What we saw last night: 5 series that kept us sane this week

by time news

Every evening we publish our night viewing recommendation here on the “Time Out” website. We aim low: things you can watch at night without burning your brain with an overdose of stupidity – you can do that yourself – even if they are not supertemporal masterpieces. The recommendations are sometimes based on watching individual episodes that show potential, but you are definitely welcome to complain about us in the secret Facebook group “The spoiler: what are you seeing today”. In honor of the end of the weekend and for your convenience, we are grouping all the recommendations in one place for the traditional end-of-the-weekend binge, ranked according to how much we like them.

1. 1899

Behind “1899” stands the German duo Yantier Frissa and Baren Beau Udar, partners in life as well, who are also signed to “Dark” (the excellent German time travel series that dominated the Netflix charts between 2017 and 2020), and at least according to the first two episodes it seems that all the ways Where they played in your head in that series they perfect with presence. Let’s put it this way: The first episode begins like a period historical drama set on a luxurious ocean liner. In the second chapter you are already in strange, dreamlike and creepy regions of an extremely liquid reality.

It’s unnecessary to try to explain what’s going on there and the truth is that we have no idea either, but beyond the complicated and challenging plot that develops in “1899” – in the second episode you’ll have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming – this is a technically very impressive production, almost certainly won all the photography awards, The setting and effects. There is also an excellent and multilingual international cast that holds dialogues in seven different languages ​​(!), a trick we have already seen from Netflix in the excellent “Sense8”. Later, it must be admitted, the series is a bit Gets tangled up in herself, and becomes exhausting – But if you liked the mathematical puzzles of “Dark”, you will probably also like the mental challenge that is 1899.
Available on Netflix

2. The ones pulling the strings

In this day and age, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a person who believes in conspiracies. There is no more consensus, trust is dead, Bush did the twin attack. Well, at least you can laugh about it. This is exactly what the Netflix animated series, “The String Pullers”, the second part of which was released last weekend on the streaming service. Wait, why not call it a second season? Why a second part? Who is hiding the truth from us?! Anyway, the String Pullers ( “Inside Job”) is about a secret shadow organization called Cognito that controls world events. It might be a standard workplace comedy, but a workplace where a creature that is a hallucinogenic mushroom tries to get you to lick it while you instruct the President of the United States to pass a law that dogs are not allowed to play basketball – He is anything but standard.

The second season continues to follow Reagan, the home of former organization director Rand, who knows that her father is the greatest danger to the overt and undercover world. In the second part, she is joined by Stadler (voiced by Adam Scott), an Illuminati agent who just wants to escape the world of shadows, but is drawn to the travesty that is Reagan’s life. I mean, there’s a general dolphin there. It’s definitely a troll. Somewhat strangely, among all the wild/stupid humor are hidden some interesting statements about the way our world is run – or actually, not run – and how fear can undermine reality. In other words, the string-pullers are saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t necessarily mean someone is actually following you.
Available on Netflix

3. Our universe

An ambitious new nature series whose trailer looks more like Terrence Malick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” or “The Tree of Life” than National Geographic, and with Morgan Freeman’s narration. It’s called “Our Universe”, and its stated mission is to show the various connections between all the things that inhabit our universe, from the most distant planet to whatever it is that lives at the bottom of the ocean, and the promo even promises “the birth of a star and the birth of a sea turtle.” Now, we don’t want to argue, but a turtle sounds more interesting to us.

If the title sounds familiar to you, it is because it is another move in Netflix’s five-year plan in the field of nature series in the coming years, and they all have more or less similar names. In 2019 we already had “Our Planet” (voiced by Sir David Attenborough), and Freeman will continue as the narrator of the next series, “Life on Our Planet” (wait, it gets even more complicated), which comes out next year, as well as “Our Planet II” (watch David Attenborough again), and later will also come “Our Oceans”, “Our Living World” and finally, in 2025, if the climate crisis does not annihilate us by then, we will also see “Our Water World”. What is the difference between the latter and, for example, “Our Oceans”? Um, of course we know – hey, look! A bird! And a supernova!
Available on Netflix

4. Echo 3

In our country, it was called “For her heroes fly”, and it was one of the most loved and watched series in Israel (and the most watched drama series after the split of Channel 2), which was inspired by Amir Goferind’s book of the same name. But it’s not only ours, since it was sold for broadcast on Netflix, and then also for a remake on Apple TV+. All this happened quickly, between June 2018 and July 2020, and since then there has been silence. until this week The series “Echo 3” (what a terrible name), a remake produced by Keshet International, appeared this week on Apple’s quality streaming service, and even if it is not the action series that America has been waiting for – it is not every day that an Israeli series wins this honor.

The American remake focuses on the kidnapping of the scientist Amber Chesborough (Jessica Ann Collins) by a Venezuelan underground, and her husband and brother (Luke Evans and Michail Hausman) who go out to look for her and try to rescue her and discover that there are all kinds of reasons why the American government decided to ignore the case. The first three episodes have already aired and from them the feeling emerges that this is a very effective action thriller, but in series of this type everything depends on the developments and the finale and then either it is very satisfying or the business falls apart. Keshet Broadcasting probably hopes to reproduce the success of “Khatavim/Homeland”, and they entrusted the creation of the series to the Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Ball (“The Load of Pain”), so the story should be in good hands.
Available on Apple TV+

5. Pepsi, where’s my fighter jet?

In 1996, the Pepsi company launched a marketing campaign with prizes based on “Pepsi points”. The elaborate (by 1996 standards) advertisement proclaimed “The more Pepti you drink, the more great things you get.” After they introduce a Pepsi shirt for 75 points, a leather jacket that costs 1,450 points and aviator glasses that are worth 175 points, the product that got Pepsi into trouble arrived – a Hawker Sidley Harrier attack aircraft that could take off and land vertically, probably the coolest thing you could imagine in the nineties. Above it was displayed the inscription “Combat Harrier, 7 million points”. And without any legal asterisk.

A 20-year-old climbing instructor named John Leonard noticed that there was no legal notice attached that the offer for the plane was not genuine, and after some math, he realized that he had a way to get the 7 million points at a reasonable price, with the help of an investor, and earn in return a jet plane worth more than 30 million dollar. Pepsi, of course, could not afford the cost of their legal mistake, let alone where to organize a warplane, and embarked on a long legal battle. I won’t give you a spoiler how it ends, because you can see it in the cute documentary series “Pepsi, where’s my fighter jet?” Its four episodes were uploaded to the streaming service this week. Now is the time to start paying attention to all the advertisements, and look for the mistake.
Available on Netflix

6. The 20 best comedies on screen (bonus!)

Well, it’s a bit like a cheat code, because if you haven’t been interested in any of the series so far, there’s no way you won’t find what you need here. Because comedy is always good, and besides, the definition of what comedy is has expanded in recent years. Here, for example, in the list we compiled this week in which we ranked the twenty best comedies, there are at least two series that can be considered a drama (“The Bear”, “The Heirs”), two more series that mix genres like salad (“Barry”, “Atlanta”) and more full Really hot viewing recommendations for really excellent programs.




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