| | | | Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg’s weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com. |
Everyone Makes Mistakes, Oh Yes They Do I've watched the first six episodes of the new season of Shrinking , which remains my favorite show in which every single character does the wrong thing 90 percent of the time and then spends the other 10 percent hugging because making mistakes is the best way to grow as a person. So far, the Apple TV+ comedy has given me more of my favorite elements from the first season, including Michael Urie's Brian and Lukita Maxwell's Alice, while somehow finding time for a bunch of great new guest stars led by co-creator Brett Goldstein, who is heartbreakingly un-Roy Kent-y. While the tonal balance between real, big laughs and lugubrious sentimentality occasionally falls out of balance, and while I'm never going to buy this narrative's doctor-patient ethics no matter how much rationalizing it does, it's a world I like hanging out in. Also, at some point we'll acknowledge that this really might be one of the best performances of Harrison Ford's career. |
Friday Night Delights My list of the Top 5 Shows to Occupy HBO's Friday 11 p.m. Time Slot: 5) Room 104; 4) A Black Lady Sketch Show; 3) Fantasmas; 2) Los Espookys; 1) How To With John Wilson. It's perhaps my favorite space in all of TV. The newest occupant, It's Florida, Man is the least experimental, least audacious thing to be programmed there, but with its star-studded anthology approach to familiar misadventures in the Sunshine State, it might find the biggest audience. It's sometimes funny and it sometimes gets its blend of empathy and mockery calibrated properly. Plus? Simon Rex gets his arm eaten by an alligator and Anna Faris is a mermaid. |
| | | Rollin' in Pradeeps he Pradeeps of Pittsburgh suffers from Vestigial Development Syndrome, in that it was initially made for Freevee, where it would have been a great match with since-cancelled titles Sprung and Primo . Now Vijal Patel’s eight-part comedy about an Indian family making a home in the Rust Belt is on Amazon, where I hope it find an audience. Though I found the premiere needlessly broad, with a chaotic Immigration and Naturalization Service interrogation framing device that introduces political overtones the story isn't smart enough to tackle, the emotions of the last couple episodes really hit, and I ultimately found the series quite effective. Cast standouts include Sindhu Lee, Sahana Srinivasan and Ashwin Sakthivel. Warning: The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh presents as a family show and it kinda is, but it has more swearing, hand jobs, dildos and jokes about incest than most family shows. |
The Devil Made Me [Re]View It However chaotic the otherwise conventional Pradeeps is made by its framing device, it remains calm, cool and collected compared to Hysteria! , Peacock's narratively and tonally jumbled Satanic Panic satire/thriller/supernatural whatever series. Watching this '80s-set examination of a high school metal band that attempts to jump on the occult bandwagon, only to trigger a town-wide spiral into demonic hijinks, it's easy to see why Peacock has struggled to promote it, despite stars like Bruce Campbell, Julie Bowen and Anna Camp. From theme to plot to style, it's all over the place and, in the end, I don't think it works at all. But maybe the mayhem will be closer to your wavelength, dear reader. Regardless, I liked a lot of the actors, especially Emjay Anthony, Chiara Aurelia, Jessica Treska and, in an almost unrecognizably snark-free turn, Campbell. |
The Deluge At some point, FX's John Landgraf declared that Peak TV was over, and I tend to believe him. But looking at this week/weekend's glutted roster of premieres, one might have doubts. Among the things I haven't sampled are Acorn/Sundance Now's adaptation of John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos (one of my favorite books as a kid), new chapters of The Lincoln Lawyer (I like to call it Netflix's Bosch), Hulu's limited series Rivals with David Tennant and the triumphant return of Blue Bloods on CBS. I have, however, seen and reviewed the first two episodes of both CBS' Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage (streaming on Paramount+) and NBC's Happy's Place (premiering tonight and presumably streaming on Peacock). |
Kendrick L'Amour Anna Kendrick is always worth watching in front of the camera, so it's highly encouraging that her debut as a director, the '70s set thriller Woman of the Hour, has been so well-received ahead of this weekend's Netflix release. Our Lovia Gyarkye called the film, about a woman who matches with a serial killer on The Dating Game, to be "effectively unnerving" and "undeniably powerful." The weekend's other big new streaming movie is probably Amazon's Brothers , featuring Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage, but our Justin Lowe lamented the poor plotting and character development, while praising some of the dialogue and performances. |
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