Bestest Friend and I are doing a podcast project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighteenth day of the month is "Winner."
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Here's my roundup of the best of the media I've been consuming recently.
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| The newest players are Frankie Boyle, Ivo Graham, Jenny Eclair, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, and Mae Martin. Frankie is the old man, Ivo is bad under pressure, Jenny is having too much fun, Kiell is competitive and angry, and Mae is competent and quick with the one-liners. |
Taskmaster series 15
There have been three episodes of the newest season of Taskmaster so far and I am loving the new cast. I've already written up how amazing this show is recently, so I won't keep harping on it, but it's so funny. Basically, the set-up of this show is that five comedians are given tasks to do and the Taskmaster, a comedian named Greg Davies, awards them points based on their performances. It's ridiculous and wonderful and I love how if you give five different people the same assignment, they'll do it in five different ways. It's hilarious and I'm really enjoying this new batch.
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| #pogdogs for more photos of adorable dogs |
One of our friends who is currently looking to adopt a dog recommended we watch Paul O'Grady's For the Love of Dogs on Amazon Prime. Paul O'Grady was a British comedian who came to prominence as a drag queen in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming a presenter of various radio and television shows. He recently died unexpectedly and the very last season of this show is airing in the UK right now (the last season is not yet available on Amazon). In this show, O'Grady is an ambassador for Battersea Dog & Cats Home, an animal shelter in London. In each episode, we follow several dogs as they enter the shelter and then leave with a new family. Very occasionally a dog doesn't make it, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's mostly sunshine and rainbows. (There was an episode with a dog that looked like it could have been Hannah's cousin and when they had to put her to sleep, there were many tears in our household.)
We just love this show and Paul O'Grady was such a perfect host for it. We have started quoting him a lot, using "whiffy" as a term for when Hannah needs a bath, saying the girls are "full of beans" when they have the zoomies and "he/she is the business" when there's a particularly adorable dog or cat who we would take home in a second comes across our path. I'm so glad there's some feel-good television out there.
Bear Brook (season 2, episode 7)
The second season of Bear Brook from New Hampshire Public Radio is about the conviction of Jason Carroll, a man found guilty of the 1998 murder of a pregnant woman. His confession was, at the very least, coerced, and at the worst, absolutely faked. The evidence tying him to the crime is suspect. The police officer in charge of the case is ethically dubious. But, to be honest with you, I found most of the season pretty boring.
BUT.
The seventh episode is a work of art. You could listen to it as a standalone episode without listening to any of the other episodes in the series and that's what I recommend you do. It's all about how police in the US use the Reid technique when interviewing suspects and how it both increases the rate of true confessions, it also increases the rate of false confessions. It covers how the Reid technique began, what it consists of, and interviews a person who falsely confessed so you can see how effectively it works. This episode is singular.
What's some good media I should be watching or listening to?
Hmmm... I wonder if my kid would enjoy For the Love of Dogs? Sounds like a good fit, but I'm a little wary of the dogs who don't make it. (Not that I'm opposed to exposing her, in small doses, to the idea that life is not all sunshine and rainbows.)
ReplyDeleteYou know what I think is even sadder than the dogs who don't make it? The people who have to give up their dogs because their circumstances have changed and they can't keep their dogs. There was a guy who had to give up his dog because he was old and frail and his wife, who mostly cared for the dog, had died a few months before. He was crying and talking about how much he'd miss his dog. His dog was rehomed, but I was crying thinking about that lonely man all night long. He was doing the best thing for the dog, of course, but was it the best thing for HIM?
DeleteThe people at this shelter do everything they can to help the dogs, so if they don't make it, it's sad, but they were given all the opportunities possible. For the people who lose their dogs, though, it seems like someone has given up on them.
ooooh thanks for some new to me recs!
ReplyDeletei feel the same way as Suzanne about For the Love of Dogs, but I'm worried about myself and not my daughter. I think my daughter could handle the sad parts better than me... things like that make me REALLY sad. But it does sounds good, and so does Taskmaster (you're slowly but surely convincing me to watch it.) That episode of Bear Brook sounds fascinating- I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteLike I told Suzanne, I really struggle with the stories about people who have to give up their dogs. It's heartbreaking to think about what people would have to be going through to do that. It's rare that the dogs die, but it's always off-screen and most of the time (not all of the time) it's puppies who have a rough start. I still recommend the show, though, because most of it is happiness and shots of dogs playing!
DeleteI got nothing to suggest; I rarely listen to podcasts and mostly just watch documentaries on the weekend with my husband! We did the Waco miniseries on Netflix (it was fine, but nothing spectacular; horrific story, of course), the Vatican girl (horrible production value; sad story with all sorts of loose ends), and are now watching a sport docuseries on the LA Lakers which is relatively light and breezy so far - a nice respite from cult/murder/kidnapping series!
ReplyDeleteI can see why a sports doc might be a nice respite. Sometimes we just want our entertainment to be entertaining and not educational!
DeleteI have heard of none of these things! And I don't really have any good suggestions for you, although I watched Batman (the one from 1989) with my family on the weekend and it was so fun. I remember going to see it in the theatre, on a DATE, which must have been one of my first, and I loved it then. It really held up well, except for, as my younger son said, the fight scenes. Those, according to him, were worse than the Sonny/ Carlos fight in the Godfather in terms of believability. Just, you know, giving you a picture of the kinds of conversations we have in our house!
ReplyDeleteI've seen neither Batman nor Godfather, so you can imagine that this entire comment just made me laugh!
DeleteI don't remember if I told you that we saw some clips of Taskmaster? But yes it was the same crew that we see on 8 out of 10 cats and it was hilarious.
ReplyDeleteTM clips are my happy place when I need a quick break during the day. I really like watching entire seasons, though, because you can see people's Taskmaster personas really develop over the course of the episodes.
DeleteTaskmaster sounds right up my alley, I'm just terrible at remembering new things I want to watch right now. Plus I'm mainlining all the British murder shows on Britbox so I can wring it dry and cancel. I usually don't watch stuff on Youtube but my niece was showing me 'unhinged' videos of people critiquing other people's videos of DIY renos and that was hilarious. My husband and I are watching Season 3 of Picard and need to start Season 3 of Ted Lasso but he's been away and then we were both away and there has been zero time to watch anything together.
ReplyDeleteTaskmaster is basically the only thing we actually watch on YouTube, too. I'm just happy it's available to watch in the States. I'm not sure about Canada, though. It's probably similar?
DeleteI don't know any of these! Me? I'm stuck deep into Britbox and Acorn and a couple of good things on Netflix.
ReplyDeleteBritbox seems popular with my readers!
DeleteI have not heard of any of these, besides Taskmaster and I only have heard of that because of you! I should check it out some time. I am enjoying the new season of Top Chef but have had a hard time finding time to watch episodes. I used to watch a show while eating lunch on Mon/Fri when I WFH but I haven't been able to take lunches recently like I used to. But things have finally seemed to quiet down a bit so hopefully I can get back to that habit!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe Top Chef is still going on! What an amazing run for that show.
DeleteI'll have to look out for these, NGS--I've never come across these before.
ReplyDeleteTaskmaster is such a must watch for me!
DeleteI was so excited that you included Bear Brook because I thought we would have overlapping podcast interests for once! But then you said it was boring and I was like, "darn." I really liked the show myself, mainly because it reminded me so much of Serial season 1. I do agree that the episode you mentioned was a standout. I was really annoyed to learn there's no resolution, but I found it pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI have A LOT of thoughts on this season of Bear Brook. I think it was a podcast that suffered from a weekly release. It would have been better if they had just released all of them for the binging. I don't like when they play primary source audio, like the confession video, that is of bad quality and they did it over and over again. Also, this is a case that has been covered in great detail in other podcasts and I just don't think Bear Brook brought anything new to the case, with the exception of episode seven. So, there you have it. I thought the podcast was disappointing, on the whole, but maybe that episode makes up for it.
DeleteI love your roundup! The dog's one peaked my interest, but not sure I can handle any heartbreak regarding animals. Weird huh? I know you get it.
ReplyDeleteThe dog show is mostly happy. And you see lots of dogs, including breeds I don't see much in my neck of the woods. There were so many times we said "I've never seen that breed in person in my whole life" and there it was in a SHELTER!
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