TV diary

a) “Three women”

Showtime produced “Three Women” and then decided not to air it after the season was filmed, and I’m so glad Starz picked it up, the first two episodes that have aired so far are really impressive. Apparently Lisa Taddeo’s Three women is a bestselling nonfiction book in which Taddeo explores the lives and stories of three women, in the series Shailene Woodley plays a fictionalized version of Taddeo (“Gia”). One of the three women is played by Betty Gilpin, who I honestly think is one of the best actresses working today and I think this is one of her very best performances, especially in the second episode.

b) “How to Die Alone”

After years of great supporting roles in “Insecure” and “The White Lotus,” Natasha Rothwell finally stars in her own show, which she created herself. There’s a bit of a reliance on these crazy slapstick moments that I don’t think the show really needs, but when the scenes are more character-driven, it’s really good.

c) “The perfect couple”

Nicole Kidman has done a lot of television since “Big Little Lies,” but she’s really been taking on an insane amount of work lately. She’ll have appeared in at least 3 seasons of television by 2024 (“Expats,” “The Perfect Couple,” and “Special Ops: Lioness”), possibly 4 or 5 depending on when “The Last Anniversary” and the second season of “Nine Perfect Strangers” come out. “The Perfect Couple” is about a destination wedding where the maid of honor gets murdered, a pretty good ensemble cast, but I’m not that far into the show yet, don’t know if it’s just “White Lotus” lite or something more (of course the murder victim is played by an actor from “The White Lotus,” Meghann Fahy).

d) “Agatha Always”

I really liked “WandaVision” and the whole reveal with Kathryn Hahn’s character, but that was 3.5 years ago, it feels like an eternity. I like that they went with another big swing for the first episode of “Agatha All Along” and kept the theme of “WandaVision”, but it was really enjoyable.

e) “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist”

This period piece about a mugging the night of a 1970 Muhammad Ali fight is genuinely entertaining, featuring a stellar cast including Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, and Taraji P. Henson. And listen, I have no problem with Kevin Hart, I enjoy him in a lot of things, but he wasn’t the right lead for this, he doesn’t get the right screen time for anything that isn’t a full-blown comedy, it reminds me of Will Ferrell not understanding why “Winning Time” could star John C. Reilly and he couldn’t.

f) “The Penguin”

My favorite memory of watching The Batman was when my wife came into the room and I pointed to the Penguin and explained that he was played by Colin Farrell and she got a very surprised look on her face and said, “Why?“There have been some great performances by people in heavy makeup or prosthetics — including the definitive Penguin, Danny DeVito! — but Farrell as the Penguin just seems like such an unnecessarily flashy gimmick, with a fit, handsome sex symbol in a fatsuit and a weird latex face. And it seems even more ridiculous when you make him the main character of a show, and the more I look at Farrell’s weird Penguin face, the more it has this weird uncanny valley effect, like it’s the eyes of a real person behind a bunch of other shit that looks a little weird. I liked the first episode, especially because Craig Zobel (Compliance, The hunt) is a much better director than Matt Reeves, and Cristin Milioti is good enough in this series to keep me watching, but I find myself annoyed by the prestige TV sheen that the comic book characters in this series exude.

g) “Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez”

It feels like Ryan Murphy strays further and further from the truth every time he makes a show based on a true story, and this show from the Menendez brothers has received a lot of criticism for taking liberties with the story. I’m not quite there yet to see what they could have done wrong, but it’s well produced and compelling, which is part of the problem, these people who make true crime shows definitely know how to make bullshit and damaging lies fun to watch.

h) “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez”

It’s funny that Ryan Murphy’s OJ Simpson show was called “American Crime Story” but Aaron Hernandez’s is “American Sports Story”. Is the difference that one guy was still in the NFL when he was killing people and the other wasn’t? I don’t know if this has as many factual problems as the Menendez show but this is way weaker than television, partly because Jose Andres Rivera is woefully miscast, you can never watch this show for a second and think you’re watching Aaron Hernandez, there is no resemblance whatsoever.

i) “Billionaire Island”

A Netflix series called “Billionaire Island” sounds like potentially the worst reality show on television, but it’s actually a pretty good drama from Norway about power struggles in the salmon farming industry. It feels like we’re inundated with “Succession”-style shows these days, but if you only have to watch one, you might as well watch one about Norwegian seafood magnates.

j) “Love from next door”

A fun little South Korean series on Netflix about a woman who returns to her hometown and gets into a relationship with one of her childhood friends. If this series was produced in America, it would definitely be on the CW.

k) “Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist”

A South Korean series about a psychiatrist (yes, really), which starts with a very dramatic origin story about the man: he is an acupuncturist for the royal family and is fired when the king dies after he performs acupuncture on him.

l) “Timelesz Project – Audition”

This Netflix docuseries follows a Japanese pop group that rebrands and rebrands after a sexual abuse scandal involving the agency that founded the group. It’s a pretty somber, serious series, but sometimes they mention Timelesz’s old name, Sexy Zone, and I have to stifle a laugh.

m) “Angel Di Maria: Breaking Down the Wall”

I don’t know much about football, but I really enjoyed this docuseries about an Argentinian football star.

n) “The Yara Gambirasio case: beyond reasonable doubt”

A true crime docuseries about a 13 year old Italian girl who disappeared in 2010 and a few months later her body was found. I don’t know if I’m going to finish it, just a really horrible, sad story.

o) “Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas”

Another powerful film about women who became escorts in Mexico City and were then trafficked and murdered.

p) “The Chicano Squad”

A&E miniseries about how the Houston Police Department created a bilingual Hispanic homicide unit when the number of Hispanic homicides skyrocketed in the late 70s. An interesting story, but also depressing because it had to be such an extreme situation for these people to get that job.

q) “Secret Lives of Mormon Women”

A few years ago there was a whole viral thing about Mormon women talking about swinging and swapping on TikTok, and it was no surprise that they all wanted to star in a reality show on Hulu. I get the fascination with Mormon culture, but these are mostly regular moms from the suburbs and it feels like they’re all trying to be the Kardashians.

r) “American Godfathers: The Five Families”

There are so many mafia movies and TV shows that it’s hard to separate the real history from the pop culture images. That’s why I enjoyed this docuseries, which of course was narrated by someone from “The Sopranos”, Michael Imperioli.

s) “Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos”

“The Sopranos” has been a cultural blind spot for me for a long time, having only just started watching the series this year. So I thoroughly enjoyed this 2-part HBO doc that delves into David Chase and the lives and personal experiences of the show’s other writers that inspired the show, as well as some great stories about how the show got off the ground and anecdotes about how hard James Gandolfini worked on the show, how kind he was to the people he worked with, and the toll that playing Tony Soprano took on him.

t) “Nothin’ But A Good Time: The Uncensored Story of 80s Hair Metal”

This three-part Paramount+ documentary is light on star power — the only major-band frontmen to do interviews were Poison’s Bret Michaels (who, of course, sang the song the show is named after) and Great White’s Jack Russell, who passed away last month. But there’s still a wealth of really good stories from industry figures like Tom Zutaut and Alan Niven and sidemen like GNR’s Steven Adler and Kix’s Brian Forsythe (who I myself interviewed last year). Still, it’s a pretty entertaining overview of the era with some particularly memorable stories. Quiet Riot’s Rudy Sarzo was on tour with Ozzy Osbourne when Randy Rhoades died, and his tales of Ozzy’s grief and remorse are genuinely moving.

u) “Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal”

In 1989, a scientist discovered tons of gold on a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean. I am a true nature documentary geek, because I was much less interested in this than in the other recent National Geographic docs that only focused on life in the ocean.

v) “Do I have news for you?”

It feels like the days of every “Daily Show” correspondent getting his own “Daily Show”-style series are long gone, so I’m glad Roy Wood Jr. got a show on CNN, but they adapted a British panel show rather than making another satire of the evening news. These shows, which rely more on improvisation than writing, are inherently less consistently funny, but I enjoyed the first episode, Wood is a great host.

w) “Chimpanzee crazy”

This show tells a pretty wild story, but I feel like it was only made because people wanted “the next ‘Tiger King'”. After a while, I just get depressed when I hear about this woman’s antics.

x) “Jack Whitehall: Fatherhood with my father”

This is British comedian Jack Whitehall’s second reality show with his father after “Travels With My Father”, this time about having a child. And so much of it just feels contrived to put them in “funny” situations that I don’t find it charming at all, it’s just another heavily staged reality show, except that it’s trying to make you laugh.

y) “The Anonymous”

A reality show trying to be clever with this thing where contestants interact in real life and then also interact on the internet using anonymous screen names, but I don’t know, it just feels stupid. It’s also confusing how they throw some minor celebrities and people from other shows (including Andy King from the Fyre Festival doc) into a group of otherwise unknown people.

z) “Coming from America”

A reality show about four African American families who decide to go live in Africa. I don’t really have an opinion on what they do, but the way the Americans talk about life in Africa in this show made me shudder.