TV Diary
It's a strange thing, experiencing this pandemic in a world that's full of fiction about swifter and more dramatic pandemics and apocalypses and collapses of society. Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven, about a flu that kills off 99% of the Earth's population, was published in 2014, and this HBO miniseries had already begun production when COVID-19 hit, and I wondered if that would be hard to watch or would come off badly in this context. But it's a really beautiful, poignant story, and showrunner Patrick Somerville, a writer on "The Leftovers," gives it a bit of that show's vivid, intense texture. As usual, my wife has read the source material and I have not, so she was able to give me a little perspective on what was changed from the novel (apparently Frank's physical disabilities were more severe in the book, which makes his decision sort of easier to understand than it was in the series, so I'm not sure why they changed that). But the whole thing is really wonderful, particularly the performances by Mackenzie Davis, Matilda Lawler, Himesh Patel, and Danielle Deadwyler.
b) "MacGruber"
The 2010 MacGruber movie was way better than it had a right to be, but I wasn't really clamoring for Will Forte to revisit the character, and was surprised to hear a decade later that there'd be a series. But it picks up right where the movie left off, with Jorma Taccone still writing and directing and Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe returning and Laurence Fishburne, Billy Zane, and Sam Elliott joining the cast. I feel like some episodes are much stronger than others, but it's still pretty damn entertaining. I actually slipped it into my best TV of 2021 list just off the strength of watching the first episode because of Maya Rudoph's song and Willl Forte saying "my country invited me to die for it and I RSVP'd 'yass queen'."
"Landscapers" is based on the story of a British couple who murdered the wife's parents and buried them in their garden, and got away with it until the bodies were found over a decade later. Olivia Colman and David Thewlis are obviously both amazing actors, and there's a lot of creative storytelling and arty direction in this miniseries. Really the whole cast is great, Kate O'Flynn steals every scene she's in. But the kind of wacky black comedy approach to this story does rub me the wrong way at times considering it's a true story about two murder victims.
d) "Harlem"
With the premiere of "Harlem" and "Run The World" and the finale of "Insecure" in the last few months there's been a lot of chatter about cable comedies about Black women and how they're sort of all about four thirtysomething friends. But obviously, there's room for a dozen more shows like that, so long as each one is good and has its own voice, and I think "Harlem," created by Girls Trip screenwriter Tracy Oliver, goes for bigger laugh-out-loud moments than those, which I like, some of these shows about striving young professionals can get a little too soap opera-ish for me.
e) "With Love"
"With Love" is a cute little rom com show on Amazon about all the romantic issues and relationships of the Diaz family, with each episode taking place on a different holiday. It's pretty formulaic stuff but I find it charming, although it's kind of annoying how the show takes place in Portland but doesn't feel like it at all and is very clearly all shot in L.A. And it's nice to see Vincent Rodriguez III from "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" again.
f) "Stay Close"
This British miniseries on Netflix about a missing person cold case is very moody and dramatic, but I didn't really find the story riveting enough to keep going past the first episode.
g) "Vigil"
Another British show about a mysterious disappearance, this time of a fishing boat near a military submarine, and it also was very somber and kinda lost my interest after one or two episodes.
This continues to be a pretty entertaining show, although it really mixes some wildly different tones, and while they pull of the more straightforward drama/action stuff well, I must admit I like the wackier episodes where Jaskier shows up more.
I've always had kind of mixed feelings about "Search Party" and its big tonal shifts and shaggy, unpredictable story. But having finished the 5th and final season, it kind of holds together as a whole better than I ever would've expected. It almost seemed like the odd-numbered seasons were the funniest and the even-numbered seasons veered toward being a little too dark, as if it was on purpose. In any sense, I like that they kept swinging for the fences at the end with the increasingly insane storyline of season 5, Alia Shawkat got to give her best performance of the series and a lot of the new characters, including ones played by Jeff Goldblum and John Waters, were hilarious.
j) "The Sinner"
I love how this show has turned into an anthology about Bill Pullman's detective character, although I'm always way behind on watching it, I just recently finished the 3rd season and started the 4th season that concluded airing a few weeks ago. Season 3 got a little silly at the end -- the main character wound up like Harvey Dent deciding whether to kill people with a paper fortune teller instead of flipping a coin -- but I like how they kind of made season 4 sort of an extension of the same storyline instead of making it all self-contained.
I enjoyed the first season of this Australian import on Peacock but I didn't realize it was coming back for a second season until months after it premiered last August. It's kind of funny how it felt like the story had come to a natural end already but now they're moving into a different house, it'd be goofy if all of them went to a different house every season.
Kyle Mooney is on his 9th season at "Saturday Night Live" and it's hard to think of anybody who's been on the show that long with as little screentime or impact as he's had. I've always liked and rooted for him, though, and I'm glad he got his own little Lorne-produced show over on Netflix. But "Saturday Morning All Star Hits" is very much in the '80s/'90s syndicated TV camp/nostalgia zone that other SNL people like Robert Smigel and The Lonely Island have plumbed, to say nothing of half of Adult Swim's programming, so it's funny and well executed but not especially fresh or original.
m) "Santa Inc."
This is one of those terrible edgy adult cartoons, in the style of the old stop motion Christmas specials, where a female elf (Sarah Silverman) wants to take over Santa Claus (Seth Rogen)'s job. And I guess enough dumb right wingers found this plot offensive that Rogen was able to just deride everyone who hated the show as a Nazi, but it honestly is a crappy, unfunny show for apolitical reasons.
A Netflix thriller about a girl being kidnapped by ISIS, some good exciting direction but another show I kind of abandoned after one episode.
o) "Kitz"
This German show on Netflix is a lot like the show "Revenge" that was a hit on ABC a few years ago, with a young woman sort of moving to an affluent area and infiltrating high society to exact revenge on people she blames for a death in her family. But I like the dialogue and the cast, I think it has potential.
This Swedish show on Netflix is a pretty entertaining little black comedy, one of those things where police that aren't used to solving serious cases are suddenly confronted with this big bank heist/hostage situation, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
q) "Rebelde"
I've seen American networks do English-language remakes of telenovelas, but it's kind of funny that Netflix did a remake of this Mexican show that's still in Spanish and takes place in Mexico. It's a fun frothy little teen drama about kids at an elite music school, though, I wouldn't be surprised if The CW eventually did make an English version.
A dystopian Netflix show from Korea about a future when the Earth is running out of food and water and people are trying to find a solution, definitely kind of a bummer but some good special effects.
I'm not familiar with the Colombian comedian Alejandra Azcarate, but I like her series on Netflix, it's sort of a "Chappelle's Show" or "Inside Amy Schumer"-type mix of sketches and standup, lots of self-deprecating cultural commentary and witty wordplay.
t) "Voir"
Netflix did a terrible job of announcing this show because they basically teased that they were doing something new with David Fincher, and everyone was immediately bummed out that it was a series of video essays about classic films and not a feature or a new season of "Mindhunter" or something. Each episode is by a different person, and I feel like the quality of the episodes varies pretty wildly depending on the strength of the writing and how well their voice works with voiceover narration.
This show, meanwhile, is completely let down by the voiceover, the footage is amazing but the person doing the narration basically sounds like Stewie from "Family Guy," it's just too ridiculous to take.
v) "Baking It"
I don't watch the "Making It" craft competition reality show hosted by Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, but I much prefer this spinoff because I like the hosts more (Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg), and I generally prefer reality shows about food.
This Netflix show is about Colton Underwood, a former pro football player who came out as gay after appearing on multiple seasons of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette." And the one episode I watched was kind of interesting because he's just dealing with the fallout of coming out after spending years on TV presenting himself as a straight guy looking for a girlfriend, and grappling with what led him to do that, I sympathize with him but man, what a mess.
I'd never heard of the story in his HBO docuseries, three women getting murdered in an Illinois state park in 1960 and a guy being wrongly convicted for the crime, really crazy fascinating stuff.
I kind of roll my eyes at a lot of Will Smith's inspirational Instagram content, but he is inarguably a great person to host a nature docuseries like this, he has a very genuine and infectious sense of wonder. And I'm glad he shot this before he shaved his mustache and started rocking that weird-looking beard.
I'm amused that this Netflix show just says "fuck it, we're gonna rip of 'The Real World' with 8 strangers instead of 7 strangers."
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on Friday, January 14, 2022 at 11:09 AM.
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