TV Diary
a) "Found"
NBC was originally going to premiere "Found" as a midseason replacement, but once they pushed it back, it wound up being one of the only new scripted dramas to premiere on one of the big 4 networks this fall due to the WGA and SAG strikes. That's the kind of twist of fate that could turn a show from an also-ran to a hit, but unfortunately "Found" totally sucks. Shanola Hampton is a total babe and displayed serious comedy chops on 11 seasons of "Shameless," but she's stuck in this bland missing person procedural that has no idea what to do with her talent. There's a big twist in the premise revealed at the end of the first episode, and not only is the twist really stupid, but it was completely spoiled by the promo Peacock played immediately before the episode when I streamed it. Mark-Paul Gosselaar recently admitted that he wanted to quit Hollywood after the cancellation of his amazing short-lived Fox show "Pitch" a few years ago, which makes it all the more frustrating that he's currently in a show as bad as "Found."
b) "Still Up"
This British series on Apple TV+ is about two insomniacs, a man and a woman, who've never met but spend nights talking on the phone -- I've had minor bouts of insomnia in my life but I don't know what it's like as a serious condition or if this show treats it realistically, it mildly feels like a flimsy plot device. But it's a pretty charming show, and inevitably the characters are experiencing problems in their love lives and are developing feelings for each other.
A Netflix show about a British teenager who gets out of the hospital after struggling with anorexia and has this bucket list of life experiences they've been missing out on that they want to experience now. Have only watched the first episode but it seems pretty promising and well done.
d) "The Swarm"
For months, people have been fascinated by reports of orcas damaging yachts, and a broader sentiment that with the way humans have been fucking up the planet, maybe animals should be getting revenge on us. So "The Swarm," and ambitious international sci-fi series about the world's marine life kicking humanity's ass, should be a perfectly timed zeitgeist-grabbing event show, if it was airing in America almost anywhere besides The CW. The visual effects are a little weak, but otherwise I like it.
e) "Django"
I still know absolutely nothing about the Spaghetti western Django movies aside from being the basis of Tarantino's Django Unchained. This Netflix show is pretty good, though, between "Warrior" and this I'm starting to understand why westerns were the most popular TV shows for years and years.
f) "Gen V"
"The Boys" is one of the most entertaining shows on television, partly because they don't shy away from the kind of violence and gore that goes with a darkly satirical and semi-realistic depiction of a world with superheroes, and I don't have a weak stomach for that kind of thing in general. But the show really borders on sensory overload or outright poor taste sometimes, so doing a spinoff in the same style like "Gen V" has some potential for overkill. So far I like it, the cast is strong and I like the idea of an X-Men-style superhero college campus in "The Boys" universe. But sometimes they do something just outrageously gross and I'm like, well, I guess that was fun, but they don't have any characters compelling as Homelander yet, so I hope it doesn't fall into empty shock value. I loved seeing Derek Wilson on last week's episode, though, that guy was amazing on "Future Man" and deserves lots of work.
You can do shows about Gotham without Batman, but something in the universe of John Wick without John Wick just seems kind of stupid, and that title is dogshit -- especially because 'The Continental' will always been Christopher Walken's old "SNL" character to me. Sure, the overall tone and expertly choreographed violence, sure, that translates to this series pretty well, but it feels like the most distinctive thing this show actually has in common with the movies is the wacky fonts on the subtitles for any foreign dialogue. The cast is pretty good aside from that old dickhead Mel Gibson. I just wish they cut this into normal TV episodes instead of running it as three movie-length episodes.
My wife really loved Netflix's "Castlevania" series, which concluded after its 4th season two years ago, and was pretty excited to hear about this new spinoff, which takes place 300 years after the previous series. It's pretty good, but unfortunately, "Nocturne" creator Clive Bradley just doesn't make a show as entertaining as the disgraced creator of the other "Castlevania" show, Warren Ellis. Too many spinoffs! Enough spinoffs!
i) "Krapopolis"
Dan Harmon's "Krapopolis" is one of several shows that networks snapped up from "Rick & Morty" creators in the wake of "Rick & Morty"'s success. Two years ago, before the crypto bubble popped, it was announced that "Krapopolis" would be "the first ever animated series curated entirely on the blockchain" and that NFT owners would be able to cast votes that effect the content of the show, which made it sound like the most horribly uncool shit of all time. So far, though, the show just seems like a silly Dan Harmon cartoon about ancient Greece with Matt Berry in the voice cast, and it's not bad, but also not nearly as good as it could be.
j) "Starstruck"
I think the reason romantic comedies are popular but rarely have sequels is that you can only do so much will-they-or-won't-they and they-broke-up-but-reunite stuff before it feels contrived (or realistic but not in a romantic way). So in its third season it kind of feels like "Starstruck" just keeps breaking Jessie and Tom up and getting them back together because they don't think the show should just be them getting together and staying together, but really I'd be fine with them just becoming a couple and the show finding other sources of dramatic tension. And I kinda wish Minnie Driver's character was in more than 1 or 2 episodes per season, though, she's very funny in it and there's definitely a potential version of this show where she's part of the main cast. Either way, though, I'm gonna keep watching because I adore Rose Matafeo and Emma Sidi.
"The Morning Show"'s seasons have all been spread out two years apart at this point, which isn't that uncommon these days, but it feels like it's contributed to a pretty good show having trouble finding its rhythm and becoming great. The third season has a new showrunner and I'm not sure if it's an improvement -- Billy Crudup was consistently the best character in the first two seasons and they've made him more earnest and less of a slick talker lately. Most of the new episodes so far have been pretty good, but it feels like there are so many self-contained stories that don't carry over into other episodes, like Nicole Beharie was amazing in a couple episodes and then barely in the others. A recent episode had a funny line about Aaron Sorkin doing a Kissinger biopic, but honestly this show is pretty Sorkin-lite, in good and bad ways.
I haven't finished the fourth and final season of "Sex Education" yet, never loved it like the show's diehard fanbase seems to, but I do like these characters, it's been fun watching them grow up and develop a little over the show's run.
A few years ago, my Woodfir/Lithobrake were making inside jokes to each other that I didn't understand that were quotes from "Letterkenny," and I felt insanely jealous that my friends watched a Canadian cult comedy that I'd never seen (Lithobrake actually has a song called "Wayney Day" and the title is a "Letterkenny" reference). So I'd checked out "Letterkenny" here and there, and this past summer I decided to catch up, and have now watched almost all 75 episodes aired to date. I really enjoy it, it's in some ways a sitcom but in other ways something else with its own strange rhythms, sometimes characters just sit around and riff on puns for several minutes straight.
I guess it was a matter of time before someone would seriously try to make Kim Kardashian act for a prolonged stretch of screentime, and it was probably always going to be Ryan Murphy. I don't know where this season ranks for people who watch "American Horror Story" more faithfully than I ever had, but so far this definitely seems like one of their least promising seasons to date.
This Lebanese thriller on Netflix is about a friend group whose secrets start to come to the light after one of them is murdered, I enjoy a good dark trashy thriller.
p) "Choona"
This Indian show on Netflix is pretty entertaining, almost feels like an Ocean's Eleven thing, with a group of people all realizing they have a common enemy and planning a heist together.
This Korean series on Netflix takes place in the 1920s during Japan's occupation of Korea, which has made me more curious about a chapter of history I really didn't know much about.
This is a Korean game show with celebrity contestants on Netflix, I'm really interested in how the game works, a whole thing with earning and winning currency you can use as power-ups, or to avoid "prison" and decide which contestants do go to the prison, it's a weird cleverly structured concept.
Given that so many zoos have had popular livestreams whenever a baby animal is born, it's probably a good idea that Netflix decided to get in on it with hours and hours of gorilla habitat footage from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. I prefer tightly edited nature documentaries, but there's a certain appeal to just kind of virtually hanging out with animals like this and watching their silly uneventful lives unfold moment by moment.
I really enjoyed the first season of Hulu's "Welcome To Wrexham," a docuseries about actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a Welsh football team, it had a nice mix of silliness and heart. It kinda feels like the second season retooled to emphasis the drama a little more, make it a little less about Reynolds and McElhenney goofing around. And to an extent I really respect that they've made the show more about the people of Wrexham, but it doesn't quite have that balance of different tones that I enjoyed.
This Hulu reality show exec produced by Reese Witherspoon about the love lives of five Alabama women is interesting because it's shot to look like a scripted show, that kind of thing has been done to some extent before with things like "Laguna Beach" but it's a little seamless here. I'm always deeply suspicious of the line between documentary and scripted being blurred, but it's at least pleasant to watch.
This Apple TV+ docuseries profiles a few of the big '80s/'90s models like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. And certainly their stories have been told many times before, but it feels like this is really well done and is looking at that era from a more serious contemporary perspective and letting them speak frankly about the good and the bad and the ugly.
w) "Encounters"
This Netflix series is one of the best documentaries about UFO sightings I've ever seen. It has lots of eyewitness accounts from different places around the world, stories I haven't heard before, the whole thing done with a bit more journalistic credibility and less sensationalism than you usually get about this stuff.
x) "Wrestlers"
I'm sad that "Heels," one of my favorite recent cable dramas, just got canceled. So I kind of like that Netflix has this docuseries that's about a similar sort of regional wrestling promotion, I'm a little more interested in that whole world now and how it works.
y) "Beckham"
An athlete as famous and accomplished as David Beckham is a good subject for a docuseries, and I caught myself being interested in this a couple times, but I dunno, it was mostly background noise for me. I always forget how high David Beckham's voice is, it's funny.
This HBO miniseries is about a woman, Renee Bach, who was a Christian missionary who worked with malnourished children in Uganda and was accused of basically acting like a doctor without medical training and causing deaths, it's a pretty horrifying story. Bach is being sued but is not in prison or anything she probably should be, so they interviewed her for the doc, and when a trailer first came out, there were some weird reactions on Twitter, people kind of outraged that they let her tell her side of the story and that it's irresponsible and sympathetic to her, but if you actually watch it, it's really clear that the filmmakers are not holding back here and that Bach probably makes herself look worse with the interviews in this.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 10:29 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment