Foundation, Ballard, and Shifting Gears. With guest Jared Harris

29:04I was like, I don't think he was. It shows how humour doesn't translate to news because he's completely doing a bit, basically, about how Shakespeare is overrated. And he's very funny with it. And he gets more and more into this thing. And of course, it's been actually reported because he's so famous now. it's like you know Ted Lasso star slams Shakespeare it's like bollocks to the bars it's Brett Goldstein yeah listen we won't answer it now but just to give you a preview of another question that Annika sent which made me chuckle which is Boyd's takedown of Jim Sturgis what are the worst casting decisions in TV anyway that's for next week I feel bad about that because you've watched the tape what's it called the tape show mixed tape in fact we might have to review it so don't say not might have to that would be an absolute privilege to review it Okay, but Jim Sturges is the star of that, right?

29:49Yes, he is. I'm so sorry, boy. Did you meet him in the old Greek, not Italian? In Rimini at the Italian Global Series Festival. He was there, wasn't he? He wasn't, unfortunately, but the young cast members who play the younger versions of him. Right, but they screened it, they screened it then? Yeah. Yes, I've already watched it, so we're definitely reviewing it for that purpose. Because Kay's already seen it. But also because I might like it. But also, don't, steady. Also, I actually don't think it is embargoed, so I think we're okay to review it. Which is in this day and then. So she can review it now.

30:16Well, steady. Don't. But this is when literally every single major program is embargoed now. Yes, this week has been particularly agreed to for that. It's going to carry on like this, listeners. Don't be so pessimistic. We should fight for change, Boylee. It's only we've tied ourselves to this format. We've stopped being such an eel. We've tied ourselves to this format where we essentially review stuff in advance of it arriving. I mean, that is generally how reviews work, but yes. I know, but funnily enough, other shows aren't so obsessed with that. Always freewheeling and reviewing stuff that's been on for weeks on end.

30:44so you know I would argue that a review is most useful when people are deciding whether or not to watch something I agree with you I agree with you but you know other people say they like to hear reviews after they've seen it that is true and some people do but I do think if you're already watching the show the ship has sailed alright open this whole fascinating can of worms Kay that was some semblance of a listener question if you would like yours submitted and pulled out the hat like that then do send them to pilot tv at empire magazine dot com it's time for this week's guest and I guess this week is the legendary Mr.

31:15Jared Harris Anderson Dawes of the OPA in The Expanse Lane Price in Mad Men Absalom Breakspear in Carnival Row and of course lest we forget Dr. Harry Seldon in My Beloved Foundation I spoke to Jared just last week about the show about sci-fi and about the finer points of applied psychohistory He's also in Chernobyl one of the greatest shows He is in that as well You just left that out I left it out Yeah, okay, fine I also left out Fringe less important but you know it's me and Jared Harris thank you very much for joining us on the show thank you I am it's fair to say low-key obsessed with Foundation it is in my opinion one of the best shows on television so I absolutely adore it I would be very happy to hear you say that but for so many reasons but I think the main reason why I love it more than anything else is it just does not give a fuck but in the best possible way in that it makes no effort to pander to the audience it makes no effort to dilute itself to compromise its vision.

32:13It is incredibly dense. It is packed with kind of mind-blowing ideas. There are so many strands of narrative to it. And it's just like, you know, keep up. It has that. And I wonder... It punches up rather than punches down. Exactly that. And I wonder whether that was something that appealed to you about it, but also whether that was clear from the off when he started doing this. Well, you know, Goya would educate himself about all of the latest scientific advances or ideas and concepts that are out there. And he would be trying to figure out how he could fold some of those into the show, were they going to be useful, was a nice idea to play with.

32:55I mean that whole idea of the the radiant being quantum locked and all that stuff and something throwing that in there and trying to I mean the conversations that we had around the scene where when Salvo uses the radiant to communicate with Harry who's in the vault and it's the same object so they can't they both can't have it at the same time and trying to figure out just for the way where we were in the two scenes you know okay you can't have it now because this person's here i mean and is it the same one because this one and it also something it was the conversations were hilarious because we were trying to figure out basically there's a bunch of artists trying to understand quantum science which by the way at some point becomes purely imaginative you know the i that level of science is it lives in the imagination because you can never actually see it or touch it.

33:56The only way you can demonstrate it is by these really elaborate experiments. It's like, no, no, no, it's a four-dimensional object. It has to extend itself into three-dimensional space. Obvious. Yeah, exactly. That was how he figures out how to, yeah, exactly. That part's exciting. But even when you look at, say, the very beginning of the first episode where they made a point that where you're looking at these creatures that have a hive mind. I think that lizard-like creatures, it's while Gale's voiceover is going on. Well, the hive mind is deliberately put there to introduce the idea of the Cleons before you meet the Cleons, you know?

34:38So there was a lot of threading of narrative and themes that was going on the whole time, yeah. And you've read the books as part of your, I read afterwards, yeah. Yeah. But Asimov, genius, I would say more an architect of ideas than of character. Yes. I don't think his characters necessarily leap off the page, even if his ideas are incredible. But what I think Goy did amazingly here was not only the characters in here are incredibly deep and compelling and sort of grounded, but the way there are so many different mechanics whereby you have the same central characters spanning centuries of time.

35:11And it's something I've never seen before, really, in anything. And, you know, from your point of view, you must have been like, because really new ideas, I imagine, come along quite infrequently when you're doing roles. Yeah. I mean, what did you think of that? Well, that sort of came about, which, again, that's actually an idea that has nothing to do with the books. And it was more a function of the demands of series storytelling, where you have to have a group of characters who are going to continue throughout. you know I think that at one point they were talking about eight seasons. How do you keep these people alive for a thousand years?

35:49And he came up with essentially four different ways you know. The genetic cloning is a completely original idea. The sort of going into I don't know what you call it when you put yourself in hypersleep. Cryosleep isn't it? Cryosleep another way to keep another character alive. the digitization of consciousness, that one we're more familiar with, you know. And then there's Demonson. So, you know, who's been alive longer than any of us. Yeah. It's amazing. But you've got multiple Harrys as well, haven't you? Because you've got, for one of the better term, Prime Harry, who is no longer with us. You had Ignis Harry, sort of resurrected Harry, sort of, and then you also have Volt Harry as well.

36:35And like, from an acting point of view, how do you distinguish between... I call them Raven Harry. Okay. Because the Raven Harry is the one who you're with in the beginning, goes onto the Deliverance, dies on the Deliverance, and is resurrected on the Raven. So I call that version Raven Harry, and the other one was Vault Harry. But then in the scripts, they distinguished them by the Vault Harry is Dr. Selden, and the Raven Harry was Harry. Right, okay. So he was supposed to be a little bit more human and personable. Yeah. And the other one was supposed to be slightly more aesthetic and cerebral.

37:16Volt Harry fascinates me because he's slightly more limited in that. Obviously, his knowledge is limited. He's had his consciousness edited. Yeah, exactly that. And he's been alone for a very long time, so it's going slightly loopy. Yeah. Have you seen all of them then? Yes. Yes. Well, they have denied me the finale of season three so far. But other than that, I'm completely up to it. But yeah, I love the idea of him being almost bitter, like he has a chip on his shoulder. Yeah, well, I mean, if you'd found out that your consciousness had been edited and you thought that you were in control of this whole story and you find out actually just somebody else's porn, that would piss you off.

37:52I mean, somebody who had that level of an ego where they thought that they were going to be able to manipulate the course of human history for a thousand years and you find out, oh, no, you're not that person. You're not the guy who's playing the chess pieces. You're a piece on the board. Yeah. You know, that would piss you off. And also the sacrifices that that version has made to achieve this goal, you know, and that they weren't trusted with it, which, of course, is one of the things that keeps popping up, particularly in Raven Harry's relationship with Gale, is that he doesn't trust anybody.

38:31The only person he trusted with the whole story was Raish. but nobody else has the whole story um and and people get pissed off that they're not being trusted with everything that he knows yeah and so he's pissed off with himself yeah which is quite a headspace to get into really isn't it yeah but yeah i i love that idea also like as you say about the the sort of the spanning the decades the plan that goes on the sort of psychohistory as an idea because people do talk about you know whether free will exists whether we are the products of our genetic and environmental programming and we're just on tracks doing our own thing and this i guess kind of just scales up to a civil civilization yeah yeah i mean that was the whole idea as well about psychohistory and psychohistory i mean one of the things that i was an idea that i was pitching to david was that um you know at some point you kind of have to tackle the certain questions that you have to tackle it's the limitations of psychohistory and why did they exist?

39:24And one of them was, well, psychohistory can't predict the future of an individual, but it can predict the future of large groups of people. Well, you go, well, surely that would be more difficult to do. Predicting the actions of a large group of people would surely be more complicated than the actions and the possible outcomes for a single individual. So why isn't it possible? And I said, well, it's because everybody lies. And so the data is corrupted because no one can be completely truthful about their own story because we're constantly re-editing our past as we go through our life. So there is no clear source material for any person's choices in life and how they got there and what happened.

40:09So therefore, it's impossible to predict what would happen to them because the data that you would be using to try and predict it is corrupted. Yeah, that's really interesting. I always assumed it was more to do with the fact that on an individual level, there's sort of a margin of error. Whereas when you scale it up enough, even if there are a few outliers, the overall trend will go in a certain direction. Yeah, but didn't Cambridge Analytica prove that you can actually predict the behavior of specific people? I mean, that's very true. Yeah. For better or worse, I think, in that case. Again, that was one of the questions that we were getting last time around about whether or not whether science was a sort of force for good or bad.

40:49I think AI was coming to the conversation then. And AI is a hammer, and you can either build something with a hammer or destroy something with a hammer. So it depends who's wielding the science as to whether it's a force for good or a force for bad. It depends on the intention. So much of this stuff feels quite topical at the moment because everything's moving at quite a clip, isn't it? But speaking of science fiction, one of the things I do love about your career is you've done so many amazing things from you know john lennon to andy warhol you know these great king george you know but there's been this thread of speculative fiction all the way through that you've kept coming back to big fringe you know things like carnival road you know the expansion the expanse which is one of my favorite shows of all time and i am obsessed with um anderson doars respect um but uh but you know all of these things you kept coming back to and i wonder what the draw of those things was um i love the idea of you know speculating about the future and where we might be headed and um i find that fascinating uh um and they all deal with it in different ways and of course the the brilliant thing that science fiction does when it's done well is it's really talking about now yeah and it's a way of getting people um to discuss what's happening now in a way that they're not going to put up barriers to because the story happens in the future or a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

42:16Whereas if you try and talk about stories that are present tense, people don't want to deal with it. I remember the first time that really hit home was I went to go and see Platoon, which was talking about the Vietnam War 20 years afterwards, and then Salvador, which was talking about something that was happening right then. and people didn't want to pay attention to Salvador, but they were perfectly happy to go and load Platoon with lots and lots of awards, you know. They don't like it. They want to be entertained, which means they don't want to have to look at what's going on right now. So it's a great way of talking about what's going on right now, but by pretending that you're talking about something that's in either the future or the past, in a completely fantasy realm.

42:59Because even Star Wars has lots of Vietnam in it. It has lots of, you know, there's all this allegory and stuff. It's just a prism of, you know, a veneer of speculation on top of it, which I do love. Did you, you know, was this a genre that you enjoyed when you were younger? Yeah. You said Greek myth was a thing you were really into when you were younger. Yeah. Which is a kind of fantasy. Yeah, it is. It's a way of trying to understand who we are, why we are, what we do. I mean, you know, it's, I mean, Greek myth is very much tied into their religion, you know, and their way of worship. and they're all just different ways of trying to figure out to answer the big questions isn't it just coming at them laterally yeah yeah i mean from a storytelling point of view like i love speculative fiction because i think it takes away the boundaries it's completely limitless you can do anything you want with it you can tackle any idea no matter how you know bizarre uh it's also transportational and i think that's you know more and more valuable in this age but like what do you When you say transportation, what do you mean?

43:59Well, from an escapist point of view, there's something, I mean, like Foundation in particular, there's so much texture to the many worlds and, you know, the empire and the foundation, you know, Cloud Dominion, all these things, that you do feel like you could go to these places. And I think sometimes, you know, that form of escape is actually a really valuable outlet for people, you know, when the world is basically on fire. But from a storytelling point of view, I wonder what you think makes for great storytelling. Is it ideas? Is it plot? Is it characters? Is it lyricism of dialogue and speech?

44:28What do you think are the most important components? I think that if you don't get attached to the characters, you can't sustain a story for a long time. And that doesn't mean that the characters have to be likable or anything like that. It just means we have to be interested or fascinated by them. I mean, you can be interested in whether or not some characters survive or whether or not some characters get their comeuppance. But on some level, we are, you know, I mean, the original idea of Greek drama was, and the way that the theatres were built the way they were, was the audience was placed in the position of the gods and you were watching this human story unfold and you were waiting for justice of some kind to be enacted, you know.

45:20and it was going to be we all have a sense of what is right and wrong and what the right outcome should be and um you get sort of uh uh sentimental storytelling where everything works out well in the end but as you get older you you're you're more satisfied by more nuanced storytelling where it doesn't always work out or it's worked out in a way that doesn't seem it's it seems right but not fair, you know, the people who managed to affect the change, somehow, they don't make it or they're then their sacrifices aren't acknowledged and that those for some reason seem truer, you know, I think if you if you're able to harness that, people are going to keep watching.

46:12Yeah, it resonates with our lived experience. Yeah, exactly. a lot, doesn't it? You have a kind of an emotional connection to it. But I think I'm out of time. But thank you very much. It's been lovely to speak to you. I enjoyed talking to you as well. That was Jared Harris. Let's go straight into this week's news. Obviously, we covered the big news already that Invasion is returning to Apple TV+. So let's talk about this minor little story that dropped late last night, which is the news that co-showrunner of The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann, has kind of departed the series in a bit of a bombshell.

46:43Kind of. Well, so, not quite so he's stepped down as co-showrunner he will neither be writing nor directing any episodes of the third season he is still an executive producer so he is still technically connected to the production but whether that means anything or whether he you know isn't going to be involved in anything day to day remains to be seen now there's been a lot of discussion about this is it because they are like Naughty Dog the game developer he works for they are working on a new game and he's saying he wants to be able to develop his time and energies to developing that game Could 100 % be that.

47:15The game might need a little bit more of attention. That could be it. Or, as many people have latched onto, is there trouble in paradise? Is there a rift between him and Craig Mazin? What is going on? He is fed up. He is fed up too many corridors. That's it. So many corridor scenes. Absolutely not. Not one more corridor. I think he heard my critiques. He thought not today to say it. No, he hasn't matched season one. They've made some various narrative choices that didn't quite really work dramatically. They should have. I think it's a comment on the quality of season two, I'm afraid, James. Wow.

47:47You might have to, what else would there be of you to remove yourself from one of the biggest shows on TV other than there's creative differences there? Boy Day talks sense. Allegedly. Well, I mean, look, I cannot speak for my close personal friend, Craig Mazin, or my close personal friend, Neil Druckmann. Oh, sorry. Wow. Jesus Christ. Aren't you happy you started teasing me about Kevin Spacey? I am delighted about this, yeah. The shoe is on the other foot. Unbelievable. Thank you, Boyd-O. Oh, God. Anyway, anyway, you know, I can't speak to that, but he's certainly no stranger to criticism. So The Last of Us Part II got tons of criticism for so many things.

48:28So I don't think, you know, any of the people who reacted negatively to the departure of, shall we say, a major character in The Last of Us Part II, I don't think any of that would have bothered him because, frankly, he dealt with all that the first time around when the game came out. I do wonder because obviously when we did interview season one I spoke to them both together when interview season one I spoke to Craig Mazin Solo and Neil Druckmann was not available to discuss season two interesting conspiracy so you know I do wonder whether their visions for the show have maybe diverged slightly you know their dynamic I've always found quite interesting together it's how people that's what they say about us yes Yes, that is the case.

49:10Kay will be stepping down as host of the Pilot TV podcast to pursue her video gaming demos. Listen, I was going to launch that news at the live. Yeah, that's true. So yeah, I don't know. But okay, so there's the will we ever know why this happened, how it happened, what led up to it. How long has this been in the works? Because if he wasn't over to do press for it, presumably this is something that hasn't just suddenly happened. It's just been announced. But how long has this been in the works? Because on the one hand, he does have a full-time job at Naughty Dog. And this is in addition to that.

49:38and this, I think, is incredibly demanding. So there may be some truth to the fact that he needs to go back. But equally, he has always struck me as someone who is almost like a frustrated filmmaker, like a frustrated... He's very much a storyteller. He's obsessed with Robert McKee. He's really obsessed with the construction of narrative and stories. And I would have thought, like, being involved in TV production to do a long-form live adaptation of this story would be 100 % like his jam, like the thing he most wants to do. But then, because it is his thing and he's having to share custody of it, as it were, with Craig Mason, and maybe that is a point of friction.

50:10Also, that's really interesting about how interested he is in the structure of these kind of stories and stuff because a lot of people's issue with season two Corridors aside with season two and upcoming season three what we know about season three is the decisions to tell certain stories and kind of tell the same story more than once often and ram home's various points again slightly repetitively. You mean layer the subtle commentary that he puts throughout the show. Please don't start this up again. No, no, no. But, you know, him and Craig Mason have different ideas. They're very big decisions.

50:46They're huge decisions for these to take with this show, right? You know, how much do you follow the original game and how much do you make it suitable for TV drama or make it as dramatic TV as it can possibly be? And I think they slightly dropped the ball. I mean, you're wrong, but that's fine. That's fine. So what I'm saying is he could easily have disagreed with, they could have disagreed with each other about the best way to tell the story. Creative differences. Creative differences, exactly. But particularly interesting that James is saying that Neil Druckmann is fascinated by Robert McKee and storytelling structure and all that, because those are, for some people, the flaws of the show.

51:28And there's definitely a distinction in how you construct narrative across an interactive story and how you can stretch it on television, which I think he's very aware of as well. But look, we are looking for drama in this. We are looking for like, ooh, what's happened? It could simply be, oh my God, I'm absolutely exhausted. I've not had time to walk the dog in a month. I can't be doing this anymore. Maybe he just can't be asked. He could literally. Do you know what? Fuck this. There's so much telly on at the moment. I've got stuff to watch. My sofa list is out of control. I just need a bit of downtime.

51:55I can't be doing this all the time. Who can blame him? Can't be asked. Could be that. What does this mean going forward? That is the question. so without his involvement in season 3 now Craig Mason incredible storytelling we've mentioned Chernobyl already he's very good at this stuff so a lot of people are worried about what this means for The Last of Us going forward will it make a substantive difference to the quality of the show I wouldn't have thought that it will be hugely negative it might mean that it changes going forward who can say? who can say? who can say? who can say? big news though big news Loathe though I am to bring up The Last of Us again.

52:33Yes, go. I'm going to tell you that its star, Bella Ramsey, has actually been signed up for a new Channel 4 series, which is written by Daisy Haggard. It will also be directed by Daisy. It's called Maya. And apparently she will play the teenage daughter of Anna Haggard, and she's forced into a witness protection program to escape a life-threatening danger. and both Anna and Maya have to leave their London lives behind, taking on new identities and relocating to a small rural town in Scotland. Okay, good. Daisy Haggard is great. It's also... Bella Ramsey is great. Yeah, they are. And also, we should say a Two Brothers production, Ian, Harry and Jack Williams.

53:15Full circle. Full circle. Writers of The Assassin. Yeah, it's very exciting though, yeah. They've worked together before. Back to Life was a Two Brothers production as well. So yeah, what a line-up, fantastic line-up. and it's the directorial debut for Daisy but she's written other stuff yes she wrote Back to Life that aforementioned and was she Breeders starred in Breeders and writer oh okay yeah let's draw a veil over Breeders yes Breeders spoiler special I thought she'd written it no she's just in it but she's in Boat Story as well she was in Boat Story as well yeah and this is also did you say it's a drama it's hour long six hour long episodes it's definitely new format for her.

53:58She's definitely back to the last half hour kind of comedy-ish. Kind of comedy. Comedy-ish. Comedy-ish. Yeah, comedy-adjacent. But yeah, this is a very exciting project. Speaking of things that are comedy-adjacent and crucially for the benefit of awards voting bodies, not a comedy, The Bear, which we've already discussed, has in fact been renewed for a fifth season. Now, when the fourth season went out, as I said, I haven't finished it yet, but a lot of reviews were saying, if this is indeed the final season, it provides an amount of closure, it would be absolutely fine as a final season. But it was very ambiguous.

54:29It was not said that it was continuing. It was not said that it was ending. They just said, here's the season. Make of it what you will. And everyone was forced to draw their own conclusions. But they have now officially renewed it for a fifth season. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, I haven't finished yet either, but I am up to episode eight, as I said before. And there's so much good stuff in it that it's one of those things where, funny enough, I was partly thinking they could wrap it up, you know, easily, because of the countdown clock thing. is clearly coming down to a climax. But equally, there's so many ways it can go.

55:04There's so many routes it could go down. And these characters are so... It's such an ensemble now. I think the other thing that did occur to me with this series is that it focuses almost sometimes... Like, he might not be in it at all, or barely in an episode, and it's focusing on other characters. I want a spin-off show on Richie. Richie, you know, yeah. They all get a really good shout, shall we say. All of these supporting characters essentially get a really good go, and some of them get their own episodes pretty much. And so it can easily go on for more seasons. And it lives up to my general theory, but if anything gets this popular and makes this much of a cultural impact, it's definitely going to be renewed in the world of American television.

55:47As long as the stars slash creators don't have other things they want to do. Yeah, they all clearly love it as well, I think. But also, you and I probably need a pancake pan to go with our omelette pan. That's true. So it's actually good. Well, maybe you should make me some omelettes and pancakes with your pans. Okay, look, once you've brought in the Pilot TV cake, which you've been promising us for how many episodes, I'm not entirely sure, Boydie and I will make some kind of podcast pancake. I make, just to say, spectacular pancakes. Okay, then I'm suggesting live event, a little camping stove.

56:21Fairly certain King's Place would have issues with that for health and safety reasons, but yeah. Listen, I've been watching smoke. I will get a fire extinguisher ready, and we're good to go. I'm not sure how closely you've been watching smoke, but yes. Your takeaway from smoke is it's turned you into arson. Yeah, that's it. No, it's turned me into someone who's hungry, who wants pancakes, and is willing to use a fire extinguisher if needed. Some cancellation news. Sad face. Well. Is it Neil Gaiman? Your friendship with Gaiman? No. So, Netflix has cancelled The Residence and Pulse. So, if you remember, The Residence was the show set in the White House.

56:57It was a murder mystery. I particularly, I wasn't a fan. No, I'm the only person who liked it. You loved it. You are very much the only person who liked it. James and I were not fans. No, it was very dark. Also, Pulse, which I think we enjoyed more than The Residence. I'm surprised by Pulse, yeah. I was surprised by Pulse, yeah. The medical procedural. I was going to say, for those of us not, this is the one with Willa Fitzgerald, wasn't it? Which was actually pretty decent. Yeah, it was very procedural, though. It was very procedural. No, I didn't watch any more episodes. I quite enjoyed it, mainly because she's quite compelling.

57:22No one else did either. No, but then I wonder whether it exists, I'm certainly not in the UK, in the shadow of The Pit. Yes. And I wonder if it coming out in the same year as The Pit maybe was the end for it because The Pit has been a massive hit. Can I tell you? Obviously, we wouldn't know because it hasn't aired in the UK. I had discussions and remedy about that because people were coming up to me, oh, have you seen The Pit? And I was like, no. Shut up. Kevin Spacey was off. Boy, don't flip-flop like that. You've been helping me with the gaming situation. Look at him. he's going full last man standing playing us against the middle you and I now unite against him we're allied now against Boyd it's an ever changing shifting dynamics you've gone full fistful of dollars which is ironic because you in fact have a fistful of many dollars being very very rich slam dunk high five so that is yeah that's all the news those two cancellations that's what I'm ending the news with my own personal news unless you've got more Well, one of your favourites, Eve Miles' new show, BBC issued their first-look pictures, The Guest, which is coming to BBC One soon.

58:29And, yeah, it's got a really good cast, actually. Gabrielle Creevey, Sean Daniel Young, Emmett Elliot, and it's a four-part propulsive thriller, written, created, and produced by Matthew Barry, who did Men Up, which was very good. and it's about the toxic and beginning relationship between a successful business owner Eve Miles and her employee Gabrielle Creevey Ria's never had the opportunity to think about what she might actually want from the world so when she starts cleaning for Fran she's intoxicated by this confident and self-assured woman. You would be. It's Eve Miles right? Yeah exactly.

59:05Eve Miles can't go wrong. I've just had a text from my close personal friend Jenna Franiston who says I hope you enjoy the emphasis of the morning show that I sent over to you but she also wanted to let me know that she's doing a new show on Apple TV Plus. Have you heard this? No. She has her own. Yes. Yeah, she's doing a new show. It is called I'm Glad My Mom Died. It's a new show that's coming up. And it is essentially... A Merman production, isn't it? Sean Horgan's company. Yes. And it is inspired by Janet McCurdy's memoir of the same name. Janet McCurdy is not someone I am familiar with, but apparently she is most famous for her role as Sam Bucket in Nickelodeon's teen sitcom iCarly, and it's been off Sam and Cat, neither of which I have seen.

59:41But anyway, this is, the memoir was essentially it was published I think in 2022 and she recounts her life as a child actress as well as the psychologically abusive relationship she had with her mother who died in 2013 and it also deals with her struggles with addiction and eating disorders and Jennifer Aniston is playing said tyrannical parent. Oh, great role. An interesting role. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. XO, XO, Jen. Well, crucially, did you ask her about the, was it the 8th or 9th of August? I can text her back. Can you come? Come to the live show. She's already blocked you. any other news?

1:00:17no I think we are officially done with news so let's move on to this week's reviews and first up We have Foundation. Yes, indeed. Season three of Foundation, in fact, the most impenetrable and yet brilliant science fiction series on television. Now, we had a discussion beforehand about whether or not Kay would watch Foundation, whether I would subject her to Foundation. And I put it to her that she could either watch the new series of Foundation, and I provided a link to a brief summary, a kind of story so far link that was on YouTube, to get her up to speed. Or, alternatively, she could just watch the summary and not watch the show, because I didn't want to subject her to it.

1:00:55I then suggested that as punishment for not watching it, Kay should bring us up to speed on what has happened in Foundation so far for my own personal amusement. But the look that I was then given suggested to me that that would be a terrible idea and might end in my early death. So instead of doing that, I am going to attempt, and I'm literally just doing this off the top of my head, so this may get horrible, I'm going to attempt to explain to you what Foundation is about. I don't know what's worse. I just... Oh, come on. This is what the listeners want. Is this it? The foundation-splaining to you.

1:01:30Yeah, go on, fine. I can just put the mic down as well. I'm going to try and do this. This partly comes about because we were having to put out a tweet recently and Harry, our social media editor on Empire, asked me to essentially condense the foundation plot down to a single sentence, which I was spectacularly incapable of doing because it cannot be done. But broadly speaking, it takes place in the future. How far in the future, by the way? I genuinely don't know. This is information I probably should have. It's a long time in the future. Yeah, so it centres around a galactic empire based on the capital, which is the planet Trantor.

1:02:02And it is led by the Kleonic dynasty. So essentially, these are clones of Emperor Kleon I. And Kleon I, in the most narcissistic act imaginable, decided that he would like to rule in perpetuity. So he is ruled by a series of... His legacy, as you will, was carried on by clones of himself. and there are always three of his clones on the go at any given time. A young one called Brother Dawn, who's played by Cassian Bilton, and he's essentially being trained to rule. There is the current main leader, which is Brother Day, played by Lee Pace here, and he's the one essentially in charge of the day-to-day Empire stuff.

1:02:38And then there's Brother Dusk, who's the one who's recently retired, and he's played by Terence Mann. What is it with these shows, like Sandman and this show, having all the characters beginning with the same name, letter? What, Dawn, Day and Dusk? it's ridiculous it's entirely pointless they're very D-centric they've got so many characters to try and remember anyway oh I love it I love it they also have an advisor called Demazel Demazel's a great character she's played by Laura Byrne and she's like the last sentient robot in the galaxy and no one knows she's a robot so she's essentially eternal has been living for centuries but is also kind of trapped between her programming and her duty and these weird religious beliefs she has so she's in a state of constant existential torment and angst she's also fucking cold-blooded and brutal and kills the shit out of a load of people fascinating character She's really good.

1:03:21So Harry Seldon, Dr. Harry Seldon, which is, of course, Jared Harris, is a mathematician and a very, very brainy man. And he comes up with a mathematical formula called psychohistory. And what essentially is, it's working out through mathematical trends what the future will be, but not for individuals, but for civilization. Like he can predict the trends of civilizations. And he predicts, based on psychohistory, that the empire will not only fall, but humanity will slide into a kind of millennia-long dark age, which will be awful for everyone. According to psychohistory, that cannot be prevented.

1:03:52But there is a way of shortening that dark age to a more manageable length. And the way to do that, can't remember off the top of my head, it's still quite a long time. The way to do that is to set up what they call a foundation, which is essentially a repository of knowledge and he wants to go off and do that sort of thing. Lee Pace obviously tells him to get fucked, but ultimately relents after there's a big terrorist attack on Trantor and says, fine, as long as you don't make an arse out of yourself, fuck off to the end of the universe and make your foundation and do whatever you need to do.

1:04:17The terrorist attack, by the way, which killed how many people? Oh, like millions. Millions. Millions. Millions of people. It's a whole thing. And frankly, we find out more about the terrorist attack this season than oh my fucking God, let's just say there's a whole thing there. So Harry goes off and he gets this sort of protégé called Gail Dornig, played by Lulu Bell, and she wins essentially a competition. So think of it a bit like University Challenge, to become his protégé. The X Factor. A bit like the X Factor. A bit like the X Factor, yeah. Like Trantor's Got Talent, if you will. Yes. And so she becomes his protégé, and they go off to this place called Terminus to essentially start the foundation.

1:04:48Now, it all goes a bit wrong, and Harry Seldon gets murdered. Gail Dornick gets framed for said murder. She gets put into suspended animation, and he's dead, and then the plot skips ahead like 100 years or something. And so, meanwhile, on Terminus, the foundation is being built, and Gail Dornick's daughter, Salvor Harding, is essentially taken over there as a sort of sheriff. We always see Empire, because Empire is just a cycle of clones. So Lee Pace is always around in one guise or another, even though he's playing different versions of Cleon I, essentially. He's a new Cleon. Harry Selden, meanwhile, gets resurrected.

1:05:22I still don't fully understand how that works, if I'm honest with you. But also, there's a version of him that exists inside this thing called the Prime Radiant, which is almost like a projection of him, which has limited memories and doesn't really have access to all of his knowledge. But he's quite useful, and there's a big monument thing that he sits inside called the Vault. Anyway, a whole load of thing happens in season one, but suffice it to say, it skips forward and then skips forward again, and then Gail Dornick comes out of suspended animation. She meets her daughter. Her daughter dies.

1:05:46She meets a lot of sidekicks called the Mentalic. She sets up a second foundation on the planet, the Mentalix. That's a whole thing as well. And essentially, time goes on. And as time goes on, we find out that the Kleonic dynasty, the Kleons, someone's polluted their DNA. So they're all starting to deviate from the original template of Kleon I. So they're becoming a little bit mad. So in this new season, Lee Pace's character, Brother Day, has entered his Lebowski era. So he essentially runs around with a big beard and flowing Jesus locks in a cardigan or a bathrobe, stroking a ferret. A cardigan?

1:06:15Absolutely, yeah. He's wearing a towel for most of the series. And stroking a ferret, and he's getting off his tits on mushrooms. It's actually quite funny. So he's gone completely off the reservation. And then the mule arrived. Now, the mule is played by Pilo Azbeck from Game of Thrones. Not an actual mule. And he is like a psycho-psychic space pirate. And he has come to shake up the galaxy. And that's essentially where we are with season three. The arrival of the psycho-psychic space pirate called the mule, and the decline of empire, and the rise of two foundations. and that, broadly speaking, is what Foundation is about.

1:06:47See? Just two words. You're welcome. That's given you so much more pleasure, hasn't it? I mean, I quite enjoyed it. Exactly. I don't know if that made sense to anyone listening to this. It was a load of words and they were in the right order. But I do, genuinely, I'd be fascinated to know how many of our listeners actually watch Foundation because my thing with Foundation, it is one of the best and most rewarding shows on television. but I also think it is the most impenetrable show on television and the hardest to follow because it is so fucking dense. Like Harry Seldon, he was resurrected. How did that happen?

1:07:21I have no idea. I even fucking Googled it. Nobody has a clue. Nobody understands it. It doesn't make any sense. It involves another mathematician. I would dare to suggest it's a flaw in the writing. I was just about to... I was going to say the thing that you're celebrating, I think, is a flaw. I mean, you can't be right, but I think a lot of these things, they're hinted at and layered in and then we will get to it later, I think, is a lot of it. At some point, we will understand. because the thing with the books, Isaac Asimov's books, is they are very idea-centric. They're all about very big, hard sci-fi mathematical ideas.

1:07:49I have them all and I have flipped through them. I have not read them in detail. Oh, these are the ones on the shelf. These are the ones on the shelf. I have lovely folia society editions, by the way. But this, what David S. Goya has done with this is really interesting because he's really made it character-centric and one of the geniuses is if you've got plot that constantly skips forward centuries because this is 152 years after season two. you need constants. And people like Lulu Pell's character, Jared Harris' character, Lee Pace, Cassian Bilton, you know, Terrence Mann, they're constants.

1:08:18So it gives you anchors in the world, which I think is really important. Also, it looks beautiful and incredibly expensive. Which is kind of a contentious point because David S. Goyer, who has been the showrunner for seasons one and two, this show, when the writer strikes happened in 2023, this production on this third season stalled. And when it picked up again, he had a big fight with Skydance, the production company, over the budget. And as a result of that, he stepped down as showrunner. Now, he's still connected. I think he's writing episodes on this. He's still involved. But I believe, I think it's Bill Bass, the producer, he's now the showrunner.

1:08:51So there has, I was quite worried about this season because I thought, ooh, this is... Isn't Skydots trying to buy at the moment like Paramount or something? It's mental. Yeah. This is like a, yeah. Paramount, which apparently is worth less than OnlyFans. True story. Yeah. I mean, you've shuttled both, obviously. Obviously. I'm on both. Yeah. But the quality, I would say, and the ambition has not dimmed. No. So he didn't show around this series? He did not show around this series. I guess the beginning of it he would have done, but he stepped down when it picked up shooting again. I mean, I think it's actually quite simple because in the end, it's just, this guy's predicted really bad things that could happen to humanity.

1:09:28Yes. And these various people are trying to stop that from happening and other people are enacting that happening. And then especially when the arrival... You should have done that intro. It was much quicker. Especially when the mule character arrives. it really puts in focus that really this is like an old fashioned he's just like the big bad monster he very much is you know he's the Darth Vader and in fact I was struck by how Star Wars-y the show is well like not only in terms of like the way they assign plot lines to characters which are and the white bad nasty evil there's a bad nasty evil character who's trying to destroy everyone but in like the racing there's one like chase in in vehicles that fly across do you know what I mean the floor whatever they're called Like speeder bikes.

1:10:11Thank you. And visually, it's got that kind of like Star Wars grandeur to it. Well, more like the prequels because it's very CGI. Yeah, it's very CGI. But yeah, obviously more sophisticated in this day and age. But that guy you talk about, Pilo Aspect's character, the Mule, I enjoyed him for what he was. But weirdly, he feels quite basic for a foundation character because most foundations of characters are very ambiguous and complex. He is kind of neither. So he's a weird outlier in the cast because he's a very traditional villain. Yeah, he is. I was surprised. Yeah, and this show doesn't normally deal in that.

1:10:45No, no. But it's fun. He is fun. He is fun. He's fun, if not the deepest character. Yeah, and I think the shame of the... And my simplistic summary is, obviously there's a myriad complications of the Empire versus the Foundation and the Second Foundation and what the fuck they're all playing at and why, you know, the clone, the triple clone of that thing is... Why, like, Lee Pace, right? Yeah. For example, Lee Pace's character, why does it completely change personality from one era to the next? Like, to what purpose? It reminds me of, you know, of my... What was the other show we did recently that I got confused about?

1:11:25Sandman. Thank you, Sandman. It's like, things happen, and you're like, yeah, but why are these things happening? And in traditional dramas or stories, you know, things are... I think the writers feel they need to explain things more, clearly, than they do in this kind of genre, whereby, as you said, with the death of, what's his name's character? Harry Seldon. Harry Seldon. It's just supposed to just go, oh yeah, he's resurrected, we don't know how and why, and we just have to go along with it. So there's a lot of that going on in the show. But what I was about to say was, in my rambling, almost as rambling as your explanation, is that I think if people are put off by the, I don't know what Kay thinks about this, but if people are put off...

1:12:05I have a good idea. I have a good idea what she thinks about this. All right, but my feeling is, if you're put off by the seemingly complicated array of characters and who they are and what the fuck they're doing and what is this whole thing about, and big ideas like the fact that one man can, in fact, not just him, but various people can work out what's going to happen in tens of thousands of years' time by doing some maths on a, doing some goodwill hunting-style maths on a sheet of paper or whatever, then there's a lot of fun to be had, despite all of that, because there is because you've got like Lee Pace's character who's completely ridiculous and has a really good time like season two I'm going to do with him fighting naked for about 10 minutes he's wonderful in this but the point of it is I won't even get to that point right well I wonder whether you know I'm happy to embrace the complicated nature of it because there's enough fun stuff going on as well for me and ferrets don't forget the ferrets the ferrets but also like the mule character I warmly welcome that arrival who doesn't love a psychic space pirate his first scene right where he is very good in terms of it being shocking and violent and blah blah blah with thingy from the office that's right yeah right so I really I really enjoyed this first episode and I watched another one as well the first two episodes I do I can see as opposed to other shows which James loves which has a perverse obsession with which is always over the top and ridiculous.

1:13:35I can actually see why you and people like you love the show. People like me. There's a, yeah, there's a grandeur to it visually. It is beautiful to look at and the sets and the, the CGI, as opposed to Sandman, the CGI in this is very expensive. It's buried high level, yeah. In Sandman, it was like, whatever, you know. In this really... I'm so sorry to Sanjay Bhaskar having to listen to this again. Yeah, sorry, Sanjay. So I really enjoyed it despite barely knowing what was going on and despite and you're right the summary which I think is available on Apple TV it's on YouTube is helpful is helpful but even though I'd completely forgotten about lots of things that I'd watched in season 2 it's entered the whole it's one of those shows that just hanging out with those characters and being in this world is entertaining and interesting enough for it not to be to worry too much about the ins and outs of every single little detail of which characters are doing what and why and all the different settings and plot lines and planets.

1:14:39So I'm enjoying it. It's been a couple of years, as we said, since the last season. And you do almost feel like you need to do a night course, a kind of foundation in foundation in order to kind of get up to speed. So re-watching the first two is probably not the worst idea if you have the time and the inclination. Other than that, I would say reading detailed episode summaries is almost mandatory if you want to get back into this because there's a lot. But then maybe your memory is better than mine. I don't know. Oh, no, absolutely not. We all know that. Foundation then, Kay. If you wish to watch it, you can find it on Apple TV+.

1:15:12So you didn't watch neither of the, just to check, the... You watched the little, what's it, the previously on Foundation thing, didn't you? The thing that you said I had to watch. The mandatory thing, yeah. Did that... Was that more or less clear than the rambling nonsense I gave you just five minutes ago? do you know what I watched it there's a load of characters beginning with D there's a mule that isn't an ass and then they get into metallics and that's it do you know what I mean like do you know what's happened is that that first episode of series one was so confusing so traumatic for you and so traumatic and consequently so angry and then your perversion and making me forcing it upon me forcing foundation on me when yeah I think it's just all you know come together in the way that now my brain will not allow a single second of it in case you are interested in a little bit of friendly rivalry.

1:16:02When Steph Seelam was on this podcast, when she was last here, we got into a bit of a back and forth about the accessibility of different types of shows and me and comedy and her and science fiction. And I roundly challenged her to open her mind to that. And so she tested me afterwards and said, before I come back on the podcast, tell me what that show was again. I'm going to watch Foundation. Oh, good. So she's going to watch the beginning of Foundation for the next time she comes on this podcast. Do you know what you say to her? Good luck to her. Good luck to her. You know what? I'm going to persevere as well because I think I kind of opted out of the previous two series halfway through pretty much.

1:16:36I couldn't be bothered. I know you find offensive. I do, yes. That means there's half... Wait, is this Series 3? Yeah, it's Series 3. We're reviewing Series 3. Yeah, what? Was that just another revelation? Wait, did you watch Series 1, Episode 1 again? No, no, no, no. It's more that, you know, earlier when I was accused of hypocrisy. Although, to be fair, we did do Squid Game Series 3 and we did do The Bear Series 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The main reason we're doing it this week is everything is Embargo. Exactly. All right, fine. This is genuinely one of the few un-embargo shows. But what I was going to say was, I think I'm going to carry on watching this because I think I'm going to really enjoy it.

1:17:09Yes, I do too. I might go to the dark side and, you know. I'm happy for you both. I'd be fascinated to have been in a discussion with this. Should we embargo Foundation? They probably went, you know what? What's the point? No one's going to understand anyway. Do you know what? Funny you should mention that because one of the publicists literally say to me, are you by the way are you reviewing Foundation in Heat asking about coverage in Heat and I was like yeah yeah you do realise it's not embargo you're fine to write well it's embargo to one day but it was run for publication I was like yeah yeah he goes like literally like wanting to ram the point home that we're allowed to review this fucking programme please god everyone because and actually I was looking at the responses online to this series and have been overwhelming positive it's amazing it is amazing so I feel like I've got to I've got to get on board for it yeah you definitely should also just on a side note it is worth noting I think this is the most weirdly accessible of all the seasons oh I agree it has a very clear through line a very clear villain that's partly because of the villain but isn't the problem though that because there's so many characters and there's two seasons of past where it was just impenetrable that you get to series 3 and it's like it's not really an entry point is it well to a certain extent it is in that there's a soft reset almost every season because each season skips ahead 100, 150 years 200 years by definition you have an entirely new cast of characters with entirely new stories.

1:18:27Now some persist like the robot and the Kleonic dynasty and people who've been in crime sleep. And the mysteriously resurrected. And the mysteriously resurrected Harry Seldon. Dude. But generally speaking it's new characters with new problems and this one is you've got two things the foundation and the empire and then this psychic pirate turns up who's like all powerful and they're all fucked and that's broadly speaking the main plot line here. I stand corrected. And so but this has this has space opera-y aspects to it that I don't think the previous seasons had. Oh yeah. But even I am probably happy to concede at this point we might have talked about foundation a little more than our listeners 100 % would like.

1:19:01So should we put foundation to bed? Please God, yes. Okay, next up. We didn't say when it was on. It's on Apple TV Blastboard. When is it on? Friday, the 11th of July. Friday, tomorrow. Thank you. Now we have Ballard. Starring Maggie Q and coming from the books of Michael Connolly. This is indeed the continuation of the Boschiverse. The Boschiverse? The Boschiverse. If you're Sean Connery, it's the Boschiverse. The Boschiverse, which began with Bosch and continued with the recently departed Bosch legacy. In this, though, Q plays Detective Ballard, a disgraced cop relegated to a basement to work on cold cases.

1:19:41I don't know if this sounds familiar to you. Only for one of them to overlap with a case belonging to one Harry Hieronymus Bosch. Boydie, what did you think of Department Maggie Q? Well, you've completely taken the joke from me. Because, yeah, wouldn't it be brilliant if Maggie Q was in Department Q? She should be in Department Q as well. We've got Matthew Goode. We don't need her. Q squared. Yeah, Q squared. Funnily enough, this is an example of what we were talking about earlier with smoke. Yeah. Which is that this is a bog standard. Yeah, basic. Police procedure. Mediocre. Mediocre. Perfectly serviceable.

1:20:22Better than, what was that other monstrosity we watched a couple of weeks ago? The one where they're gathering all the different agents from the FBI and the CIA. Oh my God, yes. That was terrible. That was boring. Was that split second? Was it called? Or countdown or something like that? Countdown. Not to be confused with Channel 4. Quiz show. I'd say it. That was so boring. I could barely make it to the end of an episode. This is not boring. It's just stand... Well, I wasn't particularly... it's just standard fair it's like you know the character but what's interesting is the Bosch stuff the Bosch series managed to be more entertaining than a lot of procedures because of that character and because Titus Welliver's performance in that character this Maggie Q it's not her fault but she's a complete blank character in the middle of this show now I remember meeting they introduced her didn't they they did at the end of Bosch Legacy etc and she seemed to be more fun or more interesting then when they introduced her as a kind of extra character in the Boshiverse with Harry Bosh.

1:21:25Now she's got her own show and her own investigations to undertake. She suddenly got quite boring. At one point, there's one scene where she calls one of her staff who's into sense that she can communicate with dead people, basically, and is practically considered herself a medium. And she's furious about it and brings her in and says, you can't talk about that stuff in public, even though it wasn't in public, it was just chatting to her colleagues, because people, you know, we won't be able to get the case to it, because people assume you thought you could do it by a mental, you know, mentalist technique.

1:21:58Like a mentalic from Foundation. Exactly. Shut up. So what I'm trying to say is, you build this whole thing about this key supporting character in the world of Bosch, and you make her quite dull, and, you know, just nothing particularly special about her, she's not particularly funny she's if anything a bit too serious she takes herself quite seriously a lot of it is about persuading another ex-police woman to join her gang then you just know she will in the end it's one of those come on just get on with it and then there is this bit at the end of the first episode which you're supposed to go oh wow yeah you know look and you're like well of course that's happening because yeah you know it's a bosh you've got to try and revive it sometimes fucking Harry Bosh fucking Harry Bosh it's a bosh show so yeah it's not great.

1:22:47And what I meant to say, I started this whole thing by saying, alluding to is, it's the same idea as Department Q. A team has been formed in this police station, this time in LA, with these eccentric characters investigating cold cases. In a basement. In a basement, while being weirdly, by the way, shouted at by their superiors. Oh, God, they were annoying. They were annoying, right? But this shows you, Department Q, full of invention and and wit, and charm, and surprises. Well-rounded characters. Think of Akram versus any of those. Any of them. Storytelling twists and turns, and clever tricks with timelines.

1:23:26This is plodding, relentlessly plodding investigations. It's like, ah, you know, Amazon Prime Video, we'll give them another solid, you know, show. It's fine, it's fine, it's going to pass the time. It's like a rhyme. It's fine, it's fine, it's going to pass the time. But oh my God, it's completely mediocre. it's fine Kate you concur 100 % terrible dialogue so bad so bad so bad I mean literally so bad I'll call you I'll answer what oh my favourite sorry that's so my favourite line I did write down my favourite line yeah go on we might have a goddamn serial killer on our hands oh I know I know that's what she said that's brilliant it is toe curling it's so bad such patchy acting and it's not dynamic or interesting in any way.

1:24:19And exactly that, I thought of Boyd's point about smoke and I thought this is what he's talking about. But also, not being funny, Bosch was pretty good. Because Michael Connelly's books are massively successful. Based on this book, they were quite knotty, really interesting things. My understanding, and Bosch legacy, slightly less so than Bosch, but was still decent, less so towards the end. But this, and I believe these are still based on because there are the Ballard books that Michael Connelly's written, and then they cross over with Bosch, you know, in the novels. This feels like incredibly basic network procedural territory, just in the way it's constructed, the type of storytelling.

1:24:54The acting is, as has been alluded to, toe-curlingly terrible at times, and some of the line deliveries are just, I was like, oh my God, stop, this hurts my heart. This is part of the Bosch-iverse, really upset me. But at the very end, because also it's a Bosch-like episode, whereas at the very end, there is the, you know, it is heavily hinted that Bosch will be in the second episode. And that made me want to go back and watch it because I love Titus Welle of his performance at Bosch and I love the Bosch shows. I'm not sure I can because I think it might just make me sad to see Bosch in this show.

1:25:26Do you know what? This is an insult to Bosch. Right. It is. Wow. It is. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's really basic. It's really boring. This is very similar to FUBAR. All these kind of shows are just so mediocre and I wonder how they get past. But this, honestly, and I hate to say it, this is the very low end of Mediocre. This is bordering on just flat out bad. It's just like, I was bored, I wasn't interested, it had terrible acting in it. There's no tiptoeing around. It was all over the shop. Whereas you can have a fairly basic, unsophisticated crime show, which, you know, it's fine, but there's better stuff on.

1:26:04I'm not sure this quite qualifies as that. What's interesting is the streamers now, I mean, it's a bit of a no-brainer, I guess, especially this one because it is a Bosch franchise show yeah but in general these bog standard procedures that could be on you know an American network often those American network ones work harder actually of being decent like because some of them are great yeah exactly yeah give us some examples Homicide Life on the Street yeah fucking genius amazing yeah even the ones that the ones that Terry likes Third Watch High Incident these were all good shows no it's not CSI Law and Order Lauren Olde SVU CSI was good early on some of the CSIs are really good some are better than others but yeah Lauren Olde SVU which is Terry's obsession we watched some of that go on her you know back in the early days of this podcast and I remember thinking oh yeah I can totally get it because actually they're quite kind of witty and well written very pacey quite well written quite well acted you know varying whereas yeah a show like this and Eve I think I give this a slightly more of a pass because I hated Countdown so much because Countdown was so terrible.

1:27:16It's not as, well... I didn't think it was as bad as that. But what I'm building up, what I'm trying to say is it's interesting that the streamers feel they need to do this kind of show in all its mediocrity when they could, you know... But I'm not sure, I'm not sure that is even the question here. I think it's that given that the Michael Connelly books are generally very good and Bosch was very well received, Bosch Legacy, I think, slightly less so, but you've got good characters that people are familiar with you've got an established franchise of characters you've got great source material so how is this so bad?

1:27:46Right, yeah your point is they've kind of fucked it up How have they fucked it up to this extent? It could and should have been much better This should have been a really high quality It's shoddy It's a script It's a script It needed another pass I think that's definitely definitely true Or just a pass Or just a pass Yes Ballard then which is on Prime Video Wednesday the 9th of July 2025 There you go. If you're a Boschiverse completist, it is there for your enjoyment. Speaking of which, finally this week and straight out of 1992, it's Shifting Gears on Disney+. A multi-camera sitcom that sees Kat Dennings and Tim Allen as a kind of estranged father and daughter, plus Sean William Scott, Stifler himself, as a mechanic.

1:28:27Kay, would this automotive sitcom pass your MOT? No. Excellent. Stick the brakes on. No, I mean, this has not been a good week for me in TV. Foundation. they're shifting gears and Ballard yeah Ballard no I just think what a load of Ballards yeah a total load of Ballards it just isn't funny and I just don't think these sort of studio sitcoms I mean look I'm sure there's someone who's going to be smart enough funny enough to create one that I'm then going to be like reverse ferreting but for now this is not it it just it reminded me a bit of how disappointed I was in the reboot of Frasier yeah the script isn't funny enough the jokes aren't funny enough and frequent enough.

1:29:10The acting's okay, but it's just one of these things where it could be in the background and you can half pay attention and be, you know, occasionally I might smile, but I'm forcing it. It's just not good enough, I don't think. Yeah, I didn't enjoy this. But did it not feel weirdly like you'd tumbled through time and ended up in the early 90s? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's wild. I just don't think they work in this day and age. Where did this even come from? and who thought this was good. Dan, we talked about this on this podcast before, like why people aren't making live studio audience. I'm assuming this was live studio audience.

1:29:43It seemed like one. Live studio audience. Mrs. Brown's. Mrs. Brown's. Yeah, like multi-camera sitcoms. Yeah, and there's a few British ones left. Yeah, not going out is mostly filming in front of an audience. Because it felt studio audience because you get those slightly awkward rhythms in speech where they're pausing because the audience is supposed to be laughing. Yeah, I mean, they shouldn't need to do that. No, because they didn't do it in Friends. Yeah, exactly. They didn't do it in Friends. There's a lot of things in this show that they didn't do in Friends, quite rightly. I mean, I've been a fan of Tim Allen.

1:30:16I find him quite annoying. I never liked Home Improvement, which was a massive show. That was one of, you know, massively. Talking about the 90s, he ran for pretty much most of the 90s, I believe. And this is like, oh, God. And you know, now, I'm... Right. I'm about to make a point about his politics. And I didn't actually... I forgot about it until I started looking at reviews of this. I don't know his politics. Yeah, he's quite right-wing. Is he a Marga? He's not fully Magga. Magga, I think. Magga? Magga? I might be too bring it. Make it too English. It's Marga. Do you know where you've gone?

1:30:46You've got a bit Marga saying Marga. Yeah, yeah. He's not Marga, but he's a bit Magga. He's a Magga-la-maniac. There's a mention in the script about a right-wing kind of politician. And he's like a kind of, you know, the character is supposed to be like a grumpy guy fed up with the modern world, fed up with Instagram, oh, what invented ideas. Oh, you Gen Zers. There's a whole rant about, like, influencers and people on their phones. So tired. But what I was going to say was, so I happen to, a lot of them mentioned his right-wing politics. He hasn't fully, I don't think he's fully enveloped Trump, so to speak, embraces Trump, but he's definitely like, you know, generally like a Republican.

1:31:25And none of that is why I'm judging the show, but it's just an interesting aside that this character is basically like that And that's supposed to be somewhere inherently funny. You know, this guy's being grumpy about everything. And the very first jokes in the show were about his grumpiness. But it made me sad. This show made me sad because Sean William Scott is a really funny guy. You know, when he's given a decent script. He was one of the funniest things about the American Pie films, the original American Pie films. And he was in some really kooky, stupid comedies that you would have hated, various films.

1:31:58And, you know, he was a very charismatic, funny guy. and in this it's nothing oh brilliant what for? for American Pie 2 amazing in this it's like give nothing character it's just completely boring we're all supposed to be excited about the daughter character as well Tim Allen's character's daughter played by Kat Dennings and she's just not funny and the kids aren't funny it's just it's like right from the first second almost when they're trying to force the laughs and they're all acting I've talked about this regularly particularly with American sitcoms like this, not just ones that are filming in front of the audience, but actually other ones that are multi-camera, ones often with laughter tracks or, you know, kind of, et cetera, is this I'm-in-a-comedy acting style.

1:32:45And this does it to an extraordinary extent. We're all in a comedy, so we're all going to go, oh, they'll look like that, you know. It's like, and it's like, it's excruciating. I actually think, I hate bad American mainstream studio sitcoms, bad ones, more than anything else. I think that's fair. I think they're my kryptonite. And more than you hate, you know, whatever the things you hate. I mean, but these. Everything. Comedy, yeah. But bad, these ones. And again, it shows you how brilliant. Even Seinfeld, I'm mentioning Seinfeld, obviously. But I saw the other weeks, we were asked about what season, you know, I often say to people, don't start with season one or two, go to season three.

1:33:25but actually the very first episode does have the blueprint of a really really good show and they're all underplaying it and they're not like you know they're not in everything's in quotes and they're all like coming out with these smug fucking one-liners that aren't funny anyway they let the characters breathe and just establish themselves that's what they did in Friends actually in Friends the pilot of Friends you know these actors were allowed to get to live in those roles and make them seem real to us these people in this fucking show They don't feel real for a second. They feel like they're all trapped in a studio reading a terrible script.

1:33:59It's shit. Oh, my God. Tell us what you really think, Boydie. It's already been renewed, by the way. It's doing quite well. Yeah, it's doing quite well. In these times where the American sitcoms are on a massive decline, there's hardly any of them left, you know. You wonder why. So this has clearly done well enough to warrant more episodes. How? How? Tim Allen's got something on someone. Yeah, I found this excruciating to watch for all the reasons that Boydee said. A broad comedy is not my thing generally, but this is acutely unfunny, badly written and badly staged American sitcoms from like 30 years ago.

1:34:37And I just don't understand why it's on my screen and why I was forced to watch it. And these are 22 minutes I will never get back. And it's just, it's upset me. Well, the reason you're forced to watch it is because everything else was embargo. That is true. That is true. We wouldn't have gone near it. No, we wouldn't. Yeah, it's, I mean, it is. I mean it was it was mercifully short it was so that is an advantage but still yeah I could have made another omelette with my omelette pan in the 22 minutes it took to watch this fucking show oh god shifting gears then oh which is on Disney Plus I think it's on then now I don't know when it's on because I snubbed it it's on Disney Plus who cares when it's on we're not interested Wednesday Wednesday the 9th of July 2025 shifting gears arrives on Disney Plus everyone Go to it.

1:35:23Wow. Insane. Other things that are out this week. The Walking Dead Dead City Season 2 lands on Thursday, which are very exciting. Obviously, I've already seen that. That is on Sky. Skymax. Skymax. Too Much. Yes. Lands on Netflix. Yes. Also on Thursday. We will be reviewing that on next week's regular podcast. Yeah. We'll be discussing a little bit about Dead City, or at least I will, on Pilot Plus this week. Dexter Resurrection comes to Paramount Plus on Friday. we will be reviewing that properly on Pilot Plus. And the Institute, very exciting, comes to MGM Plus, and that's on Sunday, and I think we're going to do that on next week's main show.

1:36:00It's Stephen King adaptation. But that looks pretty good. Anything else, Boyd? No, I think you've covered it, pretty much. Yeah, I think you have. Now, this is going to be my favourite part of the podcast. Yeah, I know. And I get to ask Kay what her pick of the week is. Well, in a sign of how bad this week has been, my pick, begrudgingly, and without having seen it, without having seen it. It's Foundation. Sorry, say it again very clearly so that I can make it my ringtone. No, you've had it once. That's all you're getting. And be grateful that I've said it. Boyddy? Oh, I mean, Foundation's clearly a masterpiece.

1:36:37In comparison with these other shows, it may end up being a masterpiece anyway. Yeah. But yeah, it's easily Foundation. Foundation then, our pick of the week. And dare I say it, our lifetimes. Fabulous. No. Us. Oh, God. Well, that's it. We're done. That is the end of the show. If you enjoyed it, please do head over to any of our social media accounts and leave Kay a five foundation rating. I think she would really appreciate that. I just can't. Yeah. You can follow her at Kay Rivera. You can follow Boyd at Boyd Hilton, me at James C. Dyer, and this very podcast at Pilot TV Pod. And don't forget, it is Pilot TV at empiremagazine.com if you want to address either this listener question type post bag or the big bumper post bag on Pilot Plus, which you can subscribe to and drops every single Thursday.

1:37:24On next week's show, as we've referenced, we'll be covering a lot of stuff that's out this week that we weren't able to cover, plus presumably some other things, because lest we forget, next week also plays host to Star Trek Strange New Worlds on Paramount +, which I have already seen, and we will be covering. Bookish comes to you in Alibi. That's quite exciting. Kay likes that, because she's seen it already. Mark Gatiss, yes. The Samurai Turned Pretty has its final season, arriving on Prime, if you're interested in a bit of YA drama. Yeah, the couple next door, if you're interested in a bit of raunchy...

1:37:52Oh, you're all over this, aren't you? Yeah. Anyway. Okay, anything else? Mixtape, which is with the aforementioned... And we definitely should do that. Well, we can't review everything. Yeah, well, we're obviously not going to do Star Trek. So we can do mixtape. Unbelievable. Too much mixtape, yeah. That is true. By the rules of this podcast, whereby new shows do outrank returning shows, we may not be covering Star Trek. I can't even say it. Star Trek Strange New World exactly deal with it which means I will just go solo I'm going to go rogue and review it on my own of course you will but yeah that makes sense I'm not going to say what I think of it maybe I hated it you don't know well you can't say and hopefully we'll never find out but also listeners do book your tickets yes come and see us at King's Place on the 8th of August it's going to be epic we've no idea what's going to happen but it will be wonderful us three and Jenna Franus that's right Jenna will be there I'll ask her to bring the whole cast of Friends another reunion that's it We'll do it live on stage at King's Place.

1:38:50Be there. Don't miss it. Oh, and Geoffrey Dean Morgan and Scott Gimple will be on next week talking about The Walking Dead. Good show. Yeah. Right, that is it. We are done. Until Thursday for you Pilot Plus subscribers or Monday, next Monday for everyone else. We're off to enjoy the sunshine. Pilot out.