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Prospero, because the show is set during the modern day. You know, the day when American politics boils down to "FUCK YOU I LIKE MY GUNS, MY GOD AND HATE THE GAYS!" vs "FUCK YOU, YOU'RE A JACKASS, GIVE PEOPLE HEALTHCARE!"
It's very much playing on our current world political climate. I mean, half this season was based on current Russian politics.

Also, just started watching The X-Files... Bit out of date. I was told most of the cases were just serial killers... Well, 3 episodes in we have Aliums, Alium tech and millitary brain washing, and now a mutant.

EDit: Well, so far the biggest scare came from me looking down at my food during the intro and looking up in the middle of that stretched, screaming dudes face... Cmon!

Hay look folks shows actually set in space!

Dark Mater - Ridiculously cheesy title card, and a bunch of cliches chucked together...yet so far it kinda works for me. Bunch of people wake up on a spaceship with no memory, retaining the skills from their previous life but pretty much nothing else. Except there is a big cargo of guns in the hold.
Few episodes in and I like the stories so far - bits of humour and distinct personalities (even if they are all archtypes).

KillJoys - A bit more originality here although perhaps not pulling of the "bantar" and (I think) GotG like tone its going for. Editing/pacing issues a bit, but also very fun in places.
Has one of the people from Wherehouse 13 sort of doing a Star-Lord esq role.
Basically about two bountry hunters.....in space. (but they have secrets in their past, because, of course they do)

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Other then that the 3rd season of Defiance. But thats not in space. But, hay, Aliens, lots of aliens. And politics. Alien politics. Close as we get to Babylon5 at the moment

I just finished watching Sense8 on Netflix.

Show takes forever to get going, having eight separate main characters with their own plot lines and supporting cast will do that. Getting past that though, the both the individual and overall stories are somewhat interesting, and it has a very diverse cast.

One of the characters seems like just a straight up Author Avatar of Lana Wachowski, but given how few transgender people are on tv, I'll take it.

Overall, if you've liked what the Wachowskis and JM Straczynski have done in the past, it's worth a try.

I enjoyed it.
Pacing all over the place, but I can see B5-esq aspects to how things tie together and (I assume) the Wachowski siblings doing a good job with the action sequences, even on a probably tight budget.
I hope they do another season, as there seems a lot more to explore.

Must say I am getting a bit of a Netflix fanboy these days, as they keep commissioning stuff for me. Arrested Development! 4 Marvel shows! Wachiwsky/Straczynski collaboration!

Now I just need them to do a Greg Wiesman or Rockey-o-Bannon show and I'll be sorted.

So I've been looking into Mr. Robot, and I'm pretty sure that Christian Slater is playing a Tyler Durden

Thoughts?

I had my hopes up for True Detective season two. So far.... it's ok. It's not bad but... maybe the bar has been raised waaaay high? The first season was more like a movie divided in 8 parts and McConaughey and Harrelson's performances were so mindblowing! And the script!
As opposed to.... this season. Mediocre script, so-so performances (except for Colin Farrel, I'll give him that) ... I don't know. I like it... but it's not to the same level of genius.

So this week I watched the 2-part BBC documentary Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners. It turns out that, when slavery (as opposed to just the slave trade) was abolished in 1838, the British Government paid out £20 million in compensation - worth around £17 billion in modern terms, making it the largest such payment ever issued by the UK. This compensation was not for the freed slaves, it was for the people who owned them.

If you can, I would recommend giving it a watch, because it's highlighting some important subject matter that gets very little attention. Notably the economic and social scale of slavery, and the effects this has had on British society.

I'd recommend this youtube video of what Britain did to stop slavery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NoWIZv96KU

Best examples were as soon as a slave stepped onto Britain's soil they're no longer a slave. There was a big court case about it. And, they picketed Africa with only two ships to begin with to stop slavery when it was still popular with everyone else.

Elomin Sha wrote:I'd recommend this youtube video of what Britain did to stop slavery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NoWIZv96KU

Best examples were as soon as a slave stepped onto Britain's soil they're no longer a slave. There was a big court case about it. And, they picketed Africa with only two ships to begin with to stop slavery when it was still popular with everyone else.

That's my point though: British history predominantly focusses on the abolition of slavery, often downplaying the preceding two hundred of exploiting slave labour, and the effects that exploitation had.
Note that the plantation industry kept running on slave labour until 1838; 31 years after the slave trade itself was banned. It is also worth noting that the slave trade ban itself, also post-dates the law freeing of slaves arriving in the British Isles by a similar amount of time.

EDIT: and I've just seen what channel that links to. Sargon of Akkadd? Really? Really?

I actually never knew anything about England's dealings with slavery besides, we used to do it. School was never really forthcoming during history lessons on much else besides WW2 and Henry VIII.

England has had a lot of history, much of it unpleasant.

Though my main knowledge of English slavery is that an ancestor of mine ran away with one of the slaves (though the commonly told family history refers to him as the "butler") to Jamaica, but ended up in Canada when her beau died either due to shipwreck or fever off the coast here.

The history of slavery in England is a long and very interesting one. Under the Saxon and other pre-Norman kings, England had a sort of proto-feudal society, and although it was forbidden by the Pope to keep Christians as slaves, serfdom was very common. Serfdom is, for the record, a practice by which a person is legally bound to the land that they work, and go with the land as it is bought and sold. It is thus not technically slavery, but it is rather the same in spirit.

The ideology of the Normans, however, was more in keeping with the spirit of the Pope's anti-slavery edict, and were religiously and culturally opposed to serfdom- whilst it remained legal, it was seen as a rather barbaric practice, a remnant of the tribal days when men were subjugated rather than controlled through rule of law. By the time of the Domesday book, around 10% of the population of England were slaves, but this number quickly declined. By the late 12th century, serfdom was basically non-existent and the vast majority of peasants were free men, working land that they rented from their lord. Although society and means generally forced them to stay within a couple of miles' radius most of their life, they were free to do otherwise.

Serfdom didn't die out altogether, and the last of the serfs were ultimately freed by Elizabeth I, at about the time that colonialism was just starting to get going. By this time, Britain had started to get involved in the Atlantic slave trade, with the victims in question invariably being from the west coast of Africa. Some were transported to the American colonies, whilst others came home- fashions (and social structures) had changed, and it became increasingly fashionable for gentlemen to own 'black manservants' as a curiosity item. This practice declined in popularity over the years due to perhaps the most upper-class civil rights movement in history; the feeling of the mood against slavery was less one of ideological opposition and more a view that, in the words of a gentlemen of the time, "the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe". This finally came to a head during the 1780s, when a series of legal cases finally formed a legal precedent for the freeing of slaves upon arrival on British soil- although slavery wasn't actually made illegal in Britain until 2013, because reasons.

However, whilst the aristocracy might not have liked slaves at home, they were proving far too profitable to cease trading overseas. Between the 16th to 18th centuries, the transatlantic slave trade boomed, continuing to grow year upon year. The sheer number of slaves transported this way is genuinely staggering- estimates put the total numbers at around 12 million, the majority of whom were traded by the British, and more than half of whom were traded during the 18th century. And for those at the time, it was easy to say "why not?"; slaves were easy to acquire from the technologically underdeveloped African interior, sold for a good price and then continued to be a license to print money for the rest of their life, costing next to nothing and producing all of the agricultural goods that made the New World so profitable.

It is worth noting that slavery wasn't just a 'conquering white man' thing- most slaves acquired from Africa had been made slaves by African tribal leaders, and were then transported to the coast for sale in exchange for manufactured goods. In the story of the slave trade, nobody comes out with their hands clean. Indeed, it has frequently been argued that racism wasn't really a factor in the slave trade (although their religion may well have been)- rather, that racism as a societal prejudice was born out of slavery and the associated airs of superiority. The main social factor that meant Africans rather than Europeans were sold as slaves is that the African slaves were already there.

With time, the trade developed into the famous 'triangular trade'; manufactured goods were produced in Britain, shipped down to West Africa to exchange for slaves, and these slaves were then shipped to the colonies to be sold. The transport of New World agricultural goods, such as molasses and tobacco, completed the triangle of profit and human suffering- as time went by, this cycle became ever more efficient and ever more profitable.

Times changed, however. It might have taken two hundred years, but by the late 18th century the human reality of slavery began to make its impact on British society, particularly given how huge the trade was becoming. It is at this point that a man named William Wilberforce enters the story- Wilberforce was a devout Christian, and like Abraham Lincoln after him these beliefs led him to view slavery as utterly abhorrent. Wilberforce was the figurehead of the British abolitionist movement, and worked tirelessly for the rest of his life to wipe it out; he is said to have brought an abolition bill to every meeting of the House of Commons he attended from 1787 to 1807. The man was utterly possessed in his conviction, and his organisation (The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) almost single-handedly turned the view of a nation from indifferent to morally outraged towards slavery. Indeed, the sheer scale of his achievement may be reflected by the fact that the Slave Trade Act, banning one of the most profitable industries of the time, was ultimately passed (by 283 votes to 16) whilst Britain was midway through fighting Napoleon and needed all the money they could get (interestingly, the French had themselves banned slavery during the Reign of Terror, but Napoleon reinstated it in 1802 to win support from the colonies. Abolition finally returned in 1848).

MetricFurlong, however, makes a very good point- whilst the slave TRADE was abolished in 1802, the Slavery Abolition Act itself was not given Royal Assent until August 1833, and emancipation of slaves in the British Empire was not achieved until 1838. Wilberforce didn't live to see either of these, perhaps his greatest, victories, as he died in July 1833.

TL;DR - slavery is a very long and utterly horrible history of people faffing around with law and economics whilst millions and millions of people worked themselves to death. Ain't that fun.

Somewhat related, I just began watching Humans - it is gripping and unsettling and wonderful.

Question for all you television-watchers: do you largely prefer content made by your country of residence/origin? I do not watch very much television at all, I am not well educated in it's particulars, so I cannot explain with any eloquence why it is - but the British TV I've enjoyed has been light years ahead of any American show I've found to be okay. This isn't a patriotic thing, I'm not so proud of my country that I have bias towards it's media content, but rather I'm wondering if it is simply because nowadays the mindset and inherent underlying attitude is so well communicated from writer to viewer - that something about it resonates so strongly with me.

Depends on genre. I only speak English, so my ignorance of other languages holds back my diversity.
I'm from the UK, and generally speaking I actually prepare US dramas or action shows. Its hard to scale though, as the US produces vastly more I think it should be expected their "best" would be "better" (or, rather, "they have more so there is more likely something that more precisely fits my tastes").

On the other hand, I think the UK produces more comedy I like. IT Crowd, SPACED, Father Ted. That sort of thing ranks as my all time favorite shows.
Compared to US stuff..well, I like Parks and Rec quite a bit, but its not going to be on the same scale as those things.

On the other other hand (I have 3 apparently), I guess the US wins with animated shows. Avatar. Korra. Gravity Falls.Anything Greg Wiesman has ever made........compared to...umm...I am not even sure what the UK makes anymore. Aardman makes Shaun the Sheep I guess, thats pretty high quality for what it is. But cell animation? Childs UK shows tend to be live action I think so little investments in animated shows happen at all.

True Detective's finishing just as it's getting interesting.

Let's Glitch Little Big Adventure 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmaBTspRfDs

I submit to you Doctor Who, and Heroes: Reborn.

Doctor Who - see other threed

Heroes: Reborn: Episode 1: Awakening (because of cause its called that...)

Ok, to start with THANK GOD its not ignoring the end of the last season. It honest to goodness seems to want to move forward. Thank you.
That said, its Civil War.
Hello mutants! Hello Disaster! Hello Government Registration Act!
-sigh-
To be fair, it looks like thats more the background then the story itself. So its not quite redundant to people that have read a comic.
And, it does keep stuff interesting. There is a lot of elements in play and the "around the world intersecting lives" idea still works quite well (even if more recently Sense8 has done it better).
Also no one has acted that stupidly yet. Unless asking someone to kill you and then being upset that you kill them in self-defense later counts as stupid, which it probably does.


Minority Report Epp1; Ok, THAT was a pleasant surprise
Loosely this show fits into the "prevent crimes" genre (like Person of Interest, or The Dead Zone for that mater). All the same template.

But this has a lot going for it. A lot of energy, set in a convincing 2040. And not repeating the film at at - its a sequel to the film, basically.
Looking forward to seeing more.

I did like the wrist-band flying drone camera one girl had, btw.....because thats a real thing that will be sold in a few years time. (a firm was showing them off at a trade show a few months back, they really work)

Minority Report has a TV series?

Yup.
Quite a surprise too, as I would have thought depicting a (non-post apoc) future would be too expensive for TV. (more often we get shows like Continuum giving us brief glimpses in..err...flashbacks)

Gotham episode 2. Wow.

The reboot of Danger Mouse has Alexander Armstrong, Kevin Eldon and Stephen Fry.

I'm sold.

I think I heard John Oliver had a role too.

Anyway, hope they keep the music. Was upset Inspector Gadget didn't.

So, Agents of SHIELD started again.

I'm still impressed at how well the showrunners get the TV medium. There are quite a few flaws with the show, but it's really good at conveying it's story. Considering the VERY tall order of setting up Civil War this season, I'm quite interested in seeing how it will go.

BUT...

The first episode was meh. It would have been better as a double-length episode, with the monstrous Inhuman having a bit more involvement and the new government agency getting some more screen time.

BUT...

kudos to the show for finally having superpowers (and decently CGIed ones at that) in their superhero show. In fact, the CGI is a lot better this time around. Really liked the new plane.