I had quite a busy day yesterday, and I still managed to squeeze in some shows to talk about. First of all, kudos to the bold choice of using “ass” in the audio description over at Sexy Beast(Paramount Plus). I think the general line of thought from the old guard would be to avoid that word for some out of date reason. There’s no one watching Sexy Beast, who got to Episode 6, heard “ass” and got offended. The show features a lot of sex, is primarily set in and around porn, and that use was during a sex scene. It really helped to change what is so often just “thrusting”, into a more well described intercourse of two people. Sexy Beast is dark, gritty, and nasty, and ass is the best way to match the tone of this series. Again, kudos.

I’m not a super fan of the audio description for Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), but I’m avoiding being hyper critical, because I really think a lot of what I might perceive as lacking could be (and likely very well is) tied to a list of demands from Netflix, and also from Nickelodeon, where Avatar originated. Not that this show has gotten super dark, or anything like that, but if you approach it like it is family fare instead of a broader fantasy project that reaches a wide audience, then there might be some missed opportunities. I’ve mentioned in the past that this show really avoids being too specific in character descriptions, and I honestly believe it has everything to do with M Night Shyamalan’s rogue casting choices that left fans cold. The odd thing is that here, the majority of the audience watching is sighted, so they would still have that problem, so it’s so odd to not want that for your show for the percentage of users who are visually impaired, unless you feel like you got the casting wrong, which I’ve heard from my sighed friends who are fans is not the case. Balderdash, I say. No way around it.

The Regime (MAX) gets way better and more focused in the second episode. Martha Plimpton really allows for an interesting setup for the episode, and her interactions are excellent. The audio description here is still good. Perhaps the only feedback I could give would be that I happened to read about their filming locations and they seem intentional, sometimes recognizable to at least a European audience. I’d be really curious what the eventual UK AD track does with describing locations. In America, it’s a solid gamble that your audience wouldn’t know these places. But, they sound historically beautiful.

The other shows had no audio description, and don’t get a shoutout. I do wish that FOX’s slate of animated shows had audio description on Hulu.