TV Diary
a) "Pluribus"
Vince Gilligan created one short-lived CBS series in 2015, but it kinda felt to me like in the 17 years since creating "Breaking Bad" he mostly just rode that out, not doing a lot besides that show, a spinoff series and a spinoff film, like he didn't have a lot of other ideas. So I approached the highly praised first episode of "Pluribus" with cautious optimism, and I have to say I loved it, and the three other episodes that are out so far. I recommend going into it cold so I don't even want to describe the plot too much. But I really like the way it puts a funny, thoughtful twist on some old sci-fi tropes, and Rhea Seehorn's is a pretty interesting and nuanced character and performance to put in the middle of that high concept spectacle.
Last week I gratuitously namedropped that I met Steven Spielberg at work, and I almost met Claire Danes the same night. I decided to keep it profesh and not tell her how much I enjoy her work, her new show included, but nonetheless, "The Beast In Me" is really good. Danes plays a successful novelist grieving her son who gets pulled into this odd situation with her new neighbor, played by Matthew Rhys, a wealthy real estate developer who's been accused of killing his wife. And the show gets a lot of mileage out of the tension between their performances, Danes constantly on edge and terrified and Rhys, pushy and menacing and weirdly charming.
A lot of miniseries based on a true story feel like they're straining to stretch out a story that would've made more sense as a movie into 8 or 10 episodes. But "Death By Lightning" is only 4 episodes and I found myself wishing there was more of it. It mainly covers the year between James Garfield (Michael Shannon) being nominated for POTUS and his death after being shot by Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), but there are so many great performances by the supporting cast (including Bradley Whitford and Shea Whigham) that I kinda wish they made more episodes or even stretched the story into the presidency of Chester A. Arthur (one of Nick Offerman's finest roles). Betty Gilpin seems initially a little underused but gets a couple of incredible scenes in the last episode.
d) "Stumble"
The two funniest episodes of the problematic and recently canceled "English Teacher" were the two episodes that guest starred Jenn Lyon as an obnoxiously opinionated Texan woman. And the new Peacock mockumentary sitcom "Stumble" is built around Lyon playing a somewhat similar, if more charming and sympathetic character, a cheerleading coach at a junior college. Kristin Chenoweth has just a small recurring role, which would be disappointing if the show didn't have a hilarious ensemble cast full of people I've never seen before like Taylor Dunbar and Jarrett Austin Brown, a really promising little show.
This Peacock series is full of actors I know from good HBO shows but it feels like a Lifetime movie, with Sarah Snook as a mother whose son disappears under odd circumstances. It's not a ripped-from-the-headlines story, though, it's based on a novel, which makes me suspect there's some overly complicated twist that I'm never going to find out about, because the idea of watching 8 episodes of this melodramatic dreck sounds like torture.
f) "Malice"
This British series, with comedian Jack Whitehall as the nanny for a wealthy American family on holiday in Greece, with lots of sinister foreshadowing about something very bad happening at the end of the vacation. I don't mind terribly that there are so many TV dramas now in this "White Lotus" niche of dark suspenseful stories about wealthy people. But this one just doesn't intrigue me at all and
My take on the first season of "The Vince Staples Show" is that I thought it was perfectly fine as long as it brings a bigger audience to his music without distracting him from continuing to make great albums. I think what I've seen of the second season so far has made me laugh a little more than the first, but I still haven't seen anything that really puts it on the level of similar shows like "Atlanta" or "Rap Shit."
Michael Schur and Ted Danson came up with such a lovely little show for the first season of "A Man on the Inside," I'm happy to see they've come up with a new low stakes mystery for Danson's character to delve into that's mostly an excuse for a lot of sweet and funny character moments. I roll my eyes a little when Danson and his wife make appearances in each other's stuff, but Mary Steenburgen's character is pretty entertaining and they have a sweet little romantic subplot.
i) "Bat-Fam"
A cutesy cartoon about Bruce Wayne raising a son while being Batman is a weird idea, but this is a moderately fun show.
I usually roll my eyes when a long-running show does a 'flashback' origin story episode, but the one that opened the 16th season of "Bob's Burgers" was really wonderful, I appreciate that this show still manages to make me smile after so many years.
I feel like the American titles of Netflix's imported shows always suck. Changing a show from "Ten Percent" (in French) to "Call My Agent!" (in English) is so corny. "Old Dogs, New Tricks," as it's known here, is simply called "Animal" (in Spanish) in Spain, which I think is a much better title. Decent little sitcom about a veterinarian who starts working at a pet store.
Another one where the title in the original Korean is cooler ("Esquire: Lawyers who dream of becoming Lawyers") even if it's pretty understandable why they changed it. Pretty similar to American legal dramas, though, including moderately problematic romantic potential between the young lawyer and her mentor.
m) "Aema"
Apparently the film Madame Aema was one of Korea's biggest box office hits of the '80s and this miniseries dramatizes how it was made. Kind of interesting to get a piece of their cultural history through a show like this, I guess it'd be like watching "The Offer" without having seen The Godfather.
A pretty dark Brazilian drama about a woman who goes in search of her teenage daughter who's been kidnapped by sex traffickers.
I like this Japanese reality show on "Final Draft," all the competitors are retired athletes, doing physical challenges for a cash prize and a shot at a new career. Good concept, I kinda hope this gets spun off in America and other places.
I've never had kimbap but I really need to try it now, this show made it look delicious.
Again, something that illuminates a little of Korean life for me, but I have a limited capacity for watching this much stuff about natural disasters and mass death events.
A docuseries about the prison escape of South African rapist Thabo Bester, and a celebrity doctor who helped him escape. The title makes my eyes roll but a pretty crazy story.
I haven't watched a ton of Ken Burns stuff, but I've found this pretty engrossing, I like the way that he's approaching early American history from a present day vantage point.
I liked the story in the first episode about how Edgar Allen Poe's first volume of poetry became one of the most rare and valuable books of all time, but the production values on this History Channel series are pretty poor, some of the talking heads are, like, "Jeopardy!" contestants, seriously.
u) "TV We Love"
Another show with a decent concept but really lousy execution, makes me want to see a more high quality docuseries about early television. Also weird to realize that when you make something about '50s TV now, it's almost impossible to find talking heads to actually saw the show when it originally aired.
A Netflix show about con artists with lots of interviews with their victims, a little illuminating to hear how people pulled off stuff like this and what some of the red flags are, but a pretty depressing watch.
w) "June Farms"
A frothy reality show about a farm that hosts weddings in the Hudson Valley, didn't find it interesting at all, felt almost like an informercial.
I feel like they probably should've gotten this out there much closer to the released of Top Gun: Maverick, but smart to do a reality series about real Marine and Navy student pilots.
Never heard about this case of two Indiana teens who went missing in 2017, awful story, glad the crime was solved eventually.
z) "Murder 360"
One of the more high quality true crime docs I've seen lately, an anthology series on Paramount+. Paramount+ is probably the worst streaming service from a UI standpoint, though, I get so many technical issues, makes me less likely to watch their stuff even though I pay for it.
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