What Are You Watching

[rostasi]

 

[JSngry]

I use Pluto to watch some old sitcoms and game shows (currently The Drew Carey Show and 25 Words or Less) and TV Westerns (currently on Season 16 of Gunsmoke and almost finished with Wanted Dead Or Alive, Somehow this Classica thing got a push recommen,dation, so hey.

I used to think that The Roku Channel & Pluto were more or less the same. There's certainly overlap, but enough of a difference to matter.

And then there's Tubi, which has buttloads of early TV (like, EARLY) and other uber-niche type stuff. Like, I just finished all 4 seasons of the two-network, 2.5 premise Joey Bishop 1960s sitcom, which is nowhere near as shitty as today's online consensus will have it. It's a warts and all time capsule.

All of this shit has commercials, but hell, this notion of commercial-free TV runs contrary to my upbringing!

[rostasi]

I used to regularly watch Slow TV on Pluto until they pulled it a few years ago.
Apparently, Paramount wasn't making enough so they let it go. Haven't been back since. This is a regular thing with me and TV as you've probably guessed by now.

[JSngry]

I just wait for shit to show back up somewhere. It usually does, eventually.

Tubi has some old Loretta Young shows that are...epic. I thought I knew what to expect, but boy was I underprepared.

 

Apparently Slow TV (4 seasons) is now on Fubo, which is partially owned by Paramount.

I don't do Fubo, that's for cord- cutters, so it's not free. Plus for me, there would be a lot of redundancy.

But it's not gone.

[rostasi]

I'm not sure that it's the same "Slow TV" (Seasons?) that I'm talking about - and, yes, I'm not paying 85 bucks a month(!) to find out. The original Norwegian Slow TV is what I used to watch - especially while walking on a treadmill during the extra hot months when it would reach triple digits out - or just having it on the wall during the day with the sounds filtering thru the house speakers.

Much of it is on YouTube and so that's an option, I guess ... but, again, shows disappearing while you're in the middle of watching them on some channel, then you have to pay for them later as they migrate to somewhere else.

We had some visitors from Köln a while back and had a live stream showing from a Namib desert waterhole on the screen. They screamed "Hey! We've been there!" and talked about their adventures on that trip. It was a pretty remarkable coincidence.

[rostasi]

RAY BRADBURY NEBULA AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMATIC PRESENTATION

Doctor Who: “Dot and Bubble” by Russell T. Davies (BBC)
Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros) *WINNER*
I Saw the TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun (A24 Films LLC)
KAOS by Charlie Covell, Georgia Christou (Netflix)
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 by Mike McMahan (Paramount+)
Wicked by Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox (Universal Pictures)

Nice to see the Dune: Part Two win, but it's really good to see that Lower Decks made the cut. I'm gonna miss that show.

[jlhoots]

The Bear - season 4, episodes 1,2 &3.

[mjazzg]

On 6/26/2025 at 4:29 AM, jlhoots said:

The Bear - season 4, episodes 1,2 &3.

Same, last night. Very pleased to be back with these characters and some great dialogue

[jlhoots]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

Same, last night. Very pleased to be back with these characters and some great dialogue

Watched 4 more episodes.

[Referentzhunter]

 

 

[jlhoots]

The Waterfront - episodes 1 & 2 - Netflix

[mjazzg]

On 6/28/2025 at 2:12 PM, jlhoots said:

Watched 4 more episodes.

I'm up to ep.6 and there's no quality dip. The wedding episode was masterful 

[mjazzg]

3 hours ago, mjazzg said:

I'm up to ep.6 and there's no quality dip. The wedding episode was masterful 

Finished, didn't see that coming

[jlhoots]

On 7/1/2025 at 3:20 PM, mjazzg said:

Finished, didn't see that coming

Me too. Renewed I think.

[JSngry]

Pee Wee as Himself (Max)

[rostasi]

 

Continuing enshitification...

Edited yesterday at 12:54 AM by rostasi

[JSngry]

Are you a PBS member?

https://www.pbs.org/call-the-midwife/when-to-watch-call-the-midwife

[rostasi]

Yeah, we had to sign up for their "Passport" service,
because the local PBS is notoriously bad when it comes
to programming mistakes. It's the first time we've seen a
show have such a limited availability after it's shown
(unavailable beginning mid-June - just weeks afterward).

Usually, they have an expiration of many years when
you can watch them. We're thinking that it has to do 
with a contract they might now have with, in this case,
Netflix who will pay PBS bucks for temporary and
exclusive access. PBS is probably riding that train
because of upcoming idiotic slashing of their funds.

I'm considering using a VPN and watching the
rest of it on BBC 1.

Edited yesterday at 02:55 AM by rostasi

[JSngry]

We've been members for a while, just because. Passport comes with membership so hey, no complaints here.

But... wouldn't BBC be the ultimate determiner of their international distribution deals? I'm sure that Nextglix is money whipping them, but still, they can always say no, right? Or at least, wait. 

[rostasi]

Yeah, I'm sure that the deal(s) that they have are ones that regular folk don't know of (unless there's something online about it), but it's, in general, one of the aspects of the "modern" world that we both complain about around here without trying to sound like, "well, back in the good ol' days..." But, we both really miss having our old setup with the big Mitsubishi on wheels that, before 2020, we could just turn on and simply f'ing watch a show - either live or off of a hard drive.

For me, easily 80% of the time I'll have some kind of trouble after I've pressed the "on" button - and since I'll turn it on, at most, 2 or 3 times a week, I just can't imagine what it would be like to watch the thing at the rate that most other people do. For my wife, she's often in the middle of some series and one day she'll go to turn it on and it's gone! Oh well, won't know what happened to those folks in that show. Now, she's watching something on Disney that just drops out in the middle of the show. Today, she spent 10 minutes in the middle of some drama unplugging and replugging crap and jumping thru hoops on the remote just to get back to the storyline she was watching. And we saw online that other people are having the same problem with this Disney channel. ...and the only reason we got Disney temporarily is because in order to be able to watch the TV version of Dune a few months ago, we had to buy something else (can't remember the channel), and Disney was part of the total cheap one-time package deal of less than $10 a year, but, you know, you had to buy both or pay full exorbitant price for the thing that you really wanted.

Earlier, we talked about Call the Midwife disappearing and all I had to do was go to Netflix, pay them, watch it and then cancel? Well, that's what I did this evening - except before I gave them my money, I did the hunt for the show on their website  - finally found it - and the little drop down menu said that they are only showing seasons 1 - 10, so I would've been out of luck if I had just went and signed up for it 'cause I just wanted to see what happened in the final three shows of Season 14. More research said: *nope. you gotta wait until September...*

It all just makes my damn head hurt.

Edited yesterday at 05:25 AM by rostasi

[mjazzg]

On 7/3/2025 at 1:24 AM, jlhoots said:

Me too. Renewed I think.

One thing about the series I didn't quite understand was how/why Luca and the others from the closed down restaurant suddenly decide to stage at The Bear

[jazzbo]

Resident Alien, Season 4

My wife started watching this with me and finds it hilarious. I like it a lot as well. I may be going back through the first 3 seasons with her.