81 Best TV Shows Similar to The Queen's Gambit (Page 4)
Heist
The appetite for true crime stories can seem insatiable. Mountains of podcasts, TV series, and movies, the latter two sent directly to streaming services, have been released over the last decade, making it more difficult for these narratives to find a wider audience. Netflix’s newest documentary series, Heist, attempts to cash in on this trend to mixed results, telling three stories over the course of six episodes. Continue Reading →
The Kids in the Hall
Eddie Martin's documentary gives voice to the cast of young actors in Larry Clark's seminal Kids -- and the traumas that came from the experience.
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.
“You couldn’t possibly make that film today” is a phrase that often turns up these days when the conversation turns to older movies that have even a whiff of controversial content about them. In some cases, that’s little more than hyperbole. But in the case of Kids, it somehow comes across as an understatement. Continue Reading →
Tuca & Bertie
SimilarBlack Books Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catterick,
Lisa Hanawalt’s beloved animated show Tuca & Bertie was prematurely canceled by Netflix back in July 2019. But less than a year later, Adult Swim took a risk by giving the show another life. If the first four episodes of the new season are anything to go on, the show only gets stronger, funnier, and more mature in its sophomore outing. Continue Reading →
Penguin Town
The Patton Oswalt-narrated Netflix docuseries tells a compelling story about the endangered birds' life during their molting and mating season.
“Six hot months! One wild colony! No rules!” With this reality show-esque tagline, Netflix’s Penguin Town appears to be a quirky, comical twist on nature docuseries. They even pulled in comedian Patton Oswalt to narrate. Penguin Town follows the adventures of a wild cast of African penguins. As the series progresses however, dramatic events unfold, pulling the audience in for an emotional trip alongside the endangered birds.
The series follows the journey of African penguins as they hit land on the shores of Simon’s Town, South Africa. Here the birds live it up amongst the “giants” (aka humans) of the town, molting their feathers, hooking up with their mates, and hopefully raising some hatchlings before they depart. This may sound like spring break for penguins, but their time at the beach is anything but a vacation. These penguins fight off predators on land and in the sea, attempt to survive catastrophic weather events, all in the hope their species will survive and thrive. Continue Reading →
Death and Nightingales
SimilarFate/Apocrypha, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Pride and Prejudice Tales from the Neverending Story, The Family Game, The Far Pavilions, The Strain,
On the heels of The Luminaries, Starz brings us another dramatic import, this time the Irish 3-episode miniseries Death and Nightingales, based on Edmund McCabe’s book of the same title and adapted/directed by Allan Cubitt. Set and filmed in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, Death and Nightingales is one of those rare sunny day thrillers, a gorgeously filmed but raw story of a young woman trying to save herself amidst family secrets, Irish Nationalism, and an increasingly untenable homelife. Continue Reading →
The Crime of the Century
SimilarNightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, The Gangster Chronicles, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
A running joke in early episodes of The Simpsons was McBain, an action hero parody. In one scene, a group of rich people celebrate their new product SWANK (a product 10 times more addictive than marijuana), and end with a toast: “To human misery!” After watching Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, The Crime of the Century, it’s hard to not think this scene was based on Purdue Pharmaceutical’s owners, the Sackler family, toasting the creation of OxyContin. Continue Reading →
Girls5eva
StarringRenée Elise Goldsberry,
NBC’s streaming app Peacock plays a strong hand in the nostalgia game. It’s the streaming home of The Office. It’s rebooted sitcom classics like Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster. Adding to the nostalgia trip is its new original comedy Girls5eva. Created by Meredith Scardino and executive produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, Girls5eva might first look like pure bubblegum pop fluff, but it digs deeper as a comedic exploration of pop music’s problematic past. Continue Reading →
Mare of Easttown
Mare of Easttown may at times feel like it’s kicking a dead horse. It’s a grammatically perfect post-Cardinal Bernard Law, cold-case-comes-alive thriller with rich performances by its entire cast. Yet for a story about a maverick detective purporting to be about more than crime, it follows surprisingly predictable beats, leaving little room for illuminating nuance. Continue Reading →
The Serpent Queen
For the podcast, I sat down with Scherrer to discuss the unique challenges of the project, that line between being period-appropriate and too on-the-nose, and working with some of the most interesting instruments and period synthesizers of the day to craft the haunting, tension-laden score for The Serpent. (He also talks -- and plays -- us through the winding tension of the series' title theme.) Continue Reading →
It's a Sin
NetworkChannel 4,
SimilarMore than Blue: The Series, Queen Cleopatra, Star and Sky: Star in My Mind,
In 1979, the Village People released the song “Ready for the 80’s” on their double-LP Live and Sleazy. The song is upbeat and bright, full of hope and promise. The group sings “I’m ready for the 80s / Ready for the time of my life” throughout the chorus, and one verse starts “Everything is gonna work out fine / I have faith in this old world of mine / We'll be loving in the bright sunshine.” Listening to this song over 40 years later, you can’t shake a sense of dramatic irony. In the end, the 80’s weren’t kind to the Village People, disco, or queer men in general. As I watched the opening episode of Russell T. Davies' latest mini-series, It’s a Sin, I kept thinking of this song and its optimistic outlook for a new decade, an optimism echoed in the fresh faces of its cast, blissfully unaware of the heartbreak awaiting them. Continue Reading →
Behind Her Eyes
SimilarCigarette Girl,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Valvrave the Liberator,
StarringRobert Aramayo,
Following off the success of Bridgerton, the next bestseller to be spun into Netflix gold is Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes, a book that was so aggressively marketed around its super-secret third act twist that early readers were encouraged to use the hashtag #WTFthatending. They aren’t kidding. WTF that ending, indeed. Continue Reading →
Bridgerton
SimilarAround the World in 80 Days, Helltown, My Holo Love, No Escape, Santa Evita, The Summer I Turned Pretty,
Thank goodness for Shonda Rhimes, not only for having the clout to bring a beloved historical romance to a major streaming service but for recognizing what’s been missing from historical television drama: Fun. And Bridgerton is fun, bursting at the seams with romantic tropes, six-packs, friendship, and scandal. Continue Reading →
The Plot Against America
David Simon and Ed Burns' adaptation of the Philip Roth novel paints a harrowing picture of an alternate America that feels all too prescient.
HBO’s latest miniseries imagines a world where renowned pilot, isolationist, and anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh runs for president and defeats FDR in 1940. What follows is a rise in anti-Semitic hate and fascism throughout America. And as you watch the series, you’d be forgiven for thinking this a pretty in-your-face way to address the Trump administration. That might be true, but the series is based on the Philip Roth novel of the same name which was released more than 15 years ago in 2004. If anything, Roth’s The Plot Against America has been frustratingly, dishearteningly prescient. It’s no wonder showrunners David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire) were drawn to it.
The show follows the Levin family (originally the Roths in the novel) as they deal with the shifting political tide and how it strains their family bonds. Father Herman (Morgan Spector) is an outspoken liberal who finds Lindbergh distasteful and disgusting. Wife Bess (Zoe Kazan) frets constantly for the safety of her family, remembering all too well how isolating it was to be the only Jewish girl in her class growing up.
Michele K. Short/HBO
Cousin Alvin shares Herman’s political leanings, but is determined to act, eventually signing up for the Canadian army in order to “kill Nazis.” Meanwhile, impressionable young Sandy (Caleb Malis) grapples with his hero Lindbergh’s politics while his little brother Phillip (Azhy Robertson) tries to make sense of it all. Things are only further complicated when Bess’s sister Evelyn (Winona Ryder) falls for Rabbi Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), a staunch Lindbergh supporter. Continue Reading →
Feel Good
Netflix breathes new life into the tired stand-up comedian sitcom genre.
The stand-up comedy dramedy is dead. It was tired after Seinfeld, and the only person that got it right since turned out to be a monster. Every other offer in the genre has either struggled with a relationship with the world outside of comedy, or an obsession with the inside world of comedy, which is not that interesting. I am sorry to say, but I do not care about anyone’s struggles to impress a booker.
The thing that Feel Good, Netflix’s new British comedy centered on the life of queer comedian Mae Martin, gets right is that stand up is still work. It doesn’t matter if your work is talking in front of other people, or working in an office. Most of the time it’s not that interesting. Our current society is so obsessed with work that the obsession tends to bleed into our media. Feel Good isn’t a show about a stand-up comedian. It's about a person who happens to be a stand-up comedian.
Mae as a character has more important things to think about than comedy. The show navigates through its first six episodes mostly focused on Mae’s relationships with George (Charlotte Ritchie), a teacher who’s never had any queer experiences, her mother, Linda (Lisa Kudrow), and her sobriety. Martin proves themself a capable actor, painting a well-made version of a person who doesn’t just love cocaine but loves getting high on any sort of obsessive behavior. Feel Good isn’t about drugs or about being queer. It's about the day to day struggle to fight our worst aspects. Continue Reading →
Hunters
Al Pacino leads a team of Nazi hunters in a brassy Amazon series stuffed with Holocaust pathos and comic-book sleaze.
(Editor's note: this review is based on the first five episodes of the show, which is what was provided to critics prior to the show's premiere.)
Amazon’s Hunters is a lot. That’s not bad, by any means, but it is a heads up. It’s funny and heartbreaking and stressful, a love letter to exploitation films, comic books, and revenge fantasies, and it is a lot. It’s also very much something that people need to see right now. Created and written by David Weil and produced by Jordan Peele, Hunters was inspired by his grandmother’s stories about World War II and the Holocaust, stories that Weil saw as a battle between good and evil (much like the comics that the show references and draws visual inspiration from). Nothing is as simple as good versus evil, of course, but Hunters does an excellent job of addressing the battles head-on.
Set in 1977, the show revels in its primary NYC setting, full of grit and cigarettes and flickering subway car lights, and the visits to other locales are given equal ‘70s glory by production designer Curt Beech and set decorator Cathy T. Marshall, with loud wallpaper and lights shaped like grapes and so much carpeting. The most real and lived-in location is the modest house where 19-year old Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) lives with his grandmother Ruth (Jeannie Berlin). After Ruth is murdered and the police handwave her death as a burglary, Jonah is approached by Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino), who knew Ruth from their time in a concentration camp and who, Jonah comes to learn, is the financier and now leader (in Ruth’s absence) of a group of Nazi hunters. While the Hunters are working from a list of Nazis who were active during the war and are now living in the United States, it becomes clear that there is a wider network at play and larger stakes than even the Hunters had suspected. Continue Reading →
High Fidelity
Hulu's gender flipped, more diverse take on Nick Hornby's modern classic about entitled men-children has charm & heart.
Nick Hornby has made a career out of the unlikeable protagonist, from the philandering Doctor Katie in How to Be Good to the selfish, womanizer Will in About A Boy. By far his most popular--and most adapted--role, however, is record store owner and emotional masochist Rob in High Fidelity. Rob is a self-professed asshole who is fun to watch because we’ve all known that guy. Some of us have been that guy. In Stephen Frears’ 2000 adaptation of Hornby’s novel, Rob is portrayed by John Cusack with a kind of self-deprecating air of vagrancy that some find irresistible.
Twenty years later, though, the world looks a little different. There has been a culture shift with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. It isn’t quite as appealing to watch a character like Rob Gordon continuing to fail upwards as it was 20 years ago. Audiences don’t have as much patience for the sort of nostalgia-driven entitlement that Rob and other male characters like him seem to thrive on. Labeling a woman as awful for talking a lot, forcing an ex to admit that she was “not quite” assaulted, or even thinking for a second that any of these women owe Rob an explanation is no longer quite so cute.
With that in mind, why make a newer, updated version of High Fidelity? There is a grimy sort of magic to people who really, really love music and who fall in and out of love because of (or maybe in spite of) music. Hulu’s ten-episode series asks, “Why the hell not?” While Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka’s take on High Fidelity is new and fresh—at times a painful delight—it isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel. With its expert pacing, fourth wall monologuing and a protagonist covering real emotional pain with sharp observational humor and self-depreciation, it’s hard not to compare it to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s breakout hit Fleabag. Continue Reading →
Birds of Prey
Despite solid reviews, DC's latest putting Harley Quinn front & center struggles to find an audience.
This past weekend, something rare happened. A live-action title based on a Marvel Comics or DC Comics property underperformed at the box office. Usually, such movies are bulletproof at the box office but Birds of Prey proved that not everything with the DC label on it is destined for box office glory. Opening to just $33.2 million, Birds of Prey came in severely under expectations this frame and scored the lowest debut for a live-action DC title since Jonah Hex. Among prior February openers, Birds of Prey opened just below the $33.3 million debut of microbudget horror title Get Out and also below the $34.1 million opening of last years would-be WB tentpole The LEGO Movie 2.
Birds of Prey is gonna need some incredible box office stamina to recover in the coming weeks, and it feels practically assured at this point that the film will become the only the eighth 21st-century live-action DC Comics project to miss $100 million domestically, following in the footsteps of Catwoman and the two RED movies. Normally you can pinpoint an exact reason these kinds of blockbuster titles went awry, but in the case of Birds of Prey, it’s hard to see what lead to this opening. The marketing was distinct and emphasized the kind of elements (action & comedy namely) audiences look for in these movies, reviews were strong, February has always been a successful launchpad for comic book fare and Harley Quinn is an incredibly popular character.
Perhaps it simply boils down to the fact that sometimes, a surefire success just doesn’t turn out to be as surefire as it seemed. At least Birds of Prey only cost $84 million to make, so the financial losses will be minimal. After all, it’s a tentpole title released by an arm of AT&T, a company so financially secure that it can more than withstand a million mild underperformers like Birds of Prey. Plus, Birds of Prey did score two genuinely impressive box office feats in its opening. First off, as near as I can tell, Birds of Prey is the first time in history a live-action film directed by a woman of color topped the domestic box office. It also joins a rare group of films (which includes The Birdcage) with queer lead characters that managed to open number one at the domestic box office. Continue Reading →
Kidding
Jim Carrey returns as a kids' show host who stubbornly continues to choose goodness, no matter what life throws at him.
Kidding picks up right where it left off in season one, with reality literally crashing in on Jeff Pickles (Jim Carrey). Season two follows the ever-moving cycle of conflict in Jeff’s life and psyche. Though no longer listed as a director for the series, Michel Gondry’s cool, icy tone (with plenty of gliding single takes) is still present. In this season, it's former Weeds showrunner Dave Holstein’s delightfully twisted sense of humor that gets to shine. The series fully embraces the absurdity of its circumstances and brings more laughs. Not to say the show is any lighter. Like Weeds, it brings the menace this season. It’s 2020; everyone's into ax play.
When we last left Enlightened PBS Children’s Entertainer Jeff Pickles, things were going from bad to worse in every aspect of his life. His show was on permanent hiatus; his marriage, torn apart by the death of his son Phil, is in tatters; family estranged, and his identity is being pulled apart. All he had was the hope found in the felt-fantasy land of Picklebarrel Falls.
Carrey remains a consistent highlight throughout this season, making appropriate choices when conveying Jeff’s conflicted ethics. Jeff ticks and the wheels turn in his brain; it’s part of what makes him feel human. As the show embraces the comedy chops of its main cast, flashes of “Classic Carrey” are present and we can see that Carrey hasn’t lost his goofiness at all and that everything being acted for us is a choice. Continue Reading →