Vikings Season 1 – 2 (Canadian – Irish production)
Vikings is a bloody, meat-tearing, bare-arsed and tits-bared trek through Viking culture, mythology, and 
history. Ragnar Lothbrok’s (Australian Travis Fimmel) stare is enough to make shield maidens swoon and Saxons poop their pants.
Good actors, great fight scenes, and oh yeah, I’ve fallen in love with Lagertha.
8/10 (both seasons)
Daredevil Seasons 1 – 2 (US production)
Well-written, good dialogue, exhausting fight scenes, with the main villain – King Pin, played by Vincent D’Onofrio – by far the most interesting and complex character.
One of the things I liked most about the first season was the time taken with dialogue. A lot of television blasts through a scene, carrying the minimum words required before transitioning to the next. In daredevil the conversations are given space to breathe, to reveal character, to evolve.
No wading through 12 hours of bullshit to get to a decent second or third season, either. Starts great.
8.2 / 10 (first season)
Which is why the second season was a letdown. Punisher was suitably ultraviolent, copping and dealing out unsustainable amounts of damage. This aside, the season sucked. The world’s worst ninjas, a new superhero (Elektra) with three accents (European, American, and an unidentifiable third); plus a protagonist (Daredevil) that never quite becomes someone to root for.
Oh, and Karen’s transition from unpaid secretary to senior journalist (with an office) is one of the most absurd character arcs I’ve seen. First, print is dead; second, you can’t walk off the street and become an investigative journalist; and third, if you did, the real journos in the place would riot.
6.4 / 10 (second season)
Person of Interest (All Seasons) (US production)
Starts out as a poorly-acted, weakly written, police procedural, before…
5.5 / 10 (first season)
…becoming a procedural with improving writing and, hey, wait a minute, is this a science fiction program?
7 / 10 (second season)
To a science fiction program about warring A.I.s, with characters you’ve grow to care about. Prescient, in some ways, about the surveillance state becoming prevalent in the much of the West (and China).
8 / 10 (seasons three to five)
Troll Hunter (Norwegian Production)
Kinda like the Blair Witch project, but with humour, relatable characters, and a decent script. Three 
university students surveil a suspected bear poacher. He’s not a bear poacher, as the movie’s title suggests.
If you know nothing about Norwegian folk tales (like me) you’ll learn something. Dark fantasy with dry Norwegian humour. Good stuff.
7.3/10
Peaky Blinders Seasons 1 – 2 (British Production)
I started watching Peaky Blinders because I was sick of the American accents in every other damn show on Netflix. So, Peaky Blinders rewarded me with a melange of Irish and English and vaguely European and barely-concealed Australian.
Aside from this, I liked Peaky Blinders. Cillian Murphy’s excellent performance (with a soul-searing, blue-eyed stare that puts Ragnar Lothbrok to shame) and a milieu saturated in whiskey, cigarette smoke, and gang violence. Dealing, as well, with the aftermath of the first world war, and the shattered psyches of the men who fought through the mud, blood, and insanity.
8.1 / 10 (both seasons)
Broadchurch, Season 1 (British Production)
Some of the best acting I’ve seen on television in years, with David Tennant and Olivia Colman superb in the lead roles. The subject matter (murder of a young boy), will understandably put many off. It’s grim, in a typically British way, but also has its moments of humour (also in a typically British manner).
The last two episodes are devastating. Not for the faint-hearted.
9/10
BoJack Horseman Seasons 1 – 3 (US production)
Funny, original, surrealist and occasionally even heartbreaking. The premise – that BoJack Horseman, who is actually a horse, had a hit show in the 90s and has basically been a lonely, self-loathing drunk in the two decades since – is not one that sounds like it will lend itself to both pure hilarity and pathos. But it does.
The show takes creative risks (in particular in seasons two and three), builds character arcs, layers darkness over humour over absurdity.
8.5 / 10 (all Seasons)
Better Call Saul (US production)
I’m enjoying this more than Breaking Bad.
Now, Breaking Bad was recently voted the #3 in the ‘100 Greatest TV Show of All Time’ (beaten only by The Wire and The Sopranos), so it’s a big call to say this is better.
I’m not sure I am (yet), but I am saying it is more watchable. In part because, well, Jimmy McGill (who hasn’t become Saul Goodman yet) is a better person than Walter White. Unlike Walter, who ultimately did everything for himself, Jimmy is a good guy. Selfless with his brother, self-sacrificing to the woman he’s in love with, concerned enough with the well-being of his clients to go that extra mile for them.
The beauty of Better Call Saul is it shows how a lawyer, with a dubious relationship to the rules of lawyering, can be a more ethical person than the lawyers who are sticklers to the rules. That the real slime are the high-priced attorneys, while tabloid Saul is one of the few decent humans.
8.8 / 10 (both seasons)
Recently at a Fitzroy wine bar I was laughed at for saying: ‘g’day’. That’s right, in Fitzroy, Australia. Not in a good way, either.
Now, this is not my drinking establishment of choice (not least because they are usually filled with freshly-tattooed hipsters liable to laugh at people for saying g’day), but as I was visiting a friend in Fitzroy, it was there, and it had alcohol.
No doubt in this milieu – the hyper-educated children of the elite; the land of the soft-handed part-time artist; of the sneering rich, curdled by their own narcissism – there is greater empathy with the sneering rich on the other side of the earth than with the public housing tenants three streets over. I’m sure someone non-ironically mouthing an Australianism in this context is quaint. I’m also sure they don’t watch any Australian artists or creators, but rather stream Netflix and make public validations of their values by chirping over whatever the faddish US show is at the time.
But – and this is a big caveat – you may have noticed I didn’t review one Australian television production. I’m guilty of mainlining Netflix because – let’s face it – there’s so much fucking good TV these days. Binge all you will, there’s always more to be had.
Which is another way of saying, next time around I will try to review a set of Australian TV – Jack Irish, Rake, and Cleverman at minimum. Otherwise I probably should be laughed at for saying g’day.
