TV Diary
"Space Force" has gotten pretty negative reviews, and I would say some of the criticism is warranted, but it's better than it's getting credit for. Most of the time, it's a pretty solid "Silicon Valley"-style modern tech farce, with some detours into the ruthless gallows humor satire of "Avenue 5." But it's a strange fit to have Steve Carell return to series television just to suppress his Tom Hanksian everyman charm and play the dumb and arrogant fictional head of a real military branch just created by Donald Trump. And it's a little weird to watch a show about the near future that's just fuzzily in our reality -- they never specify who the president is but he tweets a lot, the Space Office got its funding from the shuttered USPS, and there are a lot of ciphers for current public figures -- I thought the fake Elizabeth Holmes was pretty funny, the fake AOC (with the initials 'AYC') less so. And a lot of the B plots with Carell's family aren't very interesting, although the mystery of why is wife is in prison is intriguing. But John Malkovich is reliably great, I've enjoyed the show more often than not.
b) "Quiz"
I feel like "Quiz" was not the best name for this miniseries about people cheating on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" considering that Quiz Show was the name of a very famous film about a different game show conspiracy. In any event, this is a pretty enjoyable series with Tom from "Succession" and "Fleabag"'s sister as the cheaters. I like that they also set the scene with the creation of the show too, so you kind of get to see the origins and get to know the people working on the show before they have to deal with this huge clusterfuck.
I loved Snowpiercer, but one of the things that made it gripping was the claustrophobic feeling of being permanently confined to narrow train cars, which is not necessarily an appealing prospect for multiple seasons of a television adaptation. And the series just doesn't have Bong Joon-ho's visual flair or the movie's sort of Terry Gilliam sense of absurdity. It's not bad and is using the space of the series for some decent world-building, but it's definitely a little disappointing.
d) "Hightown"
After "Veronica Mars" and "Terriers," I'm a sucker for neo noir shows about the seedy underbelly of a sunny coastal town, and "Hightown" captures that vibe pretty well against the backdrop of Provincetown, Massachusetts (amusingly, Starz was going to call this show "P-Town" but then changed it after another upcoming show changed its title from "Pussy Valley" to "P-Valley"). In some ways "Hightown" is kind of a cliche show about a hard drinking, womanizing cop trying to get their life together and crack a big case, with the twist that the cop is a woman, but Monica Raymund pulls off the role well. I really enjoy the theme song, the punkier original version of The Go-Go's' "Vacation" by Kathy Valentine's earlier band The Textones.
e) "Grant"
History Channel does do some purely scripted dramas now, which is what I thought this miniseries about Ulysses Grant would be. But it's one of those weird docudrama hybrids where you've got scenes of Justin Salinger playing Grant interspersed with informational talking head stuff. It's interesting, though, Grant's presidency definitely gets a little glossed over in the history books so I learned some stuff I didn't know.
f) "Barkskins"
Another historical epic, this one about French and English colonists battling over North American territory in the 1600s. I enjoy a good David Thewlis performance and he really gets to chew the scenery here, but overall I've found it a little slow, and Matthew Lillard is a bit out of his depth.
The name of "Coincil Of Dads" made me chuckle when I first heard it, and I kind of expected this to be a tediously wholesome network drama I would roll my eyes at like "God Friended Me." I also thought it was funny that Tom Everett Scott plays a dad on the show while he's playing a dad on two other current series, "I'm Sorry" and "The Healing Powers of Dude." But it's a really well made and sometimes moving show that's grown on me pretty quickly. Scott's character dies of cancer in the first episode, and the series is really about the friends who he asks to help take care of his family after he's gone, including Michael O'Neill, who's guarded but lovable in the same way he was on "The West Wing." I also really like the Savannah, Georgia setting, it seems like a really gorgeous city. This has kind of become my go-to heartstring-tugging NBC show like "Parenthood" used to be.
h) "I Know This Much Is True"
Mark Ruffalo is a talented actor who's endured a lot of difficulty and tragedy in his life that seems to come through sometimes in his performances. But "I Know This Much Is True," in which Ruffalo plays two twin brothers, one of them a paranoid schizophrenic and one of them suffering a series of crushing setbacks, borders on maudlin. At a certain point it feels like the story, from the novel of the same name by Wally Lamb, is just sadistically piling misery onto the characters. The series opens with a horrific scene of a character sawing their own hand off, but with each successive episode it really becomes difficult to watch. There are good supporting performances by John Pocaccino and Juliette Lewis, but they're kind of fleeting moments amidst hours of the two Ruffalos going through one painful ordeal after another.
i) "Creepshow"
George Romero and Stephen King's 1982 horror anthology movie Creepshow was styled as an homage to '50s horror comics like Tales From The Crypt. And in a weird circular way, the "Creepshow" TV series now feels like it can't help but face comparisons to the "Tales From The Crypt" anthology series from the '90s. But I've enjoyed this series, like most anthologies it's hit and miss but there's a decent variety of different styles of horror, some stories more predictable than others. The first episode had a King story, but the second half of the episode was by far our favorite segment so far, the one about a dollhouse called "The House and the Head," just elegantly simple and intensely creepy.
A South African show on Netflix, kind of a dark teen mystery about a teenage girl who thinks she may have found her long lost kidnapped sister. Don't know where the story's going but it's interesting so far.
k) "Trackers"
Another South African show, this one a crime drama on Cinemax, with mostly white lead characters. Really found the first episode hard to pay attention to, a lot was going on but I just didn't care.
l) "Curon"
A supernatural Italian show on Netflix, has some some good spooky atmosphere and moody lighting but I don't really know what's going on enough to want to solve the mystery.
m) "The Woods"
So often American TV adapts foreign properties and sets the story here that it's interesting to see it go in the opposite direction with "The Woods," a Polish series that adapts an American crime novel and moves the story to Poland. It seems to work, at least from the first episode, I like the way the story jumps between the '90s and the present day, but I was amused when a brawl broke out while teens were dancing to "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors.
n) "Control Z"
A Mexican show on Netflix, kind of goes in interesting places with smartphones and hacking and the terrible things high schoolers can do each other now.
I really enjoyed the first season of this CW show, haven't watched a lot of the second season yet but so far it's good. They did a decent job of resolving the first season's mystery and immediately setting a tense new storyline in motion. I kinda wonder if the show has lost some of its earlier comedic edge since the Michael Showalter-directed pilot, though, I think it works better when there's some levity.
p) "Ramy"
This show grew on me over the course of the first season and the second season was just fantastic, one of the best shows of 2020 for sure. There are so many comedies out now that are tinged with drama and cycle through a ton of hot button issues and cultural taboos in almost every episode, but "Ramy" is one where it feels relatively organic and I always laugh out loud a few times in between the intense envelope-pushing moments. Every time one of the episodes left Ramy off-camera and zoomed in the lives of other characters, I'd start out skeptical and then love it, even the Uncle Naseem episode. I kind of expected Mahershala Ali to have a quick little cameo but he's a major part of half the episodes and really brings it.
A year ago, Bravo aired "Dirty John," a true crime miniseries about a con man known as Dirty John. Then Bravo decided to turn it into an anthology series with a second season about another terrible person who was neither dirty nor a John, which feels like an awkwardly strained bit of branding. They also didn't retain the same people behind the camera from the first season, and there's no big charismatic performance like Eric Bana -- Amanda Peet and Christian Slater are okay, I guess, but they don't really bring the kind of screen presence to liven this up and make it feel like more than a Lifetime movie.
r) "Insecure"
I've never been big on this show -- the Issa talking in the mirror stuff just makes me cringe, it's not funny -- but they've been in a good groove lately, might be the best season to date. I enjoyed Yvonne Orji's HBO standup special, but it kind of underlined a recent weakness of the show, that one of the funniest performers in the cast has kind of turned into this unsympathetic character who rarely has comedic scenes anymore.
s) "Billions"
Just before season 5 started, Complex published my piece about music in "Billions." And I have not been disappointed by the new episodes being loaded up with references to Dave Mustaine, Manfred Mann, and Keith Moon, and the great use of The Band's "When I Paint My Masterpiece" at the end of one episode. I'm really bummed that they weren't able to finish shooting this season before the COVID-19 lockdown and episode 7 will be the last one they air for a while, because it's been really good so far, enjoying seeing how all these storylines are slowly converging and they've expanded the cast with some good recurring roles (Julianna Margulies, Corey Stoll, Eva Victor, Domenick Lombardozzi).
"Labor Of Love" is a completely generic "Bachelor"-style reality show with the weird and uncomfortable added twist that the bachelorette (or suitress, as they'd say on "UnReal") wants to start a family immediately so she's auditioning someone to have a kid with as soon as possible. Kristy seems likeable enough but a lot of the guys are gross (one of them is from Maryland, goes by 'Budge,' and refers to himself in the third person). I feel sad that Kristin Davis is hosting this instead of still acting, she's still really cute, maybe Kristy and Kristin will run off together.
A few weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown, Amazon Prime rolled out this reality show where they profile emergency workers and other people who have been doing noble or difficult things during the pandemic, and celebrity hosts like Alicia Keys or Kevin Hart facetime with them and surprise them with some thoughtful gift or something. It's all very wholesome and inspirational, but definitely soured by the fact that Amazon has absolutely not been doing the right thing in a lot of ways throughout this whole ordeal.
v) "Lenox Hill"
Another docuseries about people doing noble and important work. But it was filmed in a NYC hospital back in 2019, so even when people are doing difficult surgeries and stuff, it has this weird undertone of feeling like a glimpse back at a place that probably looks very very different right now.
Another docuseries about people doing noble and important work. But it was filmed in a NYC hospital back in 2019, so even when people are doing difficult surgeries and stuff, it has this weird undertone of feeling like a glimpse back at a place that probably looks very very different right now.
This is a reality show about a woman in Maine who has a business creating art out of moose poop. It's very self-consciously quirky and silly but she and her family are charming, seem like nice folks.
x) "Songland"
Have enjoyed the last few episodes, not a lot of starpower in the guests but there's been a lot of quality in the song submissions. Florida Georgia Line in particular got pretty much all good songs to choose from, and chose the best song (but then buried in the middle of an EP of lesser songs, which annoyed me). Bebe Rexha got some good ones and they made an interesting decision to merge together 2 of the songs into one, which my astute wife actually suggested before they did it. When this season is over I might have to comb through all the dozens of the songs featured on the show and find the keepers.
y) "Remy & Boo"
For the first few minutes that my kid watched this cartoon about a little girl and her robot friend, I was really confused and thought it was a Monsters, Inc. spinoff because the girl looks like a slightly older version of Boo, the toddler who befriends Sulley in the movie. But it's not that at all, Remy is the girl and Boo is the weird little ghost monster-looking robot.
A cute show about a bushbaby and his lemur and squirrel friends, my 5-year-old watched this nonstop for a while until I got sick of it and I think maybe he did too because went to watching another lemur-themed show, the Madagascar spinoff "All Hail King Julien."
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