TV Diary
a) "Ahsoka"
I've always been a pretty casual viewer of all things Star Wars and have been indifferent to most of the TV projects outside "The Mandalorian" and "Andor." But so far, "Ahsoka" is moving along briskly and amiably, most of the cast are babes, only some of them in weird alien makeup, and the late Irish actor Ray Stevenson, in one of his final roles, is a pretty good villain.
"Who Is Erin Carter" is a UK show about a British schoolteacher living in Spain under a false identity, trying to start a new life and get away from some kind of dark past, until she stops an armed robbery and ends up on the news, and people from her past find her. All the dialogue is in English so it feels like they didn't need to bother setting the show in Spain, it doesn't seem to have much bearing on the story. But a decent show, some good fight choreography in the action scenes.
c) "Painkiller"
Netflix's "Painkiller" is the second streaming series about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, after Hulu's "Dopesick." They're not as closely about the exact same story as, say, "Candy" and "Love & Death" - the only person who's really a major character in both is Richard Sackler (played by Matthew Broderick in "Painkiller" and Michael Stuhlbarg in "Dopesick"). But it's hard not to compare them each other in your head if you've seen both, and while "Painkiller" has fewer composite characters and more real people in the story, it feels a bit broader and more heavy-handed.
"The Winter King" kind of mixes real British history with Arthurian legend, Eddie Marsan is always a good scenery-chewing bad guy, but I dunno, the whole thing feels very overblown and dramatic and boring to me.
The second season of "Only Murders In The Building" ended with a murder, though it didn't take place in The Arconia. And it feels like during the hiatus they got self-conscious about breaking the 'rule' of the titular podcast, so they had the murder victim come back to life, and then die again in The Arconia, which was kind of stupid, but it's a comedy, who cares. Having Paul Rudd playing an unlikable diva and Meryl Streep playing a nervous, inexperienced actor are fun stunt casting, but the core cast is really still what makes this show work, I really think this is some of the best work of Martin Short's career.
f) "Killing It"
The first season of "Killing It" featured Craig Robinson and Claudia O'Doherty as two people who teamed up to make money killing pythons in the Everglades, and it was a pretty funny little dark comedy. But I really feel like it really took off in the second season, as they move from one bizarre criminal enterprise to another. One of my favorite episodes of television this year is the one where they find out that Pitbull employees half a dozen Pitbull impersonators, and Timothy Simons has a hilarious recurring role as an FBI agent who can't stop mentioning that he's bisexual. Probably the best show Peacock's made outside of "Poker Face," "Bust Down" and "Girls5Eva."
g) "Invasion"
It feels like Apple TV+'s "Invasion" attempts to translate War Of The Worlds-style alien invasion event movies to series television much like "The Walking Dead" that zombie movies could become a long-running series. I love that idea on paper, and "Invasion" has pretty cool-looking visual effects and a big talented cast, but the first season was frustrating, with odd pacing, and the anticlimactic death of one of the more interesting characters in the first episode. The second season is introducing new characters, and intriguing new story possibilities, but I hope they have a plan, I'm not really sold on this show having long term potential yet.
It feels like Apple TV+'s "Invasion" attempts to translate War Of The Worlds-style alien invasion event movies to series television much like "The Walking Dead" that zombie movies could become a long-running series. I love that idea on paper, and "Invasion" has pretty cool-looking visual effects and a big talented cast, but the first season was frustrating, with odd pacing, and the anticlimactic death of one of the more interesting characters in the first episode. The second season is introducing new characters, and intriguing new story possibilities, but I hope they have a plan, I'm not really sold on this show having long term potential yet.
I initially got the vibe that "Winning Time" might turn out to be an anthology series where each season has a different subject, and I was glad to hear that it was in fact an ongoing series about the Lakers. That being said, the show's shortcomings are getting harder to ignore. And it's really only one: the cast is great, the story is interesting, the direction is distinctive, but the dialogue is just lousy. Every character speaks as directly as possibly about whatever the scene is about, nothing rings true or has any sense of patter or period-appropriate flavor to it.
i) "Billions"
I really liked season 7 of "Billions" without Damian Lewis, but I thought the show underestimated how many viewers saw Axe as the main character of the show. And I actually watched the season 7 finale under the impression that it was the series finale and it, well, didn't feel very final, so I was relieved to hear they were coming back for one more season, with Lewis returning. I'm particularly happy that it feels like they're giving Wendy and Wags good stories to go out on, Maggie Siff and Costabile are MVPs of the "Billions" cast who felt a little underused in the last season or two.
I'm mostly aware of Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet comics from the handful that have been spread around the internet as memes, and if you've seen a couple of them you get the idea: blue aliens living everyday lives much like ours, but speaking in stilted, clinical terms like Mr. Spock. Teeth are "mouth stones," parents are "life givers," alcohol is "mild poison," pizza is "dough slices," raccoons are "greyscale finger bandits," salads are "leaf buckets"...it kind of goes on and on like that. There are some really sharp comedy minds on the writing/producing side of things on this Apple TV+ series (Dan Harmon, Demi Adejuyigbe, Beth Stelling) and it occasionally gets a big laugh out of me, but I do wonder if it's going to develop into anything more than a one trick pony.
We don't know what "Rick & Morty" is going to sound like without Justin Roiland voicing the title characters for a while, but we now know how he's being replaced on the other show he co-created. In the first minute or so of season 4 of "Solar Opposites," Roiland's character Korvo gets shot in the neck, his wound is repaired, and suddenly he has the voice of Dan Stevens and speaks with a British accent, and they just move on and accept it. And honestly, it works. It might even be a better show now, Korvo always felt like kind of a stock cranky Roiland character who wasn't as funny as Rick Sanchez, so now it doesn't have that baggage and they're also really leaning into Korvo and Terry being a couple now. Kind of crazy that Thomas Middleditch wasn't the guy who got fired from this show first, though.
l) "Futurama"
I think I've gained a greater appreciation for "Futurama" over the years because of how much my wife loves it. I kinda took the show for granted as a lesser "Simpsons" sibling, but I think the sci-fi angle has let them stay pretty creatively resilient and there's a certain distinct rhythm of "Futurama"'s misdirection jokes and wordplay that I really enjoy. The recent 8th season for Hulu has been strong so far, the first episode was a pretty good satire of modern TV and streaming services and there was a hilarious crypto episode, but it hasn't all been super 'timely' 2023-inspired storylines.
This Japanese show on Hulu is about people who've lived in 'temporary' housing for over a decade after some unspecified disaster, and I kind of like that by not tying it to any real life event they can kind of take the premise to whatever extremes they want, and make it easy to see parallels to things like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or whatever. And the dialogue is really well written.
A really surreal South Korean show about a psychic veterinarian and a detective teaming up to solve cases in a small town. Definitely one of those times when I'm glad Netflix makes a lot of shows in other countries and you get to see something that would never get made on American TV.
o) "Mask Girl"
Another South Korean show that doesn't feel like anything on U.S. television, about a woman who becomes a masked internet personality and then she gets mixed up in this violent crime plot. Not super into it but I respect its originality.
p) "Moving"
"Moving" is a Korean show on Hulu, with a very familiar "Heroes"/"X-Men"-type premise about teenagers with superpowers, seems like a decent show but I've just seen this kind of thing done better before and the special effects aren't very impressive.
In "The Chosen One," a 12-year-old boy in Mexico begins performing miracles and is hailed as a new messiah, and as disinterested in anything this overtly Jesus-y, it's pretty well made and compelling so far.
"The Devil Judge" is this very dystopian South Korean show about this society ruled by three judges, very dark but feels a little too unsubtle to be particularly thought-provoking.
"Zombieverse" is a South Korean show with the kind of brilliant idea of setting a reality competition show in a zombie apocalypse, so people are trying to survive and complete quests while actors playing zombies chase them. I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been a huge hit in America.
t) "Lighthouse"
In my habit of just checking out random foreign shows on Netflix, I stumbled upon "Lighthouse," a Japanese talk show where every episode is a discussion between two show business veterans, Gen Hoshino and Masayasu Wakabayashi. And even though I don't know anything about these guys' careers, I find their conversations pretty interesting, they're witty and thoughtful guys, almost feels more like My Dinner With Andre than an American talk show, and Hoshino composes an original song to perform at the end of each episode inspired by what they discuss.
A Netflix true crime series about the mysterious death of a Spanish TV host's husband. Slightly intrigued by the story but probably not enough to actually finish the series.
I remember one summer when I was 19 I worked as a telemarketer for a couple months, just a total shit job and I sympathize with anyone who finds themselves having to do that for a paycheck. This HBO docuseries is about some telemarketers who realized the company they were working for was some kind of scam and decided to expose it, it's full of a lot of quirky personalities and takes its time to tell the story in this casual, ambling way, which I get the impression some people really loved but I found it a little tedious.
This MTV reality series is kind of formatted like a real life dating app, where three women sort of walk through a gallery of men and pick and choose who they want to date. It's a decent idea with some slick production values but it all feels just gross and like everyone is playing a part for the cameras.
x) "Superfan"
This CBS show starts with an audience full of fans of a particular famous person, and then they pick 3 to be contestants, "The Price Is Right"-style, and they answer trivia and stuff to be named that celebrity's biggest fan. I enjoyed the LL Cool J and Shania Twain episodes, it's fun that they also get the celebrity to perform and honestly, it just feels like the whole thing harkens back to a more wholesome old-fashioned idea of fans who just go to a lot of concerts and collect memorabilia but aren't, like, stans who fight people on social media.
A mech suit anime series on Netflix with a cool rotoscope-style animation style, my son and I watched a few episodes one day, he seemed to dig it.
My 8-year-old has always loved the How To Train Your Dragon movies, but he's really been big on them lately, rewatching all the movies and many seasons of TV spinoffs. We recently stumbled upon this series that's been on Peacock since 2021, which takes place in the modern day with kids discovering that dragons still exist, but my son watched one episode and decided pretty quickly that it didn't have the charm of the movies set in a mythical past with Viking characters.
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