| | | | 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. |
The 'Madness' of King Domingo Not to say that conspiracy thrillers and spy dramas aren't TV for the whole family, but the best gather-around-the-television-with-leftovers programming is still Netflix's A Man on the Inside. If, however, your clan does enjoy a good genre potboiler, there are options. Head over to Max to start watching HBO's Get Millie Black , in which novelist Marlon James gives a traditional missing persons plotline a distinctive Jamaican twist. Over on Netflix, The Madness’ even more traditional Hitchcockian "wrong man in the wrong place" conceit gets a huge bump from star Colman Domingo, having a blast playing The Baddest Man in Philadelphia. I wish I could say that a surplus of talent — stars Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright lead the way — instantly makes Paramount+ with Showtime's The Agency worth checking out, but through three episodes sent to critics, it's very much a show in search of a consistent identity. |
Acaster & Commander Looking for a fun game to play with the family over the holiday? Find a group of relatives who don't know comic Anthony Jeselnik's "thing," sit them down in front of his new Netflix special Bones and All and watch the processing occur. (Oh, and be sure to turn off subtitles on this one, since they totally destroy the flow of Jeselnik's pregnant pauses and dark, zig-zagging detours). While I don't think Bones and All is Jeselnik's funniest work, I always like when he eviscerates anti-cancel culture crybabies — plus, it contains some change-of-pace autobiographical reflections that serve as a reminder of what a strong and distinctive storyteller Jeselnik can be when he sets aside the roasting and satirically self-satisfied gallows humor. Also relatively new to streaming is HBO/Max's James Acaster: Hecklers Wanted . Another comic on the "stop whining about cancel culture" express, Acaster's gimmick for this tour — it's right there in the title — and the buzz from the road were so good that the execution for the filmed concert ends up a little disappointing. It's just hard to guarantee quality crowd work when the cameras are rolling. For almost an hour, you forget that heckling was even supposed to be part of the recipe. Still funny. |
| | | Far From the Madden Crowd Amazon's It's in the Game: Madden NFL is a commercial. Multiple representatives of EA Sports serve as executive producers on a four-hour documentary in which EA Sports opens up its vaults to allow for a celebration of EA Sports and the beloved institution that is its Madden NFL video game. Is this actually a "never-been-told" story, as Amazon is boasting? Nah. Nearly everything of value here was previously covered in the 30 for 30 podcast on the topic, which also felt less like a bloated advertisement. But for a couple of hours, It's in the Game is at least a high-spirited commercial, filled with great interviews from video game industry icons and past and present NFL superstars talking about the development and evolution of Madden NFL. Highlights include every word out of icon Gordon Bellamy's mouth, the unexpected emotions of college players getting their first mocap experience at the NFL Combine and some of the reflections on how player ratings became an obsession among the real players. Lowlights include the entire fourth episode, which is all about how Madden NFL won and is great and has changed the world and can be purchased wherever fine video games are sold, including Amazon. |
Some Like It 'Yacht' The latest installment in HBO's Bill Simmons-created Music Box documentary anthology series, Garret Price's Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary might have a punny title. But it’s an effectively straight-ahead approach to a genre that's easy to mock, but more satisfying to treat with at least some seriousness. Boasting reflective, good-natured talking head appearances by the likes of Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald and most of Toto (plus a GREAT recorded phone conversation with Donald Fagen of Steely Dan), the film honors what's best about yacht rock — much love for the countless session musicians who provide its connective tissue, plus great admiration for the vocal stylings of Mr. McDonald. And when it's time to find humor, almost nobody is easily offended. It would have been simple for Price to treat yacht rock as pure cheese. It's harder to get critics, scholars and Questlove to offer actual, tangible analysis and STILL find room to play the iconic "Ride Like the Wind" sketch from SCTV. |
Fast, Chiefs and Out of Control It took three Super Bowl titles in five years to make the Kansas City Chiefs into the NFL team most associated with winning, but it took Taylor Swift to make the franchise also synonymous with … romance? Although Swift's name is never mentioned in Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Stor y, it's impossible to imagine the movie, premiering Saturday (Nov. 30) night, existing without her. The Hallmark Christmas flick — the first I’ve watched this year — is a bit odd. The love story between Hunter King's Alana, a Chiefs-loving Missouri native, and Tyler Hynes' Derrick, a Chiefs marketing exec with no particular affinity for football, is conventional stuff: She believes in fate! He's more practical! She's got a huge family! He's pretty much a loner! Despite filming in Kansas City, it only occasionally looks distinctive, perhaps because everybody keeps talking about how cold it is and it was CLEARLY shot in the summer. But man, Kansas City and the Chiefs got behind this project, which features cameos from the city's mayor, from coach Andy "Fumblerooski" Reid and a bunch of Chiefs players past and present, including Techmo Bowl legend Christian Okoye. No, Travis Kelce does not make an appearance, but his mother does! |
Honoring Jim Abrahams Sometimes as writer, sometimes as director, sometimes as producer and often as all three, Jim Abrahams, who died this week at 80, collaborated with brothers Jerry Zucker and David Zucker on a string of movies and one wildly influential television show that reshaped comedy as we know it. Someday, Police Squad! will be streaming somewhere. Until that day comes, though, the ZAZ cinematic output is well-represented in the streaming space. Set yourself up to stream The Kentucky Fried Movie (Peacock), Airplane! (Amazon),Top Secret!(PlutoTV), The Naked Gun (MGM+) and Hot Shots! (Hulu) and you'll spend your weekend laughing. My opinion: Airplane! might not be the best comedy ever made, but it might be the FUNNIEST movie ever made. |
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