Category: TV

RIP David Warner (1941 – 2022)

Jyoti
I don’t know why I’m so upset by this. Obviously, he was a huge, huge actor, his IMDB has got 228 acting credits. I’ve loved so many things that Warner turned up in and made a possible 7/10 a 12/10.

He made everything better. Even if it’s one voice or a passing bit, David Warner made it stick and made you think about it often years after.

He felt like family.

Ms. Marvel And The South Asian Diaspora

Jyoti

I am so happy that young South Asian girls have Ms. Marvel on their tellies, tablets and phones.

I am so happy that young white kids watching Ms. Marvel will see views of Karachi and get an idea of Pakistan beyond the racist tropes peddled by the Western media. Beyond the murder porn of US drone footage.

I cried when Kamala talked to her nani and heard her say this:

Nani says: "My passport is Pakistani, my roots are in India. And in between all of this, there's a border marked with blood and pain. People are claiming their identity based on an idea some old Englishmen had, when fleeing the country."

If you’re Irish, you know what partition means, why it was carried out and the consequences for a once-united country. If you’re South Asian, you carry that same understanding and many, many families will have their partition stories. (I mean, let’s face it, there are very few countries that haven’t been sucked dry by the ravenous British Empire. It’s more common weal than commonwealth, amirite?)

Ms. Marvel is a wonder for the way it handles tone-shifting, moving from real history to Marvel mythology and back again without insulting or cheapening the actual events.

But the bestest thing is that Ms. Marvel is a bright, chirpy kids’ show. It has moments of pure silliness, as it should. It is joyful, it’s not some bleak sermon about South Asian oppression, it’s a celebration of our cultures, home and away. It is soooo rare for us to see South Asian families represented, let alone as the centre of a fantastic superhero origin story. There are plenty of grim stories about South Asians and, yeah, we need justice and we need to hear about injustice but, fuck me, could we be allowed to be HAPPY and DANCE and be YOUNG and STUPID and have churi-enabled magic powers?

I’m so happy that I, a middle-aged Indian immigrant living in Britain, can see this show which makes me cry and laugh in equal measure.

But I really, really wish that me in the ‘70s, a little brown kid growing up in a succession of white towns had been able to see himself on TV, too.

I would have been a lot less lonely.

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Picard And 24th Century Mental Health

Jyoti

It was bizarrely melodramatic *and* old-fashioned. And, obviously, potentially harmful.

Also, like 90% of Picard The Series, it directly contradicts Roddenberry’s template of a future Earth that’s post-illness, post-scarcity, post-money. Like Rafi being poor and being “abandoned”, like *everyone* being an alcoholic or addict of some sort.

No spoilers but where was the help for the person in question? Seems like they would have got better help in today’s 21st century capitalist hellhole than the fully-automated luxury space communism that Roddenberry envisioned.

tl;dr ->

Heartstopper

Jyoti

#Heartstopper is the show I needed when I was a kid. It would have made me feel so much less isolated and weird. I wouldn’t have felt so unloved and unlovable.

Lost tracks at the number of times I’ve cried watching this series. I was like, ‘I’m an old man, I’ll find this cute but it won’t affect me, oh no, not with this tough old hide of mine.’

And then:

Thank fuck it’s there for today’s kids.

The Wildest Show On Television

Jyoti
Image

GIF by fuckinprototype

Just watching the Speakeasy episode and it only confirms that this show is THE BEST SUPERHERO SHOW EVER! It has drama, it has sadness but, most of all, it is RIDICULOUS FUN and always makes me giggle.

The Flash is too earnest, everyone is too amazing and perfect. Supergirl was kind of in-between LoT and Flash but LoT just rules.

To be an actor on it must be a fucking romp as where are you gonna be? When are you gonna be? Wild West? Viking? Bowling Alley Outside The Universe? Are you dead – doesn’t matter, you can still pop up. Did you leave the series – even less important. You’ll hop back in and out with not even one eyelid batted. It’s truly an ensemble show, a very over-used and mis-applied description but actually true here.

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GIF by ittybittymattycommittee

In these times when the world is a never-ending series of punches in the nuts, having something as reliably uplifting and escapist as LoT is a true public service.

The Best TV Shows Ever

Jyoti

At the minute, this is a bare list. If I ever have time, I’ll flesh it out with them new-fangled hyperlinks and maybe an under construction gif.

Ladies and genitals:

BEST TV EVER LIST 2021

  1. Halt And Catch Fire
  2. Columbo
  3. Star Trek
  4. The Good Place
  5. Futurama
  6. The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin
  7. The Guardian
  8. Carnival Row
  9. The Day Today
  10. Travellers
  11. Stargate SG-1
  12. The X Files
  13. Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
  14. The Order
  15. Falling Skies
  16. Da Vinci’s Demons
  17. Skins
  18. Smack The Pony
  19. Continuum
  20. The Fast Show
  21. The Expanse
  22. Farscape
  23. Star Trek: The Next Generation
  24. Popular
  25. The Mandalorian
  26. Porridge
  27. Adventure Time
  28. The Twilight Zone
  29. The Simpsons
  30. Poirot
  31. Battlestar Galactica
  32. Humans
  33. Billions
  34. The Wire
  35. MASH
  36. Firefly
  37. Westworld
  38. True Blood
  39. The Witcher
  40. Elementary
  41. Ripper Street
  42. Doctor Who
  43. Terror In Resonance
  44. The Waltons
  45. Sherlock
  46. Krypton
  47. Jekyll And Hyde
  48. Veronica Mars
  49. Black Mirror
  50. Space 1999
  51. iZombie
  52. Magnum PI
  53. Kolchak: The Night Stalker
  54. Moonlighting
  55. Quatermass
  56. Queer As Folk
  57. The Wonder Years
  58. St. Elsewhere
  59. Fringe
  60. Game Of Thrones
  61. Silicon Valley
  62. Gotham
  63. Grimm
  64. The Closer
  65. Gilbert’s Fridge
  66. Ed
  67. The Invaders
  68. Murdoch Mysteries
  69. Orphan Black
  70. The Outer Limits
  71. The Six Million Dollar Man
  72. Major Crimes
  73. Joe 90
  74. Happy Days
  75. Hawaii Five-Oh
  76. Soap
  77. Earth 2
  78. Hill Street Blues
  79. Defiance
  80. The Prisoner
  81. Sense 8
  82. House Of Cards
  83. The Muppet Show
  84. Spaced
  85. Pushing Up Daisies
  86. Rhoda
  87. Star Trek: The Animated Series
  88. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
  89. Red Dwarf
  90. The Rockford Files
  91. Big Train
  92. Reaper
  93. Dark Matter
  94. Community
  95. Dead Like Me
  96. Cheers
  97. The 4400
  98. Petrocelli
  99. Siren
  100. Buck Rogers In The 25th Century