What shows are you currently watching?

[stylofone]

Bluey is great, but I believe the destructive potential of Disneyfication is unlimited. I fear it has dealt a mortal blow to Doctor Who. Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom is my favourite children's show. The creator of Bluey worked on it. I just read that the actor who voiced the Wise Old Elf, David Graham, died this year. He would have been about 88 when he was working on the show.

But I digress... It could be the end of an era for Bluey.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... ns-cartoon

[nibble]

Really enjoying Landman (kind of a Yellowstone for the Texas oilfields)

[stylofone]

I just finished a binge rewatch of Squid Game S01, and I'm ready to start S02 tonight. It is an over-the-top dystopian fantasy, but the news reporting about season 2 is eerie. The show is a fictional depiction of extreme capitalism where a gruesome, terrifying, "Battle Royale"-style fight to the death is preferable to the nightmare of dog-eat-dog South Korean exploitation and grift.

To cash in on the show's popularity, Netflix has arranged for IRL versions of the game for the fans. Who would want to role-play this sick, violent horror? Lots of people, it seems. Squid Game is not so OTT after all.

During the wait for Hwang to produce new scripts, Netflix tried to keep the cephalopod gold flowing with the 2023 competition series “Squid Game: The Challenge,” which didn’t match the buzz generated by the mother ship. On Dec. 17, Netflix launched the multiplayer mobile game “Squid Game: Unleashed” and made it free for everyone to play — a break from its usual strategy of paywalling the offerings of its still young gaming business to remain exclusive to Netflix subscribers. There’s also the VR adventure “Squid Game Virtuals” and a raft of consumer products and brand partnerships — everything from a large Mattel doll based on the show’s iconic mechanical girl overlord (named Young-Hee, as we learned in Season 1) in the orange jumper and yellow Peter Pan collar to over-the-top Christmas sweaters emblazoned with “Squid Game” motifs. The deals are varied across every imaginable product offering, including Dominos, Xbox, Duolingo, Puma, Dos Equis XX, Carl’s Jr. and Olive Young.

Now season 2 is out and the reviews aren't great. The lead actor is a major shareholder in a couple of entertainment industry companies, which are nicknamed "Squid Game Stocks". They have sunk because of bad reviews. Once again, I didn't realise just how much art was imitating life. Squid Game is more real than I thought. Netflix, of course, is more 001 than 456.

Anyway, S01 was absolutely brilliant, I'm still looking forward to the new episodes. I hope the reviews are wrong.

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/squid- ... 236251673/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/c ... r-AA1wyZI8

[nibble]

Ignore the naysayers. Season two is great.

[stylofone]

Ignore the naysayers. Season two is great.

I finished watching it last night. You were right!

I think the strength of it is the way the game is consistently portrayed as a analog of the real life exploitation which people face in the outside world. Also, the game's organisers seem obsessed with demeaning their victims with contrived scenarios to deprive them of the opportunity to make ethical choices. Then the bosses triumphally declare that poor or weak people are evil or somehow deserving of their fate, and therefore the exploitation of the weak by the powerful is justified.