Category: Television

It’s been a few months since I’ve recommended a new show to watch but that’s just because nothing new really came out that I really liked until just recently. Here are two shows that I think you should watch:

Swagger
This is currently my favorite show streaming on TV right now. It’s a new series by basketball player Kevin Durant that is inspired by his experience playing basketball as a youth. It’s a sports drama and you don’t really have to be into basketball to watch it. It’s an easy show to pick up and watch and there’s tons of great acting with a pretty great soundtrack to go with it as well. The first season still hasn’t finished and the show’s timeline takes place in 2019/2020 so it touches on the various important issues that took place in the US last year including black lives matter and the pandemic. It only has a 6.6 on IMDB for some reason but really ignore that since it’s really great. The show is streaming on AppleTV+.

Cowboy Bebop
This is probably gonna be a controversial one but I really liked Cowboy Bebop. In my defense, I never watched the original Manga series and so I didn’t have any preconceptions or expectations going into this. There is nothing like Cowboy Bebop, it’s a sci-fi series that feels like the 70s which is a very odd combination. So you have old 70s cars for example on the planets, but you also have space travel and all this futuristic technology yet they all look very old school. From the very first scene of the first episode, the show was fun to watch and it really disappointing that it got canceled after just the first season.

Skip: La Brea, probably the worst TV show I ever watched. It was total garbage and none of it made any sense. I have no idea how it managed to score a 5.6 on IMDB. Invasion, this show had potential but didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t very exciting and didn’t make me want to watch it. Too loud to be background TV as well.

For the first time in the Middle East, six writers from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will have the opportunity to turn their dream project into an Arabic-language TV show. The National Creative Industries Group (NCIG) in partnership with Netflix have created an intensive program designed to incubate six creators to turn their TV series ideas into pitch decks ready to present to Netflix in six weeks.

If you have a TV series idea you think would be great for Netflix, submissions to apply for this program opens tomorrow (November 1st).

Selected participants will receive:⁣
– Mentoring and masterclasses led by best-in-class industry professionals⁣
– Sessions with the Netflix development team⁣
– Training and certification by the world-renowned New York Film Academy⁣
– The opportunity to pitch final projects to the Netflix team⁣
– For Saudi-based participants, all travel and accommodation in Kuwait will be covered⁣
⁣
For more information, click here.

Note: This is open to people residing in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, expats included.

Foundation just came out last week it’s so good! If you’re into sci-fi and are looking for a new epic series to watch, get AppleTV+ and start watching Foundation, only two episodes are out and a new one will be released every week so you can catch up pretty quickly.

If you don’t know how to get AppleTV+ working, I pay for the service with Apple Store cards I buy from Xcite and I use SmartDNS to trick AppleTV into thinking I’m in the US (Same for Hulu, HBO etc.).

This is some completely random info to wake up to but I just found out that Freddie Highmore, the star of the popular TV series Bates Motel and The Good Doctor at one point was living in Kuwait and interning at Gulf Bank. I thought the info was made up but it’s mentioned on IMDB in the trivia section and there is a photo of him at Slider Station.

If you don’t know Freddie as an adult then you might recognize him as Charlie from Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as playing Peter in Finding Neverland.

Mind blown!

Thanks forzaq8

If you have Netflix and are feeling nostalgic, the popular and hilarious Kuwaiti play Bye Bye London is available on the platform to watch. Link

It looks like it’s been there for a year now but didn’t really notice until someone pointed it out. The quality of the video is the best I’ve come across yet and it even has English subtitles.

Searching for “Kuwait” on Netflix brings up some other local shows and movies but the only other one I recognized is Back to the Future inspired movie, Back to Q82.

Thanks Nidal

Since we have a few days off for Eid I thought I would share a new list of shows you could binge-watch. If you want to know how to stream HBO, Hulu, and Disney+, check out my old post on this subject here.

Sweet Tooth
I’m a sucker for anything that involves a post-apocalyptic world so when I watched the trailer for Sweet Tooth I knew I had to watch it. Sweet Tooth takes place in a world that has collapsed due to a deadly virus leading to the rise of human-animal hybrids. The show felt like one big adventure and never got boring with the only negative really being the fact there are just 8 episodes. If you have Netflix check it out.

Clarksons Farm
Jeremy Clarkson is best known for his car shows Top Gear and The Grand Tour but you don’t need to be into cars to enjoy this show. I actually found it much more entertaining than anything else Jeremy has done, it’s a very chill and funny show so I really hope he’ll film a second season. This one is available to watch on Amazon Video.

Mare of Eastown
A crime drama that revolves around a murder that takes place in a small town. The show keeps you guessing who the murderer is till the very end and since it’s just 7 episodes long, it’s a quick watch. Not as good as The Killing but I mean nothing really is. This show is available on HBO Max.

Shadow and Bone
I’m generally not into fantasy worlds but the trailer for Shadow and Bone caught my attention and then the show just grabbed me from the very start. It’s also a short series with just 8 episodes so you’ll be able to finish the first season in a day or two. This one is on Netflix.

Bonus: Not a TV show but if you’re looking for a movie to watch I thought the Dinsey film Cruella was surprisingly great and fun to watch. I rented the movie on Disney+ but I think you could rent it on Amazon Video and YouTube as well. I also watched Chris Pratt’s new Amazon Original movie called The Tomorrow War. It was ok I guess, I wouldn’t pay to watch it but it’s free if you have Amazon Video.

A few years ago I scanned and uploaded a Kuwait TV Guide issue from back in 1989. Back then we didn’t have satellite channels just regular UHF and VHF stations with the English one being KTV2. If the weather was humid, we used to get Saudi Channel 2 and Dubai Channel 33 sometimes but we mostly survived on KTV2 and video rentals.

But after the 1990 invasion, we started to get access to satellite television. I remember we had around 8 satellite channels with the main English one being Star Plus. A few weeks ago I found a 1994 and 1995 copy of the TV Guide and I decided I’d scan the 1994 one. It’s got the KTV2 guide as well as Star Plus, Prime Sports, Zee TV, Star TV Music and the CNN and BBC guide. I also added a bonus Showbiz ad that was in the Arabic section.

If you want to flip through the PDF or download it then click here.

At the start of the curfew, I asked for some shows to watch since I had pretty much watched everything already. I got a bunch of suggestions and some turned out to be really great, so here are some more recommendations for you to watch:

New Amsterdam
This show is so cheesy but there are over 50 episodes and although it’s so not my style, I couldn’t stop watching it. It’s like driving by a car wreck on the highway, binge-watched the show over a two-week period non-stop so it helped kill a lot of time. There are two seasons out on Netflix and season 3 recently started on Hulu.

The Terror
Two seasons, two different stories. I loved season 1 but couldn’t get past the first episode of season 2. Season 1 on the other hand grabbed my attention from the very first episode. It’s very different from the usual stuff I watch and based in a time period I’m usually not a fan of so the whole thing was a bit refreshing. It’s a horror but has more of an amazing stories kind of vibe. Highly recommend it, available on Hulu.

Industry
While working on this post I realized none of the shows here have good trailers, Industry included. This is a show about young traders at a UK bank and if I just went off the trailer above I would have thought it was actually boring or lame. It wasn’t. It’s very different from other trading shows like Billions or Black Monday, but that’s mostly because it’s British so it’s a lot calmer and less dramatic. Only one season is out and it’s available on HBO.

Your Honor
I was close to not adding this show to the list only because I really really hated the way it ended. But up till the ending, this show was so good and stars both Bryan Cranston and Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire) so really incredible acting. This show is on Showtime.

The Big Flower Fight
I thought I posted about this series but just searched the blog and turns out I haven’t. If you like shows like The Great British Bake Off then you’ll like this show since it’s got a very similar structure, style and mood. It’s on Netflix.

The Great Pottery Throw Down
Similar to The Big Flower Fight and The Great British Bake Off, a bunch of amateur potters compete to become the top potter. It’s also a British show so it’s slow-paced, calm and very chill to watch. It’s available on HBO.

Blown Away
Ok one more show similar to the two above except this one is about glass blowers competing against each other. Unlike the other two this one is an American show so it’s much more fast-paced and intense but it was also fun to watch and really interesting. This one is on Netflix.

At the start of the curfew, one of the things I did was sign up to Discovery+. Since I watch so much TV I had pretty much already gone through all the content I wanted to watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Disney and AppleTV+. Desperately needing new content to watch I found out about Discovery+ which at just $4.99 a month (with ads) seemed like a good deal. Two weeks in and I love it!

Discovery+ is the perfect background TV content with tons of great shows (the above is my list). The subscription gives you access to content from A&E, History Channel, Food Network, HGTV, Discovery, TLC, and more. If you’re a fan of House Hunters like me then you get access to all variations of the show in addition to a House Hunters channel that is live and just plays one episode of House Hunters after another… indefinitely. Thanks to Discovery+ I now know living on an island or in the Alaskan wilderness is not for me.

If you want to access Discovery+ you need to use a VPN or what I recommend, a SmartDNS service. I also purchased the subscription through the US Apple Store so no US credit card needed. If you want to sign up start off with the $4.99 membership and if you like the service and want an ad-free experience, you can then upgrade (it’s $6.99 a month). That’s what I did and I think it’s worth it.

Since my Arabic Cartoons from the 80s list did so well I wanted to put together a thorough 80s English Cartoons list. The whole weekend whenever I remembered any cartoon I wrote it down but it still feels like I’ve missed some. But the search did remind me of two very important TV channels growing up. Before satellite TV we only had access to Kuwait TV channels (KTV1 – Arabic, and KTV2 – English) but sometimes when the weather was humid we would pick up Saudi Channel 2 (English) and Dubai Channel 33 (also English).

Anyway here are some of the most memorable cartoons I used to watch in the 80s, if I’ve missed out anything let me know.

Alvin and the Chipmunks
Bionic Six
BraveStarr
Captain Planet
Care Bears
Centurions
Chip N Dale
Dangermouse
Dennis the Menace
Denver the Last Dinosaur
Dinosaucers
Duck Tales
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
G.I Joe
Gummi Bears
He-Man
Inspector Gadget
M.A.S.K
Mister T
Pole Position
Popeye And Son
Rainbow Brite
Scooby-Doo And Scrappy-Doo
She-Ra: Princess of Power
Silver Hawks
Speed Racer
Snorks
Tale Spin
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
The Real Ghostbusters
Thunder Cats
Transformers
Voltron
Yogi Bear

Is Netflix about to add a ton of old 80s Arabic cartoons? I hope so because they recently added one of my favorite childhood cartoons, Flona (فلونة). Currently, the only way to watch old cartoons from the 80s is on YouTube and a lot of the episodes are missing and it’s not really practical to binge-watch a series there. If Netflix is gonna start adding these cartoons then I’m suddenly going to have so much content to watch. Here are some of the Arabic cartoons I’d like to see on Netflix (please feel free to mention any Arabic cartoon I missed):

Abtal Al Mala3eb
Al Hadaf
Al Laith Al Abyad
Al Nimir Al Moukana3
Al Rajol Al Hadidi
Amira Yakout
Bell wa Sebastian
Bombo
Captain Majed
Flona
Ghawasa Al Sarka2
Grendizer
Heidi
Jazora 
Jongar
Khomasi
Kimba 
Mazinger
Moghamarat Neils
Nahoul Bashar
Raad Al Emlaq
Sanshiro
Shanakel 
Sindibad
Sinan
Sport Billy
Smurfs
Zeina

If you want to check out Flona, it’s listed in its English name on Netflix Kuwait, The Swiss Family Robinson.

If you’re looking for a new series to watch this weekend, below is a list of some shows I just recently watched.

What We Do in the Shadows
Based on the 2014 movie with the same name, What We Do in the Shadows is a comedy that came out last year on Hulu. If you’re a fan of mockumentaries like The Office and Parks & Recreation then you’re going to love this show. What We Do in the Shadows follows the lives of three vampires who’ve lived together for over 100 years, on Staten Island, in New York. It’s the funniest and dumbest thing ever, I highly recommend it.

Tehran
I started watching this series with low expectations because my friend undersold it to me but it turned out to be really enjoyable to watch. I think I binge-watched the whole season over two or three days. The show focuses on the conflict between Israel and Iran with an interesting storyline involving Mossad agents living in Iran trying to infiltrate it from the inside. If you were a fan of Homeland then this is for you. Tehran is available on AppleTV+.

The Queen’s Gambit
You’ve probably heard about this show since everyone has been talking about it for the past couple of weeks. The Queen’s Gambit is a mini-series that recently came out on Netflix and is about a young orphan girl who discovers and masters the game of chess. I really liked the show but this one I think was actually overhyped. The way everyone has been talking about the show led me to believe it’s the best thing to come out this year but it’s not. It’s fun to watch, but it’s not the best thing ever.

Ted Lasso
This was another show I think was overhyped. Ted Lasso originally started as a character in a 2013 NBC Sports promo and now turned into a proper TV series. Ted Lasso is an American football coach who is hired to coach a professional soccer team in England. Ted has never played soccer in his life, nor does he know the rules so it’s pretty funny watching him get to grips. But, that quickly wore off for me after a few episodes and honestly, the series trailer and the original NBC Sports promo show the funniest bits. Ted Lasso is available to watch on AppleTV+.

It’s getting harder to find shows to watch since I’ve basically watched everything on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon video but thankfully, there are still new shows coming out all the time. Here are some recent ones I’ve watched:

Cobra Kai
If you’re an 80s kid you’re going to love this. Cobra Kai is a TV series that is a sequel to the original movie starring both Ralph Macchio (karate kid) and William Zabka (the kid he fought). It’s a series that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is pretty funny at times especially how they keep making the karate kid look like a bully in the original film and Zabka the victim. This series recently became available on Netflix but has been out for two years (it was a YouTube Original) and so there are two seasons to watch.

Euphoria
I had been putting this series off for some time because I thought it was going to be very teenagery but wow, what an incredible series. I think this might be one of my favorite shows I’ve watched this year. The story, the art direction, the music, the cast, everything about it is just so amazing. Euphoria follows around a bunch of young high school girls who are all friends showing us their different stories. It’s dark, it’s shocking, it’s controversial and it’s really entertaining. If like me you’re a fan of Sex and the City and the series Girls, then you’re going to love this. Euphoria does to Girls what Girls did to Sex and the City. I highly recommend this show, I binge-watched it over a weekend and it’s definitely a must-watch. Euphoria is on HBO.

Raised by Wolves
I just finished watching this series last night and I have mixed feelings about it. The show started off great and interesting, but then past the halfway point, I started losing interest. I was then hoping things would turnaround towards the end of the season but it just didn’t do it for me. I know a lot of people loved it and it scored pretty high on IMDB so I don’t know, maybe its because one of the main characters played by Travis Fimmel (Ragnar from Vikings) started getting on my nerves the same way he started pissing me off in Vikings, or it could be because I wanted the show tp head one direction (more adventure) but it took another (more philosophical?). If you’ve run out of things to watch then I’d watch this, it’s also on HBO.

Nat Geo will be premiering a 20-minute film on the Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre tonight called “Kuwait Culture”. Here is the synopsis:

The 20-minute film entitled “Kuwait Culture” explores the various aspects and features of the colossal project, envisioned as a beacon of art, creative and scientific thinking in Kuwait. Spread over an 18-hectare site, it encompasses 6 museums including the museum of Natural History, Science & Technology, Fine Arts & Theatre, Museum of Islamic History and the Space Museum, all tied together by a central street, a covered thoroughfare forming ASCC’s spine shaped like human DNA. The new National Geographic Abu Dhabi film gives audiences a rare glimpse into the massive and complex task of building the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre, which started in 2016, and involved over 3,000 suppliers from different companies working together to deliver the mammoth project on time.

I don’t have Nat Geo so hopefully they’ll publish the film online after it airs. If you do have Nat Geo, the film premiers tonight at 7PM (Kuwait time):

Premier: Monday 21 September 2020 at 7:00PM
Repeat: Tuesday 22 September 2020 at 8:00AM
Repeat: Tuesday 22 September 2020 at 2:00PM

Here is the link to the documentary on the Nat Geo website.

The 1992 IMAX documentary ‘Fires of Kuwait‘ is now available on Hulu to watch. The film is a testimony to the remarkable resourcefulness and heroism of the men and women who extinguished and controlled over 600 burning and gushing oil wells sabotaged by retreating Iraqi troops in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The movie was frequently showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater but I never got the chance to watch it. But, Hulu recently partnered up with IMAX to exclusively carry 16 of their movies one of which is Fires of Kuwait so I’m finally gonna get around to watching it.

If you have Hulu and haven’t had the chance to watch the film, here is the link. If you don’t have Hulu but want to know how to get it to work in Kuwait then click here.

Thanks Eddy