The one hundred seventy-seventh TV show: #916 Veep
It's been a couple of years since we started watching Veep - for various reasons, we took a break a few years in, but we've now made our way through the first five seasons which should give us something to go on. The show comes form the same base of The Thick of It, but with its focus shifted to US politics the tone changes in different ways. Focusing on the weirdly empty role of vice president and the succession battles it inspires in later seasons, the series is weirdly cutthroat. If anything, it feels even more aggressively bleak as rarely, people seem to get anything done, and it's all even more about wheeling and dealing than trying to a good job running the country.
With that, it's excellently acted, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus switching effortlessly between the (fake) caring and underlying anger, making the exaggerated moments work. That's not to say that the rest of the cast doesn't work - there are so many highlights in there - but she really holds it up in her own way. It's a masterpiece and although I have a bit more to go, it's been excellent so far.
The one hundred seventy-eighth TV show: #924 Girls
Did I not discuss this yet? Both awkward and funny, there's something about Girls that looking back on it taps into a collective experience of my generation - vapid, yes, but also stuck in a world not giving much to us, there are moments that really work, while Lena Dunham clearly plays an at times unlikeable character discovering herself in a way that feels real, and which will either fascinate you and draw you in, or repulse if you don't get the right feeling. For me, it was a bit of both - what I watched was worth it, but it's not at that height all the time to recommend the full run.