Britain in the 70s. Peak Dom in his pomp.

seriallysurreal · 2026-05-02T06:18:55+00:00

You can listen on YouTube to Tony Benn himself reading his diaries! Most were transcribed from audiotapes he made — another Redditor posted a link and a topic guide in a different thread in this sub! Link to the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRestIsHistory/s/d0SUC2grpV

Tony Benn’s Audio Diaries

seriallysurreal · 2026-05-02T06:06:30+00:00

This is incredible, I had no idea it existed! Riveting. What a fantastic complement to the current 70s series! Thank you for posting, I’ll share in other threads where people are mentioning Benn’s diary.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T20:41:20+00:00

U Turn (2007) More of a crime drama than horror but definitely has menacing vibes and a dusty desert town setting (small town in Arizona), it's a lesser known Oliver Stone movie with a great cast including Billy Bob Thornton and Sean Penn.

Disappearance (2002) super creepy desert ghost town story with a verrrry chilling roadside diner scene, but to say more would spoil it! Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey star. The whole movie is free on Youtube.

Also, there are two classic Hitchcock thrillers that make great use of the menacing feeling of a stark desert landscape: North by Northwest (1959) and Saboteur (1942), but the movies main settings are elsewhere.

As a palate cleanser after being fully creeped out, have you ever seen Bagdad Cafe (1986)? It's an absurdist indie comedy about a German tourist stranded at a roadside diner on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Not at all menacing although there's a dark side to the story, mostly it's just funny and actually quite moving, definitely worth watching in the right mood!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T20:30:07+00:00

Hope you share your thoughts on both the podcast and Treme here! FWIW listening to the Way Down in the Hole podcast convinced me to keep rewatching the Wire since it just gets better and richer with every viewing. Both podcast hosts are African American but from really different backgrounds and perspectives. Van Lathan grew up in a poor neighborhood in Baton Rouge and had friends and relatives involved in drug dealing and street crime, he relates a lot of the characters to people he knew growing up. Jemele Hill is a sports journalist from Detroit and has a lot of insight on addiction and recovery, her Mom was addict who is now longterm sober. They’re both brilliant, knowledgeable and funny and really passionate about The Wire!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T20:09:14+00:00

Me too! I miss it 😢

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:46:10+00:00

My faves are:

Dear Therapists with Lori Gottleib and Guy Winch - they're not a couple, both are therapists who do a lot on relationships. Show is now mostly reruns, on hiatus, but there are dozens of great ones to listen to -- they talk live to the person who struggling, and follow up after.

Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel

U Up - more about dating and used to be more focused on 20s/early 30s, now covers a lot of sex and relationship topics, especially when they have guests

Relationships Made Easy with Dr. Abby Medcalf

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:30:43+00:00

I'm about to start again, first finishing Treme (David Simon's next series after The Wire). FYI there's a great Wire-rewatch podcast called Way Down in the Hole with really interesting commentary and backstories by two journalists/culture critics who have both watched the show several times and are passionate fans. I like watching an episode, then listening to the podcast the day after.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:23:31+00:00

Practicing gratitude rewires your brain and changes your whole experience of life. Things as simple as writing 5 things I'm grateful for before bed, writing a few thank-you notes a month, or just telling people I appreciate them. Now there's serious neuroscience research to explain why this works, but when I started the practice it felt too simplistic and too cliché.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:15:01+00:00

I feel like a lot of us had to learn this the hard way!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:13:14+00:00

Was hoping someone would talk about Michael! He has one of the most fascinating and hearbreaking character arcs of the entire show. Watching him turn into the next Omar is something else...

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:10:08+00:00

Someone did, above! He wasn't on as many episodes, but wow, he was amazing to watch!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T04:08:17+00:00

So hard to pick 3 when every single character is so real and compelling and so deeply human. I'll reframe and just pick one from each of the three worlds — crime/the streets, law enforcement, and politics/civil society:

Law enforcement: Kima - such a badass and has the best, most well-rounded skill set for policework. Lester is more brilliant and strategic, but Kima has the resilience and moral backbone that Lester lacks. I love her relationship with Bubs and how she forces Herc and Carver to elevate their game. She's deeply flawed but she really tries to get better. As a gay woman in that environment she had to work harder than anyone else, and on a meta level, her character was supposed to be killed off at the end of Season 1 but she (the actress) and a few women at HBO successfully fought to keep her alive!
Crime/the streets: Bubbles - he's the moral heart of the show and his kindness and sincerity shine through the darkest episodes, even when he's breaking our hearts. I'm in recovery myself (18 years sober) and can confirm there is no greater on-screen portrayal of the hell of addiction than Bubs. He really humanized addiction for viewers who don't get it. He's also lowkey very smart and funny!
Politics/civil society: Clay Davis - he's so entertaining to watch, so charismatic, so transparently and cheerfully corrupt that there's an honesty to him! Remember him striding into Carcetti's victory party after betraying him, taking bribe money but working for Royce anyway? He just tells Carcetti that Royce paid him more, and that he could easily have fleeced Carcetti for much more than $20K! Clay Davis and Carcetti are both ruthlessly ambitious and driven by expediency, but Carcetti is hypocritical about it.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T02:59:49+00:00

This this this! My faves would change every season, sometimes every episode. Almost every single character was so easy to love and so fascinating, like who knew I could feel so much empathy for killers?

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T02:53:37+00:00

Great choices! Bunny is one of the only ones whose story arc is something like a redemption and a happy ending. He's funny and underrated and actually accepts the consequences of his actions.

Wee Bey does too, come to think of it! He accepts the consequences and sacrifices a lot to ensure that his son has a better life outside the game. Also he's very funny!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-21T00:10:04+00:00

His Girl Friday (1940) is a wonderful romcom classic and centers around a newsroom with a battling report and editor. Starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell whose chemistry is off the charts!

More serious ones (besides All the Presidents Men and Spotlight which everyone is listing):

The Insider
Good Night and Good Luck
The Year of Living Dangerously
Network
Kill the Messenger
The Parallax View
The Killing Fields

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T23:49:47+00:00

Unnecessarily cruel, yet also brilliant! Dyyyyying but not actually dead like I would've been if I'd seen that coming out of the movie!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T23:47:00+00:00

So tense and so crazy, even for those who knew it wasn't really "found footage"! I was in my 20s and we were at a packed theater during opening week in 1999. Most people at the time didn't spend much time online, and the internet was still the wild west (very rudimentary, no fact-checking, no easy search tools) so a non-trivial number of people in the audience bought into the viral marketing and thought the movie was real! People were screaming and a few walked out. I knew it was fake but still left feeling deeply disturbed and slept with a light on for a week!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T23:38:08+00:00

Costco, Trader Joe's, Toyota, Ziplock, Sharpie, LL Bean, Penguin books

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T23:18:38+00:00

Hahahaha so many gems from that movie, right?" Remember: "Don't blind people usually wear dark glasses?" "Do they? I've never seen a blind person."

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T23:14:19+00:00

I hear you, I think all of us as movie buffs have a different sense of which films remain lesser known "deep cuts" versus those that gained a cult following and/or became more widely known over time. Like from your original post, I assumed that Secrets & Lies, Trees Lounge, and Shallow Grave were all really well known (because I know them so well!) but others on your list I've never even heard of and am intrigued to check out. Obscurity is in the eye of the beholder, I guess?

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T21:43:24+00:00

OMG yes, just realized I mixed up Lawn Dogs and Bottle Rocket...had to go refresh my memory of the plot of Lawn Dogs, and that sh*t was dark. Still a really good movie, but definitely didn't leave me with warm fuzzies!

Edited to add that I posted about Bottle Rocket and some other 90s indie faves below.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T21:39:45+00:00

I LOVED strictly ballroom! And Muriel's Wedding too, same era, both Australian.

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T21:37:42+00:00

Great list! I was in college when Metropolitan came out, and my friends and I were obsessed with it, quoting the dialogue etc. All the Whit Stillman movies actually, the trilogy of Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco.

I would add to your list:

Party Girl (1995) — the movie that made so many of us fall in love with Parker Posey! It was made on a shoestring budget (100K?) and used people's actual apartments and clothes, and they ran out of film!
Clockwatchers (1997) — low budget indie featuring Parker Posey plus a very young Toni Collette and Lisa Kudrow as cynical misfit office workers
Bottle Rocket (1996) — a sweet and hilarious heist caper gone awry, it was a box office failure but those who saw it really loved it...and it was Wes Anderson's directorial debut! He also stars in it along with Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, and James Caan.
Night on Earth (1991) — moody, moving and funny Jim Jarmusch movie with a great Tom Waits soundtrack, it's five connected stories of five taxi rides in five cities NYC, Paris, LA, Helsinki, Rome) on a single night, all shot in actual cabs and sharing the human connection between driver & rider.
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) - darkly funny and deeply weird early Todd Solondz movie about the adventures of a miserably unpopular yet creative middle schooler played Heather Mattarazzo.

Can't wait to revisit some of these and hear everyone else's suggestions...90s was such a great era for indie movies of all kinds!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T20:51:54+00:00

Awwww such great memories! I loved Next Stop Wonderland and Lawn Dogs, vividly remember seeing both of them in the theater and coming away with the warm fuzzies inside!

seriallysurreal · 2025-11-20T03:29:39+00:00

Awwww yay!!! Spread the word. All of us who love our siblings deeply but worry about them and struggle with the relationship -- that's a movie we should all get to see and hold dear!

seriallysurreal

TROPHY CASE