TV Diary
I have a pretty low level of investment in these Star Wars series on Disney+ and it's already starting to feel like there's been diminishing returns with the ones since "The Mandalorian." And while I'm not eager to revisit anything involving the prequels, Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi is a solid choice to build a show around, and this already feels a lot more solid and memorable than "The Book of Boba Fett." I rolled my eyes a little at the unexpected return of one iconic character, though, the story already feels kind of predictable and tedious, although Vivian Lyra Blair is holding her own as a child actor, and Kumail Nanjiani's scenes are entertaining.
I never watched the documentary series or followed the story in the news (although I did watch the very funny NBC sitcom that weirdly loosely based its first season on this case, "Trial & Error"). So I went into the big HBO dramatization not really knowing what to think of the Michael Peterson case, and so far I still don't, really. But as an acting showcase it's really something, Colin Firth and Toni Collette and Parker Posey and Michael Stuhlbarg are predictably great, although Odessa Young is really a standout among those bigger names. It was kind of wild to see this miniseries turn the documentary filmmakers into characters in the story and hold them up to scrutiny and criticism, but learning the details of everything it really seems like the right thing to do.
c) "Pistol"
Having read multiple books and many other things about the Sex Pistols story, it's interesting to see it dramatized -- I have mixed feelings about some of the casting but for the most part I think Danny Boyle and the actors are doing a pretty great job of it. I haven't read Steve Jones's book that they based it on, but I have ready John Lydon's autobiography and can verify that you wouldn't have been able to get a good screen adaptation out of that, so the Jones book was probably the right way to go, and it's a little refreshing to get it all from his perspective.
d) "The Offer"
I had been resisting getting on board with Paramount+, since they have a relatively weak slate of scripted originals compared to other streaming services, but I kinda knew they'd get me eventually since CBS moved "Evil" on there and they've got a miniseries about George Jones and Tammy Wynette coming up. So when my kids begged me to let them watch Sonic The Hedgehog 2 I finally signed up for Paramount+ and started checking out their shows. It's interesting that in the push towards dramatizing pop culture history and turning everything that's ever happened into a movie or miniseries, we're now getting not just biopics of celebrities and bands but stories about the making of classic films like Mank and now this miniseries about The Godfather. The cast is very entertaining, I had no idea Matthew Goode was capable of anything like his spot-on Robert Evans, this is the first thing I've liked Miles Teller in, and Juno Temple steals scenes as reliably here as in "Ted Lasso." Giovanni Ribisi is shit in this, though.
A huge amount of Paramount+'s programming is "Star Trek" stuff, and I've always been kind of a casual fan who hasn't gone far beyond "The Next Generation" and the theatrical movies, but now that I'm subscribing I'm starting to check that stuff out. "Strange New Worlds" has the same creators/showrunners as the new "The Man Who Fell To Earth" series I have mixed feelings about, and Alex Kurtzman had a hand in the J.J. Abrams Trek movies that I have very little affection for, so I went into this show with a lot of skepticism. But Anson Mount and Jess Bush are good, there's definite potential here.
f) "Gaslit"
A lot of the attention paid to "Gaslit" has focused on Sean Penn's "transformation" into John Mitchell and I just think it's so stupid that Hollywood would rather spend a ton of money putting a thin actor in a fatsuit and doing a 3D scan of their face and covering them in prosthetics and a bald cap than just hire a fat bald actor. But really the point of "Gaslit" is more to put focus on women on the margins of the Watergate story, played by actresses including Julia Roberts and Betty Gilpin and, in a standout small role, Ahna O'Reilly. And the whole ensemble is great and full of funny people portraying the Watergate conspirators as complete numbskulls (Hamish Linklater, Chris Bauer, Patton Oswalt, Nat Faxon, Shea Whigham clearly having a great time as G. Gordon Liddy), tonally reminds me a bit of The Informant! in that respect. Sometimes the writing feels a little clumsy and they're just walking around outright saying "we're gonna be snakes and ratfuck the Democrats!" but the performances really carry the show.
g) "Angelyne"
"Angelyne" has a more interesting physical transformation for its lead actor -- I think Emmy Rossum is absolutely beautiful, but she's unrecognizable as a buxom blonde, and I think her performance really works in part because it fits the strangeness and artificiality of Angelyne's mysterious public persona. Angelyne is a woman who put herself on billboards all over Los Angeles in the 1980s and rabidly pursued fame, and this Peacock miniseries about her is the first I've heard of her, so I guess she wasn't that successful (apparently she's in Earth Girls Are Easy, which I saw decades ago but don't remember anything about). It's an entertaining show and I enjoy the weird meta elements of trying to tell the story of someone who wants to remain a mystery, I hope it gets Emmy and Emmy, both because it's her name and because she's overdue for one after carrying "Shameless" for 9 seasons.
h) "Night Sky"
"Night Sky" is about an elderly couple played by J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek who basically find a portal to a distant uninhabited planet behind their house, some great, weird stuff, had me hooked from the first episode. The next couple episodes have lost me a little, it feels like they're introducing so many characters and plot threads and I'm not really understanding where it's going, but it's still by far one of the best new things I've seen lately. And they could definitely do more flashbacks because the younger version of Spacek's character, Lily Cardone, wow.
"Normal People" was deservedly a big hit and Hulu and the BBC have made the no-brainer decision to have the same people adapt another Sally Rooney novel into a miniseries. But nobody likes "Conversations With Friends" remotely as much, including me, maybe the story just doesn't translate to the screen as well or the cast doesn't have any chemistry, I don't know, even someone as charismatic as Jemima Kirke feels kind of wasted in this.
Whenever I watch this show, all my wife and I can talk about is the weird neon hair color Claire Danes has, which feels kind of out of place in a story that takes place in 1893. I think it's otherwise a pretty good, well made show, although I find it kind of slow moving and have no idea what I'm really supposed to make of the story so far, I like the scenes with Danes and Tom Hiddleston but I feel like there's probably some themes or subtext from the novel that are going over my head here.
This Showtime comedy is about a woman who gets a job at the Home Shoppping Network-style channel she grew up watching and gets to work with her childhood idol -- in sort of a meta touch, they're played by two "Saturday Night Live" cast members from different generations, Vanessa Bayer and Molly Shannon. It's a really funny, charming show set in a place that's never really been the subject of a scripted show before, and Jennifer Lewis is hilarious. But the plot driving the story is that Bayer's character had cancer as a child, and she lies that she still has cancer in order to avoid getting fired, and the lie spirals out of control and becomes her public image, and that's all pretty stressful to watch, to be honest, I kind of wish the show wasn't primarily about someone lying about cancer.
Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley have been married for almost 30 years and apparently choose to keep their professional lives separate for the good of their relationship. And honestly, good for them, I guess it's working. But Kelley has given so many veteran actresses great roles in recent years that I do kind of wish they worked together, because Pfeiffer deserves to have a TV vehicle better than being the best part of this middling Showtime anthology series about wives of POTUSes. Viola Davis's portrayal of Michelle Obama has gotten a lot of negative attention, I wouldn't say it's outright terrible but it's definitely the weakest of the three storylines overall. But the episode that focused on their earlier pre-White House lives was really good, the younger actresses portraying the characters really held their own, particularly the other Betty Ford, Kristine Froseth.
Apparently the main character in The Lincoln Lawyer is the half-brother of the main character in "Bosch" in Michael Connelly's novels, so you'd think if they were going to make a "Lincoln Lawyer" series it'd be smart to do it on Amazon and put it in the same narrative universe as "Bosch." In any event, this Netflix series is good, I don't like it as much as the McConaughey movie but it's solid, the cast has chemistry.
n) "Hacks"
I'm so glad that my #1 show of 2021 came back quickly with a strong second season that took the story in new places. I thought maybe there'd be an annoying drawn out thing with Ava trying to keep the e-mail secret for the whole season, but instead they got it out in the open and now there's a lawsuit, which is way funnier. It's a shame that the show leaving Vegas meant that they were only able to fit Poppy Liu into the story for one episode because that was the best episode. That and the cruise ship episode.
"Made For Love" was another 2021 HBO Max highlight, and while I don't think the second season is necessarily as good as the first, I like that they decided to kind of ramp up the sci-fi elements of the show and introduce all these new weird ideas like the AI versions of Hazel and Byron, such a deranged and unexpected twist for the story to take.
p) "Girls5Eva"
Another sophomore show that I'm happy to see more of, especially since it's the only post-"30 Rock" comedy on the air now that "Mr. Mayor" has been canceled. I feel like the writers must love giving Renee Elise Goldsworthy the most absurd lines because she can really deliver anything with a straight face, it's incredible.
q) "Barry"
"Barry" was one of those shows that was on a great roll before the pandemic kept it off the air for 3 years. And it kind of took a while to get back in a groove because it felt like they had to open with a few episodes really reckoning with all the violence and loss in the story so far, which made a bit less of a comedy than it used to be. But this season has gradually ramped up and gone to some pretty incredible places, "710N" was one of the funniest and most beautifully directed episodes they've ever done, Bill Hader is really a genius.
r) "Clark"
I'm amused that there are so many things titled Stockholm Syndrome but this Swedish show about the origin of the phrase is just called "Clark." Bill Skarsgard is good in this, it's kind of nice to see him in something a little more playful that shows his range since he's so often playing really dark characters and villains, even if overall "Clark" can get kind of exhaustingly wacky.
This Spanish show about a grizzled old war vet taking on the drug dealers in his neighborhood is alright, feels very much like it would star Clint Eastwood if it was an American movie.
A Netflix show from Switzerland, kind of a wholesome family drama, have found it a bit dull so far.
This Netflix show is about the 2010 disappearance of a Chilean woman who was eventually found dead in her own attic, well made but kind of too bleak for me to get into.
A South African show on Netflix, feels very much like a soap opera with good production values, seems alright.
I was a big fan of "Adam Ruins Everything," which was a hit for TruTV that got unceremoniously canceled when the network changed owners. And Adam Conover's new show on Netflix is a pretty similar thing with a specific emphasis on American government, which is still such a big subject that they can still cover a really wide variety of topics. The show being exec produced by Barack Obama feels weird, and they address that weirdness in Obama's cameo in the first episode and I believe them that it's not pro-government propaganda just because an ex-president's involved, but I dunno, still feels a little off just in terms of optics.
This Apple TV+ docuseries is about a con artist whose name is Eric Conn, and hey, it feels like it was just naturally made for TV. But the tone of the whole thing is kind of irritatingly goofy, the directors are just having too much fun adding comedic bells and whistles to the story.
It's weird to see a ripoff of "World's Dumbest Criminals" hosted by one of the world's most famous gangsta rappers, but Snoop is having fun, as he always does.
This cooking reality show, with a twist where one contestant is sabotaging the others and part of the game is figuring out who, is such a weird concept, but it's pretty entertaining TV, and Natasha Leggero is the right kind of knowingly absurd comedian to host a show like this.
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