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Are there any good dramas I should try?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by hkmb, Feb 23, 2015.

  1. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    There are no good dramas on local TV at the moment, so I was wondering whether any of you could recommend anything. While I'm all in favour of reality TV (and Survivor is coming back this week), and comedy, some decent drama is always a good thing to have, and I'm missing it.

    Over the last couple of years, I think my favourite dramas have been Homeland, The Fall, and The Returned. I quite liked The Americans too. And I enjoyed Revolution in spite of the ludicrous plot holes. Before that, I loved Spooks, and the original British Life on Mars.

    So I'm happy with spy/terrorism things, crime things, spooky ghosty things, and political things, and SF things. But they have to be well-written and well-acted and well-thought-out and challenging: I'm not looking for CSI: Little Rock - Traffic Crimes Unit or anything.

    Does anyone have any good recommendations?
     
  2. Blizzard_Persona

    Blizzard_Persona Senior Member

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    Marco Polo, on Netflix is amazing.

    Sons of Anarchy.

    Breaking Bad.

    Better call Saul.

    Walking dead.
     
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  3. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    These are a few "police procedural" series we've gone through, in the last year or two, all very good:

    Waking the Dead (British cold case series, very entertaining, 10 years running)

    The Killing, aka Forbrydelson (Danish, Sofie Grabol plays Sara Lund, captivating. Alternates between cops an politics)

    Arne Dahl (Swedish team)

    Wallander (Swedish, middle aged detective, series has heart)

    Unit One (Danish, crack team, loosely based on real cases)

    Bergen (Danish, political drama, change of pace)
     
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  4. Blizzard_Persona

    Blizzard_Persona Senior Member

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  5. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Ah, yes. I should really give Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul a go.
     
  6. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Thanks!

    I couldn't really get into Waking the Dead.

    I should give The Killing and Bergen a try: I've heard good things about them. Is Wallander the one with Kenneth Branagh?
     
  7. xliderider

    xliderider Senior Member

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    Allegiance is quite good! The Katya character is bad@ss. :)
     
  8. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    I hadn't heard of this. I've just Googled it, though, and it sounds very interesting. And given how much I enjoyed the last big American remake of an Israeli series, it could be very promising. Thanks!

    Incidentally, the mention of Katya made me think of Eastern European names in general, and that reminded me of Orphan Black, another of my big favourites of the last couple of years.
     
  9. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    House of Cards remake on netflix or the original on BBC.
     
  10. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    The Wallander we watched was Swedish, just downloaded. Subtitles were a bit of a struggle, not sure if you'd want to take it on.

    There's a North American version of The Killing, but again, prefer Scandanavian version.

    Here's a sample of subtitle struggles, with Wallander:

    image.jpg

    Another:

    image.jpg

    (With a bit more hunting I was able to find better subtitles. ;))
     
  11. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    I loved the British version, but I just couldn't get into the remake. I usually really like Kevin Spacey, and I can see the quality of the programme, but for some reason it just didn't work for me.
     
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  12. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    I once had to write English subtitles for a Cantonese documentary. It's incredibly hard work. And it was a low-budget documentary a long time ago: I did a lot of fast-forwarding and rewinding of a VHS tape to do it. So I can understand the challenges these people had.

    I'm generally happy with watching stuff with subtitles if it's good enough to make it worthwhile. But if it isn't brilliant, I lose patience quicker that I would with a programme in a language I speak, so, for example, I only got two episodes into Hatufim (the Israeli programme on which Homeland was based) before I gave up.
     
  13. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    For the most part my experience with subtitles with the above shows was good, basically you don't notice them much, until they jump the tracks. I'm not sure HOW they're all done, you're more in the know then me for sure. I suspect there's some sort of speech recognition being used, and then the translation logic comes into play. Sometimes good, sometimes not.

    The "burning cars in the skull" for example: "in the skull" should have been "in mind" as in: " what they had in mind". It's tricky, dealing with all the nuances of a language.

    The other learning curve for me was just how to deal with separate sub title files. I have some players that could incorporate them on the fly, but preferred to hard code them, especially since we were passing some of these series on to someone else with limited resources.
     
  14. fotomoto

    fotomoto Senior Member

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    I can't find the thread but I think it was you who recommended the documentary "Next Goal Wins". If it was, THANKS! We (the family) loved it.
     
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  15. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    If you havent seen much HBO series ,there were some great ones now on dvd.
    Empire Boardwalk is coproduced by Scorsese and like a 50 hour theater Scorsese movie,
    The Pacific,Deadwood,Carnivale, The Wire all excellent
     
  16. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    Rome was great as well
     
  17. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Not knowing they're there is always a good sign.

    Translation can be difficult. I remember my Dad telling me about a meeting he was at with simultaneous translation between English, German and Italian. He was talking about something the group wanted to avoid, and said, "The absolute last thing we want to do is....". He caught the German translation, which was "Our ultimate objective is...."

    I've always used hard-coded subtitle files: it's a lot simpler.
     
  18. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    It was indeed me.

    I'm delighted to hear that you and your family enjoyed it. It's possibly my favourite documentary ever. And a brilliant one to watch with the family.
     
  19. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    I tried the wire, but found it incredibly difficult to understand the mumbly dialogue. It's a shame: it seemed like it could have been good otherwise.

    Was The Pacific a war thing?
     
  20. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    Pacific is WWII.
    Im the same way with understanding accents.Now I always use the subtitles.
    In fact I need to watch the Wire and Deadwood again as I only understood 50%