Reviews
I hope ABC gives this show room to breathe because it's unique, smart, and pretty funny. And there's not a weak link among the main cast members. Noah Galvin is the real deal.
I'm giving this four stars, but that doesn't reflect the strange fatigue I feel with this show. It's consistently clever, and yet somehow annoys me. I think the insane deluge of awards over so many years is part of the problem. All that said, a very important show for TV diversity and one that I imagine will hold up quite well.
The best sitcom of the past decade. Boom.
This is a solid B for me; I really don't understand the intense disdain from some (most) critics. Would I want to hang out with these people? Probably not. But their crazy antics and bone-headed blunders delivered at least a couple of laugh-out-loud moments for me in each episode. (And I really didn't know how much I needed Fred Savage in my life.)
The first season follows a young Jenny in the late '50s as she adjusts to her new job at a nursing convent in London's crowded East End, where many of her patients are living in squalor and battling enemies both visible and invisible. Among the most memorable are a Spanish woman pregnant for the 25th time and a 15-year-old Irish girl forced into prostitution. Cheery! The patients' stories are often brutal and actress Jessica Raine, who practically glows onscreen as Jenny, sheds her share of tears. There are occasional laughs, many coming from Miranda Hart's Chummy, but the show's a serious tear-jerker.
Jude Law gives one of his greatest performances as Pope Pius XIII, formerly Lenny Belardo, the first American pope. A chain-smoking, secretive, right-wing Machiavelli with a love of gold jewelry and big hats, Lenny knows what's up in the Vatican, so he eschews the counsel of the Secretary of State and brings in his surrogate mother, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton), to serve as his chief advisor. From the mind of Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino, this is a fun, stylish, interesting, wonderfully watchable series.
Perhaps anticipating how much Emeril can be for some of us, each episode includes a co-host to serve as a bit of a cultural bridge (such as my fave and yours, José Andrés, in Spain). That pizza episode? Nom nom nom.
Get beyond the first episode (which is very, very Baz Luhrmann) and you just might get hooked. This is a big, colorful series with a sprawling cast of veterans and newcomers. It's about the rise of hip-hop (executive producer Nas and adviser Grandmaster Flash are around to keep things real), but as with any Luhrmann project, it's also a love story — a star-crossed love story between an aspiring rapper and disco singer.
This show is... frustrating. Mindy Kaling is a good, but not great, actress. She has surrounded herself with some A+ costars, but also some serious duds (the southern siblings are the worst). There is heartfelt drama and laugh-outloud comedy, but often the two extremes are shoehorned into episodes, making them feel tonally insane. Shifts in time, cast members randomly discarded. It sometimes feels like the show reboots every so often without any explanation. Yeah, frustrating is the word.
Turns out Will Forte is one of the smartest, most creative folks to come out of SNL. This show somehow managed to move beyond an impossible setup and become a consistently intriguing series.