Commentaires de Narce

I have commented many times about shows that rely on subtitles when the characters obviously are able to speak English. But Andor has gone beyond silliness by CREATING a language that no viewer on Earth speaks.

The characters are able to speak English, they do it all the time. So what is the point? To make the show more "exotic"? To make sure no-one is watching it while folding the laundry? Or, like the Emperor would say, "Because I can!"

Well, go ahead, just don't expect me to listen.

First off, I confess that Seth is not one of my favourite actors, or writers, or...

I watched 3 episodes before writing this, and before checking the reviews. [Hint: sort by Review Date for the most realistic ratings] In general, I agree with what has been said - the first episode, with Martin Scorsese, was the best. 2 and 3 were cringe-worthy enough that I have no real hope for the series, despite the Emmy accolades (maybe voting for the guest appearances?).

If you really want to see a comedy based on what goes on in a production house (TV, not film, but basically the same) I highly recommend "The Industry" {a.k.a. "Made in Canada"). It's much funnier than The Studio, despite the lack of celebrity cameos. It was a small Canadian series, and is almost impossible to find, but it is worth the search. The cast and writing are top-notch.

Yes, I slogged through the whole thing, and no, I was not enchanted by it.

Every video trope seems to have been trotted out by the producers:

• Flashing back and forth in time.

• Is what we're seeing reality or hallucination?

• Husbands who are not supportive, more like sabotaging.

• Are there ghosts in this house?

• Text on a phone screen that is unreadable unless you can pause it and zoom in.

• Something happening at night in an unlit space.

• "Straight" transitions to "Lesbian" after one kiss.

The time changes were especially confusing - who is this person on screen right now? Is she someone who we encounter later as an older person, or is she someone who dies or moves away?

I don't know if they're doing a second season or not, but I'm inclined to skip it.

I have to say that this was one of my "must watch" shows. The writing, from Robert and Michelle King, was well above the average for TV, and the cast were spectacular. I loved Katja Herbers as Kristen, and the support of Colter, Mandvi and Emerson made the whole thing hang together beautifully. Special kudos go to the 4 girls who play Kristen's daughters - they were fabulous!

Throw in the occasionally-appearing people like Christine Lahti, Kurt Fuller, Andrea Martin, the late Peter Scolari and the irreplaceable Wallace Shawn and you have an ensemble cast that is well worth watching. Too bad it had to get cancelled.

...be attracted to the spinoffs of this movie.

Yes, it has an attractive star with some stinging lines, but it's not exactly Bogie and Baby's "To Have and Have Not" with added nudity. Frankly, the script is less than stellar and the production needed a good shove just to make it to mediocrity.

I would be interested in seeing Margaret Qualley in something more absorbing, like a Femme Fatale role for Sugar (without the SF twist).

I just finished watching Season 3 of Fisk, and I have enjoyed all of it. No, it's not the knee-slapping guffaw-inducing style of comedy, it's a little more cerebral than pratfalls and spit-takes. It's Australian, so be ready to look up some of the language, but it's not beyond the realm of understanding.

In brief, I seem to agree with most of what was said in rchalloner's review - slow pacing, injudicious editing and unnecessary side-tracks.

As this seems to have involved a bunch of actors who are basically new to me, and therefore unrecognizable. This is compounded by someone's insistence that every male actor must have a beard of some description, making it even harder to tell them apart. The only exception seems to be Samuel who, while bearded, has a unique treatment of his hirsuteness. OK, so the Gillette company didn't exist, but surely some men (or their wives) trimmed or removed their beards with some sharp implement like a knife.

By now you may have guessed that I am not a big Christian, yearning for more bible stories on TV. So the degree to which the show follows the Bible is basically lost on me. I recall a couple of facts about David from my Sunday School days, like the lion encounter and the slinging death of Goliath, along with the fact that he played the harp occasionally. Virtually no memory of Saul or why he chose to annoy God, or of Samuel and his role in the story of David. I got almost as much about David from Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as I did from this show.

Saw the listing for this, and always liked Nathan Lane as a comedic actor, but as soon as the laugh track raised its ugly head, I knew there might be trouble. They say that it is done before a live audience, but it didn't sound like that to me - At the very least, it sounded like reactions were "enhanced".

Good cast, but no real chemistry between them and jokes that elicited NO laughs from me (and another giveaway that audience reactions may be pre-recorded). I expected more from the guys who did Will & Grace.

I heard that people had problems figuring out what was happening in Season 2, so they were told to go back to Season 1 to hepl make sense of it. So I went back and re-watched Season 1 BEFORE I started Season 2. Well, that's a lot of time wasted.

Season 2 seems to have almost no connection to Season 1 except for the main characters. And even then, it makes very little sense. I couldn't be bothered to finish S2, it was just too bizarre.

I managed to struggle through the whole thing because my video player can play at 1.5 x speed, otherwise I might have given up on it after episode 1.

The plot seems to struggle between the subplots: who is killing the girls and why, where is Mickey's sister and why, what happened to Truman's career? I was confused by flashbacks that made little sense unless you were plotting a timeline for the characters: now she's a kid, now she's a teenager, now she's an adult, now she's a cop... Unfortunately, this style of non-linear storytelling seems to be in vogue now, for some strange reason.

The pacing seemed to drag many times, with a character walking down a street as music plays in the background - for the whole duration of the song! A little judicious editing would have helped. It looked to me like they had a contract for an 8-episode series, but only had a script for 4 episodes, so they had to throw in a whole lot of filler.

Once again (after The Night Agent) Netflix has produced a show that requires you to either speak a second (and atypical) language - Farsi, or in this case, Korean. Don't speak that? Well, there's always the captions! Mind you, that's sort of like getting a PDF of the show script, complete with the useless prompts like "ominous music playing" or "distant horns blowing".

I never saw the French original, so my comments are based completely on the Fassbender version.

It seems to me as if someone is trying to create another version of the hugely successful "Slow Horses". Even the opening theme, performed by Jack White, seems to be a poorer version of Mick Jagger's "Strange Game"

I rather liked Season 1 of this show. Season 2, not so much. For some reason, the Director/Producer/Writer felt that about 1/3 of the script should be in Farsi, and nobody had the sense to override this stupid decision! For Pete's sake, these are supposed to be diplomatic personnel in New York City - they ALL have to be able to speak English, even among themselves, but no, they lapse into Farsi on a regular basis. Fine, if you are making a show for the Iranian market, but what portion of the North American market (or Netflix subscribers) speaks Farsi?

Somehow, I suspect that someone in charge wanted to make an anti-Iranian show, and this was what they came up with.

And the subtitles are written like they are meant for the hearing impaired, but stupid descriptions like "tense music playing" "Noor in Farsi" and "indistinct chatter" add no useful information for anybody.

I decided to watch this mostly on the strength of Anya Taylor-Joy and her remarkable performances. Unfortunately, there is just too much of other stuff that makes this film less than it might have been.

First, the cinematography. There are just too many scenes where it was so dark I couldn't really see what was happening.

Next, the "score", that seems at times to be trying to evoke a feeling of horror by assaulting the eardrums with screeching noise. Not exactly John Williams, here.

And speaking of screeching noise, there are the twins, who are so annoying that I kept hoping *they* would disappear. Probably not the fault of the kids, more likely attributable to the director.

Then there's pacing. Innumerable shots of the father chopping wood. Scenes that are stretched out, as if they had the script for a one-hour movie and had to make it last 90 minutes. "We'll fix it in post, just splice in some of the B-roll footage." Again, I would lay the blame at the feet of the director.

Finally, the animals. The black ram that gets to spend the night with the children despite Thomasina's protestations. The black (charcoal?) rabbits that teem in the woods near the cottage. The wolves, notable for being unseen and unheard, but who bear a lot of the blame.

And if you suffer through to the last scenes, you get some sort of quasi-explanation of what you have been watching, but still basically unsatisfying.

I made it through 4 episodes before giving up on it. Bare bottoms and full-frontal nudity are OK in their place, but they seem to have been inserted here just to keep me from falling asleep. The writing and acting (with the possible exclusion of Mr. Tennant) were sub-par, verging on silliness. Having one of the characters groped to make her spill food on another character is R-rated 3 Stooges. And this from Disney? Walt must be spinning in his sarcophagus.

Alex Hassell is played up here as being irresistible to women, but I can't imagine why. He is callous, unfaithful, self-indulgent and looks like an overaged Rami Malek. And Aidan Turner's Declan is just strange, somehow able to stumble through an interview with a drunken guest as if he had the charisma of Johnny Carson.

They may be rivals, but they can't compete for my attention - there are better shows out there.

Season 2 started out with such a poorly-lit episode that I thought I was watching the Game of Thrones "Long Night" show that engendered so much controversy about its lack of visibility. Season 1 was never so light-challenged. This has been a complaint of mine before, and I'll say it again: just because you CAN shoot a show by candlelight using modern technology doesn't mean you SHOULD. Hollywood made a whole genre out of "film noir", but these films were all completely visible and watchable - think of Harry Lime and the black cat in The Third Man. Sorry, but I can't assume this Silo won't turn into an unlit pigsty, so I'm out!

I am a long-time fan of Tolkien, going back to the 60s, before Bakshi's animated attempt at the Trilogy. There's a LOT of stuff in the 4 books (always start with The Hobbit) and anyone attempting a cinematic adaptation always has to leave some parts out, unless they want to make a thousand-episode juggernaut.

I'm afraid this series could have done a little more judicious cutting. Characters and plotlines come and go like Ringwraiths - and that's not a good simile for something attempting to be entertaining, no matter how Tolkienesque.

Part of the problem for me is that there are just too many characters, making it difficult to keep things straight - who is the enemy of who, who is a suspected bad guy, who has what special powers? Then the plot jumps from one set of characters to another, just adding to the confusion - do these people know about the other people we saw last week, or are they totally isolated and unaware?

There's a reason the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books are the most popular: going through the Silmarillion is, quite frankly, a real slog. Too much, too unfamiliar - like this series.

How appropriate that this series should debut just as the US President wants to take over Canada, Mexico, Panama and who knows what (or where) will catch his fancy next?

Yes, sir, there is a North America, a Central America and a South America. Let's make them ALL great again, and not just the USA.

On a less political note, I was glad to see this as an adjunct to the BBC nature specials, although I don't know if it will ever replace them. The BBC has such a deep pool of talent (along with Sir David) that it is difficult for the US channels to match up with them. Why do you think that Masterpiece Theatre is made in the UK? Because they have so many great actors available to them.

I had (like so many others) enjoyed Season 1 of Sherwood. Season 2, however, was just so depressing that I couldn't even finish it. Party A kills someone from Party B, so Party B takes revenge on Party A, which then goes after Party B... you get the picture. The constant ping-pong between the "families" was annoying and confusing - I kept trying to remember which family had done which action.

So now IMDB wants me to add extra characters, so... the quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox while the boy stood on the burning deck, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was 3 in the afternoon.

First off, don't blame my review on the fact that there is a Black man in the title role. I enjoy The Irrational, which has the same situation. And I liked Morris Chestnut in Rosewood and The Resident, so no, it's not a matter of race.

I found the show annoying, but it's hard to put a finger on just why this should be. Part of the problem may be the search for rare and unusual diseases like Fatal Insomnia and Songbird Fever. What, there aren't any commonly known diseases that are sometimes difficult to diagnose?

And I seemed to be torn between the Victorian-era Holmes and the modern Watson, who works in a modern hospital but has a Victorian office and labs that look like they were stuck in a time machine. This wasn't helped by the Reichenbach Falls intro, which depicts a manageable dive into a pool before the final descent - nothing like the actual Falls. Of course, this has to be the situation so that Moriarty (and probably Holmes) could be resurrected late in the episode.

Then I couldn't figure out why there were these two Croft brothers working in the same clinic. I found them both a bit annoying, and the explanation given later in the episode for their presence was unsatisfying.

There have been so many good representations of Holmes and Watson (especially the Cumberbatch "Sherlock", which was also set in the present day) that I felt there was something (besides Sherlock) missing from this show.

I looked at this in IMDB when it came out, and told myself that this was a "must see" - GREAT cast with some real comedy chops. An overdue chance to see Julia Duffy again, and an always welcome opportunity to watch Allison Janney and Leslie Bibb in comedy roles. And then there's Carol Burnett.

An interesting premise: ordinary woman tries to break in to snooty Palm Beach society. Unfortunately, that's where the "interesting" ends. Someone somewhere decided that this should be stretched out to 10 episodes, even if there was only about 5 episodes of content. This leaves us with a lot of filler - dare I say, a whale-sized amount?

The capable cast seems to be lacking a good script, so I lay most of the blame at the feet of the writers. For a comedy show, it seems to have too few laughs - and no, I don't root for canned audience reactions, I am looking for scenes that amuse ME!

And I'm afraid that Abe Sylvia, as showrunner and a major writer, has to bear his share of the blame. And then Kristen Wiig and Laura Dern have to share some responsibility, as producers. They SHOULD have the clout to put an end to something that they see is not working, so either they didn't see it, or they are only there for the PR credits and not as "real" producers.

What can I say that hasn't already been noted? Not much, except to reiterate the complaints about the canned laughter that gets inserted after every line, funny or not. And something different: canned applause! "Look, look, it's someone who has been on TV before! You should know them! Go nuts, like a puppy when its owner comes home, and applaud like there's no tomorrow!"

I also must confess that Tim and Kat are not my favorite actors, so seeing them together has no special cachet for me. The added problem that they don't seem to go together very well just aggravates my dislike for this show..

First off, I did not find the characters in this series at all absorbing or interesting. I blame this on the script, and maybe on the directing as well. But a character-driven show like this needs to make the characters interesting - not necessarily likeable (see Baby Reindeer) but someone you can relate to.

Second, Ms. Moss (who had a producing role here) needs to pick and choose her roles more carefully. She was a big hit in Mad Men, but went on to the Handmaid's Tale (which got over-stretched) and this Veil that looks like a 2-hour movie forced to fill a 6-hour box. A good plot or interesting idea gets too thin under circumstances like this.

I basically agree with Jezlang's comments on the use of subtitles in this presentation. This is a film about ART; the subtitles are just annoying and distracting. This would have been more effective if there had been a translated voiceover of the non-English speakers. That way I would not have had to split my attention between what was being said, and the art that was being discussed. And yes, somebody should have noticed that small yellow subtitles don't work well on a sepia background!

Ken Burns should know better. Imagine the great Civil War series with subtitles instead of narrations.

These subtitles are almost as annoying as the IMDB character count!

I am a big fan of the Kings, and when the character Elsbeth was introduced in The Good Wife and reappeared in The Good Fight, she was entertaining and refreshing. She had an off-the-wall courtroom presence. When you first saw her on a case, you figured her defence was doomed to fail. But then she came up with a twist or re-interpretation of the facts that made all the difference. She was not in every episode of either series, and that kept her from becoming cloying.

But now the Kings feel that she merits a show of her own, and that is becoming too much of what was a good thing in smaller doses. The episodes are feeling repetitive, and things are not helped by portraying the crime (and the criminal) in the initial minutes. The rest of the show just becomes filler - how does this wacky person figure out what we already know?

Sorry, but this just doesn't measure up to the expectations that were created by Elsbeth's earlier (and occasional) appearances.