TV Diary
a) "The Guest"
Two different shows called "The Guest" have debuted in the last few weeks. One is a Netflix series from Spain, but this is the other one, a Welsh series about a wealthy middle-aged woman (Eve Myles) who hires a struggling young woman as her house cleaner (Gabrielle Creevy). Even with a very ominous score and moody lighting from the very beginning, it's easy to get caught up in the friendship between the two characters and a woman who's living in poverty suddenly having a lot of money thrown at her, but things start to escalate pretty quickly to a dark place in the first episode and I'm curious to see where it goes from there.
b) "Boots"
This Netflix series is based on the memoir of a guy who enlisted in the marines as a closeted gay teenager in the '90s, it manages a pretty good balance of being sitcommy but still feeling like there's a firm foot in reality and someone's actual experiences. Obviously Vera Farmiga's always been beautiful but she's really still just so striking in her fifties, was surprised to see her in a show like this but I'm not complaining.
I am generally pro-Glen Powell and a big reason for that is Hit Man, a very entertaining movie he co-wrote that allowed him to wear lots of wigs and makeup and take on different voices and identities. So "Chad Powers," a series where he plays a disgraced football player who assumes a new identity with a wig and prosthetics to be able to play on a college team. Unfortunately, the whole Chad Powers persona and voice is just a little over-the-top and broad, I feel like it'd be such a stronger show if it wasn't such an irritating performance. It's not bad otherwise, though, a strong supporting cast including Perry Mattfeld from the great "In the Dark" and Steve Zahn.
Michael Chernus is kind of a journeyman character actor who went to Julliard and has done a lot of stage work, and is probably best known for a very funny supporting role on "Severance." And it's really something to see him play John Wayne Gacy, he's physically perfect for the part and brings this innate goofy folksy quality from his more comedic roles that makes who he's playing even more unsettling and menacing. In 2021, Peacock made a docuseries called "John Wayne Gacy: Devil In Disguise," and then they basically flipped the title and subtitle around for this, which seems kind of annoying and lazy to me.
This is the third season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series about infamous killers, and the more true crime Murphy does, the less he seems equipped to tell true stories about serious life-and-death situations. He's just very unserious, and seems too interested in tying in the movies that were inspired by Ed Gein's murders, Pyscho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, including Tom Hollander's laughably bad depiction of Alfred Hitchcock. I generally like Charlie Hunnam, I thought he was stoic in the right way on "Sons of Anarchy," and I don't know how close his portrayal of Ed Gein is to reality, but it just feels like he's too over-the-top, like he's playing Lennie from Of Mice and Men.
I tapped out from the original "9-1-1" a few seasons ago, but I see that it's now sillier than ever and sent Angela Bassett into outer space. So I had to check out the latest spinoff just to see a tornado at a Kane Brown concert. See, this is the kind of silly bullshit I'm fine with Ryan Murphy making.
The CW seems to be barely a functional network these days and most of its scripted programming is imported shows produced by Canadian networks. The latest example is a Canadian "Law & Order" spinoff that I guess NBC didn't want, although honestly I think it's pretty much up to the same standard of acting and production values of the other "Law & Order" shows.
A little surprised that FX renewed this show after Brian Jordan Alvarez's allegations. I have mixed feelings about continuing to watch and enjoy it, but the rest of the cast is so good, Sean Patton and Savanna Gann in particular are so funny. And it's the only show on TV right now that actually talks about things happening in America under the second Trump administration (the end of affirmative action in college admissions, the trans ban in the military, etc.). I was slightly offended by the episode that makes fun of a character who, like me, considers Looper to be a really important movie.
"The Diplomat" was created by a "West Wing" producer and on paper the third season sounds like it could be even more of an idealized liberal fantasy, with Allison Janney as POTUS and Bradley Whitford as First Gentlemen. But "The Diplomat" is a pretty dark and smart show about international intrigue and Janney is anything but an idealized president, and I really enjoy seeing how this story keeps getting more tense and complex with moments of disarming wit and character moments.
j) "Gen V"
One of the stars of the first season of "Gen V," Chance Perdomo, died in a motorcycle crash between seasons, and the show made I think the right decision to have his character also die and put the cast and crew's real grief into the fictional story. And Hamish Linklater is a really worthwhile addition to the cast, I'm glad to see his career really soaring.
Apple TV (ahhh it feels so good to type that without the stupid plus sign!) canceled this series after one season last year, but somehow they had one additional episode leftover that they just put out as a one-off. And I'm glad they got to finish and release it, one of their funnier episodes, which features an AA-style support group for werewolves (and werebears and werehorses).
"Only Murders" has always toed the line between a sendup of serialized mysteries and a functional serialized mystery, and as the show keeps rolling on into a fifth season with more bodies piling up, they've remained pretty creative with the storylines. Christoph Waltz is a great new addition and I'm glad Richard Kind has remained in the cast from last season. Selena Gomez's line reading might actually getting worse instead of better, though.
Disney+'s animated MCU shows have never been particularly good but they also seem to be detoriating instead of improving.
An Apple TV animated series, I put it on for my son but neither of us took much interested in it.
Another show that neither I nor my son enjoyed, in fact I thought the animation was absolutely hideous, very "Polar Express.
Horton is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss characters, he's always just so noble and put upon. The new Netflix series about him is very cutesy and preschool-y, though, doesn't really have the tone of the Seuss books.
This show is probably as good with Dan Stevens as it was with Justin Roiland, but it'd kind of become background noise for me, I'm glad they're wrapping it up with the sixth season, I started it but I doubt I'll finish it, it's just barely amusing to me anymore.
This Netflix series from Japan is about a woman who decides to bring an ex-boyfriend into her marriage, less of an erotic fantasy than a realistic look at the social and emotional minefield a situation like that could be.
This Danish series on Netflix is a good old fashioned "someone disappears and a community's dark secrets are unraveled" type thing, I feel like I've seen this kind of thing so many times that I don't know if I'm intrigued enough to finish it.
A French rock singer who killed an actress in 2003, pretty grisly story, it's interesting to hear about something that was huge headline news in another country that never really made waves over here that would've been an OJ Simpson-level spectacle if it happened in America.
This is the third docuseries about New Orleans that I've watched in the past few months. They're all pegged to the the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but this one on CNN is not centered on the 2005 tragedy like the others, it's more of a celebration of New Orleans culture and music and food, which makes it kind of a nice palate cleanser.
Rebecca Miller's documentary about Martin Scorsese is really great and thorough, I'm glad somebody got to do something like this while he's still alive, and as a 5-hour series so they can really get into just about every movie in some detail. It all actually cuts pretty naturally into one episode about the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, and then one about his career since 2000. It's a bit more revealing about Scorsese's personal life than I expected, with lots of interviews with family and friends (and I'm now smitten with Domenica Cameron-Scorsese), but mostly to the extent of giving a context to his work. My favorite part is when the filmmakers find out that the guy De Niro's Mean Streets character was based on is still alive, and they get him on camera ("Did you really blow up a mailbox?" "Yeah." "Do you remember why?" "No."). This is the third documentary I've seen released in the past year (after Rise of the King and Norman's Rare Guitars Documentary) that has, I believe, new interviews with Robbie Robertson from before he passed away in 2023, nice to see a little more of him.
David Beckham had a Netflix docuseries a few years ago that I mostly remember for a viral scene ("be honest") that made his wife look kind of silly trying to pretend like she didn't have a posh upbringing. I mean, hell, she's Posh Spice! So it feels like her new Netflix docuseries primarily exists as a corrective to give her a more sympathetic portrait, and I think it works to some degree, the first episode is the first time I ever really saw her as a three-dimensional and likeable person.
The title of this nature docuseries makes it sound like it's gonna be more gorey and violent than it really is, but I suppose it's good that the name prepares you for the occasional graphic moment. Maya Hawke does the narration and I enjoy the sound of her voice, she was a good choice.
Lots of reality dating shows take place in beautiful island locations, but this Peacock series is actually about people who live in Hawaii, which is kind of nice and refreshing.
I see Jimmy Fallon (and current "SNL" cast members) in so many commercials these days that I've started to wonder if Lorne Michaels is covertly running an ad agency, and that's basically what this show is, with contestants pitching campaigns to big brands. A somewhat interesting concept but it really just makes Fallon seem like even more of a sellout company man at a moment when the Trump administration is trying to kick his peers off the air and he's just cowering and avoiding political jokes.
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on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 at 12:50 PM.
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