AWOL Roundtable: What We Can’t Stop Watching In Lockdown
Have you ever wondered how you can have so many subscriptions to streaming sites and STILL have nothing to watch? Or is that just me?
I feel like it’s just too easy to get caught up in the list suggested to you based on all the rom coms you binge when you’re hungover (ok, yes, that is definitely me). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a helpful feature, but it makes you really work hard to find something else.
Which is why I live for suggestions from other people, especially at this stage of lockdown when I’ve run out of cross stitches and I simply cannot deal with another ‘will they, won’t they, but LOOK they did’ plot line.
I’ve begged the wider staff at AWOL to share their isolation faves with me, and now I’ve decided to share it with all of you. Please enjoy.
Channel Zero
I have been rewatching all three seasons of ‘Channel Zero’, an excellent horror series based on ‘creepypasta’ stories — those unnerving urban myths that do the rounds on internet message boards.
The first season is probably my favourite. At first glance, it seems like a regular mystery, as a man returns home to the sleepy and gray town in which he was raised to discover some murderous shenanigans going on. And then, at the end of the second episode, out of nowhere, a man made of teeth emerges from a garden. Human teeth! What more could anybody want from television?”
– Joe
Find it on: Amazon Prime
Kim’s Convenience
I’ve just discovered the Canadian comedy show, Kim’s Convenience. It follows a South Korean family living in Toronto who own a convenience store and it’s honestly laugh-out-loud good, without having to lean on any stereotypes. All four seasons are on Netflix now, so do yourself a favour.
– Kassia
Find it on: Netflix
Hollowmen & Utopia
For some reason that I can’t remember now, I decided to rewatch ‘Hollowmen’, the 2008 ABC comedy show about the federal government’s hapless central policy unit.
Written by the same folks behind The Panel and Frontline, it’s excellent iso-watching: rib-crackingly funny, clever, and conveniently far removed from our current day hell.
In the same vein, I’ve recently moved onto Utopia, a newer ABC comedy series also by Working Dog Productions — it’s delightfully infuriation, and according to a couple of friends that work in the public service, disturbingly accurate.
– Jules
Find it on: ABC iView
RuPaul’s Drag Race
“It is a really good time to start watching Drag Race. And there’s a LOT of it going on at the moment… I’m currently watching season 6, concurrently with season 12. It’s weird jumping back and forth through time, getting excited about massive pop-culture events that happened a decade ago.
But good lord, it is so much fun. And it lives in such a carefully constructed bubble, defined by its own rules and language and culture and even celebrities ( I have no idea who half the guest judges are), that its perfect watching for isolation, because it doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of TV has for me at the moment, of being either too cheerfully ignorant of the state of the world, or reminding me too fondly of all the things I miss.”
– Patrick (read his full review here)
Find it on: Stan
Revenge
Instead of starting anything new in iso, I’ve turned to the comfort of rewatching things I remember were good. One of those shows is ‘Revenge’ — the drama about Emily Thorne, aka Amanda Clarke, and her journey to avenge her father’s death by terrorising rich people in the Hamptons.
Like anything good, the last two seasons get pretty far-fetched but those first two seasons? Top tier television, honestly. Fake deaths, sham marriages and pregnancies, too much money for any one human to own, and four 40-minute, 20+ episode seasons? It’s really is the perfect self-iso series to get stuck into.
– Michelle
Find it on: Stan
The Mandalorian
I signed up to Disney+ months ago purely to watch The Mandalorian (yes, I’m a giant Star Wars nerd), then got so distracted by all the films I forgot were Disney (plus every Pixar film ever) that it wasn’t until last weekend that I remembered my whole purpose there.
I have now binged the entire series and yes, it’s as good as they say, and Baby Yoda is still a boss.
– Kassia
Find it on: Disney+
Sunderland ‘Til I Die
During isolation my sharehouse has become obsessed with sporting documentaries. Our favourite of which has been Sunderland ‘Til I Die, which is about a beloved, but not very good, football team in the North East of England.
This show is all about the passion of the working class fans in Sunderland. For better or worse, everything that happens to the team has a profound impact on the lives of the people that live there – even the local pastor’s sermons are about football. Plus the accents are incredible.
– Chloe
Find it on: Netflix
Fast & The Furious
I wish I could say I’ve been watching something intellectual, but the truth is I’ve been watching Vin Diesel’s worst movies (just kidding, they’re all bad) with my friends over Zoom.
They’re awful, but truly escapist. Want to forget about a global pandemic? Watch all eight Fast & Furious movies plus that one spinoff with The Rock and Jason Statham.
Watch Vin Diesel as a robot soldier in a movie called Bloodshot that has roughly three plot points that the writers obviously forgot about halfway through.
In my experience, it’s impossible to be stressed about literally anything when you’re vibing to Vin Diesel.
– Alana
Find it on: Netflix
(Lead Image: Pexels / Vlada Karpovich)
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