Bingewatching

I said I was going to use my LJ to try to keep up with movies, but maybe I'll talk about TV also. I haven't been watching a lot of TV lately, in general, but this week while Rob has been gone I've done an unusually large amount of binge-watching, spread out among several different series.

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
This is a 7-part miniseries of a book that I've read and re-read over the past few years. I had seen the first episode and liked it, but I failed to set the DV-R and I didn't get episode 2 when it was on BBC-A last summer, and I refused to watch it out of order. So finally I saw that it was available on Amazon (I think it's on DVD as well) and caved and bought it. I started to buy one episode at a time, but I figured I would end up watching it all and I did. It got the gist of the book quite well. It's a big book and it took some telescoping of events to fit it into 7 hours, but basically I think they did it justice. I have plenty of small quibbles (for example, it's repeatedly said in the book that Jonathan Strange is not handsome, but here he rather definitely is. But that doesn't really especially affect the plot, I have to admit) but no really gigantic ones.

2. Mozart in the Jungle
I had never even heard of this until it started winning Golden Globes the other night (I believe my actual comment to Col in Trove chat was along the lines of "wtf is Mozart in the Jungle?") but it turned out to be about classical musicians in NYC. I have a music background and so this right up my alley. I loved it. It's on Amazon Prime, which I already had, so it didn't require any additional cash layout.

And then that made me think of the other Amazon Prime series I was already aware that I hadn't watched, and that was (of course)...

3. Transparent
Honestly, I had a mixed reaction to this. I loved Maura and wanted the series to spend much more time with her and much less with her whiny children. I watched the first three or four episodes (I forget; it was late) and I'll keep going but I really only love about 25% of it.

Oh, and one more, although this was on network TV (on the former ABC Family, which has some new name that I've already forgotten) and is just starting so no bingewatching:

4. Shadowhunters
I can't say that the first episode was good enough to make me want to binge-watch, anyway. But it was better than the movie (which was The Mortal instruments: City of Bones) - which is to say, not absolutely awful. And I love these books, so I'll keep watching at least for a while. (I guess this is one of those products of the New Age of Entertainment or whatever: has there ever previously been a failed movie which was immediately picked up and made into a TV series? Maybe there has, but I can't think of one, offhand. But then, Cassie Clare's books have a huge and mostly young fandom, and if they can successfully tap into that it'll all be gravy.)