I started Renegade Nell (Disney Plus), which is about a woman in medieval times who is given a temporary, and seemingly random ability to beat up bad guys. She learns more about this in the first episode, which expertly has her learning things so the audience can learn along with her. It is one of the strongest pilots I’ve seen recently, which does an excellent job of introducing us to the characters, and giving us an idea of the season long arc, while slowly building the rule book for how Nell’s abilities work. This is certainly a first episode where you will know if this show is for you or not. The audio description, which is written and narrrated by Michael Whitford of (I believe he said IOU) is making bold choices some blind people will hate. He doesn’t just interpret facial expressions but sometimes the entire scene. There was one fight where something was happening, and he jumped in with “and that’s a good thing…” and I could immediately hear the cries of visually impaired people everywhere. But, then there’s another fight sequence that seemingly lacks audio description, and I think it’s because there is crowd chatter. Not discernible dialogue, but crowd noise. He summarizes it all after the fact, but it is weird to hear someone drowning with no context. I’d still recommend this show, but I can’t totally go out on a limb for the audio description. Though, it is far more descriptive, even with its faults, than a lot of recent Disney series like Percy Jackson. I’ll stick it in the middle tier.
Also did the fourth episode of Three Body problem (Netflix), which has a fascinating scene where Jonathan Pryce reads the aliens Little Red Riding Hood, and it reminded me of how great Arrival is, and how the focus on linguistics for alien encounters is so important. Also, they know this is an alien race, so why do they keep referring to them as “Our Lod”? I’m feeling this is Top Tier audio description, since I’ve even bothered to recommend this show at least once in the last 24 hours to another blind person looking for a sci-if show to watch.
Shogun (Hulu) is a deeply fascinating show that just needs more in the narration. This episode, which sees the “barbarian” and his translator have a misunderstanding, was so well told, I just wish the description wasn’t all just this one dude. Such an excellent program. The written narration is also, excellent. More than on voice though. Middle Tier.
