What Are You Watching?

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

Actually, I don’t watch much TV, but when I do, it’s often because DIL tells me I NEED to watch something she binges as we tend to like similar themes.

Now it’s the new Dynasty on Netflix. I LOVE it. It’s trashy, campy, with often ridiculous plots, but I’m hooked. I never really watched the original Dynasty because I was busy being 1500% MOM to a newborn and didn’t have time. The star of the reboot is most definitely Fallon Carrington, played by Elizabeth Gillies. The surprise is when she first broke out in song. Her voice is beyond amazing and adds another element to outrageous musical episodes. If I were the writers, I’d figure out any way possible to showcase her voice, too.

And then there’s yummy Grant Show as Blake Carrington; I’ve had a secret crush on him for YEARS, ever since he was Jake on Melrose Place.

On Amazon Prime, I’m warming up to Silks, about the dilemmas and problems that modern day barristers have to face and what it means to become a silk. A Silk or Queen’s Counsel is an eminent lawyer who’s appointed by the Queen to be one of “Her Majesty’s Counsel learned in the law.” . Their gown is made of silk instead of cotton.

Dropping on July 8 is the reboot of one of my all time favorites, Gossip Girl. Based on the bestselling novels by Cecily von Ziegesar, the original show ran from 2007-2012. This extension of the pop culture classic series finds a new generation of entitled New York private school teens introduced to social surveillance nine years after the original blogger’s website went dark. The only sadness for me is that it features all new characters and while I understand, the truth is that NO ONE can replace these originals:

Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf, the Queen Bee, Penn Badgley as Dan Humphrey, dreamy Chace Crawford as Nate Archibald, Taylor Momsen as Jenny Humphrey, and sexy Ed Westwick as Chuck Bass. Top-notch casting for sure.

Of course, I’m also anticipating the new season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Filming was delayed due to Covid but I think they started up again.

What types of shows do you like or do you not watch anything at all?

Binge-worthy: Scott & Bailey

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

While watching Mueller testify and now during a break in the proceedings, I think I’ll finish a post I started last week about a TV show I am SO beyond excited to recommend to you!

And BTW, I think Jimmy Stewart could have portrayed Robert Mueller to perfection, but prolly lots of you don’t even know who the great actor, James Stewart, even is, so my suggestion is to Google him.

I’m not much of a binge watcher; in fact, I don’t watch a lot of TV at all, but I loved The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and that’s about the extent of it. Oh, and Gossip Girl has a special place in my heart. Blair and Chuck forever!

A long time ago, I caught an episode of Scott & Bailey on our local PBS station and it piqued my interest. When I was bored and searching for something to watch on Amazon Prime besides my crush Paul Hollywood on the Great British Bake Off, S&B popped up, and I thought I’d start from the beginning.

I confess that I couldn’t get enough! It’s gritty, it’s real, and I was absolutely HOOKED.

I thought I’d ration myself to one episode a day to make it last longer, but that self control flew out the window almost immediately. Then I said to myself, “Self, you can watch two in a row, but that’s IT, I mean it.”

Well, that didn’t work either. I kept bargaining with myself until I lost all rational thought and binged the entire five seasons, knowing that when it eventually ended, I would suffer REAL pain and feel abandoned by these characters I’d come to identify with and LOVE. Yes, I mean that. I don’t use that word lightly, nor do I take those feelings lightly. I LOVE Rachel and Janet.

They’re two strong women whose lives tended to be screwed up and messy at times, but they PERSEVERED. They ENDURED. They never gave up. You haven’t lived until you study Detective Constable Janet Scott (brilliantly acted by Lesley Sharp) as she interrogates each and every criminal. From her Madonna-like smile to her soft and measured voice, she asks every question with pristine diction and straightforward dedication to solving a crime, often with a full confession. She’s the embodiment of speaking authentically with truth and conviction.(Ha ha, a double entendre.)

Both Rachel (Suranne Jones) and Janet are Detective Constables in the Major Incident Team of the Manchester Metropolitan Police Service, with the team headed by DCI Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore), whose character is loosely based on Diane Taylor, a former Detective Inspector from Greater Manchester Police. Yes, it’s a Briit show.

Scott & Bailey was an original idea by Suranne Jones and Sally Lindsay. Jones felt that there needed to be more roles for women “that weren’t wife-of, sidekick-to, mother-of, mistress-to, etc.”^[4] Jones remarked, “We were just chatting away over a bottle of wine in a pub” when the idea came to fruition. [Sidebar: see how much can be accomplished with enough vino??]

The creators paired up with Diane Taylor to create the program. The involvement of Diane Taylor as a consultant producer is credited with maintaining Scott & Bailey‘s “rigorous authenticity”. From Taylor’s perspective, television police procedures were often filled with not only technical inaccuracies, but what she felt were inaccuracies of how officers behaved, saying: “that’s what really irritates me in other dramas – detectives crying over dead bodies and getting drunk senseless. You’d last about two weeks”.She said, of her time as a police officer in comparison to portrayals on television, that “reality is much more interesting. I could pull a thousand cases out of my head people would say would never happen. People need drama because they would not believe the reality”. (Background curated from Wiki)

I’ve shared my obsesh with all my friends and a few are as captivated as I was and totally binged. But now it’s over and I went through cold turkey withdrawals, I need something else, cos I’m jonesin’ for a fix.

For me, the only downside of this amazing show was the outrageous number of smokers. At times, the smoke was so heavy, it almost gave me a virtual asthma attack. I only hope for their health’s sake that there’s a lot less lung damage in the real Manchester Police Department.

Watch it and let me know if you love Scott & Bailey as much as I do! And also share some of your fave binge-worthy TV shows.

Cats, Rats, and Bats

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud

Sorry, no pics to share ‘cos the video is grainy and black and white, but these were my three visitors last night at Casa de Enchanted Seashells.

In that order. The first video shows a cat sitting on the steps, looks to be dark gray and I’ve seen him before. The next is of a very large rat running down the steps, and the third one is a bat flying directly across the camera lens.

It sounds like it could be the start of a joke…”A cat, a rat, and a bat walked into a bar…” (Although I have no idea what kind of a punchline to write. Maybe Mrs. Maisel or Suzie could help.)

Or a children’s book, “The Tall Tale (Tail) of the Cat, the Rat, and the Bat”,

Or as Theo would say, “Grandma, that rhymes!”

Since I don’t have any decent pics of last night’s guests, here’s our beloved Bandit who ruled us all for thirteen years before she died of chronic renal failure.

The bat is from one of my favorite books, Stellaluna, by (my friend) Janell Cannon.

And the rat, well, this gif says it all…

(There were no coyotes this time, but I’m happy to report that I’ve been seeing TWO beautiful creatures in the garden, which is awesome as coyotes mate for life. I would be even happier if one day they brought some little ones to visit. It would be a dream come true. I could be their grandma, too!)