Topic: Shows or maybe films where you couldn't buy into the FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE

[Clownbaby]

There's a lot of shows out there with really obviously unrealistic, creative, exaggerated premises that are still absolutely convincing and easy to get invested in because they've been made so well. But then there's obviously some shows where they might not necessarily be all that bad but the whole main character's reason to be and their motivations, or the situations they're in, just don't sit right and it just has you going "well that's a predicament I don't buy into"  (but not worded as stupidly as that)

I know Ugly Betty is hardly worth anyone's time but I have seen it right through because it was there, and made me irritable just enough that it was kind of entertaining to watch it and then grump about it in my head afterwards. She's made to look "ugly" with her braces and glasses and simultaneously flamboyant and frumpy outfits, and yet she is very driven about working in fashion. It's a show that is so irritating and full of missed opportunities that I can't just ignore it.

We're expected to instantly side with her and against the VAPID FASHION PEOPLE but it's very understandable to me and pretty much everyone watching it whether they admit it or not why she would be regarded with suspicion by the VAPID FASHION PEOPLE because of how she looks. Why get into the fashion world if you have no regard for the clothes or the lifestyles you'll be writing about? They're right to not take her seriously. I'd buy into the fish out of water thing if the writers went down the route of her trying to pull off high fashion but getting it horribly wrong because then you can root for her and think oh bless you Betty you're trying in them clothes, I want to watch you adapt and strengthen in this world of high fashion that you love and respect. Nah she just shows up in an absolute display of repulsive sewer green granny blouses and trips over and bumps into people all the time and generally brings down the image of a job that she knew about before signing up.

It's like how in Devil Wears Prada, the fish out of water in that film even says she "doesn't give a shit if it's this blue or that blue it's all just blue right" and then we're supposed to feel sorry for her when that pisses Meryl Streep off.  Fuckin tear her up Meryl she's talking shite. She has no attention to detail and is not right for the job. Stop taking so many chances on her.

Girls is a bit crap because it's obviously trying to be a hipstery Sex and The City that thinks it's smarter than Sex and The city but it is not, and it Lena Dunham is a fundamentally unconvincing premise in and of herself

I realise these are both girly crappy shows but by all means this thread is open to anything. I just really can't stand Ugly Betty.

[Lordofthefiles]

Frank Spencer would have been drummed out of town for being a (suspected) nonce long before he’d had the chance to get his roller skates on or inexplicably get off with Betty.

[sevendaughters]

Of a similar era and stripe I would go with Glee. The show started lightly satirically, as a kind of quirky postmodern parody of a world where the Glee club is taken hyper-seriously like team sports in a Dead Poets Society teacher + one or two precocious nerd students way. Everything was so totally on-the-nose, from the teacher's wife is a bitch but there's this quirky MPDG staff member who is oh-so right to the jock who has to be roped in and finds sensitivity through glee. By episode 5 or 6 it had rejected the parody and had become the type of show it was taking the mick out of and became a lazy Goofus & Gallant meaningfulness of glee actually thanks piece of shit teen drama.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

The Goodies.

[Baby Of The Year]

The Hunt. Otherwise good film ruined by the critical point that children don't lie. You what mate?

[DrGreggles]

Fuck off, mate.

[Blue Jam]

Haven't we had enough Gervais threads already?

[Phil_A]

The Book Of Henry - a heart-warming family drama from the director of "Jurassic World" about a wise-beyond-his-years genius boy that dies of an illness and leaves behind detailed instructions for his mum on how to murder their paedophile neighbour.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Hunted - The first series was vaguely okay but when they realised how easy it was to hide they introduced a whole load of new rules which made the thing ridiculous, and it was painfully contrived in places too.

[mothman]

I've probably ranted about this before, but post-apocalyptic drama Revolution from a few years back annoyed me right from the start. It had this whole high-concept thing, what if electricity stopped working?  But it fell at the first hurdle when right from the start it was, oh noes, electricity has stooped working! Then, suddenly - "Five Years Later." Sure, lets just gloss over the misery and the gigadeaths and skip right to the part where everyone's living in agrarian simplicity in impossibly clean clothes, until, oh noes, here comes the EVIL MILITIA to ruin everything - there's always an EVIL MILITIA in these shows - and there's a grand conspiracy over whoever turned off the elctricity, and it's all so pedestrian and basically the same old US character-drama dybamic that's in everything.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

The Book Of Henry - a heart-warming family drama from the director of "Jurassic World" about a wise-beyond-his-years genius boy that dies of an illness and leaves behind detailed instructions for his mum on how to murder their paedophile neighbour.

That's a hilarious film. It's not meant to be, but fucking hell I laughed all the way through it.

[Bently Sheds]

Harry Potter.

I got about 30 minutes into the first film before giving up. The gist I got was that it's a world where magic exists, but the wizards aren't allowed to do magic in the real world, but there's this fuck off great university in the magical faraway tree land where they twat about like public school Ali Bongos learning spells and conjuring shit.

To what end? You can't magic in normal world, so why bother training up these wankers? Why not DESTROY THEM ALL or prevent all magic in case of its misuse? Why have a bridge between the two worlds?

I ask all this without caring about the answers. I don't care if it's all explained in the children's books. Potter can fuck the fuck off.

[Clownbaby]

Oh I also don't buy into the main lass in The Blacklist (Elizabeth Keen) being so important and special because they got THE MOST nondescript, inoffensive and perfectly lipglossed/smooth-haired even when she's crawling out of wreckage actress they could find

[Deanjam]

Game of Thrones. If everyone is an arsehole, why should I care who is king.

[Hey, Punk!]

Harry Potter.

To what end? You can't magic in normal world, so why bother training up these wankers? Why not DESTROY THEM ALL or prevent all magic in case of its misuse? Why have a bridge between the two worlds?

Non-magic-folk (muggles) can't see a lot of magic, there are many locations which exist within the muggle universe. Diagon Alley exists within London between other alleys, but MAGICALLY!!!!

I also think there was a section where a wizard admitted that a muggle military could basically wipe out the wizarding world.

That's what I remember, I haven't touched anything Harry Potter since the last film came out.

[Blue Jam]

"Have you heard the one about the British remake of Breaking Bad where he just goes and gets treated on the NHS etc..."

Even within the context of the shocking US healthcare system the premise seems a little far-fetched... finally started watching the show this week and I'm loving it all the same.

[Blue Jam]

Shallow Grave. As much as I love that film, why didn't they just hide the money and then call the police and let them deal with the body?

[Jerzy Bondov]

The Hunt. Otherwise good film ruined by the critical point that children don't lie. You what mate?

But the characters in the film who think that are wrong. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Perfect film in my opinion.

[Dex Sawash]

The OA
Parallel dimensions you can shift between if a group of you gesticulate a specific way precisely synced. Oh and you can cure people too.

[EOLAN]

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

To be honest; I don't think that I have seen the whole film. Admittedly, someone's issues with their own look can often be down to their own mind-set rather than how attractive society tends to deem them; but Garofalo still seems too damn cute and nice and not even close to Hollywood ugly to make the premise believable. 

[QDRPHNC]

Baseketball. If you insult someone enough, they'll fall over.

[Norton Canes]

"Have you heard the one about the British remake of Breaking Bad where he just goes and gets treated on the NHS etc..."

Even within the context of the shocking US healthcare system the premise seems a little far-fetched... finally started watching the show this week and I'm loving it all the same

It's a silly idea. Watched the first half hour, watched the last half hour. No need for the rest.

[Clownbaby]

But the characters in the film who think that are wrong. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Perfect film in my opinion.

Yeah, the main character is ostracised based on what the girl says and the whole film is about how people don't like to take chances when they suspect someone is a paedo

[MidnightShambler]

It's a silly idea. Watched the first half hour, watched the last half hour. No need for the rest.

Breaking Bad went on for so fucking long I only ended up watching the lot because I didn't want to have wasted so many hours of my life without finding out the end. Load of old pony with a few good scenes and episodes and great acting.

My dad won't watch any episodic drama, Line Of Duty or Broadchurch or whatever, on the basis that it could all be done in an hour and half and the rest of it is just a load of people fucking talking for hours. Gotta say the older I get the more I'm inclined to agree with him.

[Bazooka]

Hunted - The first series was vaguely okay but when they realised how easy it was to hide they introduced a whole load of new rules which made the thing ridiculous, and it was painfully contrived in places too.

The entire thing was contrived from start to finish, even with a contract signed, the legal ramifications were out of this world. And access to cash machine cameras?

[JesusAndYourBush]

Hunted - The first series was vaguely okay but when they realised how easy it was to hide they introduced a whole load of new rules which made the thing ridiculous, and it was painfully contrived in places too.

The premise is ok, but the amount of fakery makes the whole thing pointless.

So someone is trying to escape and you think they might be catching a bus but you don't know which bus they'll be catching so you access the CCTV - simulated because they can't actually access the cctv - presumably they've just stuck a camera on a tripod which the person being hunted had been told to ignore.  So they're looking at the pretend CCTV... where is the person we're hunting?  Oh yes, they'll be the person that's being followed by A FUCKING CAMERA CREW except when we see them on cctv the camera crew has vanished.  They must have had to film 2 takes.

Someone is in the countryside somewhere... so from the aerial drone footage we see the person being hunted... oh there they are in the middle of the field WITH AN INVISIBLE FUCKING CAMERA CREW.  You'd have had to ask them to move out of the way and hide while they shot the drone footage.

A person is being pursued by a hunter who's about 100 yards behind them, running across a field, they vault a gate and get into a waiting car which speeds off.  OK MATE THE 2-MAN CAMERA CREW HAVE FILMED THE SHOT OF THE CAR SPEEDING OFF, NOW COME BACK AND LET US GET IN THE CAR AND FILM A 2ND TAKE OF THE ESCAPE FROM INSIDE THE CAR WHILE THE HUNTER STAYS BACK AND PROMISES NOT TO CATCH US WHILE WE FILM THE 2ND TAKE.

And in the most recent series they invented the ability to "hack" cars so they can see on a map exactly where a car is.  Like they're somehow hacking into the cars GPS.  FUCK OFF  MATE.

On and that aerial shot of London they keep showing to give the impression the Hunters are based in The Gherkin and not in a broom cupboard at Channel 4.

[Clownbaby]

Season 8 of The Walking Dead could have been cut down to movie length. It was about 20 hours too fucking long.

Walking Dead in general is soaring 35,000 ft above the shark cause they're absolutely stuck in a rut of "we need a big baddie. Nobody will watch it if there isn't some kind of big unbeatable bastard lording over the show for at least 2 seasons" when actually I think it would be braver of them to just write it so the main gang actually meet a fairly decent society of people and start building lives instead of just endlessly conquering nasty cult-like mini dictatorships

[up_the_hampipe]

Blackadder - You mean to tell me that the same man exists in different time periods through history? Get outta here, bub!

Doctor Who - An immortal "time lord" travels in a police phone box? Take a hike, skip!

The X-Files - A department in the FBI dedicated to the supernatural? Hold the phone, cowboy!

Coronation Street - All that trouble happening on one street? I'll believe it when I see it, nimrod!

[hummingofevil]

Coronation Street - All that trouble happening on one street? I'll believe it when I see it, nimrod!

Pobol y Cwm trumps that: the same but everyone speaks Welsh.





(Disclaimer: PyC is the best show on TV and needs a broader fan base)

[Gregory Torso]

13 Reasons Why. A teenage girl decides to kill herself because she is bullied, drug raped, bullied again, raped again, gets called a stupid poo poo head, gets into a car accident, gets beaten up, gets her nudes leaked online and so on, piles and piles of abuse and misery basically with a vape-wave soundtrack or whatev

Before she commits suicide, she records thirteen CASSETTES to give to people as a fuck you from beyond the grave. How long did it take to record thirteen tapes that absolutely no fucker would be able to listen to because they are american teenagers in the year 2018 AND DON'T OWN TAPE PLAYERS. Each tape is 90 minutes, assuming she didn't fill the whole tape though, did she stick some Modest Mouse on the other side or something,. Anyway she then gets a gay latino 35-year-old high school student with ridiculous hair who drives around in a chevy listening to Joy Division to eake out the tapes one by one (along with a tape player so you can fuck you listen to it, of course). It should have been called 13 Tumblr Posts or something, just pass out a link to thirteen different twitter accounts that just call you a cunt for pages and pages.

She emoitonally tortures her only friend from beyond the grave, gay latino dude keeps saying "you have a tape, my dude, hoo boy, get ready becuase you have a tape coming your way, bruv" and then we he gets it its just her going "you're alright, you are alright, i like you urgh" so FUCKING STUPID.
christ, even with the whole incredibly irresponsible "HAY KIDS, are you being BULLIED? why not KILL YOURESELF and make everyone feel BAD" message, would any of her bullies and enemies actually give that much of a shit, they're stupid idiot american grave children with rich parents and Hamptons, whatever the fuck Hamptons are, but they're always going to them, aren't they.

Stupidest thing of all, there is a SECOND SERIES of this planned. HOW? Does some kid buy a fucking lathe cutter and start cutting his own flexi disks with recordings of him going "Whoo, I'm dead now, and it's becuase of you gnarr" and his bereaved eskimo grandma fucking skateboards around town like Marty Mcfly frisbeeing records at school kids?