| | | | 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. |
Only Robberies at the Nursing Home If you've finished the most recent season of Only Murders in the Building and you're looking for a new streaming comedy about mystery-solving septuagenarians, Mike Schur's A Man on the Inside, a Netflix eight-parter based on the Oscar nominated doc The Mole Agent , will probably satisfy. Sir Ted Danson — yes, this newsletter bestows honorifics now — plays a recent widower who goes undercover at a San Francisco retirement home, trying to get to the bottom of a recent jewelry theft. The series isn't always laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it certainly has funny elements as well as a huge heart, especially when it comes to the ensemble of mostly 70-something actors (plus the excellent Stephanie Beatriz, Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Lila Richcreek Estrada). The highlights include Sally Struthers, Margaret Avery and John Getz, with the great Stephen McKinley Henderson as an Emmy-worthy standout. Pro tip: Stick around and read the closing credits. Oh, and if you haven't seen The Mole Agent, it's on Netflix and it makes for an amusing comparison. |
Big Trouble 'Interior Chinatown' While this week isn't quite as packed as last week, there are a couple of other big titles. I agree with our Angie Han that Charles Yu's Hulu adaptation of his novel, Interior Chinatown, becomes perhaps too exhaustingly meta (it all worked better on the page), though there's pleasure to be found in seeing Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng and Chloe Bennet in lead roles. There's also pleasure to be found in Cruel Intentions , but only in the 1999 Roger Kumble adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (available on Tubi) and not in Amazon's new eight-episode reboot, which is blandly cast and disappointingly unimaginative in updating the story of sex, revenge and manipulation for a younger generation. |
| | | That's a Rapp The cast of Max's Sex Lives of College Girls has always been full of fresh faces with potential for stardom. But from the initial ensemble, there was Renée Rapp and then everybody else. It can't be surprising, then, that after two years away, Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble's comedy has to begin its third season with the multi-episode process of orchestrating the exit for Rapp's Leighton. Then the show goes about answering the question, "How many fresh and upgraded recurring characters does it take to replace one Renée Rapp?" The answer? Lots! There's a new roommate (Gracie Lawrence, very funny as Kacey), additional screentime for Ilia Isorelýs Paulino's scene-stealing Lila, a bunch of new love interests and some solid guest stars, including Tig Notaro as a law professor mentoring Pauline Chalamet's Kimberly. The odd thing is that while you'd think all this recalibration would lead to unevenness, the seven episodes sent to critics are actually much more consistent than the up-and-down second season. The best so far is the fifth chapter, a callback to season one’s "Parents Weekend" that features another delightfully awkward dinner featuring all of the blended families. |
Farrow Said, 'Well, Stone the Crows' Let's be clear: If you aren't already a BIT paranoid about the way your phone is tracking you, monitoring your behavior and utilizing your data, you live in a pleasant fantasyland that I wish I could visit. If that's you, don't watch HBO's 61-minute Surveilled. If, however, you already know a bit about spyware and its weaponization on an international stage — or if you happen to have read Ronan Farrow's eye-opening reporting on the subject from The New Yorker — Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz's documentary is frustratingly limited, to the point of general worthlessness. It's a short film with no visual style unless "lots of footage of Ronan Farrow nodding and furrowing his brow" counts, and it remains stuck in the reporting that Farrow conducted in 2022, even while acknowledging that this field is constantly evolving and, on a moral level, worsening. Had Surveilled come out in 2023, it would have felt bracing and immediate. As it stands now, Surveilled, available on Max, plays as an introductory paragraph to a much richer and more in-depth piece that somebody else will have to make. |
Sassenach, and How to Get It This blurb is exclusively for my parents: Hey, Mom and Dad! Outlander is back with new episodes starting tonight on Starz! I believe this is the second half of the seventh and penultimate season. The last new installment aired in August 2023, but I refuse to use the word "Droughtlander." Damnit. They got me again. FWIW, Outlander is also back for viewers who aren't my parents. |
Puttin' on the 'Blitz' Were all your local showings of Gladiator II: Gladiate Harder and Wic- (I believe -ked premieres sometime next year) sold out? There are some big movies hitting the streaming space. Apple TV+ is premiering Blitz , a WWII drama from Steve McQueen, which our Leslie Felperin noted for the "bravura sequences" while lamenting that the over-reliance on clichés blunted some of its impact. Netflix launches Malcolm Washington's adaptation of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson (pictured), featuring a lead performance from Danielle Deadwyler that earned praise from our Lovia Gyarkye. Weekend options also include Spellbound (no, not the Hitchcock thriller or the spelling bee documentary) and Joy (no, not the Jennifer Lawrence mop biopic) on Netflix. But speaking of the Jennifer Lawrence Joy, J-Law produced Apple TV+'s Bread and Roses, which Lovia called "harrowing" and "brutal." |
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