Tag: Soul

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Letterkenny (Dec. 25, Crave)

Maybe it’s the particular genius of Canadians to make comedies about places in which not much happens. I mean, think about it, “Schitt’s Creek,” our most successful comedy ever based on worldwide acclaim and Emmy Awards won, was set almost entirely in a small, sleepy town and, more often than not, in two motel rooms. Brent Butt and crew spun six seasons out of Dog River in “Corner Gas,” a place where there wasn’t a lot going on. And the “Trailer Park Boys” hatched their hare-brained schemes in a mobile home park.

In “Letterkenny,” the main preoccupations are drinking, fighting, fornicating (or at least talking about it a lot) and, occasionally, chorin’. On paper, it sounds ridiculous. In practice, thanks to the commitment of series creator Jared Keeso and the rest of the cast to their oddball, small-town characters, and the skill with which they navigate the trademark rapid-fire dialogue, it’s pretty brilliant.

Not everything hits the net, of course, if I can use that phrase in keeping with the show’s hockey obsession. The first episode of the new season has one of those big fight set pieces that are so much fun (they remind me a tiny bit of the ones in the old “Batman” show of the 1960s, minus the cartoon “Blam!” and “Kapow!” exclamations and with even cooler music). But the American and Canadian armed forces guys who turn up to help and then hang around shirtless in the bar didn’t really up the comedy quotient for me.

On the other hand, there’s a dialogue in another episode between main characters Wayne (Keeso), Daryl (Nathan Dales), Squirrelly Dan (K. Trevor Wilson) and Katy (Michelle Mylett) about whether whistling sounds can come from parts of the anatomy besides the mouth that had me in stitches.

And you probably won’t want to miss Mark Forward’s master classes in cringe comedy as Coach forces his beer league players, including Jonesy (Andrew Herr) and Reilly (Dylan Playfair), to listen to monologues about his late wife Barb’s erotic skills.

“Letterkenny” also has its sweet moments of caring and camaraderie. Even oversexed bartender Gail (Lisa Codrington) gets a little love this season.

Bridgerton (Dec. 25, Netflix)

Attention lovers of period drama and star-crossed romance, Shonda Rhimes and her team have a Christmas gift for you.

I’d love to tell you what I think of it, but alas, review coverage is embargoed until Tuesday.

“Bridgerton” is the first original scripted series from Rhimes’ Shondaland as part of her Netflix deal. Created by her “Scandal” protege Chris Van Dusen, it’s based on the “Bridgerton” novels of Julia Quinn, about an aristocratic family in Regency London and their romantic pursuits.

Refreshingly, some of the other aristocrats are played by Black actors, including Rege-Jean Page (“Roots”) as the dashing Lord Hastings, Adjoa Andoh (“Doctor Who”) as Lady Danbury and Golda Rosheuvel (“Silent Witness”) as Queen Charlotte.

Phoebe Dynevor (“Younger”) also stars as Hastings’ romantic interest, Daphne Bridgerton, and Dame Julie Andrews gives voice to Lady Whistledown, the gossip whose scandal sheet keeps all the lords and ladies on their toes.

Soul (Dec. 25, Disney Plus)

This new animated film from Disney and Pete Docter (“Up,” “Inside Out”) could be subtitled “The Meaning of Life.”

For main character Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a music teacher living a fairly mundane life in New York City, there’s only one thing from which he derives meaning: jazz music, which he longs to play professionally at the Half Note club.

He finally gets his shot, asked by a former student to fill in at a gig with legendary saxophone player Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), but Joe is so enraptured after his tryout that he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s walking and steps into an open manhole. Next thing you know, he finds himself minus his body, on a conveyor belt to the Great Beyond.

Joe manages to escape to a more hospitable spiritual realm called the Great Before, where souls — portrayed as child-like, amorphous blue-green blobs — are assigned personalities. But they can’t travel to Earth and into bodies until they find a spark, something that fires their will to live. Mentors, experienced souls stopping in on their way to the Great Beyond, help them do that.

In his desperate scramble to get back to Earth and to his gig, Joe gets mistaken for a mentor and paired with 22 (Tina Fey), a soul who has decided she has no interest in living and has already foiled mentors like Mother Teresa, Muhammad Ali and Marie Antoinette.

After they end up in the Zone, a place where lost souls wander, Joe and 22 get help from a hippie mystic named Moonwind (Graham Norton), who leaves his body at regularly scheduled intervals, to get to New York. But the re-entry into Joe’s body doesn’t go quite as planned. I won’t tell you how because that would spoil the fun of a delightful interlude in the film.

Once on Earth, 22 finds delight in almost everything: the taste of pizza, the sound of a trombone, a seedling falling from a tree. Her enthusiasm opens Joe’s eyes to the fact there’s more to life than jazz and that he’s been missing out on a lot because of his obsession.

I won’t spoil the ending for you, although this being Disney you can probably surmise that it’s an uplifting one. It’s a sweet, beautifully animated take on a weighty subject.

Odds and Ends

If you’re a fan of the long-running Canadian detective series “Murdoch Mysteries,” the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and classical music, the special “A Music Lover’s Guide to Murdoch Mysteries” (Dec. 24, Acorn TV) will be right up your alley. Seven members of the TSO gather on the series’ police office set to play a selection of songs that Murdoch might have listened to in the early 20th century. The selections include Ravel, Brahms, Canadian composer Laura Gertrude Lemon, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Scott Joplin and the beautiful “Blue Danube Waltz” by Strauss, as well as music composed by Robert Carli for the show. “Murdoch” star Yannick Bisson hosts in character and there are clips from the series interspersed with the music.

If you’re a fan of rich people behaving badly and/or manufactured reality show drama, tune into “House of Ho” (Dec. 21, 8 p.m., Super Channel Fuse). The docuseries follows Vietnamese immigrant turned wealthy Houston businessman Binh Ho and wife Hue, his spoiled son Washington, daughter Judy and other relations. Frankly, Binh’s patriarchal attitudes and Washington’s seeming neglect of his wife and kids to go drinking and gambling with clients left a bad taste in my mouth.

If you enjoyed the most recent season of “The Mandalorian,” which ended with that blockbuster finale on Friday, you might enjoy “Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian ‘Making of Season 2′” (Dec. 25, Disney Plus).