SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Sounds (Sept. 3, Acorn TV)
I sat down last weekend to watch a few episodes of “The Sounds,” just to get a feel for the show, and couldn’t stop until I had binged all eight. The twists just keep coming in this Canadian-New Zealand co-production, set in the latter country’s breathtakingly beautiful Marlborough Sounds area.
The star of the show is Canadian actor Rachelle Lefevre, whom you likely recognize from one of her many TV credits (“Under the Dome,” “Mary Kills People”) or even the “Twilight” films. The series begins and ends with her and she is our main point of reference throughout. She’s Canadian Maggie Cabbott, come to the small New Zealand town of Pelorus to join her Canadian husband Tom (played by New Zealand actor Matt Whelan), to escape his rich, predatory father and open a sustainable fishery. And then Tom disappears while out kayaking and we’re off to the races.
Maggie proves herself to be much more than just a grieving spouse as the series progresses and her secrets (and Tom’s) are laid bare. But the mostly friendly townsfolk of Pelorus also have things to hide, including local police officer Jack McGregor (Australian actor Matt Nable), who becomes Maggie’s main ally as she finds her footing.
Canadian actor Emily Piggford (“The Girlfriend Experience”) co-stars as a tenacious investigator sent to Pelorus by Tom’s family, who suspect Maggie had something to do with his disappearance.
The series is a crime drama and psychological thriller, but also an exploration of relationships. It touches on betrayal, loyalty, the idea of doing bad things for love, the damage wrought by keeping secrets and whether we ever really know the people we’re closest to. But beyond all that, it’s just a compelling watch. And if you don’t catch it on Acorn, you’ll have another chance to see it when it debuts on CBC on Oct. 5.
Away (Sept. 4, Netflix)
Hilary Swank is back — although she never really went away. It’s just that nothing she’s done recently has thrust her into public consciousness the way her Oscar-winning roles in “Million Dollar Baby” and “Boys Don’t Cry” did.
That could change with this big-budget Netflix drama, in which Swank plays astronaut Emma Green, leader of an international mission to Mars. Swank does excellent work portraying a woman who’s reached the pinnacle of her career with all the responsibility that entails, but who is also a wife and mother who’s leaving her family behind for three years. The sacrifice becomes even starker when Emma’s husband, sidelined astronaut Matt Green (the wonderful Josh Charles), has a crisis back home and Emma can only offer encouragement via video chat (a predicament sure to resonate with many people who’ve faced similar conundrums during the COVID-19 pandemic).
Of course, Emma isn’t alone on the mission. The capable supporting cast includes Ato Essandoh (“Chicago Med”) as Ghanaian-British crew member Kwesi; Ray Panthaki (“Marcella”) as Indian astronaut Ram; Vivian Wu as Chinese colleague Lu; and Mark Ivanir (“Homeland”) as the thorn in Emma’s side, Russian astronaut Misha.
The show balances the drama of keeping the spacecraft functioning (there’s a spacewalk in an early episode that I found tense as hell, even though I knew there was no way the series would let its lead drift off into space) with the emotional pull of the crew members’ lives back home.
Emma’s family, including daughter Alexis (Talitha Bateman), gets the lion’s share of the attention, but that doesn’t make the other astronauts’ stories any less poignant. There’s a plot line involving Lu and a forbidden relationship that brought me to tears.
It’s the humanity that very much tethers “Away” to Earth.
The Boys (Sept. 4, Amazon Prime Video)
Don’t worry, there will be blood as this tale of vigilantes battling evil superheroes returns for its second season. In fact, cast member Laz Alonso (Mother’s Milk) told Global News there would be a “lot more blood” this season. I’m still catching up on all the episodes, but I can confirm the sight of at least one exploding head.
At the end of Season 1, the Boys had uncovered evil corporation Vought’s dirty secret, that the world’s superheroes were not born that way but were nurtured into their superpowers with Compound V. Also, Butcher (Karl Urban) found out that his wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten) was still alive and raising the child she had against her will with corrupt supe Homelander (Antony Starr).
As Season 2 begins, what’s left of the Boys — Hughie (Jack Quaid), MM and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) — are in hiding, along with their superhero friend Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara). Butcher is missing and the Boys’ mission to expose the secret of Compound V and destroy the superheroes is stalled — or is it?
There’s a new threat not just to the Boys but to the world, in the form of superterrorists or supervillains. Homelander is riding high on the fact the superheroes have been admitted into the military, but Vought boss Stan Edgar (the fabulous Giancarlo Esposito) slows his roll. And there’s Edgar’s new hand-picked member of the Seven, Stormfront (Aya Cash), to contend with.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Butcher won’t stay missing for long. The show wouldn’t be the same without him.
As always, the darkness of the series is lifted by its moments of comedy. There’s one segment I particularly enjoyed involving the Deep (Chace Crawford), a hallucinogenic drug and his gills.
Odd and Ends
There is lots more to watch this week, most of which I didn’t have time to prescreen. I did get to watch a couple of episodes of “Raised by Wolves” (Sept. 3, Crave), the new sci-fi series executive-produced and partially directed by famed movie-maker Ridley Scott (“Alien,” “Gladiator,” “Blade Runner”). It’s set on an alien planet where two androids, Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), have escaped a catastrophic war on Earth with implanted human embryos. The androids, who are raising the children to be atheists, have their mission interrupted by a space ark full of highly religious colonists also escaped from Earth, led by Marcus (Travis Fimmel of “Vikings”). The pace is indeed slow, as some critics have complained, but I also found it interesting viewing.
Disney Plus has “Earth to Ned” (Sept. 4), a talk show hosted by two extraterrestrial creatures, Ned and Cornelius, from the Jim Henson Company, which also brought us the Muppets.
If you’re following “The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons — Ever!” the episode airing Aug. 31 at 8 p.m. on ABC and Citytv is all about the man who’s both a “Bachelor” villain and hero, Nick Viall.
W Network has a couple of offerings, Season 4 of “The Good Fight” (Sept. 3) and the new Marc Cherry dramedy “Why Women Kill” (Sept. 6). Despite the promising title, this is just the same old “Desperate Housewives”-style melodrama dressed up by situating the stories in three different time periods: 1963, 1984 and 2019. It stars Ginnifer Goodwin (“Big Love,” “Once Upon a Time”), Lucy Liu (“Elementary”) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“The Good Place”).
History also has new shows: “Eating History” (Sept. 2), in which hosts Josh Macuga and Gary Mitchell try out actual samples of historic foods; and “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch” (Sept. 6), in which experts search a 512-acre paranormal and UFO hot spot in Utah.
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