The TV and the Drama

I remember one time (and I am unlikely to forget the incident ever) when a student (year 6) in my school in London asked me if I had seen some TV series on Amazon Prime and I responded that I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime and so I haven’t. They then asked me which platform I watch my TV on? Netflix maybe? I responded in negative saying that since I pay my TV license I stick to good old BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 etc. for my entertainment. A few students who were listening in on the conversation looked at me in horror and this student commented that I live a very sad life. I burst out laughing and told them that I am happy with my free views and they are welcome to enjoy their various paid subscriptions (although is it a free view if I am paying for the TV license? that is a thought for another day…not that it makes any difference to me now mind…).

I knew that in India, it is not possible to watch any TV in prominent cities (at least it was 5/6 years ago) unless you get a DTH service and that is why when I was in Bangalore I had to subscribe to either Sun DTH or a local DTH provider based on what language programmes you are likely to watch more. Now it seems that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Airtel XStream, and Tata Sky are the key players (anyone else I missed?). My siblings have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and my nepotes are bored when they come to my home because we have so far refused to subscribe to any of these. I know that I don’t have much time left because just like paying for a TV license in the UK, I have to subscribe to one or more of these services to get my normal TV too, which is very sad indeed. But it is what it is. Now the problem is though, these providers are so smart that we can never find what we need in one of them. We end up subscribing to at least two or even more to switch between the stuff we might end up watching. In this day and age, that seems to be a smart business move but hurts the consumers badly and we are not up for it. I am forever trying to find ways to circumvent the problem. For now, we watch our news and other stuff through the free channels available from Roku (Al Jazeera, Sky News, Wion, Plex etc.)

When I finally decided that it is time to watch Ponniyin Selvan Part 1, it was already out of theatres. It took me a long time to even convince myself that it is ok if they mess up the book which is my absolute favourite one (the first name of my pseudonym is a strong female character from that book…) and just watch it as another grand movie. But it was now available only with Amazon Prime. I have to get a 30-day Free Trial to watch this movie. Whenever my siblings and their children come home, they strongly suggest that I get Netflix. We had already done a free trial of it while we were in the UK, but we didn’t find many programmes that we would watch and it was very American, which Mr M wasn’t very keen on 😀 If we are to get this free trial for Amazon Prime, it would help us check out its contents and see if we would watch any programmes in it at all apart from the odd movies now and then.

Oh! Why does it have to be this hard and so much drama (and money to shell) to watch some good TV heh?

Updates on TV Shows

(Inspector)Lewis: Completed 4 seasons or so. Was surprised to see Hathaway a bit grown up with a funky style to him. (I am a fan of Hathaway actually!) I can’t imagine Lewis without him, just like Sherlock and Watson.

The Wrong Mans: We just finished the first season of this. It is hilarious. I didn’t know James Corden produced and acted in this. Those two protagonists are very good.

Taboo: I have started to watch this on BBC Weekly now only because of Tom Hardy. It is going OK so far. Let’s see if it manages to hold my attention for the whole season. Mr. High Sparrow from Game Of Thrones is up to no good in this one heh! He usually isn’t in any series/movie.

Shooter: I loved the Mark Wahlberg movie and I really like Ryan Phillipe. Those two reasons are enough to make me watch this series weekly on NetFlix, even though I still think it should have been just left with a movie version.

Sherlock: Of course I have started watching them. But only two episodes completed. We wanted it to be our Weekend Watch program instead of spending an hour and a half during the weekday evenings. Mr. M’s first foray into modern Sherlock wasn’t up to a good start. Thankfully the second episode made up for a tepid first one.

Death in Paradise:  Another one of our Weekend Watch program. I have absolutely loved all the previous seasons and was so glad when they came up with the new season. Again, the first episode wasn’t too captivating with its story, but the second one was good. Welcome back Dwayne 😉

Selfridge:  Just as a break from Lewis we started on this one. We are only one episode old, but it looks very grand doesn’t? The jury is out on this one. Too early to judge.

 

 

 

Titbits

8 cool travel jobs hiring right now – I wouldn’t say no to that Elf Post position. Rest of it is out of question, except may be the Buckingham palace job? That can do I suppose, as long as I am being fed some of those royal (vegetarian) food.

Father’s epic rant after taking his son to see Finding Dory leaves Twitter in stitches – This was hilarious. I am with him on this. I wasn’t too fond of Finding Dory movie either.

A Michael Bishop Mystery – Complete both the book in the series by last week. I liked it a lot. Gave it 4 stars in Goodreads. The protagonist is a old school teacher and he ends up investigating the murder of his colleagues in Trinity college. The parallels between the literature and life was interesting.

Horns – I chose this on Netflix because of Daniel Radcliffe, but it was surprisingly interesting, even though I could figure out the culprit much sooner. Not sure if that was the intention. Recently I got to know from an Instagramer that this is based on a book of the same name by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son). That was news to me.

The Fall – My current TV series on Netflix. Very gripping and very interesting. Mr Grey (Jamie Dornan) is the antagonist in this series. He is scary but still, there could be some more expression on his face. Gillian Anderson has maintained herself so well. She is very sexy. The accent is very cute 🙂

Binge Saturday

I have been having this craving for pizza (thin crust, to be very very specific) for a week now. But since I am trying to watch what I eat, I tried so hard to curb that craving for a week. But today morning I had this weird dream that I am trying chocolate pizza (yes, that is part of the menu from Whooppeezz) and I find it a bit weird..because it wasn’t exactly not the way I expected it to be and then I am trying that thin crust pizza and am enjoying it. When I woke up, I decided that today was the day when I am going to get that damn thing out of my mind. So what did I order ? Tadaa….Veg Explotica thin crust pizza….

and in 10 mins there was no trace of it and I ended up being a very happy woman 😉

So I decided to keep my happy feeling going and ended up subscribing to Netflix India and binge watched Stranger Things. I am not a fan of horror supernatural sci-fi movies/stories/series. But I have been hearing about this series for too long now. So thought to give it a try. I did manage to complete the season and I was OK with it. I think those cute kids in that series were the main reason. Now off to the rest of the other series one by one. Thankfully, the subscription is free for a month. So I can enjoy it as much as I can and then decide if I want to continue or not.