We rag on the Oscars, and learn a lot about actor Freddie Highmore tonight. Also, updates on old projects, and Tony says a couple of his best pointless stories! Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Whatever happened to the Briar Rose project? –Craig
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Yes, Minister (and Prime Minister) were such great shows! I especially liked Nigel Hawthorne. He was also in my favorite movie version of 12th Night.
And yeah, John Lithgow was great in The Crown. I like that show a lot.
Forgot to say, last week and this week there’s been a big volume difference between the two of you. I have to turn the volume way up to hear what Will says and then down again for Tony.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll mess with the sound levels this week.
Catching up and was just about to say similar, even up fairly high William is easily drowned out by the slightest background noise.
The story of my life!
Wait… it’s like that now? Or it used to be like that?
Was like that on Ep 374, Ep 375 was much better
Yes Minister is satire at its finest. It’s right up there with the 4th season of Black Adder, which was set in WW1.
What’s astonishing about it is that, despite being set in the 80s, the SAME political discussions are happening now. Europe (although back then it was probably about the EEC or some other precursor to the EU), the national health service, jobs for the boys, and so on. I wonder if we’ll look back on something like the West Wing in 30 years and see that it’s all the same nonsense.
I also agree with William – I think Brits do properly self aware, self deprecation. to that end, political shows here might show the absurdity of US politics, but in dramatic form. I don’t think you’d see it properly satirized as Yes Minister.
I’m amazed Chrome accepted the spelling of satirized, total guess.
I should really watch it again, it’s been a while!
I also listen to podcast The West Wing Weekly which is reviewing the series an episode at a time ~16 year later. They’re already finding that the stories in the show are still the same types of things in the news today (and sometimes the stories in the show were drawn from real life events that happened several presidential administrations ago). Makes you wonder if we ever really make progress?
SQUISH: Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
I object to be referred to as a cardboard box!
Adrift: Damn, I thought the film looked interesting from the trailers but knowing this kills what little motivation I had to go see the film.
Darkest Hour: I’m interested in this enough to watch it via one of the streaming services we subscribe to but not enough to pay theater prices for it.
Shape of Water: *shrug* I thought it looked interesting, but never got around to seeing it. Now I have to wait for it to hit one of our streaming services.
Haven: The show wasn’t completely without features of interest, but yeah it definitely wasn’t good.
IT Crowd: Yes, both of you should already have seen and loved this magnificent British comedy. You should also steer well away from the U.S. remake pilot as it was tragically bad. Also William, shut your mouth! IT Crowd was a masterpiece of comedy!
Briar Rose project: I still believe! I also am still looking forward to hearing the finished project. Also for the record, having some sort of regular updates would be nice; even if that update is that it’s still being worked on with no other details.
Seriously Tony, how can you get away with using profanities like Belgium on this podcast?
Solo: I was not excited for it, as the lead looks nothing like Harrison Ford, but the trailers looked fun. We ended up seeing it during opening weekend and I left feeling rather meh. It’s a fine heist movie, but somehow is lacking the essence of Star Wars.
Town names: What we’ll find out in 30 years is that Tony had a time travel accident and ends up being the guy that named all those towns just to punk himself.