TV Diary
Friday, February 26, 2021
a) "Kenan"
Back when starring in a sitcom meant 26 episodes a year, "Saturday Night Live" cast members weren't gonna get their own show until they were done with the grind of live sketches every weekend. But now that even network shows tend to have shorter seasons, it's more possible -- Aidy Bryant has already done 2 seasons of "Shrill" without leaving the show, and now Kenan Thompson, a record-shattering 18 seasons and counting into his "SNL" tenure, is not only multitasking with his own NBC sitcom but bringing another current cast member, Chris Redd, with him. "Kenan" is decent so far -- a few good laughs in the first couple episodes, and Don Johnson makes a surprisingly good comic foil for Kenan. But I don't think Chris Redd hasn't realized the difference between sketch funny and sitcom funny and goes a little over-the-top with his line readings. And this show embodies that weird sitcom tendency to want a make a show about a single parent, but not a divorced parent, leading to a widow protagonist, which leads to all these plot points about grief and mourning that clash a little with the tone of the show.
This Amazon show has kind of an interesting, creepy premise about the former girlfriend and possible accomplice of a serial killer starting a new life under a new name, and the mother of one of the killer's victims trying to track her down. And Hamish Linklater, a really great underrated actor, has a supporting role here but it feels like there's a lot of potential in the character for him to do great work.
c) "Clarice"
Thomas Harris's novels and The Silence Of The Lambs have spawned a whole multimedia franchise at this point, but some completed intellectual property rights issues have resulted in "Hannibal," a series that was never able to depict or mention Clarice Starling, and now "Clarice," a show that cannot depict or mention Hannibal Lecter. Despite that, "Hannibal" was an incredible show, and the lingering possibility that they could've gotten a 4th season and been allowed to introduce Clarice makes this existence of "Clarice" as a bland network procedural all the more frustrating. Still, she's an interesting character and Rebecca Breeds is a good choice to play her, it definitely feels like she's kind of picked up some of Jodie Foster's mannerisms in her performance, but it's good, not too over-the-top.
Bono's daughter Eve Hewson (whose full name is Memphis Eve Sunny Day Hewson, because of course it is) has been acting in film and TV for a decade now, but things must be really lining up for her now because she's starring in 2 miniseries that premiered in the same week. "The Luminaries," on Starz, is the better of the two, about people going to New Zealand in the 1850s to find gold. I'll gladly watch anything filmed on location in New Zealand, and this show has an interesting atmosphere, I'm intrigued where the story's going.
The other new show starring Eve Hewson, "Behind Her Eyes," is kind of a cheeseball erotic thriller where a woman has affairs with her boss and her boss's wife. People seemed to really hate the ending, which kind of makes me want to finish all 6 episodes just to see what bullshit they're on, but I haven't gotten there yet.
f) "It's A Sin"
A miniseries about UK in the early years of the AIDS crisis, some great performances and endearing characters and it really feels like it evokes the period much more convincingly than most other modern shows that take place in the '80s, but I'm going through it kind of bracing myself for oncoming tragedies.
Brianne Howey was so great at basically playing monsters on "The Exorcist" and "The Passage" that it's a little disappointing to see her just play a single mom in "Ginny & Georgia," although she does pull it off with some of the same playful irreverence she's brought to other roles. Most of the show is kind of bland coming of age stuff, though.
I'm not that into 'alternate history' premises like "The Man In The High Castle" to begin with, and the conceit of "For All Mankind," that the Soviets got to the Moon before the U.S. and the space race never ended, is a bit weaker than, say, 'if the Nazis won the war.' It just feels so weird to watch a show where they play the 'the Russians are the bad guys' stuff pretty straight, and they throw in all these goofy parallel universe things like Chappaquiddick doesn't happen and Ted Kennedy becomes president but then is embroiled in a sex scandal with Mary Jo Kopechne, or John Lennon survives being shot but Pope John Paul II doesn't. But as much as the big picture stuff makes me roll my eyes, "For All Mankind" is pretty compelling from moment to moment, some good acting and good writing, pretty good outer space special effects for a TV series. I kind of wish they hadn't flashed forward a decade for season 2 and gave most of the characters hokey gray hair and stuff, it felt like there was plenty of mileage in the '70s timeline the first season took place in.
i) "Trickster"
The CW has been airing this cool Canadian series with a mostly indigenous cast and a weird supernatural premise, Joel Oulette is a pretty good lead actor considering that he was just this kid who sent in an audition tape while he was in high school. I also like how his mom wears band shirts for a different Canadian hard rock band in almost every episode (even Anvil!). Unfortunately, I just saw that the show is not getting a second season because there was a whole controversy about the show's co-creator lying about having indigenous ancestry for years.
j) "The Crew"
It's slightly jarring to see Kevin James with a shaved head, but otherwise everything else about his new Netflix show is exactly as it would be if it was on CBS, the laugh track and the cheesy jokes and the NASCAR setting. The first episode gave me a couple chuckles but I have low standards like that. Gary Anthony Williams being on this show is how I found out that "I'm Sorry" was canceled, so that was a real bummer.
This fantasy/mystery show on Disney Channel is alright, but like a lot of kid's shows with higher production values, I'm not sure who it appeals to, because my kids aren't old enough to take an interest in it but I find it a little boring and I suspect older kids or teenagers would too.
This show has been a pretty interesting ride, I'm curious to see how it ends, although the second-to-last episode kinda felt like a drag as they finally did the big exposition dump to explain what's been going on this whole time. Part of me really hopes the popularity of "WandaVision" leads them to turn the miniseries into an ongoing series, I feel like they could do something just as creative with the second season even after the sitcom homage device has run its course. Maybe they're setting up a movie, though, that would be cool too.
m) "Servant"
"Servant" is great at bewildering, difficult to explain plot twists that they always seem to reconcile and account for without the show collapsing into a "Lost"-like puddle of nonsense, and I'm impressed that they've kept that up even in the second season. M. Night Shyamalan's daughter Ishana directed an episode recently that was one of the more entertaining installments, but the episode he directed this season was incredibly gripping, I forgot just how distinctive his pacing and camera movements are and how well they build tension. I feel like Lauren Ambrose should be getting award nominations but it's kind of on an island over on Apple TV+.
This Israeli show on Apple TV+ has great psychological thriller atmosphere, but I don't really know where the plot is going or what I'm supposed to make of some of the characters yet, it keeps me guessing. Ayelet Zurer is stunning, though.
This German show on Netflix takes place 50 years in the future, but the premise is that all the power grids went down in the 2020s and society basically collapsed, so that's fun to contemplate. It's mostly a campy thing about tribes fighting over a magical cube, though.
I really checked out quickly on the Amazon show from Spain about troubled teens at a boarding school, couldn't get into it at all.
There's a lot going on in this Netflix show from Brazil: an environmental police officer is searching for his missing wife, and also trying to figure out why a freshwater pink dolphin turned up dead on the beach, and there's a whole mythical folklore thing happening too. I'm confused, but intrigued.
Jazz saxophonist and occasional actor John Lurie is known for the Showtime series "Fishing With John" where he'd take guys like Dennis Hopper and Tom Waits out on a fishing boat. I've heard about it for years and never seen it, but I guess Lurie's new HBO show "Painting With John" is sort of a follow-up to that. There's no celebrity guests, though, it's mostly just Lurie telling stories while painting and occasionally interacting with friends and family or crashing a drone. It's kind of like having lunch with a cantankerous uncle, it's good.
People like DJ Vlad have made kind of a cottage industry out of interviewing rappers and trying to get them to talk about illegal activities on camera and possibly incriminate themselves, and there's a lot of justifiable backlash to that. But it's interesting to see this Hulu docoseries kind of go into the criminal backgrounds of rappers and industry kingmakers with more of a journalistic eye, mostly with stories going back decades.
This very entertaining TruTV show stars three chefs who try to replicate fast food or junk food staples for a guest celebrity judge, and then do their own gourmet spin on the dish, but it's very casual and silly and mostly features guys like Joel McHale joking around with the chefs. Some of the dishes they come up with are really creative and look delicious.
The true crime TV/podcast industry has driven me nuts for a long time because so much of it is so sensationalized and doesn't stand up to any kind of journalistic standards. But this Netflix show, which stretches a viral video of a woman on a hotel elevator shortly before she died into 4 episodes, is really just shoddy on every level, at one point they have some random YouTuber analyzing the video moment by moment.
It was a pretty great idea for CNN to just make a show about one of the most likable living actors strolling around Italy eating food and stuff, glad to hear they've already renewed it for a second season.
Another CNN series, not bad but I feel like they're trying to find something new to say about Abe and that might just be impossible at this point.
"The Masked Singer" was a patently absurd show to begin with, but it at least had a kernel of a clever, functional idea, that it can be a cool challenge to try to identify a celebrity by their singing voice when you've maybe only ever heard their speaking voice. Having them dance but not sing just stretches to the idea to total incoherence. It's nice that Paula Abdul is finally judging a dancing competition instead of a singing competition, though, like, let her speak on her actual main area of expertise, please.
This show is fun to watch, but watching it bums me out because they never acknowledge that they taped it in Australia, where you can actually have a big audience with no masks, they just few an American host out there and used Americans living in Australia to maintain the fantasy that they're in the U.S. and COVID-19 isn't still making shows like this impossible to produce. This show makes me feel like a less smug music expert know-it-all than "Beat Shazam" does, too, it's harder for me to ID a song if a band is covering it than if it's the original recording.
Every now and then I see a truck shipping a whole entire house down the highway and I'm just fascinated by the logistics of how that works. So I appreciate this show just kind of illuminating that process, although it still mystifies me a little, like it just seems like a lot, at that point I would still just build a new house instead.
