Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Tuesday TV Touchbase: The Repair Shop & Hawkeye

 



On Christmas Day, the fam spent the day here at the Fortress of Ineptitude in the warm comforting glow of our television bingeing a series called The Repair Shop.

It was our daughter Randie's fault. She was familiar with this show and wanted to share it with the fam. 

Which she did. All day.   

So here's the deal: The Repair Shop is a British television show about a place called The Repair Shop which is shop that repairs things. 

What sort of things, you may ask?

Well, all sorts of things. 

Mostly family heirlooms. Knick-knacks and thingamabobs, old toys, dolls and stuffed animals, vintage bicycles, paintings, furniture, awards and trophies.  If it has sentimental value for a family member, the friendly folks at the Repair Shop will fix it.

Furniture restorer Jay Blades acts as a foreman for a diverse group of men and women with different levels of expertise on working with wood, metal, paint, cloth and whatever a thing might be made of.  

Idea for a drinking game:  when anyone suggests that a restoration will send someone "over the moon" or says a restored object is "brilliant", take a drink.  You will be gobsmacked drunk before an episode is halfway over so maybe don't do that. 

Since The Repair Shop is a British TV show, of course there are connections to Doctor Who. The series employs two narrators:

  • Bill Paterson  appeared as Professor Edwin Bracewell in "Victory of the Daleks" and "The Pandorica Opens"
  • Robert Pugh was Tony Mack in "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood".

The Repair Shop is a very gentle show. Family members carefully bring their aged and broken doodads to the shop, the crafts people graciously accept the item and then go about their work with quiet professionalism, determined to do right by the family by restoring a precious heirloom to a better condition. Then the family returns and the restored item is presented which is frequently greeted with a few tears from a family member and even the restorers.  

The Repair Shop is a sweet show with a heartwarming acts of kindness performed with remarkable talents and skills, a perfect show for watching with family on Christmas Day. 

OK, we will now move from the quiet gentle show about repairing family heirlooms to a more fast pace show about super heroes fighting gangsters in track suits with arrows.

Hawkeye ripped through 6 episodes on Disney+ with humor, heart and some astonishing action sequences. 

Episode 3's car chase sequence with that wild 360 degree camera in Clint and Kate's car just blows my mind. 

The episode 6 big battle with Clint and Kate against a swarm of heavily armed Track Suit Mafia hoodlums is just epic.  

Clint Barton may not get a lot of love within the Avengers franchise but here he is a fully realized character, haunted by misdeeds and bad choices and tragedy but pushed to do whatever he can to help innocents he barely knows and his family that loves beyond words.

Kate Bishop's MCU debut is so true to her comic book self, smart, capable, quick witted and, like Clint, she has a drive to help others and seek justice, even at great personal cost. 

By the way, the knock down drag out fights these two get into have real consequences with cuts and bruises that linger long after a fight is over.  

Besides opening up the MCU by introducing Kate Bishop, Hawkeye also brings over a character from Marvel's Netflix shows.  Vincent Dinofrio is on hand as the Kingpin Wilson Fisk from Daredevil.  (This is not the only Daredevil cameo in the MCU with Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock appearing in Spider-Man: No Way Home.)   

I will spoil the ending in that Clint will make it home to his family for Christmas and with a new friend (and a dog!) in tow. 

The real fun of this series is the crazy journey getting there. 

Well, that is that for today's Tuesday TV Touchbase. 

I don't expect there was anything in this post that sent you "over the moon" 

GLUG!

But maybe something in this post was at least a little "brilliant".

GLUG!   

Tomorrow's post takes a look at the Doctor Who New Year's Day special.  

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here. 


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