Norwegian Sci-Fi/Fantasy, a Kiwi Walkback, and Lingering Over the Breakup
The Weekly Binge: 3 Web Series To Watch This Week
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The Weekly Binge is a handful of recommendations based on what the Stareable Team has been bingeing on this week. Click through to watch and let us know what you think by leaving your own reviews on the site!
Made in Mosjøen
A series of science-fiction and fantasy themed vignettes, Made in Mosjoen feels like Philip K. Dick crossed with Terry Pratchett by way of Norway. The episodes explore unrelated characters and settings but share consistently spotty lighting, a nihilistic tone, hints of an expansive universe and a tendency to break the fourth wall. One episode uses two lovers in the throes of passion to suggest a society where Fake interactions are policed. Another takes us into an underworld club where Matrix-y characters discuss a fish-based superweapon. Yet another has a surly child fortune-teller setting aside her video game to successfully guess at a customer’s unusual question. The show often seems to be insisting on a moral relativism of sorts — equating our society’s ridiculousness to this fictional version.
$1 Reserve
If only life allowed you to walk back more things. Like quitting a job, or jokes about weird sex stuff right as a party goes silent, or telling people Trump is kidding and will straighten up before the general election. But some things have no reset button, like having children, or sharing your legendary cake recipe with your Aunt Sally and having her claim it as her own. Here, a woman attempts to hit undo after mistakenly thinking her boyfriend cheated on her and selling all of his things on New Zealand’s Craigslist. There is more than a passing resemblance to High Maintenance as she goes to retrieve the items after realizing her error, cutting through broad swathes of society and repeatedly having intimate conversations with strangers.
Til Lease Do Us Part
If this show were on a major network, it would be called something ridiculous like “Battle of the Sexes.” It would involve a contrived plotline where a couple who lives together breaks up (milking that final argument for laughs) but continues to share an apartment because they need to maintain appearances for their family or a will or because the holidays are around the corner. The man (it would obviously be a hetero-normative couple) would first celebrate the break-up and his freedom, drinking beer and playing basketball with his friends, one married and jealous and the other single, attractive and maybe ethnic. But then he would realize that his ex-girlfriend took great care of him and is going to do better in the dating pool. Oh wait, it was a movie. This movie. In Til Lease Do Us Part, they take the same central conceit but this time it’s lesbians, you don’t actually see the break-up (so you keep wondering what the issue was) and the latent emotions between the women actually seem real. And perhaps the biggest twist — the show is enjoyable and engaging rather than trite and superficial.
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