I can't get into modern television. (Off-Topic)

by stabbim , Des Moines, IA, USA, Monday, January 22, 2018, 08:50 (2498 days ago) @ Coaxkez

Well, I've given some opinions in other replies. Coming up with my own list is sort of hard because almost everything I'm watching lately is on Netflix, and some of it (Frontier, The End of the F****ing World) is even exclusive.

The only thing I've really watched on Amazon is The Grand Tour, which is, IMO, only appealing right now if you're very invested in the 3 former Top Gear hosts who are on it. It's gotten a lot better in its 2nd season, but it's still got a little way to go before it's as good as Top Gear used to be.

If you prefer old shows, I've been watching The Dick Van Dyke Show, which is a very old sitcom that's surprisingly good, although a bit campy in some places.

Red Dwarf is a show that's both old (started in 1988) and new (the latest season came out last year). It's a sci-fi comedy centered around the last man alive - while working on a mining ship, he's put into stasis as punishment for smuggling an un-quarantined cat on board. He wakes up 3 million years later to learn that the crew is dead and they've been flying away from Earth the whole time, so he is effectively alone, except for a humanoid creature which evolved from said cat, and a single hologram recreation of one of the crew (his bunkmate, whom he hates, naturally). The story doesn't matter much from there because RD takes enormous liberties with continuity - anything they need to set up a punchline is fair game. The humor comes mostly from savage insults and subverting sci-fi tropes.

Interestingly, they've managed to go this whole time without technically having any aliens involved. Everything they encounter is either manmade stuff that got left out in space (robots, genetically engineered creatures), or people from other dimensions, etc. Also, Patrick Stewart is a fan.

I recently watched a Scottish comedy called Still Game, following some older folks (pensioners, as they'd be called there) who entertain themselves as best they can in a run down old city. It's technically in English, but if you're not actually Scottish you'll probably need subtitles. And Google.

I am watching The Lizzie Borden Chronicles right now. I'm only halfway through, so I can't tell you if it's good overall. I can say that the first half features gratuitous violence and Christina Ricci being creepy.