Friday, March 29

From Better Call Saul to Derry Girls, don’t we all have shows we gave up on? | Television


A confession: I have watched a total of three episodes of Better Call Saul, a show that quite a few people reckon is not only the best on TV, but also better than its beloved predecessor Breaking Bad. I loved Breaking Bad and I know that, given time, I’d love Better Call Saul too. And yet, in 2015, after struggling through a trio of expertly made but often glacial installations of Better Call Saul’s first series, I put it to one side, and seven years, three US presidents and one planet-altering pandemic (perfect timing for catching up on TV, you would have thought) later, I still haven’t picked it up again.

Better Call Saul is not alone. I also abandoned Gomorrah, the Naples-set mafia drama, midway through its first season, turned off by how broadly drawn and basic it seemed compared with the Matteo Garrone film of the same name, also based on Roberto Saviano’s source material (plenty of Gomorrah fans have told me it gets much, much better in the following episodes and seasons). I limped through four episodes of Marvel’s loud, stern-faced, callback-heavy The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, after mistakenly thinking that, given I quite enjoyed Wandavision, I might like another Marvel show.

Even shows that I like have suffered a similar same fate: for some unknown reason I stopped watching Derry Girls midway through series two, despite hugely enjoying every episode I had seen. Comedies, lacking the propulsive plottiness of dramas, are particularly at risk of being prematurely shelved – I’m still only halfway through series three of Stath Lets Flats, despite it being comfortably the funniest show on TV. And often one show will get bumped for another, more gripping one – when Severance arrived a few months back, its sheer addictiveness pushed several other shows I’d been watching to the sidelines, and I still haven’t returned to them.

I’m sure I’m not alone in prematurely jettisoning series left and right. At a point when there’s more TV to watch than ever, and where that deluge of TV also has to vie with every other form of entertainment in existence, seeing a show through might not be the best use of one’s time. And certainly ditching a TV show halfway through a series doesn’t seem quite as dramatic an act as walking out of a movie early (more on that later) or, shame of all shames, giving up on a book. Still, it’s a big call to make – particularly if you’ve invested time and money into it.

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Plenty of great shows started slowly, after all – Parks and Rec and, yes, Breaking Bad all had patchy first series that bore little relation to the classics they would become. The Wire begins in such an impenetrable fashion – with its inscrutable police slang, enormous cast of characters and labyrinthine plot – that Charlie Brooker (an early superfan of the series) had to write a guide to watching it. I’m sure tons of people gave up on it after a single episode – and what a mistake that would have been. Some dumped Succession in its early episodes too, turned off by the Roy family and their parallels with real-life scumbag elites. I’m sure many of those people have since returned to the show, after hearing so much breathless praise for it in the seasons since. But in doing so they’ve missed out on much of the weekly reactions, predictions, memes, recaps and other things that make watching the show so enjoyable.

They’ve probably had to sidestep a number of spoilers too – that’s the problem I’m currently facing with Better Call Saul. I do eventually plan on watching it, honestly. I’ve just got a couple of other shows I should probably finish first …

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Adjoa Andoh and Simone Ashley star in Netflix’s Bridgerton Photograph: Liam Daniel/NETFLIX

READ Unquestionably the biggest story in the world of entertainment this week is the news that Netflix lost subscribers in the last quarter, something unprecedented for the content giant, which has seen 35% wiped from its share price as a result. There’s been plenty of great writing on the subject, from this NYT explainer on why this might serve as a flashing red light for the streaming industry, to Guardian writer Andrew Lawrence’s own theory on why Netflix are struggling: they’ve stopped making enough good shows.

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WATCH It’s been three long years since the last series of Barry, Bill Hader’s brilliantly dark comedy series about a hitman who gives up the job to get into amateur dramatics, but series three arrives on Sky Comedy/NOW at 9.45pm on Monday (American viewers can watch it on Sunday night on HBO). I can’t remember a comedy that was so heart-stoppingly tense. Related: here’s seven other shows to watch this week.

CUE UP Also back is Decoder Ring, Slate’s charming podcast on cultural mysteries big and small. The first one is a doozy: Willa Paskin investigates why razors have so many blades.

You be the Guide

Last week we asked you for the movies you walked out of early – something that it turns out a lot of you have done. Here’s a small selection, including some controversial choices. Avert your eyes, Terrence Malick fans …

The one which bored us (two seasoned moviegoers) to death was Sideways. OMG. So much drivel in one movie. Slow and boring. We left halfway through and no other film has had that dubious honor (yet). Not even I Give It A Year. And THAT was bad … – Karen Ross

Jude (1996), based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Despite a stellar cast (Christopher Eccleston, Kate Winslet, Rachel Griffiths…) nothing happened for over 45 minutes. I gave up and left to catch the second half of From Dusk Till Dawn next door instead. – katherine hofmeyr [NB: I once passed out during a screening of Jude at university. I was hungover and the scene involved the slaughtering of a pig! – Gwilym]

This is a controversial opinion because people love Charlie Kaufman, but I found adaptation unwatchable. It was a very self-referential, ‘aren’t I clever’ kind of film with unlikable, boring characters. Fifteen minutes in, the man next to me was snoring and I didn’t even stop him. – Shizuka Otake

The Tree of Life. Maybe I’m a philistine but I also like being entertained, rather than watching pointless meanderings flouncy nowhere. It was like an A-level media studies project with a massive budget. – Suzanne Stockton

In Nairobi 30 years ago I went with a friend to see John Boorman’s film Zardoz. It was quite hard to follow but when the end credits appeared after half an hour or so, we twigged that the reels were being shown randomly. The cinema was nearly empty but we stuck it out to the end (beginning) and visited the projection room on our way out to make a mild complaint. The projectionist was completely unmoved and said “you have seen the film anyway, isn’t it?” We didn’t walk out but the film walked all over us. – Paul Sullivan

get involved

We often flu about books that should never have been made into films/series (The Bonfire of the Vanities immediately springs to mind), but what about the books that you’d love to see adapted for film or TV? For example, I’ve always wanted to see Franzen’s The Corrections on the screen, big or small (Noah Baumbach tried to adapt it for HBO, but it never got past the pilot stage). Send over your suggestions by replying to this email or emailing [email protected].

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