"Dexter: New Blood" - OK! Every last motherf***ing one of you are now banned!

[Neil]

Why did none of you tell me about this!!!?

[MinionZombie]

Is this a TV movie or a series? I knew something new with Dexter was coming, but didn't know how far along they were. Hopefully it'll go someway to improving upon that crap ending to season 8. While I watched all of Dexter, seasons 6 through 8 were pretty shite and just got sillier and sillier and turned into cliches and struggling to find anything they hadn't already done better before. Seasons 1 through 5 were good, with 1 and 4 being superb.

[Neil]

Is this a TV movie or a series? I knew something new with Dexter was coming, but didn't know how far along they were. Hopefully it'll go someway to improving upon that crap ending to season 8. While I watched all of Dexter, seasons 6 through 8 were pretty shite and just got sillier and sillier and turned into cliches and struggling to find anything they hadn't already done better before. Seasons 1 through 5 were good, with 1 and 4 being superb. Well, I believe the producer or writer of S1-4 is the chap behind this new one?

[EvilNed]

Is this a TV movie or a series? I knew something new with Dexter was coming, but didn't know how far along they were. Hopefully it'll go someway to improving upon that crap ending to season 8. While I watched all of Dexter, seasons 6 through 8 were pretty shite and just got sillier and sillier and turned into cliches and struggling to find anything they hadn't already done better before. Seasons 1 through 5 were good, with 1 and 4 being superb. This is why I never watch tv shows or series. They all start good and they all end crap.

[Neil]

This is why I never watch tv shows or series. They all start good and they all end crap. What about Game Of Thrones then? DOH!

[MinionZombie]

What about Game Of Thrones then? DOH! GoT's finale season gets slagged off way too much IMHO. Was it perfect? No. But is anything? After S8 there were revisionist opinions of S7, which I seem to recall was actually quite well received. Seasons 7 and 8 of GoT were the 3rd act of the whole thing, so after years of build up it was time for payoff. And it wasn't like Season 8 was in a giant rush anyway, as there were two slower episodes to kick things off before the epic, then another couple of softer ones, then the finale. You can't meet everyone's expectations, certainly made harder by the GRRM taking forever and a day to finish the originating material, so they had to go off on their own after a certain point. I wonder if it was even possible to have met the expectations of the greatest denouncers of GoT's 8th season. Dexter, on the other hand, ran out of steam after season five. After that it struggled to find stories that were interesting, villains that were interesting, and it turned itself into a bit of a cliche of itself with sillier character choices all leading up to a decidely weak-ass ending. As if killing Deb wasn't bad enough, it finishes with him being a lonely lumberjack.

[EvilNed]

What about Game Of Thrones then? DOH! Never watched it. I watched all of Battlestar Galactica up until the penultimate episode. The series started so good and turned into such a convoluted clusterfuck. I never even watched the finale. I don't care how it ends, I hope they all die. After that I realized that I'd spent around 75 hours watching something that I ended up hating. I'm never gonna watch another tv-series in my life. It's not worth it. I've got better things to do. Miniseries are excluded.

[Neil]

Never watched it. I watched all of Battlestar Galactica up until the penultimate episode. The series started so good and turned into such a convoluted clusterfuck. I never even watched the finale. I don't care how it ends, I hope they all die. After that I realized that I'd spent around 75 hours watching something that I ended up hating. I'm never gonna watch another tv-series in my life. It's not worth it. I've got better things to do. Miniseries are excluded. First 3-4 series of Dexter were pretty darn good, but then went rather average. And yes, miniseries are excluded, especially when they're called Chernobyl

[MinionZombie]

First 3-4 series of Dexter were pretty darn good, but then went rather average. And yes, miniseries are excluded, especially when they're called Chernobyl 1) Dexter Season 4 was awesome. I remember being utterly gripped by that one. Season 5 simply couldn't live up to it, but it actually worked pretty well. However, Season 6 was a real dud and 7 and 8 were just like 'end it already!' 2) Hell yeah! Chernobyl was astounding. Also - Band of Brothers. I've lost count of how many times I've watched that. The Pacific is also pretty good. It's no BoB, but once you put that aside and live and let live with the structure of the story (they had to adhere to how events played out in real life, rather than how they would in a screenplay), it's very good and shockingly grim at times. But yeah ... BoB all day every day. They captured magic with that mini series. Speaking of, I'd be interested to see a Vietnam mini-series drama in the style of BoB from the same makers.

[Neil]

Also - Band of Brothers. Damn! I deserve to get a damn good thrashing for forgetting that mini-series. Quite possibly one of the best bits of TV ever!

[MinionZombie]

Damn! I deserve to get a damn good thrashing for forgetting that mini-series. Quite possibly one of the best bits of TV ever! I'm rolling up a newspaper as we speak, in order to thwack your nose! Saving Private Ryan was very good, but BoB really nailed everything perfectly. All the war stuff was brilliantly realised, but it was the perfect story - and structure - to make a mini-series out of. We follow these guys from boot camp through to the end of the war, losing people along the way. Their story had a linear momentum to it, and that made it a perfect fit for adaptation. The Pacific, on the other hand, had characters coming and going at different times in different units - so it felt more disjointed. However, that was according to the true stories of those individuals and it was right to tell it that way, but that does inherently affect the pacing of the ten episodes. Back to BoB, though, and it was able to pace itself perfectly and unfold the story just right. The ten episodes themselves work as a three act structure - e.g. Bastogne is the second act low point of the ten episodes, a real struggle for the men to endure. So, narratively and structurally is was ideal, then of course there was the flawless execution of telling that story on-screen. It's visceral. You feel a part of the action, but never in an exploitative way. You feel like a documentarian scrambling along after these young men and just trying to keep your head low to dodge the bullets. Then there was that episode where they discovered the concentration camp. Episode 9, IIRC. "Why We Fight". It's a hell of a gut punch that episode and really captures that moment of discovery. We all grew up knowing about the concentration camps - they aren't a surprise to us - it's part of the story already. However, to those men, they're in a war and then this whole extra angle comes along to their shock and disgust and they can hardly process it. Then when they brought the nearby townspeople to come and see what their country had done, what was going on just a couple of miles from where they lived. Seeing those men and women in their finest clothes being exposed to these horrors. Indeed, that based on exactly what happened - civilians were escorted from their towns, near to these camps, and were given tours. There's some staggering footage I saw a while back where you see these people walking into the camps all kinda smiling because they see they're on camera and they don't really know what they're going to see - then you see them getting toured through the quarters, past tables of sickening artefacts (e.g. human skin lampshades, shrunken heads, etc) - then you see their faces after witnessing the horrors that have been wrought and it's simply stunning.

[Neil]

I'm rolling up a newspaper as we speak, in order to thwack your nose! Saving Private Ryan was very good, but BoB really nailed everything perfectly. All the war stuff was brilliantly realised, but it was the perfect story - and structure - to make a mini-series out of. We follow these guys from boot camp through to the end of the war, losing people along the way. Their story had a linear momentum to it, and that made it a perfect fit for adaptation. The Pacific, on the other hand, had characters coming and going at different times in different units - so it felt more disjointed. However, that was according to the true stories of those individuals and it was right to tell it that way, but that does inherently affect the pacing of the ten episodes. Back to BoB, though, and it was able to pace itself perfectly and unfold the story just right. The ten episodes themselves work as a three act structure - e.g. Bastogne is the second act low point of the ten episodes, a real struggle for the men to endure. So, narratively and structurally is was ideal, then of course there was the flawless execution of telling that story on-screen. It's visceral. You feel a part of the action, but never in an exploitative way. You feel like a documentarian scrambling along after these young men and just trying to keep your head low to dodge the bullets. Then there was that episode where they discovered the concentration camp. Episode 9, IIRC. "Why We Fight". It's a hell of a gut punch that episode and really captures that moment of discovery. We all grew up knowing about the concentration camps - they aren't a surprise to us - it's part of the story already. However, to those men, they're in a war and then this whole extra angle comes along to their shock and disgust and they can hardly process it. Then when they brought the nearby townspeople to come and see what their country had done, what was going on just a couple of miles from where they lived. Seeing those men and women in their finest clothes being exposed to these horrors. Indeed, that based on exactly what happened - civilians were escorted from their towns, near to these camps, and were given tours. There's some staggering footage I saw a while back where you see these people walking into the camps all kinda smiling because they see they're on camera and they don't really know what they're going to see - then you see them getting toured through the quarters, past tables of sickening artefacts (e.g. human skin lampshades, shrunken heads, etc) - then you see their faces after witnessing the horrors that have been wrought and it's simply stunning. Damn you! I'll have to watch it again now!

[Tricky]

I'm rolling up a newspaper as we speak, in order to thwack your nose! Saving Private Ryan was very good, but BoB really nailed everything perfectly. All the war stuff was brilliantly realised, but it was the perfect story - and structure - to make a mini-series out of. We follow these guys from boot camp through to the end of the war, losing people along the way. Their story had a linear momentum to it, and that made it a perfect fit for adaptation. The Pacific, on the other hand, had characters coming and going at different times in different units - so it felt more disjointed. However, that was according to the true stories of those individuals and it was right to tell it that way, but that does inherently affect the pacing of the ten episodes. Back to BoB, though, and it was able to pace itself perfectly and unfold the story just right. The ten episodes themselves work as a three act structure - e.g. Bastogne is the second act low point of the ten episodes, a real struggle for the men to endure. So, narratively and structurally is was ideal, then of course there was the flawless execution of telling that story on-screen. It's visceral. You feel a part of the action, but never in an exploitative way. You feel like a documentarian scrambling along after these young men and just trying to keep your head low to dodge the bullets. Then there was that episode where they discovered the concentration camp. Episode 9, IIRC. "Why We Fight". It's a hell of a gut punch that episode and really captures that moment of discovery. We all grew up knowing about the concentration camps - they aren't a surprise to us - it's part of the story already. However, to those men, they're in a war and then this whole extra angle comes along to their shock and disgust and they can hardly process it. Then when they brought the nearby townspeople to come and see what their country had done, what was going on just a couple of miles from where they lived. Seeing those men and women in their finest clothes being exposed to these horrors. Indeed, that based on exactly what happened - civilians were escorted from their towns, near to these camps, and were given tours. There's some staggering footage I saw a while back where you see these people walking into the camps all kinda smiling because they see they're on camera and they don't really know what they're going to see - then you see them getting toured through the quarters, past tables of sickening artefacts (e.g. human skin lampshades, shrunken heads, etc) - then you see their faces after witnessing the horrors that have been wrought and it's simply stunning. Agree BoB was excellent, I've watched it through several times and it's just spot on. Can't believe it's 20 years since it came out now! Saving Private Ryan is a good war film and probably the best WW2 one ever made at the time of its release, it just suffers a bit from inaccuracies which are probably not an issue to the casual viewer but are to someone who is well versed in WW2 German heavy armour (that Tiger in the final battle only just resembles one if you squint), and having been to Normandy to carry out a battlefield study over several days from the landings to the slaughter at the Falaise Gap, and my knowledge from serving in the military myself, I just can't help myself picking fault with it. Generation Kill from HBO is also massively overlooked, if you haven't seen it it's every bit as good as BoB and again is based on a true account of the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 from the perspective of a reporter embedded with a U.S marine reconnaissance unit. The military banter is spot on. I'd also highly recommend Generation War ("Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vater" in German) which is pretty much Band Of Brothers from the German perspective and follows a group of young German friends from the early days of the war when they were all enthusiastic about it, to the defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk, to the end of the war when the regime was collapsing on all fronts.

[EvilNed]

Band of Brothers and Chernobyl: Both HBO. I love BoB. Read the book too, and Leckies book "Helmet for my pillow", which forms one half of the story of The Pacific. One thing to remember is that Band of Brother focuses on one company over the course of a little over a year. From the landing at D-Day to the surrender of Nazi germany were only 11 months. Meanwhile in the Pacific american boots were on the ground a lot longer. Leckie fights at the battle of Guadalcanal, which took place in August/September of 1942 whereas the series caps off with Sledge at Okinawa in May-July 1945. That's 2,5 years compared to BoB's 11 months. Different companies as well. I do believe The Pacific suffers from it, when comparing the two. BoB took it's time to develop the personalities and relationships of one company, whereas The Pacific focused on three different (John Basilone being the third). All the same, they have their own merits. The Pacific is good, just not great. Looking forward to Masters of the Air, about the Flying fortress bombers flying over Europe. They had some of the highest casualty rates of any american service - if not the highest. I read that book too. There's some grim stories in there. Including one where a plane's landing gear got stuck as well as the hatch that opened up to the belly gunner. The plane was on fire and had to land, but doing so would crush the belly gunner flat against the tarmac. The pilot had no choice but to do it.

[Neil]

there's some grim stories in there. Including one where a plane's landing gear got stuck as well as the hatch that opened up to the belly gunner. The plane was on fire and had to land, but doing so would crush the belly gunner flat against the tarmac. The pilot had no choice but to do it. ffs!!