Yes, I’m sorry, but I am a one-woman show here at realityeo.com, a one-woman show with a full-time job that isn’t about watching and writing about TV, which means I normally work five days a week at my real job and spend weekends toiling on the blog. And this past weekend, I wanted to have a weekend off, so I went to Stratford, Ont., and watched Shakespeare plays instead of watching and writing about TV. However, Watchable will resume next Monday, July 4. Have a great week!
Month: June 2022
SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Umbrella Academy (June 22, Netflix)
in Season 3 of “The Umbrella Academy.” PHOTO CREDIT: Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
One of the things I’ve always liked about “The Umbrella Academy” is that its stepsibling protagonists are more superhuman than superhero.
Sure, saving the world is pretty nifty, but it’s the human flaws and foibles in these six characters (seven including dead brother Ben, played by Justin H. Min) that have kept me watching. So the good news is that, despite being embroiled in yet another apocalyptic scenario in Season 3, the brothers and one sister of “The Umbrella Academy” (more on that later) are still very much a screwed-up family of misfits who happen to have superpowers.
In fact, this season ramps up the emotional stakes for our characters who, as the episodes begin, are just back from their near-death experience in 1963 and missing the people they left behind in that timeline. And, as we saw in the Season 2 finale, their home is no longer their home and Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) is no longer their father, having adopted a different group of seven superpowered children named the Sparrow Academy.
Unfortunately, the Sparrows aren’t there to do much more than be antagonists to the Umbrellas for the first few episodes — the season opener includes both an entertaining dance-off and an epic fight in which the Umbrellas get their asses handed to them — and to bring back Ben.
Aside from Ben and sister Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), the six Sparrow brothers and sisters, and one cube, are mostly presented as personality-free villains. While the Umbrellas’ ghost version of Ben finally passed on to the afterlife in Season 2, the Sparrows’ Ben is very much alive but a real asshole.
Speaking of assholes, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) undergoes a character transformation I really didn’t like. After leaving her beloved husband Ray (Yusuf Gatewood) in the 1960s, Allison learns that the daughter for whom she returned to the present is no longer part of her timeline. Her grief turns her into a gratuitously violent monster who focuses most of her rage on her brother Viktor, formerly her sister Vanya.
Yes, “The Umbrella Academy” acknowledges the coming out of Canadian actor Elliot Page as a transgender man by having Viktor undergo his own transition into his true self, which is handled with class and grace.
Viktor’s story arc is one of the most satisfying things about the new season as the angry, abused sibling of seasons past becomes a force for good, trying to make amends for the lives he’s taken.
The other star of the season is Tom Hopper, who displays a radiant sweetness and deep humanity as his character, Luther, finds love.
Diego (David Castaneda) reunites with Lila (Ritu Arya), who brings a visitor from her time travels, a kid named Stan (Javon “Wanna” Walton); Klaus (Robert Sheehan) manages to bond with Reginald, although it involves a typically abusive manipulation on Reggie’s part; Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) is as amusing as always as he wearily tries to save the world all over again.
It seems the Umbrella Academy has triggered something called the “Grandfather Paradox” and there’s a menacing ball of light called a Kugelblitz in the basement of the academy that is dissolving the world piece by piece.
There’s also a secret mission that Reggie is bent on fulfilling, called Oblivion, one that caused him to part ways in the Sparrow timeline with his chimpanzee assistant Pogo (Adam Godley), whom Five tracks down.
There’s also a callback to Harlan, the kid that Viktor accidentally imbued with superpowers in Season 2, that plays into Viktor’s reclamation, Allison’s villainization and the world-threatening time paradox.
It’s a rollicking sometimes silly season with the standard blend of quirky comedy, darkness (and this season, it sometimes goes really dark) and a killer soundtrack.
For me, the show is always at its best when the Umbrella Academy gets to be a family, which it does in some cathartic ways here, but they never get to stay a family for long. So, after a frenetic finale involving an evil plan of Reggie’s, the timeline is reset — Season 4 has reportedly already got a green light — and it seems as though the stepsiblings will scatter once again.
Netflix has a lot of other stuff debuting this week, including the made-in-Toronto film “The Man From Toronto” (June 24), starring Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson, and the docuseries “The Future Of” (June 21), a look at technological innovations that could change human life, while “Money Heist” fans will want to check out the spinoff “Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area” on June 24.
Short Takes
Being BeBe (June 21, OUTtv.com; June 22, 9 p.m., OUTtv)
It’s easy to get swept up in the glamorous artifice of drag and forget that it’s a hard, and not always lucrative, way to make a living. The documentary “Being BeBe,” which highlights 15 years in the life of drag artist BeBe Zahara Benet, is clear-eyed about this reality. It show’s BeBe’s successes — winning the first “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2009, creating her show “Creature” in 2012, doing “Drag Race All Stars” in 2018, touring “Nubia” in 2020 with other Black “Drag Race” alumni — but also the low points, like having to move back to Minneapolis from Brooklyn when the stage show “Reveal” fails to make money. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the lowest as it left BeBe, real name Marshall Ngwa, unemployed just when he was expecting a breakout year career-wise. But Ngwa, interviewed by friend and filmmaker Emily Branham, is philosophical about the setback: he has had to hustle before to make a living; he will do so again. He also has the advantage of a loving, supportive family, not something to be taken for granted coming from Cameroon in Central Africa. Branham juxtaposes footage of BeBe, who refuses to categorize his sexuality, with interviews with young queer men and women still living in Cameroon, shunned by their families and at risk of violence, even murder, in a country in which homosexuality is prohibited by law and even ordering the wrong drink can result in a jail sentence. In that context, that BeBe can choose to make a career out of drag is a triumph apart from any financial and artistic rewards. “Drag Race” has gone some way to humanizing drag artists for the viewing public; “Being BeBe” gives us a more intimate look at one of its stars.
PHOTO CREDIT: Alyssa Moran/Peacock
Queer as Folk (June 26, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV)
How do you reimagine “Queer as Folk,” the groundbreaking, sexually frank 1999 TV series about a group of gay men in Manchester? If you’re Canadian creator Stephen Dunn, you move it to vibrant New Orleans, expand its gaze to include non-white, transgender, non-binary and disabled characters, make the sex even more in your face and have your characters transformed by a tragedy. It’s no spoiler to say that the first episode of the new series includes a nightclub shooting inspired by the real-life slaughter at the Pulse bar in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died. The body count is mercifully lower in the show, which to its credit doesn’t dwell on the violence but on how its characters process it. And if you think that means just anger and sadness, think again. Lead character Brodie (Devin Way), for instance, decides the best way to honour a dead friend is to throw a big-ass party, turning ex-boyfriend Noah’s (Johnny Sibilly) spacious home into a makeshift nightclub he names Ghost Fag. Other key characters include Mingus (Fin Argus), a high school student and aspiring drag queen; Devin’s brother Julian (Ryan O’Connell), who has cerebral palsy; and his best friend Ruthie (Jesse James Keitel), a trans woman who’s just become a parent with her non-binary partner Shar (CG). Eric Graise adds snarky wit as Marvin, a bilateral amputee in a wheelchair; Armand Fields is wise drag mama Bussy; and ringers Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis play Brodie’s adoptive mother, Brenda, and Mingus’s mother, Judy. Yes, that’s a lot of characters, all with very distinctive arcs, and the show can be messy as it shifts from storyline to storyline, but these characters also really grow on you, at least in the four episodes I viewed. They can be selfish and self-defeating at times, but they represent a spectrum of queerness that’s so much more expansive than this series’ predecessor.
Odds and Ends
A couple of British detective series that I have personally enjoyed are back with new seasons. Season 3 of “Hidden” (June 20, Acorn) sees Welsh detectives Cadi John (Sian-Reese Williams) and Owen Vaughan (Sion Alun Davies) investigating two brothers after a body is found in a river. On BritBox, “Grace” returns for a second season on June 21, with Roy Grace (John Simm) and Glenn Branson (Richie Campbell) investigating several different murders from their home base of Brighton.
Apple TV+ has the comedy “Loot” (June 24), starring Maya Rudolph as a spurned wife who decides to try to use her billions for good.
Prime Video has “Chloe” (June 24), about a young woman’s obsession with a former friend she stalks on Instagram.
HBO and Crave have the true crime series “Mind Over Murder” (June 20, 10 p.m.) about six people convicted of killing a grandmother in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1985 and later exonerated by DNA evidence.
NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Old Man (June 16, 10 p.m., FX)
By all means, watch “The Old Man” to see a couple of esteemed senior actors who are still masters of their craft, but if you’re looking for a fresh take on the spy/action drama you won’t find it here.
Much of the enjoyment comes from seeing Jeff Bridges transform in the first episode from a crotchety widower who can’t sleep through the night without having to pee several times into a fugitive ex-CIA agent who can still engage in hand-to-hand combat with men many decades younger.
The other big star is John Lithgow as FBI boss Harold Harper. He’s helping hunt down former colleague Dan Chase (Bridges) after the latter kills an agent who tracked him to his Vermont home and goes rogue, although Harper has his own reasons for hoping Chase never gets found.
Why are the FBI and the CIA suddenly so interested in Chase? It has to do with an Afghan warlord named Faraz Hamzad who was betrayed by Chase three decades earlier, when Chase was in Afghanistan helping Faraz fight Soviet invaders, against the orders of his CIA superiors.
Why Chase was so interested in helping this particular warlord rout the Soviets to the detriment of his career is pretty murky. It’s also unclear why American intelligence services would be so keen on helping Hamzad enact revenge against a U.S. citizen and former colleague, at least in the four episodes made available for review.
Also along for the ride are Amy Brenneman as a love interest for Dan, who gets drawn into his flight from the feds on a rather flimsy pretext, and Alia Shawkat as an FBI protege of Harold’s. Israeli actors Hiam Abbass and Leem Lubany play older and younger versions of Dan’s beloved wife, Abbey, who dies of Huntington’s disease five years before the series begins.
But it’s the male characters who are very much driving the plot, with a concomitant body count. Apparently the only solutions available to Dan and his pursuers are violent ones.
The series, based on the novel by Thomas Perry, seems to want to say weighty things about the differences between heroes and villains, as evidenced by the speechifying dialogue, but characters’ motivations are not overly clear or nuanced.
There are some strenuous fight scenes — if Bridges shot any of those after he returned to set from battling both cancer and COVID-19, then wow — and each episode offers up a big twist, although I suspect you’ll see most if not all of them coming.
It’s a shame that Bridges, 72, and Lithgow, 76, don’t get to share scenes beyond a phone call in the first four episodes, although future episodes will feature at least one face-to-face meeting.
Overall, “The Old Man” is lesser than the sum of its parts, but Bridges and Lithgow are pretty terrific as two of those parts.
Short Takes
The Lake (June 17, Prime Video)
I only had time to screen one episode of this Amazon Canadian original, but I found it amusing and charming. It stars Jordan Gavaris (“Orphan Black”) as Justin, a gay man spending the summer with Billie (Madison Shamoun), the daughter he gave up for adoption after high school. He rents a cottage on the lake where his family spent all their summers before he had a falling out with his dad and left for Australia. To add to the awkward stew of painful memories, Billie not wanting to be there and Justin getting a crash course in parenting a teenager, he learns that the family cottage wasn’t sold as he believed but rather willed to his stepsister Maisy-May (Julia Stiles) by his father. So Justin starts scheming to get it back. The Northern Ontario-shot series also stars Terry Chen (“The Expanse,” “Jessica Jones”) as Maisy-May’s husband, Victor, and Jared Scott as their son, Killian.
Prime Video also has “The Summer I Turned Pretty” (June 17), a coming-of-age series from “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” author Jenny Han.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Eagle Eye Drama
Hotel Portofino (June 19, 8 p.m., PBS/PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel)
The latest Masterpiece period drama takes us to the Italian Riviera in 1926 where
English expat Bella Ainsworth (Natascha McElhone, “Californication,” “Designated Survivor”) is running a charming hotel that caters mostly to other Brits, alongside her widowed daughter Alice (Olivia Morris) and spendthrift husband Cecil (Mark Umbers). The guests include demanding matriarch Lady Latchmere (the always wonderful Anna Chancellor) and her niece Melissa (Imogen King); Italian Count Albani (Daniele Pecci) and his son Roberto (Lorenzo Richelmy); American art dealer Jack Turner (Adam James) and his “wife” Claudine (Lily Frazer); medical student Anish Sangupta (Assad Zaman), who saved the life of Bella’s still traumatized son Lucian (Oliver Dench) in the First World War; faltering tennis pro Pelham Wingfield (Dominic Tighe) and his unhappy wife Lizzie (Bethane Cullinane); and snobby Julia Drummond-Ward (Lucy Akhurst), who’s there to marry her wallflower daughter Rose (Claude Scott-Mitchell) off to Lucian. I doubt it’s a spoiler to say there are romantic complications, particularly after new employee Constance (Louisa Binder) arrives from the north of England, but there are also political ones, with local Fascists ready to do violence to anyone who doesn’t support Mussolini and corrupt police supervisor Danioni (Pasquale Esposito) looking to line his pockets at Bella’s expense. Throw in art theft, marital discord, illicit liaisons both gay and straight, and there’s a little drama to liven up the beach excursions and glasses of Limoncello on the terrace. The setting is breathtakingly beautiful (although it was mainly shot in Croatia rather than Italy) and the characters, although not deeply sketched, grew beyond mere types in the four episodes I watched. In short, I’d recommend checking in.
Also, I’m thrilled to report that Season 8 of “Endeavour,” the prequel to beloved detective drama “Inspector Morse,” is finally here, debuting June 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS.
Odds and Ends
With apologies, it’s a light week for the Watchable list. I was on vacation last week and out of town so I did very little screening and some of what I wanted to watch wasn’t available, including the second season of musical comedy “Girls5eva” (June 16, 9 p.m., W Network/StackTV).
This week’s Netflix offerings include the anthology series “Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet” (June 15), about the ways in which technology and crime intersect; the series “God’s Favorite Idiot” (June 15), in which creator Ben Falcone stars as a tech support worker who becomes a divine messenger, with Melissa McCarthy as his girlfriend; reality series “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend” (June 15); and the movie “Spiderhead” (June 17), starring Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth.
Disney+ has Season 3 of the series “Love, Victor” (June 15), with gay teen Victor (Michael Cimino) sorting out his relationship issues and what he wants to do after high school.
Apple TV+ offers the film “Cha Cha Real Smooth” (June 17), which stars creator Cooper Raiff as a bar mitzvah host who strikes up a friendship with a mother (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter (Vanessa Burghardt).
Finally, CTV Comedy Channel has Season 2 of the comedy series “Roast Battle Canada” (June 13, 10:30 p.m.) with judges Russell Peters, K. Trevor Wilson and Sabrina Jalees, and host Ennis Esmer.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: Under the Banner of Heaven (June 8, Disney+)
in “Under the Banner of Heaven.” PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle Faye/FX.
The bloody murder of a young woman and her 15-month-old daughter would be horrific in any context, but this miniseries is particularly chilling in its depiction of religious men turned fundamentalist zealots and killers.
“Under the Banner of Heaven” is based on the book of the same name by Jon Krakauer about the real-life 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty, wife of the youngest brother in a prominent Salt Lake City Mormon family, and her daughter Erica. But it’s more than just a crime procedural — and a particularly gripping one at that — it’s also about the sexism inherent in the Mormon faith (and pretty much every other organized religion); a suppressed history of violence in the early days of Mormonism; a loss of faith, as personified by the show’s fictional lead detective; and the fracturing of a family.
It was created by Dustin Lance Black (“Milk,” “Big Love,” “When We Rise”), who is himself a lapsed Mormon.
When Brenda and Erica are found dead inside their home, suspicion immediately falls on husband Allen (Billy Howle), but Mormon detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and his Native American partner Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham) follow the evidence to a more insidious conclusion: that Brenda was targeted for running afoul of two of Allen’s brothers and their newly fundamentalist beliefs.
At the same time, Jeb is urged by Allen to probe the untold history of their faith — in particular, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when more than 100 members of a wagon train were slaughtered by Mormon settlers in southern Utah, who tried to blame the attack on Paiute tribesmen — which has Jeb questioning whether the founders of the religion on which his entire life has been built were following God or their own selfish desires.
The show has an embarrassment of riches in its cast, including Wyatt Russell and Sam Worthington as brothers Dan and Ron Lafferty. Russell is especially effective as Dan, who becomes increasingly unhinged as he progresses from tax scofflaw to a believer in a literal interpretation of original Mormon texts, to the point that he wants to “marry” his two teenage stepdaughters. Ron, meanwhile, goes from successful entrepreneur and local politician to someone who believes he’s a conduit for revelations that come directly from God.
Fortunately, Brenda, played by the always excellent Daisy Edgar-Jones, gets to be more than just a murder victim in the series. She’s portrayed as a loving, intelligent woman who believes in her church but is unwilling to blindly follow its more repressive patriarchal strictures.
You’ll also notice some Canadian actors in the cast, not surprising since the show was shot in Calgary, including Christopher Heyerdahl as the Lafferty family patriarch. Stratford Festival veterans Tom Rooney, Graham Abbey and Evan Buliung also appear, the first two as Mormon bishops, the latter as historical figure Major John D. Lee.
People often use the word “evil” when describing particularly heinous crimes, which plays into the idea of people’s lives being dictated by forces outside themselves. In “Under the Banner of Heaven,” the worst acts, even those committed in the name of a warped idea of God, are all too human.
Disney+ also has the new series “Ms. Marvel” (June 8), starring Canadian actor Iman Vellani as TV’s first Muslim superhero. I didn’t get to screen this one, but everybody and their brother is going to be writing about it, so you probably won’t miss my take.
Short Takes
For All Mankind (June 10, Apple TV+)
The question going into Season 3 of space drama “For All Mankind” was whether the series could keep up the momentum established by its superior second season and excellent season finale (if you watched it, spoiler alert, I bet you can still conjure up an image of Gordo and Tracy running across the surface of the moon wrapped in duct tape). Based on the three episodes I’ve screened so far, it’s off to a good start, beginning with a season premiere whose ending will have you on the edge of your seat. The series began in 1969 with the Soviets beating the Americans to the moon. Season 3 opens in the early ’90s, with both the U.S. and Russia planning missions to Mars in 1996. When a third player, a private company led by Kenyan-American visionary Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi), announces it’s heading to Mars in ’94, NASA and the Russian space agency scramble to move up their timelines. The three-way race also brings plenty of interpersonal complications. Astronauts Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) are competing to head NASA’s mission; Ed’s ex-wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) has joined Dev’s Helios after an aborted foray into space tourism; Johnson Space Centre director Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) is still butting heads with former astronaut Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger), who’s in charge of choosing the Mars mission commander; Gordo’s and Tracy’s son Danny (Casey W. Johnson) and Ed’s and Karen’s adopted daughter Kelly (Cynthy Wu) are also in the mix as Mars crew members. And Margo’s long-distance flirtation with Soviet engineer Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk) brings complications of its own. As always with this series, there are many threads to follow but, with all three missions to Mars lifting off by the end of Episode 3, there’s a promise of lots of juicy, action-packed drama to come.
Dark Winds (June 12, 9 p.m., AMC/AMC+)
You’re sure to have seen Zahn McClarnon’s face before, whether in “Fargo,” “Westworld,” even “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” but here he’s the star of the show as Navajo police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. And he gets this adaptation of the Tony Hillerman “Leaphorn & Chee” books — which I sincerely hope is just the first of several seasons to come — off to a great start. The Lakota and Irish American actor is paired with Hualapai actor Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee, while Edmonton-born Jessica Matten, who’s of Metis-Cree descent, makes a welcome third lead as fellow officer Bernadette Manuelito. The six-episode series is mostly set on Navajo land in New Mexico, which is almost a character in its own right. It’s 1971 and Chee has been parachuted in as Leaphorn’s new deputy. Leaphorn is out to solve the murder of two Dine people, an old man and a 19-year-old girl, but it’s not a priority for the white FBI agent (Noah Emmerich) who’s taken over the file and is more interested in a bank heist that took place in the nearby city of Gallup. The twists and turns of the criminal investigation — and trust me, it’s plenty twisty — are interwoven with glimpses of Indigenous traditions and superstitions; of Joe’s family life; of Chee’s and Manuelito’s painful pasts; of the racism that colonialism has made a fact of life for Indigenous populations the world over. The series, which was created by Chickasaw producer Graham Roland and had a mostly Indigenous cast, crew and creative team, has Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin as executive producers. But it’s the relatability and chemistry of the characters that leaves you wanting more.
Odds and Ends
We are big “Peaky Blinders” fans in my household so I’m particularly keen to see the sixth and final season of the period gangster drama, which comes to Netflix June 10, and would have made time for it had screeners been available. I have avoided all spoilers coming out of the U.K., where it already aired, but it’s a safe bet the Shelby family will go out with a violent bang. Sadly, Helen McCrory, who masterfully played Aunt Polly Gray and died last year of cancer, was unable to shoot the final episodes.
So much TV, too little time to take it all in and that means I didn’t get to screen the series “Irma Vep” (June 6, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave), which stars Alicia Vikander as an American actor who comes to Paris to star in a remake of the French silent film classic “Les Vampires.” HBO also has a documentary that sounds interesting, “The Janes” (June 8, 9 p.m.), about an underground network of women who helped to provide access to abortions in Chicago before the now threatened Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S. And on June 12 at 10 p.m., the latest attempt to make history young and sexy debuts on Starz/Crave with “Becoming Elizabeth,” about the teenage years of Queen Elizabeth I (Alicia von Rittberg).
Netflix has lots of comedy specials this week, including “Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill” (June 6); the series “That’s My Time With David Letterman” (June 7); “Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration” (June 9); “Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute” (June 10); and “Amy Schumer’s Parental Advisory” (June 11). And seeing as I was talking about Mormon fundamentalism earlier, there’s also a documentary about Warren Jeffs, president of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey” (June 8).
Speaking of comedy, Prime Video has “Backstage With Katherine Ryan” (June 9), in which the Canadian-Irish comedian offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a comedy special.
CBC Gem has the Icelandic serial killer drama “Black Sands” (June 10); “Check It” (June 10), an American documentary about bullied gay and transgender youth who formed their own criminal gang; and “Small Town Pride” (June 10), another doc, this one about the challenges of being queer in a small town, which follows subjects in Alberta, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories as they prepare for Pride celebrations.
Finally, Hollywood Suite has the German miniseries “Faking Hitler” (June 9, 9 p.m.), about the 1980s scandal involving the publication by Stern magazine of diaries purported to have been written by Adolf Hitler.
NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.
Recent Comments