Schmigadoon!
As Melissa (Cicely Strong) explicitly points out, the musicals that inspired the first season of Schmigadoon! were all of a relatively similar happy-go-lucky and “they all lived happily ever after” cloth. Her attempt to return to that mystical world with her now husband Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) in Schmigadoon! Season 2 takes them instead to Schmicago. It is another mythic town that mirrors musicals, but this time out, it’s the shows of the 60s and 70s. The Broadway shows of that era were darker, more complex, more violent, and far less likely to deliver a happy ending. That, paired with their motivation to flee the drudgery of day-to-day life and the heartbreak of infertility, means escaping will take something far more challenging to find than “love.” Continue Reading →
Hello Tomorrow!
Hello Tomorrow! is a lot like its lead character Jack Billings (Billy Crudup). It looks great, for one. For another, it keeps dancing in the hopes that you won’t catch on to exactly how hollow its charms are, even when the music stops. And, like Billings, you almost want Hello Tomorrow! to get away with it. Unfortunately, they’re both running confidence games that they can’t land. Continue Reading →
Mythic Quest
SimilarCatterick, Men Behaving Badly,
Red Dwarf Studio3 Arts Entertainment,
One of the hardest things in television is creating the impression of change without breaking the show or making it feel like half-assed window dressing. That’s the problem facing Mythic Quest at the start of Season 3. Continue Reading →
The Shrink Next Door
SimilarAlias Grace, The Bride of Habaek, The Singing Detective,
StudioMRC,
If I were to tell you that Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd were starring in a comedic miniseries about a hapless, neurotic man whose entire life is taken over by his overbearing psychiatrist, you’d be forgiven for assuming that (a) Ferrell plays the psychiatrist and Rudd his patient, and (b) it’d be a pretty funny movie. In fact, the opposite is true: Rudd, in a rare villainous role, is the doctor, and the series, Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, isn’t particularly funny. Oh, there are some amusing moments, but they’re more likely to elicit laughs of the uncomfortable kind, as the viewer is torn between sympathizing with its protagonist and wanting desperately to shake some sense into him Continue Reading →