The Big Door Prize
SimilarKONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, M*A*S*H, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Roswell Tales from the Neverending Story, The Shining, The Strain, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles,
Watch afterDexter: New Blood, Severance,
Silo The Night Agent,
StarringJosh Segarra,
In Season 1, The Big Door Prize felt like a cracked mirror version of a small-town Stephen King story. When the Morpho Machine—a device that spits out a card revealing the user’s “potential”—arrives in Deerfield, it does indeed disrupt life. However, most Deerfield residents are nice. Or, at least, they're not mean in the “could be tempted by Randall Flagg or Leland Gaunt” way. As a result, the disruptions were more of a “the principal buys a motorcycle” and “that dad grieving the death of his son declares himself sheriff without ever abusing power.” No escalating series of pranks culminating in out-and-out bloodshed or betraying one’s former friends to the dark embodiment of evil found here.
For those expecting The Big Door Prize Season 2 to start stacking the bodies like cordwood, I have bad news. It keeps the King’s small-town vibes without wandering into King’s “the secrets we keep will literally tear us apart” territory. Opening moments after Season 1’s end, the Morpho machine has stopped spitting out cards, instead offering the town folk a move to the next level. While the result is, essentially, yet another projective test, the results bring a distinctly different flavor to the mix. While the series retains a certain goofiness, it also gains a sadder complexity. The longer we look at the characters, the more forced their good-time silliness becomes. Instead of the exception, Season 1's Father Reuben (Damon Gupton) centric fourth episode feels more like Season 2’s template.
Mary Holland and Josh Segarra nail the couples' costumes category. (AppleTV+)
To find that tone, the series does reshuffle its character decks. Many of the students we met last year are nowhere to be seen, for instance. New characters are introduced, including a music teacher played by Justine Lupe. Others, like Cass’s (Gabrielle Dennis) best friend Nat (Mary Holland), get a much bigger spotlight. The overall result gives the series a stronger ensemble feel, even if it is not necessarily without downsides. Continue Reading →
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, 2Moons: The Series, Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, Animated Classics of Japanese Literature, Astro Boy, Dexter, Fallen, Fate/Apocrypha, Fearless, Game of Thrones, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gossip Girl,
Hilda Furacão House of Cards, Jewels,
Little Women Monarch of the Glen, Mr. Mercedes, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Sherlock Holmes Super Pumped, The Alienist, The Buccaneers, The Moon Embracing the Sun, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, Tientsin Mystic,
StudioHyperobject Industries,
There’s no denying Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty remains entertaining in its second season. There’s no denying that its panoply of digital tricks holds the viewer’s attention, whether what’s on-screen is a scrimmage gone awry or a father meeting his child for the first time. But does that mean it’s good? Continue Reading →
Yellowjackets
NetworkShowtime,
SimilarConstellation, Cruel Summer, From, Luther, Sonny Boy,
StudioShowtime Networks,
Season one of Showtime's surprise hit Yellowjackets left us with as many questions as it answered. With the show's sophomore season—launching this week—creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson take us deeper into their strange, terrifying wonderland, doling out mystery, horror, humor, and some exquisite needle drops. Prepare for a Tori Amos renaissance in the vein of Kate Bush's success on Stranger Things 4. Continue Reading →
Mayor of Kingstown
SimilarBaywatch Nights, Mirai Sentai Timeranger, Narco-Saints,
StudioMTV Entertainment Studios,
When last we left Kingstown, MI, the town was recovering from a brutal prison riot that left plenty of guards and scores of prisoners dead. Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) has proven nowhere near the adept fixer his deceased brother (Kyle Chandler) was. The town paid the price. Continue Reading →
Moonhaven
NetworkAMC+,
SimilarSonny Boy,
What is it about living through cataclysmic times that makes us crave apocalyptic entertainment? Are we just clinging to the hope that humanity gets plucky and figures shit out before it’s too late? AMC’s new sci-fi adventure Moonhaven, an uneven but…well, plucky creation of Peter Ocko tries to answer just that. Set some 200 years in the future, Moonhaven shows humanity at two very divergent stages. While things like climate change, war, famine, and plagues continue to rage on unchecked on the Earth, it’s forever Opposite Day on the Moon, where a small chunk of humanity has been living under the protective eye of IO, an artificial intelligence tasked with helping those people fix Earth, somehow. Continue Reading →
The Flight Attendant
NetworkHBO Max,
SimilarAround the World in 80 Days, Helltown, No Escape, Santa Evita, The Summer I Turned Pretty,
It’s been over a year since we saw Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) at the beginning of her sobriety, coming to terms with how the trauma and legacies of her childhood shaped her. As season two begins, we get the rundown on how that’s been going via her AA sharing. Now based in Los Angeles, Cassie is healthy, in a relationship with smoking hot photographer Marco (Santiago Cabrera). She's also still working as an international first-class flight attendant with an unspecified side hustle that definitely isn’t working with the CIA, wink. Continue Reading →
Landscapers
There’s a sort of inflationary issue in the True Crime genre these days. This presents an immediate hurdle to HBO’s new “based on a true story” limited series Landscapers. Continue Reading →
Dexter
NetworkShowtime,
StudioShowtime Networks,
It is difficult to imagine the people who, after Dexter’s largely despised series finale, felt that more Dexter would solve the problem. When you recall the last season of Dexter was also largely despised, it becomes even more challenging. Add in that, for many, the writing on the wall started even earlier, and it becomes damn near impossible. And yet, here is Dexter: New Blood. Continue Reading →
Invasion
Invasion, Apple TV+’s newest foray into sci-fi television, follows “ordinary” people around the world as an alien force, well, invades. Created by Simon Kinberg (who writes and directs several episodes) and David Weil (who also created Amazon’s Hunters), Invasion is an engaging slow-burn of a thriller series, building character and atmosphere with the ever-looming threat of an unforeseen enemy. Continue Reading →
The Pale Horse
Amazon's adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery keeps the author's innate spirit for intrigue.
The dreary insistence of death permeates every fiber of The Pale Horse, a new mystery miniseries from BBC arriving on Amazon Prime Video this Friday the 13th, if you dare. Composed of just two hour-long episodes, The Pale Horse is a loose adaptation of the 1961 detective novel by Agatha Christie, one of her final works. To adapt the story’s complex web of intriguingly dark characters, Sarah Phelps (EastEnders) innovates the material through clever addition and subtraction, while maintaining the harrowing spirit of Christie’s pen.
Set in 1960s London, The Pale Horse follows the stoic Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell), a rich antique dealer whose wife Delphine (Georgina Campbell) tragically died a year prior. Though she haunts Mark at seemingly every moment he’s not awake, the aging socialite has already taken in a new young wife, Hermia (Kaya Scodelario), who appears to have a more violent temperament hidden beneath her cold, pristine exterior.
It’s not long before a string of coincidental deaths and unexplainable occurrences begin to take shape all around Easterbrook. The woman he’s been cheating with dies mysteriously and suddenly in her sleep and the seemingly unrelated death of a shopkeeper turns up a list in her possession with his name on it. Bewildered by the stink of death all over him and now his world of friends and acquaintances, Easterbrook sets out on a personal investigation to discover what’s really happening, all while being hounded by the unrelenting Inspector Lejeune (Sean Pertwee). Continue Reading →