I was wondering about that one…
I will try Ken Burns’ new series tonight.
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We watched about 20 minutes of The Beast in Me last night and decided it wasn’t for us. Too many unlikeable characters!
Watched Ballad of a Small Player with Colin Farrel the other night. An interesting look into the life of a high roller degenerate gambler. Enjoyable if not a bit weird.
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We recently started the newest season of The Morning Show, which is entertaining enough. It’s been a while since we watched the previous seasons, so we’re both a bit lost when happenings are referred to. Oh, well.
We also watched the new episode of Derry, which we almost gave up on after 2 episodes. The sense of dread and Stephen King’s way of showing the very real horror of people behaving badly (The Eternal Mean Girl trope, racism, etc. etc.) side by side with the supernatural.
I also just may have a fondness for the story, as it was one of the first long novels I read.
Finally, the latest installment of the completely bonkers The Chair Company.
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Playdate on Amazon was actually funny, in a dumb way…but it has gags and subtext that were more intelligent if not deep. Rotten Tomatoes and critics panned it. Audiences liked it. Oddly jumpy intro and structure but once it gets rolling it’s fine.
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We felt like utterly mindless fluff last night, and Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale delivered. My takeaways:
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Lady Mary still makes terrible decisions
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It’s hard to feel sorry for spoiled rich folk.
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Kids are to be seen, not to be heard. But srsly, I believe not one child uttered even a single line. They all seemed to be just another part of the general backdrop.
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Paul Giamatti
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The absolutely fabulous, stunning fashion and gorgeous jewelry stole the show entirely, as usual.
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Every single character’s elaborate & repetitive references to their impending retirement — maybe so the focus group wouldn’t forget that this truly is The Grand Finale
— but it made for mostly terrible and sentimental dialog with unfortunately very few (but good) zingers. After all, the dowager is dead. -
Unless I misunderstood the convo between Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Hughes, we are to assume that a woman well over 60 might still be a virgin
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The dramatic farewell to their staff, as if they’d never see them again… when Lord and Lady Grantham seemingly just moved a quick stroll away through the park
Also watched another coupla episodes of The Morning Show with a rather predictable story line 
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Every time there’s a detail like this, I remember that Downton Abbey is the only TV show (or movie) that I have in common with my 75 year old aunt.
I had mixed feelings about The Grand Finale, but not really a mix of good and bad so much as a mix of “oh yes, this is the thing I like from Downton” and “hmmm, not enough of that other thing I like from Downton” (namely Tom’s class consciousness, Edith and Mary sniping at each other, and several of the characters who are now dead). Tom’s edges have really been sanded off over time, in the same way that the mean neighbor on a sitcom eventually becomes a gruff but beloved member of the family. To be fair, I suppose that happens in real life when you get a shitload of money.
Oh! One thing I really like is Thomas Barrow’s arc. Yes, this is another case of edges being sanded off, but I think it’s been earned. Maybe the Granthams et al are a little too accepting of him to be believable, but you know what, I’ll gladly take that over hearing a homophobic diatribe, as period-appropriate as it might be.
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I wish there’d been more zingers, although it made the 2-3 stand out, like when Hector Moreland insulted Carson and Daisy, or when Andrew suggests Paul Giamatti find lighter reading in the nursery
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Finished The Morning Show last night. I was surprisingly moved by the scene with Jennifer Aniston and Jeremy Irons (a former massive crush of mine about 30 years ago), as well as the scene between Billy Crudup and his mom. All hit a bit close to home.
Time for some fun shows next!
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I’m watching Slow Horses, Down Cemetery Road, The Morning Show and for escapism, the wacky Palm Royale.
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We have stuck with Slow Horses, and it has grown on us. Thanks for the encouragement.
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I’m leaning into solid menopause content with
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Riot Women — Sally Wainright’s latest drama on BBC. Because it comes from her it’s heavy on the soap but also focussed on women in peri/menopause (who start a band). I love Joanna Scanlon who is a superb actor who does not get as much love as she deserves but the entire cast is solid. (I’m not sure Tamsin Greig is given the right stuff to do).
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Small Achievable Goals: this CBC gem finally dropped on ITV and I’m trying not to eat all the delicious content at once. Coming from one half of Baroness Von Sketch it is of course very funny and the focus on menopause and the treatment of women is smart.
As an aside: I also just watched If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, 2025) and it was a brilliant but gruelling watch that renders the ceaseless demands on a working mother with a disabled child, the burdens of expectations, and the lack of support and understanding in way that is almost too emotionally immersive to be bearable. And yet that’s what it should be as that nightmare strategy also takes the film into horror territory and that genre is absolutely necessary for exploring motherhood (as many films, including The Babadook, have illustrated).
Psychological thrillers like All Her Fault also provide these commentaries, but usually more explicitly or overtly rendered as they bring together domestic and criminal/justice structures to bear on each other where women are both hyper visible and invisible. They’re more obvious which makes them fun and most of the time justice (usually extrajudicial because the system wasn’t going to be looking out for their interests) is rendered. Good fun even if also having its stressful moments.
(Note: I could go off on how some of this content (books, television) can use the genre to impose the older values of bad domesticity—eg the maternal women > women with no children or twisted maternity. Funnily, I’ve been able to identify the novels written by men (hidden in first initials) because of how they approach these stories. I could go off on this but I don’t have the spoons to manage the articulation or whatever gender war I might accidentally set off.)
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I think you might really enjoy https://celestemdavis.substack.com/ (if yer not familiar yet).
If I had Legs I’d Kick You has been on my list of things to watch.
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We’d kinda dropped the ball on Only Murders in the Building — mostly bc we feel like it lost its zing, but Christopher Waltz featured heavily in the two we watched last night.
Still a shame Selena Gomez fell into the Ozempic trap. So completely and utterly unnecessary.
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I want to see If I Had Legs as well…
Current TV obsession: The Chair Company. We’re also watching the holiday edition of Tournament of Champions (I don’t like many cooking competitions, but I like a lot of the people on this one, and the randomizer is just enough of a wild card without getting into Chopped/Cutthroat Kitchen territory), the rest of HBO Sunday night (Welcome to Derry, I Love LA), Pluribus, and Real Housewives. Oh, and Stumble, or at least the first couple episodes. It’s constantly on the verge of being a little too silly for me, but I really like Jenn Lyon.
Since we both work at home, which leaves both morning coffee and lunch available to watch an episode of TV on most days, we sometimes watch a movie at night. Last night was the new Marc Maron documentary, which as a fan of both his standup and his podcast since the early days, was up my alley. The night before, Nouvelle Vague, Linklater’s dramatization of the making of Breathless. Despite Breathless being far from my favorite Godard movie (maybe I need to give it another shot), I loved it.
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Where did you watch the Maron doc?
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I was wondering if anyone else “got” the whackiness that is Tim Robinson’s humor. I take it you also watched I Think You Should Leave, which has some ridiculously funny skits (like the lunch meeting, the adult ghost tour, etc. etc. He is absolutely insane. In a good way 
And thanks for the heads up about the Marc Maron doc. Very much enjoy his standup, and we’d listen to his podcast on roadtrips back in the day.
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Oh, we rented it. With something like that, I’m never sure if it’s going to end up coming to one of the streaming services or not.
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