I still haven't got around to finishing season 3, not because it wasn't good but because life happens.

That said - I'm still not over the first two seasons and I probably never will. The gore is one thing, it's visual, either you're sensitive to it or you're not, but the psychological aspect of this show is absolutely insane. It's torn my brain to shreds over and over, and transforms the visuals into an impossible window into horror, Lovecraftian horror, the horror that creeps into your soul and breaks it down.

I absolutely agree with Abbie, Hannibal is a truly unique experience but you have to be ready to handle what it's gonna throw at you, because in a way, it's actually made Hannibal Lecter alive and manipulate your mind into madness through the screen.

Last edited by Saniss (2020-03-13 16:12:52)

A couple more Canadian comedy classics for the list that I know are available online:

Corner Gas: Sitcom set in the small farming community of Dog River, Sasketchewan, following the mundane, and occasionally surreal, existence of the local residents. 6 seasons of the live action show available on youtube, and then a few seasons of the animated series that's been made for the past couple years, but tbh I've never actually watched any of it.

EDIT: Well shit. Apparently youtube nuked all the channels that had everything uploaded. As far as I know it's all up on Crave, or there are *cough* other *cough* methods.

The Red Green Show:

Red Green is the leader of a local men's lodge in rural Ontario. He also happens to have a local cable access show. The show follows Red and the other local characters of the lodge and their wacky shenanigans as they misuse duct tape in every way imagined by gods and men alike, and a few ways neither thought was possible. I mean, I'd be surprised if you haven't at least /heard/ of the Red Green Show, it's pretty much become synonymous with Duct Tape at this point. But if you've never actually seen the show, it is absolutely a Canadian classic, and 100% available for free on youtube. (It's legit too, posted by Steve Smith himself).

Personally I'd say start with season 4 after they moved networks and got a bigger budget. The early seasons are still good but definitely have a different feel to them (I mean low budget Canadian TV in the early 90's. Speaks for itself really.)

https://www.youtube.com/user/RedGreenTV/playlists

Season 4 direct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYbrQ-0 … 0E353C3F52

I love how much Canadian content is in this thread ❤️
MAKES ME PROUD

1) When I don't know something, you should never be surprised. And you know that. Jesse.

2) Also no. And that's a fantastic phrase.

This one is bingeable. Kids in The Hall. 5 seasons of a group of Canadian 20-somethings (Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson.) doing the weirdest, wildest, most out-there sketch comedy they could get away with on television in the 80's/early 90's.

Available on CBC Gem: https://gem.cbc.ca/season/kids-in-the-h … 4b1467fea2

and since that's probably gonna be blocked outside Canada, a VPN or other *cough* sources *cough* are available.

Some highlights:

Scott Thompson was openly gay at the time, and a lot of their sketches involved gay characters and themes, and just generally trying to push the limits of what they could get away with, and how many homophobes they could annoy.

And since we're talking about Dave Foley, go watch NewsRadio. Personally speaking, it's one of the best sitcoms ever made.

Dave Foley plays the new news director for a New York news radio station (Hence the name. Do ya get it? Do ya?), as he tries to wrangle the out of control employees and eccentric billionaire owner. (Also stars Stephen Root, in one of my favorite roles of his. And Joe Rogan in his first acting gig, and he's fucking /hilarious/.) Also holds the unfortunate title of being the show Phil Hartman was working on when he was murdered.

Available on CTV's streaming service: https://www.ctv.ca/NewsRadio/Video/S1E1 … 1462213#/1

Or probably elsewhere.

I'll throw this on the stack, since it's my current obsession. 

DIF'ers in the UK surely know all about this, but here in the colonies we know nothing about the goofball glory that is "Time Team".    (We have a franchise version called Time Team America that airs sporadically on PBS, but most people don't know about that either.)

Time Team aired in the UK for 20 years and every episode is exactly the same - a team of archaeologists (and Tony the "presenter", whose purpose is to pester the actual archaeologists about what they're doing) spend three days digging up somebody's turnip field or rose garden and discover a Roman villa or a Bronze Age graveyard or sometimes both.    This show proves beyond any doubt that the entire UK is just human bones and pottery shards covered with two inches of topsoil. 

The show's secret weapon is Phil Harding, who can get legit misty over a flint shard and then explain why, in the most spectacular accent in television history.  (Supposedly it's a Wiltshire accent but I say Phil is clearly a Hobbit who came here to learn our ways.)   

Another fave of mine is John Gater the nerdly "geo-phys" guy who generates spectacular target maps with ground-penetrating radar and then takes endless shit from the rest of the team when they invariably find nothing there.

Anyway, there's an (apparently) official YouTube channel that posts an old episode once a week, plus lots of non-official uploads online that I guess are a-ok with the Time Team folk as well.   It IS a reality show at its core, so take it all with a grain of stone-ground Celtic salt. But with 20 seasons of this thing (plus a couple dozen "Time Team specials"), if this is your kinda thing at all, there's enough here to get you through two apocalypses.

@Trey: I've never been sold so hard, so quickly. This is going to consume a lot of hours of my life.

SO. FARSCAPE. Let me tell you a little something about the best sci-fi show ever made.

One part Jim Henson company puppets. One part early ought's sci-fi television. A big ol' heaping spoonful of batshit crazy. Equal measures Ben Browder and Claudia Black. Sprinkle in some of the craziest, coolest, and most unique character concepts and storylines. Mix thoroughly, add some hallucinogenics, and hey presto you've got yourself a Farscape.

The short pitch: John Crichton, an astronaut (Ben Browder) is developing new experimental spaceship for NASA when he is unceremoniously swallowed by a wormhole, thrown halfway across the galaxy where he immediately accidentally kills the brother of an insane military captain of a human adjacent species and crash lands into a living ship full of alien prisoners of the militaristic human adjacent species, who are all in the middle of a prison escape. One of which is a living plant, another is basically a toad. And that's basically the first 5 minutes of the pilot.

Farscape has a special place in my heart for a lot of reasons but for the most part it's because it's one of the few sci-fi shows that is able to go to those truly /weird/ bits of sci-fi. Those ideas where you're watching a usual primetime sci-fi show and go "Oh man wouldn't it be awesome if X thing happened. yeah, but they'd never do it."? Farscape is the show that does those ideas. And executes them with an intelligence, humour, and heart, while still making everything feel alien, that almost no sci-fi I've ever seen has managed to pull off. For example, Moya, the living ship.... this beautiful creature:

Is a cool concept, and in most sci-fi shows a living ship would show up, and it'd be a thing for an episode, and everyone would move on with thier lives. But no Farscape makes her a real character in the show, she has emoitions, and feelings, and desires of her own. There are entire episodes, hell, arcs, that revolve around her relationship with different members of the crew. And so not only did they go to the effort of making the living ship a real fleshed out character, they added Pilot, this lovely fellow:

Who was genetically grafted into her to act as a user interface. But he's not just that, he is connected to her, physically, mentally, emotionally, they share the wants and desires, and goals, they are two characters that have been together, quite literally, since they were both children. And that gets /explored/ a /lot/ what other show is gonna have that sort of depth with the environment and an 8 foot tall puppet? And make it work, so damn, well.

There's another one I really want to talk about but I won't because it's major spoilers, and well, I'm not a monster.

I wasn't kidding when I said I consider this the best sci-fi show ever made, it manages to be absolutely batshit insane, and yet heartfelt, and honest to it's characters, and will make you feel things you didn't know you could feel, and then you blink and for a moment remember you're looking at a 6 foot tall hunk of silicone.

It is, for me at least, one of the prime examples of how you put characters, and their stories up front and centre, so even when the universe they're living in and the things happening to them are completely ridiculous, and even when the character is the craziest alien design you've ever seen, it still works, because you care about the character and who they are (god guy or bad guy, they're all fantastic). And because of that, they can get away with the /most/ ridiculous concepts, and it still works because you've bought into these characters and you care about what happens to them.

(THAT SAID. It's still an early ought's sci-fi show so it has it's moments of groan worthy cheese from time to time. Closest I can compare it to is like, season 3 or 4 SG-1 after they got out of their really awkward phase but before everything was super polished. But it get's out of it's awkward phase pretty quick and into the really juicy stuff.)

It's all available on Prime, and if you're anything like me, it'll change your life. Or at the very least how you look at story telling in a syndicated television format. And what more can you ask out of life, really?

(And I'm just gonna leave you with this moment, in case you arn't already sold...

Yeah, there's an episode that's like 40% Looney Toons, and it's /amazing/ and makes PERFECT sense in context.)

I thought you were making a joke, but no that is actually literally Baldrick. I'll be damned.

#fuckyeahwritestuff

Don Hertzfeldt just posted the entirety of It's Such a Beautiful Day to Vimeo. It's only a little over an hour long, it's one of the best animated movies ever made, and it's perfect quarantine viewing for reasons that will become obvious.