In among the new shows of late, I have been revisiting some old shows, and also watching some Emmy Contenders Interviews.
NYPD Blue
As time has gone by, I have concluded that NYPD Blue is my favourite show of all time. Once every six months or so, I start a re-watch. I usually start from season 2 episode 5 “Simone Says” which is the first episode Jimmy Smits appears in. I am not a big fan of the David Caruso days.
I am however a huge fan of Alan Sepinwall thanks to his reviews of the show, all of which you can find here. Alan now writes about TV over at Hitfix and you can find his present blog here.
The show is often on in the background while I am doing other things, and I have it in my headset while I do household chores. I know the show so well by now I do not need to see it with my eyes, I can picture all the scenes in my head. I have a lot more to write about this show but I will save it for a separate post.
The West Wing
The Soho channel on Foxtel constantly plays The West Wing, and if I happen to be flicking around and spot it, I will usually tune in if I am not watching anything else. So it could be said I am constantly re-watching the show. It is one of my favourites and it always will be. :)
Breaking Bad
This is another show which regularly plays on Foxtel – on the FX channel – so it can be said I am regularly rewatching this show as well. I was thrilled to see both Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks were nominated for Emmy awards this year for Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spinoff show.
Emmy Contenders
There was a series of Emmy Contenders chats done by the LA times, many of which I viewed. The standout chats for me were these chats – Jonathan Banks – Titus Welliver from Bosch – Jamie Dornan – sadly the latter two were not nominated. You can click here to see all the Emmy Contenders chats for 2015.
The Fall
I’d watched season one probably 3-4 times in full previously but I had only watched season two twice and I felt like it was time to revisit the show..
In revisiting season 2, I discovered that my most favourite episodes are episodes 4, 5 and 6 in season two. I love the police procedural stuff they put in, the following of Spector, plus the moment when Stella and Spector finally are face to face, that is an acting masterclass right there.
I will also like to mention that I *love* Stella Gibson as a character. I love everything about her. I love that they gave her a BMW hatchback to drive – it suits her character perfectly. I can see Stella owning that car.
There is going to be a season 3 of The Fall and I can honestly state, if Spector vanishes, they could still continue on and have a truly great show with the characters they have created, in particular the Stella character and the medical examiner Reed Smith played by Archie Punjabi are stand outs.
Fifty Shades Of Grey
Knowing how amazing Jamie Dornan is in The Fall and being a huge fan of his work, I also felt like I had to watch the movie *gulp* Fifty Shades of Grey. This is a movie, not a TV show, but it follows on from The Fall.
The two roles – playing a serial killer in The Fall, and playing Christian Grey are similar in some ways. And in fact, there is a moment in Fifty Shades where they kinda make fun of it – here is a video clip, it only goes for 1:37 and do not fear, there are *zero* sex scenes in this video –
With that said, there are a LOT of sex scenes in the movie, but nowhere near as many sex scenes as there are in the book. Yes, I’ve read all four of the books. For the most part, they are badly written smut, but underneath that is a love story. If I had to choose between reading Twilight and reading Fifty Shades, I’d pick Fifty Shades every time.
I’m not someone willing to criticise things without having experienced them myself, which is why I read the books to begin with. They made a pretty decent movie out of it and I am guessing a lot of that is down to the director who seemingly had a lot of fights with the author over the material. The music in the movie is fantastic, they picked some great songs.
I thought Jamie was brilliant in the movie with one small caveat – I wish they had just let him use his Irish accent, or if they had spent a little more money and time on a voice coach. A little too much of his accent came through. The Irish accent is a really strong one as far as accents go and it is quite a lot of work to remove all traces of it. It is the vowel sounds.
I did not expect to become a fan of Dakota Johnson but she is truly amazing in Fifty Shades of Grey. She really puts herself out there in so many ways. The casting could not be any more perfect re Jennifer Ehle – who played Lizzy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries with Colin Firth – playing the mother of Dakota Johnson, too, they look so alike!
I watch many police shows and love procedurals, so I’m pretty sure I used to watch that. Law and Order SVU was a favorite of mine. Too much has changed, so I don’t watch it any more.
NYPD Blue has a language which rarely appears on other shows, the ways they talked and the things they said, it is sort of like Shakespeare in some ways. It is unfortunate that the only place you can purchase all 12 seasons on DVD is in the UK. I own the four seasons released here in Australia, and fortunately some kind soul in the UK has made the other 8 seasons available to those of us unable to purchase them. :)
We started watching Breaking Bad after the series was over. We loved it and were lucky enough to have finished the series just in time for Better Call Saul. I can’t wait for season 2!!
The half horrified, half crazed scream followed by 5 minutes of laughing very loudly at the end of episode 1 of Better Call Saul brought The Other Half running to see what the heck was going on.. I will have to do a rewatch on the series soon, it was truly brilliant.
In some ways I felt like it was almost better than Breaking Bad. It certainly is more tolerable to the general public, I think.. :)
Used to love NYPD Blue. Including the Caruso year.
I agree about the language: whether it’s authentic or not, it has its own rhythms and cadences.
I really hope there are people in a NY police precinct who do talk like this, because it is such a lovely way of speaking. :) There are times when I just crave hearing it and I have to go and listen to an episode.