Not a groundbreaking day for TV News,but I did watch Not Dead Yet (Hulu), whose audio description has gotten worse. Sitcoms do not offer many gaps in dialogue to add audio description, so it’s painfully obvious when the narration is this bad. There were some obvious gaps where we could have gotten something, perhaps to either explain what just happened, or set up the next scene. I think the narrator spoke twice outside of the title and the end crediting the company Vi-Tech. Right now, I wouldn’t work for Vi-Tech if my life depended on it. I’ve heard this narrator before, and she’s done good work. it is entirely possible, she even recorded more lines than are being used, and somehow this is what the company gave to ABC. So, if you are an established narrator, maybe having your work misrepresented isn’t worth the payday? Seriously, listen to the second episode of the second season of this show, and convince me that a different AD team wouldn’t have had more description.

It also was watched the same day as Masters Of The Air (Apple Plus), which I just mentioned yesterday as one of my top 3 shows right now just in terms of quality of audio description. The others were Criminal Record and Halo, though Fargo and True Detective are right behind them. That’s really a Top five if you want the most bang for your buck right now in the AD community. The third episode of Masters is action packed.

I also got to Episode 8 of What If, which seems to be rolling all the ideas from the previous episodes in, and since I haven’t been a big fan of all of them, I’m not totally sure this episode worked for me. It was nice to see Happy’s character continuing though. And, I am a fan of Captain Carter.

In the realm of “catching up”, I watched a season 7 episode of The Golden Girls (Hulu), a season 2 episode of Young Sheldon (MAX), and a season 1 episode of Silicon Valley (MAX) which all had audio description. Young Sheldon is actually a really solid example of the possibilities of how good sitcom audio description could be, as it is a network sitcom, structured more traditionally than Silicon Valley. The Golden Girls is made in a different era, so it is more representational of how classic sitcoms deserve audio description, notably shows like All In The Family, MASH, and Cheers, which all had long runs, were successful, and are considered classics. of course, I could expand that list, since most classic shows don’t have audio description.