| | | | 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. |
Sailing the Seas of Chee Through the first four episodes of the third season, which premieres Sunday night (March 9) on AMC, the plot of Dark Winds involves Leaphorn and Chee poking around a case with supernatural elements that will doubtlessly prove to have rational explanations involving shady real estate developers involved in human trafficking or drugs or both. It all feels a little too Scooby-Doo to reach the level of the second season, which made my Top 10 list for 2023 . That's a VERY minor level of disappointment, though. I'll just keep saying that Zahn McClarnon is giving one of TV's best performances and that the supporting cast remains top-notch. Deanna Allison has a boosted profile this year and the marriage between Joe and Emma Leaphorn is one of the small screen's finest. Jessica Matten keeps getting better and she demonstrates her ability to confidently hold down a plotline by herself. New faces include Jenna Elfman, solidly dramatic and non-distracting as an FBI agent whose investigation relates to the drama from last season. This is just a good, nuanced television page-turner and I hope the Netflix Effect has brought new eyeballs to Dark Winds. |
Havlicek Yourself Before You Havliwreck Yourself If you like the idea of a nine-hour documentary about the Boston Celtics — of which large chunks are dedicated to Bill Simmons and his dad sitting around remembering their favorite playoff games at the Boston Garden and recounting that one time Lil Bill was in the newspaper standing next to John "Hondo" Havlicek on crutches — then you'll probably enjoy HBO's Celtics City. If your response is "Oh, HELL no!" then you probably won't enjoy Celtics City . That was easy! I took in all of Lauren Stowell's series, now on Max, and frequently appreciated its efforts to parallel decades of the team's greatness and not-so-greatness with the complicated racial legacy of Boston. But because I've also watched recent and semi-recent documentaries on Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, the Lakers, the Lakers/Celtics rivalry and current NBA stars including Jayson Tatum, plus 30 for 30 docs on the Bad Boy Pistons, Len Bias, Bill Walton and more, I've seen essentially the same interviews and game-by-game clip recaps between three and five times apiece, and Stowell makes no effort at aesthetic or chronological variation. |
| | | Murdock, She Wrote I truly don't recall if I ever finished the third season of Daredevil, which concluded on Netflix back in 2018. The blind vigilante (Charlie Cox) and his zaftig nemesis (Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin) made their long-awaited return this week with Disney+'s Daredevil: Born Again. Did I actually miss them, though? As our Angie Han notes in her review, either Daredevil or Kingpin or both have made appearances in shows including Echo, Hawkeye, She-Hulk and, in vocal form, the recent Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. And yet where is Finn Jones' Iron Fist?!? Exactly where he belongs: nowhere. Anyway, I haven't viewed any of this new title, but Angie praises its lead performances and continuity with the earlier iterations, which I guess means that Disney/Marvel's decision to shoot one version of the series, scrap it and try again might have paid off? Perhaps when I've watched a few episodes I'll check back in for a future newsletter. |
A Morris Line As I wrote my review of Errol Morris' new Netflix documentary, CHAOS: The Manson Murders , it dawned on me that because of the power of the Netflix algorithm and Netflix subscribers' insatiable appetites for mass murder drivel (which is what the documentary is being promoted as, even though it's actually a somewhat muddled examination of how commonly accepted narratives take shape), it's likely to be Morris' most widely watched film ever, even if the people watching have no idea who Errol Morris is. So let's drive some eyeballs to other (mostly superior) Errol Morris works. If you're an AMC+ subscriber, you're in luck here, because the streamer has Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, Dr. Death and Vernon, Florida, which is a great starting point. The Fog of War is on Tubi, A Brief History of Time is on Max and Apple TV+ has his semi-recent The Pigeon Tunnel. Even though Separated, his last doc, was made for NBC News, it isn't streaming on Peacock currently. |
What Wii Do in the Shadows Critics were sent seven episodes of Hulu's Paradise, so my initial review was based on the season up to last week's "The Day," an ambitious and potent chapter that felt far more serious-minded than the watchably twisty thriller that preceded it. Would this week's finale follow in those ambitious footsteps or return to silliness? The latter! I hate to keep saying "silly," but without revealing the twist, there's no better way to describe the resolution of the season's big whodunnit mystery. I appreciated the brief window of insight into the predictably racist and classist origin story for Paradise, but most of what happened in the present day was kinda ridiculous, though I've liked Nicole Brydon Bloom's evolvingly weird performance as Agent Jane a lot. I'm surprised the cliffhangers for the already-ordered season two are less "shocking" and more "Yes, I've seen shows like this and I know what season two always looks like." Fine. One spoiler: You know what's a good slowed-down version of "Another Day in Paradise"? "Another Day in Paradise." |
'Major League' Need Not Apply It's a thin weekend for new streaming movies, so maybe it's a good time to make your way through THR's list the 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, ranked by Jordan Mintzer and timed to spring training and the release of the well-regarded Eephus. Several of the films on Jordan's list aren't streaming currently, but you can start with Eight Men Out (Tubi), Bull Durham (Tubi), A League of Their Own (Paramount+), Fear Strikes Out (Pluto TV) and The Pride of the Yankees (Amazon). And it's not MY list, so don't come crying to me about Field of Dreams and The Bad News Bears not making it! |
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