What's your personal TV schedule?

[The Curmudgeon]

Overload. TV OVERLOAD.

I've said it before, but the sheer volume of great TV now is just overwhelming and unless you spend your days like the fat blobs from Wall-E and never moved away from the screen there's just not enough time to watch it all. You need to have a system, right?

So right now we've created a sort of rota. We're re-watching the original X-Files (which, at nine seasons of 22 episodes is so no easy task), but then we've got normal TV, Sky TV, Netflix and Amazon, not counting the six hours of wrestling a week I watch.

So right now, with the X-Files on Amazon there is also

Sky TV - "Aquarius" - fictional retelling of the Charles Manson cult, starring David Duchovny. We're half way through the first season. It's very good.

Netflix - We just finished Stranger Things and we're now watching "Love", one of those shows you could easy skip past. No hype or online chat, but it's a comedy drama about a couple of thirty-somethings who become friends first and then fall into a relationship. So far so what, but it's funny, well written and pretty believable.

Amazon - We're half way through "Grace & Frankie", about two older friends who have to reshape their lives after finding out their respective husbands declare their love for each other. Quirky but grounded, and all four (Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and the Newsroom's Sam Waterston) are all great in it.

We're also kind of getting through "Mr Robot", a show I thought I'd love but I'm kind of struggling with it and I'm not sure why. I'd read all kinds of hype and I'm just.. I dunno.


Among that rota is Hell's Kitchen, which gets watched right away to avoid spoilers, and the final season of the Gillian Anderson crime drama "The Fall", which is fantastic.

So that's how we're managing to keep our heads about water in the endless sea of quality television. A fairly flexible "rota" of shows that when one is done, we move onto another. The system, so far, works.

What do you do?

[trashcanman]

Luke Cage at the moment. I pretty much prioritize Netflix shows since I can binge them and then move on to weekly shows like Scream Queens (if you still haven't watched this, you SUCK) and the DC shows along with whatever I'm getting on disc from Netflix (currently The Affair with Preacher coming up). When I'm out of those I move on to anime and/or classics. I'm 2/3 through the second season of the original Twilight Zone, which I plan to work my way through in its entirety. I'm waiting for Westworld to get halfway through the season or so and then I'll start on it so by the time I catch up I won't have to wait too long to finish the season.

[The Curmudgeon]

We're probably going to fall out here, Trash, but I did watch the entire first season of Scream Queens and.. it was OK. I obviously didn't love it nearly as much as you. It was fun, clever, but I did feel it dragged on a couple of episodes too long, and got just too ridiculous near the end (that jock guy thinking his friend was actually a GHOST? C'mon...) That being said, the second season starts this week and I'm recording it, so it wasn't a total bust.

I haven't watched Luke Cage yet, but haven't heard exactly glowing reports. I think the problem might be, and this is a guess, is that Luke Cage himself isn't that interesting a character to base an entire show on. In the more grounded realistic world that Daredevil/Jessica and Cage live in, a guy who literally cannot be hurt might not hold that much interest when it comes to fights, unless they start bringing out similar supervillains, which might go against the theme of the series. We'll see.

[trashcanman]

Luke Cage is the best Marvel show yet. Believe it. It's blacker than the jack of spades so it may not translate as well to people who don't have a genuine appreciation of the culture, but forget Cage himself. The supporting cast is amazing. It'd be a great show with no superhero at all. And it handles America's current...uh, problems with a sort of grace, positivity, and lack of finger pointing that you just don't get anywhere else in media. It's a fucking masterpiece. Plus, it's got amazing music.

Appreciation of Scream Queens is very much tied to one's sense of humor. For me, it scratches a severe itch for a brand of satire I didn't even know I needed. Again, it may not translate in some places as well as others because it really never spells itself out and it often veers into out of control silliness for its own sake, but I love the fact the show and the people making it just don't give a fuck. They just go for it and there's nothing else like it on TV. There never really has been. I doubt it gets renewed again, and I'll miss it dearly when it goes, even with the massive amount of quality shows contending for my time.