paultrengove Reviews

Ted Lasso (2020–2023)

Season 1 - incredible!, Season 2 bombs

[8/10 · 24 August 2021]

I had a fear this would happen after being one of the strongest advocates for what was a brilliant initial season of Ted lasso. Season 2 is sooo disappointing.

Season 1 - absolutely brilliant!

The quirkiness, the storyline, the hilarious inspirational quotes from Ted, and of course the focus on a team trying to win in the Premier League with a clueless American coach was brilliant.

S1 focused on the amazing Ted, with a secondary focus on his immediate support characters and was brilliant.

Season 2 however - for me has been nothing but disappointing.

It seems to me Apple+ told the writers that they need to engage a wider audience than just its core. The original audience I feel were people that love sport and loved clever comedy.

Season 2 does not focus on Ted, instead all of the support characters and their romantic interests or struggles in their world. The writing of the second series is all about "feel good" stories and takes the focus away from what this series was. It is barely about the game and the struggles of a team and a foreign coach, it is no longer clever and witty it is just dull, boring, predictable. This used to be brilliant and different- now it's just the same as everything else.

I cannot believe all of the positive "critic reviews" this series is receiving online. They are nearly advertising to people looking for something to watch, that perhaps had no initial interest in season 1. Which is fine of course, but this all feels very commercialised. This is also demonstrated by Apple's decision to release each episode once a week and charging a subscription to do so. Season one was released all at once and it was such an enjoyable and witty show to watch either binging or at your own pace.

This show has lost me and I'm devastated because I was one of its strongest advocates to many friends who now come to me and say "well that show just got lame - what a shame"

Greatness Code (2020– )

I imagine watching this is like being on LSD

[1/10 · 7 September 2020]

Seriously , what a disgrace. 7 champion athletes telling their story and the creator puts a graphical effect on every single shot.... I felt like I was going to be sick 2 minutes in. We get you know how to use Adobe After Effect, well done ... but you've ruined what could've been a cool little series of short docos.

The Forgiven (2017)

Critic scores have always bothered me

[8/10 · 23 March 2019]

Sometimes a film does not need to be original or show artistic flair when telling its story. This is particularly the case when portraying momentous and in this case tragic historic events. And critics always searching for "originality" or "flair" when reviewing a film can at times consider no context when truly understanding the intention of a movie such as this one.

A film can certainly do history justice by purely being authentic with strong and brave performances as is the case in The Forgiven.

A movie about the fallout of South Africa's transformation from apartheid to a fragile state of confusion and change, runs the risk of "trying too hard", embellishment or falling victim to basic flaws such as bad acting or poor story telling. However this film is executed perfectly and the performances from Whitaker and Bana were simply outstanding.