TV Diary




a) "The Good Lord Bird"
The Showtime miniseries "The Good Lord Bird," based on James McBride's novel of the same name, is a fictionalized account of abolitionist John Brown's crusade against slavery, told from the perspective of a fictional slave in Brown's crew (the opening text "All of this is true. Most of it happened." put it pretty nicely). While it'd be easy to just make a straightforward biopic valorizing Brown, the most notable white man in pre-Civil War America who devoted his life to ending slavery and was ultimately hung for treason, "The Good Lord Bird" is a more complex and sometimes comical portrait. Ethan Hawke really chews the scenery and seems to enjoy playing maybe the biggest personality he's ever plaed. Still, the tone is kind of odd to me, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it after a couple episodes. The narration is a bit glib -- for instance, when a cannonball tears through Steve Zahn: "in that moment, just like the rest of the country, Chase was divided in half."

"The Third Day" is a uniquely structured miniseries with 3 episodes about Jude Law finding himself on a strange mysterious island off the coast of England, one 12-hour (!?) live special depicting the island's seasonal festival, and then 3 more episodes centering on a different set of characters on the island. I'm a little annoyed to find that Sky Atlantic broadcast the special in the UK but it doesn't seem to be part of the series as it's shown in America on HBO. But those first 3 episodes are pretty gripping and strange, at least until things get kind of punishingly dreary towards the end and land on a not terribly satisfying plot twist. 

I've never seen the well regarded original UK version of "Utopia," which was created by "The Third Day" creator Dennis Kelly, but it seems like the American adaptation by Gillian Flynn is getting much more mixed reviews. I found the cast and the premise really promising, but then the villains just go around violently wreaking havoc on sympathetic characters and it becomes a bummer pretty quickly. Like I was happy to see Desmin Borges from "You're The Worst" in a new series, but then I had to watch him get his eyeball scooped out with a spoon, it was unpleasant. 

Jack Dylan Grazer was so good in Shazam! that I was excited to see that he'd be starring in an HBO miniseries, and he continues to be a really captivating screen presence. He's also the nephew of Hollywood superproducer Brian Grazer, and one of his co-stars is Martin Scorsese's daughter, so, nepotism ahoy. But "We Are Who We Are" is good so far, kind of a coming age story about military brats on an army base in Italy, where some scenes play out multiple times from different characters' perspectives. I haven't seen any of Luca Guadagnino's movies, so I don't know if the random frames that freeze while the audio keeps playing are an affectation he's used before, but I get confused every time and think my internet connection is breaking up. 

I love Jeff Daniels as an actor, but his character on "The Newsroom" made him such an avatar for smug boomer liberals (like, literally an avatar) that he's the most eye-rolling possible choice to play James Comey in this, the first big budget prestige cable depiction of the Trump administration. At this point, we've seen dozens of people play Donald Trump in a comedic context, but this is the first time a big time actor has played him in a fairly serious, straightforward production -- I'm actually surprised it never occurred to me that Brendan Gleeson has the perfect physicality to play Trump, but then I can't think of any time I've seen him play a character that wasn't Irish. Naturally, it's impossible to play Trump without at least a hint of comedy, as much as they try build him up and make him intimidating -- you don't see his face of hear his voice for the entire first episode, and there are only 2 episodes -- but Gleeson just saying the words Trump has actually said or plausibly would say can't help but come off ridiculous, because he is ridiculous. I would say Gleeson does a better job than I expected but it still doesn't work on some level that maybe is insurmountable and beyond him or any other actor. But it is interesting to see actors portray almost every major Washington figure of the last 5 years -- Jo Lo Truglio doesn't really look like Jeff Sessions, but he might be the only person elfin enough to play him, and they found a dead ringer for Jared Kushner in Phillip Ricio. 

f) "Deaf U" 
Netflix is marketing "Deaf U," a show about deaf students at Gallaudet University, as a 'docusoap,' which I suppose is a novel term for the kind of drama-heavy reality shows we've been watching for decades. That made me think of things like "Laguna Beach," but really this show reminds me more of "Love on the Spectrum" in that it's a show where pretty much the whole cast is disabled, and there's this really wide range of likable and unlikable personalities that I think is really refreshing and is probably better for representing and humanizing a marginalized community than any show with just one or two disabled people in it. 

"Emily In Paris" has gotten a lot of divided reactions and even the people the like it seem to regard it as a guilty pleasure, but I was still surprised at just how dopey and dull it is, doesn't even seem to offer the entertainment value of past Darren Starr series like "Sex and the City" or "Beverly Hills, 90210." It really makes me feel bad for Lily Collins, whose film vehicles have generally been of a much higher quality than this. 

h) "Filthy Rich"
"Filthy Rich" was supposed to premiere on FOX last fall, and then last spring, and now, thanks to the coronavirus, this repeatedly delayed black sheep show has turned into one of the only completely new scripted series debuting on one of the major broadcast networks this fall. It's about the scandals of a family of televangelists, so obviously in some ways it feels like a less funny "Righteous Gemstones," but tonally it's more like the "Dynasty" reboot but somehow more campy and less entertaining. 

i) "L.A.'s Finest"
"L.A.'s Finest" started airing regionally on Spectrum cable last year, and is now is part of FOX's cobbled together attempt at a fall lineup. I'm kind of surprised that this broad, silly 'sexy cops' show didn't get buried in this year's reckoning over television copaganda, but maybe it's so light that it doesn't deserve that kind of scrutiny. I didn't even realize it was spinoff from Bad Boys II and Gabrielle Union is still playing Martin Lawrence's sister, but I guess that doesn't really matter to the story at all, it's not like Will Smith is gonna pop up in there. 

j) "Gangs Of London" 
This British show has been repeatedly pitched as "'Succession' with more aggression" but that seems like a silly trendy way to describe it, it's just a typical show about violent organized crime. They really set the tone early with the opening scene of a guy being hung from the top of a building and then set on fire, it's an impressively show scene but, y'know, kind of gratuitous and nasty. 

k) "The Salisbury Poisonings"
This miniseries about the 2018 nerve agent murders of two spies in Salisbury, England is pretty well done, it starts with the deaths and then works its way backwards as the community reacts and law enforcement tries to figure out what happened, feels like they took a very grounded approach to telling what could have been a very sensationalized story. 

l) "Flesh And Blood" 
"Flesh And Blood" reminds me a lot of "Gold Digger," another British miniseries that aired in the US less than 6 months ago: both shows are mysteries in which a widow starts seeing a new man and her children are all suspicious of him. "Flesh And Blood" seems like a more action-packed murder mystery, but "Gold Digger" was more interesting, better cast and production values and storytelling. 

m) "Departure"
It feels like after "Lost" and "Manifest" there's this burgeoning genre of shows about the mysterious disappearance of commercial airliners, but there's real diminishing returns to such a specific premise, I didn't find this Peacock show interesting enough to watch more than one episode. 

n) "The Murders At White House Farm"
In 1985, a young man in Essex murdered his whole family for an inheritance and then tried to pin it on his schizophrenic sister orchestrating a murder-suicide. It's a pretty crazy case that I had never heard of, and this miniseries unspools the story pretty well in that it's really not apparent what happened at first. 

o) "A Wilderness of Error" 
In 1970, an army surgeon in North Carolina murdered his whole family and then tried to pin it on a roving band of murderous Manson Family-style hippies that supposedly just showed up at his house and started killing people and writing "PIG" on the wall. Errol Morris wrote a book about the case, and then Marc Smerling adapted it into this Errol Morris-style docudrama in which Morris is one of the primary talking heads, which is kind of funny just because I've never really seen Errol Morris talking and he's kind of avuncular and folksy in a way I didn't expect. 

p) "Sneakerheads" 
Sneaker culture is so inherently ridiculous to me that it's not a bad setting for a sitcom. This Netflix series feels a little cartoony and lightweight, though, it made me laugh a couple times but the cast didn't have much chemistry. 

q) "Wild Life"
SyFy's Saturday night "TZGZ" animation block has been pretty hit and miss to me, and this show, and zoo animals running wild after a zombie apocalypse wipes out humanity, takes a great premise and executes it really blandly with terrible animation. 

r) "Dragon's Dogma" 
This is like an other 'adult anime' in a medieval setting from Netflix like "Castlevania," but it takes itself a lot more seriously, and the second episode was a lot less interesting to me than the first one. 

s) "The School Nurse Files"
This South Korean show on Netflix is about a school nurse who has the ability to see human feelings and desires as these gross 'jellies' that are like squishy CGI auras around everybody that nobody else can see. A really strange, creative show that I'm curious to see more of. 

t) "Good Morning, Veronica"
This Brazilian show kind of feels like a typical hardboiled police detective drama, but it's pretty well made, strong cast. 

u) "Song Exploder"    
"Song Exploder" is the kind of podcast I'd listen to if I ever listened to podcasts, but I don't, so I'm glad they made into a Netflix series. Out of the first 4 episodes, the only song I thought was especially interesting and worthy of a half hour dissection was R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," which had great interviews with all 4 members of the band and actually revealed some stuff about the lyric that I didn't know. The Ty Dolla Sign episode was cool but it felt like they picked an album track because it had Kendrick Lamar and Brandy features and then they didn't give interviews for the episode. 

This is Freeform's attempt at kind of a teen-friendly version of an informative topical comedy show like "Last Week Tonight" or "Patriot Act" to run for a few weeks before the election. I think it's fine, I'm not totally the audience for it but I'm glad they're doing it, and it's made me laugh a few times. 

It's interesting to see Showtime do a docuseries about the history of The Comedy Store two years after canceling "I'm Dying Up Here," which was basically about The Comedy Store in the '70s with all the names changed (except Johnny Carson). That show might have been better if they didn't fictionalize everything, the real stories and people are just more interesting than the stuff they came up with. But it kind of feels like a missed opportunity that they seemingly made this show right after Mitzi Shore died in 2018, she's kind of the main character of the story and it would've been great to actually have her interviews alongside all the comics. 

This Netflix docuseries profiles different pro sports coaches, I only watched the episode with Doc Rivers but I liked it, coaching is such a strange job and he seems like a really interesting, thoughtful guy. 

A new interview show on PBS, kind of dry but I like it, I never thought Charlie Rose was actually a good interviewer so I would be fine with this kind of filling that space, Corrigan seems to really listen to the people she's talking to. 

A dog grooming competition show on HBO Max that really leans into the silliness of the concept and has fun with it, but still takes the craft seriously and lets the competitors be creative and take pride in their work, cool show. 
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