Yet another BritShow marathon on the Kindle Fire via the Amazon Prime trial: Torchwood.
Eval of season 1: not too shabby. A sort of British combo of The X-Files and Sanctuary with much lusher, more appealing settings–largely Cardiff, Wales–with more than a bit of the contemporary Dr. Who feel. Not as outstanding as Downton Abbey (a much, much different kind of show), but better fare than almost all the current offerings we get on cable TV.
Fun find.
In other areas, I’ve been importing the mobi or prc format of all the “read more than once” eBooks I’ve purchased from Baen Books over the past several years. *heh* I even discovered a couple I had meant to read but just hadn’t gotten to yet and downloaded the Kindle formats to read, even though I already had html formatted copies in an electronic “library”. In some ways it’s not quite as easy to read eBooks on the Fire as on a notebook or desktop, reading html formatted books in a web browser. For one thing, in my browser, I can simply set the text to scroll and only have to page forward when I reach the end of a chapter, instead of turning individual pages, as in a hardcopy or Kindle formatted book. But I don’t really miss that so much.
Setting the number of words per line (more or less) is a big plus for reading via the Kindle, as I usually read a couple of lines at as time. With a simple touch of my right thumb to the right side of the screen, the page “turns” and reading flow is smooth and fast, faster than page turns in hardcopy books. And while the Fire doesn’t use e-ink, I’ve not experienced eye strain while reading the 20+ books I’ve read on it in the past couple of weeks. All-in-all, the movies, TV shows, music, books have been very enjoyable to watch, listen to and read, and web browsing is at least Good Enough for minimal use. (I actually found some info the other day faster by dropping out of a video on the Fire and going to Opera Mobile than my Wonder Woman who was already on the web in her web browser on her notebook. Maybe I will get accustomed to the virtual keyboard yet. :-))
Oh, season 2 has generally been an improvement even over the relatively high standards of season 1. For one thing, the character of Owen Harper is much more appealing as a dead man (walking, talking, yadayada). Fun lines result all over the place.
Jack Harkness: “Why is it you agree with Owen all the time since he died?”
Ianto Jones: “I was raised to never speak ill of the dead.”
Good lines. (Well, very close to verbatim.)
My favorite series of Torchwood is the third: Children of Men. I prefer Doctor Who but I do love Gwen’s accent. Rhys is my favorite character– any time they put him in danger I told the show I’d be angry with them if they killed Rhys.
Glad you liked Downton Abbey. Series Two premiered tonight on PBS. I’ll begin watching tomorrow (since we don’t get any tv channels). Others you might enjoy: Whitechapel and Survivors (the updated version, but be warned it wasn’t resolved or renewed).
You might like George Gently. It’s a gritty buddy cop show about an older detective who loses his wife and moves to the country. He doesn’t move to a quirky little English seaside village and enjoy the scenery (for that watch Doc Martin or Kingdom). No, he is on the hunt for corrupt cops and tries to lead his partner (played by the guy who plays Stan Shunpike in the HP movies) away from the easy road of being, “a cop on the take”. And when I say “buddy cop” I mean older, wiser and better cop paired with a young, brash dolt.
*heh* So the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey was on Sunday evening… Missed it, but… your mom watched it on a CD I had burned (the streaming PC needs to be pruned–or more like we need more storage *heh*) from a (*cough* pirated) copy found somewhere on the web. We’ll just have to put that in our Sunday evening schedule to watch or record.
There are a few irritating aspects to Torchwood, but it still beats others in the genre.
Note: All I accomplished by downloading the thing was time-shifting, which I’ll do anyway with the “broadcast” showings. It’s a wash.