Light Shop is a South Korean horror drama running eight hour-long episodes on Disney+.

The first few episodes introduces these characters who are quite different and the commonality is they end up in this spooky lightless and long alley that they have to traverse in the dark of night. But in the middle is a light shop — a shop that sells light bulbs and I suppose lamps of alls sorts — and its lights shine brightly and draw in these people.

But strange things start happening to these characters. They meet other characters that turn out to be damaged or strange or perhaps demons. By mid-series you realize that all these are dead or on the brink of death — mostly because of a bus accident — and haven't moved on to the other side — stuck haunting the Earth until they resolve some issue, even if that issue is admitting they're dead. And the light shop owner is perhaps a guide for the way forward…

Actors

• Ju Ji-hoon as the light shop owner (who has his own story of how he became the current owner)
• Park Bo-young as a nurse who can see the spirits because she was once in a coma
• Kim Seol-hyun as a deaf woman who committed suicide, now she can talk and she's trying to save her husband who is a spirit
• Kim Min-ha as a writer in a lesbian relationship (which I'm not sure I've ever seen in a K-Drama)
• Shin Eun-soo as a teen school girl Hyun-joo who's always buying new light bulbs for her grandmother; turns out grandma is trying to get Hyun-joo to pick the light bulb that will return Hyun-joo back to the real world.

Fairly interesting story and it's nice that it's short and doesn't drag it out too long. More like "spooky" horror than "jump scare" horror.

Trying Netflix "Standard with ads" tier which is $8 vs $18 per month. Differences:

• You get ads. Generally I've seen one or two 30s ad breaks (sometimes no ad breaks, sometimes up to 2m ad break with two ads). The ads are standard television-type ads (i.e. big brands probably paying a bunch for that ad space). There is a timer on the upper right counting down until ads end. Apparently Kid logins have no ads, which is just as well since they can't buy anything.
• Some programming is not available in ad-tier. These are shown with a big obvious lock icon on the upper right of the title graphic when you're browsing. All 152 Movies and Series Blocked On Netflix’s Advertising Tier (April 2025). Based on the April list this doesn't affect my K- and C-Drama watching and mostly would affect watching some popular movies.
• No Picture in Picture. At least on my iPhone and iPad it no longer goes to Picture in Picture when I go to another app. Makes it less convenient to play a game while watching Netflix since I then have to use a second device to watch Netflix.

The ad-tier is definitely great with me and you save $10 per month. 2m of ads per 1h show is nothing compared to Viki's free ad-tier which has like 90s to 3m of ads every 10m or so and when you first resume watching a video (and Viki's ad-tier is 480p video).

Compared with Viki's standard plan which is the same price $8 per month Viki has no ads, 720p video (Netflix ad-tier and standard are 1080p), 1 active device (instead of 2 for Netflix), about 2/3rds of Viki catalog available.

Prey (2022) [+] Predator franchise film on Hulu. Set in the 18th century, Naru (Amber Midthumper) is a Comanche who wants to be a warrior in a tribe where woman are not. She comes to suspect there's a spirit hunting large predators and people. There's also a run-in with a large band of French trappers who are after this spirit. As usual for the series, as Naru witnesses the Predator's attacks the more weaknesses she notes until she is finally ready to face it. Pretty well made movie.

Sweet Home Alabama (2002) [-] New Yorker Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon) returns home to rural Alabama in order to finalize her divorce from Jake Perry (Josh Lucas) who she hasn't seen in seven years. She is now a sophisticated urban dweller but back with old friends and family she starts to revert to her roots and maybe starts to like Jake more… I guess I missed the part where she has a change of heart because it's jarring when she suddenly decides to leave her fiancé (Patrick Dempsey) at the altar. In the end not that interesting a film.

Goat Simulator+ (2022) [-] Apple Arcade version of Goat Simulator and one of the few where the Apple Arcade version has less features (in this case less goat types). You play a goat (third-person view) interacting in a 3D world pushing things down and jumping on them. As is usual for these types of games I got nauseous fairly quickly (controller might help as touch control is a bit fiddly). In any case you get goals (e.g. collect stuff, get elevation, destroy stuff, etc.) and as you do them you get more goals. I never looked at Goat Simulator before since I thought it was more of a sim game but it's more like a standard you do goals game.

Abe Sapien Trade Paperbacks v1 to v9 (2008-2017) [/] Abe Sapien and Lobster Johnson are the only two Hellboy universe characters that have gotten their own series. For Sapien v1 and v2 are compilations of one-shots and limited series. v3 to v8 cover his series which begins with him transformed, having fled from the BPRD, and wandering Hell on Earth America trying to figure out who he actually is. It’s actually a rather dark arc. v9 is stories set in Sapien’s past. Overall somewhat interesting.

Porterhouse, San Mateo [+] Good steak; nice, old-fashioned atmosphere; friendly staff. Kind of expensive though I guess average for a good steak place. They've been in San Mateo a long time and recently moved to 2nd and B Street, in the old bank building — a nice location that has had several upscale restaurants that didn't survive.

The King's Affection is a South Korean historical drama-romance of 20 hour-long episodes.

Royal twins are born, which is a sign of bad luck, and so the girl twin is ordered killed but Crown Princess Han (Han Chae-ah) fakes the girl's death and sends her to an orphanage. A dozen years later their father is now King Hyejong (Lee Pil-mo) and a young Dam-i (Choi Myung-bin) enters the court as a new royal maid. Crown Prince Lee Hwi discovers his lookalike and instead of thinking "this is weird" sees this as an opportunity to sneak out of the Royal Palace on excursions disguised as Dam-i while she takes his place doing boring things like sitting all day and studying.

It is during this time that Dam-i meets a young Jung Ji-woon (Go Woo-rim) and they start falling in love. Unfortunately Lord Sangheon (Yoon Je-moon), Queen Han's grandfather and a powerful lord at court who ordered baby Dam-i's death, hears about the suspicious lookalike and orders his lieutenant Inspector Jung Seok-jo (Bae Soo-bin) — and Jung Ji-woon's father — to eliminate the new maid just in case. Jung Seok-jo succeeds (and in the process kills a witness maid in front of Jung Ji-woon which leads to their estrangement) but he actually murdered Crown Prince Lee Hwi dressed up as a maid. Queen Han realizes the truth and convinces Dam-i that the only way to survive is to take Crown Prince Lee Hwi's place, which she does.

Another dozen or so years later Crown Prince Lee Hwi (Park Eun-bin, lead in Extraordinary Attorney Woo) is well established — with his two advisors Court Lady Kim (Baek Hyun-joo) and Eunuch Hong (Ko Kyu-pil) as the only two people who know his secret, though later on we find out other people knew but never revealed it to the Crown Prince — but in need of a new tutor because the Crown Prince is a terror to his teachers (in order they don't get close enough to discover his secret). Enter an adult Jung Seok-jo (Rowoon, male lead in Destined With You), a physician who studied in Ming (China) and has recently returned. He is blackmailed into taking the job so that Lord Sangheon has a spy in the Crown Prince's entourage.

Crown Prince Lee Hwi recognizes Jung Seok-jo but not vice versa. All his attempts to get Jung Seok-jo to resign fail and so he remains a tutor and as time goes on Jung Seok-jo starts to have feelings for the effeminate Crown Prince, and eventually vice versa. Their attraction causes ripples that threaten to reveal the Crown Prince's secret (though naturally most observers think it's a homosexual attraction)…

The King's Affection is a fairly large production with lots of locations and people and good period costumes, though also being an idealized picture not dirty and dark. The court intrigue is interesting and Park Eun-bin is very good playing a very subdued character.

I feel that the second half is not as good. I started getting annoyed with Jung Ji-woon who is vey bad at OPSEC and continually lets people notice how he acts around the Crown Prince. Also he is given jobs like sneaking into places and he usually gets caught.

At twenty episodes it does seem to run longer than I'd like. Once people start learning the secret it "speeds up" without actually getting faster. The last two or three episodes is Lord Sangheon and his private army trying to usurp the throne so there's lots of combat and one useless death. The climax is well done and yet has a plot hole as to how Crown Prince Lee Hwi survives. But at least there's a happy ending for all characters.

Overall still was entertaining and maybe had too high expectations.

Lobster Johnson is a Hellboy pulp-era spin-off character. In that universe the Lobster battled underworld criminals, Nazi, and Imperial Japanese agents in 1930's New York City and even went to Europe during WW2 where he died (to reappear as a ghost in the Hellboy and BPRD comics).

He has a crew of helpers (for information, leg work, mechanical and engineering aid, and also battling mobs so that Lobster can concentrate on the main bad guys), a nosy reporter (Cindy Tynan, who develops a romance with one of Lobster's crew), a police force that doesn't appreciate his help and sometimes goes after "that vigilante".

Unlike more sanitized pulp heroes The Lobster believes in murdering the guilty, often killing with The Lobster's Claw, where his right palm both kills the victim and burns a claw mark on their forehead. The Lobster is also perhaps unkillable (except for that last adventure) in that he keeps getting into more and more dangerous situations (e.g. stuff falling on him or big explosions that destroy a room) where anybody would have died but he seems to come out badly wounded but still alive.

Sort of typical pulp stories and in general few references to the regular Hellboy universe. Some of the occult bad guys use Hyperborean speech and there might be one or two Cthulhu-type monsters. If you like 1930's pulp action then Lobster Johnson is for you.

I include the Crimson Lotus TPB set in the same era. It collects a five-issue limited series where a couple of Chinese agents are pitted against the Japanese Crimson Lotus during Japan's occupation of parts of China. The Crimson Lotus has witch powers and uses masked monkeys to do her bidding and she also lives on to appear in the main Hellboy timeline. I found the story less interesting than Lobster Johnson.

May It Please the Court #1.1 to #1.6 (2022) [/] After a scandal top lawyer Noh Chak-hee (Jung Ryeo-won) is suspended for a year from her big firm and ends up getting a position in a small city’s public defender’s office where she clashes with more principled co-worker Jwa Si-baek (Lee Kyu-hyung). As she takes on unusual cases (the series is based on a book by a public defender where he relates various cases he’s seen/heard about) Chak-hee starts to thaw out and find some compassion in her soul. Meanwhile a serial killer is targeting a group of powerful people who did something bad a long time ago and both Chak-hee and Si-baek have ties to that event. There’s also maybe something going on between the two but this is a K-Drama not a K-Romance series… After six episodes lost access to this Disney+ series and it was starting to get interesting.

Music Girls (2018) [/] 12-episode anime about a Japanese idol group. Yamadagi Hanako (Seria Fukagawa) is a talented musician and choreographer who falls in love with girls group Music Girls. Unfortunately she has no singing talent so instead she hangs out as assistant manager helping them with chores and organization whilst also solving their various problems of being idols and part of a dozen-plus member group. Has good animation, songs and fan service. Each episode tends to focus on different girls so you kind of get to know them all and it has a nice culmination when the Music Girls have to perform at a big festival and bring in 10k people into the audience or their record label will drop them.

Prune+ (2022) [/] Apple Arcade version of Prune. A minimalist 2D game. A tree starts growing and you prune the branches (using swipes) to make the tree grow the opposite way. Maneuver around obstacles, pick up items, get to the light before you stop growing. I played a few levels and there are obstacles like wind and black spheres that block out the sun. Surprisingly not easy to prune if you're trying to be tricky. Interesting concept.

Badland Party (2022) [/] Online multiplayer version of Badland. You and up to three other players try to get your little fluffy pets (and their many clones) through the level triggering buttons, pushing blocks, avoiding death traps. Simple controls (fly left and fly right, let go to start falling, and kind of keep on a straight horizontal by tapping left or right) which work well on a touch screen. A little like Lemmings in that there are a lot of clones and most will die but as long as you get the minimum to the end you pass the level. Left Apple Arcade Apr 17th but I guess it will go to the normal store.

Banh Mi & Bowl, Santa Clara [/] Vietnamese restaurant in a small strip mall and a bit run down. But food is cheap (for the area) and tastes fine. Combination is nice as it's any pho (small or large) plus any drink for like $18.

Wrath of Man is a Jason Statham heist-thriller-action movie directed by Guy Ritchie. Set at a Los Angeles armored car company, "H" (Statham) is the new hire, a bit of a loner/silent type, who foils a robbery by shooting and killing all half-dozen-plus armed robbers much to the surprise of his partner and the rest of the company.

Turns out that H is a criminal mastermind out for revenge because a similar armored car robbery turned violent and one of H's loved ones was killed. As seen in a long flashback H and his crew go after other crime outfits looking for the crew but after turning Los Angeles criminal underworld upside down they come up empty and so H decides to go undercover to find the inside man that must have helped that opposing crew.

That other crew is hard to find because they are new to the scene. Led by Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan), the crew is made up of US Army veterans that served in Afghanistan under Jackson. They are meticulous planners and militarily precise during ops but one of them, Jan (Scott Eastwood), went a bit out of control in their last heist and murdered both armored car guards and an innocent bystander (which brings H into the picture).

This leads to the final act when Jackson and crew decide to go for The Big Heist — the armored car depot which will have almost $200M after Black Friday pickups. It's going to be a long and bloody gunfight inside a warehouse-like space between Jackson's heavily armed and armored squad and the more numerous company guards…

I really like this film. It has a sort of 1970's movie feel. Not as much of an action film even though there are gunfights but more about raising tensions for that final act. I like that the final battle isn't so much about H killing everybody since a lot of damage is done by the armored car guards. Statham is really good playing his usual type of character. Contrast to a sort of similar Statham film I saw, The Beekeeper (2024), which to me was very average and unoriginal action movie.

Good movie where once I started watching it I didn't stop until it was done.

BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) is the overarching US government organization (later UN backed) which Hellboy belongs to. These comics actually start after Hellboy leaves the BPRD for several years so it's Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman who are the main agents, though many other people come in and either leave or die as the series progresses.

A few volumes deal with BPRD in the past, after it was formed and before Hellboy was old enough to go on missions. For the most part though the volumes tell a continuous story that is in three phases.

Phase 1 is ramping up to total war. There is a frog faction and there is an underground race faction as well as occult stuff and all these groups start coming together to form one big army to take over the surface world.

Phase 2 is Hell on Earth as the frogs, underground race, and the other factions are destroyed because the big monsters (Ogdru Hem) finally rise. These are mostly big and stationary but emit lots of little monsters and/or gasses that turn people into monsters. It's not "war" war but more like War Against the Chtorr where the Ogdru Hem are changing the local area around them into Hellish places but people can still live there and many parts of the world are fine. It does get worse and worse as time goes on.

Phase 3 is kind of short at three volumes and it's the return of Rasputin for his final bid to conquer Earth. Hellboy returns from the dead for the final fight. The Earth is mostly destroyed except for many underground havens where pockets of humanity survive while on the surface the new race of man thrives. The End to the Hellboy universe (though future products will still be set in the past).

It's interesting that this series is rather bloody. Characters are introduced and may be around for years before they are killed and in the end all but one or two characters die. I do like that many characters are just BPRD agents — normal humans with military training, sometimes well equipped to battle monsters.

I think you can read this series independently of the rest of Hellboy, though that helps a lot and events in other Hellboy comics are sometimes reflected here. But I guess if you read the first five Hellboy TPBs (before they launched BPRD) that will cover all previous knowledge and after that cross-references are light.

In general I think I've most liked the first five Hellboy TPBs and the BPRD series. The other Hellboy Universe series not so much. And it's nice if you start with Hellboy you see Rasputin as the first Big Bad and at the end of BPRD Rasputin is once again the Big Bad as it comes full circle.

Castle (2009) [/] This is a network television crime mystery comedy-drama series. NY Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) is at first forced then is resigned to having mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) as her partner he's very good at inventing scenarios and noticing unusual clues but it grates on her no-nonsense style of detective work. Later on a romance develops which runs throughout the series. I've been watching this series on-and-off for years and this last stretch was season 5 to 7.4 which is not that much different than previous seasons since this is an episodic show (i.e. the episodes can be played in any order and you don't miss much other than the Beckett-Castle romance progressing). It's a nice background show in that you can watch it while doing something else, miss half the episode, and still roughly know what happened.

Starhyke (2009) [/] British science fiction comedy series of six 45-minute episodes filmed in 2004 but not released until 2009. In the far future humans have purged all their emotions and conquered or exterminated all other races in the galaxy. Captain Belinda Blowhard (Claudia Christian) of the Nemesis tries to stop a Reptid ship from going back in time to destroy humanity. But the Nemesis is caught in the time jump whilst the Reptid compassion bomb infects the crew with emotions. Now in the 21st century the Nemesis still has to stop the Reptids whilst the crew struggles with human emotions (mostly leading to a lot of sex jokes and sex). The series parodies other science fiction tv and movie media (e.g. chief of security is the always angry Wu Oof played by Rachel Grant). It’s funny at times and rather low brow humor. The 45-minute format allows for longer single-episode stories

Pro Snooker & Pool 2025+ (2022) [/] Play one of various versions of pool/snooker with a variety of tables. You control shot power, can spin the ball, and the UI shows you where the first ball hits goes. Feels more like a computer game port in that the graphics are not great and the UI is not great. But seems like a serviceable simulation.

Moonshot - A Journey Home+ (2022) [/] A gravity game. The anthropomorphic moon went through a wormhole and is lost and trying to get back to Mother Earth. In each level you fling it around gravity wells (and if planets you can enter orbit and then another fling) and into the exit wormhole. Pick up coins and probably do other things. Cutesy game but not that interesting.

The Roasted Crab, Santa Clara [+] Went here for lunch with my brother (the location is at Mercado Shopping Center). Catfish basket ($18) was delicious with lots of catfish and standard tasting French fries. Also garlic noodles ($11) which was also quite good. Would like to come here again next year during DDC.

The Interpreter is a Chinese romance drama running 42 45-minute episodes.

The setting is Shanghai's IAI (International Academy of Interpretation?) where Cheng Jiayang (Huang Xuan) is the young hotshot Chinese-French interpreter who is very demanding of his students. In the new trainee class is aspiring interpreter Qiao Fei (Yang Mi) who already had a bad run-in with Jiayang a couple years ago in Switzerland.

He already thinks she's not cut out to be an interpreter so he's especially hard on her but she perseveres and slowly a romance develops. But it turns out she used to date Jiayang's older brother Goa Jiaming (Gao Weiguang) and left Jiaming without saying goodbye and taking $100k (though that's a misunderstanding that is not cleared until halfway through the series). In any case that means Jiayang's mom is against Qiao Fei having anything to do with her sons.

On the good side the leads make a good looking couple (though in the Switzerland scenes Jiayang has an awful haircut) and Qiao Fei's roommate, small time actress Wu Jiayi (Li Xirui/Sierra Lee), is also quite attractive and has her own romantic subplot.

Unfortunately the series has lots of annoyances. Naturally a lot of translating into French which is obviously dubbed because it's out of sync with the mouth movements and the voices are different people. Several times they go to Switzerland but that must have been filmed at one time since Jiayang has a different haircut and actually kind of looks different so it's funny when he's in Shanghai looking great in one scene then travels to Switzerland and looks like his old self in the next scene.

There is a lot of skipping ahead and then barely referencing what was omitted. For example Jiayi meets a famous actor who gives her a ride in his van and then a couple of episodes later they're breaking up with no appearances in between. Or when another character gets married and a few episodes later we get back to them and her husband is abusing her and apparently it's been going on for a while. The main plot also sometimes seems to skip things.

As for the main characters they're both too secretive, especially Qiao Fei. In order to spare the other's feeling they'll both lie. This always backfires leading to people thinking one or the other is doing bad things or they are discovered in the lie. But apparently they don't learn and keep lying to each other. And the whole Qiao Fei breaks up with Jiayang to spare him in case she dies in a 50/50 brain surgery yet the breakup is also quite cruel to him.

So I did watch the whole thing and there are whole episodes and parts of episodes which are quite good. But this is really not a well produced series and has lots of flaws and lacks polish. If not for Yang Mi and Li Xirui I wouldn't have watched it all the way. Would not recommend watching this series.

The Andromeda Evolution by Daniel H Wilson is a sequel novel to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain which I haven't read but seen in movie format. In the first story a NASA probe crashes at a remote Arizona town and the probe carries an alien virus that kills humans within three days except two people. A team of scientists is sent to find out how to stop the virus and it's a fairly tense medical techno thriller without any bang bang action.

Evolution takes place four decades later. All governments have been conspiring to keep the Andromeda virus a secret so as not to panic the world. There are two variants: AS-1 that kills people and AS-2 that eats plastic astonishingly quickly. Taken together it's an alien weapon designed to keep intelligent life confined to their home planets.

An Andromeda structure appears in the middle of the Amazon jungle and a team of scientists is sent to find out how to stop it because it's growing and growing. It's an international team and it means at least one of them has a secret they can't divulge. There's also the jungle to contend with (though that's glossed over) and the indigenous tribes which have had almost no civilized contact (and that becomes important later).

There are two significant plot twists. There's also some elaboration as to how the Andromeda virus (not sure the original story specified but this one indicates it's more like nanotechnology) has been designed as a weapon. I like how Wilson adds that the Saturn hexagonal storm is actually a big Andromeda virus storm (formed after the events in Evolution) and it's started to emit a radio signal aimed outside our solar system which may lead to a sequel novel.

It's a pretty engrossing story. Very talky and thinking about things and not much action except once in the middle and then more at the end. Rather good sequel considering it's by another author, Crichton having died in 2008.

Star Wars Rebels (2014) [+] Animated series that ran four seasons. A decade-and-a-half after the Galactic Empire is formed rebel resistance cells start to spring up. One such cell is led by Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall) and consists of Jedi not-quite-Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr), his eventual protege Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), Mandalorian weapons designer Sabine Wren (Tiya Sircar), Lasat former honor guard Zeb Orrelios (Steve Blum), and the irascible astromech Chopper (Dave Filoni). Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) makes some guest appearances and later on Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) is the Big Bad. This series makes the Ahsoka live-action series make more sense — not that it was particularly confusing but a lot of back story stuff in Ahsoka is developed in Rebels. Chopper is of course the best character in Rebels.

Flow (2024) [/] Animated film with no dialogue. A feral cat is caught up in a flood that drowns his homeland. He manages to escape on a small sailboat inhabited by a capybara. As the boat moves along they pick up a lemur, a dog, and a big white long-legged bird (secretary bird). The boat moves along the flooded land and they have adventures. And then the waters recede and the four (minus the bird) find themselves together perhaps lifelong friends… It’s not bad animation. Gets a bit psychedelic at times. At the end I’m not sure there was a point to the story other than this cat experiences this world-ending event.

Gear.Club Stradale (2022) [-] Apple Arcade. Italian driving game with pretty realistic physics such that in the first race — on a two lane mountain road — it's really hard to pass much less pass half a dozen cars to qualify. Not the game for me. But it is a nice looking game.

Sonic Dash+ (2022) [-] Apple Arcade. You play Sonic the Hedgehog running down a three-lane track. Pick up gold, zoom over monsters, jump and duck, activate powers. It's like an endless runner turned into levels. Maybe too much of a kid's game.

Pho Hoa & Jazen Tea, Mercado Shopping Center, Santa Clara [/] Came for dinner during DDC. Standard food. Was fine with a loud kid. Apparently part of a sizable chain. Was fairly full of people when we ate there.

The Last Kingdom is a five-season British historical drama set during the early 10th century following the course of uniting the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into England whilst those same kingdoms are beset by Viking invaders coming to conquer and make a new home in the British Isles.

Based on Bernard Cornwell's novels (who also wrote the Sharpe novels which I love and I think he has another series set during the American Revolution) the main protagonist is the fictional Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon). HIs father is betrayed, Uhtred is sold to the Vikings and he loses his ancestral home (in Northumbria, which borders Scotland) to his uncle. Uhtred is raised from about 10 years old as a Viking so he grows up a man of two worlds (a big theme of the show is the struggle of Christians vs Pagans).

After his adopted family is betrayed (again instigated by Uhtred's uncle) he ends up going to the Saxons and serving under the Wessex King Alfred (David Dawson) as a mercenary and Viking expert and as the seasons go on he rises through the ranks to become a minor lord. Meanwhile there is politics amongst Wessex (in the southern coast), Mercia (in the middle), Northumbria (in the north) and the various Viking domains and Uhtred is in the middle of it all. He also has many loves who tend to die or go mad or other bad ends to make room for his next love.

Lots of outdoor scenes and middle age structures. British production so they try to make it historically accurate (and Cornwell also writes his novels to be historically accurate but with some fictional characters) and many of the characters are historical (though to be fair the histories are not that detailed). Good battle scenes and I like the tactics shown. I like how the "major" cities are really just walled towns or partly walled towns.

Each season follows two novels so plot progresses fairly rapidly over the course of an 8 or 10 episode season. I did find the last couple of seasons less good possibly because I was used to the series so it was getting old hat. But it's also nice that at the end of the series there are conclusions and Uhtred's story is done.

I like the setting and I think it combines nicely with Pendragon RPG. Although Pendragon is more set in the mid to late Middle Ages and it's Anglo vs Saxon there the theme of invaders is much the same. The Vikings here have their own codes of honor vs what the Christians have and that's very Pendragon. Politics and the various adventures in The Last Kingdom can all be brought into a Pendragon campaign.

The Last Kingdom is a good not great series but I'm glad I watched it because it gives me a resource for the next time I run Pendragon.