TV Watching
Jan. 23rd, 2019 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
out_thereThings I have watched recently and enjoyed:
Sex Education (Netflix)
A well written teen comedy/drama is a thing of joy and this was great. Teens having sex way younger than I did (but there were kids at school hooking up / that one pregnant girl, so it's certainly possible) and trying to figure out sex and relationships and all that teen angst at the same time.
It's funny and honest to the characters, and the teen actors are all great. (And I've never been happier not to be a teenage boy.)
Plus, there's Gillian Anderson!
A Very British Scandal
To be honest, I watched this because I read an interview with Hugh Grant talking about how fun it was to play villains and complicated characters now that he's older (and doesn't fall into the rom-com hero mould any more). It was actually really enjoyable.
Not the accent, which is the terribly posh accent that I could never imagine taking seriously in bed, but the story as a whole. They did a great job of making both Hugh Grant's character and Ben Wishaw's characters intriguing and dislikeable. It's a story of exes, blackmail and attempted murder, and both characters are flawed in their own ways.
It had moments of genuine humour and was a really interesting watch (although I will say that the making-out scene twenty minutes in was not so much titillating as really, really uncomfortable because that amount of patronising / paternalism makes my skin crawl when seen onscreen.1)
1 Weirdly enough, while I can read BDSM fics and find them hot, there's clearly a big line inside my head that says 'this behaviour is a red warning light in reality'. Mind you, that was the kind of story where I watch and realise that if I was either of the characters, I wouldn't have got involved in that relationship in the first place -- this is probably why I'm single. Single, yes, but my life is free from big romantic drama. I'll take single and calm over fraught and frantic, thanks.
Sex Education (Netflix)
A well written teen comedy/drama is a thing of joy and this was great. Teens having sex way younger than I did (but there were kids at school hooking up / that one pregnant girl, so it's certainly possible) and trying to figure out sex and relationships and all that teen angst at the same time.
It's funny and honest to the characters, and the teen actors are all great. (And I've never been happier not to be a teenage boy.)
Plus, there's Gillian Anderson!
A Very British Scandal
To be honest, I watched this because I read an interview with Hugh Grant talking about how fun it was to play villains and complicated characters now that he's older (and doesn't fall into the rom-com hero mould any more). It was actually really enjoyable.
Not the accent, which is the terribly posh accent that I could never imagine taking seriously in bed, but the story as a whole. They did a great job of making both Hugh Grant's character and Ben Wishaw's characters intriguing and dislikeable. It's a story of exes, blackmail and attempted murder, and both characters are flawed in their own ways.
It had moments of genuine humour and was a really interesting watch (although I will say that the making-out scene twenty minutes in was not so much titillating as really, really uncomfortable because that amount of patronising / paternalism makes my skin crawl when seen onscreen.1)
1 Weirdly enough, while I can read BDSM fics and find them hot, there's clearly a big line inside my head that says 'this behaviour is a red warning light in reality'. Mind you, that was the kind of story where I watch and realise that if I was either of the characters, I wouldn't have got involved in that relationship in the first place -- this is probably why I'm single. Single, yes, but my life is free from big romantic drama. I'll take single and calm over fraught and frantic, thanks.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 11:30 pm (UTC)Exactly that! The story was really intriguing and satisfying, even though they were both... not great people.
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Date: 2019-01-23 05:30 pm (UTC)I watched A Very British Scandal right after they released it as an impulse watch (I didn't know it was new, even), and I laughed my way through it. They were just all such dickholes. It was amazing. I love that Hugh Grant is playing non-romantic-hero characters. He did a good job at them, sure, because he was pretty, but this feels more like his real acting sweet spot.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 11:30 pm (UTC)I enjoyed it. It's fun and funny.
I love that Hugh Grant is playing non-romantic-hero characters. He did a good job at them, sure, because he was pretty, but this feels more like his real acting sweet spot.
He's always had a great level of charisma, a way of making a bumbling everyman into a romantic hero (because not all of those characters were particularly good or heroic people, honestly) but he does such a wonderful job of making a dislikeable character fascinating. I'm definitely enjoying it.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 10:09 pm (UTC)It is genuinely funny!
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Date: 2019-01-24 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 10:09 pm (UTC)Hee! That tends to be the issue! But it's a good problem to have.