TV Diary
a) "The Chair"
I don't think Amanda Peet's ever worked behind the camera in her couple decades of acting, so I was surprised to see that she co-created this Netflix series and wrote half its episodes. But it's pretty good, glad to see Sandra Oh already back on a quality series before "Killing Eve" has even aired its final season. It's kind of fun to have a college show mainly from the perspective of professors, including great supporting roles from Bob Balaban and Holland Taylor. But the main storyline gets kind of irritating as it goes on and most of the student characters are humorless campus activist stereotypes who perform a Hamiltonized version of Moby Dick.
b) "Heels"
The Showtime wrestling drama "Heels" hits a lot of the familiar beats of cable dramas -- a family business with a sibling rivalry, moderately successful athletes/entertainers striving to get to the next level, emotionally dysfunctional manly men and the women who love them, etc. But the cast is strong and the first couple episodes are pretty promising, each one had one big climactic scene that kind of revealed something interesting about the main characters and changed the relationships between them.
My wife read the book this is based on and she had a lot of thoughts about the casting, but without that context I'm mostly just impressed by a show that includes Nicole Kidman, Michael Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, and Regina Hall. It's a weird one, though, I'm not really sure what to make it yet and am just kind of enjoying the character moments.
I never saw the original "Fantasy Island" growing and I don't know what I thought it was about but I didn't realize there was actually like a supernatural fantasy element. But FOX's new reboot is kind of charming, and the super fine Roselyn Sanchez plays the host who's the grand-niece or something of the Ricardo Montalban character.
A very odd, interesting Netflix show that starts out as kind of a satirical look at a young woman trying to become a filmmaker in Hollywood and getting harassed and taken advantage of, and then takes this weird supernatural horror turn, very curious to watch more and see where this is going.
f) "Clickbait"
A tawdry little thriller series on Netflix where a woman sees a viral video of her brother held hostage and holding up signs basically saying that he's a rapist and he's going to die when the video hits 5 million views. Things rapidly escalate from there but it all feels kind of over-the-top and a little dated, like this would've been an exciting premise 10 years ago but not so much now.
This show is like a murder mystery that takes place in Berlin just after the end of WWII, pretty interesting premise, but I can't take Taylor Kitsch seriously with these weird old timey detective voice he's doing.
A creepy old timey horror show starring Adrien Brody, seems well made but I just couldn't bring myself to pay attention to it, just got disinterested very quickly.
This Showtime was one of the better new comedies of 2020, I'm glad it's back for a second season, although it's really one of those shows that's more of a half hour drama or dramedy, it's less about laughs and more about characters and emotions. The season premiere was really good, a little less into the flashback-heavy second episode but I appreciate how it served the storytelling.
"The Other Two" is one of those shows that had one great season before the pandemic and then an incredibly long wait for another season, but I'm glad it's finally back 2 years later, moving from Comedy Central to HBO Max. I'm glad they followed up on the gag at the end of the first season with Molly Shannon's character getting her own talk show because that's definitely the funniest part of the new episodes.
I feel a little silly enjoying this show as much as I do, but it really scratches that rom com itch with the added dimension of being based on real stories and sometimes not having these simply happy endings. What I've watched so far of the second season has been excellent, other than the Kit Harington episode being a little flat
"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" premiered less than a year before Mike Brown's shooting, and has managed to be a funny, silly, mostly beloved show about noble police officers through years of a historic surge of protests against police brutality. But last year after George Floyd's murder, it finally reached a tipping point where the pushback was enough that "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" decided that the occasional social commentary and good cops vs. bad cops storylines they'd done so far weren't enough and they'd have to really address the cultural climate now. And the first episode of the final season is really quite awkward, this sudden cautious tone change and one character leaving the force and becoming a P.I. while another has a crisis of confidence and another goes comically overboard with being anti-racist and woke. The second episode is a little back to normal and it's still a pretty funny show with a great cast, but it feels like they're going out on a weird note.
m) "Grace & Frankie"
"Grace & Frankie" also just kicked off its final season, although due to pandemic production delays we're just getting 4 episodes now and the rest next year. But it's nice to have these characters back after a long break, having the four principals under one roof was kind of an inevitable storyline I'm glad they finally did, although the hiding money stuff got a little over-the-top goofy.
This was created by Diego Luna, I only knew his work as an actor but apparently he's directed a couple features. This show is really good, though, definitely one of the best imports I've seen on Netflix lately, a very entertaining little comedy about a recently split up couple trying to raise kids and having all this bad shit happen to them.
A French show on Netflix about this guy who's had a couple tragedies in his life and then has to search for his missing girlfriend, very dramatic and mysterious but I don't think I'm really hooked by the story enough to keep watching.
A Netflix show that takes place in Jordan but is basically about pretty universal stories of adolescent girls being mean to each other, although the extent of the violence in the first episode did shock me a little.
q) "Valeria"
I enjoyed this frothy Spanish show on Netflix last year, happy to see it back for a second season. Although now when I watch it I keep feeling weird remembering that I recently wrote a song called "Valeria," it was just one of those things where I wanted to use a woman's name in the chorus that hadn't been a famous song title before and that one had a nice ring to it.
Some of the premises on this animated MCU show are kind of silly and not interesting to me, but as far as the animation style and the storytelling, I like the execution. They have a lot of the actors from the movies voicing their characters, including Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa one last time, although sometimes they have other actors doing the voices, including Lake Bell instead of Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, which I think is a total improvement personally.
This is a very cutesy animated series where Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy all have spidey powers and fight crime together. I think my favorite thing about is Patrick Stump's theme song, I love that between this and his song for The Lego Batman Movie he's now a part of silly animated versions of both the D.C. and Marvel universes.
t) "Ex-Rated"
I always think of Andy Cohen as the Bravo executive who put himself on TV but I guess at this point he's famous enough that he can do shows with other NBC Universal properties like Peacock, which released "Ex-Rated."
This Disney+ docuseries is pretty charming, I loved the first episode with a mama bear and her two cubs. I was very stressed out when they had to cross the river, though.
v) "The Hype"
This is a competition reality show for streetwear designers, which is a whole world I find a little surreal and ridiculous to begin with. Some of the contestants seem like nice talented folks worth rooting for, though, even while they're doing weird challenges like trying to dress A$AP Ferg and him telling them when the clothes look too A$AP Rocky.
This other HBO Max reality show about young ambitious urbanites is produced by Issa Rae and sort of feels like they tried to make a show about real life equivalents of the characters on "Insecure." But of course, "Insecure" has talented writers and a charismatic cast, and the people on this show just kind of come off really boring and devoid of personality. Also one of them is a guy who has a Drake heart shaved into his hair, which almost made me turn off the show right there when I saw it.
x) "Bake Squad"
A pretty charming baking competition show on Netflix, not really the sort of thing I tend to watch every episode of, but one or two was entertaining enough.
y) "Gossip"
This Showtime docuseries that kind of looks at how gossip columnists changed the media and political landscape over the last few decades is pretty good, there's some good tawdry stories but also some pretty clear-eyed analysis.
z) "UFO"
The latest wave of revelations about government files on UFOs has predictably birthed a new wave of documentaries -- 5 days after Netflix premiered "Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified," Showtime rolled out their own docuseries. The Netflix one was pretty mediocre but this was produced by J.J. Abrams and is a bit more polished and entertaining even if it's covering a lot of the same ground.
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