In no particular order:
Schitt’s Creek (laugh riot)
Sanditon (disappointing)
The Life Ahead
Defending Jacob (shot locally around Boston)
The Morning Show
Never Have I Ever (hats off to Suzy’s son)
Hamilton (better than live)
The Queen’s Gambit (totally engaging, a true binge)
The Crown (4th season, bulimia reigns supreme)
Broadchurch (Olivia Coleman, before she’s queen)
The Undoing
Uncle Fred
Lucky Logan
Unorthodox
Shtisel
Fauda
Let Them All Talk
Ted Lasso (delightful)
The Great British Baking Show (impressive; not inspired)
Goldfinger (Sean Connery; ALWAYS Bond)
From Russian With Love (ditto)
Mank
Halt and Catch Fire
Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom
–RetroFlash
Betsy PfauRetired from software sales long ago, two grown children. Theater major in college. Singer still, arts lover, involved in art museums locally (Greater Boston area). Originally from Detroit area.
Characterizations:
right on!
We have a decent amount of overlap, Betsy. Now I have some new shows I can try from your list.
Happy to offer some new suggestions, Laurie.
Thanks, Betsy. As you have commented, we do not perfectly overlap on these, so I will borrow from this copiously. Just heard raves about Ted Lasso last night.
Ted Lasso was so upbeat. Dan watched in on the Vineyard (tho I had bugged him about…he somehow missed my pleadings), so I had to figure out our Apple TV+ all by myself (non-trivial) back in Newton. It was just delightful. I highly recommend it.
Fun to see some overlap, and I can’t believe I forgot to include The Queen’s Gambit on my list!! Glad to see you loved Schitt’s Creek…I always tell people you either love it or hate it at first but have to give it some time and then you’re hooked. Wanted to like Mank but hated it, didn’t make it through one episode. Will definitely check out Ted Lasso…fun to have something new to look forward to! And congrats on your first RetroFlash…perfect prompt for it, right?
Definitely perfect for this prompt, Barb. It did take us a while to settle into Schitt’s Creek before we were on-board, but then we grew to love it. It swept the Emmy’s this year. I thought Mank was a one-off movie. Is it a series? Did we miss bingeing something? He was easy to hate, but we thought it was interesting enough to keep us engaged, and lots of Hollywood trivia (might have been too much for you). Also, beautifully shot.
Mank is a movie, not a show with episodes. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s on my list of movies to watch.
The cinematography is fabulous and it tells an interesting story (though not entirely truthfully), but Mank is a tough guy to like. We thought it was well-worth watching.
Great list, Betsy. I love August Wilson and really want to watch Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Ma Rainy’s is the best movie of the year, so far. Chadwick Boseman is AMAZING! What a loss. After his first monologue, I turned to my husband and said, “Oscar”. Viola Davis is also excellent, but Boseman is out-of-this-world exceptional.
Hurray for your first RetroFlash! Nice to see The Queen’s Gambit as your featured image – we are loving that show! You have a lot of shows on your list that I haven’t even heard of! So interesting to see what everyone has turned to during the pandemic. After it’s over, I plan to cut way back on my TV time.
Yes, there is a certain over-lap, but not as much as one might suspect. We have our own favorites. Dan and I have always been movie buffs, so watch the new movies that get released. He’s watching some old movie behind me right now. Vicki told us about Halt and Catch Fire and we are obsessed with that right now (almost done with it – three seasons’ worth). I watch shows that he won’t (Shameless, which will end at the end of this season; The Last Show, John Oliver, Meet the Press), so I have to catch those at times of day when he’s not watching something that I’m interested in. He is around a lot and watches much more than I do. I run all the errands, and tend not to watch during the day, so my viewing time is more limited. Life is full of compromises.
Betsy, Just this week I confessed that we don’t even have Netflix – Luddites that we are. But our son came for the holidays and convinced us, and so we now have Amazon Prime and Netflix and thus all these binge suggestions are great!
Glad Noah hooked you up, Dana. Now you will have lots of good things to watch and good suggestions from our lists!
Wow, I thought I saw Ma Rainey the very first day it came out–but you put it on this list before that so evidently I am just a culturally cutting-edge wannabe. I think all of August Wilson’s plays are thrilling in their artfulness and authenticity. I compare them (as a cycle of plays) to being equivalent for the theater to what Monet did for painting with his “series paintings.” This was a superb adaptation from the stage to the screen.
We saw it the second day it dropped. It received rapturous reviews in the Boston Globe, so I rushed to see it and was rewarded. I have not seen many of Wilson’s play in the theater, so can’t comment on the cycle, but thought these performances were breath-taking and will win Oscars (as streaming performances will be considered this year, given COVID).
Dale, I haven’t seen the new film version but saw Ma Rainy on Bway when it opened in the 80s, and thereafter tried not to miss any plays in Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle.
Then five or so years ago I saw Ma Rainy again in London – one of the most powerful plays imaginable.
Now that you have Netflix, you can see this performance too, Dana. Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, as sick as he was, are riveting.
Thanx Betsy, it’s now on my binge bucket list!
Glad to help.