a) "The Witcher"
I really enjoy Henry Cavill as Geralt in "The Witcher," he has this kind of unflappable, slightly bored or annoyed musclebound badass persona that reminds me at times of Brock Samson from "The Venture Bros." The show plays it straight a lot of the time, but there are certain moments that are almost sitcommy. I have to confess, though, I think a lot of the confusing timeline stuff and the B plots with supporting characters are a little dull (whenever Geralt's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, "Where's Geralt?").

b) "Reprisal"
Hulu's "Reprisal" is a very pulpy and stylized show with a femme fatale revenge plot reminiscent of Kill Bill. It's got a big and impressive cast (Gilbert Owuor and Madison Davenport) and in the first half of the season that I've watched there have been a number of really memorable scenes and setpieces. But it's also a show about a gang called the Banished Brawlers, who are led by a trio known as the Three River Phoenixes, who hang out at a club called Burt's Bang-A-Rang, and just having to listen to actors say those words with a straight face can be kind of exhausting. I wish they took that element of the show down a notch, Cinemax's recent show "Jett" did this kind of thing much more satisfyingly.

c) "Work In Progress"
"Work In Progress" is kind of a typical autobiographical sitcom where a comedian plays themselves, except quite a bit darker both tonally (the numbers in the title of every episode refers to Abby McEnany's countdown to her planned suicide) and literally (they use practical lighting in shooting the show). But it's also at times very funny, particularly in the subplot where McEnany sees Julia Sweeney and decides to tell her off because of the "SNL" Pat character that hasn't aged particularly well -- Sweeney gets to play a fictionalized version of herself who's amusingly married to "Weird Al" Yankovic while also getting to kind of apologize for Pat and explain what she was trying to do with the character.

d) "Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show"
I'm not too familiar with the cast of this new Netflix show, but there are a couple of pretty funny performers. The sketches can be a little hit or miss, though, and sometimes it feels like they cop out on the bad sketches by doing something at the end like flashing an "executive produced by Cardi B" card at the end of a fake TV show or cutting to white executives realizing they created something with racist stereotypes.

e) "Soundtrack"
I'm always interested to see how music is incorporated into scripted television -- obviously it's a big effort when a show features original songs in every episode, but even shows where the cast members sing popular songs can be pretty impressive from a production standpoint. By that standard, "Soundtrack" seems kind of simple -- it's a straight up romantic drama where occasionally characters express their emotions by lip syncing to Kelly Clarkson or Sia tracks in little choreographed music video scenes. It's pretty charming at times, though.

f) "Dolly Parton's Heartstrings"
I think it's great that we're at a place as a culture where Dolly Parton is one of the few celebrities that almost everyone can agree is great. Her Netflix show, where each episode turns one of her songs into an hourlong narrative story, is not great, though. The episode about "Jolene" was kind of interesting in that it kind of gives Jolene a sympathetic backstory and doesn't lay the blame at her feet, but on the other hand, it was just a really mediocre hour of TV drama.

g) "I'm With The Band: Nasty Cherry"
This is a show hosted by Charli XCX where she decides to svengali a female rock band, and picks 4 girls and helps them get their career started. The band consists of 2 seasoned musicians and 2 girls (a model and a film set designer) who they think would make good "rock stars" and have to learn to sing and play bass, respectively, for the band, so a lot of the show is kind of about them struggling through their baby steps (and also the guitarist fronts her own band that she's not breaking up to be in Nasty Cherry). The show is pretty entertaining -- a lot of the talking head reality show segments kind of break the 4th wall in a funny way -- and the songs the band has released are pretty good (although they don't really sound like a band, it mostly sounds like Charli XCX's rock-leaning music with a weaker vocalist). The whole project has this doomed air about it, though, like these girls are not really going to bond and stay a band for very long, I kind of wish Charli had found a band that already existed and mentored and made a show about htem.

h) "Spinning Out"
One thing I find myself thinking very often when I watch a show on Netflix is what network might have aired the show if Netflix didn't exist or didn't pick it up. And "Spinning Out" is very Freeform, or maybe a little darker than it would've been if it was on Freeform, lots of angsty teen athletes and family dysfunction, kinda boring and melodramatic.

i) "V Wars"
"V Wars" is a Netflix show about vampires with "The Vampire Diaries" star Ian Somerhalder, so naturally I picture it being on The CW, although really it's more of a gory straight-up horror thing (but also very boring).

j) "Virgin River"
Another one that could've been on The CW, very earnest small town drama, it's based on a novel series so maybe the source material is more interesting but the show was dullsville to me.

k) "Hello Ninja"
A very cutesy silly new cartoon on Netflix, but my 4-year-old who watches lots of cutesy silly stuff had zero interest in it, so I have to deem it a failure.

l) "Don't F**k With Cats"
One of the more interesting true crime docuseries I've seen, partly because while it deals with a pretty dark story, they find a way to insert some levity into the situation, from the title on down, mostly through the lens of the Facebook sleuths who helped bring a murderer to justice.

m) "Narcoworld: Dope Stories"
Gritty Netflix docuseries about police making drug smuggler arrests. It's kind of interesting to see the real thing since this stuff gets dramatized too often but once I got a taste of it I didn't really need to watch multiple episodes of it.

n) "Merry Happy Whatever"
Where a season of television once aired piece by piece over 3 to 8 months, it's often now released all at once. So it kind of makes sense to have shows that all take place in the space of a few days, things centered around a particular holiday or something, and the holiday-themed family sitcom "Merry Happy Whatever" is an experiment in that lane -- the first season is about Christmas but presumably other seasons would center on other holidays. Unfortunately, it's just hideously lame and unfunny.

o) "Home For Christmas"
This Norwegian import on Netflix is a much better attempt at a Christmas-themed sitcom than "Merry Happy Whatever," kind of a silly show where a woman lies to her family about having a boyfriend and then scrambles to find a guy to bring home for Christmas.

p) "Nobody's Looking"
"Nobody's Looking" is another Netflix import, from Brazil, that kind of surprised me with what feels like a very American sense of humor. But the premise, about angels who work in an office running the world like a bureaucracy, is also really really close to an American show that aired last year, "Miracle Workers."

q) "Crash Landing On You"
A Netflix import about a wealthy South Korean heiress whose plane crashes in North Korea and an army officer helps her hide and falls in love with her, really kind of a crazy premise for a TV show but it's charming with some funny dialogue.

r) "The Gift"
A Turkish import on Netflix about how a painter whose work bears a strange resemblance to a recently unearthed archaeological artifact, didn't find the mystery intriguing enough to keep watching.

s) "Twice Upon A Time"
A French time travel romance story, really soppy and sentimental, not very interesting to me.

t) "Mortel"
This French show is about 2 teens who acquire superpowers, but their superpowers only work when they're near each other. I don't like much about this show, but I thought that little twist was pretty novel.

u) "Singapore Social"
This feels like someone took a long hard look at the success of Crazy Rich Asians and the success of "The Jersey Shore" and decided we need a trashy reality show about rich Asians.

v) "The Club"
A Netflix show from Mexico about some rich teens who get involved with a drug trafficking ring, not into it but I feel like if an American network remade this it would be a big zeitgeisty hit.

w) "Infinity Train: Book 2"
Last year Cartoon Network ran this really unique little fantasy miniseries "Infinity Train" and I loved it, probably the thing I most regret forgetting to put on my 2019 TV list. So I'm pleasantly surprised that they brought the show back for another season as kind of an anthology series -- with the first season protagonist Tulip's story resolved, the new story features a version of her from a parallel universe, Mirror Tulip. It's a great show, some poignant emotional storylines and some really funny silly moments and creative concepts, so far I'm not loving the second season as much as the first but it's growing on me.

x) "You"
Nothing has made me feel more like a TV hipster than "You," which I enthusiastically told everyone about when it was a little watched show on Lifetime, but now that it's a gigantic hit on Netflix, I'm kind of like oh yeah, it's alright I guess. Part of that is down to the shelf life of the premise -- it just feels impossible for the 2nd season to be as good as the first without the novelty or element of surprise, although it's still pretty watchable and they try to keep it introducing by giving Joe a love interest who turns out to be pretty messed up too.

y) "Joe Pera Talks With You"
I still have mixed feelings about this show, sometimes I feel like Joe Pera's babyfaced-young-guy-who-talks-like-an-old-man schtick is very tiresome, but occasionally I'm in the right mood for it and the more contemplative episodes like the lighthouse one are really enjoyable.

z) "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
It's nice to see Sterling K. Brown have some fun on a comedy for a few episodes while he's still on the boring lucrative "This Is Us" gravy train, really looking forward to what his career will be like after that show runs its course. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is still pretty good in its 3rd season but starting to suffer from diminishing returns -- I think it was kind of a bad call for the show to kick off with Joel being such a thoroughly unlikable character and then come around a couple years later to expecting people to want to see him get back with Midge at least temporarily and have his own stupid little B plots, he sucks and I'm never gonna like him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 09, 2020 at 1:01 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.