Masterpiece Theater

[Drunk Monk]

VdV e2: The show has come around, mostly because the team is solid. Eps are an hour and a half like movie length. This one had kinky religious sex and Indian twins.

[Drunk Monk]

VdV 3: Season finale. Three and done. But it was quite good, again, mostly for the crime solving squad. The lead and Lucienne are particularly good as a male and female team, both of whom sleep around a lot, including with each other and have no qualms or issues about it. There's also a wannabe casanova cop and a nooB techie cop. But most of all, the pathologist is hilarious. That reminds me of Endeavour, which also has a hilarious pathologist.

We'd definitely watch another season if they make it. And if we find it, maybe we'll watch the original series.

[Drunk Monk]

Flesh and Blood premiere. A 4 ep miniseries. It's engaging so far but one huge story chopped into quarters. At least VdV had some resolution with each episode and some overarching stories for the series run. Ep one of F&B just started to get good when it ending, teasing the next ep, and we still don't know who the victim is. HP1: Umbridge as Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched. A mom meets a new man. Her three kids are suspicious but each has their own drama. I really like how this one is filmed so far. It's located on Britain's West Sussex coast, and the use of light is spectacular. It really catches that seaside light.

[Drunk Monk]

F&B e2 kept up the pace. It's a pretty funny show. It still has yet to reveal the victim, which doubles the suspense and the guessing game.

NOT MASTERPIECE but we also watched Cobra on PBS. It was extremely mediocre. A solar storm sends the UK into a nationwide blackout. Chaos ensues. They kept deleting anything that sounds vaguely like a cuss word hich cuts out lots of dialog and the accents are thick so I found myself missing lines, but I wasn't really paying that much attention anyway. We might keep watching it because it's something to watch.

[Drunk Monk]

F&B e3 keeps up the pace. The device of not revealing the victim makes it doubly fun to try to guess. Umbridge is so deliciously psycho. Finale next week.

Cobra got a little better but we’re still not that engaged. Big power outage just doesn’t sell the level of disaster but some of the characters are okay.

Tried The Trouble with Maggie Cole and felt it was too Hallmark and Maggie is super annoying. It’s ITV.
Might still add it to our Sunday night playlist because the setting is so lovely.

I suppose this is changing to PBS but it’s still really about Masterpiece. The other series are just filler.

[Drunk Monk]

F&B finale was disappointing. A cliffhanger and next season is a year away. Will we even live to see that?

Fell asleep during Cobra. There’s a rebellion militia because a solar flare caused a blackout so the rebels create a blockage to protest which also stops the relief effort. This show makes no sense.

My allergies have me down so I’m calling it a night.

[Drunk Monk]

Roadkill is Hugh Laurie as a UK politician trying to avoid scandal. Looks like a 4 ep run on Masterpiece. HP1 = Cho. It's watchable but just because it's got that classy Masterpiece vibe. It's really a soap opera where everyone is banging everyone else and got dirt on everyone else. I never watched House so I'm not engaged. But as you probably have gathered by this thread, it's our habit to watch Masterpiece on Sunday nights, so we'll likely watch this.

Not a murder mystery (yet). No sword fights. Not DOOM recommended.

[Drunk Monk]

Roadkill e3 - still satisfying. Just realized that the newspaper editor is Pip Torrens, who played Herr Starr in Preacher. http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFor...p?tid=4038 He was so good in that - one of my favs. Not sure why it took me so long to put that together. He looks exactly the same, sans scar.

[Drunk Monk]

Roadkill S1 finale. Yeah, that really didn't end. It reached a point and left a lot hanging. That was disappointing for a S1 finale. It's an okay show. The music started out good but then got a tad annoying. Brit politricks and scandals. Good cast. We'll tune in when S2 comes about, but that won't be for another year or so. Needed a swordfight. 

Now we wait for a month+ for any new Masterpiece content - the next is a redux of All Creatures Great and Small which doesn't premiere until Jan 10 2021. There's three other shows slated for 2021 but no firm dates yet.

[Drunk Monk]

Churchill’s Secret (2015) Dumbledore as Churchill after he had a major stroke. His steadfast wife is the ever sophisticate Lindsay Duncan. Their performances alone sell this. Also on cast is Christian McKay, who plays the mayor on Warrior so I thought about him a lot when I covered that. This was very Masterpiece, mostly set in a beautiful manor in the English countryside. Dumbledore depicted a stroke really well at first but his recovery was too quick, although I’m told that sometimes it goes that way. That wasn’t my experience with my dad at all. Nevertheless, that’s how it happened historically so what do I know?

No swordfights. Recommended for DOOM Churchill historians.

[Drunk Monk]

After cancelling Netflix DVDs, we invested in Amazon Prime's PBS Masterpiece channel, which unlocks a ton of shows.

Profilage (aka Paris Murders) This is a police procedural about a cute redhead psychological profiler who really needs to eat more pastries and cheese. She's impossibly skinny, but she always gets the answers. I call this 'psycologique un-zero-un'. Every episode describes something out of DSMIII. Everyone in Paris are sexy model beautiful except for a few of the bystanders. And the police station sits right on the Seine across from Notre Dame. Somehow I missed that walking down those very streets. We're mostly in it for the Paris views. We got about 3 eps in.

Vienna Blood This is a police procedural buddy show about a jaded veteran cop who beats up his suspects and a young doctor who uses Freud's methods to solve murders. We only got through the first ep of a two-part premiere. It's a period show. Police work was harder before the interwebz.

[Greg]

I noticed a new version of All Creatures Great and Small is next up on Masterpiece. I read the books as a teen and saw some of the first iteration of the show in Ireland.

[Drunk Monk]

Yup. I remember that original series too. There was this scene where a farmer has to have his dog put down and it was so poignant that it really stuck with me. I remember watching it with my parents and we were all crying. That's about all I remember from it though.

[Drunk Monk]

Finished Vienna Blood. It was okay. 6 2-part eps. 

It was the Vienna architecture that was outstanding. 

The buddy cop trope was a tad hackneyed - like watered down Sherlock. 

I liked the Jewish Freudian character, although not being able to decide between the two hotties (rich socialite vs hysterical forensic scientist) felt like a stretch. He's not really charismatic enough to get either. 

Given the time period (just prior to WWII) they played with growing anti-Semitism themes. A 2nd season is allegedly on order from summer of last year but who knows where things stand with the pandemic?

The best part was the first episode where a the hysterical forensic scientist has a hysterical hallucination staring at a Munch painting (hysterical in the Freudian sense, not as funny ha ha).

There was a cool sword display in the 2nd to last episode in the background of a military school. Not particularly DOOM recommended.

Profilage continues to amuse. We're into season 2 but I skipped a few eps. We're can predict some of it, but there've been enough good twists to surprise us now and again. Chloe dresses really funny. She's got overdyed red locks, and wears bright green dresses with purple jackets and red tights. I've decided she looks like Madeline if she became a raver. 

I really should look up to see if there really is a police station just across the Seine from Notre Dame.

[Drunk Monk]

Still semi-watching Profilage although we're not overly dedicated to it. It's getting really predictable. There was a good mcguffin in the last ep but I called it as soon as the character was introduced. And Stacy called the theme (a topic they were yet to address) before the episode even began.

I just discovered there are 10 seasons of this show. Our channel only has two seasons. Also, the lead profiler swaps out after 6 and a half seasons. We'll bail soon. 

I should note that both Profilage and Vienna Blood have nudity but it's digitally blurred on the Amazon Prime PBS Masterpiece channel. Sometimes the discreet nipple makes it through but it's weird for the occasional full frontal scene. 

We tried the Frankie Drake Mysteries but couldn't make it through the first ep. There was something annoying about the pacing and tone of the dialog. Frank from Kim's Convenience appeared in ep1 (it's another Canadian show) but that wasn't enough to sustain.