TV Diary
"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" shares a title and, loosely, a premise with the 2005 film, but I appreciate how different it is -- even the basic facts of the story are flipped around a lot (it's two strangers paired up to pose as spouses on a spy agency assignment, rather than two spies who got married). A lot of people moronically whined that Donald Glover and Maya Erskine aren't as sexy and Brad and Angelina, but it's a really great series, worth just dropping your expectations and seeing where it takes you. Glover's performance in particular is possibly a career best for him, for me it sort of confirms that he was holding back and playing a nondescript everyman in "Atlanta" to let the other cast members and the writing/direction shine more, Erskine is fantastic too, every episode takes the concept in a dramatically different direction, building up to an amazing finale.
For a long time, people have kind of given Vince Staples the backhanded compliment that he's a lot funnier and more personable in interviews than in his music, and have nudged him towards more film and TV work. For me personally, I have no complaints about Vince's music (he made my #1 album of 2022), but I was curious to see if him create in another medium. "The Vince Staples Show" is pretty good, but I have to admit I found it a little underwhelming -- it's kind of exactly what you'd probably expect it to be, with stock storylines where clueless white cops or bank employees ruin his day or embarrassing well-meaning liberals try to be friends with him. A few times those situations build to a big laugh here and there, but I like his music way more than this show, so I'm not bothered that this is only 5 episodes and billed as a "limited series." He'd probably refine and improve if he did a 2nd season, but I'm more interested in his next album.
c) "Champion"
This British show on Netflix is the more conventional kind of scripted TV show about rap, about two brothers who are rival rappers, almost like a London-based "Empire." Not bad but nothing special.
"The Woman In The Wall" originally aired last year on BBC One, but it's kind of nice to see Ruth Wilson star in a series on Showtime again, after she abruptly left "The Affair" before its last season and alleged some pretty shitty treatment by the show's producers. "The Woman In The Wall" is a pretty dark little story, but I'm intrigued by what I've watched so far.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have created something of a WWII cinematic universe with Saving Private Ryan, "Band of Brothers," "The Pacific," and now "Masters of the Air." Like its predecessors, "Masters" has great production values and an impressive cast (including Barry Keoghan and Austin Butler), but it's hard to say if it's on the same level yet, feel like I need to see how these characters' story arcs play out.
Another well made Apple TV+ series that I haven't really felt too engaged with yet, although there were a couple of really harrowing scenes that will stick with me.
g) "One Day"
"One Day" is based on the same novel as the 2011 Jim Sturgess/Anne Hathaway movie of the same name. I liked the movie, and I've enjoyed the series so far, but knowing how heartbreaking the ending it, I'm not sure if I'll watch it all the way through.
I reviewed the first season of "Life & Beth" two years ago and enjoyed it, but it didn't necessarily feel like a show that would return for a second season. Nice show, but I wish the high school flashbacks weren't such a frequent recurring feature, I don't think it really adds that much to the storytelling. The second episode has a 10-second cameo by Jimmy Buffett that must have been filmed in the final months of his life, that's pretty fun to see.
While it's true that the first season of "True Detective" was far better and far more popular than the next two seasons, I think Nic Pizzolatto deserves credit for making the thing and envisioning it as an anthology series. The fourth season with new showrunner Issa Lopez, "Night Country," is the first without any direct involvement from Pizzolatto, and it's also the first that features a number of references to a previous season. It was a decent season, but I rolled my eyes at the callbacks, particularly in last night's finale, when a character actually says a famous line from season one like it's a catchphrase. It felt like the "Fargo" series, where I'd respect it more if the creator presented its stories as its own original series instead of piggybacking on the IP of somebody they never met, makes the whole thing feel cheap.
7 years after the first season about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Ryan Murphy's anthology series about feuds among the rich and famous has finally returned for a second season. And I kind of can't tell if Murphy is intentionally or unintentionally interrogating his own fascination with this subject in "Capote Vs The Swans." The second episode, in which famous socialites ("the swans") discuss in detail how Truman Capote's writing about them feels so lurid as to be hateful and a kind of gay male misogyny, is this strange moment where I'm like, is Murphy talking about himself here? Is he putting Capote in an especially unflattering light so that we know Murphy isn't as bad as him? That said, it's a really interesting, high quality series. Most of the episodes are directed by Gus Van Sant, and it feels like some clever meta casting that all the swans are played by Hollywood it girls of the '80s, '90s and 2000s (Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Chloe Sevigny, Callista Flockhart, Diane Lane, Naomi Watts). Surprisingly, it's Flockhart who really stands out here and gives a charismatic, memorable performance, over a decade after her last substantial role.
An Indonesian series on Netflix, kind of an epic intergenerational story jumping between different time periods, seems good but I haven't finished it yet.
A Netflix series about an estranged father and daughter reconnecting in a surfing down in Mexico, pretty good show and Nerea Mazo is beautiful.
This Amazon Prime animated series had a built-in cult following from the pilot episode that premiered on the creator's YouTube channel in 2019. "Hazbin Hotel" takes place in Hell and has a very wacky, garish aesthetic, and is full of curse words and original songs, I dunno if it's my kind of show but it's enjoyable, great voice cast including Keith David and Stephanie Beatriz.
Martha Kelly is an actress/comedian who's not really very famous, but if you've seen one of her memorable roles in shows like "Euphoria" or "Baskets," you'd probably recognize her face and voice in "Carol & The End of the World" immediate even though it's an animated show. "Carol" is about one woman's life as people prepare for a planet to hit Earth and probably kill everybody, it's a very dry existential comedy, not necessarily my thing but I'm sure some people would love it.
A good new Netflix series, love seeing this wave of series like "Warrior" and "The Brothers Sun" that have crazy impressive marial arts movie-style fight choreography but have prestige TV-level writing and acting.
I love Run-DMC and I of course know their story well (I even interviewed DMC once!). But this 3-part Peacock docuseries is really fun and reveals some stories I've never heard before about particular records and eras of the group, and I felt like they did justice to telling Jam Master Jay's story without him here. That said, I braced myself for disappointment with how they'd deal with the elephant in the room of Russell Simmons, and of course he gets to just sit on a couch and talk about the good old days, and they never acknowledge his horrifying history of rape and assault.
In America, Robbie Williams is slightly famous for being super famous in the UK, so it's interesting to watch this Netflix docuseries about his wildly complicated superstar career without having really experienced it firsthand outside of hearing songs here and there. Seems like he had a pretty crazy ride for a while there and is pretty exhausted by it all now.
I've been a fan of Taylor Tomlinson's standup since the first time she appeared on "Conan" -- my wife and I thought about seeing her in Baltimore last year, but then we looked at the ticket prices and were like "oh, that's a lot...good for her, though." So I was excited when Stephen Colbert announced last year that Tomlinson had been selected to take over James Corden's post-"Late Show" timeslot on CBS, making her the only current woman host in late night. It was a little of a letdown, though, to learn that her show would be a reboot of "@midnight" (retitled since it now airs at 12:30), the game show with comedians hosted by Chris Hardwick on Comedy Central a decade ago. It was and is a mildly entertaining show, and Tomlinson is a good quick-witted host, but I hope this is just a stepping stone to her getting more opportunities outside standup, I think she's definitely capable of more.
I was introduced to this show when Amazon Prime streamed the Australian version a few years ago, and I think I enjoyed the Irish version even more. It's a reality competition where a bunch of comedians spend a few hours in a house together, and whoever goes the longest without laughing wins. So it's fun to watch everybody work through the psychological challenge of trying to make other people laugh without themselves breaking. I generally adore women with Irish accents so I went into this show in love with Aisling Bea and now also have crushes on Catherine Bohart and Deirdre O'Kane. But it's really just fun to watch how everybody navigates the challenge and how even the people who aren't silly prop comics will kind of go to greater lengths to entertain each other in this environment.
The concept of taking a bunch of the most hated and controversial people from reality shows and putting them all in one show is kind of brilliant, and I like that the show doesn't take itself seriously at all, Joel McHale was a good choice to host. That being said, it's kind of sad to see McHale back on E! hosting the kind of dumbass reality show he used to mock clips of on "The Soup." I miss "The Soup."
This is Netflix's first attempt at a live cooking show (although I invariably watch it a few days later), and it's pretty enjoyable. David Chang just hangs out with a couple celebrity guests, making conversation while he prepares their food. The episodes with comedians (John Mulaney and Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer and Iliza Schlesinger) are invariably more fun than the others, I particularly liked Mulaney and Kroll getting off on a tangent about one of my pet topics, how In-N-Out's fries kind of suck.
David Chang must be in really high demand right now, because he basically launched two similar shows for Netflix and Hulu in the same week. The Hulu one features Chang, Chrissy Teigen, and Joel Kim Booster (who I guess it not famous enough to be in the title of the show) having dinner with other celebrities, it's more tightly edited and formatted than "Dinner Time," which makes it feel less like a fun hang.
Every time people pined for Jon Stewart to host "The Daily Show" again, I'd swear it would never happen simply because he seemed totally burned out by over a decade of four shows a week, getting nothing on the air during a 4-year HBO development deal and then making Apple TV+'s short-lived "The Problem with Jon Stewart," which felt more like a behind-the-scenes podcast of a topical late night show than the actual show. So I was more surprised than anybody when it was announced that Comedy Central would bring Stewart back to host "The Daily Show" on Monday nights this year, I guess I underestimated how directionless the show is now and that they'd be willing to make "The Daily Show" a weekly gig for Stewart. And it kind of felt like he needed to put the suit and tie on and get back into the "TDS" format to deliver what people want, and he really did deliver, at least that first night. I feel like a sad nostalgic millennial for how much I enjoyed it, but if we can do that every week for the rest of 2024, I think it could genuinely be good for the world, he really has a gift for this stuff when he's at his best.
A pretty grisly Netflix true crime docuseries about a Virginia couple who were murdered in 1985, possibly by their daughter or his boyfriend. I can't believe I never heard about this, I was a little kid at the time but I lived in Virginia in 1985.
Another Netflix true crime series, although a less scandalous one, about the onetime world's wealthiest woman, basically in an intricate tax evasion scheme, found it kind of trivial and boring.
Another doc about people who were in a cult, looking back at what fools they were. I feel like this is evergreen content that there will always been an audience for, but I'm weary of it.
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on Monday, February 19, 2024 at 1:07 PM.
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