| | | | 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. |
I Like Big Bots Because of the openness of Martha Wells' writing, the lethal and disaffected title hero of The Murderbot Diaries has been read as a sci-fi metaphor for autism, asexuality and more. Me, I look at Murderbot, who feels more pressure to get through his queue of prestige streaming content than to monitor the humans he's supposed to protect, as a deadlier version of a television critic. Hunkier, too, as played by Alexander Skarsgard in a droll version of the character that worked for me despite having no connection to the Murderbot I imagined from the books. I wish creators Chris and Paul Weitz's interpretation of the property's overall tone worked as well as Skarsgard's performance. In the book, the humor comes from Murderbot's perspective on the fairly serious events at hand, while in the Apple TV+ show, Murderbot's perspective is a comic capper on a story that's already straining for comedy. |
I Was So Much Older Then, I'm Younger Than That Now My parents want me to point out that when I was a wee child, my mother drove a baby blue Plymouth Duster, because she was (and is) as much of a badass as Josh Holloway in J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan's new Max drama, Duster, a pulpy, R-rated Hot Wheels series that plays like a slightly over-polished version of the genre fare Cinemax was producing a decade ago. It's a fine star vehicle for Rachel Hilson, Keith David and Holloway, even if the Lost vet is playing a character between 15 and 20 years younger than his actual age. And speaking of implausible age-based casting … Well-regarded millennial content producer Benito Skinner makes his TV-creating debut as a Zoomer college freshman in Amazon's Overcompensating, a funny and big-hearted coming-of-age coming-out comedy that doesn't do anything revolutionary, but absolutely filled that Sex Lives of College Girls-shaped hole in my heart (it's a congenital defect). |
| | | A.F.C. See You Real Soon! An enthusiastic "Welcome back!" to FX's Welcome to Wrexham, which came in at No. 4 in my Top 10 list last year . My favorite thing about the it has always been its ability to blend laughter, tears and sports hijinks and I'll admit that the opening of the new season isn't as funny or emotionally rich as the show at its peak. What the docuseries has to do, over nearly two full episodes, is realign expectations to explain why, despite the influx of money and visibility provided by co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, it's still OK to look at Wrexham A.F.C. as an underdog as they enter the increasingly competitive League 1. In that respect, even though I haven't cried yet this season, these episodes were fascinating, going deeper into English football budgeting and the logistics of Welsh urban renewal than I was expecting. I love this show, even if Wrexham's football performance has become so newsworthy that there will be few surprises. (In response to last week's newsletter speculation: Yes, Blake Lively appears briefly.) |
Maximum Segura-ty Sometimes it takes months or even years before television is able to catch up with the real-world zeitgeist. But this has been quite the spring for air travel, and specifically for television meditations on pilots, co-pilots and their relationship to the passenger experience. Nathan Fielder, very much ahead of this curve, dedicated a full season of HBO’s The Rehearsal to a frequently dazzling examination of what catastrophes could be avoided if pilots and co-pilots communicated better. The Spain episode of Max's Conan O'Brien Must Go found Conan and a pilot who can only be described as Spanish Nathan Fielder having awkward interactions, with Conan even wearing a Sully mustache. And as for what Tom Segura's Bad Thoughts , new on Netflix this week, reveals about what goes down in the cockpit … well … it's gross! Bad Thoughts is a Segura-fied version of I Think You Should Leave or Key & Peele or any sketch show built around the sensibility of a single star, and if you know Segura's comedy, you probably won't be surprised to know that lots of bodily fluids, gross sex acts and still grosser sex acts are involved. It doesn't all work and, once you know Segura's material, it's odd how predictable his version of what's "extreme" quickly becomes. But to quote our Angie Han, "You can't accuse the guy of not committing to a bit." |
Honoring Robert Benton Robert Benton, who directed three actors to Oscar wins and won three Oscars himself, died this week at 92. Over a career that spanned five decades, Benton progressed from co-writer of the counterculture classic Bonnie and Clyde to one of Hollywood's most respected directors of the sort of mature, mid-budget dramas for grown-ups that they don't make anymore. Benton's output is all over the streaming landscape, but one could start with his writing efforts including Bonnie and Clyde (WatchTCM), the hilarious What's Up, Doc? (Tubi) and Richard Donner's Superman (Max), before checking out Kramer vs. Kramer (Roku Channel), for which Benton won writing and directing Oscars, Places in the Heart (Tubi) and the wonderful Nobody's Fool (Kanopy). |
Honoring Joe Don Baker Best known by younger viewers as a consummate blustery character actor and to somewhat older viewers as a wonderfully unlikely leading man in the '70s and '80s, Joe Don Baker died this week at 89. Oddly, the latter segment of his career is better represented on streaming than the more recent films, since Fletch, The Natural and both of his James Bond films are between homes (many are rentable). You can, however, watch Walking Tall on Plex and Mitchell (and its iconic MST3K episode) on Tubi. |
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