Month: November 2020

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Real Right Stuff (Nov. 20, Disney Plus)

There’s a buoyant sense of nostalgia to this documentary that I find appealing. Like its companion Disney Plus drama series, “The Right Stuff,” the film gives a snapshot of a time when all of America — if not the world — was caught up in the space race and the wonder of sending human beings into the blackness far above the Earth.

This sunny, hopeful view is selective memory, of course; the civil rights movement against deeply entrenched anti-Black racism was in full swing when the original astronauts, the “Mercury Seven,” were chosen in 1959; America was already embroiled in the Vietnam War and the space program itself was a product of Cold War paranoia, as the U.S. vied for supremacy against the Soviet Union (something that’s explored more thoroughly in the drama).

Nonetheless, there’s something infectious about the newsreel footage of people packed onto the beaches of Cape Canaveral watching Mercury rocket launches; or shoehorned into Grand Central Station hanging on every word as Walter Cronkite broadcasts live.

Between May 5, 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and May 15 to 16, 1963, when Gordon Cooper became the last American astronaut to fly a solo mission, there were six manned Mercury flights (seven if you include the one when they sent up a chimp named Ham). The doc makes effective use of still photos, interview footage, and audio and video of the missions themselves.

The footage of the astronauts inside their relatively tiny capsules is particularly interesting, ramping up the suspense even though we know they all survived. Still, there were some tense moments, including the three minutes during John Glenn’s re-entry (probably the best known of the Mercury Seven and the first American to go into orbit) when the ground crew, worried that his heat shield might fail, was unable to communicate with him; and the 55 minutes when nobody knew whether Scott Carpenter — who’d lost precious fuel taking photos of space “fireflies” and overshot his landing site — was alive or dead.

The United States doesn’t really have a space program anymore and, even if it did, it would be hard to imagine people dropping everything to watch a rocket launch or bringing central Manhattan to a standstill for a parade for a single astronaut, as happened for John Glenn. Nonetheless, it’s entertaining to look back.

Disney Plus also has “The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special” launching Nov. 17.

Big Sky (Nov. 17, 10 p.m., CTV, ABC)

I’m not a fan of American network crime drama. I find it too glib compared to, say, British or Scandinavian offerings, and the people are too damn pretty. “Big Sky” does nothing to disabuse me of these prejudices.

Granted, I’ve only seen two episodes, but I didn’t find this thriller all that thrilling.

It was created by TV whisperer David E. Kelley — who has won 11 Emmys for hits like “L.A. Law,” “Picket Fences,” “The Practice” and one of my favourites, “Ally McBeal” — so “Big Sky” certainly aspires to be prestige TV.

Maybe if it was made for cable instead of linear broadcast, like Kelley’s “Big Little Lies” was, it would dig deeper into its darkness. I haven’t read the books it’s based on, including “The Highway” by C.J. Box, but they sound more gritty than the series was allowed to be.

The basic premise is that two teenage girls have gone missing on a road trip to Montana. Private detectives Cody Hoyt (Ryan Phillippe) and Cassie Dewell (Kylie Bunbury) are looking for them, along with Cody’s estranged wife, Jenny (Canadian Katheryn Winnick of “Vikings”).

The episodes I saw veered in tone between crime drama, soap opera and “you go girl” female buddy dramedy.

Sometimes the variances take place in a single scene. The teens, for instance, go between shrinking in terror from their kidnapper and sass-talking him. One minute brainy sibling Grace (Jade Pettyjohn) is explaining to not-so-brainy sister Danielle (Natalie Alyn Lind) and fellow victim Jerrie (nonbinary actor Jesse James Keitel) how they should get their captor to bond with them so he won’t kill them; the next she’s antagonizing him by calling him an asshole.

We also get dialogue like this clunker from Danielle: “This is my biggest nightmare, I’m gonna be on ‘Dateline.’”

The tonal shifts mean that the stakes don’t feel that high — aside from one shocking act of violence in the first episode — nor are the characters particularly likeable, even the good guys. It’s too bad because there are some decent actors in the cast, including Winnick, John Carroll Lynch (“American Horror Story”) and Brian Geraghty (“Boardwalk Empire,” “Chicago P.D.”).

One last quibble: characters mention the pandemic (in fact, the series shot in Vancouver during the pandemic), but no one is physical distancing or wearing masks or doing anything else remotely pandemic-like so why even bring it up?

Death and Sickness; Kenny and Spenny Paldemic (Nov. 20, CBC Gem)

If your taste in pandemic-related entertainment runs to quirky and unconventional, CBC Gem has you covered.

“Death and Sickness” is a movie that filmmaker, actor, musician, artist and TV and radio personality Sook-Yin Lee and musician Dylan Gamble made, apparently while quarantining in real life in Sook-Yin’s Toronto home. It starts off as a record of two people with their own idiosyncrasies riding out the pandemic together but turns into a reflection on loss and grief, specifically Sook-Yin’s over the real-life suicide of her long-time partner Adam Litovitz and the death of her sister Dede. It’s a very non-linear film, full of non-sequiturs and sometimes just downright weird. Personally, I liked the Renaissance-style puppet show.

“Kenny and Spenny Paldemic” is both a catch-up and a return to form for the duo behind the popular “Kenny vs. Spenny” TV show in which Spencer Rice (mainly) suffered humiliation at the hands of his frenemy Kenny Hotz. The conceit here is that Kenny, financially and professionally successful, has roped loser Spenny — clad in a fask mask and plastic shield, wielding a plunger with a six-foot handle — into making a COVID-19 special. Kenny offers to shoot a pilot for broke Spenny, which degenerates into Spenny doing some of the same embarrassing stuff he did on the original show. The pair also venture into the streets of Toronto; Kenny to interview people about the pandemic; Spenny to sing. My favourite bit is Spenny playing in front of somebody’s front door, the door opening and the occupant closing it again after listening to all of four seconds of Spenny’s oeuvre.

Belushi (Nov. 22, 9 p.m., Crave)

When I watched this Showtime documentary I was startled to realize that it’s been 38 years since John Belushi died of a drug overdose, which is longer than he lived; that he died at 33 is the second thing that startled me since I had forgotten.

Although it’s impossible to think of Belushi without thinking about how he died, this doc by R.J. Cutler, Emmy-winning director of “American High,” doesn’t dwell on the sad end but gives a fairly thorough accounting of the life that came before.

It’s based on interviews that author Tanner Colby conducted after Belushi’s death and he appears to have had incredible access. We hear not only from the two people who were closest to Belushi, wife Judy Jacklin Belushi (now Pisano) and his “Blues Brother” Dan Aykroyd, but family members, childhood friends, and comedy and movie colleagues, including “Saturday Night Live” boss Lorne Michaels.

The picture that emerges is of a brilliant comedian and a kind and loyal friend but also someone for whom normal boundaries didn’t apply. It covers not only the things that everyone remembers him for — “SNL,” “Animal House,” “The Blues Brothers,” “1941” — but his groundbreaking work with the Second City in Chicago and “The National Lampoon Radio Hour.”

Tony Hendra, a Brit who directed Belushi in the 1973 National Lampoon stage show “Lemmings,” says Belushi’s approach to comedy reminded him of the raw energy of the United States, but also the “enormous void at the centre of America, a void that has to do with promise and disappointment and impossible expectations . . . When you finally get where you’re going, what then?”

For Belushi, the final answer was a mix of heroin and cocaine in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, but the work and, for those who loved him, the memories live on.

Odds and Ends

Your enjoyment of the second season of “His Dark Materials” (Nov. 16, 9 p.m., HBO) will likely depend on how invested you are in the source material from the Philip Pullman novels. I only had time to screen the first of the new episodes and found, as with the first season, that it can be plodding at times and so very, very earnest. Nonetheless you can enjoy the work of fine actors like Dafne Keen (Lyra), Ruth Wilson (Mrs. Coulter) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Lee Scoresby) as well as newer additions like Andrew Scott of “Fleabag” fame (Colonel John Parry) and Amir Wilson (Will Parry). I’ll watch at least long enough to catch Scott in action, who’s been on my radar for more than “Hot Priest.”

If you’re in a documentary mood, HBO has “Crazy, Not Insane” (Nov. 18, 9 p.m.), which examines the work of psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis with serial killers and other murderers. Lewis has been ridiculed for her theories about why people kill, particularly her work around dissociative identity (i.e. multiple personality) disorder, but she makes a cogent argument that murderers are made, not born — particularly those who have a combination of a history of childhood abuse and brain dysfunction. And she believes the United States has regressed to a form of Middle Ages justice by executing people who are demonstrably, if not legally, mentally ill.

I’m sorry I didn’t get a screener for this one, but — cuteness alert — Amazon Prime Video has “The Pack” (Nov. 20), in which 12 pairs of dogs and humans embark on challenges across multiple continents.

There are a number of American shows returning to Canadian channels this week, including “Bull” (Nov. 16, 10 p.m., Global TV), “NCIS,” “FBI” and “FBI: Most Wanted” (Nov. 17 from 8 p.m., all Global); and “For Life” to CTV (Nov. 18, 10 p.m.). And yes, “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” is back for another season on MTV (Nov. 19, 8 p.m.).

The Sundance streaming service has the U.K. drama “Cold Call” about a single mom in Manchester (Sally Lindsay, “Coronation Street”) getting caught up in a cold call scam, which apparently went over like gangbusters in Blighty in 2019.