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glroberts
Reviews
True Detective (2014)
Season 4=waste of electricity
I hadn't watched any of this series, but heard Jodie Foster was in #4 so thought we'd start with that...the high viewer rating had me looking forward to a great series! Wow, what a disappointment. After episode 1, I thought "well, you have to give it a chance to develop", and looked forward to improvement in Episode 2. It was actually worse...full of irrevelant soap opera-like stuff, very little going on that meant anything. Not to mention the silly childish "supernatural" events that a child could have written.
Other than the two "kids", the adopted daughter and the young male cop...there's nobody even remotely likeable in this disaster. They all act like they hate each other and live a trashy life style. If I hadn't been to Alaska before seeing these episodes, I'd never even bother going, just on a chance that people like that would be there.
If there's any plot to the first two episodes, it would be "some people got killed and some mysterious supernatural stuff is going on". That's about all the substance of the two hours you waste watching it. Unless you like watching people abuse each other, curse a lot, and have no focus to their lives other than forcing you to watch their trashy activity in full.
After this, I may recover someday and try season 1 to see why it had such high ratings, but it will take some time to wash the garbage from the first episodes of season 4 out of my mind. It truly is not worth the few cents worth of electricity it takes to watch it.
Motor MythBusters (2021)
unexciting
Had to check this out since I loved the original Mythbusters series, but it was disappointing to where I haven't been able to watch an episode for more than a few minutes. I'm somewhat into cars, but there are too many irritations to hold my interest. Watching the over-decorated girl (Faye?) overact and feign interest as she's instructed about birds in episode 5 was agonizing.
Big Weekends with Gregg Wallace (2021)
Mostly good, some episodes too "foody"
I'm usually skeptical of travel shows by chefs, as so many of them spend most of the episode sitting at tables talking about food and wine, but was pleasantly surprised seeing the 'Venice' and 'Rome' episodes where Gregg did delve some into local foods but spent a majority of the time discussing or seeing interesting sites and attractions, and doing things more exciting than eating. Occasionally he does go overboard, such as the disappointing 'Istanbul' season 2 episode, where he just goes mostly from food to food and covers little else. C'mon Gregg, Istanbul should have all sorts of fascinating sights and history! I realize foodies may view this a bit differently, but I like to do more when I travel than just eat and wine. Hopefully the Istanbul episode was an exception, and he'll be back on track with a good balance of doing interesting things besides eating next episode.
Designated Survivor (2016)
Third season is garbage
I really liked the first 2 seasons, but season 3 is a waste. Soapy drama mixed with politically correct propaganda.
Tin Star (2017)
Disappointing and sluggish
After 2-3 episodes, I'd have rated this maybe 7.5 stars, but after slogging through the whole series, I think 5 is pushing it.
Very frustrating to sit through the very long pauses used as filler. This probably could have been an OK 5-episode show if they trimmed out the useless pauses and irrelevant scenes. This guy is supposed to be on the wagon, yet way too much time is spent on each episode showing whiskey glasses being poured and filled as he uses every possible excuse to booze it up (and encouraged by his wife, if you can believe that). I spent a lot of time on the last episodes with my hand on the remote, and eventually fast forwarded through much of the useless and pointless nonsense in the later episodes.
The entire ninth episode is a long, boring look back at history supposed explaining why he's what he is, something that could have easily been done with a 5-10 minute "flashback", but instead wasting an hour of your time if you can manage to sit through it.
The story itself is pretty flawed and simplistic, but I could have tolerated this if the production itself was good. Lovely scenery, but geez, get on with the story and quit showing us 30 second scenes of someone sitting there supposedly contemplating something deep or guzzling down each of several glasses of whiskey in real time...we got it in the first few seconds, no need to drag it out
Marcella (2016)
Annoying music spoils it
After watching a few similar series, we eagerly looked forward to this one from recommendations. One of the first things I noticed was the loud, often ominous-sounding background music that often is so loud it makes it difficult to pay attention to the story.
After two episodes, I decided it just wasn't worth it...that music just dominates the episodes to where it's sometimes difficult to keep track of what's going on. What a shame; it looks like it could have been a good series. Judging from other reviews, some aren't bothered by the music (or they're listening via cheap speakers that don't play the constant, ominous bass present during what seems like 3/4 of the episode).
We usually love British crime-dramas (Broadchurch, River, Happy Valley, etc.) and would probably like this one except for the obnoxious background music. What a shame to waste good writing and acting due to some overzealous person who thinks it adds to the story. I may try to take up the remaining episodes with the sound off and only subtitles on, but for now, it's just not worth it.