14 Best Releases From Peacock Network
Apples Never Fall
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jewels, M*A*S*H, More than Blue: The Series, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, The 4400, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Shining, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
The expression, “The book was better,” has become a truism in adaptation, an assumption where the few exceptions only prove the rule. But what’s a creator to do when the source material is deeply flawed?
If you’re Apples Never Fall creator Melanie Marnich, you make several cosmetic changes to Liane Moriarty’s novel. The drama moves from Australia to West Palm Beach. The four Delaney children—Troy (Jake Lacy), Brooke (Essie Randles), Amy (Alison Brie), and Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner)—are no longer uniformly tall and olive-skinned. Quite the opposite, really, on the skin tone front. Relationships are shuffled a bit. Unfortunately, these changes fail to elevate the series.
The broad strokes of the plot itself are intriguing. The Delaney parents Joy (Annette Bening) and Stan (Sam Neill) have finally retired from a lifetime of running a tennis center, including their own stints as players and coaches. Rather than a delightful occasion, it churns up all manner of unprocessed relationship issues. Stan is cantankerous and competitive, oscillating between diminishing everyone around him with words and beating them all over the court. Joy, on the other hand, expected to spend her golden years catching up with her children, who lack the time or interest in doing the same. Continue Reading →
The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!
NetworkPeacock,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Batfink, Family Guy, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tales from the Crypt, The Wallflower, Thunderbirds,
StarringJ. Smith-Cameron,
Peacock’s claymation sitcom is at its best when it skips the satire for the strange, but “best” is grading on a curve.
To its credit, In The Know resists dropping the term “woke” to describe its characters. Unfortunately, in a fairly disastrous opener, that’s the only “those silly sensitive liberals” signifier it lets go past. The premiere’s big joke, one it repeats OFTEN, centers on the proper terminology for someone without a place to live. Because, of course, it's a goofy waste of time to worry about language. Only Zach Woods’ ever-increasing profane frustration at being corrected by Fabian (Caitlin Reilly) saves the bit. His voice performance as “NPR’s third most popular host” Lauren Caspian is just sly enough to make it unclear if his anger comes from his inability to remember the correct term, someone having the nerve to interrupt him, or the thought that someone in the office might be more progressive than him.
It isn’t that mocking blowhard radio hosts can’t be a rich comic vein. Just check out the original Frasier series, a show with a strangely intense cross-generational appeal that persists even over 19 years after the final episode aired. It’s centering that mockery on NPR, particularly an NPR that has more in common with a conservative’s fever dream of what the company is like rather than anything resembling reality, feels like a weak tea. Fortunately, things improve for In The Know as it quickly moves beyond what initially seems like an exercise in sticking it to those caricatures of public radio employees. Continue Reading →
Twisted Metal
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarFate/Zero, Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Sonic the Hedgehog,
Through the haze of nostalgia, someone might find themselves thinking, “I remember Twisted Metal being a fun video game. I don’t remember there being a story to it though.” If that’s you, good news: your brain is not playing tricks on you. While the series gained complexity over time and each character took on backstory and better-defined goals, the on-screen experience essentially boiled down to a demolition derby in which the victor received an ironic fulfillment of their biggest wish. Continue Reading →
Based on a True Story
SimilarBates Motel, I Love Lucy,
Delia, oh, Delia, Delia all my life/If I hadn't have shot poor Delia/I'd have had her for my wife/Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone." Continue Reading →
Mrs. Davis
NetworkPeacock,
Watch afterBEEF Citadel, Fleabag, Good Omens, South Park, Tulsa King, Twisted Metal,
Betty Gilpin is a dramatic arts treasure. Capable of ringing tears or laughs out of any situation she deserves all her flowers and more. She is so good, her portrayal of Sister Simone nearly pulls Mrs. Davis across into great television. Continue Reading →
Paul T. Goldman
Paul T. Goldman isn’t funny, per se. Like its titular lead subject (real name Paul Finkelman), there’s an awkwardness that will leave all but the least sympathetically embarrassed feeling itchy. It is frequently strange. It’s perplexingly over the top and all over the place. It rings out laughs, but most are distinctively of the “too awkward to do anything but giggle” variety. So, no, not especially funny. Continue Reading →
Irreverent
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarLupin,
Paolo (Colin Donnell), a mob fixer, is used to being the smartest person in the room. However, sometimes even the most intelligent guy makes dumb decisions. For Paolo, that begins with killing a mob boss’s son to save his own life. Then he makes that worse by going on the run with the boss’s money. But he's not done yet. Next up, he gets robbed by, of all people, a depressed Reverend, Mackenzie Boyd (P.J. Byrne), who decides to live it up on Paolo’s dime. Finally, he completes the progression of bad ideas by taking Boyd’s new job in the small town of oceanside town of Clump. There, he reasons, he can finally regain control of his life's wreckage. Continue Reading →
Angelyne
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarBates Motel, Unforgettable,
Angelyne, the enigmatic blonde bombshell whose likeness once dominated over 200 billboards all across Los Angeles in the 1980s, has only ever been promoting one thing: herself. With a mountain of platinum locks atop her head and a chest of truly unearthly proportions, she had the entire city asking who is Angelyne? But creator Nancy Oliver (True Blood, Six Feet Under) and showrunner Allison Miller's (Brave New World) new miniseries argues that that’s the wrong question entirely. Instead, the real question is, what is Angelyne? What does she represent to herself, the city, and celebrity culture in general? Continue Reading →
Bel-Air
Over the course of the first three episodes of Bel-Air—Peacock's downbeat reimagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a modern, self-serious prestige-adjacent drama flipping the script on the original comedy's inherently sulky premise—new kid on the block Will Smith (played with smooth-as-ever charm by Jabari Banks) plays basketball, dodges a gang hit, and contends with an obnoxious cousin who is seemingly his complete opposite. So is this dramatization really all that different from the culturally-defining '90s sitcom? The answer, like the show itself, is complicated. Continue Reading →
True Story with Ed & Randall
Before the Chicago improv theater, iO, closed from the pandemic in the summer of 2020, they used to play a game called “The Dream” during shows. An audience volunteer (usually tipsy) would walk on stage and an interviewer would ask them about their day in detail. The cast of the show, listening intently from downstage, would then recreate their day, beat by beat, with heightened physicality and bits. Most nights it was barely watchable, but if anyone saw it and thought, “This should be a TV show,” then Peacock's got the show for them. Continue Reading →
One of Us Is Lying
There has been something of a teen thriller renaissance of late. Shows like Cruel Summer, The Wilds, Panic, and Outer Banks have mined the teen streaming audience to deliver stories that all had at least something about them worth watching. Joining the fold this week is Peacock’s One of Us Is Lying, an adaptation of the Karen McManus book of the same name. Continue Reading →
Dr. Death
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarAre You Afraid of the Dark?, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Dr. Death borrows its tantalizing title from the Wondery podcast, which similarly breaks down a harrowing true story about a neurosurgeon who — for whatever reason — keeps killing or permanently harming his patients on the operating table. Continue Reading →
Girls5eva
StarringRenée Elise Goldsberry,
NBC’s streaming app Peacock plays a strong hand in the nostalgia game. It’s the streaming home of The Office. It’s rebooted sitcom classics like Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster. Adding to the nostalgia trip is its new original comedy Girls5eva. Created by Meredith Scardino and executive produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, Girls5eva might first look like pure bubblegum pop fluff, but it digs deeper as a comedic exploration of pop music’s problematic past. Continue Reading →
Rutherford Falls
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarEcho, Son of the Morning Star,
Michael Schur’s no stranger to centering television sitcoms around complex topics. There’s the inner workings of local government in Parks and Recreation, the chaos and philosophy of the afterlife in The Good Place, and now America’s problematic past in the Peacock original Rutherford Falls. Co-created by Schur, Ed Helms, and Sierra Teller Ornelas, Rutherford Falls is the funny wake-up call we need. Continue Reading →