| | | | 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. |
Emmy More It hasn't been that long since the strike-delayed 75th Primetime Emmy Awards in January, but in case you've forgotten, the Anthony Anderson-hosted telecast was pretty great, while Beef, The Bear and Succession dominated. Expect more domination at Sunday's 76th Primetime Emmy Awards telecast, at least in drama and comedy where Shogun and The Bear should rule. Questions still abound, though. How will Eugene and Dan Levy handle the task of being the first father-son hosting duo? And what will have the edge on the mini/limited/anthology side, where contenders include Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Fargo and True Detective: Night Country? As you prep for ABC's shindig, I offered my personal preferences alongside colleague Scott Feinberg's prognostications. |
Thy Will Be Dunne If you want to get granular and wonky about NIL collectives and the countless under-regulated and unregulated pathways to payment that the increasingly impotent NCAA is dealing with, Amazon's new six-part docuseries The Money Game falls short. But director Drea Cooper's overview of the new Wild West of athlete compensation does do a lot of things right. Using LSU's 2023-24 sports calendar for structure, Cooper is able to trace how the explosion of name, image and likeness deals have impacted both athletic superstars engaged in social media (Jayden Daniels, Angel Reese) and social media superstars engaged in athletics (Livvy Dunne). Though the most prominent performers get most of the spotlight — the series has a lot of empathy for Reese and a lot of curiosity about Dunne — the most interesting segments focus how this long-overdue shift has changed the lives of people like Alia Armstrong, a championship hurdler with minimal public-facing profile, and Trace Young, a basketball benchwarmer perfectly happy to leverage his TikTok following to get a bowl named after him at his favorite poké eatery. |
| | | Rothwell, Somebody's Watching Her Second week in a row with a nifty new comedy series to watch? What a time to be alive! Last week, it was FX/Hulu's English Teacher. This week? Hulu and Onyx Collective's How to Die Alone, featuring Natasha Rothwell as an airport employee who reexamines her life after a near-death experience. It's no surprise that How to Die Alone offers a tremendous platform for Rothwell, given that she created it, nor that Rothwell is impressively adept at its wild swings to the extreme of laughter and tears, given her Emmy-nominated White Lotus work. More surprising is just how confidently the show handles the varied tonal terrain of going from wacky workplace sitcom to truly moving reflection on romance, friendship and a life properly lived. Our Angie Han called the series "warm, funny and occasionally even life-affirming" and I'd compare it to the likes of South Side (that comedy's co-creator, Bashir Salahuddin, even guest stars here) and Single Drunk Female. |
Shailene, Shailene, Shailene, Shailene / I'm Beggin' of You Please Don't Take My Time Lots of odds and ends this weekend. Starz's adaptation of Lisa Taddeo's Three Women has big ideas about female agency and desire and some very good performances (Betty Gilpin and Gabrielle Creevy are standouts), but it's a structural mess. Netflix's feature Uglies looks like YA Dystopia 101, though our Frank Scheck praised star Joey King. I'm curious about CNN's Have I Got News for You , a Roy Wood Jr.-hosted American take on the British comedy panel show, premiering Saturday. |
Voorhees a Jolly Good Fellow Every Friday the 13th, I check to see how many Friday the 13th movies are available to stream. This Friday the 13th, the answer is a disconcerting "one" and that's only if you count Marcus Nispel's 2009 reboot, which is on Max. Also at Max, you can watch The Real Murders on Elm Street, a Discovery docuseries about small-town carnage confusingly timed to premiere this week, as if Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13thwere interchangeable franchises. |
Honoring James Earl Jones A dramatic powerhouse, a stealth comedy treasure and, of course, possessor of one of the most distinctive voices ever recorded, James Earl Jones died this week at the age of 93. Jones won multiple Tonys and multiple Emmys and he received an honorary Academy Award. He surely would have been worthy of a competitive Oscar for The Great White Hope, a movie I wish were streaming. But plenty of Jones' other countless indelible roles are easily available, starting at Disney+, which has all of the various Star Wars films, The Lion King and The Sandlot . Jones brings boundless gravitas and priceless notes of hilarity to Field of Dreams, streaming on Netflix along with Conan the Barbarian. You can spot an impossibly young Jones in Dr. Strangelove (Amazon) and an impossibly regal Jones in Coming to America (Paramount+), and if you want something a little under the radar, I recommend the big-hearted A Family Thing, streaming on Tubi. Oh and read David Rooney's tribute. |
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