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?

He made my day today

On a rainy and gloomy and a very very dull day, this video of Christoph Waltz was like sitting next to a wooden fireplace 🔥 and enjoying its warmth.

Sing along

My nieces and nephew are here for a week for their vacation and ever since then the only time the TV is switched on is for their benefit and the only channels that get played on and on and on are the Pogo (for Chota Bheem 🙄 ) and iKidsWorld for the Karadi Tales rhymes or stories from Amar Chitra Katha. There is one song which is now the favorite of all three kids.

Have you heard of the stories about a person trying to straighten a dog’s tail ? There are lots of versions of it everywhere eg. Version 1, Version 2. The same is portrayed in a rhyme and it’s fun to watch too. This is being played so much that I have started to remember the lyrics and am singing along with it 😯 I hope that is normal and a natural course of action and I seriously wish that I don’t start humming these songs which I usually do, especially at work.

Little Gray Cells in Action

After ‘Death in Paradise’, I needed something else to keep me engaged in my weekends and if it was a detective series, the merrier. After a lot of thought, I decided to go back to the good old Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Do you remember the old TV series that used to come, where a cute stout fellow played Poirot? My friend gave me his name, David Suchet. I remembered his face but not this name 😦 He has a very cute mustache doesn’t he!

I have always loved those episodes. But I don’t remember when I stopped watching them. I don’t even remember the season I used to watch earlier. That is clearly a sign that I should start on them again isn’t? Finally got hold of all the seasons and started to watch them one by one. So far I have completed one season and have just started the 2nd season. It is so much pleasure to watch the ‘little gray cells’ in action. I love the small quirks, the friendly banter between Hastings and Poirot, the love-hate relationship between Poirot and Japp and Ms. Lemon with her cute curls. I think I am set for a month or two with these episodes. And Mr. Hercule Poirot never disappoints 🙂

“It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within–not without.” ~ Poirot”
― Agatha Christie

Already ???

If you are a Game of Thrones fan and haven’t neither seen the series yet nor read the books and are planning to, then this post isn’t for you. I am gonna try and contain myself and not give away any major spoilers, but I can’t guarantee it.

Its already over 😦 The season with 10 episodes is already done. Oh My God!!! What a roller coaster ride. I am still not sure how I feel about the various deviations or rather should I say major deviations from the book. I think I am not too happy about it, but kind of accept it, because that is all I can do now! (I know I am trying to convince myself here, especially now that I have seen all the episodes). The last episode made me empty a big tub of icecream even before I could stop myself or even realize what I was doing. I sort of expected a few of the twists in the last episode and certainly did expect the end scene to be exactly the one that was shown, but that doesn’t mean it felt nice to see it. It still made me cringe in horror. The only other surprise that made me cringe was when Stannis the Mannis did what he did and became the most unpopular guy, even beating Ramsay Bolton in the race. A lot of surprise elements in the series which sort of leads the story astray from the books, especially the White Walkers scene (whoa!!! that was one hell of a scene yeah?). Now that we know a couple of characters are dead , who weren’t dead yet in the book, how is the story gonna proceed….and I have to wait for almost another year now! Dammit!!! I seriously hope the book comes out before that because there is a lot of catching up to do. I really admire how they actually condense the whole story into 10 episodes trying to bring all that matters into the series, considering the number of subplots and characters involved, but still feels bad to see your small and favorite characters not being included. My best scene of the whole series is where Jorah and Tyrion sit and talk after their attack. That was one hell of a place and the photography was so amazing. I kept rewinding to that scene just to take in that sunset. It was soooo awesome. The final episode does win the most gruesome episode award among all the episodes. People dropped dead like flies, literally. Someone even tweeted that this episode had more deaths than the (in)famous Red Wedding 🙂 But at least it ended where the books ended. A small consolation if any.

I think I did manage to not add any spoilers, hopefully. But if I did, well, I did warn ya’. Now the wait begins. But at least there will be lot of posts discussing and dissecting the season. So I will get my GoT fix 😉