US TV

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching.

Slightly later than normal this week thanks to everyone and their auntie suddenly thinking Sunday nights are the best time to broadcast TV shows. Monday nights? Not so much, so here we are on Tuesday, perhaps for a little time, perhaps for one week only.

Earlier this week, I reviewed the first episode of American Gods (US: Starz; UK: Amazon) and the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale (US: Hulu; UK: Amazon). But time and time wait for no man, not even me, so I’ll be reviewing the second and fourth episodes of those two respective shows after the jump, along with the usual regulars: The Americans, Doctor Who, The Flash, Great News, Lucifer and Silicon Valley.

But I did try to watch something else as well. Albeit a tad unsuccessfully.

Dear White People (Netflix)
Follow-up TV series to the massively successful movie that explores the modern day nuances and mores of race, class, race again, sex and race (again). Set on a modern day US Ivy League college campus, it looks at what happens when a humour magazine organises a black-face Halloween party. The ‘Dear White People’ of the title is the name of a college radio show run by Logan Browning (Powers, Hit The Floor) in which she tries to explain to white people what they’re doing might be racist, while they in turn phone in to explain to her how racist she’s being.

And that’s all I got.

The first 10 minutes were actually quite funny – astute critiques of what forms racism can take in an age in which accusing someone of racism is seemingly worse than their actually being racist, as well as insights into how racism changes depending on the classes of both those being racist and those targeted, and even how what constitutes racism can vary from one person to another.

I’d like to have carried on watching, but then came a point where I realised I literally had no idea what people were saying. The words didn’t mean anything to me. I am old and white and British, and the cast are predominantly young and black and American, and I simply couldn’t understand their lexicon and references, or when I did, it was five to 10 seconds after the line had been delivered.

What I caught was very good, though, so I may come back to it – with the subtitles turned on and tablet in hand set to the Urban Dictionary so I can work out what’s going on and maybe learn a little, too.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Dear White People, Great News, Doctor Who and Silicon Valley”