Dear Hongrang is a South Korean drama-romance running 11 hour-long episodes.

Jae-yi (Jo Bo-ah - Tail of the Nine Tailed, 2020; Military Prosecutor Doberman, 2022; Destined With You, 2023) is the "cursed" daughter of a prominent merchant clan. Her brother Hong-rang disappeared when they were both kids and after 15 years there have been many impostors but no Hong-rang. Until one day Hong-rang (Lee Jae-wook - Alchemy of Souls, 2022/2023) appears and seems to fit all the physical marks but claims amnesia and Jae-yi instinctively knows it's not Hong-rang.

Jae-yi's adopted brother Mu-jin (Jung Ga-ram) agrees though on the other hand it's in Mu-jin's best interest that Hong-rang be fake as he would then become the heir presumptive over Mu-jin. As the three do battle socially there's also a bigger battle between Merchant head Shim Yeol-guk (Park Byung-eun), who favors Mu-jin, and his wife Min Yeon-ui (Uhm Ji-won), who favors her returned son Hong-rang and whose family owns the merchant house (Yeol-guk married into the family so even though he's the head of house he's not head of the clan).

Besides Shim Yeol-guk and Min Yeon-ui there are two other factions (with warriors and there are a lot of fights and dying in this series). Hong-rang has a secret patron with ninja-like warriors and they're set on taking over the Min Merchant house. Prince Han Pyeong (Kim Jae-wook - Her Private Life, 2019; male lead's older brother in Melo Movie, 2025) is a bit mad and obsessed with painting and has the royal army and is nominally allied with Shim Yeol-guk.

With four factions it does get confusing as to who is fighting who in a particular fight scene especially when it starts out as two factions and then a third joins in. The romance that occurs is very hurried to the point it's not as believable as usual (I guess with 11 episodes something had to be shortened). The ending is kind of a rough bloodbath and nobody wins.

Jo Bo-ah is pretty and good. The costumes are sets are good. Fight scenes are fine. Wasn't crazy about the complicated plot made worse because it's telling a story in 2/3rds the usual episodes. So overall this is not a series I recommend.

Battleground Ukraine covers the history of Ukraine from its independence in 1991 to about the end of 2023 after the war with Russia has been going on for almost two years. Author Adrian Karatnycky has been working for political think tanks and NGOs and mostly covering Ukraine since independence with lots of traveling and talking to political leaders from all sides.

Each chapter covers one presidency from Leonid Kravchuk who led the country before there was a real constitution to current president Volodymyr Zelensky who gets two chapters, one before the war and one since the war. The overall picture is a country that was divided between Ukrainian and Russian supporters with the two ethnic groups being mostly separate in the west and east of the country. Early government was full of corruption and privatization of state industries led to a powerful oligarchy who controlled large parts of the legislature by supporting their candidates. Some presidents tried to reform government and the economy with mixed success.

But all the presidents were pretty much part of the system either in the old Soviet hierarchy or new oligarchs who kind of liked government the way it was. Volodymyr Zelensky is different since he was a political comedian with a television show and large following who got elected to president by being appealing in social media and promising change. Although his presidency started fairly rocky because he didn't really have a plan and did things by feel and he found out rapid change is hard even if you get a large number of inexperienced legislatives elected on your party platform. But war changed that and he rallied the country and with something immediate and specific to focus on he's become an effective president.

Similarly Russia's actions helped unite Ukraine. First by taking Crimea and then the invasion a decade later. Part of it is absorbing Russophobe territories they increased the percentage of Ukrainianists but also showing their aggression they put the fear into the rest of the Russophobes so now the citizens have solidified into a Ukrainian people. Whether Ukraine is ultimately successful in reclaiming its lost territories or not depends a lot on Western aid and that is the ongoing story the book ends on.

I found this to be an interesting book as I knew very little about Ukraine beforehand. It's interesting how conflicting forces each corrupt have kind of cancelled out to end up with a more democratic Ukraine than you'd think. And this without Western help as we have a "you reform first then we'll help your burning country" which makes it really hard for a democracy to form.

Tehran s3 (2025) [+] Mossad agent Tamar (Niv Sultan) is stuck in Tehran and is now being hunted by both her Mossad superiors to the Iran secret police. Her only assets are Faraz (Shaun Toub), head of the secret police department hunter her but she can blackmail him, and her ability to win friends, even deep cover Mossad agent The Owl (Sasson Gabai) tasked with eliminating her. This season she has a reprieve because UN nuclear inspector Eric Peterson (Hugh Laurie) is arrested by the Iranians and Tamar discovers the Iranians have smuggled all the components to build a nuclear bomb... As usual this remains a high drama series with perhaps one too many plot twists (one of the bad guys turns out to be another undercover agent).

Hey Sensei, Don't You Know? (2019) [/] Japanese light romantic comedy based on manga. Six half-hour episodes. Mousy manga artist Hana Aoi (Fumika Baba) meets handsome hairstylist Riichi Kido (Eiji Akaso) who turns her into a beauty and then starts dating her because he likes her work ethic and personality. While her manga improves now that she has a real relationship to base it on (this is her first relationship) she has lots of insecurities about being a good girlfriend worthy of Riichi especially since popular actress Nanase Hoshino (Honoka Yahagi) is also after Riichi... I guess this is an ok series but it's very light and short and somewhat uninteresting at time but I suppose I'm not the target audience.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure (2023) [/] Kids-level exploration/interaction game. You're on a resort island with Hello Kitty and her friends. Wander around doing tasks, making friends, crafting stuff. It's described as a cozy adventure so I guess it's on easy mode. The graphics are nice and the character dialogs are fairly distinct though I didn't recognize anyone other than Hello Kitty itself. A bit too simple for me but it looks quite playable.

Bonchon, San Mateo [/] Christopher got a bunch of takeout and we ate it maybe an hour later. Wings of four flavors. Seasoned french fries. Wasn't really distinctive -- like what'd get from a buffalo wings place. They also have Korean Fried Chicken so maybe that's better.

Project Hail Mary is a science fiction film based on Andy Weir's novel (Weir also wrote The Martian).

The movie timeline pretty much starts today or very soon but it does start in media res about 5+ years later. A man wakes up with no memory in an enclosed man-made environment that turns out to be a spaceship with two other astronauts (who are both dead having died on the five year journey under induced coma).

Eventually he remembers he's Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and in flashbacks throughout the movie we learn the background plot and how he got there: The Sun is being eaten by some space amoebas (Astrophage -- sun eaters) which will cause catastrophic temperature drop on Earth in about three decades. Turns out all nearby stars are also going through this phenomena except for one, Tau Ceti, 11+ light years away. So Earth's government built a space ship (powered by astrophage which doesn't break the laws of physics but is orders of magnitude more efficient than any other Earth fuel source -- it's neat that the astrophage is jetted out the front which hits a parabolic shield that pushes the ship forward which I guess works because the astrophage is constantly accelerating, without expelling anything, once it starts so pushing out at the start is much less force than when it hits the shield).

Now Dr Grace has arrived at Tau Ceti and he finds another ship there, which then proceeds to make first contact with him (with some neat communication methods). He meets Rocky (eventually voiced via Rocky-language-to-speech synthesizer by James Ortiz), a sort of small rock-like being who is also the only survivor of his 24-being crew, here to save his world from the astrophage. Together they have to work together to figure out how the astrophage in Tau Ceti isn't eating the star...

Kind of like The Martian this is an engineering heavy film (science too I guess but there so much about building and gadgeteer-ing that it's more engineering). Unlike The Martian now we have two very different beings finding a way to both communicate and work together and become friends. I did end up with a few questions about what was going on but I guess the book would explain that better and the film is already 2-1/2 hours (it did have a somewhat Lord of the Rings endless ending that you could have cut off 30 minutes and just did a little voice-over "and then we each went home and saved out peoples").

It's a good film with lots of action parts, lots of cool science and engineering, and cute buddy comedy vibe.

Don't Fool Me, Beauties! is a Korean FMV Dating Sim from Storytaco. FMV (Full Motion Video) means filmed actors and dating sim means you're trying to form positive relationships.

You are Han Bin, a jobless young man whose parents finally kick him out of their home and force him to find a job. He finds one at a seaside resort hotel, Treebit, which is currently failing. With low occupancy rate the workforce gets their own rooms to stay at the hotel which gives you an excuse for being there 24x7.

As you go through your days you meet and interact with four women:

• Ga-eun, CEO of the hotel, who is under pressure from management to make the hotel profitable and from her grandfather to get married.
• Ah-young, your senior staffworker who's there to show you the ropes and also has a secret live-streaming hobby.
• Bit-na, Instagram influencer, kind of stranded at the hotel when her manager quits after a dispute.
• Ji-woo, your childhood friend and web comic illustrator, you haven't seen her in a decade she suddenly shows up to reconnect.
• The Manager, your immediate manager and the only male NPC. Although not a traditional partner there are like four or five choices that if you get them all right you end up with him.

Everything having been pre-filmed by necessity the gameplay is mostly choose-your-own-adventure style. You get some amount of video and then it stops and you get two, usually three, sometimes more choices. Some choices will increase your favor with one of the women (and there is a visual and audio confirmation so you don't have to guess). Less often are choices that decrease your favor (again with visual and audio confirmation). A very few choices end up with a Bad End. The choices are sometimes obvious, often not all that obvious, and sometimes didn't make sense to me but that was rare.

When you get to the end you get to choose which woman to end up with though you can only choose ones where you have enough favor and I think at best that's two of them (and probably not Bit-na and Ji-woo since several branches you interact with one or the other). The final 10-15 minute conversation you get two to four choices. If you get them all right you get a Happy Ending (and this time there are no audio/visual confirmations to indicate you made the best choice) which apparently is marriage. If not you get a Normal Ending which is bf/gf relationship. And one or two choices give you a Bad Ending (which means you don't even end up with the woman).

Once you've seen a video and start the next section you can stop and go to the chapter screen then choose a decision point to play over again. When you watch a scene for the first time you can only pause and go to the chapter screen but on re-watch you can skip back and forward or skip to the choice selection. The chapter screen tells you exactly which path you've taken and gives you a clue that some paths lead to sub-trees rather than going back to the main path.

As you play the game you get video and picture rewards, most are scenes from the game but some are different scenes like a scene with a character and you're not around (otherwise you're always around in every scene so everything is your POV).

The story is fairly simplistic and the situations are not that great. This is not a K-Drama and I've seen dating sims with more interesting characters and gameplay. But using real women is rather nice -- they're attractive (they're all Instagram models) and maybe not the best actresses but POV you're talking to them in closeup or close proximity so kind of intimate that way. This is a PG-rated story so no nudity or even suggested sex.

Playing it through takes 3 to 4 hours. Six chapters at about half an hour each plus the ending sequence. I did go back and go through every branch to get 100% on all the chapters and endings and Steam says I spent 20-1/2 hours playing (probably much less since I was also filling out a spreadsheet with the various paths).

This was my first FMV Dating Sim and I found it entertaining. I can't tell if this was a good or bad example of an FMV Dating Sim but I think I'd recommend it.

Wonder Pets: In the City (2024) [/] Children's education show on Apple TV. Our heroes are three pets: Izzy the Guinea Pig (Victoria Scola-Giampapa), Tate the Snake (Christopher Sean Cooper Jr.), and Zuri the Bunny (Vanessa Huszár). By day they're pets in a kindergarten. But after school they get calls from around the world -- animals in trouble that need their help. They put on their capes and use their flying toy vehicle to go help their brethren.

Educational in that every animal in trouble is at a place so there's a bit of explanation about what the animal is and its habitat. Also before they leave there's usually a bit of trouble they have to solve and that solution applies to helping the animal. Solutions are simple like "work together", or "don't help but support each other", or "dealing with frustration".

The animation is collage-like as if photos are cut out of magazines and put together. There are lots of song numbers from their intro to their solution song to traveling song and ending song. The hero pets are voiced by kids and I guess the singing is too. Each episode has two 10-minute segments. It is kind of barely watchable for adults but I've seen worse.

Lucy (2014) [-] I watched this late 2015 and gave it 3/5. Watched it again because I was bored and it's worse than I remembered. Way too much stuff about how using more and more of your brain would give you superpowers and the asides to explain it with the funny little videos are quite annoying even if Morgan Freeman is doing the narration. Not one of Scarlett Johansson's better roles as once Lucy starts activating her brain she becomes rather emotionless. The few action sequences are ok though I didn't like the last fight scene as it got a bit bonkers. I hope I don't get the urge to try watching this again.

Cut the Rope 3 [/] Seems like a simpler version of Cut the Rope for Apple Arcade. Go to a random world and do three mini-levels to collect a creature which I guess eventually another random world. Each mini level you cut the ropes to get a little guy to his dad waiting below and if you can get the little guy to collect 1 to 3 starts that'd be great too. Besides rope cutting there is a grappling hook and a cannon and probably more stuff. I remember playing Cut the Rope and that's quite hard getting three stars whereas this one seems rather easy though I guess it gets harder.

Star Trek: Nero (2009) [/] This four issue series fills in the 25-year gap between when Nero arrived in the Kelvin universe and when Spock arrived as seen in the movie. It's not as interesting as Countdown because there's less going on. It's mostly stuck in Rura Penthe for almost 25 years. I did like the detour to visit V'ger or a version of V'ger before it returned to Earth.

Stand or Fall is a Chinese romance-drama running 32 45-minute episodes.

Guan Wen (Qin Lan -- The Rational Life, 2021) is a Business Development Director at fashion brand TL when she is forced out by her new boss. She gets a commitment to be hired by a small mall to head their Business Development department. Ding Ning (Wang Yang) is a rising corporate executive of a conglomerate but his boss sees him as a dangerous rival and so has Ding Ning sent to manage the same small mall that Guan Wen will work for. Turns out they were college sweethearts but she broke up with him for obscure reasons.

Ding Ning is forced to hire Guan Wen and makes it hard for her to do her job (Business Development at a mall is getting companies to open stores there and existing companies to renew for more money). But Guan Wen is rather ruthless doing her job (and one reason she was forced out previously is because she's not a good team player) and as she continues to succeed and work with Ding Ning he realizes he's never gotten over her, changes his heart and decides to win her back.

Meanwhile Guan Wen's two best friends also have their own fairly developed subplots.

Jing Zhi Qiu (Alina Zhang) is a former rising actress who quit, got married to Wang Li Ren (Zhang Duo), and is now a housewife and mother. Her first plot is her husband's pretty assistant is trying to romance him and subtly sabotaging their marriage. After that's done Jing Zhi Qiu realizes she's kind of lost her identity and decide to secretly enroll in a celebrity talent contest with her husband finding out.

Chen Xuan Xuan (Liu Yun) is younger than the other two with a long-time boyfriend Lin Hao (Shawn Wei). She's been dedicated to supporting him and outwardly he's the perfect boyfriend but there are enough audience hints that something is up with him and it's more obvious that his aunt and sister are quite greedy. Meanwhile Chen Xuan Xuan opens up a coffee shop (at Guan Wen's mall) and it becomes a success after she recruits graduate student He Yi Fei (Lawrence Wong) who is both handsome and a great barista. He Yi Fei develops feeling for Xuan Xuan though she doesn't notice because of her boyfriend.

The main romance has two good leads and suitably dramatic. The two other subplots are their own stories and complement the main plot (mostly contrasting the relationships of the three women to their men). All three women are independent and strong (Xuan Xuan a bit less so at first but once crisis hits she becomes determined) and the heroines of their own stories.

Overall very nice series and I quite enjoyed it. MyDramaList indicates there will be a second season (the first season has a good standalone ending no plots left dangling).

Knotwords+ is an Apple Arcade word game Zach Gage who's done several excellent word/puzzle games.

Take a crossword puzzle. Remove the clues. Split up the puzzle into two to a dozen or so letter sections, not necessarily in a line. In each section you know the letters to put in. Now fill in the letters and make sure every horizontal and vertical line has a valid word.

As you do these puzzles patterns become second-hand. SP is often in that order unless at the end of a word (SH is similar). Similarly many words in ING or ED (and Knotwords has a propensity of pluralizing words so lots of words ending with S). H and M seemed to be used a lot in two-letter words especially when they're adjacent so you often might see EH as a word with the H making a second word like HO or HI.

Each month there are 60 puzzles, 30 normal and 30 tricky. You have hints which I think start at three. A solved puzzle gives you another hint up to a maximum of 6. Using a hint on a line gives you the dictionary definition of the word in the solved puzzle (note that for the most part you can solve puzzles with any words that fit).

Some puzzles are variations. Themed puzzles have several words that fit the theme (themes like weather, animals, plants, good qualities, bad qualities) and you can't get hints for those words. Twist puzzles have numbers on the left and top sides and the numbers tell you how many vowels are in that whole line. Vowels-start puzzles start out with all vowels set.

Besides the monthly puzzles there are three daily puzzles. They start out easy at the beginning of the week and get fairly large at the end of the week. Similarly the monthly puzzles start out easy and get bigger and a littler harder later on.

I found this to be a fairly addictive game.

Highest 2 Lowest (2025) [/] Music mogul David King (Denzel Washington) wants to buy back control of the label he started but after his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped he might have to use that money to pay the ransom. Complication when it turns out that it's Trey's friend Kyle (Elijah Wright) -- son of his driver/assistant/good friend Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright) -- and now the conundrum is choosing to save his company or a non-relative... Better movie than I expected with a lot of stuff filmed in the streets of New York City.

Jeopardy! World Tour+ (2023) [/] It's an abbreviated form of Jeopardy with three categories each with three questions. You do that twice with the second time the questions are worth double. Then there is Final Jeopardy question. You alternate picking questions and only you can answer -- there is a timer and three choices. You are "playing" against other people who are actually not picking from your board -- they each have their own question board which means the game can just replay their scoring. Jeopardy is not one of the better quiz shows but it works with a good host and personable contestants neither of which this game has.

Star Trek: Countdown (2009) [+] I reviewed this comic book series when it came out and thought it was average. Re-read it and now I think it's pretty good. Star Trek (2009) movie script writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman did the story so this comic book story does seamlessly integrate and leads right into the movie and fills in some gaps that may have been mentioned in the movie but were not elaborated upon. This is the story of how Spock with the help of the TNG characters saved the main universe but let Romulus be destroyed hence leading Nero on his quest for vengeance with an advanced-tech ship.

Big Al's, Milpitas, CA [/] I guess this is a more family friendly version of Dave & Buster's. Restaurant, bar, video games, bowling. Went here after gaming with my friends. Food is about what you'd expect and the games had a selection which kids could play even though they were not kids games.

Can This Love Be Translated? is a South Korean romance series running 12 hour-long episodes.

In a touristy town in Korea translator Joo Jo-jin (Kim Seon-ho, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha - 2021) ends up helping Cha Mu-hee (Go Youn-jung, Alchemy of Souls p2 - 2023) confront a Japanese ramen shop owner who is having an affair with her boyfriend though it turns out Mu-hee was the other woman.

Years pass and now Cha Mu-hee has is filming, starring in a horror film. Joo Jo-jin is in town and thinks about visiting her but Mu-hee gets into an accident and ends up in a coma. A few months later she wakes up having become famous for her role in the film (and because she was in a coma) as the zombie killer (a killer who is a zombie) Do Ra-mi.

With her new-found fame Cha Mu-hee is recruited into a reality romance show shot in multiple countries and her counterpart is Japanese relatively famous actor Hiro Kurosawa (Fukushi Sota) who actually doesn't think much of Mu-hee seeing her as a B-list actor. Naturally with multiple countries and two co-stars who can't talk to each other they need an interpreter and it turns out to be Joo Jo-jin.

There is a slow romance that develops between Jo-jin and Mu-hee but it's kind of mostly on Mu-hee's side because he is very matter of fact yet very private and doesn't say what he actually feels. There's also Hiro Kurosawa as a possible love interest but that never seems credible. Neither is the other love rival, one of the show producers, Shin Ji-seon (Lee E-dam) who is Jo-jin's fiancée but secretly she and Jo-jin have sort of been in love without the other knowing it.

Half way through the series I really like this complication: turns out Mu-hee has a split personality. Do Ra-mi is her assertive and crazy side willing to do the things she's afraid to do. Once Joo Jo-jin finds out he tries to help Do Ra-mi (or is a blackmailed a bit to spend time with her) and meanwhile Mu-hee doesn't remember. It's an interesting twist.

Overall a fairly nice romantic series.

Cypher 007 is a stealth game based on the James Bond 007 and available on Apple Arcade. You control James Bond and you start out in your apartment and immediately attacked. The overarching through-line is that you are trapped in your mind while another consciousness has taken over your body. Re-enact missions from your past as you seek to escape the Mind Trap.

The first chapter is escaping through the London underground. There is a chapter based on Moonraker and one based on The Spy Who Loved Me. Each chapter is 10 missions, though some missions are one big boss combat or otherwise pretty short. There have been no new chapters since release so I don't think any more will be added.

It's an overhead angled perspective game. Move Bond with a thumb (movement is pretty easy) and the other thumb to control actions and items. Guards and cameras move around in set routines until they spot you. Helpfully when you're close you can see their exact viewing area and you can see how objects block their vision (and if you stand up you can see that their active viewing area increases). Guards can also hear you sneaking about or walking/running though in my experience they generally don't notice.

You can avoid guards or take them out. Sneak up behind and choke hold him (which takes time and does make a bit of noise -- many a time I start choking a guard and another guard turns and sees us. You also also have many devices:

• A weapon like a stun gun or even a laser rifle
• A stun grenade
• A watch that can stun people
• Cufflinks that can be used to set up a tripwire trap
• A mini-drone that can be used to scout, pick up objects, or explode to stun a guard

There are other devices, some non-combat like a mirror umbrella that people and cameras can't see behind so you can walk past guards that way. There are also different suits each giving you some bonus -- I like the suit that recharges electrical devices so I don't have to depend on picking up batteries, but the suit that cuts down chokehold times is also a bit nice.

Items can be upgrades using blueprints and parts you find and pick up during a mission.

In general the story is fairly well done with lots of dialogue and the levels make sense as part of the story. Chapter one is mostly underground but other chapters have outdoor areas and houses to roam. Unfortunately not every level I think can be done solely through stealth -- I wanted to not have to use weapons but one boss fight is really tough if you can't quickly take out the hordes of minions.

Once you finish the game you can replay it on hard mode and there is a challenge mode for each level. Hard mode just makes everything a bit harder and if you die you restart the level rather than restarting at a checkpoint in the level. Challenge mode is various things like doing a level very quickly.

It's a fun game even without any additional chapters. Several hours of gameplay just for the first run-through.

Love Untangled (2025) [/] South Korean teen romantic comedy film. Park Se-ri (Shin Eun-soo - Light Shop, 2024) has crazy curly hair that she's never managed properly. To win the heart of the school hunk she needs to straighten her hair and there's a new hair stylist with a magic hair straightening technique from Seoul. And that hair stylist's son is her new strange classmate Han Yoon-seok (Gong Myung). To get that hair treatment she befriends Yoon-seok and helps him out after he's injured. Naturally once she finally gets the straight hair and is ready to confess to the school hunk she starts to realize it's Yoon-seok whom she's attracted to... It's a nice enough movie.

Downwell+ (2023) [/] Rogue-like arcade shooting/jumping game with 2-bit graphics (with some red elements). Controls are left, right, jump/fire. You are going down a well that has platforms to land on and creatures to shoot or stomp. Pick up items and try to make it to the bottom shaft (which leads you to the next level). It's simple but well executed and vaguely nostalgic (though I don't know why).

Crossword Jam+ (2023) [-] Apple Arcade word game. There is a dial with four or more letters. Form words using the letters of the dial without repeating letters. There is also a crossword but your words automatically go into the crossword so the crossword is only for giving you clues for a word (if it's a valid word but not in the crossword that's bonus points). Not a particularly exciting game as the combination of the two (dial and crossword) makes it maybe too easy.

Vampirella vs The Superpowers TPB (2024) [/] Vampirella and sidekick Dyna Might go undercover in Plural 1948 (alternate Earth where the world wars were fought by natural and chemically-enabled supers) to find a drug kingpin dealing in illegal elixirs -- drugs that give people temporary super powers. This is part of the continuity where Vampirella joins The Superpowers Project (composed of public domain Golden Age heroes) which I find a bit confusing as Dynamite is also publishing comics with other versions of Vampirella. I like this story because it is somewhat noir-ish.

F1 Drive to Survive is a Netflix documentary series where each season follows the behind the scenes of a Formula 1 race year. Season 8 is on Apple TV and it covers the 2025 season.

The series is filmed in the year with interviews during the year and then is put together in time to air just before the next F1 season (in F1 one season ends and a couple months later the next season begins). So all the final results are known before they air the Drive to Survive season.

Each episode seems to have a theme. Episode one focused on the six rookie drivers in 2025 (out of a field of 20 drivers). There was one episode about Fernando Alonso who is the oldest driver. The last couple of episodes focused on the three drivers vying for the championship (though it was really one driver and two with a slight chance if the first driver had disaster strike which actually happened in the second to last race).

Interviews with drivers and owners and one commentator. I've heard there's a bit of re-enactment since the film crews are not there for every big moment.

I guess my biggest issue is that there is no through-line with respect to the racers. Episode one focuses on the new drivers but after that episode you might see something on one or two but by the end of the series you don't know how they did. Same for Fernando Alonso. It's a little different for the teams since the series tends to focus more on the two three or four teams so that seems a bit more of a story.

Overall I found the season ok. I suppose since there are a low number of personalities and it's mostly the same people one year to the next it kind of builds up as you watch more seasons. I don't think I'll bother to watch previous seasons on Netflix.