This morning, a friendly Shaw Cable technician picked up our DVRs, so now we’ve officially cut the cable. Or rather we’ve cut one of the dozens of cables that connect us to reality. The decision to drop cable often comes from the realisation that it’s possible to download most content for “free”. That switch to a life of digital thievery is usually accompanied by a whole host of justifications as to why it’s okay. Whatever. That’s not how I work. As someone whose livelihood comes from people paying for entertainment that they could, at least in theory, steal, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to not pay for my own entertainment. But… there’s so much good television available at the moment – True Detective, Game of Thrones, Broadchurch, The Walking Dead, Hannibal, and lighter shows like Supernatural and The Big Bang Theory. But there’s a lot of crap too – sometimes every channel seems to be a stream of reality TV and endless variations on American Idol. When we looked at our viewing habits, there are really only a handful of shows that we really care about. All of those shows are available for purchase from iTunes as soon as they’re shown on TV. Dropping cable has reduced our Shaw bill by over … Read More
Brief Thoughts on True Detective
My wife and I finally finished watching True Detective on Tuesday. She was out of town while it was on TV so we were watching it on demand and life is busy enough that it took us quite a while to catch up. I ended up staying off Twitter, Facebook and several of the blogs I read to avoid spoilers. I won’t be posting any here either. I’m not completely sure when or why True Detective caught my eye but I think the when was on the plane to The Bahamas and the why was the star power of McMatthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Or maybe it was instinct. Either way, like most of the Internet, we were impressed – in my opinion it’s some of the best TV I’ve seen for quite some time. It’s hard to pin down why but I tend to enjoy darker movies and I’m comfortable with a slow burn story. Stylistically it pushed all the right buttons for me and the slower pace made a welcome change to most shows. At times, it felt like we’d been glued to an hour of TV where nothing happened. I often find myself enjoying shows with shorter seasons more … Read More