TV Diary
a) "Poker Face"
It's hard to think of a hypothetical new show that would appeal more than Natasha Lyonne fresh off "Russian Doll" and Rian Johnson fresh off Glass Onion doing weekly murder mysteries. But I particularly like the storytelling formula they've chosen, which isn't quite the same as the Knives Out movies. First, you get the entire story of a murder, who the victim was and why they were killed. And only then do you see how Lyonne's character, a gambler on the run named Charlie who has an uncanny ability to tell when people are lying, happens upon this scene, and how she figures out that there was foul play. The crimes are often absurd Rube Goldberg contrivances and the circumstances that land Charlie in the right place at the right time are just as ridiculous, but that's all part of the fun. And the gallery of new characters you meet each week is so well drawn that sometimes you genuinely mourn the victims, or even find yourself rooting for their clever killer.
"Three Pines" is another mystery show, a more conventional and serious one, based on a series of novels. But it's also the most thoroughly Canadian mystery show I've ever seen, with Alfred Molina as a Quebecois inspector named Armand Gamache who looks into a death at a curling competition in the first episode. I like that each case is two episodes, so the stories can stretch out and build some suspense.
c) "Shrinking"
I find Bill Lawrence's career interesting, because he's gradually moved from making very unsentimental setup-and-punchline sitcoms like "Spin City" to a procession of shows that have a bit more heart and sentiment, from "Scrubs" to "Cougar Town" to "Ted Lasso" and now to "Shrinking," a dramedy about a therapist whose wife died in a car crash. Lawrence co-created the show with star Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from "Ted Lasso") and there's some absolutely wonderful writing in here, although sometimes Segel's character and the things he puts his patients through are almost too mortifying to watch. The supporting cast makes it work, particularly Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford, who's a great choice to play the cranky but lovable mentor character that's a staple of Lawrence's shows (Roy Kent, Dr. Cox from "Scrubs").
This Anne Rice adaptation is kinda fun, a neurosurgeon finds out she's secretly the heir to an ancient dynasty of witches and has crazy powers. I don't really know what's going on story-wise but I'll watch anything with Alexandra Daddario in it and there's a good moody color scheme to the whole show.
This British sitcom takes place in a world where almost everybody has superpowers, except for the protagonist, who finds out that her pet cat is actually a human shapeshifter. A silly little show, some of the humor is really corny, but it manages to be pleasant and likable even when it's not funny, and Mairead Tyers is really adorable.
Apparently Diane Gordon has been playing the character Philomena Cunk on British television for about a decade, but this Netflix series is I guess her American debut, and it's a really funny show. It's basically a mockumentary with a clueless reporter interviewing real people and asking them asinine questions, pretty familiar "Daily Show" type stuff, but Gordon takes it all to such an absurd extreme. Every single sentence out of her mouth is wrong in a different way, she manages to keep a straight face no matter what, and you can never predict where a joke is going, except when they manage to work "Pump Up The Jam" into every episode.
"Night Court" was one of those shows I grew up on before I was even old enough to understand a lot of the jokes, to me it and "Cheers" and "Taxi" were like my early glimpses at a broad sitcom simulacrum of the nocturnal adult world, all the things that went on in the city after I went home and went to bed. And of course it was just a very funny, silly show with great cast chemistry. I kind of figured when "30 Rock" did an episode riffing on the idea of a "Night Court" reboot that such a thing would never actually happen, but where in a pretty reboot-crazy time right now and the new "Night Court" has gotten really good ratings. Bringing back John Larroquette as the only person from the original cast (while reversing his role from prosecutor to public defender) and having Melissa Rauch play Harry Stone's daughter is a pretty good foundation to build the show on, but the rest of the ensemble isn't really clicking, feels like anybody could be playing those parts.
h) "Riches"
Not to be confused with the underrated old FX series "The Riches," "Riches" is a British family drama on Amazon about a Black-owned cosmetics. Pretty good show, didn't find it terribly gripping but the acting was strong.
i) "Servant"
"Servant" is the first Apple TV+ series to get to a 4th season and has consistently been one of their best and most unique shows. I'm glad this is the last season, though, they've kept escalating the story and throwing new strange stuff into the mix for so long that I'm curious how it will all end. I think all four of the principle cast members deserve awards, but especially Nell Tiger Free, it's really remarkable how you can go back and forth from being scared of Leanne and then scared for Leanne, very difficult character to get right.
j) "You"
"You" is a bit like "Servant" in that I keep watching the show to see how the writers will paint themselves into a corner and then invent some creative but increasingly implausible way to keep the story going. The returns are a little more diminishing with "You" and I was a little more interested in season 4 before I heard that there's going to be a season 5, at this point I'd like to see them wrap this up and bring Joe's story to a satisfying end. That said, I'm enjoying his whole thing with a new identity and a new set of supporting characters in the UK, Penn Badgley is really a brilliant comic actor when you consider how much this show rests on him being able to express one thing with his face and another with his voiceover.
I would guess that this is my wife's favorite show on TV right now, based on her anticipation of season 2 and her excitement to watch all three new episodes every Friday. I like it too, it really captures the adventure and silliness of D&D. Having Lance Reddick voice the dragon that was the big bad this season was inspired casting.
"Ginny & Georgia" was the butt of a joke on "SNL" recently about how a show can be #1 on Netflix and most people haven't even heard of it. Decent show, kind of a less cutesy "Gilmore Girls." But after Brianne Howey's great performances on "The Passage" and "The Exorcist," I'm kind of bummed that she's known for something like this instead of more sci-fi/horror.
There are so many actors working on multiple series concurrently these days that it feels like it's been ages since I actually saw an actor jump ship from one show to a higher profile one. But Olivia Cooke, my favorite thing about season 1 of "Slow Horses," is conspicuously absent form season 2 now that she's on "House of the Dragon," and I'm not really caught up on "Game of Thrones" stuff to follow her over to that show. "Slow Horses" is alright without her, I guess.
n) "Dead End"
6 months after the animated series "Dead End: Paranormal Park," Netflix premiered an unrelated show called "Dead End," a Polish dark comedy about a bank robbery gone awry. Pretty gory, entertaining show, one of Netflix's better European imports in recent memory.
A pretty sweet little coming-of-age Mexican show on Netflix, hits some of the same notes as "Never Have I Ever" but isn't as funny.
This Indian series on Netflix is about a couple who sue after their children die in a theater fire. So, pretty heartwrenching story, right off the bat. But the first scene, with the family squabbling before the fire, ends with the father telling the mother "Be patient, only a few more years, then they'll be gone," like, just the most corny distasteful 'ironic' dialogue. After that, I even found the title "Trial By Fire" to be mildly offensive, like the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
q) "Smiley"
"Smiley" is a gay romcom based in Barcelona, some good dialogue and well rounded characters.
r) "The Wheel"
This NBC game show feels like an effortful attempt to reinvent "Hollywood Squares" with celebrities who all have some professed area of trivia question expertise being selected on a spinning wheel. Kind of a fun show but also kind of stupid.
I started watching this HBO Max docuseries when it premiered back in November, before I had heard of the sordid Murdaugh family saga. But then in January, Alex Murdaugh's murder trial began and that being in the news drove me back to finishing the series, which is really a pretty bizarre, jaw-dropping story.
This Netflix docuseries is about the horrifying 2004 incident at a Kentucky McDonald's where a prank caller convinced employees he was a police officer and ordered them to conduct a strip search of a co-worker suspected of theft. This story was the basis of the 2012 film Compliance, which I think is really one of the best movies of the 2010s, albeit a really dark and stomach-turning movie. Often when a story has been both dramatized in a fictional work and detailed in a documentary, I prefer the documentary, but in this case, I think it was maybe just too depressing to get the real story in greater detail.
I've started to feel like one of the things that Netflix makes way too many of is docuseries -- specifically, they've stretched a lot of things into several episodes that easily could've been covered in a movie, or even just a TV newsmagazine segment. I can remember back in the '90s when there were 'Pepsi points' that you could trade in for various prizes. Apparently in one of the ads there was a joke that for 7 million points you could get a Harrier II fighter jet, but they didn't put a legal disclaimer in the ad, so someone actually called their bluff and sued when they couldn't get a 32 million dollar fighter jet from Pepsi. Interesting story, but didn't need to be padded out to 4 episodes running almost 3 hours, they really put a lot of tedious nonsense in here to justify it being a series.
Another Netflix docuseries about a mildly interesting story, of a German Shepherd who wound up with a $400 million trust fund, that really didn't need to be dragged out into several episodes.
It doesn't take much for me to enjoy a nature documentary, especially with a good narrator. But even with voiceover from Morgan Freeman, this one didn't really engage me too much, some good animal footage and okay big-picture CGI stuff, but it just felt a little flat.
My brother and I grew up on Transformers toys and cartoons, and my brother still collects the toys. My kids go through Transformers phases, my 13-year-old has watched each of the Michael Bay movies multiple times. And my 7-year-old recently rediscovered some of his toys and spent a few days having epic Optimus/Megatron battles. I put on the newest series, "Transformers: Earthspark," and while I like the animation style and was entertained by the novelty of Optimus Prime being voiced by Alan Tudyk and Bumblebee voiced by Danny Pudi, my kid didn't really take to it like other Transformers shows and we never returned to it.
Another show I put on because my kid liked the Sonic The Hedgehog movie, but he didn't take any interest in the show, whole thing feels very cheap and looks like it could've been made 20 years ago.
This is an odd little stop-motion animated show on Apple TV+ about a sentient shapes named Square, Circle, and Triangle (although they're three-dimensional so they're really a cube, a sphere, and a pyramid). Triangle is voiced by Scott Adsit from "30 Rock" and Circle is voiced by Gideon Adlon, daughter of veteran voice actor Pamela "Bobby Hill" Adlon. My 7-year-old likes it, we watched every episode in one Saturday.
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