TV Diary
After David Simon finished his run of "Homicide: Life On The Street," "The Corner," and "The Wire" 14 years ago, it felt like maybe he'd kind of said what he had to say about Baltimore and set about making shows that took place in Iraq, New Orleans, New York, and New Jersey. So it's interesting to see Simon finally return to Baltimore for a miniseries based on a book by another Baltimore Sun reporter, Justin Fenton, about the BPD's Gun Trace Task Force, who were indicted for racketeering in 2017. There's a lot about the show that feels familiar to "The Wire" fans, including a few returning actors, including Jamie Hector as Sean Suiter, the detective who died under mysterious circumstances in 2017, so I'm pretty curious how the show is going to play that out. But the big difference is where "The Wire" was all fictional characters loosely based on real people, "We Own This City" is all real names, real dates, etc. The first episode set things up pretty well, I've always been kind of a Jon Bernthal skeptic but I think his Balmer accent is pretty solid. And Josh Charles is one of my favorite actors from Baltimore who hasn't done a lot based in Baltimore since his bit part in Hairspray at the beginning of his career, so it's great to see him in this. The dialogue around David Simon's work has always been polarized, especially in Baltimore, between people who think he's making the city look bad and people who think he's actually too sympathetic to the police, a debate that's become more intense in recent years, and I think "We Own This City" will fan those flames even more. But so far, it's hard to say whether I think the show addresses or validates either side's criticisms.
I'm enjoying this Amazon series where Josh Brolin plays a rancher who finds a big black portal in a hole in the ground on his property. I believe my wife asked if it was "a supernatural 'Yellowstone'" when I started watching it, and I objected, but that's pretty accurate actually. I've enjoyed that the show has progressively gotten weirder over the first few episodes, it felt like it started getting a little crazy when the editor did dozens of rapid cuts while Will Patton is naked having some kind of breakdown in front of a buffalo head mount while "Angel of the Morning" blares on the soundtrack.
c) "Killing It"
I kind of assumed from the title of Craig Robinson's new sitcom on Peacock that it would be another one of those 'ordinary person becomes a hitman' shows that have been so common in recent years. So I was kind of pleasantly surprised when the first episode took a surprising turn halfway through and it turned out to be a show about the Florida Python Challenge, a real thing where people try to kill off the python population in the Everglades for a big cash reward. Claudia O'Doherty from "Love" is so funny in this show, kind of cheerfully deranged and barely aware of how ridiculous her life is, Jillian is just a great character. And episode 6 with Zach Grenier from "Devs" is so good.
d) "Roar"
This Apple TV+ anthology series from the creators of "GLOW" is based on a short story collection, where each story is a weird little heightened reality fable with a title like "The Woman Who Ate Photographs" (Nicole Kidman literally eats photos and sort of experiences the moment in the picture) or "The Woman Who Was Kept On A Shelf" (Betty Gilpin is asked by her husband to sit on a shelf all day to inspire him while he works). Some of them have pretty clear social satire aims, some are a little more surreal and impressionistic, but it's a pretty interesting show that keeps me guessing where each story will go.
"Slow Horses" opens with a British spy botching a mission and getting exiled to a really boring assignment, which is a great premise. I like that it's sort of a droll parody of spy shows but also has a bit of action and intrigue.
I put the first episode of this on one night, and we kind of rolled our eyes mightily at yet another stuffy drama about an upper class white guy's misadventures in sexual misconduct, and my wife went up to bed halfway through. And then the episode ended with the introduction of the show's big stylistic flourish, which is completely absurd and laughably and became instantly infamous on the internet in the days after the show debuted on Netflix. I don't know if I should 'spoil' it with particulars, but it's fucking hilarious and kind of turned what was a pretty unpromising show into a campy disaster.
This British series on Netflix is about kids who are on a field trip when a robot apocalypse happens. A fun idea on paper but the execution didn't really do anything for me.
h) "Hard Cell"
I'm not familiar with Catherine Tate, but apparently she's known for a BBC sketch comedy show, and "Hard Cell" is her new Netflix show where she plays multiple characters in a women's prison. And this is definitely one of those strains of British comedy that is just not for me at all, reminds me of "Little Britain," deeply unfunny stuff.
I recently wrote about why "Russian Doll" is one of the best shows Netflix has ever made, and I stand by that. A lot of people thought the first season felt so self-contained that it should've remained a one-off, and the consensus about the 2nd season is that it isn't as good. And well, yeah, it isn't, but it's still great and I'm so glad Natasha Lyonne went back to this world and these characters and came up with another weird time wormhole for them to step into, there were some hilarious lines that went by so quickly I almost missed them and the ending was beautiful.
j) "Black-ish"
I kind of like when family sitcoms end and you can look back and see at how all the kids on the show grew up on the air. It definitely peaked a while ago, though, I kinda put it on out of habit this year, 8 seasons is a good place to leave it off.
I would say "Grace And Frankie" is going out on the top of its game, though, I've been watching a lot of the final season over the last couple days and it's still just hilarious, definitely gonna miss these characters.
This Dutch show on Netflix about phone sex lines becoming a phenomenon in the Netherlands in the '80s, kind of a period piece sex comedy like "Minx" or, sort of "The Deuce." There's a lot of overly wacky sex scenes that get kind of over-the-top but it's otherwise pretty well written, one of the better recent imports on Netflix.
m) "Pachinko"
This Apple TV+ series takes place in Japan-occupied Korea in 1915, which is pretty interesting, I really didn't know much about that chapter of history. Haven't kept up with it or gotten too into the story yet, though.
Junior, the 1994 comedy where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cisgender man who gets pregnant, seems like a pretty bizarre little cultural artifact now. But the lead actor in the Japanese series "He's Expecting" actually watched Junior and studied Schwarzenegger's performance to prepare for his own role as a pregnant man. Obviously there's a minefield of ways this kind of story could be problematic or just plain stupid, but the show maintains kind of a balancing act of being charmingly silly about it.
This French series is about a girl who finds a skeleton on the beach in the present day, and then finds herself transported into the body of the '90s teenager whose remains she found. Pretty strange and entertaining show.
This Colombian show on Netflix has kind of a ridiculous premise where a crime syndicate kills a woman to transplant her heart to someone else, but it's otherwise pretty well written and acted and not as violent or soapy as I expected it would be.
Another Netflix import I kind of put on as background noise while I was writing, that takes place in 14th century Barcelona, didn't really leave much of an impression.
I didn't even realize when I started watching this Turkish show on Netflix that it's actually a spinoff of the Belgian show "Into The Night," taking place in the same apocalypse scenario in a different part of the world with a marine biologist as its hero. I'm not super into either show, but I love the idea of a big global storyline that's carried out in different shows that take place in different countries.
A docuseries about the 2014 murder of a South African football player, I haven't finished it yet but I guess the case is still unsolved, sad story.
t) "Old Enough"
This show, which has been on TV in Japan for decades and just came to Netflix recently, is kind of a game show where toddlers and young children are sent on errands to pick up or buy things, which has kind of prompted some reflection in America about how we keep our young kids more sheltered by comparison. I mean, my oldest son is 12 and this year was the first time I think he walked a mile or more away from our house, went to a friend's place and went to a store and bought things with his own money. The kids on this show are really cute, though, and y'know, they have a camera crew around in case anything bad happens, which the rest of us do not.
This 3-part HBO doc is about a guy who faked his own death and then became a drug smuggler, pretty crazy that they have him sitting around explaining how he did it all, I feel like you rarely get to hear these kinds of stories straight from the person who did it.
I like the format of this Netflix game show where one person answers trivia questions, and three people try to guess if they're faking about knowing the answer or actually know it. After the round is over, whoever did best out of those three gets their turn answering the question, and the other two people have already heard them explain how they know when somebody is lying, which makes it all very weirdly psychological and interesting.
Netflix's first "Conversations With A Killer" was about Ted Bundy, and now they've moved onto one of the other big serial killers of the '70s. I didn't know that much about Gacy, the details are pretty nuts, and it's wild hearing his actual voice on recordings. But the most chilling part is definitely a lengthy interview with someone who was nearly one of his victims, detailing a day he spent with Gacy and how close he came to getting killed.
Given that "Our Great National Parks" is hosted by Barack Obama and has 'our' in the title, I kind of assumed it was going to be all about American national parks, but it actually goes all over the world. And that's cool, because I know a lot less about other country's national parks and there's some amazing footage.
The Ice Age movies were not masterpieces even by animated feature standards, but they were always pretty entertaining, especially the Scrat segments. These Disney+ shorts are just okay, though, I think I watched them all in about 20 minutes and didn't find them as funny as the bits from the movies.
My 6-year-old loves Dr. Seuss books and he has really taken to this series and was excited to see that a 2nd season came out. It's a pretty clever little show, although the Rivers Cuomo theme song really gets on my nerves. I wish my kid took the Green Eggs and Ham message to heart and tried new things at the dinner table more readily, though.
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on Monday, May 02, 2022 at 9:58 AM.
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