TV News: Amazon has decided to close the door on Bosch: Legacy, with the upcoming season pegged as its last. Also, FOX has confirmed that this upcoming 5th Season of 911 Lone Star will be its last.
TV Shows Watched: Bel Air: S3E8 (Peacock), The Perfect Couple: S1E3, S1E4, and S1E5 (Netflix) with audio description, 911: S6E13 and S6E14 (Hulu),. Fight Night was still without audio description as of yesterday.
Podcasts: Unspooled (Armageddon), Film Threat (The Acolyte’s Cancellation), Pod Save America (Politics), The Damage Report (Politics), and Countdown With Keith Olbermann (News/Politics).
YouTube: Oscar Expert (Breaking Down Venice/Telluride Debuts
Movies: Rebel Ridge (Netflix) with audio description, and The boy and the Heron (MAX) with audio description
Well, I only watched three shows. It would feel odd if I skipped The perfect Couple. This is an ensemble drama that focuses on a wealthy family that was preparing for a wedding when one of the guests is mysteriously murdered, putting a huge damper on things. Detectives come and interview everyone, trying to piece together what really happened. As the series progresses, the audience gets a glimpse into who likely really isn’t the killer, but it is still obvious this family has a lot of secrets.
So, International Digital center is behind this audio description, with Liz Gutman writing. For you Bridgerton fans, that doesn’t mean this is the new horny hit on Netflix. The sex scenes are pretty brief, and certainly not the focus of the story. At its heart, this is a murder mystery, and a great example of how human writers have to always exist in AI, because as AI would likely write audio description as is, frequently with shows and movies of this ilk, they require knowing how it ends, to be able to reference all the little moments in very passive ways, that lead to that revelation. Whoever the killer is, we are getting slowly fed clues, and they could be in specific facial reactions, or camera shots showing someone hearing a certain conversation, or even down to a detail as someone having an object or wearing an article of clothing one moment, and then not later. The possibilities right now, midway through the show, are endless.
Liz has done a good job of not pointing a finger too hard at any one person, but taking this large ensemble and keeping everyone in play for as long as possible. The audio description track is solid at the basics, entrances and exits, who is present for which conversation, and lots of facial reactions to flesh out performances. while not the focus of the show, perhaps the only thing the audio description could have included more of would have been this opulence that comes with wealth. Clearly, this family has money to blow, and often that leads to shooting in these “Lifestyles Of The Rich and Famous” homes that are impossibly awesome, and even unattainable usually for someone based on their job. This bleeds into wardrobe choices as well, which I feel like is occasionally mentioned. none of this is important to the main objective, but would all be secondary goals that just help bring a blind audience even more into the show.
I still have three episodes to go, and while I’m not saying this is the best show I’ve ever seen, the solid audio description has made it possible to stay as engaged in this whodunit as possible. I’ll say this now, because I’m not at the end, and there is no killer reveal, but how Nicole Kidman is being used, and positioned, it is really hard for me to not assume she’s the killer. Why else would she be here? Her character is not as interesting as some of the others, and she really isn’t the lead. We shall see if my guess is right.
