2023 in Review: Entertainment

TV shows & movies #

Ahh, unwinding. After the day was over (sometimes that was at around 19:00 o’clock, sometimes 22:00) I usually felt so mentally exhausted that all I could do was household chores and then some good old telly. 2023 was quite an OK year in that sense, not that I watched that much stuff but most of it I really felt was worth my time. I remember starting the year with:

Apple TV+ (which has really stepped up it’s game from the Carpool Karaoke days) #

• Shrinking, season one: ridiculously good dramaish comedy about a couple of shrinks. This show made me both laugh and cry. Features Harrison Ford, who just totally steals the show. Features one heck of a cliffhanger ending that has me waiting for season two on the edge of my seat!
• Slow Horses, seasons one and two: such a ★★★★★ spy thriller show. I hear season three has also just finished, so might jump on it as I just ended our subscription to Disney+. Which leads me to…

Disney+ #

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Catnip for an eighties kid like myself! Maybe not the greatest in the series, but not the worst either.
• Andor, season one: Ahhh, Andor! The show everyone was talking about in 2022! As per usual, I’m late to the party, but hey it’s a good show, still very much worth anyone’s time. It’s a bit different from the fluffy Star Wars one might be used to, more gritty and nuanced.
• Ahsoka, season one: Talk about fluffy Star Wars! Some real nostalgy-inducing star ship shots in this one.
• The Book of Boba Fett, season one: As I started to watch season three of the Mandalorian, I realized things that had happened between seasons two and three were part of this show. It was….OK. Not that I really long for season two, but I don’t have any regrets spending the time watching this one either. The weakest one of the SW shows I watched in 2023.
• The Mandalorian, season three: Weeeeelllllll… it was Mando alright! Maybe the flirting with western action has got a bit tiresome for me. Don’t get me wrong, still a solid show, but cannot really say I’m excited for season four.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi, season one: A fun little backstory filling in the details about old Ben (even though the show was totally stolen by the adorable little princess Leia as portrayed by Vivien Lyra Blair). Also, who doesn’t just love Ewan McGregor?
• Light & Magic: A documentary about Industrial Light and Magic. This was the perfect show to watch while being under the weather, falling asleep and then waking up and not having had missed anything crucial. Interesting bits and bops about how we are where we are today with special effects. So much to thank George Lucas for, for pushing what’s possible and believing in computers.

Other outlets #

• Top Gun 2: This was a long time coming for me. I missed the theatres thanks to being so scared of COVID germs, but in 2023 I finally got to watch this from the comfort of our own sofa. It was a solid action movie, well worth the time!
• Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Missed both of these! Need to rectify the situation ASAP.
• YouTube Premium: And last, the ultimate time sink: YouTube Premium. I gave it my little finger thinking “well, I do watch some YT on my phone where I cannot really do any adblocking, and I would get a music service included in the same subscription”. It totally has swallowed the whole hand, no way I’m ever going to go back to ad-ridden YouTube as pretty much all adblockers have gone down the drain too. Now I know I should just stop the sub and use the ad version just to knock down my addiction, buuuuut… maybe after this month? Or the next?

Music #

Nothing to report here and that is so sad. There seems to be no room for listening to music in my life anymore. Would love to change this, but always when I’m alone and would be able to listen to some tunes my brain goes “No! Podcasts instead!”.

Gaming #

2023 was a weird year in gaming. Major blockbusters such as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 were shadowed by big layoffs in many studios. Not a lot of gaming hours clocked in 2023, here’s what I can remember from the top off my head:

• Fortnite: the go-to game of my go-to gaming crew. For me Fortnite is more a vessel for hanging out and catching up with friends, rather than playing for the sake of playing it. But it certainly does not hurt that the game seems to play quite nice, rarely have any technical hiccups and gets refreshed content quite often.
• Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: I love Zelda. But mostly the 2D ones (Link’s Awakening and and A Link Between Worlds are two of my all time favorite games). I really tried to like both TotK and BotW, but… I’m just not cut for them. Too much openness tends to just overwhelm me, I need guide rails and/or a good story to follow! (Also the weapons breaking, gosh darn it :D Although the fusing mechanic in TotK was quite a clever solution to the problem.)
• Super Mario Wonder: I think this was one of the only games I actually finished in 2023 (the other being Metroid Fusion). I really really liked this one. The only way it could’ve been better would’ve maybe been better boss fights, now they were quite same-same and the final one was a breeze, but those are minor gripes as the main thing in the game are the overly clever levels and wonder flower effects. Still cannot believe how each and every level had it’s own reason for existing. All that said, still waiting for the next 3D installation. Strange, it seems I like my Zeldas two dimensional, but Marios in 3D?
• Guessthe.game: I guess it's a game? It has become a daily routine for me and my friends, it's a simple online game where you have to guess a game based on screenshots that reveal more and more until the sixth and final clue is usually a video of the game. Addicting and fun.

I also bought a Steam Deck, mostly for emulation stuff for the rinky-dink retro-gaming podcast of ours, but cannot really say it got too much use. Here’s hoping for a better 2024 in this regard!

Podcasting #

So as a big podcast consumer and a proud host of not one but two podcasts, one would assume that we would’ve published many many episodes last year? Nope. The truth is we published…four. Two for Webbidevaus and two for Retropelipodcast. That sucks and I’d love to turn this around, but it does not look like that in the near future unfortunately.

As for what comes to listening to other podcasts, here’s my priority list and I heartily recommend them all:

• Shoptalk Show, a long-running show about frontend web dev for the most part. Been listening from the start and still digging it.
• Accidental Tech Podcast, an Apple-centric weekly show with sometimes a bit too long episodes but it’s all fun nonetheless.
• Thinking Elixir, a podcast about the Elixir ecosystem. The hosts have a lot of fun doing the podcast and it shows! Many fantastic interviews and an excellent news segment in every episode that keeps me up-to-date on what’s happening.
• New Game Plus, a retro gaming podcast where three guys spend seven days playing one old game. Found this one just this year and been bingeing the back catalogue. The hosts have an incredible chemistry.

Reading #

Welp. No comments. Should probably give my Kindle a charge and see if it still boots up...

Posted in #recap #tv #gaming