As I continue to swim the waters of DocNYC, which launches next Wednesday, I am gathering a lot of great titles to tell you about soon. The festival is less COVID-y than last year. A lot of music docs, including an off-beat series from HBO and Bill Simmons, some of which, Alanis Morrissette and Kenny G, rolled out at TIFF in September. And a number of films on, literally, film. Anyway… keep an eye out.
Meanwhile…
Every time I spend more than 20 minutes with friends, the conversation turns to, “What is worth watching?” The endless waterfall of content is exhausting and exhausting to keep up with. But it does feel like word-of-mouth is more powerful than anytime in memory. Friends understand their friends tastes (usually) and can offer enough insight to either guide them to or away from something they may like.
The show that I have been personally touting for at least 6 months now… and have gotten a grand total of none of my friends to watch, is Why Are You Like This, a one-season comedy on Netflix from Australia. Three friends - 2 women and a guy - in their 20s who defy easy definintion, dealing with work, sex, ambition, pleasure, and stupidity. The show is unrestrained without being gross, sexy without being sexual, and political in an era where almost any choice can be dangerous. But most of all, it’s funny. If I am in need of a quick mood change, I can fire up an episode and get lost in the absurdity almost instantly.
One of the surprises to me lately has been how much streaming animation I am enjoying… not starting with traditional shows and movies. I live just off Fairfax Ave in Los Angeles, so Fairfax is literally right up my alley. This Amazon show is much smarter and less obvious than I expected. I’ve been a big fan of Amazon’s Invincible, which is an aggressively adult superhero series. It can be a bit uneven, but the idea of people with super powers being real people has been a popular one lately and I found this show to be the best at digging into that dichotomy. And I just plain love Hit Monkey. It’s hard-R Marvel animation on Hulu and it scratches my itch. An actual primate, surviving the murder of his troop by a bunch of asshole hitmen, becomes a high-end assassin with the help of the ghost of a smart-assier John Wick-type voiced by Jason Sudeikis.
The Great is about to return for its 2nd season and it’s just a delight. This season is, surprisingly, a little more sexually obsessive than the first, and I am not always the biggest fan of that. But what is interesting with The Great is that we are getting a lot more of that sexuality from the women, expressing what they want and what they don’t want. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult are stellar. And Peter The Great as a fool (which sometimes means he is a kind of genius) is one of those brilliant tools to reflect on the circle of life.
Love The Next Thing You Eat from David Chang and Morgan Neville. Six episodes. Smart. Funny. Insightful. And so passionate about food and life. A show I also really enjoyed that feels a bit similar is The Choe Show, an FX on Hulu series. They are both in the same family as How To with John Wilson and Painting With John. Hanging out with smart, interesting, interested people is a joy in life… and on TV.
AppleTV+’s The Shrink Next Door is a weird and almost hypnotic ride. We are onto the “gag” in the first couple episodes. The opening sequence of the limited series is a moment from one of the last episodes. (How did we get there?) But the experience is so much like closely watching a lobster swimming around in a pot of cold water as the temperature goes up and up and up… it gives us a lot of time to consider what we are seeing and what the feeling and motives of these characters really are. Both Will Farrell and Paul Rudd are playing against character. Kathryn Hahn is, as always, full of quirks and surprises and so astute.
I have come to hate The Morning Show, which bent itself into a pretzel to make its first season about sex abuse into a vehicle for the charms of two loved actresses who really had no part of that story. Season Two seems to want to deal with the failures of inclusion in the first season… but manages to make every potentially serious story point trivial. The efforts regarding race are overt and the feelings they exude are actually a bit insulting to the idea that the show cares about race or sex abuse or, really, anything. It’s not even good soap opera.
There are bunch of shows I intend to watch but haven’t… like WuTang Season 2, Hanna Season 3, Maya & The Three, Dopesick, and more than the first couple episodes of Love Life Season 2.
You should definitely check out the doc, The Sparks Brothers, on Netflix, even if you don’t think you know or care who they are.
There are a couple older titles that I feel haven’t been fully accessed, like The Chair or Marcella, both of which I highly recommend. (I would like there not to be a second season of The Chair, even though I would love to spend more time with those characters. It felt done when it was done.)
I was shocked when I finally took Netflix’s repeated suggestion of Sky Rojo (what kind of name is that???) and was fascinated by the show. Strippers who had become part of a club in the middle of nowhere, without passports or money enough to escape and then 3 decide to leave. The sex, violence, and melodrama goes from there. I’m not sure this one needs a third season, but it’s the kind of show that I think a lot more people would like if they sampled a few episodes. A third season is coming regardless of how I feel.
I also really like Big Sky, a broadcast TV show… ABC. It’s a cop/PI thriller with two women in the leads and a willingness to challenge them with batshit crazy people in Montana. It’s a David E. Kelley show and has no business being as good as it is.
Turn on that HBO Max to see Wellington Paranormal, an absurdist comedy from Taika Watiti and Jermain Clement and the UK version of Ghosts, which I feel is a step above the US version. The variation isn’t massive, but period ghosts just seem more natural and comfortable in the jolly old.
And always worth checking out Criterion Channel, which has the original Nightmare Alley (1947) on this month along with so many other great movies. They are also featuring, as they often do, female filmmakers and this month, films about female friendships. If you are a little worn out on the other streamers, you cannot go too far afield on this app. And it’s less than $100 a year. Treasures everywhere.
I’m sure I am missing some great stuff. It would seem silly to recommend Squid Game or Ted Lasso or Call My Agent or whatever was right off the presses a month or two ago. I will try to do this periodically. Maybe the next time right before Christmas.
The thing about all these streaming channels is that there is such a bounty of quality…and crap. It’s just so much. Tastes will vary. And every couple months, it feels like a new wave of stuff, even if we didn’t see all we thought we should last month.
Until tomorrow…
THB #22: Stuff To Watch On TV