Alright. Let’s talk about the new show on Amazon, The Baxters! Oh wait, this doesn’t have audio description. Never mind. It sounds awful. Next!
OK. Let’s try this again. The new show A Gentleman In Moscow (Paramount Plus with Showtime) starring Ewan McGregor as a former Count who lives in Russia, and has his title, money, and land stripped from him with the rise of communism, and is forced to live in the servants quarters of a hotel. The audio description here is great, and I’ve been hearing this narrator on a lot of Paramount Plus (and Showtime/CBS) content lately. I think it might be Andrew Thatcher, but whoever, this show is well described, and I loved the pilot. this role is tailor made for McGregor, and I could see him earning an Emmy nomination for this. Between a strong pilot and excellent audio description, this gets to debut in the top tier. It does benefit from limited use of locations, though there are flashbacks, but he’s told he can’t leave the hotel. So, we should be able to shape the hell out of this hotel by the end of the series.
I finished Masters Of The Air (Apple Plus), and as a note for anyone who hasn’t, it’s only 9 episodes, and the last one is a bit longer. It wraps up the story in the best way, and we get that “where are they now?” Stuff at the end read to us. Finding out the fates of some of these men was a little sad, but so many of them got some really great education after the war. Masters Of The Air has had all sorts of reasons to earn its spot at the top after nine episodes, but this has some really strong description, a strong attention to detail in terms of war specific sections, and the tone is just right. Had Halo not been running at the same time, this probably would have been the best audio description I was listening to, but I finished those two back-to-back.
The Good Doctor (Hulu) struggles with its new audio description. Sometimes, it’s clear that there’s something missing, other times it gives you what you need. This episode had an interesting case with a young guy who might hav Alzheimer’s, but Sean figures it out. Of course he does. This really hovers around middle/bottom tier now in therms of the audio description.
Girls 5 Eva (Netflix) makes me laugh like no ones business. The audio description doesn’t have a lot of free time to work with, but it does feel like the team is doing their best to describe as much as possible. The third episode, we go home and visit Wiki’s amazing parents. Love this show, please renew it. Middle/Top tier audio description. It does the best it can, but some other shows lend themselves to having more description.
And finally, Palm Royale (Apple Plus) actually started to bore me a bit in the second episode. These episodes need to either be funnier or shorter. One of those two things. Each episode ends up feeling too long, and not funny enough. If the runtime was brought down, and tightened, they might get more out of what they are trying to do in the long run. I still want WAY more Carol Burnett than I’m getting. The audio description here though, is really good. Lots of attention paid toward the opulence, or lack thereof. Apple generally seems to hire the right teams to do their audio description, it’s not always the same company, and give them the freedom to produce high quality audio description. Top tier.
