TV Diary
I never really kept up with "Slow Horses" past the first season but I'm really enjoying the new Apple TV series which is based on a different Mick Herron novel and developed by "Slow Horses" writer Morwenna Banks (who has a fascinatingly random career -- she was also an "SNL" cast member for four episodes in 1995 and voices Peppa Pig's mother). Great performance from Emma Thompson, and Darren Boyd steals every scene he's in. The end of the first episode is a huge bummer that also totally hooked me on watching more, with a really creative and weird score by Laura Karpman (who was nominated for an Oscar for her work on American Fiction) and great needle drops (John Cale, The Nerves, etc.).
b) "I Love LA"
I feel like there's a general weariness at the very existence of any new TV comedy about striving twentysomethings in New York or Los Angeles. I totally get that, but I generally like Rachel Sennott, and she co-wrote one of her better movies, Bottoms, so I was interested to see a series created by her. "I Love LA" definitely doesn't feel totally distinct from some of the shows it will invariably be compared to, but the first episode was pretty promising. I like to make fun of Odessa A'zion for coming up with a fake last name so people won't know she's Pamela Adlon's kid, but she's just absurdly beautiful, and she's good in the 'chaotic former best friend' role here.
c) "All's Fair"
It was obvious back when he had a whole fan service tangent about them in "The People vs. O.J. Simpson" that Ryan Murphy is obsessed with the Kardashians, and now he's made it his mission to give Kim an acting career. First he cast her in a season of "American Horror Story," now he's built a whole series around her with a ridiculously overqualified ensemble cast including Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, and Niecy Nash-Betts. And I'll admit it more or less works, it reminds me of those goofy yet watchable legal dramas that David E. Kelley used to make, and Sarah Paulson in particular is hilarious.
Last week I wrote about how Friendship kind of transferred the world of a Tim Robinson sketch to a movie with mixed results. "The Chair Company" is much the same but as a miniseries, and so far I think it's a little more successful than Friendship. Most "I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson" sketches have one character who thinks and acts bizarrely, often but not always played by Robinson, and almost everyone else is a completely normal straight man. "The Chair Company" is kind of fun because every time you encounter a new character, you don't know if they're going to talk like weird Tim Robinson characters or whether they're going to act like a real person would. At a certain point it's almost like two sets of people living in different realities keep running into each other.
e) "DMV"
I live in a part of the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia area that people have decided to call 'the DMV' and I hate it. That's the Department of Motor Vehicles. That's not a flattering thing to compare your region to! So I'm happy that there's a new network sitcom called "DMV" and it's about the government building where people renew their driver's licenses. And it's probably the best old-fashioned workplace sitcom CBS has done in a long time, with a great cast including "SNL" alums young and old (Molly Kearney and Tim Meadows), Harriet Dyer from "Colin From Accounts," and Tony Cavalero from "The Righteous Gemstones."
Maybe I just couldn't give this It spinoff series a chance because I absolutely hate the clunky title, but I really just don't like, it feels like a huge step down from the movies, feels like they're piling on the crazy fx-driven scenes without the proper buildup that the original It story had.
Obviously The Witcher was a very successful franchise of books and video games before Henry Cavill starred in the TV series, but when Cavill left, it really felt like any attempt Netflix made to keep the show going after he dropped out was doomed. And the fourth season with Liam Hemsworth as Geralt feels like a particularly pathetic attempt, it even opens with a recap of the first 3 seasons where they avoid showing Cavill's face as much as possible, and they've kind of haplessly tried to turn it into more of an ensemble show where the title role isn't quite so important.
i) "Loot"
I've always kind of complained that "Loot" is not the hilarious vehicle Maya Rudolph deserves, but it has developed into a pretty strong ensemble show and Joel Kim Booster has gotten more opportunities to be hilarious. The first episode of the third season, with a nudist colony led by Henry Winkler, was by far the funniest episode of "Loot" to date so I feel like they're finding a groove.
I enjoy this show, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are generally charming and have chemistry together, and sometimes the writing is pretty sharp -- I laughed for a solid minute at "She kept saying 'It's a hot dog for us.'" But sitcoms about relationships that keep drawing out the 'are they gonna stay together or not?' thing can be a little exhausting, it felt like they really dragged it out in the second season and will hopefully stop using it as the engine of the plot in future seasons. Jackie Tohn from "GLOW" is great in this show, I'm glad they moved her from a 'recurring' character to a full cast member this season.
"The Morning Show" also became kind of exhausting around the third season and I was not really looking forward to the fourth season. It's won me back a little bit, mainly because they kind of relocated the right balance of darkness and light for Billy Crudup's character. They're still pretty hit-and-miss with 'ripped from the headlines' plots, the Joe Rogan-style podcaster is even worse than the Elon Musk-style billionaire last season, but the AI storyline has a pretty good payoff.
I'm not much of a gamer so I didn't realize Tom Clancy created an Xbox game 20 years ago. I kind of enjoy the animated series based on it, though.
I kind of hate this show, it's like everything about Adult Swim that I'm totally tired of packed into one show, a toothless parody of '80s family sitcoms where everyone is overly stupid and has an annoying voice and a weird face, feels like "Beavis & Butt-Head" if it was never funny. I'm sure the people that created this show just came up with that awkward vocal mannerism the main characters have and thought it would carry the whole thing.
I like the Netflix international shows that feel pretty close to American sitcoms, like I've seen this kind of wacky 'single girl who has bad luck dating' show so many times but it's fun to see the Swedish version.
Similarly, we have so many American comedies that satirize the film industry, but it's fun to see a show that's parodying Bollywood instead of Hollywood, this show is pretty entertaining.
p) "Two Graves"
A pretty good Spanish series where a badass grandmother seeks revenge after her granddaughters disappear.
A touching Korean show about two women who were friends as kids and reconnect when one of them has terminal cancer in her forties.
r) "Miss King"
I wasn't familiar with Shogi, but apparently it's 'Japanese chess,' so it's hard not to watch this Netflix series without thinking it as sort of a Japanese version of "The Queen's Gambit."
This Korean dating show is about people who've never had a serious relationship, so it's not explicitly about virgins like the recent American show "Are You My First?" but it feels a little similar, and a little more humane and less sensationalized.
Allen Iverson seems more like a folk hero than any living NBA star, this 3-part Amazon docuseries is a good way to delve a little more into his story and career. I must be really sick of Stephen A. Smith, though, I don't even like seeing him in a sports documentary now.
u) "The Road"
Keith Urban and Blake Shelton had lengthy tenures on "American Idol" and "The Voice," respectively, and I feel like they did a good job of putting together a reality competition series for country artists that isn't just about singing covers. Each competitor on "The Road" is a singer-songwriter who's been touring for years, some of them have written hits or had record deals in the past, most of them are over 30 if not over 40. And here they open for Keith Urban and try to make the case that they deserve to make that jump to headliner status, and a lot of them are really talented, there's one guy who's kinda quirky and worships John Prine, it's great to see the variety of country music they presented here.
A few years ago CNN had a show where Stanley Tucci travels and eats, and now they have one with Tony Shalhoub. traveling and trying bread from different cultures. I feel like somebody over there is a big fan of Big Night.
A Netflix docuseries about people who've experienced paranormal phenomena. It's easy to make this stuff interesting in my experience but this isn't particularly well done.
Some crazy violent stories in this Netflix doc. I'm assuming they get to the Chicken Man from Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" at some point but I haven't gotten there yet.
Apparently Judy Garland's Wizard of Oz shoes were stolen from a museum in Minnesota, I had no idea. I think they overplayed their hand in thinking this was interesting enough to sustain a whole miniseries, though, I barely made it through the first episode.
Every new season of "SNL" after some longtime cast members have departed seems to change the dynamic in interesting way. For instance, Ashley Padilla is still a 'featured' player but it seems like she's in so many sketches already, probably because Heidi Gardner leaving opened up a lane for her. Ben Marshall has been on the show with Please Don't Destroy for four years but he's now kinda back to square one as a 'featured' cast member, which is weird. I always thought Martin Herlihy was the funniest of those guys and he's just on the writing staff now, I'm glad he still got to star in a pretty good sketch in the Sabrina Carpenter episode. Really, though, I wish they just really gave James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang more room to do weird passion project sketches, those are the people that can really lead the tone of the show in a new, more contemporary direction.
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on Thursday, November 06, 2025 at 1:33 PM.
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