I watch way too much TV sometimes binge-watching a show all the way through the night. Thanks to the blessing and curse of a multitude of streaming options there is always a wealth of content.
The rules of what gets into each monthly list are simple. It needs to be a TV show, limited or otherwise, any particular season and I have to have finished watching it in the month. This does mean for shows that are doing weekly releases I may have started watching some time ago.
The List
The list of shows ranked for April 2023 are: –
The idea is to rank what I’ve watched per month and then do some sort of ranking at the end of the year.
Star Trek: Picard
I’ve discussed season three of Star Trek: Picard at length because it’s simply the best piece of Star Trek delivered to our screens in a long time.
The season hits all the correct markers. The plot is enthralling and clever and they really give it all to you when you re-watch but it’s obfuscated just enough. The throughline of all the characters is meticulously executed. It’s amazingly well budgeted as it’s essentially a bottle, ship-based show but it feels high quality throughout. It is spot on with its pacing following an opening (4 episodes), middle (4 episodes) and finale (2 episodes) that works really well.
The series is also a master class in how to write legacy characters (albeit I detest the term) as they allow the characters to change in ways that actually make them their best selves. This is especially true with characters that got short-changed in the series generally. Let’s face it, in many ways, the characters were more archetypes in the original show, here they feel like living and breathing people while not losing the feel of the original show.
I’ve watched the series 2.5 times (end to end twice and I’ve watched a number of episodes a third time) and the series has also made it into the Neilson top 10 streaming shows which Paramount+ never reaches (1923 popped in for a short while) and this was before the end of the series run.
It’s a phenomenal series.
The Diplomat
As this year progresses it feels like Netflix is slipping down the ranking in terms of shows that really hit home with me. If I scan the top 10 shows I have ranked at the moment only one Netflix show is present and it’s The Diplomat.
The Diplomat is quintessential Netflix in that a show just drops from nowhere that you didn’t even know was incoming. I have no idea how Netflix approaches its marketing because it’s completely nuts how shows just arrive without any buildup or serious publicity.
How to summarise The Diplomat? It feels like a cross between something like Homeland and The West Wing while not being exactly like either. The main character even moves around with purpose in black suits and with an ever-present shoulder bag. When you look at the writing history of Deborah Cahn this all makes perfect sense.
It’s a great combination of situation, plot, relationships and characters and Kerry Russel is one of those actors you can pretty much follow through anything. It’s not going to make its way onto any awards lists but it is very good. Yeah, it has the crazy combination of dysfunctional relationships (though a lot more interesting than those in Homeland and substantially less depressing), a relatively down-to-earth, but highly competent woman, trying to make her mark and a bit of crazy plotting but I think it works as an overall package.
I basically binged as far as I could until about 0200 in the morning and then watched the rest when I got up it was that engaging.
What The Diplomat did introduce me to is what some people call Dad TV. This seems to be the exist opposite of people calling things Woke TV and just as toxic. When I checked out people banging on about it seemed to be ‘this does not contain any agendas I like to see’ so it is Dad TV and those agendas depend on the individual.
Tribal shite these days is just so…tiring.
Blue Lights
For the last eight years, I’ve not really watched terrestrial TV. The torrent of new content that tends to come via streaming means I just have little time for watching regular, scheduled TV. Blue Lights reminded me it’s occasionally worthwhile checking in on services like BBC iPlayer to see what’s stocked up for streaming.
Blue Lights is about a team of police officers and new recruits working in an area of Belfast and it’s fascinating. I have no idea how authentic or realistic it is, but even if it only touches on being realistic there are elements of the show that make it unique compared to other shows focusing on the police.
It’s well-acted and well-written and a very solid police show, but the unique elements are what sets it apart. You have paramilitaries making a living in peaceful times and how that intersects with intelligence agencies and wider counter-terrorism. The whole idea of out-of-bound areas that seem to let crime run rampant under accepted limits in communities. Then you have one young recruit getting an intelligence warning that people want to kill her and the answer is check under your car and here is a leaflet! The story of a young recruit who is obviously wrong for the job and living in fear is also great.
It’s a very good show and I really hope it gets a second series. I’d recommend checking it out but I’m not sure how available it is outside of BBC iPlayer.
The Mandalorian
What the hell happened to The Mandalorian this season? It just seemed so…random.
It’s hard to describe season three of The Mandalorian because while I enjoyed it, didn’t have a problem with any specific part of it and thought the big moments were exceptionally well done it just felt like it lacked a bit of focus. It lacked cohesion over the course of its episodes that could have made a season about taking back the planet of Mandalore phenomenal. While The Mandalorian has always been a bit disjointed this series just lacked a bit more forward momentum.
In past seasons the show has always felt like a Star Wars film split into small chunks and each given a Saturday Morning Serial feel with a snappy title. If The Empire Strikes Back was given The Mandalorian treatment you’d have Luke and Wampa, Han Rescue Luke, Attack of the Empire, The Asteroid Field and so on. The third season didn’t feel like that as much it just felt like some sort of random patch job which veered all over the place.
It’s also true that some of The Mandalorian conventions that just seemed part of the experience in earlier seasons now, post-Andor, just have you rolling your eyes – a perfect example being the extended walking through The Volume scenes (and sometimes back again) and relatively empty sets. They now just feel slightly cheap and laughable compared to the realism and density of Andor.
What was true about this season of The Mandalorian is it had its Mephisto moment because of an episode called The Spies combined with some belief the show should have an awesome surprise at the end. Since the episode was called The Spies and only one obvious spy was seen in the episode rampant speculation begin about who was the other spy? The fandomsphere went nuts and built speculation into expectation which is always intensely annoying.
It shows how people don’t understand the media they watch. It’s well established at this point the episode title always refers to the events of the episode itself, so while The Spies reference may have been a bit obscure it obviously wasn’t suggesting anything for the finale. People do literally watch TV without being able to decode the theme and emotional purpose behind them so it’s not surprising media criticism on social media is largely trash.
And, Finally…
April was looking like it would be a very low content month and it was in terms of new series but a number of shows that I started watching a month or so back completed this month. The surprise has definitely been Star Trek: Picard. I wasn’t really following it. I was ambivalent to the original cast all coming back.
I did not expect to find myself watching one of the best bits of Star Trek constructed.