TV Diary
a) "Ghosts"
I didn't think that CBS of all networks might possibly have my favorite new fall show in 2021, but "Ghosts" is different enough to stand out in a slate that's light on comedies to begin with. It's based on a British show, and even with an American setting and American characters, it has a certain britcom wackiness to it: a couple moves into an old country house, and after the wife has a near-death experience she can see and talk to all the ghosts living in the house. The 8 ghosts are mostly broad characters from different eras of history with silly backstories of how they died, and a lot of the comedy is drawn from the predictable conflicts of a whole group of characters who can only be seen and heard by one other person. But it works thanks to the cast, I'm happy to see Rose McIver do a full-on comedy after being pretty consistently funny in "iZombie."
b) "Dopesick"
"Dopesick" is based on a book about the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, and how it marketed OxyContin, and it attempts to boil that big, complex story into a prestige TV miniseries that puts a human face on the opioid crisis as well as dramatize the inner workings of the Sacklers and the pharmaceutical industry. It's pretty well made and I'll never turn down a chance to watch Michael Keaton do good work, but so far I'm not entirely sure if it can live up to its own weighty ambitions.
c) "Queens"
"Queens" is about four women who were in a popular girl group in the late '90s and reunite in the present day to try to make a comeback after a current star samples one of their hits and asks them to perform with them. In other words, it's almost the exact same premise as "Girls5eva," the very funny sitcom that debuted earlier this year, except "Queens" does it as a music industry soap opera in the "Empire" mold. It's fun to see Eve and Brandy, two people who actually were all over MTV in the '90s, sort of play with their own images, it's an entertaining light little show. But it's really funny that the group is called 'The Nasty Bitches' and they have to say that phrase with a straight face in almost every scene. And it did distract me that the series opens with Eve rapping over a Swizz Beatz track in the late '90s, but they used the beat from a 2005 Young Gunz single so it doesn't really fit the era.
d) "Inside Job"
"Gravity Falls" is one of the best kids' shows of the last decade or so, so I was interested to see "Inside Job," an 'adult animation' Netflix series created by a "Gravity Falls" writer and produced by the creator of "Gravity Falls." And it has a fun premise, basically that every popular conspiracy about the U.S. government is real, and Lizzy Caplan voices the head of the shadow government that's covering up lizard people and aliens and sasquatches and so on. I feel like it falls short of the "Rick and Morty" vibe it's going for, but it's still pretty good, certainly better than the last dozen or so adult cartoon sitcoms I've seen on Netflix.
e) "Acapulco"
Apparently Eugenio Derbez is playing the same character in this Apple TV+ series that he played in 2017's How To Be A Latin Lover, but I really couldn't tell after a couple episodes even though I've seen the movie, it just doesn't really seem like the same guy. In any event, most of the show is a flashback to when the character worked in a Mexican resort in the mid-'80s, it's a cute little show, reminds me a lot of the Amazon show "Red Oaks," which took place at a mid-'80s country club.
This is based on a YA novel but its basically a murder mystery where a kid dies of an allergic reaction in detention and the other kids in detention are suspects. I haven't watched too may episodes yet but it's intriguing enough, good cast.
I wouldn't say I had high hopes for SyFy's new series adaptation of one of George Romero's classic zombie flicks, but it really managed to disappoint me very quickly. Just terrible acting, terrible visual effects, and I don't really know if it's possible now to do a zombie series, even a Romero adaptation, without it feeling like lesser "The Walking Dead."
ABC's current Wednesday night lineup is weird: a reboot of "The Wonder Years," the long-running "Wonder Years" knockoff "The Goldbergs," and "The Conners," which is a continuation of "Roseanne," which debuted on ABC in 1988 alongside "The Wonder Years." There have been so many "Wonder Years"-style shows over the years that it's kind of its own subgenre of sitcom now, the best of which was "Everybody Loves Chris," and if anything this reboot with a Black cast has to live up to comparisons both that and the original "The Wonder Years." It's pretty good, though, Don Cheadle is an excellent choice for narrator.
I never saw any of the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, but I was alive in the late '90s so I at least got the gist, this Amazon series seems alright I guess, don't know how much they can keep the suspense going for a whole series though.
One of FOX's new prime time dramas, one of those shows about an affluent family and their complicated lives, seems okay but not really my thing.
A really cheesy Netflix show that feels like a throwback to an early 2000s sitcom on The WB, where a Smart person who went to Harvard moves in with her sister and her fit shallow influencer friends, with all the usual stereotypes played for laughs.
This was just a one-off special on Peacock, but I really wish it was a whole series. Basically Jo Firestone is a comedian who started doing a Zoom standup comedy workshop for a seniors center during the pandemic, and the special documents them all meeting in person for the first time and preparing to put on a standup show. It's really charming and so much fun to see people try their hand at performing late in life and figure out how to turn being funny in daily life into a stage persona and material.
I didn't have Apple TV+ during the first season of "The Morning Show" so I've been going through both seasons in the last few weeks, really enjoying it. I remember a lot of people rolling their eyes at a prestige TV series about the #MeToo movement that's very obviously loosely based on what went down with "The Today Show" and Matt Lauer, but I think they made it work very well. In a way the casting is very meta, having Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell, two people who became household names with NBC sitcoms, play the faux-NBC morning show stars, and it serves the show because you get the effect of seeing people who kind of have been America's sweethearts have private meltdowns and do terrible things. The whole thing also feels very influenced by Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes shows about live television, but it's about 10 times better than his shaky later shows like "The Newsroom" and "Studio 60," so I don't mind it feeling derivative. And Billy Crudup is really doing the best work of his career, the network executives are usually never interesting characters in these kinds of shows but Cory Ellison is this kind of improbable but believable figure, smart and calculating but also impish and animated and at times kind.
Been watching the third season and it's still a fun show but my interest has definitely waned, just too much zaniness.
o) "You"
When the first season of "You" ended, I would've been fine with it being a single season show, I couldn't really see the premise sustaining itself way beyond that. But now, in the third season, I would say they've managed to keep upping the ante pretty well, although it's a little ridiculous that he moved from New York to L.A. and built another glass murder cube in his basement. Giving Joe an equally deranged partner was an inspired choice, Victoria Pedretti is so great in this show.
Pretty interesting Netflix show about German coders who sued Google about Google Earth ripping off their creation, one of their better foreign language shows in recent memory.
q) "My Name"
A Korean show on Netflix about a woman avenging her father's death, some badass action stuff in this.
Each episode of this cute little show on E! features two tribute acts competing, a U2 cover band versus a Coldplay cover band, a Cher impersonator versus a Tina Turner impersonator, and so on, until the champion of the season gets to perform on "The Tonight Show." I have a love/hate thing with tribute bands, I appreciate their dedication to getting the details right but I still just listen to every note nitpicking how it's not quite the same, but I like that everyone is just having fun in this and coaching them to be better.
s) "Bad Sport"
Really excellent Netflix true crime docuseries about various different sports scandals, some of these stories I knew about and some of them I didn't but it's pretty entertaining either way.
t) "Buried"
A really dark Showtime docuseries about solving a cold case where a woman basically remembers details of a murder her father committed when she was a kid, just absolutely chilling stuff.
Another Netflix true crime show, about a colony of German Christians in Chile in the '60s, interesting weird story.
A Netflix docuseries about 11 members of an Indian family who died in 2018, another really dark tale, I need to take a break from checking out these true crime shows because it's a lot to take in.
A NASA docueries on Disney+, enjoyed this a lot more than Netflix's show about stupid SpaceX.
All of these Netflix competition reality shows seem to be made on the same set with the same lighting, it's kind of annoying how interchangeable they are. But it's fun to see bakers paired up with engineers to create these ridiculous complex dishes, even if they rarely look appetizing or even edible.
A cute little show on the Disney Channel, I wish my 6-year-old liked this instead of just watching more Minecraft crap.
I like that in October all the networks roll out their spooky kids shows, I'm not familiar with the A Tale Dark & Grimm book but the Netflix animated series is pretty good, I like the animation style.
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on Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 10:37 AM.
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