a) "Mrs. Fletcher"
Only knowing Tom Perrotta's work via screen adaptations of his novels, it's interesting and a little confusing to consider that Election and "The Leftovers" came from the same guy's pen. I'm also a little amused that Kathryn Hahn's next TV vehicle after "I Love Dick" is possibly even hornier than that extremely horny show. The first 2 episodes are really promising, though, it definitely has the feel of being based on a novel in that the characters have rich interior lives and it's not entirely the typical HBO half hour dark comedy with cheap cynical laughs and realistic but pointless slice of life scenes that I somewhat anticipated it being, feels like a little more is going on in there.

b) "Evil"
I love that Michelle and Robert King have taken the clout they have from creating "The Good Wife" and have spent it on getting the most old-fashioned broadcast network, CBS, to run fairly strange and smart and high concept shows like the short-lived "BrainDead" (my favorite show of 2016) and now "Evil." This show has a bit of a procedural case-of-the-week thing to it, but it feels like with each passing episode they're teasing out where the reality of the story lies, whether everything has a rational explanation or if there really is such a thing as demonic possessions and miracles. And it's really fun to see Michael Emerson play the creepiest and most mysterious character he's played since "Lost."

c) "His Dark Materials"
My wife read the novels, but a long time ago, so she's somewhat guiding me through the BBC/HBO series with at least a broad understanding of the universe the story's in. I like the cast and the production values, and the daemons are really cool both in concept and in CGI execution, so hopefully I'll get wrapped up in the big epic story and it'll translate to a series better than it did to a feature film a decade ago. In a time when every other show on TV has someone who rose to fame on "The Wire," I think Clarke Peters is someone I've most wanted to see get some really substantial roles, and this feels like it could be a big one for him.

d) "Catherine The Great"
I like that this Helen Mirren miniseries about an 18th century Russian empress is very unapologetically about palace intrigue and tawdry sex scandals, it's a lot more fun to watch than I expected it to be.

e) "Daybreak"
"Daybreak" features a snarky teenager addressing the camera like Ferris Bueller to explain what his life is like in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and to put too fine a point on it they also cast Matthew Broderick himself as the principal of the kid's high school. That's the level of obviousness that "Daybreak" is dealing in, but as someone who enjoyed Zombieland and will probably enjoy the sequel, I don't terribly mind being pandered to with more of this kind of thing.

f) "The Unlisted"
An Australian show about a global conspiracy to oppress teenagers, kind of intriguing but the execution is a little dull to me so I don't think I'm gonna find out what's going on.

g) "The Cry"
Another Australian show, a miniseries about a couple whose newborn baby mysteriously disappears. But at the end of the first episode, when it actually happens, you find out that the mom and dad both went into a store together and left the baby in the car, and then the baby was gone when they got back to the car, which honestly just kind of made me furious as a parent and so I had zero investment in whether these shitty people got their baby back.

h) "Treadstone"
My wife was way more interested in this Bourne Identity spinoff without Jason Bourne than I was, but I have to admit, the first episode wasn't bad, the fight choreography was awesome.

i) "Bob Hearts Abishola"
I have been a Chuck Lorre apologist in the past, but "Mike & Molly" was never one of his strongest shows, and it feels like they're scraping the barrel by basically doing a retread of it with the co-star that didn't become a big movie star. They're trying to make it a nice sweet love story but there was also a fart joke in the first five minutes.

j) "Tyler Perry's Sistas"
I don't think much of Tyler Perry's movies but his TV productions seem to be a whole rung below even those, it's a shame because you probably could've had a good show with this cast if the writing was better.

k) "A Little Late with Lilly Singh"
I was always kind of morbidly fascinated with "Last Call With Carson Daly," NBC's zombie late night show that trudged on for 17 years with a mediocre host who always had other gigs doing the absolute bare minimum: they ran reruns for half the year, and when they did tape new shows, Carson would just do these half-assed host segments and then throw it to a celebrity being interviewed by an off-camera producer or footage of a band's concert. So I was so happy to hear that NBC finally canceled Carson and gave his timeslot to one of the still rare women in late night. Lilly Singh got famous on YouTube and I tend to cringe at a lot of her characters, but on "A Little Late" she just wears a zoot suit and does a fairly traditional late night show with a monologue and an interview. I don't feel like she's really found her footing yet, but there's something I like about watching a new host settle into the job, and I feel like the show is more fun when she's excited about the guest, like the Natalie Portman episode.

l) "The Kelly Clarkson Show"
I have mixed feelings about Kelly Clarkson getting a daytime talk show, because it wasn't that long ago that she was one of the most consistently excellent pop stars on the charts, and it feels kind of too soon for her to kind of pivot to hosting a TV show 5 days a week and presumably touring and releasing albums less often if the show is successful. But I also like her as a person and TV personality so it's a fun show, and she sings in every episode and will just randomly bust out a killer cover of a song like Flume's "Never Be Like You."

m) "Unnatural Selection"
A miniseries on Netflix about DNA engineering and gene editing, I've enjoyed watching it with my wife since she's a scientist and can dumb it down so I can understand it. We both really really hated the biohacker guy in the first episode, she has principled reasons to question what he's doing but he also just came off like a huge douchebag to both of us.

n) "Why We Hate"
This Discover Channel docuseries covers a lot of ground in 6 episodes and is pretty well done. But even though white supremacy and right wing violence is a topic they don't shy away from, I feel like by trying to make it all very broadly about all kinds of human hatred for any kind of 'other,' they're almost shifting the focus away from where it should be on white supremacy and colonialism shaping our entire world.

o) "Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America"
This has been pretty good, the idea of getting really granular about one song for an hour of television is great. Of course, they end up zooming out and talking about more than just the song at hand, but it's still cool to get the whole story of Outkast's early years through the prism of "Elevators" and things like that. The "Kings of Rock" episode was my favorite so far, I was kind of getting emotional through the whole thing before they even touched on Jam Master Jay's death at the end.

p) "America's Most Musical Family"
I love seeing kids with musical talent so this Nickelodeon show is a pretty cool twist on musical reality competition shows. I definitely root for the kids that play instruments over the vocal groups, though, especially WanMor, the group comprised of the 4 songs of Boyz II Men's Wanya Morris, all of whom are also named Wanya and sang a Boyz II Men cover, the whole thing just made me roll my eyes so hard.

q) "The DNA Of Murder With Paul Holes"
Remember when Oxygen was the channel for women and not the channel for murder? Weird, right? I'm not the biggest fan of true crime doc shows, but this is easily one of my favorites, mostly because they've focused on compelling cases I haven't heard of before and because cold case investigator Paul Holes is a really watchable host, he really projects a quiet charisma and intelligence. Also his name is Paul Holes, which I can't help but kind of snicker at as he learns about people who have been stabbed full of holes.

r) "The Substitute"
My son really enjoys this Nickelodeon hidden camera show where they do kind of a silly 'undercover boss' thing where a celebrity in disguise goes into a classroom one day as a substitute teacher and wacky hijinks ensue. Some of the celebrities are people from kid's shows that I don't really know but the episode with John Cena is pretty entertaining.

s) "44 Cats"
Nickelodeon has been airing this funky Italian cartoon (called "44 Gatti" in its homeland), it's interesting to me how European cartoons really stick out and look and feel a little different even when they've dubbed it with American voice actors.

t) "Ricky Zoom"
My 4-year-old adores the talking truck show "Blaze and the Monster Machines," which is absolutely terrible, so I was afraid when he started watching this other new cartoon about a talking dirtbike that's even more annoying, but thankfully he seems to have already lost interest in it.

u) "Big City Greens"
A charming Disney Channel cartoon my kids watch sometimes. It's weird to see a cartoon where all the humans have Simpson yellow skin but otherwise don't resemble the character design on "The Simpsons," though. .

v) "Castle Rock"
I didn't realize "Castle Rock" was gonna be an anthology series with a different story and set of characters each season until they started advertising the second season. I'm kinda glad, it felt like they did as much as they could do with a lot of the season 1 characters, and the new cast headed up by Lizzy Caplan is really good. I don't think I'm enough of a Stephen King reader to really catch all the references or appreciate the way they've woven various characters and themes together. But I still like the concept of it, it's like the Coens-as-genre approach of "Fargo," which I might have liked more if they hadn't named it after a specific Coens movie.

w) "9-1-1"
This show has always been ridiculous but they really went overboard with the 3-episode arc about a tsunami hitting California. Every time we watch this show we're like "this is so poorly written, why are we doing this" and then some storyline or another has us on the edge of our seats. I hope Angela Bassett and Peter Krause gradually tiptoe out of the show like Connie Britton did, though, they deserve better.

x) "Single Parents"
My favorite new fall show of 2018 still going strong in season 2, have really enjoyed the episodes with Leighton Meester's real life husband Adam Brody playing her crappy ex. I like to refer to Brody as Mr. Meester.

y) "The Good Place"
I'm curious to see how they tie "The Good Place" up, but they were so creative with perfectly executed twists and weird concepts in the first two seasons that they've kinda written themselves into a corner, which is why they've wisely opted to end at four seasons. Still, there are enough hilarious lines in each episode that I'm enjoying just sticking along for the ride, and Ben Koldyke has been a really funny addition to the cast.

z) "Saturday Night Live"
I have heard some complaints about the more elaborately staged musical performances this season, and I definitely cringed at the Coldplay one, but I'm glad they're shaking things up in this old show and at least trying some small innovations. This season has been alright so far, the Phoebe Waller-Bridge episode was pretty fun, I'm glad they didn't embarrass her with dumb sketches or anything. I feel like Kate McKinnon is really soldiering through the political sketches, playing so many different people and sometimes having to animate some weakly written material. I love seeing her carry the show but I wouldn't be mad to see her move on to other things. I miss Leslie Jones this season, but again, she probably has better projects on the horizon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 07, 2019 at 3:04 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.