What are you watching in (late 2025 and) 2026?

[TheSword]

Started Peaky Blinders. Never watched it before, which is ironic considering I live 20 miles from where it is set.

 

[payn]

Finished Steal. It was a fun contemporary noir story.

 

[Cadence]

New:

Finished the new season of Shetland. Solid.

Binged Wonder Man. Very good (as long as you take it for what it is and not the 616 comic character).

Watching new season of Father Brown as it comes out. Same as it ever was.

Finally saw Fantastic Four. Liked it. A bit implausible in parts, but especially caught the spirit of the earliest issues. A valiant try at catching the spirit of the immortal 48-50.


Old ones for the first time:

Bletchley Circle. Liked it. If it was 12 years newer could do two different Sister Boniface cross-overs, one in each style.

Maigret with Rowan Atkinson. Exceptional and not enough of it. Wondering if I should watch the new series on PBS now, or give it some time off to let my expectations settle.

Did a couple seasons of Prime Suspect. It's a bit darker than I'm in the mood for at the moment.

Have seen the first few episodes of Silent Witness on the recommendation of a friend. It needs to make me care about the main cast more, but will keep going.

Earthflight - On episode two. Other half was needing a break from the cop shows. Always wonder how each thing one was filmed.

 

[Vael]

Trying out this season of the The Traitors. I'm not generally a reality show guy, but this is amusing me, so far. Also annoying me, but, that's to be expected.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is actually surpassing my expectations and ... very good? I have been generally happy with the streaming era Treks. Disco was uneven, but I liked it for its experimental nature. Picard ... same. LD was brilliant, SNW was great, though the latest season was a severe dip in quality. Have to give Prodigy a try. Despite that, I worried about Starfleet Academy and that it wasn't really gonna work for me. But now that episode 4 has aired, I'm locked in.

And ... I've rewatched Heated Rivalry a lot. It's very good. I need some queer joy and love in these times.

Also, with the passing of Catherine O'Hara, Schitt's Creek is back on the menu. I bounced off the first season the last time I tried it, but I'm going to jump to S2 and give it another shot.

 

[jian]

Watched the first episode of what is possibly the most dodgily titled Chinese drama on Netflix, Love Game in Eastern Fantasy.

Love Game in Eastern Fantasy - Wikipedia

(The original title seems to be more like The Guide to Capturing a Black Lotus, which is much more in keeping with the genre but is possibly less comprehensible to a non-manhwa-reading audience and also sounds like a Magic the Gathering reference.)

So, this is a completely straight live-action version of a "Reborn as the Villainess" manga/manhwa/whatever trope as I've ever seen. For those who don't know, Reborn as the Villainess is a manga/anime/etc genre based on otome games (video games where you play as the heroine in a fantasy setting to date multiple possible guys or capture targets; there's sometimes a "villainess" who's your rival) where the main character finds herself in the villainess role in the game or webnovel she likes. The villainess often dies at the end.

In this case, a normal Chinese office worker who likes webnovels is put in this situation; it's a cultivator romance novel where xianxia heroes fight ghosts and monsters and also get into complex romantic tangles. The game is very, very restrictive - when she first realises what's going on and reasonably goes "welp, I'm out of here, I'm just gonna run away before I get murdered by one of the heroes," she gets struck by lightning and reset to her starting point.

So, that's all fine. The SFX are TV-level, it's all very meta, it's all played completely straight. What I also found interesting is her IRL life - she lives alone in a cute but tiny flat and it's obviously completely normal for her boss to call her and her entire team into the office for the whole day on a Saturday and then harangue them about how they've only revised this presentation twenty times, how can they be tired, where's their company spirit? 996 indeed.

 

[pukunui]

Just finished watching PONIES. That was a lot of fun. A cool 70s era spy thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously at times.

Before that I watched the Devo documentary on Netflix. Man, those guys were weird!

I also watched the doco about Jim Carrey making Man on the Moon. Talk about method acting!

 

[Gradine]

Just finished watching PONIES. That was a lot of fun. A cool 70s era spy thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously at times.

I need to watch PONIES, if for no other reason than it has Vic Michaelis in it

I also watched the doco about Jim Carrey making Man on the Moon. Talk about method acting!

Of all of the weird truths about the timeline that we find ourselves forced to live in, "Jim Carrey was totally robbed of a Best Acting Oscar*" is definitely one of them

Edit: Maybe twice?! I realize I was thinking of The Truman Show

 

[pukunui]

I need to watch PONIES, if for no other reason than it has Vic Michaelis in it

Vic is fantastic. I mean, everybody on the show is fantastic. The casting on that show is brilliant. However, Vic is a real standout.

Of all of the weird truths about the timeline that we find ourselves forced to live in, "Jim Carrey was totally robbed of a Best Acting Oscar*" is definitely one of them

Edit: Maybe twice?! I realize I was thinking of The Truman Show

Definitely. I thought he was really good in The Majestic as well. Haven't seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yet, but after hearing him talk about it in the doco, I want to now.

 

[el-remmen]

My wife and I tend to recreate something like broadcast tv in our watching methods - watching one episode of a different hour-long show ever night and sometimes supplementing it with a 30 minute comedy if we have time/energy.

So right now we have the following on rotation (or have recently finished):

• Brooklyn 99 (rewatch)
• Stranger Things S5 (1 episode to go)
• Lazarus Project (a real shame this was cancelled but the cliffhanger actually felt like an ending)
• Lost Girls (a docu-series on the Long Island Serial Killer)
• Amazing Race s14 (from 2010)
• A Man on the Inside

After my wife goes to bed I usually watch a show on my own and having just finished 4 seasons of 12 Monkeys I restarted Fallout because I tried watching Season 2’s first episode and felt lost. Oh and I am also watching American Traitors (s4) and will move on to the UK’s most recent season (the uk version is superior, if you ask me) and we are both psyched for Survivor 50 starting at the end of this month.

 

[billd91]

Haven't seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yet, but after hearing him talk about it in the doco, I want to now.

It's absolutely worth checking out. It's quite a performance.