Lee Pace is just bigger than life, and Mackenzie Davis is electric in every scene, but my favourite on the show was Scoot McNairy's character. A very specific type of nerd that's rarely written with such depth and nuance. Although I guess that could be said of all the main (and not so main) characters in the show.
If anyone else loved these actors watching HACF, I would recommend watching The Fall (Pace), Fargo S3 (McNairy) and Station Eleven (Davis).
This story just keeps getting more and more bizarre. Reading the charges and supporting affidavits, the whole thing is reading more and more like some sort of Yorgos Lanthimos film. The rationalist connection - a literal sequel to the 2022 events (in turn a sequel to the 2019 CFAR stuff) - is already weird enough. But I can't get over the ridiculousness of the VT situation. I have spent time in that area of VT, and the charged parties must have been acting quite bizarre for the clerk to alert the police. Checking into a motel wearing all black, open carrying does NOT cut it. The phones wrapped in foil is comical, and the fact that they were surveilled over several days is interesting, especially because it reads like the FBI only became aware of their presence after the stop and shootout?
The arresting agent seems pretty interesting, a former risk adjuster who recently successfully led the case against a large inter-state fraud scheme. This may just be the plot of Fargo season 10. Looking forward to the season arc of the FBI trying to understand the "rationalist" community. The episode titled "Roko's Basilisk", with no thematically tied elements, but they manage to turn Yudkowsky into a rat.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Let's someone in that city punches the river and get put in jail by the local cops for battery, what do you think would happen?
I encourage you to watch Fargo Season 5 which just finished. The bad guy is basically just that, the sheriff of a small town that doesn't recognize the authority of the U.S. federal government.
Chernobyl is terrible. Anti-nuclear and anti-soviet propaganda disguised as a "true story". I can't stand movies and TV shows who claim to be historically accurate while being almost completely made up.
Rick and Morty is also bad. After two episodes I was already bored of the shtick.
Fargo is by far the best series on that list. Seasons 1 and 2 are incredible.
> the quality of films/TV produced in the west has been in steady decline for quite some time
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
The extreme and somehow flowery language in all these posts from Twitter engineers is so indicative to me of some kind of delusional rot. “My team worked SO hard every single day to Change The World, the smartest people on the planet Earth, the greatest engineers ever to touch a keyboard, no one has our scale, no one has our problems.” So caught up in their own bullshit that they are like fat, happy hens who don’t see the fox in their midst named Elon. It reminds me of Billy Bob Thornton in Fargo Season One. “The maps used to say ‘there be dragons here’. They don’t anymore, but the dragons are still there.” These people live in a bubble where they reinforce each other.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
Fargo season 4 has a scene where this Italian mobster goes...
"I think I'm finally starting to understand this country. You say one thing, yet do the complete opposite".
It's a bulls-eye for me. Americans are fake, not genuine, dramatic/hysterical and hypocritical like no other culture I've ever seen.
They also have quite a few positive traits. And any other culture you pick, including mine, too has negatives and positives. It's not a contest but we should be able to reason about it. It's fair game.
I could go on and on about how great Nordic Noir shows are. They are a refreshing change from the American style of shows. The best are, in order, "Before We Die" (Sweden), "All The Sins" (Sweden), "Broen Bron - The Bridge" (Sweden, Denmark), "Bordertown" (Finland), "Deadwind" (Finland), "Ófærð - Trapped" (Iceland), "Rebecka Martinsson" (Sweden, first season)
I have the Millennium series queued up: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl who played with Fire", "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets"
The only Nordic Noir book I've read is Smilla's Sense of Snow, but I can't recommend.
There are two American Nordic Noir series I recommend: "The Killing", set in Seattle and based on the Danish show "Forbrydelsen." Also "Fargo" the movie and all 4 seasons of the TV series.
It's interesting that that Fargo sensibility that the Cohen Brothers captured so well comes from the Nordic regions. Duluth Minnesota was once called the Helsinki of America.
I agree with your core sentiment on movies - but I couldn't disagree more on the topic of TV having reverted to the mean.
It may not all be "Sopranos", but I've seen so many TV shows in the past decade that have pushed boundaries and delivered experiences that frankly, have hit me much harder than almost any movie - and certainly much harder than pre-netflix era TV.
I know everyone has different taste, but I think we've seen a lot of maturation in the past decade specifically in the form of more interesting TV anthology series / single-season narratives (True Detective, Fargo, Watchmen) and dark-ish comedies (Rick and Morty, Barry, American Vandal, Succession). I think networks in general are giving show-runners more space and budget for trying weird stuff, because even if they end up with a show that's too niche for a general timeslot - there's at least the possibility of selling it to a streaming service later (like Arrested Development, The Expanse, and Community did).
From my point of view the problem manifests in this way: I simply don't bother to invest the time to watch new shows until it's clear that they're going to get a proper run that allows them to finish well (Breaking Bad, Justified; even Sons of Anarchy, which was a real slog for the last 3 seasons, ended well).
I'm tired of investing time in shows that Netflix simply drops: The Expanse (though now thankfully picked up by Amazon), Designated Survivor, and Shooter (although that was total crap, especially after season 1) spring immediately to mind, but there have been plenty of others.
I also won't bother starting to watch shows that I know Netflix have cancelled before they've concluded (e.g., Glow), because what's the point? And this is starting to severely erode the value of Netflix's library to me.
Things that have worked incredibly well on Netflix are shows that tell self-contained stories within a single season, like Narcos or Fargo, or shows that tell have a self contained but are able to tell it in a longer form than feature film would allow. The canonical example of the latter for me is Godless, which is one of the best shows on TV, I think. Genuinely fantastic.
And this last point leads on to another, which others have made: US TV series are too long, typically 18 - 24 episodes per season, multiple seasons, often too bloated with filler episodes, and often suffer from ridiculous over-plotting after the first few seasons, which comes off as aimless thrashing around: Prison Break (season 3 onwards: just utter nonsense), 24 (SPOILER ALERT: I mean, seriously, WTF was that Tony Almeida betrayal storyline all about in, I think, the final season - multiple sharks were jumped and I'm still pissed off about it).
On the flipside UK TV series are often too short: 6 half-hour episodes is still quite typical, so you're only really getting into a show and then suddenly the season ends. With that said, for some shows this has been made to work really well: Line of Duty, or the earlier seasons of Luther.
I do feel like, for many shows, a happy medium would be 10 - 12 hour long episodes. You could then afford to make a much more polished product, whilst still probably investing quite a bit less.
Fargo is a perfect example. Lots of interconnected chaos, that lasts one season. Then a new story, with new characters in the same universe. I look forward to more creative storytelling that is both familiar and fresh (fresh in that each season has some tonal shifts despite commonalities.)
It's also not a documentary, despite saying it is, so Im not "learning." That said, something like the history of the Ottoman Empire probably takes more than 5 episodes to cover.
I get what you are saying, but I'd find it stupid to pay a set amount per month to see the same movies over and over. Do you really think people will pay to see all of the Avengers movies every month? If yes, then fine, good for Disney. I just find the 'they have better content' line a bit much.
I'd rather watch Master of None, Fargo, The Crown and many more quality Netflix than some action here movie that has been cut from the same comic book cloth as the previous one. But that is just a matter of preferences, but to say their content is better based on how good they do in the box office is nonsense.
See, I feel exactly opposite here (funnily enough - TDK is also an all-time favorite of mine).
Opening night super hero movies, and Star Wars movies - are the only things I've bothered to go see at the theater for in the last 5 years now.
I like that they are events to experience with friends. We buy our tickets together and chat beforehand about predictions. People dress up and take pics in line. The crowd knows when to cheer and laugh. The visuals and sound effects take advantage of the medium.
I don't know any millennials who actually enjoy the watching the type of movies that Scorsese is talking about. The price per head at most theaters is too high for the entertainment you get. If I want to watch something with depth, then I can find television or streaming series which are far more enjoyable and actually have enough time for character development. I think the resurgence of shorter-run series and anthology shows (Fargo, True Detective) has addressed the primary issue TV shows had of not resolving storylines completely to keep you hooked another season. Movies just seem too short in comparison.
It just sounds like they’re doing what every other network does. A bunch of it is trash you don’t care about but another subset of their customers do. It’s not all commissioned for us personally, and Netflix will always prioritise their own shows before others in the app.
It’s not like you watch HBO 12 hours a day expecting pure content that you love from start to finish.
That said, apart from the tent pole series they [plan to] push out each year (stranger things, better call saul, Fargo, mindhunter, nightflyers, etc.) the rest is clearly data driven garbage that doesn’t realise it’s working a cliche. With a couple of exceptions even the marvel universe shows fell into their pattern.
In that sense it’s Netflix Unoriginal Content. But you still get the diamond in the mine.
Being in the EU I get about 8 different translations of two different kinds of zombie story, but you’re not really paying for that.
And on the same level, it’s a shame that streaming is now split. American Gods, Good Omens, The Expanse, and Mr Robot are all on Amazon. Netflix definitely dropped a ball on some of that. The TV show costs the same but I have to pay 2x to watch because of the networks.
The creators of Lost claimed they new exactly how that series was going to go, but watching it definitely felt like they were stringing things along to get to the 100 episode syndication threshold more than telling a fulfilling story.
I've been enjoying the limited-series shows, or shows that do not attempt to correlate multiple seasons together like Fargo. The first season of True Detective was done in the right number of episodes to get the story told without stringing it along. The studios forced a rushed second season that I pretend doesn't exist. HBO's Sharp Objects is another example of using just enough episodes to tell the story.
Breaking Bad spun off Better Call Saul, which I really hope they wrap up in Season 5. The Americans and Justified are two other shows that ended when they should have. Fargo is a fresh story every season, so it can probably go on a bit longer. Fleabag was a perfect two season show.
Off the top of my head: Succession, VEEP, Barry, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, True Detective (seasons 1 & 3), Chernobyl.
Big Little Lies was probably the worst of that bunch, and is still lightyears ahead of any recent Netflix drama.
On Prime, The Man in the High Castle is a guilty pleasure despite its flaws. The bizarre spy drama Patriot is absolutely excellent.
I like that with Prime, I can subscribe to HBO within the app, and also buy seasons of some cable shows, like FX’s Legion, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows.
I prefer that experience much more than Netflix. With Netflix, the original content has to be so good that it offsets the lack of being able to purchase non-Netflix content, and frankly Netflix originals have just not been good enough to cut it for a while.
Likewise. There are many titles available through Netflix DVD that are not available through Netflix streaming. Just off the top of my head you have Game of Thrones (seasons 1-7), The Wire, True Detective, Fargo and The Expanse.
Prisencolinensinainciusol, by Adriano Celentano (he's Italian).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yj_N5_P5qI (skip ahead to 1:37)
Incidentally, this song turned up in one of the more recent episodes of Fargo. I had to explain it to my daughter, who is a big fan of the show and was impressed that I knew of the song. Meanwhile I was impressed that I was able to find the original for her on YouTube almost instantly, despite my not having even thought of it in decades, probably.
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
It's probably unfair to refer to Netflix as ad-free, but (as I mention elsewhere), from a creator perspective, I'm referring more to the 'break-free' experience than 'ad-free'.
I do agree that impositions on the creative team to write in product placement are a hurdle, but I disagree on how difficult that hurdle is relative to literally stopping the show for a few minutes at a time, and from a consumer's perspective, product placement (when not overdone) is far less disruptive to the narrative than a commercial.
Of course, people discuss products in real life all the time, so it can be made to feel natural. Four Roses bourbon, TV shows like "Legion" and "Fargo", or Seagull Guitars could be product-placed into a TV show about my life and would look like just any other day in my life, for example.
In Fargo season three [mild spoilers] they portray this kind of hostile takeover, albeit rather more dramatically. It's a big twist at the end of the story (for those not already aware) when it turns out what the villains were doing in this regard was not actually illegal, if done properly.
Well.. 1/2 the famous actors in Hollywood since the 90s seem to be Australian. (I could name dozens.) Which is something.. My gripe is that not only Aussies have to put up with hearing them do fake US accents in movies close to 100% of the time, but whenever there's an Australian in a US movie, they get someone from the US to play them. Arghh. As if there's no Aussie actors there! ha. Maybe they're all too famous. I guess it sounds convincing to a US audience. It must do. But OMG it sounds so fake to Australians. It just sounds like someone from the US trying and failing to do an Aussie accent. e.g. there was one in Fargo series, and it was about the only bad thing about Tropic Thunder. Please don't do this. At this rate, soon there'll be a movie with Australians doing US accents in the starring roles, with supporting cast of US actors trying to sound Australian.. Mark my words.
p.s. Is that the first mention of drop bears on HN? Well done :-)
Much better in this aspect is Fargo season 3, where Varga character - played brilliantly by David Thewlis - is sort of a Mr. Hyde to the protagonist's (Emmit Stussy) Jekyll - in my interpration.
Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902 (link provided) holds up after 115 years. Don't be so surprised! Timeless storytelling and design transcends it's delivery medium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk
To the people questioning whether good television is still being made, yes of course it is, it might just take you a few years to find it. True Detective, Fargo, Utopia are all great. A la carte streaming (eg select any 10 shows, 10 movies, $10/month) is the future for media consumption. Which platform will deliver this first only time will tell. At the moment original content is the model and there are some evident growth pains.
To be fair, the mini-series format has recently proven to be quite successful. Examples include Fargo and True Detective.
Honestly, I'm more concerned with the scale of the Foundation universe and timeline. If it's not well written and presented, viewers will easily lose track of the where and when.
There are some people who would benefit--those who watch one or two channels only--but there are people who would get screwed. I watch maybe 5 hours of cable tv a week, but it's many different channels during the course of the year. USA when Mr. Robot is, AMC when TWD and BCS, FX when Fargo and Americans, Sundance when Hap and Leonard, some random channel playing a movie I want to watch.
And it will only save money for people who watch less channels than average. You might say people who watch more channels should pay more, but that really doesn't make much sense really.
Should someone who watches Fox News 18 hours a day pay 10 times more than someone who watches 10 channels a month for 2 hours combined a day?
House Of Cards was very, very promising in its early seasons. It almost felt like a future alltime favorite, but declined after Season 1.
Better Call Saul is shaping up very nicely and Fargo turned out to be better than I expected. Other than that there are many solid shows, and even more mediocre and lackluster ones I don't enjoy. However, that's not exactly my concern - I understand that only a subset of the content might appeal to me. The problem is that the part that does isn't on par with the very best the medium has to offer and I'm not sure if Netflix' current approach to content creation is a good approach to raise the quality.
I particularly liked the use of the opposite statement in Fargo[0] despite it not being a true story.
This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.
If you haven't already watched "Billions" [1], it is an absolutely thrilling show. I was uncertain about it after the pilot, but I continued because of my experience with Showtime's "The Affair" [2].
I did not regret that decision. It is in my opinion the second best show of last season, after "Fargo" [3] of course.
I don't differentiate because I don't believe that those are sufficient safeguards. I believe this because when I was 12, friends routinely accessed firearms that their parents believed were secured, and many a starwars figurine was thus destroyed.
Your comment about chemical safety and tools bring up a very good point - a gun is just a tool, like a woodchipper, and while I wouldn't let my kid play with a woodchipper, I've never asked if there's one available at her friends house.
I'll freely admit that I'm inconsistent on this, and my attitude is based in part on my general anti-gun stance, and the easy moral superiority I feel when asking the question.
But seriously, my 12 year old self and friends never treated guns with the respect that we would a woodchipper. Possibly too many TV shows where guns were just bang bang bang, or that _Fargo_ hadn't come out yet.
Definitely agree. Who says you have to find time for the side project? I believe if it's an idea you're truly interested in, you'll find time somehow. In the meantime, go spend that time with friends/family, a hobby, or a new TV show (I recommend Fargo)
I appreciate your comment, but I prefer well paced shows and movies, and good writing. Slow pacing is bad, deliberate pacing is good. "There will be blood" is a deliberately paced movie. "Django Unchained" is a deliberately paced movie. "Fargo" is a deliberately paced TV show, they're all good. Slow is when the audience is looking at their watches wondering when the end will come.
Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you're running into problems with new shows/shows that share the same name as movies. For instance Utopia (UK sci-fi/thriller/mystery) or Fargo (TV show).
I live in the UK. On Sunday I wanted to watch the new Fargo TV show. I do not own a Television. I went to watch it 'live' on the Channel 4 website. It kept saying my broadband wasn't good enough. Odd. Googled a bit, ah - adblock is causing issues. This needs a new whitelist compared to 4od - fine by me. Sit through 2 minutes of adverts specifically over the web player (bearing in mind the channel I am waiting to watch also has ads - so by watching online I am apparently getting extra, thanks). Miss the first minute of the show but never mind - I was setting up last minute.
30 seconds into the stream, player dies and shows "insufficient bandwidth" again. Hit refresh. Starts new ad cycle over player.
Within 4 minutes my "too slow" broadband had got the show at what seemed like better quality than the official web player. I also had no ads so I even finished watching the episode before terrestrial viewers despite starting late.
Content delivery still sucks. Maybe my tolerance is too low, but frankly maybe it's worth accommodating that and providing content in an easy and consistent fashion.
I was so impressed by Joss Whedon releasing his movie on vimeo (although I would prefer DLs over streams) that I bought it just to support it.
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Lee Pace is just bigger than life, and Mackenzie Davis is electric in every scene, but my favourite on the show was Scoot McNairy's character. A very specific type of nerd that's rarely written with such depth and nuance. Although I guess that could be said of all the main (and not so main) characters in the show.
If anyone else loved these actors watching HACF, I would recommend watching The Fall (Pace), Fargo S3 (McNairy) and Station Eleven (Davis).
This story just keeps getting more and more bizarre. Reading the charges and supporting affidavits, the whole thing is reading more and more like some sort of Yorgos Lanthimos film. The rationalist connection - a literal sequel to the 2022 events (in turn a sequel to the 2019 CFAR stuff) - is already weird enough. But I can't get over the ridiculousness of the VT situation. I have spent time in that area of VT, and the charged parties must have been acting quite bizarre for the clerk to alert the police. Checking into a motel wearing all black, open carrying does NOT cut it. The phones wrapped in foil is comical, and the fact that they were surveilled over several days is interesting, especially because it reads like the FBI only became aware of their presence after the stop and shootout?
The arresting agent seems pretty interesting, a former risk adjuster who recently successfully led the case against a large inter-state fraud scheme. This may just be the plot of Fargo season 10. Looking forward to the season arc of the FBI trying to understand the "rationalist" community. The episode titled "Roko's Basilisk", with no thematically tied elements, but they manage to turn Yudkowsky into a rat.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Let's someone in that city punches the river and get put in jail by the local cops for battery, what do you think would happen?
I encourage you to watch Fargo Season 5 which just finished. The bad guy is basically just that, the sheriff of a small town that doesn't recognize the authority of the U.S. federal government.
A lot of series now cheekily start with a screen that states something along the lines of:
"This story is based on true events, except the parts that aren't".
Can't think of any examples at the moment, but I've noticed it quite a bit.
Then there's the TV Series Fargo, which is made out of whole-cloth but starts with a claim that it's a "true story", which I think is great.
Reminds me of Fargo Season 2 when the muscle/hit man Mike Milligan goes corporate.
Agree!
An example I like: the Fargo TV series. Each season is self-contained and none outstays its welcome.
Chernobyl is terrible. Anti-nuclear and anti-soviet propaganda disguised as a "true story". I can't stand movies and TV shows who claim to be historically accurate while being almost completely made up.
Rick and Morty is also bad. After two episodes I was already bored of the shtick.
Fargo is by far the best series on that list. Seasons 1 and 2 are incredible.
> the quality of films/TV produced in the west has been in steady decline for quite some time
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
Clerks - $27,575 [0]
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]
Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]
The Blue - <$100k [3]
Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]
Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]
Greenlight - <$100k [3]
Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]
Man in Camo - <$100k [3]
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)
[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night-brings-beauty-to-vampires/
[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/
[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-this-announces-2021-indie-film-nominees-for-drive-in-event-virtual-ceremony/
Fargo (TV series)
The extreme and somehow flowery language in all these posts from Twitter engineers is so indicative to me of some kind of delusional rot. “My team worked SO hard every single day to Change The World, the smartest people on the planet Earth, the greatest engineers ever to touch a keyboard, no one has our scale, no one has our problems.” So caught up in their own bullshit that they are like fat, happy hens who don’t see the fox in their midst named Elon. It reminds me of Billy Bob Thornton in Fargo Season One. “The maps used to say ‘there be dragons here’. They don’t anymore, but the dragons are still there.” These people live in a bubble where they reinforce each other.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
This reminds me of Varga's organization in season 3 of Fargo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(season_3)
Fargo season 4 has a scene where this Italian mobster goes...
"I think I'm finally starting to understand this country. You say one thing, yet do the complete opposite".
It's a bulls-eye for me. Americans are fake, not genuine, dramatic/hysterical and hypocritical like no other culture I've ever seen.
They also have quite a few positive traits. And any other culture you pick, including mine, too has negatives and positives. It's not a contest but we should be able to reason about it. It's fair game.
I could go on and on about how great Nordic Noir shows are. They are a refreshing change from the American style of shows. The best are, in order, "Before We Die" (Sweden), "All The Sins" (Sweden), "Broen Bron - The Bridge" (Sweden, Denmark), "Bordertown" (Finland), "Deadwind" (Finland), "Ófærð - Trapped" (Iceland), "Rebecka Martinsson" (Sweden, first season)
I have the Millennium series queued up: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl who played with Fire", "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets"
The only Nordic Noir book I've read is Smilla's Sense of Snow, but I can't recommend.
There are two American Nordic Noir series I recommend: "The Killing", set in Seattle and based on the Danish show "Forbrydelsen." Also "Fargo" the movie and all 4 seasons of the TV series.
It's interesting that that Fargo sensibility that the Cohen Brothers captured so well comes from the Nordic regions. Duluth Minnesota was once called the Helsinki of America.
I agree with your core sentiment on movies - but I couldn't disagree more on the topic of TV having reverted to the mean.
It may not all be "Sopranos", but I've seen so many TV shows in the past decade that have pushed boundaries and delivered experiences that frankly, have hit me much harder than almost any movie - and certainly much harder than pre-netflix era TV.
I know everyone has different taste, but I think we've seen a lot of maturation in the past decade specifically in the form of more interesting TV anthology series / single-season narratives (True Detective, Fargo, Watchmen) and dark-ish comedies (Rick and Morty, Barry, American Vandal, Succession). I think networks in general are giving show-runners more space and budget for trying weird stuff, because even if they end up with a show that's too niche for a general timeslot - there's at least the possibility of selling it to a streaming service later (like Arrested Development, The Expanse, and Community did).
From my point of view the problem manifests in this way: I simply don't bother to invest the time to watch new shows until it's clear that they're going to get a proper run that allows them to finish well (Breaking Bad, Justified; even Sons of Anarchy, which was a real slog for the last 3 seasons, ended well).
I'm tired of investing time in shows that Netflix simply drops: The Expanse (though now thankfully picked up by Amazon), Designated Survivor, and Shooter (although that was total crap, especially after season 1) spring immediately to mind, but there have been plenty of others.
I also won't bother starting to watch shows that I know Netflix have cancelled before they've concluded (e.g., Glow), because what's the point? And this is starting to severely erode the value of Netflix's library to me.
Things that have worked incredibly well on Netflix are shows that tell self-contained stories within a single season, like Narcos or Fargo, or shows that tell have a self contained but are able to tell it in a longer form than feature film would allow. The canonical example of the latter for me is Godless, which is one of the best shows on TV, I think. Genuinely fantastic.
And this last point leads on to another, which others have made: US TV series are too long, typically 18 - 24 episodes per season, multiple seasons, often too bloated with filler episodes, and often suffer from ridiculous over-plotting after the first few seasons, which comes off as aimless thrashing around: Prison Break (season 3 onwards: just utter nonsense), 24 (SPOILER ALERT: I mean, seriously, WTF was that Tony Almeida betrayal storyline all about in, I think, the final season - multiple sharks were jumped and I'm still pissed off about it).
On the flipside UK TV series are often too short: 6 half-hour episodes is still quite typical, so you're only really getting into a show and then suddenly the season ends. With that said, for some shows this has been made to work really well: Line of Duty, or the earlier seasons of Luther.
I do feel like, for many shows, a happy medium would be 10 - 12 hour long episodes. You could then afford to make a much more polished product, whilst still probably investing quite a bit less.
I just finished watching Fargo Season 2 last night... the massacre at Sioux Falls. :)
Think it's a reference to Fargo - a Coen brothers film and TV series
Fargo is a perfect example. Lots of interconnected chaos, that lasts one season. Then a new story, with new characters in the same universe. I look forward to more creative storytelling that is both familiar and fresh (fresh in that each season has some tonal shifts despite commonalities.)
It's also not a documentary, despite saying it is, so Im not "learning." That said, something like the history of the Ottoman Empire probably takes more than 5 episodes to cover.
I get what you are saying, but I'd find it stupid to pay a set amount per month to see the same movies over and over. Do you really think people will pay to see all of the Avengers movies every month? If yes, then fine, good for Disney. I just find the 'they have better content' line a bit much.
I'd rather watch Master of None, Fargo, The Crown and many more quality Netflix than some action here movie that has been cut from the same comic book cloth as the previous one. But that is just a matter of preferences, but to say their content is better based on how good they do in the box office is nonsense.
See, I feel exactly opposite here (funnily enough - TDK is also an all-time favorite of mine).
Opening night super hero movies, and Star Wars movies - are the only things I've bothered to go see at the theater for in the last 5 years now.
I like that they are events to experience with friends. We buy our tickets together and chat beforehand about predictions. People dress up and take pics in line. The crowd knows when to cheer and laugh. The visuals and sound effects take advantage of the medium.
I don't know any millennials who actually enjoy the watching the type of movies that Scorsese is talking about. The price per head at most theaters is too high for the entertainment you get. If I want to watch something with depth, then I can find television or streaming series which are far more enjoyable and actually have enough time for character development. I think the resurgence of shorter-run series and anthology shows (Fargo, True Detective) has addressed the primary issue TV shows had of not resolving storylines completely to keep you hooked another season. Movies just seem too short in comparison.
It just sounds like they’re doing what every other network does. A bunch of it is trash you don’t care about but another subset of their customers do. It’s not all commissioned for us personally, and Netflix will always prioritise their own shows before others in the app.
It’s not like you watch HBO 12 hours a day expecting pure content that you love from start to finish.
That said, apart from the tent pole series they [plan to] push out each year (stranger things, better call saul, Fargo, mindhunter, nightflyers, etc.) the rest is clearly data driven garbage that doesn’t realise it’s working a cliche. With a couple of exceptions even the marvel universe shows fell into their pattern.
In that sense it’s Netflix Unoriginal Content. But you still get the diamond in the mine.
Being in the EU I get about 8 different translations of two different kinds of zombie story, but you’re not really paying for that.
And on the same level, it’s a shame that streaming is now split. American Gods, Good Omens, The Expanse, and Mr Robot are all on Amazon. Netflix definitely dropped a ball on some of that. The TV show costs the same but I have to pay 2x to watch because of the networks.
The creators of Lost claimed they new exactly how that series was going to go, but watching it definitely felt like they were stringing things along to get to the 100 episode syndication threshold more than telling a fulfilling story.
I've been enjoying the limited-series shows, or shows that do not attempt to correlate multiple seasons together like Fargo. The first season of True Detective was done in the right number of episodes to get the story told without stringing it along. The studios forced a rushed second season that I pretend doesn't exist. HBO's Sharp Objects is another example of using just enough episodes to tell the story.
Breaking Bad spun off Better Call Saul, which I really hope they wrap up in Season 5. The Americans and Justified are two other shows that ended when they should have. Fargo is a fresh story every season, so it can probably go on a bit longer. Fleabag was a perfect two season show.
Off the top of my head: Succession, VEEP, Barry, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, True Detective (seasons 1 & 3), Chernobyl.
Big Little Lies was probably the worst of that bunch, and is still lightyears ahead of any recent Netflix drama.
On Prime, The Man in the High Castle is a guilty pleasure despite its flaws. The bizarre spy drama Patriot is absolutely excellent.
I like that with Prime, I can subscribe to HBO within the app, and also buy seasons of some cable shows, like FX’s Legion, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows.
I prefer that experience much more than Netflix. With Netflix, the original content has to be so good that it offsets the lack of being able to purchase non-Netflix content, and frankly Netflix originals have just not been good enough to cut it for a while.
> I'm surprised its not higher.
Likewise. There are many titles available through Netflix DVD that are not available through Netflix streaming. Just off the top of my head you have Game of Thrones (seasons 1-7), The Wire, True Detective, Fargo and The Expanse.
Prisencolinensinainciusol, by Adriano Celentano (he's Italian).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yj_N5_P5qI (skip ahead to 1:37)
Incidentally, this song turned up in one of the more recent episodes of Fargo. I had to explain it to my daughter, who is a big fan of the show and was impressed that I knew of the song. Meanwhile I was impressed that I was able to find the original for her on YouTube almost instantly, despite my not having even thought of it in decades, probably.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yttuyIy9z-E
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
Your comment reminds me of a classic scene from Fargo Season 1[1]
Gangster 1: "There’s no library in this town. Why is there no library in this town?"
Gangster 2: "Umm... cutbacks?"
Gangster 1: "He thinks every town should have a library."
[1] https://youtu.be/Ck_3QxgO438?t=1m22s
It's probably unfair to refer to Netflix as ad-free, but (as I mention elsewhere), from a creator perspective, I'm referring more to the 'break-free' experience than 'ad-free'.
I do agree that impositions on the creative team to write in product placement are a hurdle, but I disagree on how difficult that hurdle is relative to literally stopping the show for a few minutes at a time, and from a consumer's perspective, product placement (when not overdone) is far less disruptive to the narrative than a commercial.
Of course, people discuss products in real life all the time, so it can be made to feel natural. Four Roses bourbon, TV shows like "Legion" and "Fargo", or Seagull Guitars could be product-placed into a TV show about my life and would look like just any other day in my life, for example.
In Fargo season three [mild spoilers] they portray this kind of hostile takeover, albeit rather more dramatically. It's a big twist at the end of the story (for those not already aware) when it turns out what the villains were doing in this regard was not actually illegal, if done properly.
Well.. 1/2 the famous actors in Hollywood since the 90s seem to be Australian. (I could name dozens.) Which is something.. My gripe is that not only Aussies have to put up with hearing them do fake US accents in movies close to 100% of the time, but whenever there's an Australian in a US movie, they get someone from the US to play them. Arghh. As if there's no Aussie actors there! ha. Maybe they're all too famous. I guess it sounds convincing to a US audience. It must do. But OMG it sounds so fake to Australians. It just sounds like someone from the US trying and failing to do an Aussie accent. e.g. there was one in Fargo series, and it was about the only bad thing about Tropic Thunder. Please don't do this. At this rate, soon there'll be a movie with Australians doing US accents in the starring roles, with supporting cast of US actors trying to sound Australian.. Mark my words.
p.s. Is that the first mention of drop bears on HN? Well done :-)
https://australianmuseum.net.au/drop-bear
They could do something like Fargo. The TV show exists within the same fictional universe but isn't really related to the movie.
I don't know - I've never thought to myself "I've had enough Tolkien stories represented in film". I'd love to see another representation.
Much better in this aspect is Fargo season 3, where Varga character - played brilliantly by David Thewlis - is sort of a Mr. Hyde to the protagonist's (Emmit Stussy) Jekyll - in my interpration.
The Prisoner (1967-1968) is mesmerising.
Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902 (link provided) holds up after 115 years. Don't be so surprised! Timeless storytelling and design transcends it's delivery medium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk
To the people questioning whether good television is still being made, yes of course it is, it might just take you a few years to find it. True Detective, Fargo, Utopia are all great. A la carte streaming (eg select any 10 shows, 10 movies, $10/month) is the future for media consumption. Which platform will deliver this first only time will tell. At the moment original content is the model and there are some evident growth pains.
To be fair, the mini-series format has recently proven to be quite successful. Examples include Fargo and True Detective.
Honestly, I'm more concerned with the scale of the Foundation universe and timeline. If it's not well written and presented, viewers will easily lose track of the where and when.
There are some people who would benefit--those who watch one or two channels only--but there are people who would get screwed. I watch maybe 5 hours of cable tv a week, but it's many different channels during the course of the year. USA when Mr. Robot is, AMC when TWD and BCS, FX when Fargo and Americans, Sundance when Hap and Leonard, some random channel playing a movie I want to watch.
And it will only save money for people who watch less channels than average. You might say people who watch more channels should pay more, but that really doesn't make much sense really.
Should someone who watches Fox News 18 hours a day pay 10 times more than someone who watches 10 channels a month for 2 hours combined a day?
House Of Cards was very, very promising in its early seasons. It almost felt like a future alltime favorite, but declined after Season 1. Better Call Saul is shaping up very nicely and Fargo turned out to be better than I expected. Other than that there are many solid shows, and even more mediocre and lackluster ones I don't enjoy. However, that's not exactly my concern - I understand that only a subset of the content might appeal to me. The problem is that the part that does isn't on par with the very best the medium has to offer and I'm not sure if Netflix' current approach to content creation is a good approach to raise the quality.
I particularly liked the use of the opposite statement in Fargo[0] despite it not being a true story.
This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.
Which was later used in the Fargo TV series[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(film)#Factual_vs._fictional
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_%28TV_series%29#.22This_is_a_true_story.22
Excellent article. Loved the informal style!
If you haven't already watched "Billions" [1], it is an absolutely thrilling show. I was uncertain about it after the pilot, but I continued because of my experience with Showtime's "The Affair" [2].
I did not regret that decision. It is in my opinion the second best show of last season, after "Fargo" [3] of course.
[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492/
[2]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/
[3]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802850/
I don't differentiate because I don't believe that those are sufficient safeguards. I believe this because when I was 12, friends routinely accessed firearms that their parents believed were secured, and many a starwars figurine was thus destroyed.
Your comment about chemical safety and tools bring up a very good point - a gun is just a tool, like a woodchipper, and while I wouldn't let my kid play with a woodchipper, I've never asked if there's one available at her friends house.
I'll freely admit that I'm inconsistent on this, and my attitude is based in part on my general anti-gun stance, and the easy moral superiority I feel when asking the question.
But seriously, my 12 year old self and friends never treated guns with the respect that we would a woodchipper. Possibly too many TV shows where guns were just bang bang bang, or that _Fargo_ hadn't come out yet.
The headline reads like a scene from the last episode of Fargo s2.
Definitely agree. Who says you have to find time for the side project? I believe if it's an idea you're truly interested in, you'll find time somehow. In the meantime, go spend that time with friends/family, a hobby, or a new TV show (I recommend Fargo)
Did Netflix only analyse shows with more than one season? I'm surprised Fargo wasn't included as it had me hooked from the first episode.
I appreciate your comment, but I prefer well paced shows and movies, and good writing. Slow pacing is bad, deliberate pacing is good. "There will be blood" is a deliberately paced movie. "Django Unchained" is a deliberately paced movie. "Fargo" is a deliberately paced TV show, they're all good. Slow is when the audience is looking at their watches wondering when the end will come.
Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you're running into problems with new shows/shows that share the same name as movies. For instance Utopia (UK sci-fi/thriller/mystery) or Fargo (TV show).
Anecdotal evidence alert.
I live in the UK. On Sunday I wanted to watch the new Fargo TV show. I do not own a Television. I went to watch it 'live' on the Channel 4 website. It kept saying my broadband wasn't good enough. Odd. Googled a bit, ah - adblock is causing issues. This needs a new whitelist compared to 4od - fine by me. Sit through 2 minutes of adverts specifically over the web player (bearing in mind the channel I am waiting to watch also has ads - so by watching online I am apparently getting extra, thanks). Miss the first minute of the show but never mind - I was setting up last minute.
30 seconds into the stream, player dies and shows "insufficient bandwidth" again. Hit refresh. Starts new ad cycle over player.
Ctrl+W. Ctrl+T. "Eztv.it". Tab. "Fargo". Tab Enter Tab Tab Enter. Enter.
Within 4 minutes my "too slow" broadband had got the show at what seemed like better quality than the official web player. I also had no ads so I even finished watching the episode before terrestrial viewers despite starting late.
Content delivery still sucks. Maybe my tolerance is too low, but frankly maybe it's worth accommodating that and providing content in an easy and consistent fashion.
I was so impressed by Joss Whedon releasing his movie on vimeo (although I would prefer DLs over streams) that I bought it just to support it.