Coming down after the fun of Anime Expo, last week had me retreating a bit when it came to TV since I just wanted to curl up in the dark and watch stuff. I didn’t get too deep into a lot of things but I kept up on my few regulars. What I did do before getting into any new shows in my queue is discover a British show called Scott and Bailey, which began in 2011 and wrapped up a few years ago. I believe it has five seasons, which isn’t a lot of episodes, but it delivered some great crime drama material focusing on it from the women in the fictional Manchester branch with the MIT. It’s basically a CSI show with a good bit of personal drama mixed in as well. The short seasons are its strength as are its characters, plus it’s a Sally Wainright show and I loved her work on Happy Valley and a few others so finding this show in the backlist of Hulu while looking for a reason to keep the streaming service was ideal.
While I’m not fully up to date on this series, I did catch the fifth and sixth episodes of it and continue to love every moment of it. The performances are great, I want more of Swamp, and I still can’t believe that they’re so close to introducing Floronic Man and with a great actor behind it that’s unrecognizable from his stint on The Strain. Everything about this show is firing on all cylinders.
And I remain extremely frustrated that it was canceled before it even aired. Yet I will recommend it till the cows come home as a great series to watch and enjoy as a ten-hour movie.
With a bit of mild binging, my youngest and I finally finished off the back half of the second part of Sabrina. I loved how absolutely over the top the show went at times and playing with things. There’s a lot of fun pulls from religion here to deal with when it comes to Lucifer, Lilith, and more and it has a lot of enjoyment in how it delivers it all. There’s plenty that people can criticize all they want on it, but the show to me is playing within the rules and style that it set up and it’s just having a blast with it. I still like the original comic a bit more because of the really, really, deep cuts that went into it, but this live-action version just delights me endlessly.
With two seasons out there and being canceled a few months ago, iTunes dumped them both this week for $4.99 a season. I’d seen them through Hulu previously but I always like the chance to own and watch at my own leisure and without it being streamed. The show is one that took a bit to find its groove but it’s such a fun romp with weird and quirky characters and a lot of “non-standard” stuff in the cast that I really just had a blast with it. Picking this up and burning through it on the background was a lot of fun.
While I burned through Star Trek: Discovery season 2 after the show ended, I’m rewatching it with my significant other in batches of 2 or three episodes at a time every few weeks. It’s definitely a show that makes a repeat viewing worthwhile in seeing how things tie together once you know the end but I’m also just enjoying the performances. I think we’re up to episode five so far but what really got me was just how strong Anson Mount is as Pike. I always liked Pike as a character since he was key to the pilot of the original series and filling in some of his time between the events of Talos IV and potentially up to TOS is exciting. I loved when Bruce Greenwood took on the role for the reboot films but Mount is really bringing him to life in a fantastic way.
