What I Watched: Van der Valk season four. Good European detective show, heavier on the mystery than on the angst.
Here’s the blurb from Masterpiece Mystery: Piet Van der Valk and his trusty team, including his partner-in-crime-solving Lucienne (Maimie McCoy), Hendrik (Darrell d’Silva), Eddie (Azan Ahmed), and more, are back in action in Amsterdam for an all-new season jam-packed with even more heart-pounding action than ever before. In addition to solving murder cases, Van der Valk has to deal with a romance from his past resurfacing as well as find a way to make one of his beloved team members confront their own mortality. Can their team—rather, their found family—survive what life throws at them next?
What I Read: The seven-book Cadenbury Town series. This is a witch and wolf shifter M/M romance series by E. Broom. Light and engaging, more bon bon reading.
Here’s the Amazom blurb from book 1: Who knew when I threw a latte in my boss’s face, my life would change forever? After being fired from his job for Gross Misconduct, Ernest Turnball decided to try something different and applied for a job at The Crazy Bookshop. Starting his new life as a bookshop assistant, Ernest meets some interesting characters, like Mollyanne, who looks like the wicked stepmother from Snow White, when she turns into the crone, but without the big nose. What she does have is a crow, owl, fox, and German shepherd. One of whom is always with her. Or his new boss Alfred, who reminds him of an excitable puppy. A prediction from one of the town witches puts the town on it’s guard, but strange things are still occurring. It seems someone is spell casting and causing havoc to the town and its people. Having found out he is a witch, Ernest is determined to find out who is behind spells, and if the town mayor and Alpha wolf shifter, Adhan Stone, wants to help him, who is he to say no? With the town looking on, scorecards at the ready, can Ernest and Adhan save the town, and reach a perfect ten score?
What I Listened To: Common Goldfish – Baggy Stained Jeans; One True Pairing – Human Frailty; and Chinese American Bear – Kids Go Down (孩子们的时光):
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Come on Ellie! A Euro Detective show without angst is like a Murrican one without a shootout.
My mom and I watch that sometimes when I go over to my parents’ house on Sundays. For my money (which is nothing anyway because it’s on PBS), the titular character comes off as a sufficiently cynical bastard with a heart of . . . value buried down deep inside — but not too deep that it doesn’t rise to the surface every once in a while.
You may or may not find kinship with him.
LOL. I probably would.
Started the final season of Lower Decks. So far so good (only one episode.)
I’m completely addicted to the game Inscryption. I’ve been playing it whenever I get the chance. So much so that it’s incepted my dreams last night.
Prior to purchasing that game, I watched a horrible show called Million Dollar Decorators (Netflix). All the designers and clients are fucking awful people. I don’t watch reality shows, so I can’t gauge how extreme the shamelessly self serving, rude, mean, richly oblivious people are. It’s from 2011 and I don’t think people act like that anymore (in front of the camera)…but maybe I’m being naive?
I started Somebody Somewhere on Max. It’s a dramedy about a woman in her 40s in Kansas trying to get her life going after her sister dies. It’s looking really good.
i watched the beekeeper
which was a statham movie….probably not one of his best….but once it gets going its still plenty entertaining
did have one rather obviously cgi explosion tho….bad enough that i was almost offended by it…
normally id drop a trailer….but its one of those trailers that pretty much give away the whole thing (not that theres any huge surprises…really…best to not think too hard about the plot)
also watched sisu
which was…uhh…gratuitous in its violence…not as funny as i expected tho….its played surprisingly straight considering how over the top a lot of it is
I watched Lonely Planet on Netflix, it was a decent romance. Laura Dern plays a writer with writer’s block trying to finish her novel after ending a relationship. She goes to some fancy writer’s retreat in Morocco. Liam Hemsworth is a finance bro there with his girlfriend (some breakout chick lit popular author). While there, they realize they’re really not a good couple after all and meanwhile he’s got chemistry with Laura Dern. It was well done but not memorable – like I’d have no problem recommending it to a friend but I don’t know that I’d rush to watch it again, if that makes sense.
I also watched this, and I think it has real potential to be a full-length film.
Season 4 of Van der Valk went down smooth. We finished season 2 of Old Man last night and we’re working our way into Shrinking. The only problem with Shrinking is that we always want it to last longer than it does.