Watch Extraordinary Attorney Woo

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a Korean TV show about an attorney with autism finding her way around a big law firm. Most of the episodes are self-contained although there are also a few longer running story arcs and a love story. Some of the stories give really interesting insights into the Korean way of life, although sometimes they do get a bit bogged down with procedure. I think it does a good job of balancing the issues presented and watching it certainly teaches you lots about the things faced by folks on the autistic spectrum. I really like it because the whole thing is fundamentally uplifting (although not every case has a happy ending). Well worth a watch if you happen to have Netflix.

Watch Wednesday

Talking of things to watch while the football is on (and there really is a thing in it too) you might like to take a look at Wednesday. It’s an offspring of the Adams Family franchise which you can find on Netflix. Some of the episodes are directed by Tim Burton and they seem to have spent a lot of money on this. The early episodes are really good with some great sardonic humour and lovely set pieces. The later ones turn a bit “Harry Potterish” but the whole thing is carried along by the acting and production. Well worth a look.

She Hulk - Attorney at Law

For the last few weeks we’ve been glued to She Hulk - Attorney at Law. It’s a fabulous piece of tosh with a female relative of the hulk coming to terms with being able to turn green and strong while trying to hold down a busy job as a lawyer specialising in superhero cases.

The casting is perfect, the tone just right and the stories great fun. We’ve really enjoyed it, right up to the last episode where it got a bit too clever for its own good. Theatrical and movie types talk about the “fourth wall” - an invisible boundary that separates the audience from the performer. She Hulk doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it folds it back on itself. What starts with pieces to camera while driving down the highway ends in a sequence which is one or two layers of “knowing” more than it needed to be. You might like it, I just found it made my brain hurt a bit more than it needed to.

But apart from that everything is splendid and you really should watch it. Another series would be wonderful.

CSI is back

The CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) franchise goes back a long way. I’ve still got some of the original DVDs that we bought ages ago. One or two still have the crime scene tapes around them. They must be worth a fortune. Or not.

Anyhoo, after starting in Las Vegas it then moved to New York and Miami. Then it kind of stopped. And now it is back. Unfortunately it is only showing on the Alibi network in the UK, which is not one I have access to. But we managed to get to see an episode last week and it has retained all the bonkers science it used to have, including a rather interesting use for a 3D printer. Worth a look if you can get to watch it.

Watch Hullraisers

Hullraisers is a sitcom set in Hull. It’s based on an Israeli show called Little Mom and was adapted by and stars Lucy Beaumont. It is a bit bawdy and very funny. It was filmed in Hull and gave us lots of “we know where that is” moments as we watched it .The lighting makes Hull look anything but grey. Every scene is packed with colour. As someone who has lived here for a very long time I reckon the accents are all spot on and the inherent friendliness of Hull folks shows up a treat.

Well worth a watch.

Boy girl dog cat mouse cheese

We have a house guest for the next few days. Turns out her favourite TV show at the moment is “Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese”. You can find it on BBC iPlayer and also on Netflix. Not the most relaxing watch, but fun. And it has cheese in it.

Watch Baking Impossible

If you happen to have Netflix and like baking and engineering you should watch Baking Impossible. It’s basically the Great British Bake-Off but with teams that contain a baker and engineer. In each episode rather than making a slightly different kind of cake, the teams have to build engineered contraptions which are then tested at the end of the program (with sometimes hilarious results).

If you have kids who like baking, but don’t know much about engineering (or vice versa) you should watch it with them. The challenges are interesting and the things that the teams manage to make are sometimes astonishing.

Watch Foundation on Apple TV+ for free if you have a PS5

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a classic bit of space opera. It’s all about a scientist who predicts the fall of civilisation (much to the annoyance of those currently in charge). I read the books ages ago. The first three titles (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation) are excellent. But after that I got the impression that the series had less and less to say and turned into a franchise. They might as well have used titles like “Foundation and New Car” or “Foundation and Beach House”.

Anyhoo, Apple TV has taken a swing at making a TV series based on the original books. It looks awesome. The story has been tweaked a bit for a more contemporary feel and everyone plays their part with conviction and gravitas. The first three episodes are out at the moment and although they can be a bit ponderous in places it looks like the pace is hotting up now that the characters have been established. It’s well worth a look whether you’ve read the books or not.

You can watch it for free if you have a PlayStation 5. Apple will let you have 6 months of Apple TV+ for free if you download the Apple TV app for the console and sign up. You can find out more here.

Another good version of the story was made in the 70’s by the BBC (in stereo - which was quite a thing on radio back then). t’s delivered as 8 one hour episodes and I think it is a classic. You can find it here.

"Nailed it" is awesome

Nailed it is a reality TV show where people are given stupidly short times to recreate confections that must have taken a trained chef ages to make. It’s hilarious. I’m not usually a fan of programs that set people up to fail and then film them doing it, but it works fine if the people are in on the joke. And the prize money is enormous for the winner (although I reckon that all the contestants should get a share).

The host and the expert chef are excellent and they do seem to have a knack of finding appropriately crazy guests to join in the fun. This is not highbrow telly. But it is great stuff.

Star Trek Discovery is awesome

I’ve just watched the season finale of Star Trek Discovery. It. Was. Awesome. It had everything. Star ship battles, dumping the warp core and massively implausible plot twists. Well worth seeking out. I want to go and watch the whole thing again now..

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 is Awesome

The first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery were pretty good. But the third is just brilliant. It seems to be a return to a lot of the original Star Trek tropes. Rather than convoluted and long winded stories leading up to a grand finale that is a bit hard to get your head around we have a bunch of people dropped into a nasty situation and then going about doing the right thing.

Each episode so far has ended with the amount of good in the universe increasing slightly. There’s still time for a grand story arc to shuffle in and take centre stage, but for now I’m really enjoying well told free standing episodes that leave you smiling at the end. I really hope it continues this way.

Only Connect Rocks

Only Connect is an awesome game show. Not only does it have Victoria Cohen as host (you really should read her book about how she won a million dollars playing poker) but it has some of the hardest questions out there. The teams are given things and have to figure out the connections between them.

Mind you, I might only be saying this because I got the above connection.

Dyrham Park is a great place to visit

..as seen on TV

Dyrham Park (pronounced “Durham Park”) is presently on the TV screen as one of the locations for the ITV production of Sanditon, a fairly speculative visualisation of an unfinished Jane Austen story. Apparently the "original” story ran out about half way through the first episode. There are 7 more episodes after that and so I think they should have probably added “from an idea by…” to the author credits.

Nevertheless, to my untrained eyes the plot and characters look pretty similar to “proper” versions of Jane Austen texts and we are happily trying to work out which characters are good and which bad and which chap the heroine will end up with. It seems to be boiling down to the “worthy” one or the “smouldering” one at the moment. My bet is on the bloke with the smoke coming out of his ears. Bad news for worthy folk everywhere.

Anyhoo, we didn’t really go to Dyrham Park purely on the strength of a TV tie in, we just fancied a day out in a nice place. In this respect it delivered really well. The location is lovely, the house fascinating, the views awesome, the food in the cafe tasty and we had a thoroughly nice time.

Fun with a fish eye….

If you’re in the area you should go and take a look. Whether or not you’ve seen in on the TV.

Watch Umbrella Academy

You might have spent the evening watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I spent it watching three episodes of Umbrella Academy. I think I got the better deal. Worth a look if you like well produced superhero nonsense. And who doesn’t.

I rather like "The Orville"

Every now and then I wish that they still made programs like “Star Trek the Next Generation”. Well, it turns out that they do. Or at least there is one. It’s called “The Orville” and I reckon that it is worth seeking out. I got the entire series one on Apple iTunes for a knock down price and I rate it as good value. The scenario and the hokey nature of the plots are straight from the Captain Jean Luke Picard stable, but they’ve been given a nice contemporary edge with some smart dialog and neat bits of whimsy. And the characters are all essentially nice people who you end up caring about.

If you like your Sci-Fi to include machines that can make a nice cup of tea, and where things are done with good intentions, then you should seek it out.

Watch this TV Program from Martin Lewis

If you’ve got kids (or are a kid at heart) or just want to watch something inspiring I strongly suggest that you watch this program from Martin Lewis.

It’s billed as “Ten Things Your Kids Need to Know”. It makes some very good points about modern life and how the world of work is changing. It also makes a very strong case for university. Apparently there is concern that potential students are being put off by the debt that they think they will incur by taking a degree. The way Martin explained it was awesome.

He said that you will only start paying back your student debt when your income exceeds 25K (which is a nice problem to have). The amount of your payments will be 10% of the amount your income exceeds the 25K threshold. So, if you earn 30K, you will be paying back a tenth of 5000 a year, which is around 500 pounds.

Then, after 30 years your student debt is written off completely. So when you retire you won’t have the debt hanging over you.

From a planning perspective, you know the absolute maximum that going to university will cost you, based on your income. If you don’t bring in enough to cross the payment threshold then you don’t pay anything back. Your student loan will not lead you into debt, because you only start paying it back when you have money coming in.

It’s complicated, but worth getting your head round because, as Martin pointed out, going to university is a great way to realise your potential had have your horizons properly broadened.

I’m by no means at the beginning of my career, and yet I still found the content of the program inspiring and illuminating. Watch it. With your kids if possible.

"The Expanse" is rather good

The Expanse is a great big lump of space opera that must have cost a fortune to produce. (I tried to work in an "The Expense" gag here, but I couldn't make it work. Oh well.)

The spaceships are some of the best I've ever seen on TV and the narrative is rattling along at a furious pace. Set all around the solar system, a few hundred years into the future,  it has earthers, martians and belters (folks from the asteroid belt) at the brink  of interplanetary war.

There's political chicanery, space battles and some rather unsavoury extra-terrestrial stuff oozing around the place. Some bits of the plot seem to get a massive build-up and then disappear, but there's more than enough going on to keep you occupied now that Star Trek Discovery has finished its run.

Star Trek Discovery is really, really good

I've liked Star Trek ever since I saw the very first episode on a cranky black and white telly when I was a kid way back in the sixties. For the last few years there's been a "Star Trek" shaped hole in my life that buying the boxed sets hasn't really satisfied. 

I was a bit worried when I heard about the latest incarnation of the franchise, as there were rumours of it being stuck in "development hell" and deadlines for release came and went. 

It turns out they were just working really hard to get things absolutely right. And they have. It is very, very good. A bit darker, with some real moral compromises at its heart, but brilliantly produced and acted, with some cracking story lines.  The first few episodes are mostly OK, with a bunch of Klingon subtitles I could well do without, but by episode 4 it really gets into its stride.

In the UK it's on Netflix, but in the 'states I you have to sign up to a particular CBS streaming service to get to see it. I'm not sure why I'm telling folks this, as if you're into Star Trek you've probably already watched a few episodes and drawn your own conclusions, but if you're late to the party then it's well worth seeking out and seeing. 

Star Trek 1 the complete journey

There is something of a bargain to be had out there at the moment. You can get the entire original Star Trek on Blu-Ray disks for less than the price of a video game. Awesome value. The packaging isn't great, being very cardboardy, but the picture quality is excellent. 

Watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine

If you've not watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine yet I envy you. It means you have a whole bunch of fun coming your way that you don't know about. It is quite simply the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Go. Watch. Laugh.