TV Diary
a) "War"
HBO premiering a show called "War" on the first day of October is very U2-coded. This British miniseries is about the divorce of a power couple, and the casting is a little meta -- Sienna Miller became a tabloid fixture after Jude Law cheated on her, and Dominic West has played extremely divorced men in at least three other shows (West has been married for 16 years, but apparently there was a cheating scandal at some point which, again, fits his whole brand as an actor). The first episode was strong, I like the way they've pumped this up into the divorce of the century and there's all these different pressure points that are coming to the fore.
I feel like a total philistine when I watch an adaptation of a famous novel without having read the book, but I'm really enjoying Zoe Kazan's Netflix miniseries of Steinbeck's East of Eden. Florence Pugh, Charlie Abbott, and Mike Faist are three of the best actors we've got these days and they're all just making a meal of their roles, especially Pugh.
I guess this is going to be an anthology series where each season is about a different famous situation where someone took hostages, from "The Shield" creator Shawn Ryan. The first season is about a story I'd never heard of, an Indianapolis man who was struggling financially and took his mortgage broker hostage and kept calling into a local radio station. The stuff with Jon Hamm as the radio host is good, and there's a whole great ensemble cast including Mark McKinney from "Kids in the Hall," but the hostage taker is played by Giovanni Ribisi, who I've concluded is not really much of an actor at all.
I remember when "Grown-ish" debuted and my first reaction was that they made an "A Different World" counterpart to "Black-ish," but now we've got a modern reboot of "A Different World" that reminds me more of "Grown-ish" than the original '80s show. I also noted that the show opens with a "created by" credit for the young showrunner and not the original's creator, which is unusual, but I guess it's understandable that they want to remake a show created by Bill Cosby without the optics of Cosby's name being at the beginning of every episode. I like this, the new cast is solid and it's fun to see some people from the old show (although seeing Kadeem Hardison and Method Man in the same Netflix show just reminds me how pissed I was that they canceled "Teenage Bounty Hunters"). It's not as much of a soap opera as "Bel-Air" but also I think "A Different World" is just a lot more suited to this kind of reboot than "Fresh Prince" was.
I like horror anthologies in general, it's a good genre for short stories. Each episode of Tubi's "Bite Size Terror" is between 6 and 11 minutes long, which kind of feels like that's just too short -- some of them just come and go without leaving an impression, while I invariably wish the good ones were longer. Pretty good overall, though, and I like that half of the ten episodes were directed by women, I definitely want to see more women directing horror and would definitely watch a feature from Jasmine J Johnson, director of the episode "Floral Remains."
When Peter Krause's character got killed off in the 8th season of "9-1-1," I was optimistic that he'd finally get to go work on a different show more worthy of his talent. His new show on NBC is kind of a formulaic network show about a family where everyone works for a different law enforcement agency, but hey, it's definitely better than "9-1-1." His daughter is played by Kat Cunning, who also has a role in a few episodes of "American Hostage," and she's just gorgeous, suddenly a very big fan of hers.
I'll never get a "Sports Night" reunion but I'll settle for Peter Krause and Josh Charles both having shows in primetime. "Best Medicine" is a very frothy, silly little show, but I like it, they're really finding their tone and what makes the characters funny. Charles is the kind of actor who can do drama or comedy equally well, and a show like this makes good use of his ability to deliver a line like "This was an obscene waste of condiments!" with a straight face. And Eliza Coupe's character doesn't seem like she'll be sticking around very long, but I'm enjoying what she brings to the show for the time being.
I blinked and this show is in its 5th season, and for the first time FOX started airing it in the fall, on Sunday nights alongside three animated shows, so I guess they've deemed it enough of a 'live action cartoon' to be in between "The Simpsons" and "Universal Basic Guys." And I never get tired of Joel McHale having indulgent little "Community" cast reunions when Ken Jeong or Jim Rash pops up on "Animal Control."
j) "Scrubs"
"Scrubs" is not for everyone and I don't really judge anyone who doesn't like it. But I would say anyone who enjoyed the original series should watch the new seasons, they've genuinely picked up where they left off more. And I'm glad there's been a bit more of Perry Cox in the last few episodes, he's still by far the best character on the show whenever he's on it.
k) "Mousetrap"
A Korean thriller on Netflix, not bad but at this point I'm tired of agoraphobia being a plot device to keep a person 'trapped' in their home, I have no idea if real agoraphobics think it's problematic but I find it tiresome.
A Spanish series on Netflix about two roommates who start to figure out that they're in love with each other while on a road trip, which just feels very contrived, but whatever, it's reasonably charming.
Very weird Thai show where a woman who owns land agrees to sell it to a company if the daughter of the company's president will marry her, and it's supposed to romantic with this blindingly bright pastel aesthetic.
A Japanese show about a guy "trailing his childhood love from the shadows," which, I don't know, kind of sounds like stalking to me, but again, this is supposed to be romantic in the context of teh show.
o) "S&X"
A pretty good Japanese show about a sex therapist at a clinic who has his own private intimacy problems. I think the title is stupid, though, I genuinely turned it on wondering what the S and the X stood for.
I think more of Netflix's foreign shows should keep their original titles instead of being translated into English, "Blodsoffer" is a much cooler name for a Swedish crime drama.
For this, one maybe they could've left "series" out of the title of the English version, but it's at least more memorable like this, a reasonably charming Thai show about a romance between two art school students.
This Colombian show just premiered over the summer and already has over 60 episodes, I can never keep up with stuff like this. I enjoyed the first couple episodes, though, fun pulpy thing about a singer and the wife of a politician falling in love.
s) "The Arena"
A Netflix show about French MMA fighters, it really just has a powerful whiff of people I'd never want to be around in real life.
A reality competition modeled after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is weird enough, but like having an AI deepfake of Gene Wilder's voice and one of the original Oompa Loompas talking about how nice it is to hear his voice again, all of this is just offputting and gross.
Another Nat Geo nature doc miniseries, I love all of these, some amazingly beautiful views in the first episode.
I actually didn't really follow the 2010 Chilean miner crisis that closely when it was happening, so I enjoyed this doc (my first kid was less than a year old at the time, everything from that era is a blur). It's a miniseries but Disney+ listed the episodes as "season 1," which to me implies that they could send the miners back down there for more streaming content.
I don't like that Netflix has recently been acquiring a ton of audio or YouTube podcasts and just putting them on their platform as if they're tv shows. However, this true crime pod is hosted by a British woman with an absolutely entrancing accent, so I'm watching it.
"Last Trace" is overall a better podcast than "Outlore," but in this case the cute host doesn't also have an alluring accent, so I'm not watching as much of it.
This is basically just interviews with stars of recent Netflix projects, which is an annoying advertorial kind of thing, like Jimmy Fallon doesn't only interview people from NBC shows, come on, be less shameless. That said, Krista Smith is a decent interviewer and she gets like 40+ minutes to talk to interesting people like Florence Pugh and Greta Lee about projects that I've watched.
Dave Foley was on the latest episode and was great, I feel like they do a pretty good job of booking guests. It always surprises me a little when they curse on a CNN show, but I'm pleased that in some way they get to be a little more frank and blunt about current events on this show than they often do on scripted topical comedy shows like "The Daily Show."
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on Wednesday, October 07, 2026 at 11:29 AM.
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