"Based On A True Story" satirizes the true crime podcast craze with a twist-filled comedy about three people starting a podcast about a killing in their neighborhood that they have inside information on. So obviously, it's been compared to "Only Murders In The Building" a lot and may have a tough time getting out of its shadow. But honestly, I really think "Based On A True Story" is really entertaining and true crime nerds deserve to have multiple shows making fun of them anyway. Tom Bateman is extremely funny and creepy as a serial killer who goes along with the idea to make an anonymous podcast about his killings with the first two people who discover his identity. Peacock releases some seasons of shows all at once and releases weekly episodes for others, and I feel like they totally should've released "Based" weekly, because the plot builds so much momentum with absurd twists and cliffhangers. Unfortunately, the last episode of the season ends with yet another cliffhanger and it's just frustrating to not be able to go right into the next episode and instead just hope they get renewed and can continue this story in a year. 

I've never been terribly impressed by The Weeknd's music or Sam Levinson's other series "Euphoria," so maybe I just set my expectations for "The Idol" so low that the show couldn't help but exceed them. But I was pleasantly surprised that they populated the show with a great supporting ensemble (Hank Azaria, Jane Adams, Dan Levy, Rachel Sennott, etc.) for the parts that are an obnoxious but entertaining show business satire like Levinson's feature Malcom & Marie. No, The Weeknd isn't much of an actor, but he's supposed to be a revolting villainous figure, which I almost feel like people are missing, or willfully pretending not to get, when they complain about how gross he is in the show. I mean some of the more serious erotic thriller moments are pretty cheesy and it's very possible this will go completely off the rails, but so far it's had its moments. 

Tom Holland recently announced that he's taking a year off of acting because "The Crowded Room" was so emotionally draining to make. And I'm sorry to hear that, because as far as I can tell this show was not worth his suffering, it all just feels very slow and drab and the big mystery driving the story forward is not as interesting as the show seems to think it is. I'm at the point now where my heart sinks whenever I see that Akiva Goldsman wrote something, he and another J.J. Abrams lieutenant, Alex Kurtzman, are responsible for so much mediocrity. 

A pretty intriguing dystopian sci-fi Apple TV+ series from "Justified" creator Graham Yost where people live in a giant underground silo and are told it's not safe to go up to the surface but there's something fishy going on. It was a brave choice to center the entire first episode on one set of characters and then bring in the actual protagonist of the show in the subsequent episodes, but it more or less worked. 

I think Bryan Tyree Henry is one of the best actors working today and I was really looking forward to whatever he did next after "Atlanta" ended. I don't think the FX miniseries "Class of '09" makes especially good use of his talent, it kind of feels like he and the other actors are mostly chess pieces being moved around the elaborate story that takes place in three different timelines (2009, 2023, and 2034), but conceptually it's interesting. 

I feel like "American Born Chinese" should've gotten a bit more attention considering that Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, and Stephanie Hsu are all in a series that debuted just a couple months after Everything Everywhere All At Once's huge triumph at the Oscars. It's even a somewhat similar story of someone living a normal modern life who finds out they're part of a big magical epic story far outside their daily reality. Anyway, cool show, definitely one of the best things on Disney+ in recent memory, highly recommend it. 

The premise of this British series feels like it could be compelling if the writing and acting were on point but the first episode didn't pull me in at all, maybe I need to give it a couple more episodes to grow on me. 

Now that Amazon Freevee has a bona fide hit in "Jury Duty" I'm curious to see if it was a fluke or if they end up with more shows people actually watch. "Casa Grande" is pretty good, feels kind of like "Yellowstone" if it was about immigrant workers and the wealthy families who employ them in southern California, with a mix of English and Spanish dialogue. 

I liked "The Other Two" from day one but it feels like by the third season it's fully grown into one of the funniest shows on TV, they've really found their rhythm. Last week's episode with the fake Applebee's, Ann Dowd, and Shuli being Q was just a tour de force of absurd ideas. Getting new seasons of "Party Down" and "The Other Two" back to back really makes 2023 feel like the best time to be a Ken Marino fan. 

It's kind of funny how many people seem to watch an autobiographical show created by Mindy Kaling just to complain on Twitter about the storylines on Kaling's shows and how they resemble her life. But I like this show, I haven't finished the last season but I'm pathetically excited for a Netflix show to get all the way to four seasons in the current bleak streaming climate. 

This is still kind of a shaky shadow of "How I Met Your Mother," but it's has its occasional moments of inspired writing, and it's got me in an absolute chokehold because Francia Raisa seems to get better-looking with every episode. 

The worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant after a tsunami in 2011, is I suppose worthy of a miniseries like HBO's Emmy-winning "Chernobyl." But Netflix's "The Days" is a little more dry and strictly fact-based and doesn't compel you as much with the human drama of the situation. 

This is probably the best series from India that I've seen on Netflix over the last few years, about a crime reporter accused (framed?) of another reporter's murder. 

I found this Turkish series on Netflix pretty hard to watch because of Olgun Simsek's painfully bad performance as an autistic character, one of those horrifyingly dated over-the-top depictions that would've drawn a ton of bad publicity on an American show. 

A much better Turkish series about a mother and daughter trying to escape their past. 

A serious drama about sumo wrestlers is such a good idea, definitely recommend this one. 

Sometimes Netflix shouldn't slap English titles on its foreign language shows, because in Spain this is called "El Silencio" and that's a much better title than "Muted." It's about a guy who was convicted of murdering his parents as a teenager but hasn't spoken a word since it happens, feels very lurid and gimmicky. 

This French series about what women went through during World War I is pretty good, I feel like that's a fresh perspective to see that era through. 

I'm so overly aware of the cliches and distortions of music biopics that it's easier to watch something like this, a Netflix series dramatizing the life of Argentinian rock star Fito Paez, because I don't know anything about the subject, so I don't know how accurate it is or where the story is going. Pretty enjoyable series, and I like the music, I just wonder if if a fan of Paez would be nitpicky about it like I am about biopics about my favorite artists. 

One of the better high school shows I've seen lately, that takes place in Colombia in the 1970s, feels like other countries aren't compelled to make all shows about teenagers sitcommy like in America. 

One of those shows where normal law abiding citizens get pulled into a big criminal plot with a drug lord, pretty good but nothing too original. 

This miniseries is about Natalie Portman and a few other celebrities co-founding a pro women's soccer team. And in the very specific niche of docuseries about famous actors owning a soccer team, this isn't nearly as funny as "Welcome To Wrexham," but it's an interesting story, it's cool to see how they've identified this opportunity to make women's soccer bigger than men's soccer in the U.S. and are really going for it. 

I really don't trust this "finance expert" guy who made this Netflix self-help show, but then I feel like all of this advice is for people who make more money than me so I'm not inclined to listen. 

I like Arnold Schwarzenegger as a screen presence and have enjoyed a lot of his movies. But then I put this docuseries on and just kept remembering he's a Republican politician who fathered a child with one of his employees and all that shit, so I stopped watching it pretty quickly, the less I know about him the better. 

I didn't have Paramount+ yet two years ago when they released this Dave Grohl docuseries, based on the book he wrote with his mother Virginia. But I wanted to see it at the time, and Virginia Grohl passed away last year, so I finally got around to catching up on it, and it's pretty good. The Pharrell episode is easily the best, but even the episode about the singer from Imagine Dragons was interesting, just learning about his family and having such an atypical rock star background. 

Gremlins is one of the first movies I have memories of seeing as a kid, but I don't have any particular attachment to the franchise and my kids have never seen the movies. We've all enjoyed the Max animated series, though, good way to revive this IP (can't really imagine a live action Gremlins movie working today), and the animation looks great.