What We're Watching

INGRID THOFT
Just as I'm always looking for great book recommendations, I'm equally eager to get movie and TV recommendations.  I'll go first, with the hope that like a chain letter, I'll get many suggestions in return!

Acorn TV has provided the three most recent shows I've been watching.  They're also available on DVD if you don't have Acorn.  The first, SUSPECTS, is a show about a team of detectives in Manchester, England.  The amazing thing about this show is that the dialogue is largely improvised.  This, and the style of the camera work, gives it a documentary-like style.  It's fast paced—I need the subtitles even though it's in English—and the investigative work they do is very compelling.  I'm not sure how they would solve crimes in the U.K. without the help of CCTV!  I hope this show is picked up for another season.

THE DISAPPEARANCE is a french miniseries about the disappearance of a teenage girl in Marseilles, France.  I binged this one and even sent the DVD to my mom since I thought she'd enjoy it, too.  There are many cliffhangers, and the acting is great.  There are a couple of plot twists that are rather implausible (and don't even get me started on the cleavage baring wardrobe of the female cop), but I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys mysteries, particularly those set outside of the U.S.

My third pick is very different in tone:  It's lighter and doesn't focus on serious crime.  STRIKING OUT is set in Dublin and follows a young lawyer who has "struck out" on her own after leaving a large corporate firm.  The main characters are charming, and it's interesting to get a bit of insight into the Irish legal system.  I leave the subtitles on for this show, too.  The accents are lovely, but interfere as I try to follow the plot!

How about you, Reds?  What are you watching these days?

JENN McKINLAY: The last TV show I was really hooked on was THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW. Loved, loved, loved it, but they changed the format and the cast so that's over. Sadly, I don't watch much TV. If I find something I like, I will binge watch it, but most of my evenings are spent reading, playing ping pong with the Hooligans, or floating in the pool with the Hub while listening to the Grateful Dead. I am really looking forward to the recommendations here - clearly I need to up my TV game.

HALLIE EPHRON: The two shows I love are VERA (with Brenda Blethyn based on the series by Ann Cleeves) and THE DETECTORISTS.

Up to now, all seven seasons of VERA have been on Acorn, but suddenly, the new season is going to Britbox. BOOO. I really don't want another subscription.

THE DETECTORISTS is not a crime show—it's a quirky British ensemble comedy about a bunch of sweet sad sacks who love to go out with their metal detectors in search of buried treasure. Can't wait for the new season. Also loved, but waiting for new seasons of: GLOW and THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL.

I'm trying to get hooked on CASE STUDIES and BOSCH, but so far not succeeding. And though I loved the first episodes of SHERLOCK, the final ones that are streaming are too bizarre. And wondering about THE AMERICANS. Advice??

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh, I'm no further along on TV than I was the last time we discussed it. We have one more episode of THE CROWN to watch, then will be waiting for the third season. I will have to try VERA, since I'm so hooked on Ann Cleeves's Shetland mysteries. Actually Jenn, I think you are doing exactly the right thing playing pool with the hooligans and floating in the pool with hub. Great priorities!

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  Ingrid, I'm checking out all three of the shows you mentioned. Although how I'll ever manage to watch all of them, I don't know. I'm behind on VERA and just about everything else.

What we have been watching and loving is a sci-fi series on Netflix called TRAVELERS. People from the future send their consciousnesses back to the 21st century to try to affect the future timeline. There are, of course, the usual time travel paradoxes, but it's so well done, and we love all the characters so much that we are totally hooked. Two more episodes to watch in season two, but I just read that season three is in production. Although it's supposed to be set in Seattle, it's actually filmed in Canada, and all the actors are Canadian.
I'm also loving a series running on my local PBS station, but I think it is also on Acorn, called PIE IN THE SKY. It ran for about five years in the mid-nineties in the UK. Richard Griffith's stars as an irascible police officer who is trying to retire and open a restaurant. Absolutely charming, and I adore it.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So here's what happened. We love THE AMERICANS and really look forward to it. If you haven't watched it, the pilot episode is one of the bet ever, and the show kept going beautifully—now it the midst of the last season. All good. About Russian spies embedded as Americans, and it's great.
We also love HOMELAND. More spies. All good.  But now, one  of the actors who plays a spy on THE AMERICANS is now in the cast of HOMELAND, as a spy!  I am hopelessly confused.

Same thing happened with two other shows. We started watching MADAME SECRETARY long ago—you DO watch that, right? SO good, about a female Secretary of State.  Then we started watching DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, about the one cabinet member left alive after bad guys blow up the US Capitol.  So then the next week on MADAME SECRETARY, they walked into the Capitol building, of course, and I said to Jonathan—hey! How did they  rebuild that so fast? Then I realized—it was another show.

Maybe I am simply not cut out for this, and should stick with PROJECT RUNWAY!

I am also ashamed to say we finally started watching BREAKING BAD.  We had started once, and decided it was a no. Then, for some reason, we tried it again.  Readers, it is fabulous. Fabulous! Surprising in every way. Highly highly recommended, but then you probably are all watching it already.

Brenda Blethyn a.k.a Vera Stanhope

RHYS BOWEN:  Another VERA fan here and having just met Brenda Blethyn, I'm even more of a fan because she was so lovely and friendly and just hung out with us at Malice. I was hooked on THE CROWN and VICTORIA, and I gather there will be a season three of both.  I love THE AMAZING RACE because they go to such different parts of the world. Otherwise a lot of PBS documentaries.


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The Smithie and I have gotten into a wonderful crime fiction/thriller/horror series on Amazon Prime - FORTITUDE. It's a combination of Arnaldur Indriðason, Michael Crichton, and your favorite arctic nature documentary - a genuinely twisty, puzzling mystery set in a fictionalized version of Svalbard, where climate change is threatening the livelihood of scientists, fishermen and the tourism economy. 

It has an amazing cast, comprising Scandanavian and Irish actors I've never seen before with star power like Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon and Dennis Quaid. The breakout is Richard Dormer as the lonely, conflicted sheriff at the center of the story. I can almost always spot the clues and figure our whodunnit well before the end of movie or TV mysteries, but I was well and truly stumped throughout the first series. Two seasons are up already, and the Irish/UK producer, SKY Atlantic, has signed for a third and final series. If you have Prime, check it out, and let me know what you think.

What TV gems can you share with us today, Readers?

Stay Tuned For...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I don't know about you, ladies, but my life has been hectic and then some lately. When I spend all day driving daughters and husband around, walking dogs, dashing into the grocery store/hardware store/gas station/Michaels for bags of tiny mirrors that have to be delivered to the high school (CURSE YOU SCIENCE TEACHERS AND YOUR "HANDS-ON PROJECTS"!!!) and, of course, squeezing in some time to actually, you know, make my living by writing a book-- whew! After a day like that, the only thing I want to do is fall back onto the sofa and veg out in front of the tube.

So what am I watching? Youngest and I are both into SLEEPY HOLLOW with super-dreamy Tom Mison playing an Ichabod Crane that old Washington Irving would never recognize. SLEEPY HOLLOW and our other fave, ONCE UPON A TIME, have several things in common: 1) smoldering bearded men in leather pants 2) strong female characters 3) plots that are so utterly absurd you just have to surrender your right brain and go with the flow.


Youngest tried to get me to watch REIGN, which is ostensible about Mary, Queen of Scots during the years she lived in France, but after seeing one episode, I declared a boycott. I could maybe excuse the modern prom-dress stying, or the fact the ladies of the court wear their hair like they're headed for a hippie music festival. But when the writers changed Mary's attendants names from Mary, Mary, Mary and Mary, to  Kenna, Greer, Lola  and Aylee (Aylee?!?!) that was a bridge too far.

Ross and I like to watch AGENTS OF SHIELD, which has plots, superheros, backstabbing, Clark Gregg (love him!) and conveniently wraps up by our bedtime on Sunday (9pm.) My very favorite show, ELEMENTARY, has just started up its third season! I remain impressed with the writers of ELEMENTARY, because setting up and solving a decent mystery in 45 minutes of screen time is close to impossible - and they consistently do it. I only figure out the murderer in about half the episodes, unlike my old fave CASTLE, where I could usually spot the killer by the second commercial break.


As you can tell, I look for sheer escapism when I watch TV. No doctor dramas, no heartfelt families struggling with blah, blah, blah. And, hopefully, nothing that gets cancelled in half a season.

How about you, Reds? What are you watching?

LUCY BURDETTE: I have a one-track mind right now, and it's on NASHVILLE. I know it's a soap opera (geez will every single character have slept with every other character by the time the run is over?), but I love it anyway. Yes, I'd like to shake them all and tell them to talk to each other, but I wouldn't miss an episode. Love the music too!

This is off the TV topic, but when we're in Key West, we can walk to the Tropic Cinema. So we've seen two movies recently--GONE GIRL and THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU. Both recommended, especially the latter if you want something funny and poignant, with an upbeat ending. The ending to Gone Girl was true to the book--brutal...

 
RHYS BOWEN: Of course for the last few weeks I've watched Giants, Giants and more Giants. In fact I've developed arthritis in the hips for not moving for three hours at a time. But my current favorites are the new Sherlock Holmes, Call the Midwife and The Amazing Race. But I have to confess that the nerdy side of me comes out watching TV and I'm often to be found staring at Nova and the origins of the universe.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I was mesmerized by OUTLANDER, even on the episode when I said to Jonathan--this is kind of repetitious, isn't it? But I didn't care. It was gorgeous. And I want all those knit scarves. MADAM SECRETARY and THE GOOD WIFE, both wonderful. Cannot wait for more GAME OF THRONES.  





Sherlock, of course, and Amazing Race.  You know my guilty pleasure is Project Runway, still.  Being on the road so much is making me miss everything, but Jonathan is dvr'ing like mad. He happily watched baseball, knowing we'll see our favorite shows together when I get home. HOMELAND is waiting!  (I have never seen Nashville, Lucy! Dare I begin...?)


HALLIE EPHRON: I confess, I do veg out in front of the TV at night. Two shows I try not to miss: THE GOOD WIFE and SCANDAL. The former is seriously good, amazing writing and acting; the second is outrageous and just ridiculously addictive. I'm addicted to ANTIQUES ROADSHOW and SHERLOCK (will there be more episodes?) Am I the only one who watched the PBS show about penguins? Mesmerizing.



JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What's the must-see TV at your house?