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Reviews (12)
22 May, 2022
Veronica Mars detective - the very beginning
This tv series ran initially through 3 seasons, then after a lapse of about 5 years, there was a movie. After several more years, the series continued. Surprisingly, the cast continued the same throughout!
Ms. Mars starts out as a teenage (high school) detective. There is a murder mystery involved, but it takes the entire season to finish up. In the meantime, we see many realistic detective cases: credit card fraud investigation, school election fraud, missing people location, tracking down various school related problems, spying on cheating spouses, etc. For me, this mixture of cases was very interesting. I enjoyed the variety and the realism of the sometimes mundane detective activity.
The cast is quite convincing. Kristen Bell does an excellent job of carrying the series.
I have been surprised with how much I liked this and can recommend it highly.
12 Oct, 2021
Felicien David wrote some great music
This forgotten composer wrote much music that would be considered 'mediocre.' But this recording belies that belief. I especially like the "La Nuit" selection, a cello and piano piece re-orchestrated from his "Le Desert" symphonic poem. The third quartet performed by Quartet Mosaiques is also very much to my liking.
I wish there were a really good recording of Le Desert. It certainly caused a sensation in Paris and influenced Verdi.
22 May, 2022
Season 2 of Swedish TV robot series (could use English subtitles)
This is a review of Season 2 of Swedish TV robot series entitled "real humans."
Each season has 10 episodes of 58 1/2 minutes each.
The robots in this series are called "hubots" throughout; I'll use that term, too.
The series is spoken in Swedish and the only subtitles in season 2 are in Dutch.
I purchased this with the hope that I could follow the story anyway. That turned
out to be correct. I lost track of one of the main story lines in episode 6, but what
had happened became completely clear by the end of episode 8.
One of the main themes throughout the series has to do with hubot autonomy.
Normal hubots are programmed with a block on their freedom of action; they are
effectively existing pretty much as slaves. So, the question keeps coming up as
to whether this is alright. There is a hack, however, that a few hubots have received
and they have autonomy. Some of these hubots seem to have no sense of morality
or any kind of conscience. Obviously, this is a big problem. The series does not
address the question of whether all liberated hubots will have this problem. On the
other hand, some humans have malign goals and mistreat hubots badly. They seem
to have no sense of morality or a conscience. The parallel between these two groups
is disturbing, of course. Certainly, in just about all cultures, there are people driven
to abuse others, and hubots are a perfect target for discrimination and for hate right
wing groups.
Another major theme of this series is about human emotional attachment to particular
hubots. This brings up the question of hubots replacing human beings. We see the
hubots in human society, working human jobs, in family situations, interacting with each
other, and going it alone just like people do. The economic consequences of hubots
taking human jobs are not addressed. The social consequences of hubot actions and
rights are addressed in a major legal court trial in the final episode of season 2.
The second season is somewhat toned down from season 1, which could get quite
disturbing at times. There is no nudity in season 2. Since I could not understand the
language, I do not know about whether there was any profanity. I suspect that this
series would get a TV-MA rating in the USA.
This series was re-made by the BBC in England and was simply called "Humans." I
have only seen the first season of that production. It was not nearly as edgy or
disturbing as the Swedish series. On only this limited exposure to the BBC series, I
prefer the Swedish version.
One authentic detail of the Swedish series: on occasion we get to see a brief view of
the computer code that runs the robot. The code is in LISP, which is the key language
of artificial intelligence researchers. I got a chuckle out of the (defun create-dog ....
function (that's the beginning of a LISP function definition).
I very much enjoyed this series. English subtitles needed for season 2!