TV Diary
Some people have been quick to say this Hulu series seems like a Knives Out knockoff, and it wouldn't surprise me if its creators were directly inspired by Knives Out -- the main difference is the "world's greatest detective" is Mandy Patinkin with a British accent instead of Daniel Craig with an American accent. I like it, though, I enjoy a good mystery ensemble piece, and it's full of people I enjoy like Rahul Kohli and Jere Burns.
b) "Expats"
I generally dislike snobbery about film being on another level above good television, but sometimes when a feature director does episodic television, you really do feel the difference on a textural level, like woah, this feels like cinema. And I got that immediately when watching "Expats," an Amazon miniseries directed by Lulu Wang of The Farewell fame. Nicole Kidman has done several series over the last few years, but this is the first one since "Big Little Lies" that really feels worthy of her stature. The first episode opens with some heavy foreshadowing but what happens in the second episode was still a big emotional gut punch to me.
c) "Griselda"
Much has been made of the fact that Griselda Blanco was not a glamorously beautiful woman but has been portrayed onscreen by Catherine Zeta-Jones and, now, Sofia Vergara. But it's cool to see Vergara take on a serious role and really thrive, she's got some gravitas that she never needed on things like "Modern Family."
This British series from creator/star Kat Sadler is really impressive, it's not overly similar to "Fleabag" but I think achieves the same kind of balance in having some dark subject matter but remaining very much a dry comedy and not a dramedy like an American version of this show would probably become.
Brad Falchuk co-created most of the shows Ryan Murphy is known for, but for whatever reason isn't remotely as well known as Murphy. And the first series created by Falchuk with Byron Wu instead of his usual producing partner is refreshingly devoid of winky pop culture Ryan Murphy vibes, it's a really fun and entertaining action show about Taiwanese gangsters. With "Warrior" ending, I'm glad there's another newer show with amazing fight choreography.
f) "Echo"
Speaking of fight choreography, the latest Marvel show on Disney+ picks up where "Daredevil" left off with some great fight scenes, plus appearances from Matt Murdock and Kingpin. Like most of these shows, it's not a home run, but it's a good time most of the time.
This Peacock series co-created by Mike Judge is about an NPR host, and at times echoes Judge's previous parodies of earnest lefties like "The Goode Family" or Mr. Van Driessen from "Beavis & Butthead." But it was also co-created by star Zach Woods, who's proven on "Silicon Valley" and "Veep" that he just has an incredible way of deadpanning the most absurd dialogue with utter sincerity. "In The Know" has a "Space Ghost Coast to Coast"-style format where everything is animated except for the celebrity guests in the interview segments, and so far it seems kind of hit-and-miss to me, and the stop-motion animation is kind of hideous.
h) "Ted"
A lot of people seem to enjoy this series, maybe even more than the original 2012 Ted movie. And while I enjoyed that movie more than I thought I would, I dunno, the series doesn't hit the same. I hate to say it's missing Mark Wahlberg, but the actor playing a younger version of him, Max Burkholder from "Parenthood," really just has no comedy chops at all, all his scenes fall flat. I think Alanna Ubach is a comedic genius and force of nature, but she's kind of underused as this character who's so repressed she's almost catatonic.
I like the cast and the premise (a small English town where witches have lived openly for centuries) but the first episodes just kinda breezed past me, didn't grab me at all.
It's been decades since the iconic character Sam Spade has been portrayed in a major film, so it's kind of odd to get a series where Clive Owen plays an older retired Spade in the south of France. It works, though, probably a better idea than trying to adapt The Maltese Falcon again, as much as I love the book.
Percy Jackson is 12 in the first novel, and Logan Lerman was like 18 when he started playing the character in two movies a decade ago. The new Disney+ series rebooting the franchise has 14-15-year old Walker Scobell playing the 12-year-old Percy, so I guess they're closer to the spirit of the books, but it's funny to me that Hollywood can never bring itself to have kids play kids their own age. The show is decent so far, the Jason Mantzoukas and Lin-Manuel Miranda cameos were entertaining.
This Australian series on Netflix is based on a novel and I feel like I don't really know where the story is going and might get interesting, but I really just did not enjoy the first episode at all and will probably not stick with it.
m) "Reacher"
I liked the story and the supporting cast on the first season of "Reacher" more, but the second season has continued to be pretty entertaining and has plenty of Alan Ritchson being gigantic and beating everybody's ass.
n) "Fisk"
This was one of my favorite international acquisitions on Netflix last year, and they recently released the second season that aired in Australia in 2022. No news yet of whether it'll continue beyond that, but I hope it does.
Last year I wrote about how I spent a big chunk of 2023 catching up on the first 11 seasons of "Letterkenny." Shortly after that, it was announced that "Letterkeny" would conclude with season 12, which was up to the same standard as the later seasons of the show, but attempted a little more of a sustained storyline. That didn't really feel like it had much of a payoff, but it was still a consistently weird, funny show right up to the end.
p) "1670"
This Polish series on Netflix is really funny, it's like a modern mockumentary-style sitcom about 17th century noblemen with a sort of "Monty Python" style of historical satire, I love finding shows like this from other parts of the world that have a very familiar kind of comedy that transcends cultures.
Another Polish series on Netflix, a more serious hard-boiled detective story, not bad but haven't gotten very into yet.
For years, my sons and I have been big fans of the Cartoon Network series "Craig of the Creek," and I wanted to know more about why it took place in a fictional town called Herkleton, Maryland. So last year, I got to talk to the creators of "Craig of the Creek" and the spinoff about Craig's little sister Jessica for a Baltimore Banner piece. "Jessica's Big Little World" is aimed at a younger pre-school audience so I couldn't get my kids interested in it, but it's a pretty cute and occasionally very clever, funny show. There are 10 episodes out now, unfortunately Warner Bros. has been canceling Cartoon Network shows left and right and already decided that "Jessica's Big Little World" will be done after the 20 episodes they've produced.
s) "Hilda"
I already wrote about this in my 2023 year-end list, but I was really delighted that this show came back for a third and final season, I thought they might be done after the movie, and the season 3 finale really felt like a perfect conclusion to the story.
It's fun to see Boston rap journalist Dart Adams pop up on TV in this HBO docuseries, but otherwise, a pretty dark story, somehow I never heard about the Charles Stuart case before.
With Paramount+ having hits with "Yellowstone" and all these other neo western shows, I feel like it's opened up a lane for them to do some pretty cool country music programming, including Willie Nelson's 90th birthday concert and this 4-part docuseries. Even having read Nelson's autobiography and devoured much of his enormous catalog, it's exhilarating to see so much great footage I've never seen before here, with lots of great interviews with Nelson and his family and his friends and his band, including his sister Bobbie before she passed in 2022. I particularly liked when they could delve into some great lesser known albums like Yesterday's Wine.
Another 4-part docuseries on Paramount+, but a much lighter one, with the Rush frontman having a hang with other bassists of note (Les Claypool, Robert Trujillo, Melissa Auf Der Maur). There's usually a little jamming, a little talk about what's unique about their instrument, but it's mostly just Geddy Lee making dad jokes and nerding out with his friends, a fun like post-Rush side project.
I've read some things about BTS's history and the context of how they came up in the K-pop world that make them interesting to me, but I really hoped this Disney+ docuseries would humanize the group members or reveal their musical process a little, and it just all feels really dry and corporate and guarded, even when it goes through the music doc "behind the curtain" beats.
The U.S. team won the Women's World Cup in 2015 and 2019, but this Netflix series is about them unsuccessfully defending their title in 2023. So it's kind of, y'know, not a feelgood doc, but it's an interesting time to get a behind-the-scenes look and see how far U.S. women's soccer has come, and what might've went wrong this time around or whether the competition was just a lot tougher.
This Netflix docuseries starts with the very interesting premise of a nutrition study with many pairs of twins, with one twin eating a healthy vegan diet and one twin eating a healthy omnivore diet with meat. It's very educational and illuminating, but I feel like as you go along, the show tips its hand at really wanting to convince the viewer to go vegan, and it feels less an open-ended scientific observation and more something dogmatic. That being said, I don't think going vegan is a bad thing, it's nice to hear about the benefits in detail if I ever did go that route.
Another one of those reality shows where people are kind of encouraged to be their worst selves to win some money, maybe it's better that this show is so explicitly framed that way, but I dunno, just kind of a turn-off for me.
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on Monday, January 29, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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