Reviews
Don't judge me, but I didn't think the seventh season was bad at all. Of course April is the worst, but even Stars Hollow should be home to annoying pre-teens. Overall, obviously one of the best shows of the aughts. Oh, and Lauren Graham is everything.
Ten years ago, Planet Earth blew our minds with its groundbreaking depiction of nature's ugly and beautiful moments. Well, technology has advanced quite a bit in the past decade and Planet Earth II is an even more vivid and stunning exploration of the drama of the natural world.
This fun, slightly campy, over-the-top vampire thriller was brought to the small screen by a trio of creative heavyweights. Carlton Cuse, who won a couple of Emmys for his work on Lost, runs the show alongside co-executive producers Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, who co-wrote the best-selling trilogy on which this creepy series is based. The action begins with the delightfully named Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his Centers for Disease Control team called in to investigate a mysterious viral outbreak that began on a plane that landed in New York under very mysterious circumstances. The strain, it turns out, is an ancient form of vampirism. But it's easy to guess how well that theory goes over.
Justin Simien adapts -- and improves upon -- his critically acclaimed 2014 movie of the same name about racial tensions at a predominantly white Ivy League university. Logan Browning replaces Tessa Thompson and is fantastic, as is DeRon Horton as Lionel.
The bad news: this is not (yet) a 30 Rock- or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt-level joke monster. The good news: the foundation is definitely there. The cast is excellent. But the mom-as-intern premise doesn't have very strong legs. And the comedy, while often charming and cute, lacks the bite of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's other shows. It's worth remembering, however, that Season 1 of 30 Rock started a little slow, but gradually found its sweet spot.
Could anything be more Ryan Murphy than an anthology series dramatizing the legendary feud between Old Hollywood icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, who (sort of) set aside their differences to (barely) collaborate on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The answer is no. So it's no surprise that this works so well. Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon devour the scenery, but they also find some space to ground things, touching upon themes like ageism and sexism in Hollywood. Both are fantastic, but I find Sarandon particularly appealing in this role.
Continuing NBC's tradition of mockumentary-style comedies, Trial & Error follows a young New York lawyer played by Nick D’Agosto who heads to a small South Carolina town to help defend an eccentric poetry professor accused of murdering his wife. As he works with a two-person team of weirdos in an office next to a taxidermy shop, his client's actions become harder to defend. The premise is smart and the cast is stacked with talented actors, led by the effortless John Lithgow as the alleged murderer. It's not as immediately appealing to me as The Good Place, but there's serious potential here.
This is kind of a difficult show. You have to pay attention. It's a slow, theatrical television experiment that is both incredibly modern and very old fashioned. It's investment TV, but the ROI is big. The entire series will get you thinking about the infuriating messiness of family and relationships, and the future of TV.
Hundreds of years from now, when humans have screwed up everything (#itgetsworse), survivors discover how to override the minds of their ancestors, who become an elite force trying to save humanity from itself. It's an interesting and pretty timely premise that leads down all sorts of paths as it progresses. From "Stargate SG-1" co-creator Brad Wright, this Canadian show obviously has sci-fi elements, but it's mostly a fairly grounded, semi-spy drama, so even those who are typically wary of the genre may find it intriguing.
On the surface, this satirical mystery series is about a group of self-obsessed but somehow still lovable friends in their late 20s searching for a missing college acquaintance (there's a bit of a Girls-meets-Columbo vibe). But on a deeper level, it's about young adults on a quest to figure out who they are and what they want. Fortunately, both levels are funny as hell.