TV Diary
I would say that so far Apple TV+ has a pretty high batting average with high concept sci-fi and horror stuff, comedies, and soapy dramedies, and a lower batting average with serious adult legal dramas or crime dramas. I like "Presumed Innocent" so far, I haven't read the novel or seen the Harrison Ford movie so I don't know where teh story is going, but I'm on the edge of my seat with each episode. I really liked the HBO miniseries "The Night Of" and this features a similar story and similar tone with Bill Camp in a similar supporting role, so it almost feels like a second season of that. I always have mixed feelings about Jake Gyllenhaal as an actor, though, and there are some scenes in this show where Ruth Negga is just giving an incredibly real, visceral performance and Gyllenhaal is just standing there getting totally outclassed. He's well cast here, though, he just has that presence where he's equally plausible as a murderer or just a shitty person who's been wrongfully accused. Also, great casting with Chase Infiniti, who plays their daughter and looks exactly like if Negga and Gyllenhaal had a kid together. Renate Reinsve from The Worst Person In the World plays the murder victim, and she's beautiful so I'm not surprised Hollywood is trying to work her into big productions, but it feels forced that they made her play an American, her accent is really strong in the little bits of dialogue she has in flashbacks.
b) "Clipped"
It sounds like an obvious joke, HBO made a show about the Lakers so then Hulu makes a show about the Clippers. But "Clipped" is dealing with a much more recent story, the 2014 Donald Sterling controversy, so it's less of a stylized period piece, and it feels like they're having fun with the absurdity of the situation while also respecting that it was a moment of racial reckoning for the NBA. There's some haphazard inaccuracies, though, like when someone makes a "black square in Instagram" reference, something people didn't start doing until 2020). Also, does Doc Rivers really try to meditate the same amount of time every day that David Lynch does? Cleopatra Coleman from "The Last Man on Earth" is insanely hot, I'm happy she's got a big substantial role like this, but V. Stiviano is really a unique figure, the "silly rabbit" interview was such a bizarrely funny moment. I can't imagine they're going to pull that off in the show, they already totally failed at making the "Sir, the question was, is this your handwriting?" scene land.
I'm a fan of Leslye Headland's previous work (Sleeping With Other People, Bachelorette, "Russian Doll") and can appreciate the logic of Disney hiring people who usually make dialogue-driven contemporary comedy and drama and not sci-fi or action to make a Star Wars series. I don't know if it's really worked in "The Acolyte," though,
d) "Fantasmas"
"Los Espookys" was such a wonderfully original show, I was bummed that it got canceled, but it seems like Julio Torres is still getting to do a lot of other cool stuff. His new HBO show is a little more surreal, a little less pointedly comedic, but really cool and imaginative.
e) "Queenie"
This Hulu series is based on a novel about a woman of Jamaican descent in London, good cast, interesting character-driven examination of the intersection of those cultures.
A Hulu drama about Karl Lagerfeld's early career in the '70s. I would say that maybe I don't like it because I'm not particularly interested in fashion history, but I thought "The New Look" was really good so maybe it's the execution.
g) "Trying"
This British show on Apple TV+ is really sweet and charming. And I'm kind of glad that after a couple of seasons about a couple trying to have children, they were able to successfully adopt two siblings and it's a completely different show that shows their daily trials and tribulations but their story already essentially has a happy ending. They did a 'time jump' ahead 6 years for this season, which I really disliked when another British show about parenthood, "Breeders," did it last year, but I think it works here. The episode with Jim Broadbent was really good. Also, I don't know if Esther Smith just changed her hair or something but wow, she looks great this season.
h) "Evil"
One of the best shows on TV is wrapping up with its 4th and abbreviated 5th season this summer, and I've enjoyed catching up on the season 3 episodes I hadn't seen yet. They retain this balancing act of never fully confirming whether the supernatural stuff is real or in somebody's head, I kind of hope they keep that up all through the end of the series. Also, I love the recurring use of Laurie Anderson's "Born, Never Asked" in season 3 and 4 episodes.
A Korean show on Netflix that's about an asteroid hurtling toward Earth but it's more about the human scale drama. I think it's not bad but it seems to have gotten pretty negative reviews.
Hijacking airlines seems like something that happened a lot in the '70s that doesn't happen anymore, like I've never heard of the 1973 hijacking that happened in Columbia and the story is absolutely insane.
A Korean show on Netflix about a family with superpowers, but once again, it's not at all about action scenes like it would be if an American show had this premise, it's more of a romance thing. Interesting to see how "genre television" differs in other countries, although maybe if they had a bigger effects budget there'd be more typical superhero stuff.
A Korean show that's a bit more exciting, about a guy who accidentally kills a serial killer, which sets off a whole crazy chain of events.
Another Korean show where a normal person, a college professor, gets pulled into a crazy occult storyline after an uncle dies and leaves her some property that's a burial ground.
An Indian period piece show, I think it takes place in the '40s, really impressive production values, pretty good show.
o) "Anthracite"
An interesting French show, about someone in the current day investigating a death cult from the '90s.
p) "Crooks"
A German miniseries about a safecracker who'se forced to participate in a heist, pretty formulaic but I enjoy a good heist story.
A nice heartwarming Brazilian show about a young girl who's raised by an indigenous family but decides to find her real family.
r) "The Signal"
This German series has a premise that reminds me a lot of Apple TV+'s recent series "Constellation," both are about strange things happening with astronauts after they come back to Earth. I haven't finished either series yet so it's hard to say which is better or whether they're really about the same things, but I like "The Signal" so far.
A live action adaptation of a manga about body snatcher aliens, pretty cool gross visual effects.
t) "Akuma Kun"
An animated adaptation of a manga, about a kid who summons demons to...create a better world where everybody is happy? I don't know, I don't understand this kind of thing but I like how weird it is.
A reality show about wealthy people living in Korea, not all of them Korean, but it feels like they kind of want to tap into the Crazy Rich Asians zeitgeist without using the word "crazy."
I don't know if I should feel disappointed to see Patton Oswalt hosting a game show, but I don't know, I don't think I do, it seems like a fun little side gig, he's good at it. This is one of those shows that makes me feel smart because the questions are so easy and they constantly show you how many people don't know the answer.
I didn't have high expectations for this Paramount+ docuseries exec produced by Eminem and LeBron James about music piracy in the early 2000s. But it ended up being pretty interesting, mainly because they talked to a lot of the people who worked in a North Carolina CD pressing plant who were leaking albums, as well as people who ran early MP3 piracy networks, it was cool to get their perspective and hear about how they did it, whereas the pop stars and label executives have already told their sides of the story many times. Method Man is good at a lot of things, but he's not a good documentary narrator, that wasn't a great choice.
This docuseries was produced ahead of the 30th anniversary of Nicole Brown Simpson's murder, and I feel like it was an overdue attempt to shift the focus to the victim and away from her far more famous murderer, which was one of the many injustices of the media coverage of that entire affair. Of course, O.J. Simpson's own death a couple months ago means that people are still talking way more about him, which is kind of sad.
Apparently this Netflix docuseries was made to teach the history of Nazi Germany to Gen Z, which...I hope it's effective, I guess, I didn't think it was particularly good or worth watching, but I didn't see any major flaws in its approach, which I guess is okay since I'm not the target audience.
My kid found this show on Netflix and watched it constantly for a while, I think its animation style is hideous, but I guess he thinks it's funny.