Be Excellent To Each Other

As the revived West Wing thread has shown, some of us still haven't watched that much-talked about fast-talking show. So what other gaps in your cultural life are you ashamed to 'fess up to? Or perhaps stuff you've come to late?

Me?

I've never watched Hamlet, either on stage, on film, or on TV (apparently The Lion King is not an acceptable substitute). I've only watched one opera on stage, and usually change the radio station when one comes on. I only recently listened to the Beatles' Abbey Road and Revolver all the way through, and the stereo mix on the latter is agonisingly painful. I've never been to Alton Towers, Disneyworld, or Blackpool. And other than stage musicals about US history, hip-hop is completely unknown territory for me.

Certainly plenty of gaps for me:

- Not seen any of The West Wing, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, The Wire, Arrested Development, Stranger Things, Seinfeld and probably lots of other highly-rated stuff
- Still lots of film gaps like the Jurassic Park films, Top Gun, Godfather films, Forrest Gump and many others
- Books would be my biggest gap. Since leaving school, I've probably read fewer than ten books and a couple of those would have been gambling self-help books.
- Also never seen Hamlet. I think school put me off Shakespeare as a whole.

Watch Throne of Blood instead. It's much better. Personally I have a great dislike of Shakespeare Stevens.

I've not watched Schindler's List.

It’s not Christmas until you hear him singing on a shop sound system, though. Well, when shops were a thing.

Not watched West wing or any of the godfather films.

I've never seen Hollyoaks or Love Island.

Philistine.

I do quite well filling in the gaps in Kern's list, above, so perhaps I am some kind of anti-Kern. We have met, though, without destruction. (Only one opera, but it was in Venice on a snowy day, so I am happy to leave it at that.)

This thread does a great job in showing that you're unlikely to get through even the 'greats' in all areas. For me, the things I'd like to see and never have are Twin Peaks, The Wire, West Wing and maybe The Sopranos. Loads of other things, I'm sure, but I'd like to read most of Dickens' books and still have some to go. Not entirely sure which ones.

I don’t follow any sport.

I've tried and failed to get into a "Tale of Two Cities" several times. Never even started any others as a result ("Christmas Carol" notwithstanding).

OMG. It is just fabulous, too - really worth it if you can get into it. I've a feeling it takes a long while before you do, but the pay-off, I thought, was fantastic. One of his best, though, so if that one doesn't float your boat, you can definitely leave the others.

I've not seen The Green Mile, Forest Gump or Die Hard 2.

I have never watch godfather film.

With a few exceptions where Gaz has 'forced' me to watch something (Breaking Bad, Heroes) I've not seen any of the major / "talked about" TV series.

Never have I seen The Human Centipede.

It's a lot of the big blockbusters that I seem to have missed:

Independence Day
Jurassic Park
Titanic
Fast & Furiouses
Lion King

I'd genuinely like to see the first two, don't know why I haven't remedied that yet.

Let's see...

I have never seen The Sopranos, Peaky Blinders or The Wire and have no desire to.

I've never watched a play on stage (except one in school called the The King Of Ireland's Son that was so bad that I reckon it's put me off for life)

I've read very few 'classic' books, with the notable exceptions being the ones that I read in school. To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre (kill me now) and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.

I have a movie cultural blackspot around the 70s as I grew up watching older matinee type films with my mum and obviously watched the new stuff from the 80s onward, but a lot of 70s classics are lost on me. The Godfather bored me to tears, Bullit and The French Connection are tedious in the extreme. Only Dirty Harry makes it through my flair filter untouched. Guess he was feeling lucky after all!

You should find time for Titantic as well. If you can look beyond the cheesy love story, it's still a stunning disaster movie. I won't spoil the end for you, natch.



The ship sinks. Sorry

Because you were at the front?

All of those films are worth your time.

My life is one big cultural gap. It's easier to list what I have watched/read than what I haven't.

I did watch the whole of Breaking Bad, though I didn't enjoy all of it. I watched season 1 of "24," and had started on season 2 when I realised I wanted to give certain characters a good slap, so gave up in it. I watched all of Homeland and though it lost its way a bit in the middle, on the whole I enjoyed it. Heroes started well and then went downhill after season 1. The launch show for season 3, which I assume was supposed to whet people's appetite after it's ratings had gone down, was painful to watch. So much self congratulation and hype which only made season 3 not live up to expectations even more.

I occasionally watched Friends in the early seasons and I watched a lot of The Big Bang Theory when I was working away from home and staying in hotels week after week.

Generally, I find I'm not minded to watch a lot of US TV when I see trailers for new stuff. I've tried watching a few, but I rarely get through the pilot episodes, e.g. Lost, Lucifer. I watched quite a few Scandinavian series, e.g. Wallander, The Bridge, The Killing, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

In terms of books, I've found some so-called classics to be dross, e.g. 100 Years of Solitude, and Jack Kerouac's "On the road," but I've read LOTR and The Hobbit several times and will do so again, but The Silmarillion wasn't what I expected, so didn't complete it.

Shakespeare. Total waste of time to read. If I have to have companion notes to understand what's going on, I'm not going to bother. I quite liked Kenneth Brannagh's film of Much Ado About Nowt which I watched almost by mistake. Haven't read any Dickens since the 70's at school, but at least I understood the plots.

I read The Dice Man as a recommended book when we had a reading club at my old civil service office and absolutely hated it, probably because the lives of everyone in the book who got caught up in it found their life turned to shit. I think I was expecting a comedy.

And as many of you know, I don't play console games, which is probably why I come last on the Beex Quiz most weeks. I used to play, years ago, when we bought consoles for the kids and when they had an Atari ST, Elite being my favourite. We played a few Wii Sports Resort games with my granddaughter when she was younger, but she seems to have lost interest now, it's Roblox she plays on her phone these days. I could easily get addicted to console games I'm sure, if I had the time, but I've managed to resist the temptation so far.

I've never seen Firefly.

Hi! Did I miss any... Oh...

It’s ok

Today is a busy day.

At the risk of the banhammer too, if the Fast & Furious films are as bad as Hobbs & Shaw was, I'll quite happily not bother with them.

Also - not seen/read LOTR or Harry Potter.

Watching H&S without watching F&F first would actually leave you with some questions about WTF is going on, to be fair.
There's simply no way you could describe them as works of art, but they're all enjoyable in a bad way.

I also have not seen Firefly. If it's as bad as Buffy I never will.

Can't stand most visual noise films like racey car shouty bald mens, robots hit each other for aaaaaages, or ducking Tom Cruise explosions guns ratatattat.

I saw someone describe them as cartoons, so I just imagine the films as an extension of Pole Position.

I can stand them but I have to be in the mood for them. We watched John Wick Chapter 2 yesterday because I hadn't got anything else recorded that Mrs. W and I both wanted to watch, so we watched JW2 not really knowing what to expect. (We'd watched Nurse on Wheels before John Wick; I'd say it's probably not possible to watch two other films more at opposite ends of the spectrum.) I didn't realise it WAS chapter 2 until I twigged that there were references to events that we hadn't seen. And we haven't seen any of the others. A death count of 128, apparently. I guess we'll watch the others when they pop up.

I don't understand and have no real desire to engage with 90% of Gen Z culture. It is like they have everything dialled to 11. They are also either extremely lovely and mental health aware, or they absolutely demolish your self worth with a meme.

I've never watched any of the Bridget Jones'ssess or TOWIE or the Real Housewives stuff. I did watch The Real World: San Francisco so I feel like that covered my scripted reality show bases, and I have been subjected to other Richard Curtis movies so I can probably figure out the general premise from that.

I'm quite pop culture I guess and I don't really care, I like what I like and that seems to be a little bit of mainstream everything.

Reality shows, on the whole, can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.

I bet TV company execs can't believe their good fortune that the proles lap this trash up, no matter how puerile it is, and earn them unimaginable piles of dosh.

I've never seen The Godfather or its sequels.

Up until earlier this year I'd only seen the first LOTR film.

I rarely watch TV so most of the "big name" TV shows I've not seen. No Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, West Wing, Parks and Rec, Community etc.

Oh gosh, yes. My lovely cousin was on series 3 of The Apprentice, and that's the last reality TV I watched, I think.

Theresa whole load of stuff I haven’t watched (Star Wars type stuff, any of the marvel films, Star Trek, Buffy, etc, but none of it is anything I *want* to watch, so I don’t know they’re cultural gaps as such. Things like Buffy, Star Wars seems to have had it’s day a long time ago now, and clips I’ve seen suggest it isn’t actually good but rather just remembered fondly because of nostalgia.

I’ve seen a lot of live theatre, dance, etc but all before I was 22. I have never seen or read Macbeth, though.

Criticising Buffy? That's a banhammering

I've not listened to any German thrash albums.

I stopped watching anime circa Perfect Blue because everything was suddenly 300+ episode serieseses instead. (apart from Ghibli, natch)

I've not seen any of the Universal Monsters horrrrrrorrrrr flimums. Althought with the amount of clips I've seen it feels like I have.

Never seen any giallo films.

Never been to the theatrtetre.

probably more as my brain percolates..

Mo, not criticising at all. I can imagine it was really great in its day and would for many be great to RE watch, but if you have no nostalgia going for it, I reckon it’s a lot harder to fall in love with now that it’s been dulled by time and it’s work on already dodgy effects, etc.

Same.

Oh yeah, same.

The Godfather isn't very popular is it as I haven't seen any of them either.

I’m still fond of it but it’s definitely a product of its time: it looks dated and has problematic elements by today’s standards.

is this not also a bit of an age thing? I am old
Ive seen all of the Godfathers, and all of Buffy - some more then once - and some of Angel and and Twin Peaks and X-files and a load of Marvel and all of Star Wars and all of Star Trek except the Scott bakula one and Firefly and Heroes and LOTR and HP and god knows what else
I can't stand cruelty and particularly war so I have certainly missed some classics there like I've not seen Schindlers list and I never will
I have no interest in fast and furioussses and a load of other loud ones, but I happily watched some other Michael Bay shooty blowy uppy thing the other day and I am fond of some of the blockbusters like Independence Day and Armageddon - never watched Titanic because it feels like one big eyeroll to me, but maybe I'm selling it short
I never watch any reality stuff so I've missed all that
I've been to one or two plays because I wanted to and to opera and recitals because of my mother and to some musicals and ballet because I wanted to and to the Reduced Shakespeare company so I count that as all of Shakespeare
I love reading, so I've read a load of the classics of Dutch and English and some German - but I'm sure as much as I've read there are glaring holes in there no doubt - I realised from someone above that I think I have hardly read any American stuff and oh I could not get through Ulysses, it's rare that I don't finish a book (my brain wont let me), but that one, and a Dutch one called Max Havelaar I just could not make myself finish
edit: no sports live ever and only very little on tv

Schindler's List. I've never seen that either.

I’ve never played any of the 2D Metroid games.

And I’ve even got Super Metroid.

It's been on my Netflix list for ages, but every time I see it on the list I just think.. 'Nah, another time'

It's obviously pretty grim but not gratuitously so. However, it's also a really good film, some great performances and Spielberg at the top of his game.