74 Best Releases From Apple TV+ Network

About 18 months ago, I praised a new AppleTV+ series for its “frequently elegiac and hypnotic” tone. With its return, I renew that compliment. Despite growing in scope and ambition, Silo Season 2 remains committed to its quiet, insular brand of sci-fi. That’s very much a positive. The decision to split the action this season between Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) in exile in the apparently ruined, abandoned Silo 17 and the rest of the cast back at home base is more of a mixed bag. The cross-cutting action isn’t new; Season 1 also bounced between characters, levels, and subplots. However, separating the show’s two most compelling characters—Juliette and head of IT/Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins)—does deny the audience some great verbal sparring. That doesn’t mean Silo Season 2 lacks for great interactions for either, though. Juliette quickly discovers that 17 is not as abandoned as it seemed. A man, Solo (Steven Zahn), lives in that Silo’s IT vault and refuses to leave. Zahn’s vacillation between laid-back vibes and sharp temper matches Ferguson’s mix of resentment and buried empathy well. You know the performers are in the pocket when they can sell a version of the “How did you get the name Solo?” from that Star Wars spinoff with sincerity and sadness. Continue Reading →

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 →

Shrinking Season 2 picks up a bit down the road from where Season 1 ended in time, but it immediately reconnects with its final moments. That is when Jimmy’s (Jason Segel) client Grace (Heidi Gardner) took his guidance a bit too much to heart and violently interrupted the negative patterns in her communication with her husband. Speaking of picking up right where things left off, when I last reviewed the show? I was almost certainly a bit too harsh. Overall I recommended the series. Still, I spent much of the review vocalizing about the ways it didn’t get mental health concerns or therapy right. It can be hard to review something that revolves around your job. That’s why so many podcasters reviewing Nobody Wants This spend a considerable portion of their reviews talking about how unrealistic the show’s depiction of podcasting is. (That show’s depiction of Judaism is another matter, one I should’ve been a little more on top of, perhaps. But that’s a discussion for another day.) As I had just stopped being a therapist—perhaps for good—to write full-time, I think I was especially activated by the show’s rather…flippant depiction of the field. Jessica Williams and Christa Miller spend time in the most chaotic, best appointed therapist office ever. (AppleTV+) In Shrinking Season 2, several consequences of Jimmy’s “psychological vigilantism” come home to roost, not just with Grace. That helps refine my perspective. Additionally, with distance, the depiction of Jimmy’s rock bottom, briefly glimpsed at the beginning of Season 1, feels more honest. For once, it seems as though “tell, not show” was the better avenue to capturing his downward spiral of addiction, self-hatred, parental abdication, and general interpersonal awfulness. 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 →

Some movies are just good enough. And that’s ok. There’s something to be said for a little better than mediocre film animated by star power. Wolfs is such a picture. At the start, the film feels serious. A tough-on-crime District Attorney (Amy Ryan) takes a much younger man (Austin Abrams) upstairs at an expensive hotel for a furtive romantic enough. Unfortunately, secret fun turns to tragedy when the Kid falls off the bed and into a glass bar cart, seemingly dying. In desperation, she reaches out to a cleaner (George Clooney). As he drives to her, writer-director Jon Watts and cinematographer Larkin Seiple give the scene an almost Michael Mann quality. Well, Mann with less interesting lighting and a firmly adult contemporary soundtrack. When Brad Pitt shows up as the hotel’s designated fixer, however, that serious to admittedly self-serious tone goes away. In its place, the film embraces a sort of low-level Odd Couple grumbling comedy. The dueling cleaners try to assert their superiority over each other, all while trying to hide their signs of aging from each other. To Wolfs’ credit, they don’t go to the well of bad backs, eroding vision, and barely contained yawns too often. On the other hand, when they do, the gags land with a smile or, at most, a gentle chuckle. If you were planning to watch the movie for a few hearty guffaws, you’d do well to look elsewhere. 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 →

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 →

As metaphors for one’s tweens and early teens, a superpower that changes your body, often without your control or knowledge, and leaves you questioning who you truly are at any given moment isn’t exactly subtle. But when it comes to chronicling the travails of middle school, perhaps subtlety isn’t the best way to approach the problem anyway. It’s the metaphor Ben (Lucian-River Chauhan) finds himself living as a seventh grader in Me. At school, he’s the new kid, an easy target for Jason (Brock Duncan), the bully who positively bristles with overcompensation. At home, he’s a visitor trying to become a resident as he and his mom, Elizabeth (Dilshad Vadsaria), move in with his stepdad Phil (Kyle Howard) and older stepsister Max (Abigail Pniowsky). His father is nowhere to be seen and quickly dismissed when mentioned. Max’s mom is a constant presence, even if it is usually just by mention. Then, one morning, Ben wakes up looking like Max’s friend (Jeremiah Friedlander). Like the mutants of Marvel’s X-Men, his superpower has kicked in just as adolescence is gearing up. "What do you mean, we aren't allowed to say cap?" demanded Kyle Howard and Dilshad Vadsaria. (AppleTV+) That bit might resemble the lives of Cyclops of Jean Grey, but in most other ways, Me feels a lot more like a junior version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the Gen Alpha set. Like Buffy’s Slayer mantel, Ben’s shapeshifting abilities become a gateway to a far stranger and more dangerous world existing just under the surface of his new home. And just like that series, Me plays best when it focuses on the growing pains of adolescence. 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 →

There’s no honest way to say WondLa looks ugly or uninteresting. The environs, in particular, make wonderful use of gentle pastels broken by sharp primary colors to create a world both beautiful and utterly alien (no pun intended) to our protagonist, Eva (Jeanine Mason). But visually attractive isn’t the same as unique or arresting. Sadly, once one begins to scratch the show’s surface, it reveals many all-too-familiar elements. Sometimes, it is just a general sense of the thing. At others, it is nearly one-to-one. For example, Eva’s first otherworldly ally, Otto (Brad Garrett), is a furry talkative sibling to Raya and The Last Dragon’s Tuk Tuk. Similar design elements are typically easy to accept for this critic, provided the story utilizing them offers enough to chew on. It is here that WondLa truly stumbles. A collection of other “coming of age” and “humanity’s end” stories’ greatest hits, the series never offers something fresh enough to get its audience to sit up and take notice. A collection of strong voice work, including Teri Hatcher—who has proven herself a real voice talent asset over the years—is further hamstrung because the voices come from mostly thinly sketched characters. Sarah Hollis and Jeanine Mason love your new look. (AppleTV+) In some unnumbered future year, Eva is the only child living in a vast underground bunker known as a Sanctuary. Her only true companionship is a robot surrogate parent, Muthr, who sees to the child’s physical—and, with time, inevitably—emotional needs. When Eva turns six, she—and the audience—learns she is part of a program to “save” humans from themselves. Under the direction of Cadmus Pryde (Alan Tudyk in a rare straightforward voice performance), the dwindling human populace built an array of Sanctuaries. In each, a robot raised children until the planet healed from the various environmental catastrophes and violent conflicts people visited upon it. When the Earth is ready and the children properly trained, they will be released to the surface to re-establish society and maybe treat each other and their planet right this time. 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 →

A frequently offered solution to the problem of stale biopics involves ditching the cradle-to-the-grave format. Instead, focus on a specific era or significant event in the life of an important figure. Let that story define viewers’ understanding of the person, giving the audience an insightful perspective without the exercise of box-checking. The Big Cigar takes this advice, narrowing its vision of Huey P. Newton (André Holland) to (mostly) 1974. That year, Newton faced multiple criminal charges and became increasingly convinced the government was targeting him for more than arrest. In response, the Black Panther Party co-founder left the U.S. for exile in Cuba. Joshuah Bearman’s Playboy essay gives co-creators Janine Sherman Barrois and Jim Hecht a fascinating launching pad for The Big Cigar. It’s not difficult to understand why Newton’s Hollywood-fueled escape just ahead of the FBI’s clutches would be a draw. Unfortunately, in adapting it for television, the creative team's tonal and structural choices undermine the series. P.J. Byrne's on the line! (AppleTV+) Hecht, coming off his work on Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers’ Dynasty, seems to have brought over some tonal impulses from his collaborator on that project, Adam McKay. As a result, The Big Cigar frequently tries to balance humor with dead serious topics like possible political assassination, government-orchestrated harassment, and gun violence. While the show manages those tonal juxtapositions better than McKay’s disastrous Don’t Look Up, it never delivers as well as The Big Short. Several jokes land without feeling disrespectful of the series’ more earnest moments or themes. Unfortunately, it is never as funny as it wants to be. That frequently creates a gulf between its humorous and solemn moments. They can’t seem to get both sides to integrate satisfyingly. Continue Reading →

In reviewing Dark Matter, it feels fitting to follow the moral of the show’s story. While it is easy to get lost in forever puzzling over details, the far more useful—and rewarding—path is to take a step back and fully appreciate a thing. There are elements in creator/showrunner Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own work that do not work, especially concerning pacing. And yet, by the time the credits roll on the final episode, one is largely left satisfied and, perhaps, a bit exhilarated. The temptation to dwell on each choice at the expense of the larger picture is something Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) knows well. But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. Dark Matters begins with the Jason I’ll christen “our Jason” for clarity. Our Jason is a Physics professor living in Chicago with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), a former artist who now focuses more on the administrative and business sides of art, and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). One night, Jason meets up with his friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) to celebrate the latter’s academic success. The vibe is strained, with parties seemingly aware that Jason should’ve received the same award, if not over Ryan, then certainly before him. Continue Reading →

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 →

Manhunt has proved yet another critical hit for AppleTV+. The series’ portrayal of historical figures as rich, complex, and possessing interesting dynamics with each other has received a large amount of credit for its success. Damian O’Hare, as one of the least well-known figures featured in the show, Thomas Eckert, has achieved high praise as well. With the series finale arriving this Friday, O’Hare took some time to speak to us about bringing an important but little-written-about historical figure to life, Ireland and America’s intertwined histories, and what is the true soul of the Manhunt. This interview was edited for length and clarity. THE SPOOL: We were just talking about you having watched the most recent three episodes. That catches you up in time for the series finale. Looking back over what you've seen, how do you feel about the results? Obviously, you had enough initial interest in the project to sign on. Still, projects often end up different than how they started. Given that, did Manhunt pay off on what you were expecting or hoping? 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 →

Some shows are difficult to write about because they don’t excite one’s passions. They’re not terrible or great, so they offer little to dig into. Sugar is not that sort of show. Instead, its difficulty stems from a plot development that seems too large to go unremarked upon. And yet, it would be unfair to those who haven’t yet watched the show to spoil it. With all that in mind, I will delicately attempt to navigate a third path. This development is significant. It changes much of what you know about several of the characters. And yet, it largely doesn’t impact the show. I don’t mean it is a waste of time, only that the show’s positives and negatives remain largely unaffected by this development. Take it out, and the story’s heart will remain essentially the same. It’s the rare significant plot point that changes so much without fundamentally altering the series. So, while it would be interesting to write about and explore it, this review is still broadly comprehensive without touching it.  Amy Ryan bellies up to the bar and reminds us all she's excellent in noir stories. (AppleTV+) John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is a private investigator specializing in finding missing people. Draped in bespoke suits, he insists he hates hurting people but does so with fluidity and ease. After completing a case in Japan, a message from legendary film producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell) draws him back to LA. Jonathan’s granddaughter Olivia (Sydney Chandler) is missing. Despite a history of substance abuse and frequent absences—as well as the lack of concern from her father Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris), a producer of…less quality movies—Jonathan is convinced this time is different. A film obsessive, Sugar can’t resist taking the meeting despite reassuring his handler Ruby (Kirby) that he’d rest and recuperate. When Olivia reminds the PI of his missing sister, he must take the case, promise or not. 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 →

Making Abraham Lincoln or Hamish Linklater the least interesting thing about your television series is no easy feat. That's especially the case when it features Linklater playing the 16th President of the United States. Yet, somehow, the Monica Beletsky-created MANHUNT, adapted from the James L. Swanson tome of the same name, manages to do just that. And that is 100 percent a compliment. Often forgotten is that Lincoln was not John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) and his co-conspirators’ only target. The schemers also marked Vice President Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower, an acting veteran turning in his best work.) and Secretary of State William Seward (Larry Pine) as targets. (The series additionally implies that the show’s lead, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), may have been on that list, but that doesn’t appear in historical texts.) By opening on the far larger plot that almost immediately unraveled due to bungling and cold feet, MANHUNT quickly asserts its intentions. While catching Booth is the series’ splashiest element, it is certainly not all it has on its mind. Tobias Menzies has hat, will travel. (AppleTV+) If anything, the eponymous search provides the show a means of taking stock of America immediately after the Civil War. Ping-ponging around in time, Manhunt provides a glimpse of how a collection of Americans experienced life after General Lee’s surrender. The derailing of a far more extensive restructuring of America feels every bit as mourned here as the fallen President. Continue Reading →

There is perhaps no more annoying phrase to hear from someone recommending a TV series in the streaming age than, “It’s very good, but you do have to wait a few episodes.” Regretfully, this writer nonetheless must employ it in reviewing The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. When the series finds its footing, it is equally adept at the goofy gag and the droll declaration. It’s just that it doesn’t settle into that groove until the third of six episodes provided to critics. The premise revolves around a decidedly ahistorical take on the British outlaw Dick Turpin (Noel Fielding, late of The Great British Baking Show). For those not steeped in 18th-century English criminal lore, Turpin was a highwayman who became something of a legend after his execution at the age of 33. Fans of new wave pop star Adam Ant may recall the singer briefly made Turpin a sartorial touchpoint with the inclusion of a tri-corner hat in his rotation.  In co-creators Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane’s The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, Fielding’s interpretation of the character hardly reflects the historical or legendary figure. Rather Turpin patrols the lawless outskirts of the Georgian era as a thoroughly modern man. A vegan who’s terrible with a gun and worse with his fists, he seems more drawn to the theatrics of criminality than the violence or even the money. As a result, he frequently confounds the odds through his stubborn insistence on making unusual choices and a healthy dose of good luck. Continue Reading →