Conan O'Brien Must Go
NetworkMax,
SimilarA Dance to the Music of Time, Power Rangers Dino Force Brave,
Scully The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie, Troubles,
It's been four long years since Conan O'Brien has graced our television screens, ever since his late-night TBS show, Conan, ended in 2021. Since then, he's kept busy, of course, with podcasts like Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend and guest spots on shows like Murderville. But the late-night legend couldn't possibly keep away from the limelight for long; even at the ripe age of sixty, the guy is still the same spry, lanky chaos demon he always was, a tall column of Irish awkwardness more than willing to play the fool for a laugh. That's most acutely felt in his remote travel segments, like Conan Without Borders, where he travels everywhere from Finland to Ireland to suss out the sights, tastes, and people of Earth. Think of him like Anthony Bourdain, with absolutely zero shame or culinary knowledge.
For those who missed those segments, rest easy, as Max has gifted us with four episodes of full-length travelogue mayhem in the form of Conan O'Brien Must Go. Each installment, funny enough, spins off from an episode of his podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan: He speaks to an interesting new guy or gal from a foreign country, then flies out to meet them and take in the surrounding environs. Of course, he does this the only way he knows how: By making a complete spectacle of himself.
Conan O'Brien Must Go (Max)
In the show's opening minutes, a deceptively Werner Herzog-ian voice purrs to us that to appreciate the grandeur of our mother Earth, you must sometimes defile it. Cut to Conan: "Behold the defiler." That's the tack Must Go takes in its exploration of countries as exotic and beautiful as Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland: Let Conan loose in these nations, sometimes (but not always) with a game companion or fan along the way, and witness the devastation. One week, he'll make a Norwegian hip-hop song with an enthusiastic fan; the next, he'll try to help another fan get his podcast from four listeners to a whopping five -- all through the power of aggressive ad reads for yerba mate. Continue Reading →
Franklin
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, A Respectable Trade,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Babel, Chicken Nugget, Cleopatra, Dead by Sunset, Dexter, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Genesis, Gossip Girl, Heidi, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Long Time No See, M*A*S*H, Monarch of the Glen, Murder in the Heartland, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Peter and Paul,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The 100, The Far Pavilions, The Fire Next Time, The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, The Lost World, The Murder of Mary Phagan, The Phantom of the Opera, The Serial Killer's Wife, The Shining, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Wedding Impossible, Wycliffe,
StudioApple Studios,
Michael Douglas's career so deeply connects him to as specific kind of late 20th/early 21st Century man. As a result, throwing him back to the 18th Century and into the body of Benjamin Franklin feels deeply counterintuitive. It is not surprising that Franklin—an adaptation of the book A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff—is one of the few period projects Douglas has done, joining the likes of The Ghost and the Darkness and those flashback scenes in the Ant-Man films. What is surprising, and to the series’ credit, is how quickly that strangeness recedes. It isn’t that Douglas manages to fade into the role of Franklin until he disappears entirely, but he does manage to recede enough that he doesn’t disrupt the show’s reality.
In some ways, Douglas proves a surprisingly apt selection. No stranger to playing womanizers on screen, Douglas easily finds the correct valence to portray Franklin’s specific flavor of late 18th-century skirt chaser. The metacommentary works in his favor as well, an aging icon who retains much of his skill but perhaps can no longer command the same buzz or box office returns embodying an aging icon whose mind remains sharp but whose body—and possibly will—has been beaten up by life and time. While almost a decade older than the Franklin he’s portraying, Douglas also excels at the moments where the audience witnesses the statesman energized like old times.
Thibault de Montalembert has neither the time nor the interest in your lame attempts at Call My Agent/Dix pour cent joke attempts. (AppleTV+)
Still, the script too frequently hamstrings the actor. Not bad by any means, the writing still suffers for trying to match Franklin’s reputation. It’s the old conundrum of trying to build a series, film, or play around a singular piece of art. How does a creator convince the audience that someone is singing the most fantastic song ever without truly writing the most fantastic song ever? Similarly, how do writers provide dialogue to what is, by historical reputation, one of the greatest wits in American History without simply quoting his greatest hits? Continue Reading →
Parish
NetworkAMC+,
StarringGiancarlo Esposito,
Theoretically, Parish is an adaptation of the three-episode British series The Driver. In practice, the similarities boil down to “What if there was a driver who used to do crime and might start again?” Considering how standard the plot is—a reformed criminal pushed back into a life of crime—it seems strange to call it an adaptation.
To get specific, Gray Parish (Giancarlo Esposito) is a former wheelman who left crime a long time ago. In the time since, he met and married Ros (Paula Malcomson) and started a livery service. He and Ros had two children together as well, Maddox (Caleb Baumann) and Makayla (Arica Himmel). A year before the show’s story begins, Maddox was shot to death, and the killer remains at large. Gray has particularly struggled with the fallout. Additionally, his business is falling apart, seemingly from a combination of his grief and the economy.
Into this precarious situation arrives Colin (Skeet Ulrich), a friend of Parish’s from the old days. Colin, barely out of prison, has already gotten in trouble with The Horse (Zackary Momoh), leader of an increasingly powerful New Orleans gang, The Tongais. To keep himself alive, he needs Parish’s help in cleaning out a safe. Out of a mix of loyalty and his own financial desperation, Parish agrees. Unfortunately, one job is never just one job. Continue Reading →
Palm Royale
SimilarA Respectable Trade, Anna Karenina, Annika, Återkomsten, Blackeyes, Bodies, Brides of Christ, Dark Winds, Dead by Sunset, Dexter, Fallen, Fearless, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Hero Return, Jewels, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Monarch of the Glen, Oh, Doctor Beeching!, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
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StudioApple Studios,
There’s something undeniably inspired about casting Kristin Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. A social climber attempting to ingratiate herself into late 60s Palm Beach high society, Simmons shares with Wiig a certain constant desire to change herself. The actor's years at Saturday Night Live and subsequent film roles have established her as a chameleonic performer. She has enough versatility to play everyone from the painfully grounded to live-action cartoon characters. In this case, Wiig pours that talent into a woman trying desperately to be a different version of herself.
As a kind of middle-aged conservative version of Tom Ripley, Wiig does indeed excel. The actor invests a mix of brute force cunning and barely hidden desperation in Simmons. That makes the would-be social maven compelling and repulsive in equal measure. Her machinations are too intriguing to ignore, but her very presence can be almost unendurable, especially for viewers with an overactive sense of vicarious embarrassment.
Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney try to hash it out. (AppleTV+)
The show also adds an interesting layer to her performance of wealth and class. Simmons’ claims often sound outlandish, the scrambling lies of someone trying to stay one step ahead of being exposed. However, Palm Royale slowly confirms a great many of them. Unlike Ripley or Saltburn’s Oliver Quick, she’s not a total fabrication. She has the credentials for the inner circle, but can’t stomach the time it takes. Continue Reading →
Everything Now
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun, American Horror Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dante's Cove,
Eureka Seven Further Tales of the City, Gossip Girl,
HIStory Hospital Playlist Little Women Love, Victor, Loveless, More Tales of the City, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Noah's Arc, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Out of This World, Ravenswood, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Sentimental Journey, Stand Up!!, That '70s Show, The Alienist, The Nanny, The Wallflower,
As the TV series Everything Now begins, Mia (Sophie Wilde) is eager for freedom. After spending months in a hospital undergoing treatment for her anorexia, her supervisor, Dr. Nell (Stephen Fry), has decided she’s well enough to return to school with her best friends Becca (Lauryn Ajufo), Cam (Harry Cadby), and Will (Noah Thomas). Cooped up inside for what seemed like an eternity, Mia is bursting with enthusiasm about finally undergoing many teenage rites of passage like first dates and big parties. Continue Reading →
The Price Is Right
A crew of workers isolated from the rest of the world encounters some kind of biological agent that turns the infected against the uninfected. A blood test can easily reveal infected individuals, but complications ensue when attempts to apply the test begin. No, I’m not reviewing The Thing. I’m not reviewing either of those X-Files episodes, “Ice” or “Firewalker.” Instead, I’m talking about The Rig, a new series from Prime Video that’s thick with ideas drawn from other works. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Prodigy
SimilarStar Trek Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
StarringDee Bradley Baker,
Can you have Starfleet without Starfleet? That’s the essential question Star Trek: Prodigy asks in the back half of its first season. As the villainous Diviner (John Noble) told his daughter last time, the advanced vessel ferrying the series’ young heroes contains a weapon that could decimate the Federation. If that weren’t enough, the flesh-and-blood Vice Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) has reason to think whoever’s piloting the Protostar stole the ship and marooned her dear friend, Chakotay. So despite how badly the show’s main characters want to join Starfleet, there’s a plethora of reasons to stay far, far away for the time being. Continue Reading →
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
SimilarGoGo Sentai Boukenger, The Munsters,
On March 17, 1985, Maria Hernandez was shot by an intruder. Fortunately, the bullet ricocheted off of her keys as she used them to shield her face. Her roommate, Dayle Okazaki, was not as lucky, and the intruder shot her in the face as she cowered behind the kitchen counter. Afterward, the killer pulled Tsai-Lian "Veronica" Yu out of her car and shot her as well. Continue Reading →