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can you do me a solid and watch "alpine house" and let me know if i should bother? thx


krow

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just finished depressing thai-swedish drama "30 degrees in february" and am scoping about for a new foreign show because, like you, i'm a giant dork and enjoy subtitles (classy).

"alpine house" is an estonian (lol i know, i know) drama centering on the world of sports doping. here's the theeurotvplace.com description.

Quote

This ripped-from-the-headlines, five-part drama centers on the political corruption and human greed that enable sports doping. The story begins with the Estonian women’s swimming team being stripped of their Olympic medals after their doping is exposed. Public Relations expert Martin Kütt (Ivo Uukkivi, Kelgukoerad) is called in to diffuse the situation, but new revelations threaten to escalate the scandal and bring down the government. Alpine House, which premiered in the US on Eurochannel, is now streaming on Amazon Video and Eurochannel’s Dailymotion channel.

sounds good, but what if it sucks? that's why i want you to watch it for me and tell me if i should bother. i'd read reviews and such normally but i'd like to hear what olympic dorks think about it first and i don't know any bigger dorks than you guys. 

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Sorree !

Your original post was just a couple of minutes before another in the Off-Topic grouping from Tower Bridge Fox, so it got a bit buried.

If I can get a decent non-buffering service from Amazon sometime this weekend (long-promised fibre broadband upgrade still not reached my street), I'll take a look.

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On 18/09/2016 at 10:58 PM, krow said:

i just worry the production values will be cheap and the acting will be too bad to watch. im going to watch it after I finish daredevil though. 

I've now managed to watch the first episode in assorted bits, and I have no serious complaints. It's a nicely complicated political thriller, in which nobody over about the age of three is anywhere near innocent. There's at least one character I'm having trouble believing in, but she may be clarified in future instalments- at least one more of which I shall be watching (though it may take some time at the present rate).

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i appreciate it, but all i want to do now is watch british gameshows: weakest link, eggheads, pointless. i love how half the questions are about royal institutions in cambridge and i have no idea. but i must say you guys ask an awful lot of (easy) american history and politics questions and your contestants usually have no idea.

i love pointless though. great show.

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damn, that show is a nasty motherfucker. i only got one question right the entire game because it was a katy perry connection and, duh.

i suspect i might have done a bit better had i spent more than four days of my life in the UK as most of the connections were very british. then again, maybe not. it's a hard show.

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  • 2 weeks later...

i checked it out and it didn't make me feel any better about my intelligence on anything other than scottish kings (i got all the q's right). college shows make me depressed whenever i get one wrong as it's been more than 8 years since i graduated. still, i watched about 6 only connects the other day and shockingly got a few of them and solved part of a wall because one of the lines was american cities and types of birds or something like that.

anyway, after an exhaustive 2 weeks binging BBC gameshows i have some notes.

  • mastermind is incredibly tedious and pointless. you get to pick your own category at first? i don't get what's so impressive about that. of course you can answer questions when you have time to study. it's called college and we all did it. the general knowledge round, more impressive but still boring ass show.
  • as someone who knows apparently nothing about your culture, it's really weighted toward male achievement in sports, arts, TV and presenting, and politics. there are far fewer women contestants in every show and fewer questions about notable women. (i can pay attention to stats like these because i'm certainly not busy trying to answer the question)
  • other than jeopardy, america does not have game shows on the same level as yours. thank god for jeopardy! i must say though, your millionaire was exactly on par with ours. it wasn't any more difficult. your weakest link was on par with ours as well, although since ours was primetime there was a lot more money at stake
  • you have entire gameshows that go on for a whole season without giving away a cent (pence?) until the very end. that would never fly in america. (although we do have jeopardy tournament of champions but it only lasts 2 weeks so...)
  • eggheads is amazing even though they set teams up to fail, which annoys me greatly.
  • CJ de mooi or w/e, who you love to hate kind of like anne robinson, is possibly to be on trial for murder right now, no joke.
  • i got over pointless, i got over weakest link, i got over only connect, and i'll probably get over university challenge pretty soon. i will never get over eggheads. i think i've seen 40 episodes at this point to where i'm shouting at the screen "no, don't take barry on politics!" i watch 2 episodes every night before bed.
  • presenters: anne robinson: A; jeremy vine: B+; victoria mitchell: A-; alexander armsrtong: B- (richard: A); jeremy paxman: C+ (very dismissive to those 22 y.o.'s)
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10 hours ago, krow said:

i checked it out and it didn't make me feel any better about my intelligence on anything other than scottish kings (i got all the q's right). college shows make me depressed whenever i get one wrong as it's been more than 8 years since i graduated. still, i watched about 6 only connects the other day and shockingly got a few of them and solved part of a wall because one of the lines was american cities and types of birds or something like that.

anyway, after an exhaustive 2 weeks binging BBC gameshows i have some notes.

  • mastermind is incredibly tedious and pointless. you get to pick your own category at first? i don't get what's so impressive about that. of course you can answer questions when you have time to study. it's called college and we all did it. the general knowledge round, more impressive but still boring ass show.
  • as someone who knows apparently nothing about your culture, it's really weighted toward male achievement in sports, arts, TV and presenting, and politics. there are far fewer women contestants in every show and fewer questions about notable women. (i can pay attention to stats like these because i'm certainly not busy trying to answer the question)
  • other than jeopardy, america does not have game shows on the same level as yours. thank god for jeopardy! i must say though, your millionaire was exactly on par with ours. it wasn't any more difficult. your weakest link was on par with ours as well, although since ours was primetime there was a lot more money at stake
  • you have entire gameshows that go on for a whole season without giving away a cent (pence?) until the very end. that would never fly in america. (although we do have jeopardy tournament of champions but it only lasts 2 weeks so...)
  • eggheads is amazing even though they set teams up to fail, which annoys me greatly.
  • CJ de mooi or w/e, who you love to hate kind of like anne robinson, is possibly to be on trial for murder right now, no joke.
  • i got over pointless, i got over weakest link, i got over only connect, and i'll probably get over university challenge pretty soon. i will never get over eggheads. i think i've seen 40 episodes at this point to where i'm shouting at the screen "no, don't take barry on politics!" i watch 2 episodes every night before bed.
  • presenters: anne robinson: A; jeremy vine: B+; victoria mitchell: A-; alexander armsrtong: B- (richard: A); jeremy paxman: C+ (very dismissive to those 22 y.o.'s)

Pretty sound analysis there, although I think you're a bit unfair on Mastermind: to win the coveted elegant-but-inexpensive trophy, you need to master three specialist subjects, not too closely related. Also, just occasionally, people do find they're nowhere near as expert as they thought!

The "more money at stake" for Weakest Link is not a daytime vs primetime thing, but a commercial vs BBC thing. Because the BBC is paid for by a tax, it cannot usually offer large prizes. Hence also the "season without giving away a cent" tendency.

The thing about Paxman is that, until his recent retirement, he was a news anchor and political interviewer, famous for his harsh attitude to everybody. The first half of this 1997 clip is basically setup, but once he gets going ....

Your claim about the lack of women is interesting; analysing a whole series of each show would possibly be valuable !

 

PS: Episodes 3 & 4 of "Alpine House" were a bit mid-series-ish, but we're starting to build up the corpse count, and adjust our ideas of "good" and "bad".

PPS: A shiny new fibre cable distribution cabinet has appeared, less than 100 metres from my house. Maybe in a couple of years, somebody will come along and connect the lines.

 

PPPS: Have you tried The Chase?

PPPPS: Or Bullseye with Jim Bowen (best watched after several beers)?

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from the interview:

1. what does "bawl out" mean?

2. does instruct mean "command"?

wilde's quote about having everything in common with america except language (which i probably picked up from some game show over the past two weeks) rings especially true here.

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4 hours ago, krow said:

from the interview:

1. what does "bawl out" mean?

2. does instruct mean "command"?

wilde's quote about having everything in common with america except language (which i probably picked up from some game show over the past two weeks) rings especially true here.

"Bawl out" means something like "chastise in a voice loud enough to be heard in offices all the way along the corridor".

"Instruct" does indeed mean "command" in this particular context.

;)

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1 hour ago, JMarkSnow2012 said:

AND  !

Paxman's been tempted back into journalism- his analysis of "Trump vs Clinton: Divided America" is on BBC2 at 9pm tonight (Monday). We may be about to reach peak sarcasm.

Former Sanders supporter: "I'm going to vote for Donald Trump"

Paxman: "There's a term for people like you. It's 'Mad'."

F S s: "... We're out of good options ..."

A minute or two later, Paxman stands by H.L. Mencken's grave, and claims to hear the sound of spinning.

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