| | | | | | 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. |
Re: LX, Don’t Do It Super Bowl LX kicks off on Sunday afternoon at 6:30 p.m. ET from Santa Clara, California, though the pregame coverage is already almost two weeks in. Charlie Puth will sing the National Anthem, Brandi Carlile will handle “America the Beautiful” and, as you might have heard, Bad Bunny will be the halftime entertainment, seven days after his big night at the Grammys . And the main event? It’s the Patriots and Seahawks, a legacy sequel — none of the original actors are returning — to the all-time classic that was Super Bowl XLIX. I’m sensing only limited excitement about the matchup, which is odd given the 17-3 and 16-3 records, respectively, for the two teams. Both teams have strong defenses and offenses with explosive capabilities, so it really ought to be another close game. My hunch is that the Patriots are at LEAST two years ahead of schedule in getting to this game and this will be a learning experience, rather than a victory (though the same was true before the 2001 Super Bowl). My pick: 24-21 Seahawks. But I’m a TV critic, so don’t bet based on my recommendations. |
Not Great, Bobsled! It has been a tradition for the network airing the Super Bowl to use the time slot after the game to bring eyeballs to a heavily touted new show like Davis Rules, The John Larroquette Show or Extreme, starring James Brolin. NBC, however, will go straight from the Big Game to coverage of the Winter Olympics from Italy. (This is also, incidentally, what NBC did when it had the Super Bowl in 2022.) Milano Cortina 2026 started earlier in the week with curling, women’s hockey and several other sports, but the big opening ceremony took place on Friday evening in Italy and afternoon for much of the United States. I thought NBC finally got its streaming act together two years ago, making Peacock easy to use for catching almost any event, and I’ll be tuning in this weekend for the ice skating team event, some snowboarding and maybe a wee bit of luge. If you want all of the ice- and snow-based competition and none of the reality, you can check out such chilly favorites as Miracle (Disney+), The Cutting Edge (AMC+), Slap Shot (Amazon), Cool Runnings (Hulu) and Men with Brooms (The CW app, for some reason). |
| | | Quarterback in Black I tend to be wary of documentaries in which the subjects are executive producers, as well as sports documentaries produced by the official league being covered, but Peacock’s Field Generals: History of the Black Quarterback is solid stuff. I’ve seen all four episodes of the series, which dropped its first installment on Thursday, and it offers a fairly in-depth exploration of the NFL’s (NFL Films executive produced) embarrassingly racist history of excluding and repressing African Americans in the game’s most important position. The project effectively traces the intersection of prejudice and progress in the United States and on the field, with a smart assortment of historians and cultural critics. But its best features are the reflective and passionate interviews and portraits of underappreciated trailblazers like James “Shack” Harris (pictured) and Chuck Ealey, as well as later pioneers including Warren Moon, Doug Williams, Randall Cunningham and more. The last chapter, a little too accommodating of Michael Vick’s “issues” and lacking in a Colin Kaepernick section that feels necessary, is the weakest of the four. |
Say Yes to the Chess Is a chess a sport? Ordinarily, I’d say, “Maybe!” For the purposes of maintaining newsletter theme for one more entry, the answer is, “Yes!” Rory Kennedy (Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, Last Days in Vietnam) can be counted on for solid-not-remarkable documentaries, and his Queen of Chess, now on Netflix and perhaps the first Sundance 2026 premiere to hit streaming is… that. The story of Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, who dominated the women’s chess rankings for three decades and reached unprecedented heights for a female player, is a good one, and Kennedy benefits from participation from the entire Polgár family, as well as chess legend Garry Kasparov, who had a number of memorable matches with Judit, but it’s been shaped into a fairly shallow and conventional character study. While it’s engaging throughout, Kennedy never finds a way to illustrate the chess playing in a way that’s memorable or informative. It’s a lot of prettily shot, bland reenactments of hands moving on chess pieces, without getting inside the head of any of the players. If you watch Queen of Chess, I guarantee that Netflix will recommend Queen’s Gambit to you and, well, it’s much better. Once you’re in the mood, I can also recommend Searching for Bobby Fischer on Paramount+ and Queen of Katwe on Disney+. |
Caped Crew Seder It doesn’t fit with my sports theme (though it does include several of the same talking heads as Field Generals), but the best thing premiering this week is PBS’ four-part Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History , which premiered its first episode, available OnDemand now, on Tuesday. Hosted by Henry Louis “One Day We’ll Be Friendly Enough That I Can Call Him Skip” Gates Jr., the series goes reasonably deep on the intensely collaborative and often divisive relationship between Black and Jewish Americans over 400 years of domestic history. Its even-handedness means that it’s a safe guarantee that anybody with a personal stake will think it occasionally leans a hair too far in one direction or the other when it comes to the myriad divisions, and is sure to feel like SOME data point has been excluded. In the balance, though, I thought the series was compassionate, clear-eyed and valuable. |
Gettin’ Piggy Wit It ABC/Disney+’s The Muppet Show special, which aired this week and is now streaming, isn’t perfect, but most of its problems stem from the multi-decade refusal to let the Muppets be Muppets on The Muppet Show. Its comic muscles are a little atrophied. Still, Sabrina Carpenter is perfect, and the Muppets themselves? Also perfect. My review goes through just a few of the instantly failed series that the Muppets team attempted rather than reviving The Muppet Show and … this is where the Muppets belong — on the stage, behind the scenes, in the balcony with Statler and Waldorf. Several younger generations deserve to feel the swell of joy that comes from the opening notes of the Muppet Show theme. |
| | | |
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site