TV Diary
a) "Disclaimer"
It's kind of become a running joke that Apple TV+ has all these shows with Oscar caliber actors and directors that the average person has never heard of, and the latest to add to that pile is Alfonso Cuaron's "Disclaimer" starring Cate Blanchett. Thematically, it kinda feels like Blanchett is going back to a "a respected public figure worries about being canceled when a shameful chapter of their past is brought to light" project pretty soon after Tar. But Cuaron has a strong visual sensibility as always, even just the camera movements are interesting to watch, and the story is unraveling in a slow but intriguing way. Also, I'm happy to see Kevin Kline in a substantial role for the first time in a while.
This new HBO series produced by Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes isn't entirely just "Veep" on the set of a Marvel movie, but that's definitely some of the appeal. There are so many people so perfectly cast in this, Daniel Bruhl as the pretentious director, Himesh Patel as the put-upon AD who keeps everything running, Billy Magnussen as the insecure actor playing the hero, Richard E. Grant as the obnoxious theater-trained actor playing the villain, Aya Cash as the anxious producer, Darren Goldstein as the intimidating studio rep. Right off the bat, you recognize the fraught power dynamics between all these people and the comedy just flows from that.
I think I've said here before that the romantic comedy genre is traditionally contained to feature films, but over recent years there have been more and more attempts to transfer it to series. When it has worked, it was usually anthology/miniseries situations like "Love Life" or "Modern Love," where it's still a self-contained story. But Netflix's "Nobody Wants This" was such an instant hit that it's already been renewed for a second season, so I guess we'll see how well they can sustain it. I really liked it, though, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have real chemistry, and they allowed Bell to be kind of likeably mean and flawed like she was in "The Good Place," which I think works well for "Nobody Wants This," gives it a little bit of a charge. And they don't mess around with taking forever for the main characters to meet or get together, or gratuitously split them up and reunite them, it's most pretty plausible hurdles that they work through.
I like that it seems to be part of the whole deal of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" becoming a historically long-running sitcom that the actors all get a long leash to do other stuff and star in other series. Kaitlin Olson plays a cleaning lady at a police department who turns out to be so brilliant and insightful that she gets hired to help the detectives solves crimes, which is a fun, slightly cheesy premise adapted from a French series that feels, at times, like Good Will Hunting with cops or "House, M.D." with cops. This could so easily be total network TV sludge, but it's got a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera making it pretty enjoyable. Rob Thomas ("Party Down," "Veronica Mars") was the showrunner at first, but exited after a few episodes, so I just hope the show keeps up this level of quality after that change.
Ryan Murphy has had a lot of shows on TV at once for many years now, but it feels like we're currently at peak Ryan Murphy with "Grotesquerie" and "Monsters" and "American Sports Story" and "American Horror Stories" and "9-1-1" and "9-1-1: Lone Star" and "Doctor Odyssey" all starting seasons in the space of a few weeks. "Grotesquerie" feels vaguely promising so far, a horror story that's tonally not quite like "American Horror Story," but I'm not entirely hooked yet. Also seeing Jason Kelce in a stupid commercial while watching the show where Travis Kelce makes his acting debut really underlines how thirsty those guys are to break into show business.
Ryan Murphy's other new show on ABC feels like such anonymous network TV filler that I didn't even realize that Murphy was involved until after I watched the first episode. The lovely Phillipa Soo deserves better than this. Am I wrong or is Joshua Jackson not a good actor at all? I feel like he's just reciting lines from the script every time I see him, there's no performance or presence happening there, he's just a guy who lucked into a career saying words on camera. And it becomes more glaring if you actually put him in a lead role.
Apparently NASA's first space station, Skylab, crashed in Australia in 1979, and "Last Days of the Space Age" is an Australian show that's kind of a character-driven drama set against the backdrop of that particular moment in history. I've only watched one episode but it seems pretty good so far.
h) "Penelope"
Mark Duplass's latest series is about a 16-year-old girl who leaves home and tries to live in the wilderness. Strange concept for a show, but the strength of the storytelling and Megan Stott's performance makes it compelling, she was good in "Little Fires Everywhere" but now I'm really convinced she has a great career ahead of her.
This dippy Fox show is about lifeguards in red swimsuits, so it feels almost like someone was trying to reboot "Baywatch" but couldn't afford the rights to the name and just gave it the first stupid name that came to mind.
A pretty entertaining adaptation of a British mystery novel. I'm annoyed that PBS doesn't leave episodes on demand very long, I already missed some episodes and couldn't keep up with the show, but what I saw was good.
I thought the first season of "The Old Man" was fantastic front to back, but the second season is off to a slow start, just didn't have the same dynamic now with Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow together on the same team and Amy Brenneman's character out of the picture for a few episodes. I really like the cast and the overall tone of the thing, though, it's damn good TV.
The latest crap Fox is putting on Sunday nights next to zombie "Simpsons" and zombie "Family Guy" is this overly familiar animated sitcom about suburban dads loafing around, but with the timely hook that they were giving universal basic income after they lost their factory jobs. I think UBI is still a relatively unknown or misunderstood concept in the American mainstream so I kind of resent this show for even existing, I don't know if they're trying to send a message or mock it or just use it as a zeitgeist-y hook for the show, but it's just so boring and dumb, I'm almost disappointed in Fred Armisen for being involved in it.
I'm kinda bummed that my kid doesn't particularly want to watch Lego Star Wars anything, I enjoy this goofy-looking stuff.
Zack Snyder's work is so caught up in adapting graphic novels and doing CGI-heavy live action stuff with an over-the-top cartoon or anime sensibility that it's funny to think it took him this long to actually do a fully animated project. And "Twilight Of The Gods" is pretty good, I like the style of animation and his sensibility translates pretty well to this format.
My wife loves "Vox Machina" and the Critical Role podcast but we've only watched one of the new episode so far, neither of us really remembers what happened in the last season so we might go back and do a rewatch.
p) "La Maison"
I started watching this at the same time that I was catching up on "The New Look," so it was kind of funny to be going back and forth between two Apple TV+ shows about the fashion industry in Paris, one with English dialogue and one with French dialogue. "La Maison" has a good cast but they kick the story off with the head of a major fashion house going viral for a racist rant and it's just hitting these 'cancel culture' buttons that are getting pretty stale for TV drama.
Apparently indigenous Oaxacan culture has had a 'third gender' for a long time and this new Mexican show on Netflix explores that in a modern storyline with a trans protagonist, pretty interesting to get that as the backdrop of a 'two childhood friends bonded by trauma reconnect' plot.
A soapy Italian show on Netflix about an older woman who takes a young lover. Monica Guerritore does a lot of nude scenes at the age of 66, and respectfully, good on her.
Apparently Vince McMahon tapes all his interviews for this Netflix docuseries before a lot of the really bad allegations about him surfaced, and he walked away from the project and tried to prevent it from being released. So the producers of the series really had an opportunity to just expose him with his own words, and to some extent they did. But it almost feels like they already had their 6-hour celebration of WWE wrestling and all these other people and storylines and didn't really take the bad stuff as seriously as they should've by getting caught up in the show business of it all.
Fat Joe's new Starz interview series feels kind of slapdash - the guests in the first 2 episodes, Method Man and Omari Hardwick, are both actors from 50 Cent's Starz shows. But Fat Joe is personable and always seems to have a genuine interest in who he's talking to, it's not bad. He does an intro at the top of every episode and concludes by saying the words "Fat Joe talks," followed by a theme song where he raps the words "Fat Joe talks!"
A Hulu docuseries about teenagers and social media, I like some of the slice of life stories, I don't know if they're really building to any particular message or thesis but it's interesting. Also I now have a son in high school so I'm really starting to see this stuff more as a parent than from my perspective of remembering being a teenager, which is weird.
I love noodles, man. Pasta, Asian noodle dishes, everything, what an excellent food, this Netflix series was good background noise for an afternoon or two.
w) "Starting 5"
This Netflix docuseries followed around LeBron and Anthony Edwards and a few other big stars during NBA's 2023-24 season, which is a great idea, I hope they do this every season. I especially like the stuff of just these guys chilling at home with their families, and getting that in the context of their careers and the season.
This Amazon Prime docuseries is also cool in a similar way because they got to capture Angel Reese during her last year as a college player, along with some other big college athletes, in an examination of the change of the NCAA policies and athletes being able to profit off of their name and likeness.
As someone who doesn't follow sports at all but still has different degrees of passive interest in various sports, hockey is one I really love, I went to one NHL game in the '90s and if I had to pick one pro sport to see in person it would probably hockey or soccer. So I like this show, just getting a better sense of the personalities in the league and the dynamics of the teams.
A recent PBS miniseries hosted by John Leguizamo, I love that he's transitioned from really wild over-the-top comedy to a wide range of screen work and now stuff like this where he really takes his role as a representative of his culture seriously.
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