That latest television streaming service November 16, 2019
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
As to whether it’s worth it, well, if you’ve purchased an Apple device since September 1st, or thereabouts, you get it free for a year!
Some so so reviews of For All Mankind. Got to say I liked the premise and execution of the first two episodes, though I wonder how it will be sustained across a season.
By contrast The Morning Show got a much stronger review in the Guardian.
Oddly I liked that too, it’s interesting to see Aniston as she ages. And the supporting cast is fairly robust.
Macworld’s podcast thought them the two strongest programmes, but they also thought the batshit crazy See was fun, while Dickinson was good.
A point was made on the podcast that a service that had a more limited but high standard of programming might be no bad thing. Certainly I find my heart sinking when faced with the sheer weight of television now available (and all this before we get to the way Netflix and Amazon pull series).
Still, latest addition to the roster – a Slow Horses TV series based on Mick Herron’s excellent spy thrillers. I’d have said they were unfilmable. Guess we’re about to find out.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Excited to hear about Slow Horses – excellent series – but I share your scepticism about the translation to television, and not worth subscribing. My thoughts on the best Jackson Lamb would be Delaney Williams (Jay Landsman in The Wire) if he had a British accent.
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I’m delighted to know a fellow fan! It really is great, and I’m holding off on reading the latest one until he writes another again. So much of it, would you agree, is in the writing, the way he describes the offices in the first page or two of a couple of the books just couldn’t work on television. Delaney Williams would be spot on. Perfect casting. Gary Oldman, not so much. Agreed, in and of itself not worth subscribing.
I wonder if an Adrian McKinty Sean Duffy series would be worth doing? Now that might do the trick, not least because it would have a very interesting secret history of the Troubles from a very unusual perspective.
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I saw today that there was high praise for Herron in a recent edition of The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/broken-spies-for-a-broken-england/596650/
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Interesting, I hope he’s not getting too popular… 🙂
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Begun, the Streaming Wars have.
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Mandalorian. Disney. Watch, I will not.
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Disney+ has also launched, with Star Wars western The Mandalorian as headline show (no wonder the quality – and cost – of Netflix programming has ticked up in the past week).
I would have some trepidation about both The Morning Show and For All Mankind veering off into libertarianism, given Californian tech companies and their usual politics.
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+1
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Hadn’t heard they were doing a Foundation series. Jared Harris an excellent choice for Seldon, but not sure the source material will really work as a TV show.
I’ll give Disney+ a go when it becomes available, and might try Amazon long enough to check out their LOTR show. I’ve had Netflix since the pre-House of Cards days and have always been generally satisfied with it, and I subscribe/have subscribed to a few other streaming sites over the last few years. Saturation, in combination with “terrestrial” options, seems inevitable.
There surely must be something coming soon where multiple streaming services will be packaged to consumers together.
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I love Jared Harris. You saw Fringe, he was great in that.
Agreed there has to be some sort of package. Otherwise we’re completely screwed over by the corporations again!
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The Foundation series looks promising.
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Fingers crossed.
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Didn’t Krapple try to break into the music ‘content’ business at some point, rather than just ripping off producers as it does now? Or do I mis-remember?
The only tech-oligarch that didn’t start in the content business and has had some success so far has been Bezos. And I guess in a different way Youtube.
The latter has far more eyeballs than iTunes or whatever it’s called these days.
If I was in the business of investing I’d rather bet Analphabet than Krapple.
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Didn’t Krapple try to break into the music ‘content’ business at some point, rather than just ripping off producers as it does now? Or do I mis-remember?
No idea what you imagine by ‘ripping off customers’, but as I understand it they merely started providing a publishing platform for artists: https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/08/apple-music-publishing-division/
As to the Foundation series, you should (no spoilers) read the final original Asimov books – Foundation’s Edge/Foundaton and Earth.
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*ripping off producers
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Yeah I quite liked them even if they did try to crowbar in the other series of his. I think in fairness Asimov was as much influenced by Marx as technocracy – famously he was v liberal, albeit kind of a man of his time.
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Talking of the Foundation Trilogy – it’s decades since I read it – but isn’t it the ultimate technocrat’s wet dream? Or rather technocrat versus ‘great man’ theories of history.
Surely not the most useful political imagining for these times.
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Got an email today from eir to say they’re offering 12 months’ free Amazon Prime. No mention of what it’d cost thereafter. Dunno if I’ll take them up on it, between Netflix and Walter Presents on All 4, we’re fairly well-served for streaming already, plus the Beeb can usually be relied on for several quality series a year.
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Yeah, television, it’s crazy overloaded.
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