Yeah this is just like that but instead of depressing and terrible it's happy and good

Designated Survivor is yet another politics show that gives fantasy solutions to real-world problems, and I found it funny that the show's solution to "fake news" was for the main character to announce that he was going to censor the internet and then he was cheered for this by a bunch of millennials, so if nothing else the show makes no bones about how its writing room is full of aging and reactionary white men, a fact that still escapes the many fans of The West Wing.
Telling the story of Keifer Sutherland's drastic miscasting, Designated Survivor followed the last surviving member of the American government after the rest were killed off by terrorism in a plot setup that likely sounds very familiar to the many fans of King Ralph, but after two seasons, even ABC decided it could do better and canned the show only for it to be picked up by Netflix, who apparently have more money than sense now.  The Netflix-exclusive third season of the show is... surprisingly good.
I mean, it's still utter fluff, of course, there's no chance of it suddenly becoming The Wire at this stage, but there's some interesting things done with the idea of corruption in high office that I haven't seen in other shows, like a direct equivalence being drawn between political and moral compromise, and while he seemed like the last person who should be playing the part in seasons 1 and 2, here Sutherland's air of menace actually helps sell the idea of a man willing to compromise himself to retain power.  He played so toothless and guile-free a character up until now that his turn to the dark side actually carries a bit of weight, and I was surprised after watching one of the earlier episodes to find myself genuinely disappointed in an unconvincing fictional character for the decision they made.  The politics still straw-mans a lot of issues, and socialist ideas are obviously verboten in an American show, but I liked that many of the show's "no easy answers" cop-outs were for once at the expense of characters until now portrayed as Mary Sues*, and that copping out with the kind of resolution you'd expect to see in any US drama is actually something which damages the characters in the eyes of the audience.
Lots of effing and blinding in this season, too - there's one pre-credits sequence that's just Keifer Sutherland taking a dump while doing a Rubiks Cube and then giving up saying "these things are fucking impossible."  More money than sense, I tells you.



* Yes I said Mary Sues uncritically - it doesn't stop being a legitimate critical term just because some Star Wars fans want it removed from the lexicon after internet man-babies used it poorly.

You and I need to be alone in the woods so I can download all this man knowledge

I really wish I'd seen Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets back when it was doing the rounds in the cinemas, as the last couple of weeks have kind of put a damper on the material.  Where - a mere four weeks ago - I might have chalked up the lead's aggressive overtures towards his female colleague as the actions of a letch with misplaced enthusiasm, these days Valerian can be viewed as nothing less than a persistent sex pest and serial molester.  A string of female co-workers is plastered along the walls of his and Laureline's starship seemingly as a joke about his womanising ways, but it's plain from the off that his mating patois is severely lacking and that when it fails him, he is quick to resort to physical aggression towards women, leading the mind to ponder on what kind of horrors have gone on in this isolated starship far from any witnesses, and why these countless women have disappeared from Valerian's workplace never to be seen again after he has "conquered" them.  I know there's a trend out there in that there social medias for dark takes on seemingly bright and colourful material, like, I dunno, "what if the computer in Jem And The Holograms is actually Jerrica Benton's dead mother trapped in a digital purgatory by Satan to tempt Jerrica into a rock 'n' roll life of sin while being doomed to dispassionately view her descent - or worse, to actively seek to cause it that she might bargain a way out of her own torment at the cost of her only child's immortal soul?" but trust me, there's not a lot of mental gymnastics involved in getting to the dark take here, Valerian is one creepy motherfucker right from the first moments we meet him, and through the lens of the film, we are supposed to see Valerian as he sees himself - heroic and determined, rather than seedy and unthinking.
The rest of the film isn't that great, either - some good setpieces, but a lot of the FX are surprisingly poor - well, as "poor" as they can be when they still clearly look like several million bucks' worth of effort - especially a blue blob-like alien that seems to be voiced and intermittently played by some American lady who I suspect I am supposed to recognise and who probably ends up with more screen time than any other character apart from the two leads despite... let us say "less acting ability than those who surround her" in a very even and non-judgmental manner, if only because I am now worried that she might be some sort of Make A Wish winner who got to star in the film as a last request.
I do recall trying out the Valerian and Laureline books a few years ago, and can't really say my memory of them aligns much with what I saw here, the pacing seems really slow for something so episodic and which covers so much ground, and it's flashy and bang-y and sees a welcome return to the fantasy end of the sci-fi spectrum, but ultimately, it's just an expensive-looking curiosity with the odd memorable moment and a wildly inconsistent tone.  Mainly, though, it's just hampered by how much of its creepy lead's behavior you may or may not be willing to look past in order to enjoy the rest of the film.