22 Best TV Shows Similar to GARO
Before
Like a good cop, Eli (Billy Crystal) is sure at the start of Before that if he solves this one last case, he can retire happily. The difference is Eli is a psychiatrist, not a cop. And the case isn’t some unsolved murder or wild heist. It’s a little boy, Noah (Jacobi Jupe). Noah is a child in the foster system living with Denise (Rosie Perez). He has selective mutism. When Noah speaks, he occasionally does so in a no longer used Dutch dialect. He experiences visual and auditory hallucinations that often lead to violent outbursts. He also seems to know Eli somehow and, more disconcertingly, Eli’s recently deceased wife, Lynn (Judith Light). The more Eli connects to the case, the worse it seems to get for both doctor and client. Before long, the audience, and indeed the doctor himself, must contemplate the limits of science and medicine. Is Noah mentally ill, or is there some strange and potentially dangerous supernatural force exerting a hold on him? While the concept of “mental illness or supernatural intervention” came into vogue with The Exorcist(if not sooner), the rather risible idea experienced a kind of zenith in the late 90s and early 2000s. The most common form was an aging but still bankable male star (Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, to name a couple) as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker—Hollywood frequently doesn’t know the difference—working with a young actress poised for stardom (Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning) in films with fairly generic names (Don’t Say a Word, Hide and Seek). There were other variations on theme, mixing gender, age, occupation, and so on. But at their core was the same driving question: is all this wild stuff the audience seeing caused by an evil otherworldly entity or the unfortunate result of an untreated or treated improperly mental illness? Before belongs to this “proud” tradition. Continue Reading →
Agatha All Along
The difficulty in reviewing television is, often, critics only receive a fraction of the season’s episodes. As a result, one sometimes has to offer a full review on a partial product. Frequently, that’s fine. Shows often tell you who they are, if you will, fairly early on. A character or a twist that changes things might show up in an episode down the road. Even then, though, such things often don’t change the bedrock quality of the endeavor. Sharing all of this is by way of a disclaimer because, after the first two episodes of Agatha All Along, it remains unclear what kind of show it will be. Some aspects of the tone are clear from the start. It’s obviously playing with a healthy dose of irreverence. It’s clever. Kathryn Hahn slips back into Agnes/Agatha Harkness like a second skin, quickly giving her depth without erasing the villainousness of her turn in WandaVision. The supporting characters, including Teen (Joe Locke), Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), and Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone?!), can hold the screen despite Hahn’s charisma bombardment. Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal even gives Agatha a run for her money in the charm department with a frighteningly sexual/sexually frightening turn. She carries the conclusion of episode 1 with three or four sentences that are…very intense. Debra Jo Rupp, Ali Ahn, Patti LuPone, and Sasheer Zamata support women's rights and women's wrongs. (Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Television) But is the show a drama? A comedy? A horror-drama? Horror-comedy? Horror-dramedy? One’s guess is as good as another. Episode 1, “Seekest Thou the Road,” is almost entirely a parody/homage episode, taking WandaVision’s sitcom-trappings storytelling approach and applying it to the crime-thriller limited series genre, specifically Mare of Easttown with a dollop of The Killing thrown in via the opening credits. It’s an interesting idea, a nod to the Agatha All Along’s parent series with a parallel storytelling technique. More importantly, it gives the series room enough to be more than just a reinvention of the wheel. And the show seemingly ditches it by the episode’s end. Continue Reading →
The Fabulous Four
While the general world of theatrical comedies remains elusive at multiplexes everywhere, one strain of the genre keeps on chugging in theaters. The Last Vegas/Going in Style/Book Club-style comedy is still going strong. Titles focusing on a wacky trio or quartet of famous actors over 60 persist at Cinemarks everywhere. Even Book Club 2: The Next Chapter’s box office failure last year couldn't stop this subgenre. On the surface, The Fabulous Four looks like another breezy summertime entry in this domain. In many ways, including its flat third act, it totally is. Yet, some distinctive and even downright weird touches keep it from being another Wild Hogs pastiche. Back in the day, Marilyn (Bette Midler), surgeon Lou (Susan Sarandon), singer Alice (Megan Mullaly), and botanist Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) were best friends growing up in New York City. After a few decades, though, those friendships have grown complicated. Lou and Marilyn, specifically, are no longer on speaking terms. However, that frayed dynamic is about to get “repaired” now that the latter character is getting married. While preparing for a lavish wedding in Key West, she yearns for her best friends to be her bridesmaids—all three of them. Alice and Kitty tricking Lou into traveling to Key West was only the beginning of their struggles. Once these former pals reunite, tensions clearly haven't frayed between the duo. Unresolved conflict looms over every pre-wedding celebration, even once Lou begins a flirty rapport with local DILF Ted (Bruce Greenwood). Can this quartet reunite and become “the fabulous four” again? Or will yesteryear’s turmoil capsize a once beautiful friend group? Continue Reading →
The Boys
If you’ve watched any previous season, you should have a good idea of what The Boys Season 4 offers. More to the point, it is almost certainly clear to you if it’s something you enjoy or despise. If you have formed an opinion, that should inform your decision to tune in. Because, five years after its debut, one thing you can absolutely count on is The Boys remains completely, unapologetically, itself. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything to discuss. In fact, there’s almost too much as the series continues to offer some of the most boldfaced political commentary on streaming. Not bad for a show that also boldly illustrated how that whole “Ant-Man should shrink down and enter Thanos” thing might look if the MCU took the bait. Following that memory, the gore seems as good a place as any to engage with this new season. There has perhaps never been a show as impressive in its ability to wield its considerable blood and guts touch on a wide range of emotional beats. The Boys Season 4 does not fall off in this department. If anything, it has an even more impressive level of control this time out. One moment, it proves itself intensely capable of pulling out sick laughs as a Vought event rehearsal unravels into an ever-escalating series of mishaps. Imagine it as a sort of a Rube Goldberg machine of carnage. And yet, later, when a confrontation forces a character to kill someone, the camera captures both the arterial spray and the guilt play across the protagonist’s face. Both moments play, and neither feels out of step with the series. It’s quite the magic trick. Continue Reading →
The Acolyte
“Brief, they made a monk of me; I did renounce the world, its pride and greed, Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house, Continue Reading →
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives is, by its nature, a strange beast. Both a spinoff of MAX’s now-finished Doom Patrol series and Netflix’s own Sandman, it began as a sort of backdoor pilot two and a half years ago in the third episode of Doom Patrol Season 3. However, this series tossed the actors portraying the Boys and their living friend Crystal for an entirely different trio of performers. Now George Rextrew plays Edwin, the uptight turn-of-the-century boy. Jayden Revri steps into the jacket of Edwin's late 80s punk adjacent partner Charles. Finally, Kassius Nelson portrays their modern and still of this mortal plane third wheel, teen medium Crystal Palace. Soon after meeting and freeing Crystal from the clutches of a demon named David (David Iacono), the boys take her in, although Edwin is less than thrilled at the idea. Missing large chunks of her memory, she is anxious to throw herself into the boys’ work investigating cases for and about ghosts, usually in the name of sending them off to the Great Beyond. Their first case as a trio takes them away from their English home to Port Townsend, WA. Unfortunately, even after they close the case, forces conspire to keep the three stuck in the town. With only time to waste, they decide to make the best of it by solving the problems of Townsend’s surprisingly bustling phantom population. Kassius Nelson accesses those spooky-ooky powers. (Netflix) This kind of “neither here nor there” of the show’s beginning and the characters’ “house arrest” soon reveals itself as a kind of meta reflection of the series itself. Steve Yockey, the writer of that backdoor pilot episode and the creator of this series, clearly has enthusiasm and love for the concept and the characters. The central relationship between the spectral friends has a striking sweetness without being cloying. The two's connection never feels in doubt, even as they bicker or revelations of unrequited sexual attraction come to light. The scripting deftly avoids needless "can their friendship survive" melodrama or after-school special syrupiness. It doesn’t hurt that, despite the roster change, Rexstrew and Revri wear the roles like comfortable clothes. They give Edwin and Charles a casual depth that extends behind their simple archetypes. Continue Reading →
X-Men
Regardless of what one thinks of nostalgia—a toxic force or a pleasant refuge from the chaos that is existence—there’s no denying its significant role in shaping and guiding our pop culture. Rather than simply rallying against it, we must, from time to time, acknowledge it and evaluate its accuracy. The launching of X-Men ’97 gives The Spool a unique opportunity to look back at ’97’s progenitor, the early 90’s series X-Men, also commonly known as X-Men: The Animated Series. However, this is not a task for one person. An objective of this size requires a team-up, in the Merry Marvel Tradition. Tim Stevens, The Spool’s steadfast TV Editor, whose stoicism conceals a maelstrom of doubt and rage, much like ruby quartz holds back optic blasts, tackled the first half of the series. Then, Justin Harrison, our near-feral writer with a gift for mentorship and a head full of implanted memories, closes things down with his take on the second half of season 3 and all of seasons 4 and 5. With that, there’s no time to waste. Hop in the Blackbird and come with us for a look at the highlights—and occasional lowlight—of the X-Men! Continue Reading →
What If...?
Disney+'s animated exploration of what could've been continues to intrigue in Season 2, but not all episodes are created equal. With What If…? Season 2, the time seems right to take a look at both seasons and rank them for your entertainment. Is it wrong to rank art? Possibly, but we’re of the mind that something that feels this good can’t possibly be bad. On that note, let’s not waste a moment more and start counting down from worst to best. The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) hates to be kept waiting! Continue Reading →
都市懼集
A quick overview of the high highs and middling disappointments in horror this year. With the social media app formerly known as Twitter now a shell of its former self, horror fans have been forced to return to Facebook to continue such interminable debates as “What does or doesn’t qualify something as ‘horror’?” “What the hell is ‘elevated horror,’ anyway?” “Are remakes inherently bad?” “Have horror movies gotten too ‘woke’?” “Were we wrong for letting women make horror?” In a year when both David Gordon Green and M. Night Shyamalan released new movies, the horror discourse was especially spicy, and that’s before we get to the really interesting stories, like the surprise viral success of Skinamarink, which, with the way time seems to be passing nowadays, feels like it was released five years ago. Both indie and mainstream horror made daring choices, not looking to appeal to as broad a range of audiences as possible, and treating the genre as a serious art form, as opposed to just a machine that prints money. But the biggest surprise came in October, with the release of Saw X, the tenth film in a seemingly unkillable franchise, which ended up being one of the best, most coherent entries in the entire series. Continue Reading →
Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol Season 4 Part 2 dives headfirst into what has consistently been a series favorite topic since the beginning: death. While much of Patrol has pondered what it would be like to live agelessly—essentially without fear of any possible death except the violent and unusual—but still struggle with every other aspect of being human. The members screwed up, had mental issues and physical ailments, struggled with vanity and loneliness, and frequently gave in to any number of self-loathing varietals. They would never age, but they wore their pain the same as the rest of us. Continue Reading →
Loki
One of the common complaints about Marvel’s attempts at multiverse storytelling is that it renders everything meaningless. If there is another Ikaris of the Eternals out there—or a possibly infinite number of them—why should one care if the one in front of us dies? Generally, this writer finds the argument unconvincing. If I told you there were infinite versions of your friend out there in the multiverse you might someday meet, you’d still care quite a bit to see your version die in front of you. Continue Reading →
Gen V
The Boys is good. Often, it is excellent. However, the Eric Kripke-created adaptation of the Garth Ennis-Darick Robertson-created comic book series sometimes overindulged in juvenilia and “is this too edgy for you, square?” baiting. To be fair, that isn’t exactly unfaithful to the source material. Ennis frequently vacillates between scathingly insightful critiques of the human condition and truckloads of dick jokes (see also, Preacher). Continue Reading →
Gotham Knights
It’s a year ending with a number, so, once again, someone’s launching a live-action TV show rooted in Batman’s mythology but doesn’t star Batman. That show, following in the footsteps of Gotham and Pennyworth: The Origins of Batman’s Butler, is none other than Gotham Knights. A brand-new CW production, it aims to be a “next generation” tale of sorts. The audience follows a motley group of teens possessed of assorted connections to Batman characters, old and new. By the time the first episodes wrap, viewers will undoubtedly want to shine a signal into the sky to summon a better TV show. Continue Reading →
Harley Quinn
The Harley Quinn animated TV series has always been about subverting expectations. The basic DNA of the show initially seemed so formulaic (a raunchy take on DC Comics superheroes, scandalous!) before morphing into something much more fun and emotionally resonant. Potentially one-joke characters like Bane have become so delightfully nuanced and messy. Continue Reading →
Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight
The Kung Fu Panda universe is no stranger to the small screen. Previously, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny ensured that audiences could watch more antics of Po the Panda in the comfort of their home. But the newest expansion of this franchise, the Netflix program Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, breaks new ground by being the first of these shows to feature Jack Black reprising the role as Po. Continue Reading →
Hawkeye
What if they made an MCU show with almost no stakes? Would that be inviting or off-putting? Continue Reading →
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Netflix is trying really, maybe embarrassingly hard to make He-Man a thing again. With He-Man and the Masters of the Universe their throw-toys-at-the-wall-until-something-sticks approach is genuinely starting to wear out the patience of new and old fans alike. Continue Reading →
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Returning to score these characters for the first time since Captain America: Civil War, Jackman brings his usual fanfare and frenetic action scoring to the table, expanding themes he originated in his previous work to a much larger, longer palette. Sam's theme, formerly a three-note quick motif between action beats, gets its own blues-tinged variation to pay homage to his Louisiana roots; Bucky, meanwhile, gets a softer, more melodic version of the Winter Soldier theme to contrast with the cacophonous shriek that heralded him in his debut feature. And the Captain America theme gets its own complications, now that the man holding the shield is a little less trustworthy than he used to be. Continue Reading →
Invincible
While there are many ways to adapt material to another medium, there do seem to be two prominent schools of thought. Some want adaptations of existing works to take the source material as a jumping-off point. The original text should inspire the creators of the new media, but should make their own perspective felt. On the other hand, there are those that crave pure accuracy. They want the new piece to resemble the original as closely as possible, in tone, point of view, and style. Continue Reading →