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What have you been watching? Including Between Two Worlds and Corporate

30 July 2020 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

I did another one of those movie review things for Covideodrome: Aladdin (2019).

Umbrella Academy
Umbrella Academy

Next on TMINE

This is the last WHYBW before TMINE’s August break, so there’s no ‘next on TMINE’. I’m on holiday! I’ll update you about that tomorrow.

That isn’t to say, however, despite COVID-19, that there’s no new TV on the way over the next month, just that TMINE probably won’t be reviewing it. Season two of Umbrella Academy is available on Netflix from tomorrow. Apple TV+ is offering us Ted Lasso in a fortnight. Lovecraft Country is coming a bit after that to HBO.

But actually, that’s about it. You can see why I don’t really bother with August, can’t you?

Corporate

What TMINE has been watching

I’ve not been able to watch anything German this week for a change (sorry, Das Boot and Dark) but hopefully I’ll be able to finish them off over August, along with all the other regulars.

I’ve now reached the point where Robert Lindsay is the captain in Hornblower. He’s a tad hammy but can’t dampen the overall awesomeness of the show – and neither can those cheap ITV models.

It’s the usual regulars after the jump: Baron Noir, Brave New World, Condor, Doom Patrol, Stargirl and The Twilight Zone. I’ll also be looking at a new Australian show Between Two Worlds and you’ll be delighted to hear that Corporate is back.

See you in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Between Two Worlds and Corporate”
News

TMINE’s Daily Global TV News: P-Valley, I Am renewed; a The Witcher prequel; Sky Arts to go free; + more

28 July 2020 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Internet TV

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New US TV shows

  • Trailer for Freeform’s Love in the Time of Corona
  • Trailer for HBO’s We Are Who We Are
  • HBO developing: adaptation of Brendan Borrell’s The First Shot
  • Showtime developing: Mafia First Family drama
  • Sony developing: adaptation of David Henry Sterry’s Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates & Chippendales
News

TMINE’s Daily Global TV News: Good Witch, Chesapeake Shores renewed; The Rain trailer; + more

16 July 2020 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every weekday, TMINE brings you the latest TV news from around the world

TMINE’s Daily Global TV News will return on Tuesday

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Australian TV

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New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

US TV

What have you been watching? Including Retrograde

15 July 2020 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

Wednesday again. That’s almost approaching consistency. Can’t have that.

Equally consistently, no new reviews of anything over the past week. But then there’s not been much TV worth watching. And I decided to have a couple of days off. Because I needed them.

Next on TMINE

At some point, even though I’m taking Friday and Monday off, too, I’m going to try to review both Aladdin (2019) and Greyhound (2020) for Covideodrome. Or maybe even Orange Thursday.

TV-wise, we do have some promising things coming up. Brave New World (US: Peacock; UK: Sky Atlantic) has just started, as has Sextortion (New Zealand: TNVZ On Demand). United We Fall (US: ABC) starts tonight, after only a year of waiting, while Arthurian deconstruction Cursed starts on Netflix on Friday.

I might watch any or all of those. Review them? Who knows?

What TMINE has been watching

Dark required more attention of me than I was prepared to give this week, so I’ve not got any further. Less demanding was Stranger Things, which remains true to the original meaning of the word ‘nostalgia’, being an almost physically painful, beautiful journey home to the 80s. I think I could watch it and never get tired of it.

Coupling also proves to be as clever as always, as we went through some of its numerous highlights (The Girl with Two Breasts, The Cupboard of Patrick’s Love, The Man with Two Legs, Remember This and The Freckle, the Key, and the Couple Who Weren’t, to name but a few). The plotting is genuinely superb; the sexual politics less so. But the average sitcom would kill itself for just one of Coupling‘s jokes, so let’s squint passed that.

I’ve also been watching Tron (1982) and Tron Legacy (2010), so I tuned into a weird documentary, Photo Tronology, that must have come out at the same time as the latter movie, in which director Steven Lisberger and his son Carl look through a bunch of photos from the Disney archives that were taken when the first film was being made. It’s not bad, but you have to be a real Tron fan to enjoy a couple of people looking at photos for 17 minutes.

I did watch one new TV show: Retrograde (Australia: ABC), which is one of the first TV comedies to emerge from the Coronavirus lockdown. I’ll tell you about that after the jump.

That’s on top of the latest episodes of the usual regulars: Condor, Das Boot, Doom Patrol, Stargirl and The Twilight Zone. See you in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Retrograde”
US TV

The marvellous hidden treasures of Roku’s many channels

10 July 2020 Rob Buckley Post a comment

There are, the observant will have noticed, now many ways to watch Internet TV on your TV. No more tiny laptop screens or sitting in front of your desktop – buy yourself an Amazon Fire Stick, a Google Chromecast device, an Apple TV, a Now TV box or one of the many other streaming devices on the market, connect it to your TV, connect it to your WiFi and you’ll be watching Netflix, Amazon Prime, iPlayer and all the rest in just a few moments.

Among these devices is the Roku, of which I have an amazing three different devices for different occasions. The basis of the Now TV box and even a Roku TV, the Roku offers all the usual streaming services, including Now TV, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+, as well as all the usual UK TV catch-up services, including iPlayer, All 4, ITV Hub, My5 and UKTV. Here’s my main Roku channel list:

That doesn’t make it any different to most of the other devices. But where it does excel is in its ability for pretty much anyone, including a back bedroom developer, to create streaming channels of their own and offer vastly more channels than most other devices (Apple TV – I’m looking at you here).

Here, for example, are my mid and lower channels:

So there’s some international news services, including Al Jazeera and France 24 (English and French available, as well as Spanish, I think). GreekTV does what it says on the tin, offering just about every Greek-language streaming service out there from Greece, Cyprus and elsewhere. ANT1 I quite like, even if it always seems to be showing Γυναίκα Χωρίς ‘Ονομα (Woman without a name) whenever I tune in:

But down the bottom, yes, you saw them: channels dedicated to showing every single episode of 1960s ITC shows The Baron and The Saint.

Among all those channels is Roku’s own free TV service, The Roku Channel, and inspired by this week’s discovery that it has the UK premiere of Westside, I decided to investigate further to see what other TV it – and other channels – might secretly be harbouring.

Here’s what I found on two of them: The Roku Channel and Plex. Turns out you don’t need a separate channel for The Saint – the Roku Channel has all the episodes, too.

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