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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.
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Only Gadd Can Judge Me
No, Richard Gadd’s Half Man is not, in fact, a Chuck Lorre-produced sitcom focused exclusively on Angus T. Jones’ Jake Harper. Gadd’s Baby Reindeer follow-up is the story two sorta kinda stepbrothers at different phases in their lives — Jamie Bell & Mitchell Robertson and Gadd & Stuart Campbell — coming to terms with shared toxicity, trauma and the struggles of masculinity. The series features a lot of shouting, a lot of crying and a lot of abuse (emotional and physical, sexual and psychological). It is, in general, A LOT. At six episodes, some over an hour, Half Man is exhausting television and while nobody will accuse Gadd of not having big ideas on his agenda, I found most of those ideas worked better as protracted drama — Gadd has theatrical experience and Sam Shepard is a pretty obvious influence — than convincing character arcing. Some viewers will absolutely find the series devastating and there’s no question that the performances are intense and fully committed — Gadd might be too good, actually, given that his character seems too fearsome and mesmerizing to match the rest of the show — but I thought it was mostly tiring.
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The Forage of Innocence
I doubt Netflix did this intentionally, but This Is a Gardening Show is flawless counter programming to the unrelenting fervor of HBO’s Half Man . Hosted by Zach Galifianakis, who is apparently an avid gardener, it’s a sweet, funny, appealingly restorative series boasting six episodes which, at barely more than 15 minutes apiece, never overstay their welcome and even, if you’re paying attention, offer helpful kernels of knowledge about how and why, as Galifianakis puts it repeatedly, the future is agrarian. The low-key delight was filmed largely in Vancouver Island, BC and it isn’t just Galifianakis who has never been looser and more effortlessly charming. He’s also hobnobbing with a revolving cast of local children and farmers, learning valuable lessons about foraging — mostly “Don’t do it if you don’t have proper training!” — and composting and the techniques necessary to raise corn, tomatoes and root vegetables. Again, none of this sounds inherently thrilling and I guess it isn’t exactly “thrilling,” but it’s simple, nourishing, says exactly what’s on its mind and puts a smile on your face that rarely leaves. And check out Mikey O'Connell's chat with Galifianakis.
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Glaser Burn
Between her increasingly assured work as host of the past two Golden Globes telecasts and her relatively sedate 2024 HBO special Someday You’ll Die, there had been evidence that as she approached and passed 40, Nikki Glaser was maturing and seemingly toning down the raunch. Just a bit. Or maybe she was just saving herself for Hulu? The 57-minute Good Girl starts off innocently enough, with cheeky material about spray tanning — not what you’re thinking — and why she’s looking forward to getting a face lift, but midway through, Glaser starts talking about the type of porn she’s watching these days and… let’s just say that things escalate, including the explanation for the special’s title. There’s a solid five+ minutes that Glaser spends discussing the current state of her vagina that probably won’t make for a good conversation starter for any families watching Good Girl together and none of that prompts Glaser’s confession, "It's the worst joke I've ever told. It's the worst thing I've ever thought." It says a lot about Glaser’s body of work that I’m not even sure she’s correct.
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Kitten on the Wind
I made it through three episodes of Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 before I was crushed by the weight of its pointlessness. I was perplexed by the animation, which occasionally makes the young protagonists look identical to the actors from the live-action series and occasionally nothing like them, which I guess matches that some of the new vocal stars are trying desperately to mimic their live-action equivalents and others are not. More frustrating, though, is how the story being told here simply cannot be important, because if it were, the Duffer Brothers would have included it in the actual series so it’s like, “Here, have some colorful filler with a fun soundtrack!” As our Angie Han observes, it’s mostly for fanatical completists. I did a bit better with Amazon’s Kevin , from creators Aubrey Plaza and Joe Wengert, making it through six episodes before I ran out of time. The animation is, by animal-driven adult cartoon standards, decidedly lackluster and I’m just not invested enough in all things feline to know if they got the behavioral details right, but I laughed repeatedly at Aparna Nancherla’s amusingly sickly and unhinged Judy, Amy Sedaris’ catty Shih Tzu and the oddness of John Waters voicing a Persian cat so furry he made me sneeze. There are some very specific and deranged references — I especially liked the nods to Shelly Miscavige and Plaza’s work in Happiest Season — and Angie promises it gets better as it goes.
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Theron Is Carin’
With the Old Guard films and Carry-On, Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton have accumulated a solid resumé of Netflix originals, so it isn’t surprising to see them joining forces, apparently successfully, on this weekend’s Apex for the streamer. Our David Rooney calls the Australian-set thriller, from director Baltasar Kormákur, a “taut nail-biter,” adding that it’s “well-acted, crafted with skill and briskly paced” and with a running time of 95 minutes, I’m not sure I require anything more than that. The premise sounds a lot like Curtis Hanson’s The River Wild and since that Meryl Streep whitewater drama isn’t streaming anywhere, Apex will have to do! Also, there aren’t any other new-to-streaming features this weekend, so what else are you going to do at midnight on Friday when you’re trying to unspool your brain after an arduous week? Read a book? Sleep? Apex will have to do!
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Honoring Dean Tavoularis
Think back on the Corleone compound in The Godfather, the evocation of turn-of-the-century Little Italy in The Godfather Part II, the French plantation and jungle ruins in Apocalypse Now, the impoverished Great Depression settings of Bonnie and Clyde. As art director and the production designer, Dean Tavoularis helped create some of the most memorable environments in all of cinema. Tavoularis died this week at 93, setting curious viewers up for some exceptional viewing this weekend. Bonnie and Clyde and Apocalypse Now are, unfortunately, between streaming homes at the moment, but the Godfather trilogy is on Paramount+ and you can watch other Tavoularis/Coppola collaborations including The Conversation (Amazon), One from the Heart (Tubi, Kanopy), Rumble Fish (Amazon) and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Kanopy).
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