Recently I've been watching... VIKINGS! and more...

...my occasional posts with thoughts on TV series I've binge-watched via Netflix, etc

I've just seen the latest series of Vikings!  This is one programme that gets better and better and better... fabulous story and characters, brilliant actors, amayyy-zing scenery - I love it.
 

Lagertha with treacherous Rollo, and Ragnar, he of the curious facial expressions

 
The star for me has to be the wonderful Lagertha, a role model for all women, I reckon ~ I want to be her even more than I want to be Michonne from The Walking Dead.  Why Ragnar ever let her go in favour of the scheming, faithless giraffe (Princess Aslaug), I shall never understand, and it seems he wishes he hadn't, now.  Love the bits in England from a historical point of view, too.  Such a good and unexpected ending this time. Totally gripping, excellent plot, first class acting, has never disappointed me, got to be in my all time top ten TV series.

A giraffe

The scheming, faithless Princess Aslaug

*****Five big huge gold stars*****


Just made a great new fun discovery: UnREAL, about a reality TV show called Everlasting ~ one suitor, a flock of hopeful and impossibly glamorous women, and a very jaded crew.  Really opens the eye to what happens behind the scenes on reality TV shows; scarily so!  I watched the first series over a couple of nights, and the second one has just started.

****Four Stars*****

 

Now...Fear The Walking Dead. It just doesn't compare with the real Walking Dead at all, I don't think.  The plots aren't as gripping, and the only characters I like in it are Nick and Strand ~ the others are either irritating or just flat and boring.  I watched the seven episodes of series 2 last night and, although some bits were quite good, my main thoughts throughout were:

• a) I wish either the zombies or someone with a gun would do away with Chris, Alicia, Ophelia and Travis
• b) why doesn't Strand stick with his 'this is my boat' stance, and tell them to either act a bit appreciative or get the hell off it (with the exception of Nick)?
• c) why does Kim Dickens always play the same character?

The sooner they give up on the west coast and get themselves over to Georgia, the better.  Rick and Daryl will soon sort the wheat from the chaff.

***Three stars***

 

It's never not a good time for a picture of Daryl Dixon

I sort of watched (by which I mean I sometimes read while it was on, and/or fell asleep) the first series of Between, a teenage thriller about a small town in which everyone over the age of 22 dies from a mysterious virus, and the town is then cordoned off... it's okay, just about, if you like teen dramas, but it doesn't have plot holes so much as plot chasms.  Just too daft, for me.  Most of the characters got on my nerves; the acting isn't that great.  Or it might just be because they're all teenagers, or thereabouts.  I prefer programmes about over 25s, generally; they tend not to think they know everything, and throw less tantrums.

 **Two stars**

People as ancient as me might remember Roots, when it was first out in possibly the late 1970s.  If you don't know about it, it's the allegedly true story of a family of slaves, taken from Africa to work in the cotton and tobacco fields of North Carolina.  I believe Alex Haley was revealed to have made the whole thing up, about twenty years ago, but it can be just watched as fiction based on historical truth, anyway.  The remake is four one and a half hour long episodes.  It's okay; episodes one and three were pretty good (and in three the acting was a lot better, mostly by the wonderful Jonathan Rhys Meyers), but two and three were unbelievably schmaltzy.  Could have been terrific, but cheesy beyond words.

***Three Stars***

Oh, go on, then, here's a picture of Jonathan Rhys Meyers...

A very James Bond style thriller....I only saw two episodes of The Catch, starring Mireille Enos, who I loved in The Killing.  In The Catch she plays Alice Vaughan, a top private investigator in LA.  I nearly turned off ten minutes into the first episode, which was a riot of split screens, loud background music and ludicrous action, but then it got better, with a terrific scam, and I thought it might be really good.  It's a little too silly, but I might watch some more.  Mireille has some fab frocks and hairdos in it, by the way.  The scam-artist-she-loves is revoltingly smarmy.  Can't see what she sees in him at all.  

**Two and a half Stars** 

My June 3rd TV reviews/recommendations HERE, and April 14 HERE