TV Diary
I'm always happy when American streamers and networks pick up Canadian comedies, even if it's not a gem on the level of "Letterkenny" or "Workin' Moms" the stuff that finds its way down here is usually pretty good. Anna Lambe leads a mostly indigenous cast, with the great Mary Lynn Rajskub as the token White character, in a pretty charming Arctic twist on a familiar sort of sitcom about small town life.
Three years ago, there was a cute little ad, 'everyone but Jon Hamm,' that emphasized that so many actors had Apple TV+ projects that Hamm was sitting at home feeling left out. Since then, he's had an entertaining arc on "The Morning Show" and now his own starring vehicle. "Your Friends and Neighbors" almost feels like Showtimecore in its enthusiastic embrace of all these cable dramedy tropes of shows about once affluent suburbanites who are forced into a desperate but whimsically creative life of crime. But the dialogue is snappy and the cast doesn't feel squandered by the material, which puts it ahead of most of the Showtime series it reminds me of.
c) "MobLand"
"MobLand" was originally developed to be a prequel spinoff of "Ray Donovan," one of those quirky Showtime series I have very little affection for, but it ultimately got retooled into an original show, the kind of jaunty British crime story that exec producer and occasional director Guy Ritchie has made his bread and butter. Pierce Brosnan is having a great time playing against a mean bastard in this, it's probably worth watching just for him.
d) "Happy Face"
Annaleigh Ashford had a whole Broadway career before I became a fan when she was on "Masters of Sex," but I've still really enjoyed watching her work her way up to leading a series. In "Happy Face," she plays a woman whose father is a convicted serial killer, played by Dennis Quaid. Quaid has played wholesome likeable leading men and mentors for decades and I guess I applaud him playing against type, but I'm really unimpressed by his performance so far.
"Good American Family," like "Happy Face," is based on an interesting true story, and has started out a little slow but I think that's good, it makes me curious to watch things escalate.
"The Righteous Gemstones" is by far my favorite thing Danny McBride has done, and I'm glad he's sending it off with a 4th season, I feel like that's a good number where you're probably not left wishing for much more and there was no time for a decline. The season premiere being basically a prequel film starring Bradley Cooper was more fun conceptually than in execution, but the episodes since then have been great, Editor Patterson needs an Emmy already.
"Black Mirror" has only made 30-something episodes over the last 14 years but it really feels like we've reached the limits of Charlie Brooker's imagination and there have been so many variations on a handful of themes. I'll probably keep watching this season to see if there's a standout like "Joan is Awful" from the last season, but I haven't been impressed so far.
h) "Lazarus"
Loved the first episode of this, most exciting thing I've seen on Adult Swim in a minute, good premise. I also enjoyed hearing "Lazarus" by the Boo Radleys over the credits of the first episode, didn't expect that.
i) "Subteran"
A Romanian drama on Netflix about a young mother on the run from the gang that killed her boyfriend, wasn't particularly interested in it.
"Public Disorder" has kind of an original idea, looking at the inner lives of an Italian riot squad the same way traditional cop dramas often do, but this would probably be considered an even worse type of copaganda than the usual fare.
Kind of an odd, quirky Turkish show where love is treated as a disease at the Love Hospital, I like it.
This Japanese show about a guy who manages the wealth of the super rich makes it seem like a really sordid line of work with some soapy storylines, not really my kind of thing but not bad.
m) "Shafted"
This French series about four middle-aged guys reminds me a little of the great American show "Men of a Certain Age," but is also a little more overtly a satire of toxic masculinity.
The title of this South Korean show had me expecting a serious medical drama, but it's a charming comedy in the vein of "MASH" or perhaps more accurately "Scrubs."
This is a live action adaptation of a manga, I guess that's probably not uncommon on Japanese TV but I dunno if I'd seen one before.
This very intense show is about a Mexican human rights lawyer who gets caught up in a prison riot and poses as an inmate to survive.
I've never been huge into the 'Nordic noir' thing but I like this show about a Swedish detective who goes to a ski resort and gets involved in the mystery of a missing girl.
r) "Cassandra"
This German show takes place in the present day, but in a world where there have been robot servants since the 1970s, and a family moves onto a house with an older model robot that soon becomes controlling and sinister, excellent performance from Lavinia Wilson as the robot.
s) "Melo Movie"
A little disappointed that this was a Korean comedy series and not a documentary feature about Carmelo Anthony, but it's a cute show.
Didn't watch every episode of this docuseries but I thought it was interesting to focus on the British perspective of WWII through the prism of Churchill's leadership, I learned a little.
I've never watched the movie Black Hawk Down and probably never will, getting a straightforward account of the events in the docuseries feels like enough for me.
This Discovery series is about going into cluttered American homes, searching through all the heirlooms and junk and collectibles that people just can't let go of, and finding the stuff that's actually got some monetary value, which is a pretty good idea, a whole lot of families could use a visit from these guys.
It's been 16 years since Nadya Suleman became an overnight celebrity for giving birth to octuplets. And I guess I can applaud her restraint in waiting this long to do a reality show, now that her kids are teenagers and can actively consent to being on TV, but to me it's just another reality show about pretty boring people who have one interesting thing about them to justify following them around with cameras.
A 10-hour Celtics docuseries feels like what Bill Simmons has been building to with everything else he's ever done with HBO, but I feel like it's hard to make the Celtics as interesting as the Lakers even if they're an NBA dynasty on the same level.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for watching Letterman growing up, and then I remember that Dave has a Netflix show that I just hadn't kept up with since the first season a whole 7 years ago. So I've been catching up on a lot of episodes as well as some of the recent ones like the Caitlin Clark episode, which is fun since she plays in Indiana and he's from there and they go duckpin bowling, I never realized Indiana is part of duckpin country. Dave may have been the GOAT of the 10-minute late night interview, but he hasn't adapted to podcasty long-form interviews as well as Conan, there's a pretty big variation in the quality of the episodes depending on whether he's genuinely knowledgeable or curious about the guest or their profession.
After John Mulaney's 6 episode late night tryout "Everybody's In LA" last year, Netflix has brought him back to do it as a weekly show with a slightly different title. And while I've never been a huge Mulaney fan, the show has really grown on me, I love Richard Kind as a sidekick, the Wang Chung theme song, the very Letterman-ish bits like "know your H." Mulaney is also my age so he's really up my alley with music bookings like the episode that opens with solo performances by Kim Gordon and Kim Deal and ends with the Kims singing Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl" together live for the first time ever.