Television Favorites!

[Rusty]

98 - Frozen Planet (2011) - The focus here is on life in the Arctic and Antarctic. It's pretty cool and there are some nice images, though some bits seemed repetitive. Did we need that many shots of wolves hunting bison? The stuff with the penguins I already knew from other documentaries.

[Rusty]

99 - Cosmos: A Spacetime Voyage (2014) - Neil deGrasse Tyson does a really nice job hosting this sequel to the original Carl Sagan Cosmos series. The visual effects are pretty good and I liked the animated sequences which were often used to illustrate events in the past.

[Rusty]

100 - Human Planet (2011) - This series travels all around the world and shows people from many different cultures and climates as they interact with their environment and often with animals as well. The last episode has a few segments with people and animals in an urban setting. They do a very nice job and I found it all to be very interesting.

[Rusty]

101 - Life (2009) - A nice series about various animals and plants from all over the world.

[Rusty]

1 - Miracle Workers: End Times (2023) - The fourth (and final) season of Miracle Workers takes place in a postapocalyptic world modeled on Mad Max with elements of Terminator, The Matrix, and more thrown in. It's pretty funny and I liked it more than the third season, though not as much as the first two seasons. For those unfamiliar with the show, the show is a comedy which features a new setting each season with the same cast in new roles.

[Rusty]

2 - Upload Season 1 (2020) - In the near future, a computer programmer is in a self driving car accident. His girlfriend convinces him to choose 'upload' over surgery and he ends up in a virtual afterlife. There is a lot of comedy here, but romance and drama soon enter the picture. The first season was pretty good.

3 - Upload Season 2 (2022) - The story continues and is still very good.

4 - Upload Season 3 (2023) - The third season is good, but leans away from the comedy a bit and isn't quite as much fun.

[Rusty]

5 - Good Omens 2 (2023) - The angel Gabriel shows up at Aziraphale's bookshop with amnesia. Agents of both heaven and hell are searching for him. Aziraphale and Crowley team up again. We also get plenty of flashbacks, of which the story of Job was my favorite.

[Rusty]

Doctor Who Specials (2023) - It was nice to have David Tennant back as The Doctor for three specials. They were good episodes with the middle one being my favorite. I liked the introduction of Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor. The Christmas special with the new Doctor wasn't bad. We'll see how it translates into a full series.

[Rusty]

6 - Night Sky Season 1 (2022) - An elderly couple has a secret portal underneath their shed which takes them to a room on another planet where they can look out onto a barren landscape. They've kept the secret for 20 years, but their lives are upended when a stranger suddenly shows up in the room and needs their help. The show is a pretty slow burn, but there is a strong cast, led by Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons, and I enjoyed the show quite a bit. It's too bad that it was canceled before it got a second season.

[Rusty]

7 - The Peripheral Season 1 (2022) - Chloe Grace Moretz stars as Flynne Fisher, a young woman in North Carolina in 2032 who is a talented gamer, but works hard to support her very sick mother. Her brother Burton (Jack Reynor), a marine veteran of a war in Texas, also games, but isn't as good as his sister. Burton talks Flynne into testing out an experimental rig for a new sim which places the user into an extremely realistic world. They soon find that there is much more to this than a simulation. The show has a nice cast, plenty of action, and is smartly done. It's a shame that the second season was a casualty of the recent strikes because it would have been nice to see what happened next with these characters. I'll probably check out the William Gibson novel that served as the basis for this series.

[Rusty]

8 - Star Trek: Picard Season 3 (2023) - The season started out pretty slow and I didn't find the main villain all that interesting, but it got better and I did enjoy the season, though I was a bit bored at times. There were plenty of fun elements along the way. They certainly leaned into the fan service by assembling most of the original TNG crew. I'm probably in the minority in preferring the first two seasons by a slight margin.

[Rusty]

9 - Carnival Row Season 2 (2023) - I thought the first season was a lot of fun and I was looking forward to a second season, but it was certainly a long time coming. The first few episodes were pretty dull and I thought about giving up on watching the rest, but I stuck with it and it got better. I liked the second half of the season more than the first half. Amazon forced the creators to wrap things up with two extra episodes when they were halfway through filming the series and I think they did a decent job of it.

[Rusty]

10 - Early Edition Season 4 (1999) - Gary Hobson receives the next day's paper every morning and uses the paper as a guide to save people who would otherwise have been injured or killed. This season was pretty entertaining and on par with the first three seasons. Too bad it got canceled after this season.

[Rusty]

11 - The Wheel of Time Season 2 (2023) - This season seemed even slower than the first season. It has nice visual effects, but was kind of hard to get interested in during the first half of the season. It did become more interesting during the second half. I'll probably watch the third season when it comes out, but it won't be a major priority.

[Rusty]

12 - The Mandalorian Season 3 (2023) - The third season was pretty solid and entertaining. It mostly deals with the factions of Mandalorians coming together with a few side trips, including a bit of Grogu's history and some New Republic politics. It didn't have quite the same feeling for me as the first two seasons, but I think that is because the 'shiny new show' feeling has worn if in the meantime. It's still a good show.