Part of the appeal of the summer season is that I can catch up on some shows that I fell behind on, especially since there are several that I watch with different people and syncing schedules is not easy. It’s one of the reasons when it came to live-action shows that I ended up reviewing fewer of them than I used to.
With it still bloody hot and not being up for anything really deep when it comes to season-long storylines, I didn’t get through a ton of shows this past week. But I did make my way further into 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.
This past Friday saw the return of one of my absolute favorite shows on Netflix with the fourth season of Queer Eye. While I could easily binge the hell out of this show, it’s one that I make sure to watch no more than one a day. There’s something about letting the individual stories stand for the people that are being helped that feels important, since it’s not about the guys who are helping them when you get down to it. They’re the personality that brings it to life and puts it in motion, but I want to be able to see the people they’re helping. And the first three that I’ve watched so far have resonated well, especially the opening as almost everyone knows a teacher that just seems to practically live for the school.
It’s taken forever to get this series finished as my daughter and I watch it together and we had a slew of other shows that were further ahead of it in the queue. But we did finally polish off the last three episodes and had a lot of fun. There are still issues, as there are with every CW show, in the number of just plain stupid moments that happen that these characters should be smart enough to handle. But this series is just a delight as I love the cast as a whole, especially Cress Williams after Hart of Dixie, and focusing on a lot of African-American issues and the way things play out there is definitely engaging and something that’s welcome and different when it comes to the superhero side of things.
I’m cheating and sliding a little anime in here but this is similar to the Evangelion viewing recently. I’d started watching this last summer with my eldest daughter but college took her away for awhile so we’ve been doing some catch-up this summer. We’d seen the first half of it before so we just went forward in the back half and had a blast. I love the show, crappy animation and all, but watching it knowing what’s coming in the end and seeing the reaction of people who realize that the first episode is the last episode and that the ending we got in broadcast form as we watched here is a brutal one. It’s not quite Evangelion level but it’s one that leaves you craving so much more. We’ll actually do the movies in the fall to get a different view of it since I really enjoyed those.
