28 Best TV Shows Similar to Through the Darkness

There is objective good in this world, and it is possible to know it. That does not, however, mean that everything done in pursuit of that good is itself objectively reasonable. That’s the underlying message of so much of Say Nothing, a nine-episode look at the Troubles in Ireland predominantly through the eyes of former IRA soldier/terrorist Dolours Price (Lola Petticrew predominantly, Maxine Peake in middle age). For instance, it is objectively true that Ireland deserves to be united and free of British rule. Does it follow, then, that bombings in British downtown centers are objectively good? Regrettable but necessary? Acts of terrorism? Similarly, the series considers (although with admittedly less zeal) the idea that it is objectively true that British citizens deserve lives free of random acts of violence. Does that make all actions to crush the organization behind that violence acceptable? Does that extend to mistreatment of the people who live next to members of that organization, people who never made a bomb or even threw a rock but also don’t report their neighbors, friends, and family for the same? Continue Reading →

Straight away, to be clear, Teacup is a corker of small-scale science fiction paranoia. It clearly has thoughts about life in our country and the world on its mind. It utilizes the genre's potential for metaphor well throughout. Still, one feels compelled to note that series creator Ian McCulloch has barely adapted Stinger by Robert McCammon. Instead of a Texas town circling the drain, the setting is a few farmsteads in rural Georgia. There are fewer characters—none of the characters in the book are present—and subplots like the rival gangs and desperate economic conditions don't exist. As a result, the season jettisons a lot of themes, such as explorations of racial prejudice, crimes real and imagined, and "dying" rural communities. While the show still uses its tale to reflect some larger modern-day concerns, those not interrogated still constitute a loss. Without them, Teacup tells a far smaller story. All of that acknowledged, it is essential to review the series as it exists, not as it could've been. So while a closer adaptation done well would've likely yielded a richer story, this is the last this review will make mention of it. Moreover, I have no intention of holding that possibility against the show as it exists. Continue Reading →

If you’ve seen or read enough stories about vengeance, chances are good you’ve encountered the saying, “He who seeks revenge digs two graves,” or some variation. Likely misattributed to Confucius, its meaning nonetheless carries weight. The new drama Disclaimer wrestles with the adage far more seriously than most other takes on the act of seeking catharsis through reprisal. Teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline) has just finished self-destructively barreling into his own firing, quite the fall for a former Teacher of the Year. He’s alone, a widower, his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) dead after a protracted time with cancer. However, in many ways, he’s been alone since their son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) died about two decades earlier. That’s when his wife began to pull away from him and didn’t stop until her death. With his newfound time, he begins to clean out the closets and wardrobes left unused since her passing. Among the debris, he discovers a series of objects that lead to a manuscript. In its pages, Nancy lays out their son’s final days in Italy. More importantly, she places the blame for his death firmly at the feet of Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). Catherine is now a highly successful documentary filmmaker married to financier Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) with an adult son, Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Continue Reading →

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 →

Watching The Perfect Couple, Jenna Lamia’s slick adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel for Netflix, two thoughts immediately bubble up. The first isn’t the fault of the show’s quality so much as its timing. That thought is, “maybe we should give a break to all these shows and movies about rich folk in great locales doing crime”. In less than a year, I have reviewed shows with that plot taking place in a planned bunker in the tundra, on an ultra-expensive cruise ship, a rich enclave in West Palm Beach, and, now, an estate in a seaside New England town. Other recent entries include The Glass Onion, The Menu, and one could even mount an argument for Only Murderers in the Building. A lot of these are good. Some are great. But perhaps we could spread the ensemble crime-mystery wealth (haHA) a bit? Maybe a murder mystery set at a State Fair? Meghann Fahy's got those beach-y waves everybody wants. (Netflix) Granted, this is a bit unfair. The Perfect Couple comes from a novel. Hilderbrand set the novel in Nantucket, where she lived, so she was writing about the kind of climate outside her window. That all makes sense. However, it’s difficult not to see so much media where affluence is part of the scenery and not get a little tired of it. Especially when the series feel like they’re acting as a catalog as much, if not more, than critique. Continue Reading →

Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), and the rest of the Slough House reprobates are back for Slow Horses Season 4, and things are, unsurprisingly, not good. While a bombing in a bustling London shopping center consumes most of Britain’s intelligence community, River’s grandfather, David (Jonathan Pryce), has wandered into a very different sort of fight. His memory and cognitive skills are unraveling, triggering, among other problems, a rapid increase in his paranoia. One night, someone close to him drops in for a visit, and moments later, David guns down the visitor. But is everything what it seems? Questions of what family members owe one another take center stage as David’s confused and deadly actions expose the previously largely unexplored complexity of the Cartwright family. As one member of Slough House runs to France to investigate a single errant clue, the rest of the team is left behind to protect David from Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), the new head of MI5’s “dogs”. While seemingly far less corrupt than her predecessors, she’s just as disinterested in tolerating the Horses’ nonsense or willing to trust their pleas for more time. Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Christopher Chung, Tom Brooke, Kadiff Kirwan, and Rosalind Eleazar are all here. You got a problem with that? (AppleTV+) Coming at the Horses from the other side is a seemingly unstoppable black-ops mercenary (Tom Wozniczka) trying to clean up the loose ends of…something. David might have once been able to fill in the blanks, but with dementia steadily robbing him of his past and his present consumed with guilt and trauma, he can’t conjure any explanations. As he stalks the members of Slough House, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) tries to push the new First Chair, the hesitant and PR-focused Claude Whelan (James Callis), to bury anything and everything having to do with the bombing and its apparent perpetrator. Continue Reading →

Before things go too far, it’s important to offer this disclaimer. Bad Monkey’s monkey isn’t especially naughty. Or even all that present. So people with particular opinions on animal performers, now you know. Proceed accordingly. For everyone else, Bad Monkey isn’t bad. In fact, it’s largely quite good. The series grabs your attention with an opener that accurately captures the tone of the ten episodes to come. An arrogant, nouveau riche-coded husband on honeymoon reels in a big one. Only problem is it turns out not to be a fish. Instead, a severed arm, seemingly flipping off the world, hangs off the hook. His new bride screams inconsolably as a deckhand snaps a pic of the man with his catch. On the deck above, the rent-a-captain dryly mumbles to himself about the business of making dreams come true. It is loud, over the top, funny, and a bit horrifying when you stop to think about it. Continue Reading →

Ever since the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene first created the plucky heroine Nancy Drew in 1930, so-called Girl Detectives have remained an object of cultural fascination. Netflix’s riveting new series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder introduces audiences to Pip Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers, the breakout of Tim Burton’s Wednesday), a worthy successor to Nancy and her compatriots like Harriet the Spy. In just six tightly-written episodes, Good Girl’s Guide unspools a satisfying small town mystery that will captivate teenage fans and adult viewers alike. Eschewing her original thesis proposal on feminism in Gothic literature, self-possessed seventeen-year-old Pip decides to spend her final year of school before university investigating the mysterious disappearance of her older classmate Andie Bell (India Lillie-Davies). Andie’s boyfriend Sal (Rahul Patni) supposedly confessed to her murder before taking his own life, but Pip has her doubts from the jump, and not without reason: she may have been the last person to see the doomed couple together. Her fledgling case grows even more complicated when she connects with Sal’s charming younger brother, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), and finds herself developing romantic feelings for the first time in her life. Myers confidently anchors the fun, diverse ensemble of newcomers with spunk and aplomb, her wide blue eyes searching every scene for clues. Iqbal and Patni are perfectly cast as crush-worthy sadboys, while Asha Banks and Yasmin Al-Khudhairi (Rye Lane) stand out as Pip’s practical best friend Cara Ward and her troubled older sister, Naomi. Familiar British favorites like Anna Maxwell Martin (Becoming Jane, A Personal History of David Copperfield) and Mathew Baynton (Wonka) round out the adult side of the cast, playing Pip’s loving mother and kindly English teacher, respectively. Continue Reading →

To say creator Kathleen Jordan’s adaptation of The Decameron is loose is to enjoy the gift of significant understatement. The source material, an Italian collection of 100 tales “told” to one another by ten characters, was a kind of Canterbury Tales for the plague set. Or, more accurately, Tales was a Decameron for the Brits. The Italian work, after all, has about 50 years on Chaucer’s book. While the TV series does gather ten characters together, initially to celebrate the arranged wedding of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) and Leonardo (Davy Eduard King), then to try to ride out the Bubonic, it largely ditches the tale-telling. In its place is a satirical take on today’s class inequalities smuggled onto screen under the veil of a period black comedy. While likely conceived of during or in the wake of COVID’s darkest early days, the tones and themes update nicely to now. It does not reflect our modern situation as literally as it did in, say, April 2020. Nonetheless, it smartly captures how certain global tragedies cannot be dodged and how the rich and powerful will still try at the cost of the larger society. If only it landed its jokes as well. Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson learn the importance of decanting from Jessica Plummer. (Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix) It isn’t for lack of talent. Tanya Reynolds—so good in Sex Education—proves she deserves a bigger stage, stepping into one of the lead roles as the handmaiden Licisca. She finds herself tethered to the vain and selfish Filomena (Jessica Plummer) as they journey to Leonardo’s estate. How the kind and socially conscious member of the servant class evolves in isolation as she tastes luxury and power for the first time is genuinely interesting and well-acted by Reynolds. A scene where she goes from faking kindness to the hypochondriac aristocrat Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) to genuinely delight with him feels wonderfully organic and honest. Continue Reading →

For a show set in the mid-1960s, Lady in the Lake explores a basketful of issues relevant to today. From nearly 60 years in our past, it echoes modern “concerns” of all stripes. For example, characters range from dubious to outright hostile to the idea of Maddie (Natalie Portman) working as a journalist or Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel) becoming the first black detective in Baltimore. It doesn’t take much to see how that connects with today’s handwringing over DEI—bigotry dressed up to look like worries about the “most deserving person” getting the job. That the most deserving always seems to be a white man, in such concerned citizens’ opinions, is just a coincidence, no doubt. Also spotlighted in Lady in the Lake are questions about women’s autonomy over their own bodies, grooming, legalized gambling, antisemitism, and politicians throwing over the people that got them elected for “respectability”. Homophobia, stranger danger, and the ramifications of untreated childhood trauma also receive small but prominent moments of attention. Moses Ingram's too good to get lost in this series' chaos so often. (AppleTV+) If that sounds like a lot for a television series to tackle in a single seven-episode season, well, it is. As a result, the show frequently —particularly the first two to three episodes—lapses into a sort of controlled but still frantic chaos. In its efforts, led by creator Alma Har’el, to wrap its arms around everything it wants to be about, the viewer can feel battered by incidents. The series’ occasional dalliances with hallucination and visual metaphor don’t help in this regard. They’re fascinating for certain. The sixth installment’s near episode-length exploration of Maddie’s psyche stands out as a season-high. However, they also sometimes make it overly difficult for the audience to find solid footing in the narrative. Lady in the Lake’s ambition is worthy of praise, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into good television. Continue Reading →

There’s probably something meaningful to say about the current state of politics and the seeming revival of the swords and sandals genre; unfortunately, Peacock’s new series Those About to Die engenders very little desire to engage with its material on any deeper level. Created by Robert Rodat and directed by Roland Emmerich and Marco Kruezpaintner, Those About to Die is a historical drama centered around the fading rule of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), his sons Titus (Tom Hughes) and Domitian (Jojo Macari, eating every piece of available scenery), and the bloody and politically treacherous world of chariot racing.  Set in 79 AD (reading up on that year will provide some spoilers if history is a spoiler), Those About to Die wants to have it all. It’s a drama! It’s an epic! It’s historical fiction! It’s sexy! It’s violent! Well, sure, it’s all of these things, but sadly none are enough to raise it above its vaguely ‘90s television miniseries feel. The series sags under the weight of its scale. Feeling at times like nothing so much as “James Michener’s ROME," Those About to Die features no fewer than 15 primary characters, many of whom fade into the background and reappear with such little fanfare that the audience struggles to keep track. Though the storylines blend fairly swiftly after an overpacked premiere, the characters make so many rash and death-defying decisions per episode that nothing seems to carry any sort of weight. Anything dramatic that can happen does but with varying (and unearned) degrees of consequence. There are attacks on characters but then they’re fine; characters lose money and then get more. When it feels like everyone has plot armor until a “surprise,”  nothing is a surprise anymore.  Continue Reading →

About fifteen years ago, an era of “complicated” protagonists ruled the television landscape. These anti-heroes—Walter White, Don Draper—were the sort of people one wouldn’t associate in their day-to-day life. Safely sealed in a flat screen, though, and viewers couldn’t get enough of them. It was a glorious time to be unlikable on TV. Still, as Erik Kain pointed out, it was an honor almost entirely reserved for men. Sunny is a late-arriving corrective, centering a fully complex and often unlikable Rashida Jones. As Suzi, Jones ditches nearly everything that makes her an on-screen appealing presence in the likes of The Office and Parks and Recreation. She also flattens the traits that make her stand out as a character worthy of empathy in projects like Silo and On the Rocks. In place of those, she offers a dead-eyed stare that only sparks to life when castigating her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg), random bureaucrats, and, of course, the titular android Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura). Rashida Jones does not, and this can't be stressed enough, have time for this nonsense. (AppleTV+) It isn’t like she doesn’t have cause for anger and the thousand-mile gaze. As the opening minutes reveal, Suzi has justy lost her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son in a plane crash. However, as the series unfolds, it becomes clear Suzi can’t blame her unpleasantness entirely on grief. As revealed in flashbacks, she’s been hard-drinking and foul-mouthed for some time. Additionally, although partially owed to her dyslexia, she wields her failure to learn nearly any Japanese like a cudgel. It is yet another tool for holding the world at bay. That world includes, often, her spouse. Of course, his own drinking and pile of secrets hardly made him an ideal partner either. Continue Reading →

Joko Anwar is no stranger to telling stories that serve as a mirror reflecting Indonesia’s sociopolitical situation. In his folk horror Impetigore, he delves into the topics of poverty and the abuse of power, while his superhero flick Gundala tackles the theme of mass hysteria. It is no surprise that in his 7-episode anthology Netflix series Nightmares and Daydreams, he portrays various everyday situations from his homeland, touching on issues like the struggle of being in a sandwich generation and systemic challenges faced by Indonesian society. Through his distinct narrative style, Anwar confronts pressing issues with a blend of supernatural intrigue and science fiction. In each episode, the show immerses us in compelling tales that not only entertain but provoke thought. Set between the years 1985 and 2024, the series chronicles the experiences of everyday individuals in Jakarta who encounter peculiar phenomena while simultaneously navigating their struggles. While each episode focuses on different characters, the events depicted throughout the season are interconnected and gradually reveal something more sinister. In our recent conversation with Anwar, he shed light on the inspirations behind Nightmares and Daydreams. From the show's inception to the intricacies of character development, Anwar's meticulous attention to detail underscores his commitment to crafting narratives that resonate on multiple levels. Moreover, his fascination with the aliens adds an intriguing layer to the series, sparking discussions among the audience. Continue Reading →

It is perhaps unfair to compare a single 10-episode season of Orphan Black Echoes against its predecessor’s 50 episodes over five seasons run. After all, that much more real estate allows a show so much more time to explore and resolve its mythos satisfactorily. But if one stacks up Echoes’ season against the original’s debut, the newest member of the franchise still suffers by comparison. Created by Anna Fishko and taking place about 40 years after the events of Orphan Black, Orphan Black Echoes opens with an immediate hook. A woman (Krysten Ritter)—who we’ll eventually know as Lucy—awakens in a well-appointed living room. She has no memory of who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Dr. Kira Manning (Keeley Hawes)—the adult daughter of Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany), who is sadly only glimpsed in a photo—attempts to calm and remind Lucy of her past. It fails and the amnesiac has to be chemically restrained. Later, she manages to escape the room, only to discover that it is little more than a set built inside a massive warehouse. In 2052, the cloning process at the center of the original series may be illegal, but science has found a workaround, creating a different kind of copy called, colloquially, “printouts.” From there, the series follows Lucy’s attempts to discover her past and protect those she cares about. The quest sweeps up several others in its quake, including a teen, Jules Lee (Amanda Fix), who’s deeply connected to Lucy and Kira. Others pulled into the situation include Kira’s wife (Rya Kihlstedt), a seemingly altruistic billionaire, Paul Darrios (James Hiroyuki Liao), a shoot-first-ask-questions-later enforcer Tom (Reed Diamond), and a single father (Avan Jogia) and his tween daughter (Zariella Langford). Continue Reading →

For a large segment of Gen X and Millennials, legal thrillers have an undeniable comfort food quality. These generational cohorts grew up as authors like Scott Turow and John Grisham rose to prominence, dominating best-seller lists. With that beachhead established, it wasn’t long before the legal thriller came to screens, large and small, via adaptations. While rarely deeply prestigious works, many, if not most, boasted big stars, well-established directors, and compelling enough storytelling. Presumed Innocent, an 8-part limited series—Apple provided critics with all but the final installment—arrives with that wind at its back for a considerable portion of the audience. It is further helped in the comfort department by being the second adaptation of the titular novel by Turow, following a well-regarded Alan Pakula-directed Harrison Ford-starring cinematic turn in 1990. The book also spawned a sequel and a made-for-TV adaptation of that sequel. Uh-oh. Jake Gyllenhaal and (Renate Reinsve) just spotted you across the bar. (AppleTV+) No one can accuse Turow’s Rusty Sabich (played here by Jake Gyllenhaal after Ford on the silver screen and Bill Pullman for the at-home audiences) of being the central star of a law and order-driven MCU. However, when it comes to legal thrillers, he’s about as close as you can get. Playing with that house money, creator David E. Kelley and star Gyllenhaal don’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Nonetheless, they offer a solid series to slip into just as summer kicks in. Continue Reading →

Eric is a tough sit. Whether that sit is worth the difficulty is a question I struggled with before tentatively arriving at yes. The story begins as a tale of a missing child, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), the son of Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann). After the couple’s latest row the night before, Edgar doesn’t wait around for them to sort themselves in the morning. Instead, he walks to school on his own as his father tries to make amends with his mother. But Edgar never arrives at school that day. Vincent is a creator and puppeteer on a formerly top-rated children’s show—think Sesame Street with no on-screen humans and only one set—with his creative partner Lennie (Dan Fogler). Edgar, aware of the show’s downturn and the need for a new puppet, has been doodling and dreaming up just the solution, the titular Eric. When Edgar disappears, Vincent’s desperate and possibly delusional reaction is to finish his son’s work on the giant felt monster. He reasons that if his son could only see the puppet on television, the boy would understand how important he was to his parents and come home. Others, confident Edgar is not gone of his accord and likely no longer alive, cannot get on board with the plan. Continue Reading →

The Tattooist of Auschwitz opens on Lale Sokolov (Harvey Keitel in the 2000s “present-day” sequences) living in Australia. He's decided the time has come to commit his life story to paper. A nurse with writing aspirations Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey), (the real-life writer behind the inspired by actual events but labeled historical fiction source material) is referred by someone in the community to help. With little prologue, he dives in, describing how he "volunteered" for a program about defending Jewish communities. Unfortunately, it was a trap. The train ride takes him to Auschwitz instead. While imprisoned there, he (Jonah Hauer-King in flashbacks) became one of the tattooists. The position leads him to meet the love of his life, fellow prisoner Gita Furman (Anna Próchniak). Additionally, the position gave him a certain level of consideration not accorded to others, including access to medications. On the other hand, he faces resentment among the prisoners and decades of survivor’s guilt. The book—and its two subsequent spinoffs/sequels—has a certain amount of controversy surrounding it. While I’m not an expert on the Holocaust, I feel it is at least important to acknowledge that fact. Wanda Witek-Malicka from the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center publicly worried that the book engaged in excessive “exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements” that could render its text “dangerous and disrespectful to history.” Continue Reading →

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 →

"All wars are fought twice. The first on the battlefield. The second time in memory." This line, emblazed in Vietnamese and English in the opening moments of The Sympathizer, is taken right from Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen's bestselling novel of the same name. Fittingly, it also serves as the thesis statement for Max's adaptation of the sprawling work, a fleet-of-foot miniseries that explores the malleability of identity and perception through the lens of the Vietnam War, and the dynamic lenses through which our lives and conflicts can be viewed. That duality is encapsulated in the titular character, a French-Vietnamese biracial protagonist known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande). From his childhood in Vietnam, he was always ostracized for being neither white nor Asian enough; his only solace came from his two friends, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen), who instead frame his heritage as being "twice of everything." Cut to Vietnam in the '70s, in the days leading up to the Fall of Saigon: He works for the Vietnamese Secret Police, interrogating Viet Cong prisoners at the behest of his arrogant martinet of a boss, The General (Toan Le). But he's also a communist mole, feeding information back to Man, who's now his North Vietnamese Army handler, and his daily life is a struggle to reconcile all of these varying identities. That struggle is further compounded after the Fall of Saigon (an escape attempt rendered in the first episode as an exciting, terrifying barrage of booming explosions and a foot race to a fleeing cargo plane). The Captain and Bon make it to America, though not without some heartbreaking losses for the latter; now, the two are alone, the Captain still required to report on the General's activities while laying low for both his CIA handlers and the LA cultural figures who treat him as an object of curiosity. Continue Reading →

Tom Ripley doesn't exist. Not just in the sense that he's a fictional creation of thriller novelist extraordinaire Patricia Highsmith, no; as a man, Ripley is a chimera, a shadow, a formless void that hungrily sucks in whatever nourishment it can from whatever or whoever is around him. Damn the consequences. He's one of literature's (and, in the case of several cinematic adaptations, moviedom's) greatest conmen, a remora with nothing behind the eyes except the next game, the next mark, the next place to flee when suspicions run too high. Now, writer/director/showrunner Steven Zaillian has adapted the first of Highsmith's novels into an eight-episode miniseries for Netflix (it was originally slated for Showtime before they sold it), and by virtue of those pedigrees, it's maybe the best original series the streamer has put out all year. When we first meet Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), he's a low-level grifter eking out a living with some street-level mail fraud in New York City. But one day, a private dick (Bokeem Woodbine) taps him on the shoulder and hauls him in front of a wealthy shipping magnate (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan) for a special mission: travel to Italy on his dime to find his layabout painter-wannabe son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and bring him back home to fulfill his business responsibilities. Ripley doesn't know the man, but he agrees -- the chance to start all over somewhere else (and be bankrolled for it) is too great. So he swans off to Atrani, a small beachside villa where he ingratiates himself to the pampered Dickie and his writer girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), two people as insulated by their wealth as they are by their respective artistic mediocrities. RIPLEY. (L to R) Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf in RIPLEY. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024 Unlike previous adaptations of the material, Zaillian barely (if ever) clues us into any kind of deeper humanity lurking under the surface for Tom Ripley. Matt Damon's version from The Talented Mr. Ripley was motivated by emotional impulse; here, Scott plays him like a reptile. There's something downright alien about his cold tilt of the head, those shark-like eyes (aided by Robert Elswit's chiaroscuro photography, which we'll get to later), the way his delivery teeters between blase deference and a flat, manipulative affect. He seems less like a desperate hanger-on than a predator, one all too happy to take rich people for everything they've got and discard them when he's sucked all the meat off their bones. He doesn't covet the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and even the script's frequent allusions to Ripley's subtextual lust for Dickie don't seem to fully account for his motivations. Continue Reading →

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 →