196 Best TV Shows Similar to Game of Thrones
The Spiderwick Chronicles
SimilarKONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!,
Planet of the Apes The Lost World,
Studio20th Television, Paramount Television Studios,
As the opening minutes of Roku's The Spiderwick Chronicles is all too glad to remind us, "This is a dark fairy tale." A decidedly on-the-nose sentiment to blurt out to an audience in its beginning seconds, to be sure, but that matches the vibe of the series: A lot of spells, but very little magic. The show was rescued by Roku after Disney+ cut it in 2023 after completing the series; the move was ostensibly to cut costs, part of the streaming squeeze we're all going through as streamers start realizing it doesn't quite pay to firehouse out an endless stream of expensive content. But based on what we've seen, they may have been on to something.
Based on the early-aughts children's fantasy novels by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi and updated by Aron Eli Coleite, the show offers a coincidentally similar premise to Coleite's prior show, Netflix's Locke & Key: A mom and three siblings moving to their family's ancestral home in the wake of losing their father (here, it's to divorce), only to find magical secrets that lie inside. In Spiderwick, that family is the Graces, each of which has their own distinct quirks but not a lot of space to develop beyond them. There are twin brothers Jared (Lyon Daniels) and Simon (Noah Cottrell), the former with mental health issues and the latter with a chip on his shoulder about leaving their dad behind. Older sister Mallory (Mychala Lee) is a fencing prodigy whose meticulous life planning may be her biggest weakness. Mother Helen (Joy Bryant) is doing her best to hold the family together, all while trying to deal with her institutionalized Aunt Lucinda (a small but powerful guest turn from Charlayne Woodard), who continually goes on about boggarts and ogres and faeries.
The Spiderwick Chroniciles (Roku)
But based on the house they move in, the creaky, ancient Spiderwick estate, with its labyrinthine tunnels, and the large tree that grows in the middle of the foyer, there may be something to Aunt Lucinda's mutterings (and, it turns out, Jared's visions). Turns out their relative, Arthur Spiderwick (Arthur Jones), spent his life chronicling the fantastical creatures and artifacts he came across in his varying travels, collecting them all in a Field Guide that the kids happen upon not too far into the series. Trouble is, they're not the only ones looking for the guide: maniacal ogre Mulgarath (Christian Slater) wants it too, and for hardly altruistic reasons. Continue Reading →
Conan O'Brien Must Go
NetworkMax,
SimilarScully, The Wimbledon Poisoner, 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, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Cleopatra, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, Unterleuten: The Torn Village,
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 →
The Sympathizer
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
"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 →
RIPLEY
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Cleopatra, Dark Winds, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Buccaneers, The Gold Robbers, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
StudioShowtime Networks,
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 →
Sugar
Similar4400,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Angel, Baywatch Nights, Black Scorpion, Dexter, Knots Landing, Noah's Arc, Pope John Paul II,
Sherlock Holmes The 4400, World War II: When Lions Roared,
StudioApple Studios,
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 →
Star Trek: Discovery
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun,
Battlestar Galactica Ben 10: Omniverse, Blake's 7,
Caprica Crusade, Dark Skies, Doctor Who, Duck Dodgers,
Earth 2 Eureka Seven Farscape,
Firefly First Wave, Flash Gordon, Future Man, Hyperdrive, Intruders, Inuyashiki: Last Hero,
Justice League Lost in Space, Marvel's Rocket & Groot, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Out of This World, Quark, Red Dwarf, Space: 1999,
Star Trek Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Voyager Star Wars: Droids, Stargate Atlantis, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Transformers, Threshold, ThunderCats, Torchwood, UFO, Ultraman,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
The 1960s Star Trek show did not have the chance to do a true series finale. All of its successors did though, until now. From The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine to Voyager to Enterprise to Picard, every show had the opportunity to make a final statement and sum up the years of adventures in some fashion. Yet, despite being the primogenitor of the franchise, The Original Series just sort of ends, with the sense of the conveyor belt simply stopping, and its last output accidentally becoming an end, if not quite the end.
And yet “Turnabout Intruder”, infamous though it may be, is a surprisingly fitting finale for TOS. It features the good notions and abiding themes of the 1960s show: the idea that this crew knows their captain well enough to sniff out a fake; that become a well-functioning team that can work through even the most unorthodox problems, and that after seventy-nine episodes’ worth of outlandish adventures, they remain open to new and unexpected possibilities. It also features the bad ideas and problematic elements that plagued series time and again: from a mixed-at-best perspective on women to William Shatner’s over-the-top acting. In that, the show’s final outing is an inadvertent but strangely apt swan song for the series.
In its new season, Star Trek: Discovery follows in those hallowed, unexpected footsteps. This is Discovery’s fifth and final year on the air, but as reported by the cast and crew, they didn’t know that when writing or filming it until the last minute. Despite the promise of a hastily-shot coda to give the show an air of finality, that makes this last leg of Discovery’s mission an accidental ending, not unlike the one endured by the original Star Trek series. 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
SimilarAnna Karenina, Återkomsten, Blackeyes, Jewels, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Monarch of the Glen, Oh, Doctor Beeching!,
Planet of the Apes The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
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 →
Manhunt
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Dark Winds, Dexter, Fallen, Fate/Apocrypha, Fearless, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl,
Hilda Furacão Jack the Ripper, Jewels, La Mante,
Little Women M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, More Tales of the City, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Super Pumped, Tales from the Neverending Story, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unorthodox, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
Studio3 Arts Entertainment, Apple Studios,
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 →
Apples Never Fall
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jewels, M*A*S*H, More than Blue: The Series, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, The 4400, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Shining, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
The expression, “The book was better,” has become a truism in adaptation, an assumption where the few exceptions only prove the rule. But what’s a creator to do when the source material is deeply flawed?
If you’re Apples Never Fall creator Melanie Marnich, you make several cosmetic changes to Liane Moriarty’s novel. The drama moves from Australia to West Palm Beach. The four Delaney children—Troy (Jake Lacy), Brooke (Essie Randles), Amy (Alison Brie), and Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner)—are no longer uniformly tall and olive-skinned. Quite the opposite, really, on the skin tone front. Relationships are shuffled a bit. Unfortunately, these changes fail to elevate the series.
The broad strokes of the plot itself are intriguing. The Delaney parents Joy (Annette Bening) and Stan (Sam Neill) have finally retired from a lifetime of running a tennis center, including their own stints as players and coaches. Rather than a delightful occasion, it churns up all manner of unprocessed relationship issues. Stan is cantankerous and competitive, oscillating between diminishing everyone around him with words and beating them all over the court. Joy, on the other hand, expected to spend her golden years catching up with her children, who lack the time or interest in doing the same. Continue Reading →
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
SimilarFamily Guy, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, The Sound of Your Heart,
StarringNoel Fielding,
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 →
Far North
NetworkAMC+,
StarringTemuera Morrison,
The New Zealand crime dramedy can’t wrangle its disparate tones into a satisfying whole.
In some ways, Far North offers viewers three shows in one. There’s the harrowing tale of a quartet of Chinese women, Bi (Xana Tang), Jin (Xiao Hu), Hui (Nikita Tu-Bryant), and Ling (Louise Jiang), trapped in a boat off the coast of New Zealand. They’re under the thumb of Cai (Fei Li), a capricious crime middle manager whose corner-cutting and incompetence have left them stranded and facing death by dehydration and starvation. Unfortunately, rescue is almost as unpleasant a prospect as dying. To be saved, Cai demands they either “pay” for the rescue by sinking themselves deeper into debt and servitude or killing one of their own.
On the mainland, a different kind of crime story is unfolding. A group of less-than-competent criminals working for Blaze (Fay Tofilau) believe they’re about to get the score of their lives. Employed by her to take in the meth the Chinese women are transporting, they think it’ll be as easy as loading up a camper and driving it a few towns away. Alas, between the delays and their lack of skills, complications rapidly arise. Continue Reading →
One Day at a Time
SimilarA Little Princess,
Black Books Cleopatra, Fallen, Florida Man, Flower Boy Next Door, Hyperdrive, Love, Timeless, More Tales of the City, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Off Centre, Oh, Doctor Beeching!, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Queen Cleopatra, Silo, Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, That '70s Show, The Family Game, The Gangster Chronicles,
The John Larroquette Show The Shining, Tientsin Mystic, Two and a Half Men, Unorthodox, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
Netflix’s new romance limited series offers a thoughtful, warm adaptation of the 2009 novel.
The hook of author David Nicholls’ 2009 novel is irresistible. Readers catch up with two former classmates who are something more than friends but not quite lovers on the same day, July 19, every year from 1988 to 2008. It’s no wonder it has managed two adaptations in the 15 years since its release—first as a 2011 movie directed by Lone Scherfig from a script by Nicholls himself and now as a limited series created by Nicole Taylor, with only one Nicholls’ script among the fourteen episodes.
Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) is handsome, charismatic, and just rich enough not to worry about making a plan for his future. Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) is also quite attractive—although she can’t (or won’t) see it—and from a working-class background that makes her feel as though she can’t pursue her clear goal for the future: to become a writer. They travel in different circles, but on the night of graduation, they end up falling into her bed. While they kiss plenty, it never goes further, Emma preferring to chat despite her massive and evident crush on Dexter. Continue Reading →
The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!
NetworkPeacock,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Batfink, Family Guy, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tales from the Crypt, The Wallflower, Thunderbirds,
StarringJ. Smith-Cameron,
Peacock’s claymation sitcom is at its best when it skips the satire for the strange, but “best” is grading on a curve.
To its credit, In The Know resists dropping the term “woke” to describe its characters. Unfortunately, in a fairly disastrous opener, that’s the only “those silly sensitive liberals” signifier it lets go past. The premiere’s big joke, one it repeats OFTEN, centers on the proper terminology for someone without a place to live. Because, of course, it's a goofy waste of time to worry about language. Only Zach Woods’ ever-increasing profane frustration at being corrected by Fabian (Caitlin Reilly) saves the bit. His voice performance as “NPR’s third most popular host” Lauren Caspian is just sly enough to make it unclear if his anger comes from his inability to remember the correct term, someone having the nerve to interrupt him, or the thought that someone in the office might be more progressive than him.
It isn’t that mocking blowhard radio hosts can’t be a rich comic vein. Just check out the original Frasier series, a show with a strangely intense cross-generational appeal that persists even over 19 years after the final episode aired. It’s centering that mockery on NPR, particularly an NPR that has more in common with a conservative’s fever dream of what the company is like rather than anything resembling reality, feels like a weak tea. Fortunately, things improve for In The Know as it quickly moves beyond what initially seems like an exercise in sticking it to those caricatures of public radio employees. Continue Reading →
True Detective
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Amazing Stories, American Horror Story, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Bates Motel, Brimstone, Broadchurch, Brotherhood, Cruel Summer, CSI: Miami, Deadly Class, Dexter,
HIStory Jack the Ripper, La Mante, Life on Mars, Luther, Millennium, Murder Most Horrid, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Sherlock Holmes Tarzan, The Twilight Zone, Viso d'angelo, Wycliffe,
Jodie Foster and Kali Reis shine as a pair of detectives investigating an increasingly surreal crime.
In Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt mysteries, the title character is a brilliant, eccentric detective haunted by the unsolved disappearance of one of her closest friends. Her cases are vitally recognizable and beautifully surreal. When The Infinite Blacktop, the most recent entry in the series, was released in paperback, Gran held a giveaway, including a copy of the book and some fun feelies. On one of those, a pen, the following was printed: “Open your eyes and learn to see that truth lives in the ether.” In the course of thinking about Issa López (Tigers Are Not Afraid)’s excellent True Detective: Night Country, it’s a line that’s been on my mind.
It's the end of 2023. In Ennis, Alaska, the eccentric scientists of the Tsalal research station vanish just as the long polar night sets in. Ennis police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and detective-turned-trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) know that something is not right. Though bitterly estranged, the former partners share a drive to discover what happened at Tsalal and why. Their need to get to the truth only intensifies after the scientists are discovered in a ghastly, bizarre state—a collective corpsicle, all of them nude and visibly terrified. Continue Reading →
빨간풍선
Albert Lamorisse's flights of fancy come to Criterion courtesy of a gorgeous new box set.
There are few things more wondrous than a child's imagination -- its capacity to uplift itself beyond the pain and doldrums of everyday life to see the world through new eyes. One of cinema's greatest chroniclers of that imagination is French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse, a contemporary of the French New Wave who literally went high where his peers went low. His domain was in short, charming, powerful films often linking child protagonists to wonders both terrestrial and supernatural: an animal that captures their heart, or the unyielding power of flight. Now, Criterion has captured that magic in a new two-disc Blu-ray set containing the bulk of Lamorisse's flashes of cinematic whimsy.
The crown jewel of the pack, of course, is 1956's The Red Balloon, the only short film to ever receive a major Academy Award (for Best Original Screenplay; no small feat, considering the film, like many of Lamorisse's, relies on very little dialogue). It's a simple, elemental tale of a boy (Lamorisse's son, Pascal, a frequent star of his works) walking the grey, rundown streets of postwar Paris -- the Ménilmontant neighborhood, to be specific -- only to find himself befriending a bright red balloon that follows him everywhere. The two seem to build some ineffable connection, a bond that plays out through the streets of Ménilmontant. The boy's parents and teachers don't understand their friendship. His peers envy it, chasing them through the streets to tragic ends. Continue Reading →
American Horror Story
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 →
Reacher
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The Prime series remains its big, fun, very violent self.
Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson), the “has toothbrush, will travel” man, has returned to television and not a moment too soon. Reacher Season 2 is exactly the kind of low-commitment viewing one craves as the year ends and the holidays overtake everyone’s lives. While a large, jolly man busies himself filling many of our stockings, who better to enjoy than a large, angry man knocking bad guys out of their socks? Especially when, like this time, it’s personal!
Reacher and Neagly (Maria Sten, back from Season 1 and fully second on the callsheet this time, thankfully) first met when they were members of the 110, an investigative military police unit. As seen in flashback, the group is the last time Reacher had anything approaching a stable group of friends. In the present day, several team members have gone missing, suggesting that perhaps someone is targeting them. Reacher connects with Neagly and the two join up with the only other two 110 members they can find. O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) is the unit clown and womanizer turned family man and inside the beltway fixer. Dixon (Serinda Swan) is a forensic accountant/warrior who shares an obvious but unconsummated crush with Reacher. Continue Reading →
Slow Horses
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The AppleTV+ spy series retains its humor but gives viewers its most tightly plotted effort yet.
Slow Horses Season 3 reiterates how the series differs from so many other TV shows. While critics frequently discuss film as a director’s medium, television tends to be more showrunner—and thus writer—driven. While Horses indeed derives many of its pleasures from the writers—the returning trio of Will Smith, Jonny Stockwood, and Mark Denton once again man the pens—each season’s unique tone owes to its single director.
James Hawes made the series’ debut season a workplace comedy where the occasional gun battle might break out. Season 2 darkened or ditched much of the comedy for a bleaker, higher action affair under the direction of Jeremy Lovering. In Slow Horses Season 3, Saul Metzstein doesn’t push the team back into the offices. If anything, Slough House appears even less than in Season 2. However, he does re-up some of the mismatched colleagues’ humor, particularly when it comes to the team’s most recent additions, gambling addict Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) and drug addict Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards). He also further deepens the emotional stakes with a light touch, adding depth to ever-growing complications. Continue Reading →
Fargo
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The crime drama returns to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and rediscovers its best storytelling self.
Throughout the six episodes of Fargo Season 5 screened for critics, the series isn’t exactly subtle. From opening the season with an on-screen graphic defining “Minnesota Nice” as neighbor attacks neighbor during a school board meeting to Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) staring up at a campaign billboard of himself, the show loudly states its theses at the viewer over and over.
However, it never feels like creator Noah Hawley has lost control of the storytelling. It’s methodically over-the-top. The audience is on a roller coaster, but they can feel the quality of the engineering keeping them on the tracks. In other hands, this approach can feel alienating or blunting. Fargo Season 5 benefits from meeting Hawley’s signature energy with a game cast and impressively insightful art direction. As a result, the series turns in its best offering since Season 2’s near-perfect effort. Continue Reading →