Primetime TV Update - May 2017

Here's a quick description of all of the shows I've watched and completed in May 2017. Of course, as always, there is a possibility of spoilers for any prime time show I mention.

This month I mainly completed reality shows, though I had a few scripted dramas that I finished.

On ABC, I finished the first season of "Designated Survivor". I enjoyed the show, but felt like they are still trying to figure out what it is. Is it about conspiracy theories, political life in DC or something else? Hopefully over the summer they will decide and regroup. Since I liked what I was watching, it is easier to forgive the unevenness.

On Bravo, I watched "Imposters". This ended its first season weeks ago, but I finally caught up on demand. I saw a promo thought the idea of victims of a con artist working together to find the con becoming corrupt too as interesting. It will be coming back for another season.

On Netflix, I watched "The Same Sky", which is a German language show with English subtitles, and six episodes long. A few scenes were in English, but not many. This is a period piece about life in the 1970s on both sides of the Berlin Wall. The two subplots were about the East German sports machine and trying to escape to freedom which was mainly about gay characters, meaning it had a dual meaning. The main story was about a "Romeo" agent, who went from East Germany to West Germany and had to romance women to get intelligence for his country. What happened next is very twisted, and I hope there is more story coming.

On PBS, I watched the second and last series of "Home Fires" about life and love in a small English town during World War II. The ladies had to work together to be successful, but not everything went as planned and some were destroyed. Sadly this ended with a cliffhanger, a plane crashed into the town, but as an audience we don't know who survived. 


On WGN, I watched "Outsiders", and it ended its second season with it being cancelled. WGN is out of the scripted show business. This wasn't as good as the first, and so many stories were left hanging, which was rather frustrating.

The bulk of what I watched was reality shows. On the major networks, I finished the following competitive reality shows: "Dancing with the Stars", "Masterchef Junior", "Survivor" and "The Voice". Were any of the winners surprising, not really, but at least the journey was interesting.  I also watched three non-competitive shows: "Better Late than Never" from last summer, which I hadn't completed in 2016, the second series of "An Idiot Abroad" which was more than five years old, and "Victorian Slum House" from the BBC that aired on PBS. Better Late than Never was a ridiculous four episode show starring older male stars along with a sidekick from "I can do that" going to Asia and showing the adventures. If you liked any of the people involved it was worth it. An Idiot Abroad is good for a laugh, and in the second run Karl was in the US for two different episodes. Victorian Slum House mixed history with "reality" and had the participants live in the conditions their ancestors did within a few weeks to mimic 50 years of changes from the Victorian to Edwardian area in the slum. Some people came and went, but the majority survived the entire show in the slum, while some thrived and could move out and others failed and moved away.


So that's what I've watched and finished during May 2017. Happy Viewing! I hope this summer I can play catch up and complete some shows that have been on the back burner.