Score! 3-month free trial of Apple TV+

[Freija]

Fired up my Fire TV a few days ago and saw an offer for a 3-month free trial of Apple TV+ and thought that was nuts it was so long so hit the start trial button immediately. I'm so glad I did!

It was hard to know where to start with so many things I had heard or read about and so much sci-fi type stuff to choose from.

First I binged Monarch - Legacy of Monsters because Godzilla, of course! It place takes place in two eras, current day and in post war 1940s with Kurt Russel playing the modern day character and his son, Wyatt Russel playing the earlier character and it worked very well. I thoroughly enjoyed the story.



I tossed a coin on what to watch next and landed on Invasion. Centering around an alien invasion of earth, the story is told from the perspective of 4 groups of people in different parts of the world like the UK, Japan, America, Afghanistan and South America with their stories converging in the second season. I binged all of it with my only disappointment being the last episode as I thought there should have been one more to wrap everything up.



Continued next message because only 2 videos are allowed per post. Can we change that?

[Freija]

Yesterday I started For All Mankind. This is more of a drama but I'm loving in 10 episodes into the first season of four. The premise of the first season is an altered timeline where Russians land on the moon first with the U.S. playing catch up. For someone that followed the space race in the 60s with great interest, the series follows actual people and astronauts at NASA with portrayals of such figures as Werner Von Braun, Deke Slayton, Gene Krantz, Neil Armstrong, etc. The newscasters playing Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters are soundalikes with the Walters character being spot on and a lot of this made me smile. The altered history thing starts taking off with U.S. and Russian bases on the moon and I'm hooked.



With a whole 3 months for free, that gives me plenty of time to suck out all the things I want to watch. I can't believe they offered such a generous free trial and I may or may not sleep for the next few days? 

[GeauxHomeLittleD]

@Freija  if you haven't watched Silo on there give it a try next.  There's also a comedy with Roseanne Arquette that's pretty good if you like off-beat stuff but I can't remember the name.

[Infolurker]

Some of these look really good.

https://www.wired.com/story/best-apple-tv-plus-shows/

[EndtheMadnessNow]

@Freija  Careful you don't get sucked into the Apple vortex.

I thought the father & son in Monarch - Legacy of Monsters was pretty good. I was entertained!

Same as you on "Invasion" - disappointing ending after all that build-up.

I'm mid-way through season 3 of For All Mankind. It would be better with a little less emotional feels.

+1 on Silo. I think you'll like it. Season 2 is currently in production. It may air late this year or probably early next year.

"The Family Plan" if you're in the mood for some wild action comedy, Mark Wahlberg style.

Severance season 2 production is finally back on, but no hints of any release date.

[Freija]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Yes, Silo is on my list as is Foundation.

One more episode to finish out season 2 of For All Mankind. At 3:30 AM this morning I threw in the towel and gave up for the night. As far as the drama and feelz stuff goes, I can deal with it although I like the space stuff more.

One thing I didn't comment on that some may have found too in-your-face or "woke" was the LGBT inclusion. In Invasion, Mitsuku Yamato's character was driven throughout the series by the loss of her girlfriend/lover Hinata. Actually, it was kind of fundamental to the whole story.

In For All Mankind, the arc of astronaut Ellen Waverly-Wilson's love affair with bartender turned poet Pam Horton and her marriage of convenience and hiding in the closet during the Reagan administration was a good hook for me personally and something I could relate to knowing what it was like to be different back then when many of my friends were lesbians or gay and the last thing I wanted anyone to know about me was that I wasn't born female.

That's still the last thing I want anybody to know even after all these years except for you all here when I sometimes talk about it. At any rate, I found addition of not straight characters in both of these stories to make them more relatable.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

From @Infolurker's link above I started watching "Lessons in Chemistry" that takes place in the 1950s about a bright young female chemist trying to make her mark in a man's world. So far I give it a thumbs up.