The Morning Show
SimilarGossip Girl, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Off Centre, Tarzan, Taxi, The Alienist, The Beat, The Strain,
StarringJon Hamm,
Aaron Sorkin learned the hard way that no one takes TV as seriously as TV people. When he followed up his critically acclaimed The West Wing, a show about the inner workings of the White House, with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip he discovered that you can’t treat everything with the gravity of a cabinet meeting and the wit of a theater major who gets straight Bs. His backstage drama about a fake sketch show pleased no one. When he tried to course correct with The Newsroom he tried to portray the American news media out to be brave warriors for the cause of truth. Both shows have lived rich second lives as meme generators about what Andrew Sarris would call "strained seriousness." Continue Reading →
Extrapolations
SimilarMurder Most Horrid, Pope John Paul II, Santa Evita, The Gold Robbers, Three Days of Christmas, White House Plumbers,
Watch afterCitadel, Severance, Succession,
Ted Lasso The Big Bang Theory, The Night Agent,
Much of the pre-release buzz about AppleTV+’s new original series Extrapolations was concerned with its potential to be preachy. In much the same way this writer doesn’t mind a bit of emotional manipulation in entertainment, I can be fine with preachiness. Some things are worth preaching about. Extrapolations’ flaw isn’t that it has a soapbox and is using it. It’s that it’s such a mess. Continue Reading →
Mythic Quest
SimilarCatterick, Red Dwarf,
Studio3 Arts Entertainment,
One of the hardest things in television is creating the impression of change without breaking the show or making it feel like half-assed window dressing. That’s the problem facing Mythic Quest at the start of Season 3. Continue Reading →
Bad Sisters
SimilarCatterick, Murder Most Horrid, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Three Days of Christmas,
StudioABC Signature,
From Promising Young Women to Big Little Lies, we’re in a golden age of female revenge stories. Looking to add to the ranks is AppleTV+’s new series Bad Sisters. It follows the tight-knit group of sisters who slowly turn on their prick-ish brother-in-law after years of misogynistic torture. It’s a dash of thriller Big Little Lies with a sprinkle of the comedy of 9 to 5, all set in a coastal Irish town. Continue Reading →