Down To Watch Dan & Raul

DTW is dipping into docs this May with several entries in the upcoming month telling stories that are as strange as they are true! Dan and Raul found they were looking forward to many of the same true tales lined up for the next few weeks, including a look into the life of Muppet inventor Jim Henson, the story of the melodic musical legends The Beach Boys, and an odd but well-documented life in Japan called The Contestant. The oddness continues with a return to hit doc The Jinx, a popular show thought completely told. Scripted TV stays weird with more Outer Range, more multiverse in Dark Matter, some spy stuff, and even movies in this one, so May...be have a listen!?




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In anticipation of the soon-to-be-streaming prequel, The First Omen, this week, DtW flashes back to the original 1976 The Omen! Dan sees it for the first time while Raul revisits a classic he used to watch on constant rotation, with star power in the front and satanic panic pushing it forward. Gregory Peck stars in a familial nightmare with a political tinge, detailing a family's fall after unknowingly adopting the son of Satan. Famous moments from scary movie history were made possible by this nefariously apocalyptic tale, but the fears present here were also fueled by an outsized fear of the devil saturating the culture of the age. Does it still scare and compel, or were these fears and feelings only indicative of 70s American unease? Let's talk about it!


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This week, DtW crawls out to the Prime adaptation of Fallout! Dan and Raul complete the gamer configuration of the show by inviting Jonnie to talk about the first two episodes of a tongue-in-cheek gorefest set in the post-nuclear apocalypse. Lucy is a sheltered vault-dweller encountering the Mad Max-style carnage of the surface world for the first time, Maximus is trying to escape his ineffectiveness as part of a military religion by stealing a suit of robot armor, and The Ghoul has stuck around since pre-war America to give us a modern-day perspective and more Walton Goggins for our TVs. After a few days out, the show has stuck to the game's vibes and continues to get good reviews, so is this another successful adaptation of a game, or is it a bomb with a diminishing half-life? These three brickball aficionados probably know! 


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This week, Down to Watch follows a couple of mystery men through their new streaming series! Our DtW hosts start off talking about another take on The Talented Mr. Ripley, this time simply titled Ripley and led by a couple of recognizable BBC faces. The show is set in stark black-and-white Italy and slowly meanders through the crime thriller's story, but is it so thoughtful it forgets to be compelling? A question that can also be asked about the second show covered in this pod is AppleTV+' Sugar, an LA-based crime noir starring Colin Ferrell. Ferell? A new kind of hero, John Sugar, doesn't appear to be as seedy as the story he's in, but will the show's inevitable twist undo the character work done in early episodes? These are questions for Dan and Raul!


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Down to Watch is back this week, dodgin' bunnies and chuckin' eggs to bring you a shower of April television picks to make your spring even more sprung! Dan and Raul brought a basket of green plastic grass, hollow chocolate, and adaptations like Fallout, Ripley, Parasyte, and Dead Boy Detectives. A bunch of spy craft shows are lined up like a pack of peeps, including The Veil, The Sympathizer, and an LA gumshoe story called Sugar, keeping the investigation domestic. Learn what is happening to the thoroughbreds at the race track with the New York Times doc film Broken Horses, what Conan finds while wandering in Conan O'Brien Needs to Go, and what happened back during The Hijacking of Flight 601. Keep your heads dry while waiting for May to bloom with these great picks!  


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This week Netflix dropped a tentpole series with a lot of hype, and DtW is back to tell you about it! Dan and Raul watched the first two episodes of 3 Body Problem, an adaptation of the first book in the Chinese sci-fi series that is beyond popular in China and worldwide. Showrunners/writer/director duo Weiss and Benioff found success and fame helming the groundbreaking Game of Thrones but suffered consequences to their subsequent projects based on fan reactions to the finale they crafted. Does this mean they're ready to burst back on the scene with an equally vast story full of scientific wonder and terror, or does their handling of the GoT ending prove that their stories are rudderless without a source material to draw from? That's a very specific question, and also, there's a Tarly!


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