Outside of the Johnny Mnemonic, shockingly little of William Gibson's work has been adapted for the screen (I'm still bitter that a Chris Cunningham-directed Neuromancer feature never got off the ground). But one of Gibson's later works, the 2014 novel The Peripheral, is now a pretty great-looking big budget Amazon series exec produced by the "Westworld" showrunners. In fact, the fact that it feels a lot like "Westworld," down to the slow pacing and disorienting mysteries and humorlessness, is something of a cause for concert, but the first two episodes are still pretty promising. Also I'm really smitten with Adelind Horan, she's a minor character so far but I hope there's more of her to come.
I was really looking forward to "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" creator/star Rachel Bloom's next move, and was a little disappointed to see that she'd be merely starring in a show she didn't make in "Reboot" (although hey, her character is a showrunner). But "Reboot" is a really funny and clever show about generational differences in the comedy world, much like "Hacks." And what really makes it work is that creator Steven Levitan has made hacky multi-cam sitcoms like "Just Shoot Me!" and single camera shows like "Modern Family," and takes the style of the latter in an edgier direction (curse words! Judy Greer's boobs!) to make fun of all of the above. Johnny Knoxville, Paul Reiser, and Fred Melamed get a lot of the best lines, but the whole cast is great.
It's always a little shocking when CBS has the best new show of the big 4 networks' fall rollout, but so far I think "So Help Me Todd" is the leader. Skylar Astin and Marcia Gay Harden are incredibly funny together as a down-on-his-luck private investigator and his attorney mother who hires him to help get him back on his feet, and I'd really wanted to see more of Madeline Wise since her brief role on "Crashing."
Apparently East New York is the name of the neighborhood in Brooklyn where this CBS cop show takes place, but it still feels weird hearing characters say 'East New York' all the time. Pretty overly familiar network procedural, although the cast is good, always happy to see Richard Kind.
And Richard kind is in this one too, in a smaller but more entertaining role! Is the Kindaissance underway? "Dahmer" recently became one of Netflix's most watched original series ever, so I guess their investment in Ryan Murphy is paying off. And "The Watcher" is one of the best things he's done in a while, at least based on what I've watched so far. A true crime show about a family who moves into a house in New Jersey and starts getting ominous letters from a stalker watching their every move, very unsettling stuff.
Apparently 'Freevee' is Amazon's ad-supported free streaming service that's kind of a tier below Amazon Prime in prestige. But their adaptation of Tegan and Sara's memoir High School is really good. It's kind of weird to see a biopic of a musical act that's not super-famous, but they were teenagers in Alberta, Canada at the same time I was a teenager, listening to a lot of the same music, so I find it pretty relatable. And even though my brother and I are 2 years apart in age, I feel like we dealt like some of the same stuff as the twins, as far as being in the same social groups and being too close for comfort at times. Also Cobie Smulders plays their mom, always great to see her.
Oculus is a classic to me, but Mike Flanagan's acclaimed string of Netflix miniseries has been more hit-and-miss for me, at least until "Midnight Mass," which I thought was amazing. The unrelated "The Midnight Club" got off to a rough start, I thought the whole '200 jump scares' thing in that first episode was just kind of obnoxious. And the '90s high school setting with all the period appropriate alt-rock just didn't really hit the mark in the same way as "High School" or "Yellowjackets." But I wanna go back and finish it, I'm curious to see where it goes.
Jake Lacy played a lot of generic handsome love interests before he got an Emmy nomination for a slightly darker role (still somewhat within the upbeat preppy Jake Lacy wheelhouse) for "The White Lotus." That means he can now book something like a starring role in a true crime series as an infamous pedophile, but I don't necessarily think that's something he can totally pull off, or should want to. The story is undeniably interesting, because Robert Berchtold kidnapped his neighbor's daughter twice, two years apart, and the way he got away with it the first time is completely bizarre. But I don't know, it doesn't feel very convincing as a period piece, Lacy seems out of his depth, and as a bald guy I get annoyed when a show casts someone like Colin Hanks and makes him wear a bald cap instead of just casting a bald actor.
Jacob Batalon (Peter Parker's sidekick Ned in the last few Spider-Man movies) plays Reginald, a shy, nerdy guy in a dead-end job with a crush on his co-worker, who gets turned into a vampire in "Reginald The Vampire." It hits a lot of familiar horror comedy notes but it works, Batalon and Em Haine are charming leads.
Another new vampire show, albeit one adapting a familiar franchise. Eric Bogosian playing the journalist Daniel Molloy instead of Christian Slater feels like a huge step up from the movie. They actually made his character interesting and watchable in this one, but of course he's more a narrative device than a character.
Yet another new vampire series that premiered in October adapting some established IP, and like Interview With The Vampire their main 'modern' flourish is that the main mortal-who-gets-turned-into-a-vampire character is Black now. I thought the first episode was very solid, even if it all feels a little pointlessly redundant with the two movie versions, but man, the choice of classic song they played over the credits was so wrong, just tonally such an awful choice.
My wife is a moderately big "Supernatural" fan and even she seemed mildly appalled to learn that The CW has decided to keep the franchise going with a prequel about Sam and Dean's parents. Moderately likable show, though. Meg Donnelly from "American Housewife" seems destined for some manner of stardom beyond Disney Channel movies, this show seems like it could be a stepping stone for her.
My
review of the first 4 episodes of "American Gigolo" wasn't very enthusiastic, and my opinion hasn't improved a whole lot with the last 3 episodes. It feels like they at least found the tone of the movie and the balance of glamor and grit a little more, though. Apparently "Ray Donovan" producer David Hollander was fired as the showrunner over misconduct a few months ago, so maybe if they get a second season it won't feel so damn "Ray Donovan"-y.
I'm only halfway through the third season of "Ramy," I think I feel like savoring it since there was such a long wait since the second season. Feels a little like "Atlanta" in the way you never really know what you're going to get in any given episode or even what characters will be in it, I wish Ramy Youssef was in the show a little more, but Hiam Abass, May Calamawy, Amr Waked and Laith Nakli are a great ensemble to build the family stories around. Between this and the first season of "Mo," he's really just on a hot streak right now.
Miniseries about tech CEOs are all the rage these days, and "The Playlist" is a Swedish series on Netflix about the creation of Spotify. But even as someone who uses Spotify every day and has very mixed feelings about its impact on the music industry, I just can't even begin to find Daniel Ek a figure interesting enough for a Social Network-style fictionalized portrait, watching an actor as a young Ek trying to listen to Gavin DeGraw on the internet. To its credit, the show does give voice to substantial criticisms of Ek and Spotify by the last episode, but the whole thing feels fairly dull and surface level.
Apparently there was a disastrous flood in Poland in 1997, and this Polish Netflix series dramatizes it pretty grippingly, execution was on a similarly impressive level to the recent Katrina miniseries "Five Days at Memorial."
This Mexican series on Netflix is based on a series of detective novels, and it's really entertaining and stylishly directed. There are only 3 episodes but each one is basically movie-length.
A Spanish thriller on Netflix about a family's sordid secrets, good production values but didn't get too into the story.
A pretty good Italian series where a man wakes up having been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital and has to acclimate to living there for the next week.
This French thriller has lots of time jumps, I really have no idea what's going on and gave up on it quickly.
This Netflix sci-fi anime show seems to have polarized people with its visual style, some people love it and some people think it's hideous. Personally, I think it has a cool unique texture, sets it apart from other computer animation shows that mostly look alike.
This Netflix docuseries narrated by Will Arnett is about wolves and other wildlife on Vancouver island, really well assembled and sometimes heartbreaking stuff.
I missed Demi Lovato's extraterrestrial investigation show, but this Discovery Plus show features Kesha with Whitney Cummings or Betty Who or other celebrity guests exploring the world of the paranormal. These kinds of celebrity versions of genre reality shows crack me up, I'm kind of glad they exist.
The Lincoln Project is an opportunistic cabal of Republican hacks who think they look good as long as they're comparing themselves to Trump. And it's absolutely pathetic that even well after their whole facade started to slip and they were exposed as grifters, Showtime still saw fit to let them make a show about how awesome they are.
This Peacock docuseries about the Barney The Dinosaur phenomenon is only 2 episodes, but it still feels like they're desperately dragging out a very vague thesis about the show's dark side and backlash and just not coming up with much of anything.
6 years after he left "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart made a low profile, low energy return last year on Apple TV+ with a show that aired every two weeks, wearing street clothes, combining desk segments and interviews with lots of casual segments of Stewart in the office shooting the shit with his writers. Now, Trevor Noah is leaving "The Daily Show" and its future is a big question mark, another alum's show just got canceled (Sam Bee), and Stewart is back, seeming to try a little harder, actually doing a show once a week this time and wearing a blazer over his t-shirt. The angle of the show where Stewart engages in hostile interviews with horrible people didn't really work that well in the first season (even when he confronted Andrew Sullivan he went way too easy on that hack phrenology enthusiast). But the first episode where he called the Arkansas Attorney General on her bullshit position on gender affirming care was good and actually made waves. Still feels like he's in his 'Jordan on the Wizards' era, though.
