a) "The Righteous Gemstones"
Danny McBride is a relentlessly one-note performer, and I'm not the biggest fan of that note. But I will give him credit for continuing to create new shows and surrounding his stock character with increasingly better casts, so I was excited to see this new series boasts John Goodman and Adam DeVine (as well as Edi Patterson, the breakout performer of "Vince Principals," a show I otherwise had pretty mixed feelings about). Inevitably, there have been some gross-out gags, indulgent action movie setpieces, and reenactments of internet memes that have made me roll my eyes. But so far it's been pretty good, although I'm fine with people comparing it unfavorably to "Succession" and suggesting some influence, because there's never been a Jody Hill/Danny McBride production that wasn't derivative of a Adam McKay/Will Ferrell production.
b) "Unbelievable"
I've only watched the first two episodes, but what's really striking is the contrast between them. In the first, you see what Kaitlyn Dever's character goes through and it's just harrowing, maybe even moreso because the last time most of us saw Dever was when she was so charming and funny in
Booksmart. The second episode isn't exactly happy, but Merrit Wever and Toni Collette entering the story kind of feel like arriving superheroes, so it's a relief to just see the wheels start to turn towards justice.
c) "This Way Up"
"This Way Up" is a pretty traditional sitcom in that it's a vehicle for a comic to play someone who says clever and funny all the time while everyone around them acts unamused and mortified. It's a very good vehicle for Irish comedian Aisling Bea, though, I'd never seen her before and she's hilarious and I love just listening to her voice. After a few episodes, I realized that since the show is about a troubled young woman and her unamused sister, it's probably been compared to "Fleabag" a lot, and it has, which I think is a little reductive, but it's very good in a more traditional way on its own merits. It's interesting to hear Aasif Mandvi speak with a British accent in this show, apparently he lived in the UK until he was 16, but he always sounded like he grew up in America on "The Daily Show."
d) "On Becoming A God In Central Florida"
The more I think about this show, the more I think the title is so unusually memorable and vivid and the pilot was so promising that it took me a few episodes to get a little bored of it. As someone who's never been able to put my finger on what I find unlikable about Kirsten Dunst, she's good in this, definitely a more substantial role than what she's had in the past. And I like that the show is set in 1992 but kind of reaffirms what I've always thought, that the '80s basically kept going well into the '90s for most of America. Still, it's a little trendy to tell stories about tacky Floridians these days, and the whole housewife-decides-to-do-something-drastic-after-her-life-falls-apart plot feels a little biolerplate cable dramedy, I'm still really rooting for the show to fully find its voice.
e) "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance"
"Game of Thrones" must have really opened up the floodgates for darker fantasy series for there to be such an ambitous and weirdly grown up
The Dark Crystal prequel series with such a huge all-star voice cast (including at least 4 "GoT" actors). I kind of like it, but even without having really grown up on the original movie, sometimes I'm taken aback by how different it can be tonally.
f) "Carnival Row"
Another adult fantasy show, with lots of faerie sex and allegories about racism. It's a little somber, though, and it doesn't help that the two stars are Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, who are less actors than big distinctive sets of eyebrows with people attached to them. This show also expects you to be very impressed and titillated by the idea that faeries can have sex in mid-air but my wife made the good point that sex without gravity and a surface to push against or off of probably wouldn't actually be that good.
g) "Undone"
This seems to have potential from the first episode but I'm skeptical that it needed any animation, it feels like the story might have worked better as a traditional live action show and the rotoscoping feels kind of distracting and doesn't serve any purpose in the story or the visuals.
h) "The I-Land"
One of the odder twists in Neil LaBute's career is that he's been the showrunner on 4 seasons of a "Van Helsing" series about a futuristic vampire apocalypse, which doesn't even feel much of anything like his signature films. This new Netflix series he directs and writes for is another high concept sci-fi show, but in some ways it has a much more familiar LaBute vibe -- 10 people wake up with no memories on a tropical island, and immediately begin manipulating and gaslighting each other. The weird derivative premise and lousy acting really make it hard to watch, though, which is a shame, I could see the potential for this fusion of elements to make an interesting show.
i) "The A List"
Another bad and poorly acted Netflix show about mysterious things happening on a remote island, this a British show about teens at a summer camp, actually worse than "The I-Land" though.
j) "The Spy"
I'm not surprised that Sacha Baron Cohen has finally taken on a serious dramatic role, particularly after he walked away from
Bohemian Rhapsody. Still, it's a little weird to see him play a real Mossad spy a year after playing a really dark satire of a Mossad agent on "Who Is America?" The episode I watched was kind of dry, didn't find it interesting. Also, maybe I'm just used to seeing Noah Emmerich play Americans and have a little more weight on him, but I really thought he looked and sounded awful in this, it just made me so uncomfortable.
k) "Wu-Tang: An American Saga"
Music biopics often make me wish I was watching a documentary about the same subject, so I'm glad Showtime's docuseries "Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics And Men" aired a few months before Hulu's dramatized Wu show came out, so I've already seen the real story and don't have to crave that while I'm watching the reenactment. It's not bad, it's fun to see Dave East and Joey Bada$$ play better rappers than they'll ever be, but ODB's a really difficult person to play and I don't think TJ Atoms pulls it off.
l) "Wu Assassins"
After there were already 2 shows about the Wu-Tang Clan this year, I half expected "Wu Assassins" to be about them too. But it's a martial arts show where the hero is a chef, which means there are a lot of fight scenes taking place in kitchens, which is always cool, there's so many different things to be used as entertaining fight props in that setting.
m) "Two Sentence Horror Stories"
I'm not sure where 'two sentence horror stories' started, if one particular author came up with the idea and a bunch of them, but if you look around the internet there are many, many examples, and they're pretty fun to read because they give you just enough detail to get your imagination going. The CW doing an anthology series where each half hour episode plays out a two sentence horror story (you see the first sentence at the beginning and then the second sentence at the end, right after you see the story's twist or kicker) is a cool idea on paper. But it kind of misses the point of something that's all about leaving the details to your imagination,
n) "Sherman's Showcase"
This show feels like IFC's informal companion piece to "Documentary Now!" that parodies black variety shows and music programs like "Soul Train" instead of old documentaries. Some of the songs and period details are great but it gets a little broad and obvious sometimes.
o) "Better Than Us"
This Russian series on Netflix is about a near future where people are served by human-looking robots (played by human actors). It seems pretty well done, but it's also very similar to the British series "Humans" from a few years ago that I lost interest in fairly quickly, so I don't know if I care enough to see if their follow through is better.
p) "45 rpm"
The Spanish language Netflix series "45 rpm" is about the rise of rock music in Spain in the 1960s. It reminds me a bit of other recent fictionalized music history shows like "Vinyl" and "The Get Down," but in a way I think it's easier for me to watch with interest because I don't know as much about the subject matter so I feel like I'm learning something or at least not noticing and nitpicking obvious inaccuracies.
q) "The Naked Director"
This show is a biography of one of Japan's most famous pornographers, it's really filthy and funny, kind of uncomfortable but entertaining in the way
Zack And Miri Make A Porno wishes it was.
r) "Bulletproof"
A British show that CW aired over the summer. Even a really traditional British cop drama is at least kind of novel to me because crime and policing and the culture are so different from the US, not a bad show, good cast, catchy theme song.
s) "This Is Football"
This is a really cool Amazon docuseries that looks at soccer all over the world in different countries and culture, great concept and solid execution.
t) "Workin' Moms"
I was happy to spotlight this Canadian show in my recent
Complex piece about summer TV, but since Netflix released the 2nd season in July and the 3rd season in August, I'm still working my way through the former and haven't started the latter yet. They've progressively gotten more playful with flashbacks and weirder gags, but it works, the comedy is still really grounded in the characters and relatable parenting stuff.
u) "Lodge 49"
I wish I got the sense this show was catching on but I don't, I'm just savoring the 2nd season without getting my hopes up that there'll be a 3rd. I love the way the first couple episodes of the new season felt kind of aimless but then by the 3rd episode they started to show how the storyline ties into the bigger arc from the first season. This is a show that features Brian Doyle-Murray eulogizing a co-worker by saying "Trees are just hairs on the scalp of the earth and we are lice crawling through them. You were the slowest louse, which was fast enough to make you a man." I love it.
v) "Succession"
I'm glad that this show is catching on pretty well, it's just so entertainingly foul and tawdry and everyone in the cast is note perfect. Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg is right on the line of being too over-the-top but he's fantastic, especially because I'm really not sure how old he's supposed to be, the actor is 31 but the character looks 21 and acts 11.
w) "Mindhunter"
I'm still early into the new season but that episode with David Berkowitz and the BTK killer's victim who survived was pretty great, this is really a rare show where they can do long 20-minute dialogue scenes and be gripping the whole time.
x) "GLOW"
This show is still very good and charming. But Marc Maron has always been my least favorite part of it, and now it wants me to be invested in a will-they-or-won't-they storyline with Maron and a woman 20 years younger than him? Nah, uh uh, no thank you, please move onto something else.
y) "Preacher"
I'm enjoying the final season, although it feels a little anticlimactic that it's ending just as another Ennis/Rogen/Goldberg show, "The Boys," has gotten a lot more attention (I like it less but it's execution is stronger, if that makes sense).
z) "Suits"
It really feels like the 9th and last season of "Suits" is limping to the finish line with 3 of the 4 most important characters from the early seasons gone -- even the one episode where Patrick J. Adams came back felt kind of perfunctory and unsatisfying. That said, I still like the remaining cast and enjoy watching these characters, Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt is always great TV and even giving him stuff like a goofy dream sequence is entertaining.
