What Movies or TV shows are you watching (2023)

[LosLobo]

Dropped on BBC One yesterday and now elsewhere......

 

World on Fire - Season 2 Official Trailer | IMDb 

[connda]

If you like 'strange' this is the show for you.  And I like strange. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11280740/

[KhunLA]

48 minutes ago, connda said:

If you like 'strange' this is the show for you.  And I like strange. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11280740/

I enjoyed that, something different for a change.

[Jingthing]

Oldie new to me maybe not new to you.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catherine_Tate_Show

 

I discovered it from youtube videos.

 

Funny!

 

 

 

[Mike Teavee]

3 hours ago, Jingthing said:

Oldie new to me maybe not new to you.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catherine_Tate_Show

 

I discovered it from youtube videos.

 

Funny!

 

 

 

One of my favourite CT sketches…

 

 

 

[Will27]

This new one from the Beeb is getting good reviews.

 

Follows the deaths of Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, and the extraordinary events that unfolded in the following years.

 

 

[Yellowtail]

Been watching Goliath which I thought was great the first season, good the second, but it seems the wheels have fallen off in the third. 

[xylophone]

I thought I would watch "an oldie but a goodie" last night, so I downloaded, "Independence Day" and enjoyed it, and it's surprising how much I enjoyed it, given that I had seen it a few years back. On top of that, I thought the CGI aspect was still very good, considering the advances that have been made since this movie came out.

[xylophone]

I've come back onto this thread because I need some help from folks who know more than I do (which is not difficult) about VPNs. I have posted on the computer thread but have got no response, so I thought I'd give this one a try, so here goes.........

 

I did have Nord VPN for about a year, mostly using it for the BBC iPlayer, however over the past few months it has been "acting up", in as much as I can get through to the BBC website, but when I tried to watch a few things, I get the message, "this content is not available in your region" or words to that effect, and despite the fact I play around with the region location on the app, it still doesn't work, and maybe it will work one time out of five, and then only for a short period of time.

 

I did change to Express VPN, however that added to the problems in as much as the program I was watching would buffer and freeze, and the notation, "you do not have enough bandwidth to view this program" would appear, strange because I've never had that happen before, and I'm still with the same Internet provider (3BB)?

 

I have asked for a refund from Express VPN and they have agreed to provide me with one, however with Nord I've got about a year to run, so I can leave that in the background for other things, because I can't get a rebate now.

 

Last night I tried CyberGhost in order to watch the programme, "The Sixth Commandment" and that worked okay, so I'll give that a trial run.

 

Having said all of that, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might overcome the problems I've been getting, and yes I have cleared the DNS cache and am not running any other large programs simultaneously, and I've cleaned just about everything I can on my computer – – so why am I getting these problems when they never happened in the past??

 

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[Will27]

Episodes 1 and 2 are dropping now.

 

 

[gargamon]

3 hours ago, xylophone said:

I've come back onto this thread because I need some help from folks who know more than I do (which is not difficult) about VPNs. I have posted on the computer thread but have got no response, so I thought I'd give this one a try, so here goes.........

 

I did have Nord VPN for about a year, mostly using it for the BBC iPlayer, however over the past few months it has been "acting up", in as much as I can get through to the BBC website, but when I tried to watch a few things, I get the message, "this content is not available in your region" or words to that effect, and despite the fact I play around with the region location on the app, it still doesn't work, and maybe it will work one time out of five, and then only for a short period of time.

 

I did change to Express VPN, however that added to the problems in as much as the program I was watching would buffer and freeze, and the notation, "you do not have enough bandwidth to view this program" would appear, strange because I've never had that happen before, and I'm still with the same Internet provider (3BB)?

 

I have asked for a refund from Express VPN and they have agreed to provide me with one, however with Nord I've got about a year to run, so I can leave that in the background for other things, because I can't get a rebate now.

 

Last night I tried CyberGhost in order to watch the programme, "The Sixth Commandment" and that worked okay, so I'll give that a trial run.

 

Having said all of that, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might overcome the problems I've been getting, and yes I have cleared the DNS cache and am not running any other large programs simultaneously, and I've cleaned just about everything I can on my computer – – so why am I getting these problems when they never happened in the past??

 

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

I had nordvpn for many years but found it was having issues too. I tried a bunch of others and was having difficulties with many that required support intervention. Finally settled on torguard. It was “acting up“ too, but the support, via email was spectacular. The problem I was having was that the service I was using had blocked the IP range used by the VPN and therefore I could not connect. BBC is probably doing the same. The support solution was to, for free, give me a fixed IP. This IP is not blocked. Wonderful. 3 years around $60 USD. Automatic renewal available at same rate. If I needed to pay for the fixed IP it would have been another $60.

[xylophone]

8 minutes ago, gargamon said:

I had nordvpn for many years but found it was having issues too. I tried a bunch of others and was having difficulties with many that required support intervention. Finally settled on torguard. It was “acting up“ too, but the support, via email was spectacular. The problem I was having was that the service I was using had blocked the IP range used by the VPN and therefore I could not connect. BBC is probably doing the same. The support solution was to, for free, give me a fixed IP. This IP is not blocked. Wonderful. 3 years around $60 USD. Automatic renewal available at same rate. If I needed to pay for the fixed IP it would have been another $60.

Many thanks for your reply @gargamonand I really do appreciate you getting back to me on this.

I didn't know if anybody would post on it, so I did a bit of research myself and it appears that what you have said is spot on; that sites like the BBC iPlayer will block IP addresses and over many years, I suppose that's what's happened to me.

 

One solution that was suggested via my research was that what might work is to unplug the router for a few minutes and then plug it back in again, so I'll keep that as a standby. In the meantime I will look into how to obtain a fixed IP, so I may have to go to 3BB and beg for one, although I don't mind paying for it if it gives me hasslefree viewing.

 

Once again, many thanks for taking the time to reply.

[gargamon]

7 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Many thanks for your reply @gargamonand I really do appreciate you getting back to me on this.

I didn't know if anybody would post on it, so I did a bit of research myself and it appears that what you have said is spot on; that sites like the BBC iPlayer will block IP addresses and over many years, I suppose that's what's happened to me.

 

One solution that was suggested via my research was that what might work is to unplug the router for a few minutes and then plug it back in again, so I'll keep that as a standby. In the meantime I will look into how to obtain a fixed IP, so I may have to go to 3BB and beg for one, although I don't mind paying for it if it gives me hasslefree viewing.

 

Once again, many thanks for taking the time to reply.

The fixed IP i received was from torguard, the vpn company I now use. A local fixed IP from 3bb won't help because as soon as you connect via whatever vpn you are using their IP in England which the BBC sees and will still be blocked.  

 

Unplugging your router will do nothing. As described above, it's the IP in England supplied by the vpn that counts. 

[gargamon]

Couldn't edit previous post.

 

Unplugging your router will do nothing. As described above, it's the IP in England supplied by the vpn that counts. You could accomplish the same thing by disconnecting your vpn and reconnecting. By the luck of the draw the new IP you received may not be blocked. 

[xylophone]

1 minute ago, gargamon said:

Couldn't edit previous post.

 

Unplugging your router will do nothing. As described above, it's the IP in England supplied by the vpn that counts. You could accomplish the same thing by disconnecting your vpn and reconnecting. By the luck of the draw the new IP you received may not be blocked. 

Thanks once again for your feedback and information, and in the meantime I remembered that a few years ago I had something called Smart DNS and I can't quite remember how it worked, so I will get onto their website and see what it says.

 

I also believe they do something called Smart VPN, which I will look into because I'm not quite sure if it will fit the bill for me, however you have given me some leads which I will follow up on – – and on that note, how do you find Torguard? And would it be worth me getting in touch with them to see if I could purchase a static IP address??

[gargamon]

16 minutes ago, xylophone said:

and on that note, how do you find Torguard? And would it be worth me getting in touch with them to see if I could purchase a static IP address??

It works fine for my needs. I'd hold off buying the static IP until you found out if their shared IPs are blocked. In my case they gave it free when I explained their regular IPs were blacklisted.

 

The torguard website shows all the options and costs for fixed IPs, etc. 

[bendejo]

On 7/13/2023 at 8:06 PM, xylophone said:

I watched a little gem last night from a couple of years back, called, "Last Night in Soho" and it starred the delightful Anna Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie as well as a couple of oldies, namely Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg and it was a good movie with a very unexpected ending.

I saw this a few nights ago.  It wouldn't be too off to think Stephen King wrote this; I don't go in for this type of stuff, but found this entertaining. 

For us 70-ish fossils a lot of nostalgia for mid-1960s Brit-pop, like Petulia and Dusty, but of the dozen or so songs in the movie at least half of them are by performers who didn't make the Atlantic crossing back then, like Cilla Black (the title is from a song I never heard).  Can't recall last time I heard the name Rita Tushingham. 

I believe it was Diana Rigg's last role before she died.

 

[Will27]

On 7/17/2023 at 12:27 PM, BritManToo said:

Very poor production standards, almost unwatchable.

About the same level as stuff made by/for Hallmark.

London Kills

 

I agree with you.

 

Think it was made for daytime viewing, hence the lack of violence and honest dialogue.

 

A very tame series IMO.

Especially compared to Luther, Happy Valley etc.

[Mutt Daeng]

The complete season 10 of The Blacklist is now available on TGx.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2741602/

[Andrew Dwyer]

10 minutes ago, Mutt Daeng said:

The complete season 10 of The Blacklist is now available on TGx.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2741602/

Was happy when i found The Blacklist , a series with good reviews and plenty of episodes to keep me occupied. But it soon became obvious that the whole series was going to be repetitive with more outlandish stories every week.

Keen was annoying and James Spader didn’t cut it as the mastermind imho.

 

I know others will like this series but it reminds me of Person of Interest, initially it starts well but gets old very quickly, the storyline is predictable, the victim being the villain.

 

Sorry ???? 

[LosLobo]

For those who enjoyed the highly rated Justified series from a decade ago.

 

Justified: City Primeval (TV Series 2023– ) - IMDb 8.8/10

[recom273]

@xylophone I use PIA without any issues for a year or more. One thing that may help you - I use firefox, just for accessing iplayer. I have it set to clear cookies every time I close it.

PIA have a server for streaming UK content which they guarantee works, and it does, but hey had a three days of downtime when something changed and they needed to reconfigure, during this time they were efficient at replying to enquiries.

[Mutt Daeng]

6 hours ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Was happy when i found The Blacklist , a series with good reviews and plenty of episodes to keep me occupied. But it soon became obvious that the whole series was going to be repetitive with more outlandish stories every week.

Keen was annoying and James Spader didn’t cut it as the mastermind imho.

 

I know others will like this series but it reminds me of Person of Interest, initially it starts well but gets old very quickly, the storyline is predictable, the victim being the villain.

 

Sorry ???? 

I agree to some extent with you. I enjoyed the earlier seasons better, and it does get repetitive. I think 5 seasons would have been enough. I'm still going to watch season 10 though.  

[Will27]

Murder in The Family

 

Episode 2 has just dropped.

 

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/showbiz-tv/itv-murder-family-start-date-27307830

[xylophone]

On 7/20/2023 at 1:11 PM, recom273 said:

@xylophone I use PIA without any issues for a year or more. One thing that may help you - I use firefox, just for accessing iplayer. I have it set to clear cookies every time I close it.

PIA have a server for streaming UK content which they guarantee works, and it does, but hey had a three days of downtime when something changed and they needed to reconfigure, during this time they were efficient at replying to enquiries.

Thanks for your post @recom273, and I will do a bit of research on that, but I have to say that all of the research I've been doing and the many, many reviews on VPNs (some definitely paid for/sponsored) I have seen, has just about driven me round the bend!

 

I do remember something called Smart DNS Proxy, which I used a few years back, but somehow VPNs have overtaken it. BUT having looked into it again it appears to be all that I want now because I only want to unlock BBC iPlayer and STAN Sport in Australia (to watch the rugby) and that's all I need!

 

Doing a bit more research into that, it appears that it doesn't alter the bandwidth, which some VPNs can do, and indeed a couple I have tried have resulted in messages which say that I "don't have bandwidth to support the program", when my Internet connection here with 3BB is very good, so perhaps the bandwidth is affected on some of them, however not with Smart DNS Proxy.

 

Also thank you for your info regarding Firefox and I will also look into that, so many thanks again for your feedback/information. I will let you know how things go. 

[recom273]

1 hour ago, xylophone said:

Thanks for your post @recom273, and I will do a bit of research on that, but I have to say that all of the research I've been doing and the many, many reviews on VPNs (some definitely paid for/sponsored) I have seen, has just about driven me round the bend!

 

I do remember something called Smart DNS Proxy, which I used a few years back, but somehow VPNs have overtaken it. BUT having looked into it again it appears to be all that I want now because I only want to unlock BBC iPlayer and STAN Sport in Australia (to watch the rugby) and that's all I need!

 

Doing a bit more research into that, it appears that it doesn't alter the bandwidth, which some VPNs can do, and indeed a couple I have tried have resulted in messages which say that I "don't have bandwidth to support the program", when my Internet connection here with 3BB is very good, so perhaps the bandwidth is affected on some of them, however not with Smart DNS Proxy.

 

Also thank you for your info regarding Firefox and I will also look into that, so many thanks again for your feedback/information. I will let you know how things go. 

Yes - I know people who also use a dns service https://dns4me.net/

 

Yes, it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on your speed, their servers are a little slower but you won’t notice the difference. It’s just resolving the DNS query in a different location. The reason why I don’t use it, is because it’s system wide, you need to config your router.
 

It’s cheaper than a VPN and you can get a free months trial, no need to even give your credit card. 

[tlcwaterfall]

1 hour ago, xylophone said:

Thanks for your post @recom273, and I will do a bit of research on that, but I have to say that all of the research I've been doing and the many, many reviews on VPNs (some definitely paid for/sponsored) I have seen, has just about driven me round the bend!

 

I do remember something called Smart DNS Proxy, which I used a few years back, but somehow VPNs have overtaken it. BUT having looked into it again it appears to be all that I want now because I only want to unlock BBC iPlayer and STAN Sport in Australia (to watch the rugby) and that's all I need!

 

Doing a bit more research into that, it appears that it doesn't alter the bandwidth, which some VPNs can do, and indeed a couple I have tried have resulted in messages which say that I "don't have bandwidth to support the program", when my Internet connection here with 3BB is very good, so perhaps the bandwidth is affected on some of them, however not with Smart DNS Proxy.

 

Also thank you for your info regarding Firefox and I will also look into that, so many thanks again for your feedback/information. I will let you know how things go. 

I use Smart dns proxy every day.  Works with BBC Iplayer, all the Australian networks including Stan. Great service and cheap as chips.

[xylophone]

54 minutes ago, tlcwaterfall said:

I use Smart dns proxy every day.  Works with BBC Iplayer, all the Australian networks including Stan. Great service and cheap as chips.

Many thanks @tlcwaterfall, your feedback is much appreciated

[LosLobo]

 

On 7/14/2023 at 12:18 PM, LosLobo said:

 

Foundation Series Two just dropped.

 

 

On 7/16/2023 at 11:24 PM, connda said:

Thanks!  That's what I was looking for.

I found Foundation Series 2 is just a shadow of Series 1 which did drift from enjoyable beginnings towards the end.

 

Series 2 is IMHO not worth watching.

[LosLobo]

Good movie....very good under-rated movie.

 

To Catch a Killer (2023) - IMDb