| | | | | | 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. |
O’Brien’s Song The 98th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, which is sure to come as a surprise to Adrien Brody, who is still giving his acceptance speech for The Brutalist. I kid. He finished his speech in time to shoot that TurboTax commercial. Conan O’Brien will return as host and I had to look back at my review of last year’s telecast to remember that I mostly thought he did pretty well. Medium-Hot Take: Conan should have been nominated for an Oscar this year for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (streaming on HBO Max and my favorite movie of last year). As usual, the ceremony is scheduled to run for 17 hours, with musical performances celebrating Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters, but the thing I’m most curious about is what Matt Berry will be able to contribute as the night’s announcer. (Be sure to read Mikey O’Connell’s interview with Conan.) |
‘Sinners’? I Hardly Even Know Hers! A month ago, it looked like the Oscar race was going to be a One Battle After Another rout, which made it very easy to prepare for Sunday, but several precursor awards have now made it a two-horse race between Paul Thomas Anderson’s father-daughter epic and Sinners. I'm fine with that, since I liked both movies and I like competitive things, as is HBO Max, streaming home for both films. Jessie Buckley is an inevitable winner for Hamnet (streaming on Peacock), though I’d go with Rose Byrne. Best actor appears to be coming down to the charging Michael B. Jordan for Sinners and foot-in-mouth Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme (only available for rental). If you just make sure you’ve seen Sinners and One Battle After Another , you’ll probably have seen the supporting actor and actress winners, though don’t overlook Amy Madigan for Weapons, another HBO Max option. Check out our Scott Feinberg and David Rooney’s takes on what should and will win on Sunday night. |
| | | You On Point, Pfeiffer? March seems to be Michelle Pfeiffer Month on streaming TV, which raises a key question: Why isn’t every month Michelle Pfeiffer Month? Apple’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which our Angie Han quite enjoyed, premiered at SXSW this week, but won’t actually hit Apple until next month, while Paramount+’s The Madison requires you to sit through Taylor Sheridan’s anti-New York City ramblings just to get to Pfeiffer’s emotionally raw performance. So what can we stream from Pfeiffer’s exceptional cinematic résumé? Of her three Oscar nominated roles, only Love Field is conveniently streaming, alongside The Age of Innocence, Married to the Mob (she deserved nominations for both) and Ladyhawke (Young Dan loved Ladyhawke and probably thinks she deserved an Oscar nomination for it). Batman Returns is on HBO Max and how the heck wasn’t she nominated for an Oscar for her Catwoman? Also, feel free to revisit Dangerous Minds (Amazon) and What Lies Beneath (Paramount+). |
The Secret Life of Scar-Pets-a You know my biggest problem with brilliant medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in both Patricia Cornwell’s novels and Amazon’s long-overdue series adaptation? She doesn’t have enough pun-based catchphrases. Every time she solves a crime, Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman on Amazon, very much not Nicole Kidman on the page) should give the audience a thumbs up and say, “Scarpetterrific!” Every time she makes a mistake, there should be a sad-trombone sound effect and she should lament, “Hoisted by my own Scarpettard!” Perhaps Amazon will take my note for season two, since I assume there’s a big enough audience built over four decades and 29 books to at least get a renewal, which is good because the finale ends on a cliffhanger that I at least want to see resolved. As for the rest of the series? Well, let’s just say Amazon has one particularly strong brand — adaptations of prolific novel series that you can buy on Amazon — and that Scarpetta is worse than Bosch, less entertaining than Reacher, less bluntly effective than Jack Ryan — and Nicole Kidman is, while fine, a less compelling lead than Aldis Hodge in Cross . But it has some effective moments (and some silly moments that are entertaining in their dumbness). |
It’s Easy When You’re Big in Spray-Tan If you’re a fan of capitalism-tweaking, violent dark comedies than you’ve already watched Peacock’s Killing It and Hulu’s Deli Boys, and if you’ve already watched Killing It and Deli Boys, check out Hulu’s Sunny Nights . The Australian comedy stars Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden as American siblings pitching a new spray-tan product to the Sydney audience, only to run afoul of some vicious gangsters. It’s silly, surprising and effectively dark, and while both stars are great, the whole ensemble shines, including Rachel House as the most vicious of the gangsters, former rugby star Will Mason as a former rugby star turned enforcer, and Megan Wilding as an animal control specialist who dreams of becoming a journalist. |
Spare Me Premiering on Monday, with A24 and Ben Stiller among its producers, the five-part HBO series Born to Bowl is a reminder of how often the success of sports documentaries is tied to the success of their selected subjects. Directors James Lee Hernandez & Brian Lazarte follow five participants on the professional bowling tour over the course of a season, and while they picked four high-personality bowlers (Kyle Troup, Anthony “Simo” Simonsen, Cameron “Not the Director” Crowe and Jason “Belmo” Belmonte) and the sport’s leading figure (EJ Tackett, who loves Dr. Pepper), an arc for the season never emerges. Still, the series is a good mixture of informative details for amateur rollers, delightfully droll narration from Liev Schreiber, amusingly edited clip packages from various bowling moments in culture, and lots and lots and lots of jokes about balls and ball sacks. Plus, who doesn’t have room in their life for a show that’s only five half-hour episodes? |
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