TV Diary
Thursday, November 30, 2023
a) "The Curse"
Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie are two guys who I consider a little overrated, but I was intrigued by them making a show together that co-stars Emma Stone. It's actually fun to see Fielder act and portray a three dimensional character with whole range of emotions opposite an A-list actress because one of the things I found off-putting about "Nathan For You" and "The Rehearsal" was Fielder playing himself in emotionless monotone, I get that a lot of the comedy came from that but I just found it all very dry to the point of being boring sometimes. "The Curse" has a lot going on, between the satire of reality TV and gentrification to the weird sex/relationship shit, after four episodes I feel like it could either become insufferable or have an amazing ending. I wish Safdie didn't have acting ambitions, though, he's really like Tarantino in all the wrong ways.
The 2016 Netflix series "The OA" felt like a rare product of the peak streaming era when people who make Sundance movies got to make an unapologetically slow, artsy series that didn't feel like anything else on TV. Some people loved "The OA" for its unique eccentricities, but I found it to be, at best, an interesting failure, if not outright laughable. "A Murder At The End Of The World" had a really exciting ad campaign, but then finding out that it was made by "The OA"'s creators gave me pause. I think FX did a pretty good job in reining Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling in to make a more conventional thriller mystery. It still has some unusual rhythms and moves at its own pace, but I care about the characters and the whole sinister scenario, I love seeing Clive Owen in a role like this.
This Apple TV+ series based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel is pretty enjoyable, an unapologetically soapy story about young American women in 1870s London. The Sofia Coppola-esque use of a modern rock soundtrack has diminishing returns, though, I particularly hate that the theme song is an LCD Soundsystem cover.
This Australian sitcom, starring the husband who's never around on "Evil," is pretty cute, about a man and a woman who meet when one of them accidentally runs over a dog, and they stick together to nurse the dog back to health.
e) "Black Cake"
This Hulu miniseries is one of those sprawling stories about multiple generations of a family in different timelines, the cast is great but it's definitely something that I get the sense felt like a more cohesive story on paper, jumping between these different sets of characters in each episode makes it hard for a TV show to really gain momentum.
Another very ambitious story based on a novel that spans decades, telling the story of two gay men from the McCarthyism era of the 1950s to the AIDS crisis in the '80s. Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have to play young men and old men, which is hard to do, but they convey a lot with hair and makeup, better than a lot of shows I've seen attempt something like this. I'm not so much a fan of Chris Bauer's weird prosthetic nose to play Joseph McCarthy, though.
Another show based on a book I haven't read! Shawn Levy has a long track record of goofy comedies like Night At The Museum and the last few Ryan Reynolds vehicles, so I'm pleasantly surprised that he can direct a World War II drama, Hugh Laurie and Mark Ruffalo are really good in this. I can't help but wonder if this would've gotten more attention on almost any network or streamer besides Netflix, though, it just seems lost in the crowd on there.
Bass Reeves is a fascinating historical figure, born into slavery and then becoming one of the first Black deputy U.S. Marshals. That "Lawmen" part of the title does make me worry that the franchise-minded Taylor Sheridan is planning this as the first of a whole cinematic universe of historical dramas. David Oyelowo is a good compelling star but I kind of wish there was more of the great supporting players like Shea Wigham and Donald Sutherland.
This British sitcom is about a family of puritanical Christians preparing for the rapture, which is something that's kind of a familiar part of American culture but it's interesting to see a depiction of it in another country. It's both a sharp satire of religious zealotry and also kind of a traditional family sitcom that humanizes the characters, an interesting balance to strike. The BBC aired six episodes earlier this year, and The CW picked it up to air this fall but then pulled it after the schedule after three episodes and replaced it with "Whose Line" reruns, which is really frustrating, I'd really like to see those other episodes.
Last year there was a series called "Monarch" about a country music dynasty, this one is an Apple TV+ spinoff of Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. I was a little skeptical about turning monster movies into an ongoing series, but the cast is pretty good, so far it works better than I would've expected and the visual effects are strong.
It's funny to see an American procedural franchise do a series in another country, with its own culture and legal system, and it still feels like they just rubber stamped the formula and put it in front of the picturesque Sydney skyline with some Australian accents.
l) "Julia"
So happy to have this great show back for a second season, honestly, it's just made with so much love for Julia Child and the people around her, finding all the humor and drama in her work, marriage, and friendships. Also happy to see Rachel Bloom join one of the best ensemble casts on television right now.
m) "Rap Sh!t"
Another show about entertainment and friendship that I'm really happy to have back for a second season on Max, in some ways it's not that different from "Julia," Issa Rae really did a great job with building these characters and dropping them in the modern music industry, it feels a lot less forced than most other shows about aspiring musicians.
I was also pretty pumped for the second season of "The Gilded Age," although I feel more invested in Carrie Coon's outfits than the storyline itself, and it felt like they pandered to me by starting the season with a montage of hat boxes being opened. Occasionally the stories get interesting, I feel like the ensemble is allowed to really do a lot of subtle acting as these little conflicts play out in polite society, rarely boiling over.
o) "Shoresy"
As I wrote a few weeks ago, I've spent a big chunk of this year watching every episode of "Letterkenny," and now that I'm caught up I've been watching the spinoff. I never really liked the Shoresy scenes in "Letterkenny," which mainly consisted of Jared Keeso facing away from the camera (sometimes naked), making a voluminous stream of profane "your mom" jokes in a high pitched voice, so I did not have high hopes for Shoresy having his own series. But you actually see Shoresy's face in "Shoresy" and see him become a weirdly lovable, well rounded character, it's actually kind of fascinating how Keeso subtly found the vulnerability in the character and made a "Ted Lasso"-type sports comedy where you really root for the team and care about their wins.
p) "Fargo"
I feel like a broken record, I always complain about this show and the way Noah Hawley extrapolated the Coen Bros.' movie into a genre of stories, and then he gets such a great cast for the next season that I feel compelled to watch, and again have mixed feelings about the great performances and hacky storytelling. So far this is an above average season and I love seeing Jon Hamm, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dave Foley, and Richa Moorjani in action, but there's still moments where someone says "ah jeez" in an exaggerated Minnoesota accent during a scene of bloody violence and I just resent this show's existence so much.
q) "Upload"
It's rare these days that a show survives way longer than I expected it to, I enjoyed the first season of "Upload" but I wouldn't have thought I'd be here seeing a third season, with a cliffhanger that sets up a potential fourth season. The weird "Black Mirror"-ish premise just continues to get weirder, there's a little diminishing returns but it's mostly a pretty fun show.
Now that the fourth season of "For All Mankind" is in the 21st century and fast approaching the present day, its whole parallel universe conceit continues to accrue all these weird wrinkles.
I'm glad they've added some more actors I enjoy like Daniel Stern to the cast because so many of my favorite characters have died now, or are buried in weird elderly-person makeup.
I should probably watch Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World at some point, I found it a little offputting at the time, but I feel like I might enjoy it more now. Doing an anime series with the original voice cast is kind of a fun way to continue the story while the actors are getting too old to play the character in live action, I'd probably enjoy this more if I was a fan who read the graphic novels or repeatedly watched the movie, but again, it's growing on me.
t) "Invincible"
The first season of "Invincible" came out two and a half years ago, and for whatever reason when it finally returned this fall Amazon only had the first half of the new season, plus a prequel special, which made some nerds mad. I think it's fine, though, I hope they take their time and keep making a high quality show, I'm good with a few episodes at a time, I was cool with "The Venture Bros." episodes coming out fairly slowly too. This season hasn't totally had me on the edge of my seat like the first season, but I like the way they're making the scope of the story bigger and bigger, I'm curious to see where it's going.
A really fantastic anime show on Netflix, I absolutely love the animation style and the epic story, easily one of the best adult animation shows in recent memory.
v) "My Daemon"
It's funny that Netflix constantly puts out such an enormous volume of content that I can't even bat an eye at them released "My Daemon" (a Japanese animated series) and "My Demon" (a Korean live action series) in the same week. This is a cool show, though, not quite up on the level of "Blue Eye Samurai" but I like the aesthetic of some of these newer computer animated anime shows, it's an appealing mix of different aesthetics.
w) "Young Love"
Matthew A. Cherry's very charming animated short Hair Love won an Oscar a few years ago, and "Young Love" is the spinoff Max series. I have to admit, I didn't watch this show until Matthew A. Cherry praised my No ID interview on twitter, I was like let me go appreciate his work too, and it's good stuff, family-friendly but kind of grounded in the real world. Not a huge fan of Kid Cudi as a voice actor, though.
Definitely the most depressing show of the year, the way this game show version of "Squid Game" seems to miss the point of the original in many ways while making its points in a much bleaker new way.
A James Bond-themed reality competition show, however, is a pretty fun idea, especially with Brian Cox playing the Bond villain-type host/antagonist, although I would've gladly traded this for Cox being the villain in an actual Bond movie.
I'm kind of glad that on the 60th anniversary of JFK's assassination we're still getting stuff like this National Geographic miniseries, because there are still some people who were in Houston that day that are alive to speak about it. And it's interesting to continue to get some more little details, even if we're not any closer to the whole truth, I like the way this was put together, just breaking down everything that happened moment by moment.
