Found my new favorite show at a bar in Austin last week

I was killing time at this dive bar near South Congress waiting for a friend. They had a TV playing some show I'd never seen before. No sound, just subtitles. It was this British crime drama called Line of Duty. I got so into it just from watching 20 minutes of subtitles that I asked the bartender what it was. Now I'm 3 seasons deep in 5 days. The way they do undercover operations is way more realistic than anything on network TV. The interviews with suspects are tense as hell. Has anyone else found a good show by accident like this? Where did it happen?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessicaw541mo ago

Hold on, you watched 20 minutes of a show with NO SOUND and got hooked? That is insane to me. I have to have captions on everything because my hearing is shot, but I don't think I could follow a whole drama without any audio at all. I guess the acting and the way they shoot it must be incredible if you could tell it was that good just from reading the subtitles. Maybe I need to check this out, because that sounds like a real testament to the quality of the show.

wesley_grant331mo ago

Actually had a buddy of mine do something similar a few years back. He was visiting his cousin's place and they had this Korean drama playing on the TV with the volume broken. He sat down, read the subs for like 25 minutes and got completely sucked in. My friend never watched foreign shows before, but he said the expressions and the camera work told the whole story without needing to hear a word. Ended up binging the whole series on his own time and now he swears by watching stuff that way sometimes. @jessicaw54 I totally get where you're coming from with needing captions, but I swear when the acting and directing are that strong, the sound almost becomes a bonus instead of something you rely on. Sometimes I think we lean too hard on audio and miss how much the visuals can carry a scene on their own.