It’s New TV season, so let’s have a quick look into the future!

The final season of The Bear and the second season of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender both dropped yesterday — two wildly different shows in terms of style, content and quality, and I like them both very much. We just started The Bear, and that will presumably be written up next week. Then, for a less demanding palate cleanser: Avatar but it’s live action and weirdly colourless because Netflix.

Also, Paramount has sent Strange New Worlds screeners to my podcasting partner, but not to me, and I am trying not to take that personally. (We used to share, but they cut views down to five per episode and introduced 2FA. Rude.)

Let’s watch TV!

I have figured out why this season is not working, and I am very sorry to have to report: the problem is me.

When I watched seasons 1 and 2, it was a binge, in the way that I binge: two episodes a night until we’re done.

I had hoped that going to a weekly episode drop and sharing the experience with everyone else would help me get past the “it’s good but it’s not for me” vibe, and instead I’ve been enjoying it less. But that’s okay, because now I know why that is! Sadly, it’s also not really a fixable problem!

I have some level of auditory processing dysfunction, right? I often have to take a beat to tune my ears in to whatever I’m hearing. (This is deeply annoying to my flatmate, who can tell when I’ve responded to what I thought she said, rather than what she actually said.)

I don’t usually have this problem with television, unless there are different accents at play. Especially French accents. I don’t know what it is, but even aside from my humorous complaints about the French, I really struggle with that accent and language. I have to listen very closely to understand people when they speak English with a French accent. Add in Americans, and British people, and whatever Jennifer Ehle thinks she’s doing, plus Lestat’s whole ADHD storytelling style, and I’m a bit at sea.

It was easier in the Louis seasons, because the style was less frenetic and watching every night made it easier to get into the rhythm of the accents, but this season, I basically have to start from scratch every Sunday night.

If I was deeply engaged with the series, or if I was a professional reviewer instead of a lady who spends a lot of time on her couch, I’d do two watch-throughs, one with subtitles. But I’m not. I simply do not care enough.

I am, however, extremely into Louis the Vampire Slayer (the Blade adaptation we deserve) and all the little moments of foreshadowing. Like, we all saw the CN Tower collapse, right?

Also, I still think Lestat’s music is bad (and I am something of a connoisseur of Fake Bands That Only Exist In TV And Movies); however, Sam Reid’s voice is really good. He deserves better. Even Lestat deserves better. I guess.

I pondered the matter for a few days, and have come back to add…

The sequence in which Louis read aloud from Claudia’s diary, detailing her experience of assault at the hands of Bruce, set against Lestat’s memories of his own abduction and transformation, was truly extraordinary. It has stayed with me for days.

It feels like a thesis statement for the season and the series as a whole: all of these characters are victims as well as perpetrators, and Lestat’s entire existence is wound up in telling a story which helps him make sense to himself. He lies and he lies and he lies, and then he stops to tell the truth, and that’s worse. It’s heartbreaking and brilliant. It’s the sort of thing that keeps me coming back every week. Despite the French.

And now I am coming back a second time to add AND ANOTHER THING

Last night I got to see Velvet Underground at the cinema — I movie I liked perfectly well when I watched it at home, but I utterly loved it at the cinema. It turns out the big screen experience is important!

Anyway, I now feel like I have a better idea of what The Vampire Lestat is trying to do, but also maybe a stronger feeling that it’s not quite pulling it off. I’m gonna ponder that for a few days.

Legends is a six-episode Netflix series about a small team of UK customs agents who are dispatched to infiltrate the heroin trade in the final months of Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministership. It’s based on true events, and is a very solid thriller, but I had trouble buying the premise: that three weeks of training is all it takes to transform four public servants into competent undercover operatives.

In fairness, the script doesn’t let us forget that most of them are out of their depth, and it explores aspects of class and race as Aml Ameen and Hayley Squires (who also played a public servant who is way too excited to get into real spying in The Night Manager) get out of their comfort zones.

But mostly we follow Guy, a man who slips way too comfortably into his new identity as a gangster. (He is so successful as a heroin importer that at one point it starts to look like the government has simply nationalised the drug trade.)

There’s some interesting stuff about identity and losing yourself, but it never quite pays off. Steve Coogan is incredibly compelling as the group’s mentor, who it is hinted got in too deep and suffered profound psychological damage in an earlier operation. (It turns out that he infiltrated a gang of football hooligans, one of whom later recognised him and punched him in the face. Might have been better to preserve the mystery.)

In short, this is as slippery and undemanding as any other recent Netflix production — but since I complain a lot about Netflix’s visual house style, I’ll note that the cinematography is very good, and in the scenes where Morocco stands in for Turkey and Pakistan, the standard orange Middle East Filter is used very lightly.

First of all, Sheepstealer did nothing wrong. I mean, he did many things wrong, but it wasn’t his fault! You can’t just take a feral dragon into a war zone and expect him to understand concepts like “allies” and “please don’t set our allies’ ships on fire” right away! He’s doing his best!

You could argue that this is actually Rhaena’s fault, and she did choose to bring her new feral dragon into said war zone, however, I would argue that she is barely an adult and has spent her entire life being brainwashed to believe that riding dragons into battle is a good idea and will in no way end in disaster.

In short, those ships were destroyed and people and dragons were killed because of systemic forces.

Will Rhaenyra agree, when she finds out that her son, his dragon and her (cousin?) father-in-law/lord admiral are dead? Probably not, but let us remember that she spent most of this episode locked in a room and quoting Elizabeth I. Which is, uhhhhhhh, not what the situation required.

“I can’t wait until Rhaenyra finally gets to do something,” my flatmate said, and I searched my sketchy memories of the books to find something Rhaenyra actually got to do.

House of the Dragon is not a good show, but the fault lies entirely within the source material. The events of the TV series make up a few chapters of a dreary and monotonous “history” of Westeros, as told by a misogynist septon via equally misogynist primary sources, but actually written by George R. R. Martin instead of working on the book we’ve all spent the last decade waiting for. Season 1 looked like it was overcoming the limitations of that source material, but all I remember of season 2 is that none of the characters I care about got to spend time together, and GRRM chucked a tantrum because it changed a few small details from the book. And respectfully, I do not trust GRRM’s ability to tell the difference between a load-bearing plot development and trivia.

Frankly, Rhaenyra (and Emma D’Arcy) deserves better, and so does Sheepstealer.

But I keep watching, because I love the cast, and I love each and every female character. And some of the men are … there. I guess. I’m just not looking forward to watching as everyone gets killed off, one by one, until one of Rhaenyra’s incest babies gets the Iron Throne by default.

SPEAKING OF INCEST, I know this is The Incest Show About The Incest Family, but did we need Aemond kissing his mother full on the lips? Between this and The Vampire Lestat, I simply need everyone to stop. I understand that this was Aemond recognising that his mother is working against him, and making the decision that she is no longer his mother, that the trust between them is irrevocably broken, however. HOWEVER.

Fortunately, Olivia Cooke has an excellent face with a wide range of expressions to convey my feelings. Or at least, that’s what I assume, it’s hard to tell when HBO has turned the contrast and brightness so far down.

One thing I really enjoy about AppleTV is how unconstrained it is by the concept of genre. That comedy? Is actually a drama. This hardboiled detective series?

Well, keep scrolling if you don’t want a huge spoiler.

Sugar is an eight-episode series in which Colin Farrell plays a private eye with a secret. He specialises in finding missing people, he abhors violence (though he can decidedly handle himself), he loves dogs and film, and he loves connecting with the vulnerable. Many years ago, his sister disappeared, which is why now he dedicates himself to the lost.

And what’s his secret? Maybe he’s a spy. Maybe he’s a superhero. Maybe he’s a bee. (That was my flatmate’s guess.)

At the end of episode six, three-quarters of the way through the season, he injects himself in the neck with an unknown substance, and returns to his true form. John Sugar is an alien. His friends, his allies, are all aliens sent to study and examine humanity, so that our mistakes don’t become theirs. But his sister was abducted, and so he solves the mysteries of human life.

My friends, he’s a reverse Fox Mulder.

ALSO he’s looking for a missing woman, the granddaughter of a big name Hollywood producer. Along the way, he adopts a dog, uncovers a human trafficking ring, helps expose a former child star who exploits aspiring actresses, and gets punched in the face a bit. All punctuated with surprisingly long clips from classic Hollywood films, because AppleTV has an unlimited bucket of money. It’s all bright colours and sunshine and moral decay, with the ghost of Humphrey Bogart hanging over Farrell’s shoulder.

Of course, the problem with keeping this twist in reserve is that a lot of science fiction fans, who would enjoy the adventures of an alien detective, are going to assume it’s Yet Another Crime Show and skip it. And the reveal, when it comes, is so audacious and fun that it’s a shame to spoil it. (I really loved my flatmate’s bee theory!) Only AppleTV, a platform which only advertises its products to people who are already subscribers, would pull this off, and that’s why it’s my favourite streaming service these days.

Season 2 started a couple of weeks ago, and I’m eager to watch it — but maybe I want to wait until I can binge it?

I can’t believe we’re more than halfway through the season. What am I gonna do without my emotional support comrades?

Not you, Lyudmilla, you’re … not supportive. Maybe the opposite.

As a certified Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova Stan, I feel like the opening of the season’s second half is a reasonable time to issue a complaint:

Lyudmilla is not a character. She is a force of nature, an antagonist, the human face of the inhumane state. But she is not a three-dimensional character. She’s a cartoon.

Now, I completely understand why you need someone in that role, and in a series with a lot of moving parts, some characters just need to be firmly squashed down into the Supporting Role box. But I feel like there is room for Lyudmilla to be more complex without in any way suggesting that she is, deep down, a good person. I want to know where she came from, how her experiences in the Great Patriotic War shaped her into the monster she is now. What she fears. What she wants. How she feels about being a high-ranking woman in an organisation which simply did not give women command over men.

I think, also, part of my issue is that the depiction of Lyudmilla is a little ahistorical. There was never a period in history when the KGB was a cool, chill, healthy organisation, but her behaviour is more like something from the great purges of the 1930s than the stagnation and intense focus on cultural dissidence of the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s not clear how much of that is intentional, versus how much is simply stereotypes and the USSR’s own propaganda about the power of the KGB.

I’m saying this now because, as the credits roll on episode 6, Lyudmilla is responsible for the deaths of five cosmonauts, all because of her own paranoia and inability to compromise. I’ve never been convinced that she would make it into season 2, and now I’m certain she will be dead by the season finale.

And you know what? She deserves it for taking out my beloved Lakshmi. And also Sasha and Valya, the former of whom goes out like a hero, trying to save his team, while the latter has come clean to his best friend about his treason.

(Maybe it’s a good thing that Venera 7 blew up before Valya could find out about Sasha sleeping with his wife.)

Let’s take a look at where our comrades are at the episode’s end:

Seems bad!

And I have terrible news: I just checked Wikipedia to double check the spelling of Chadha, and it turns out this season has eight episodes, not ten! We passed the halfway point two weeks ago! There is so little time left to put everything to rights and make Lyudmilla a three-dimensional character! How could AppleTV do this to me? After all those nice things I said about them?!