a) "What We Do In The Shadows"
I really enjoyed 2014's vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, but I was apprehensive about the FX series basically transposing the whole concept from New Zealand to America with a new cast of similar characters. But Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement are still writing and directing a lot of the series, and they've really picked up right where they left off with the movie, which I suppose isn't that hard given that it was pretty low budget to begin with. But I'm still really pleased with the cast, Matt Berry is the perfect guy to hand things off to, and the first episode already had some hilarious riffs on the premise that weren't in the movie.

b) "Shrill"
Aidy Bryant has been such an entertaining, relatively underrated part of "Saturday Night Live" for so long that it's nice to see her star in her own Hulu sitcom while she's still on "SNL." I'm amused to see a show take place in the world of alt weekly papers that I have a lot of personal familiarity with, and John Cameron Mitchell's asshole boss character, loosely inspired by Dan Savage, is really funny. Most of it is more a relatable slice of life than a comedy, which isn't always my favorite kind of show, and Luka Jones from "People of Earth" is just the most infuriating character ever, but it's cool.

c) "Love Death + Robots"
One of the things that I find wearying about anthology shows lately is how episodes often feel like they're padded out to get to a 60-minute or even 90-minute running tie. So I find this Netflix anthology show really refreshing, because every episode is under 20 minutes. It's all dystopian animated stories, each one from a different creative team, exec produced by David Fincher, it's a total grab bag where I like some episodes way more than others, but overall I love the format.

d) "Abby's"
Natalie Morales starring in an NBC series created by a writer/producer from "New Girl" and "Superstore" looks really promising on paper, but "Abby's" is a painfully bland, traditional sitcom with a canned laugh track and no studio audience. I'm actually shocked it's not on CBS, everything about it screams CBS. The first episode wasn't entirely devoid of charm or laughs, but I didn't feel like the cast chemistry or the premise gelled, it was just a strained attempt at a new school "Cheers" dynamic.

e) "Proven Innocent"
I enjoyed Rachelle Lefevre's recent femme fatale turn on "Mary Kills People," and she's also good in this big ridiculous FOX legal drama where she's the righteous wrongful conviction activist lawyer whose foil is the state's attorney played by Kelsey Grammer.

f) "The Village"
This touchy feely show about the interwoven lives of the residents of an apartment building is like a wholesome "Melrose Place." I feel like in the wake of "This Is Us," this kind of tearjerking show is all the rage, "The Village" isn't as horribly emotionally manipulative as "A Million Little Things" but still not really my speed.

g) "After Life"
The movie Ghost Town was one of the only things Ricky Gervais has done post-"The Office" that I liked, so I kinda hoped given the premise that this would have a somewhat similar tone, but it doesn't really, don't really care for the premise.

h) "Boomerang"
I always think of the movie Boomerang in terms of the early '90s setting that I kind of assumed the new BET series of it would be a period piece, but it's actually a contemporary update where the characters are the children of the characters from the movie. I kinda feel like it kind of blends in a little too much with other shows like "Insecure" and "Grown-ish" that constantly take inspiration from Black Twitter trending topics. But it's not bad, might actually be the first Lena Waithe show where I was particularly impressed by the writing.

i) "Most Beautiful Thing"
This Netflix show about 1950s Brazil is aptly titled, it has this bright, distinctive, old school Hollywood look and is full of beautiful women. It's a little melodramatic, I feel like there's a lot of outright screaming, but that kind of also fits the aesthetic of it all.

j) "Alien News Desk"
Every time I think of this goofy cartoon on SyFy, I just think about how how Morbo the alien news anchor was one of my favorite running gags on "Futurama." It's not bad, though, they really commit to the absurdity of the concept.

k) "Shadow"
South Africa is a novel setting for a gritty crime drama, and "Shadow" is kind of fun with its over-the-top premise of an ex-cop who becomes a vigilante crimefighter and has a condition that makes him unable to feel pain. I almost kinda wish they went all the way to making the guy a superhero.

l) "Charlie's Colorforms City"
A really obnoxious kid's cartoon on Netflix, I played it for my 3-year-old and he was kind of enchanted with it for a few minutes but I think it's really more for babies.

m) "Cousins For Life"
My son loves this silly Nickelodeon sitcom, especially because they have a cute little pet pig named Arthur. It reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching Arnold Ziffle on "Green Acres" when it came on Nick At Nite when I was his age.

n) "The Case Against Adnan Sayed"
Because I still stubbornly refuse to listen to podcasts, I felt kind of left out of "Serial" being this huge pop culture phenomenon all about something that happened in the Baltimore area. So I look at this HBO show as kind of my chance to catch up on all this stuff, both the murder and what's happened since the podcast came out. I can't relate to people who feel super confident that they know what happened and, like, advocate for or against Sayed based on the podcast or the show, though. I'm not on a jury, I don't have to make up my mind, so I won't.

o) "Finding Justice"
I was impressed by this BET docuseries about racial justice, just really high production values and really thorough, analytical examinations of things like Stand Your Ground laws.

p) "Action"
Showtime's docuseries about the aftermath of the legalization of sports gambling is pretty interesting, I hadn't really given it much thought since it happened but obvious there's this whole teeming world going on full of some memorable characters.

q) "Cricket Fever: Mumbai Indians"
Cricket is a really interesting game to me, I don't know if I actually understand it any better after watching this show but it's fascinating.

r) "Game Of Clones"
MTV is full of weird, repulsive programming, but this one is really something else. It's a bizarre dating show where people from other MTV shows, like "Jersey Shore" or "Teen Mom," pick out a celebrity they're attracted to, and then go on blind dates with 6 people who kinda look like them and have been all done up to look exactly like them. So, for instance, Pauly D goes on dates with 6 Megan Fox lookalikes, with the concept being that if all of his dates look like his fantasy girl, then the one who actually matches with him on a personality level will stand out all the more. It's almost a clever idea, but no, it's just completely insane.

s) "The World's Best"
I guess this is really just an international-themed knockoff of "America's Got Talent." I'm amused by how random the judging panel of RuPaul, Drew Barrymore, and Faith Hill is.

t) "Santa Clarita Diet"
I don't care if Drew Barrymore judges a goofy reality show as long as she keeps making new seasons of "Santa Clarita Diet." I have been just in love with this show from day one, and so far season 3 has been as funny and strange and unpredictable as ever. I talked my brother into checking it out a while back but I think he just kind of shrugged that it was the exactly the kind of show Al would like.

u) "SMILF"
When "SMILF" debuted a year ago, it was encouraging to see Frankie Shaw out there as a young woman creator/showrunner/star with her own impressive show on premium cable, especially while there were so many bad stories going around about male creators in show business. So it was a bummer this year when the second season of "SMILF" was preceded by controversies about Shaw's misconduct as a showrunner, and Showtime decided not to pick it up for a third season. The second season was good, though, I felt like it branched out a bit from the smaller scale of the first season, with standalone episodes including one without Bridgitte in it at all and that really weird dream sequence thing with Kevin Bacon.

v) "American Gods"
I don't think it makes sense to be too slavishly auteurist about television, but there are certainly some creators and showrunners I am particularly devoted to, and Bryan Fuller is one of them. So I was certainly pretty disappointed to hear he'd acrimoniously departed from "American Gods" after the first season. But I wanted to give the show a chance to still be worth watching without him ("Dead Like Me" was still good after he left, after all). And so far I really have enjoyed the second season, it feels a  little less overwhelming and ambitious but I like that it's become more of a linear TV show following the same characters from one episode to the next without as many one-off episodes and setpieces. The leprechaun and Dead Wife are a pretty entertaining pair of characters to watch bounce off of each other.

w) "The OA"
The first season of "The OA" built up a lot of eerie mystique, and then it culminated in one of the most ridiculous finales I've ever seen, I absolutely hated it. Still, I was curious what the hell they could do for an encore, and I heard a lot of enthusiasm about how the second season ends. So I'm back on board with this show, just out of curiosity, once again, but it feels even more slow moving than the first season so far.

x) "The Magicians"
Shows that kind of hit a giant reset button for a whole season and have the characters in different lives and sometimes with different personalities are dicey territory. But I seem to love "The Magicians" more and more every time they swing for the fences with a big ambitious idea, so I've really enjoyed this season, with Hale Appleman really doing an amazing job of playing a villain with Eliot's body and face, and there have been a lot of little entertaining subplots like the Margo/Josh relationship.

y) "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"
After a real rollercoaster storyline the last couple years, it really feels like "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" has returned to its strengths for the last batch of episodes, last week's bit with the betting pool was an instant classic. I also enjoyed that they brought back Audra Levine for one more episode. My wife is pretty invested in who Rebecca will end up with, but I'm kind of just happy to see how they tie it all up.

z) "You're The Worst"
It's a different kind of bittersweet feeling to watch the final episodes of "You're The Worst," which is also airing its finale this week, since it's always been this dark, nasty, anti-sentimental show. Of course, somewhere around the halfway mark of the show's 5 seasons, they kinda made the emotional core of the characters pretty undeniable, so I am interested to see if they end up together, just because I've never been sure how much the show is committed to insisting that they shouldn't. It's been an entertaining season, though, the Paul F. Tompkins arc had a good payoff.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 at 1:19 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.