| | | | | | 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. |
Duffer the Little Children After more than nine years, five seasons and only 42 episodes — the first season of I Love Lucy packed 35 episodes into eight months, though I’ll admit that its demogorgon effects were primitive — Netflix’s Stranger Things is over. The 128-minute finale (longer than 46 winners of the best picture Oscar) occupied New Year’s Eve for your friendly neighborhood television-centric journalists, so here’s what Angie Han and I had to say about what hopefully will be our last time ever needing to hear the name “Vecna.” Oh, and if you have burning questions about the finale, perhaps they’re answered in Jackie Strause’s interview with the Duffer Brothers. |
‘Doc’ to Ya, Girl Premiering on Fox on Sunday, Best Medicine isn’t a great show, but it’s fine! I don’t think that the ITV original, Doc Martin (available partially on Pluto TV), is a GREAT show either. But it’s fine! Basically, Best Medicine is House meets Northern Exposure, without the scalpel precision of the former or the loopy nuance of the latter, but it’s a warmly accessible fish-out-of-water medical drama featuring an appropriately sour — he’s practically impersonating Martin Clunes, which is a little odd — Josh Charles and the always luminous Abigail Spencer in lead roles. Even though Angie was writing our review, I watched all four episodes Fox sent out and got occasional amusement and hints of heart from the proceedings. The series has very little depth and it repeats the same basic arcs over and over, but Fox is welcome to either “It’s fine!” or “I don’t resent the existence of this show!” for blurbing purposes. |
| | | Gervais, The Final Frontier If you're wondering if Netflix's new Ricky Gervais comedy special, titled Mortality because it’s a thing that’s discussed for 30 seconds, finds Gervais moving past his self-appointed status as persecuted warrior for free speech to find anything new to comment upon regarding the modern world … No. No, it does not. Almost the opposite, as he wades backwards in the discourse to announce his determination to reclaim the word "gammon," a bit of British slang directed at out-of-touch white people that had a controversial moment in the U.K. literally seven years ago. It’s as edgy as his jokes about annoying people in first class. And it isn't like Gervais isn't, on some level, aware of his own hypocrisy. He begins by proudly using the r-word and declaring the difference between “saying” a word and “using” it, but later in the special, in a similar example, he just refers to “the n-word.” Naturally, the Netflix algorithm wanted to funnel me directly from Mortality into the freshly released Dave Chappelle special, but I recommend denying Netflix that pleasure and going to Hulu to watch Kumail Nanjiani's Night Thoughts, an impeccably arced hour that goes from his decorative musculature to his beloved cat to the value of therapy, without ever mentioning the importance of free speech. Instead, Nanjiani just delivers laughter, peppered with a few perceptive observations about mental well-being and masculinity, disproving my theory that it's impossible to be able to do both a pull-up and standup comedy. |
Arsenic and Old Chase Marina Zenovich’s I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, which premiered on Thursday on CNN and is now available on CNN streaming/demand platforms, begins with the proposition that the two things you know about Chevy Chase are that he was a huge star and he has been, at times, a bit of an asshole. Then it tries to at least complicate, without excusing, the latter. Given that Chevy Chase was kinda the Tubi of movie stars — I don’t know what that means either, but I’m sticking to it — might I suggest celebrating his legacy by watching Spies Like Us, ¡Three Amigos!, Deal of the Century, Nothing But Trouble, Funny Farm and Funny Money on Hulu? |
Remembering Brigitte Bardot You have to take the totality of Brigitte Bardot, who died this week at 91, into account. She was a screen icon of a short-lived and very particular type, but an absolute icon regardless. She was an activist for animal rights causes, which we generally accept as a pretty good thing. And she was a supporter of far-right French politicians and a public figure prone to overtly homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric. All are true. I still think Godard's Contempt is a masterpiece and it's on Tubi, along with The Girl in the Bikini and Nero’s Weekend. You can also watch … And God Created Woman on HBO Max or Criterion Channel. |
Honoring Isiah Whitlock Jr. When beloved character actor Isiah Whitlock Jr. died this week, countless people greeted the news with the catchphrase frequently uttered by Whitlock’s ethically challenged politician from The Wire: Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit . This is the rare example in which an actor’s most famous line was both a respectful and an appropriate reaction to their passing. Clay Davis, of course, was far more than just a prolonged obscenity, developing into one of the best characters on one of the best shows ever made (streaming on HBO Max), while Whitlock was, of course, more than just The Wire. Whitlock was a regular collaborator with Spike Lee — Da 5 Bloods, on Netflix, offers a hint of what he could have done with more frequent high profile movie roles — and had key supporting roles in the series Your Honor and The Residence, which are both on Netflix. |
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