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Tag: TV reviews (Page 4 of 8)

Watchable on Disney, Prime Video, Netflix Aug. 1 to 7, 2022

August 1, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Bear (Aug. 3, Disney+)

From left, Jeremy Allen White, Lionel Boyce and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in “The Bear.”
PHOTO CREDIT: FX

First things first, if the behind-the-scenes operation of a restaurant is as chaotic as in the fictional Original Beef of Chicagoland in “The Bear,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to open one.

But it’s to viewers’ advantage that sandwich shop Original Beef is up and running. If you’ll forgive the bad food pun, there’s a lot to chew in this story about a hot shot young chef (Jeremy Allen White, “Shameless”) who returns to Chicago to take over the restaurant he was willed by his dead brother.

When Carmy Berzatto takes on Beef, it has a tired menu, an inefficient kitchen and recalcitrant staff who resist the changes he wants to make, especially his so-called “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “Girls”), an aggressive loudmouth who was the best friend of Carmy’s brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal).

Michael was a drug addict who committed suicide and has left a pile of debt behind, including hundreds of thousands owed to his Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt). Carmy could wipe out the debt by selling to Jimmy, but against all odds he wants to keep the place and fix it up.

New employee Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, “Big Mouth”), an ambitious young woman who has her own ideas about how to run things, tries to help Carmy whip the kitchen into shape, which adds to the tensions among the staff, particularly with long-time employee Tina (Liza Colon-Sayas) and with Richie.

And Carmy, on top of everything else, is still processing his grief about Michael’s death, particularly since they were estranged for a couple of years before the suicide. He also has a tenuous relationship with his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), who’s partly on the hook for the restaurant’s unpaid back taxes.

Add in mundane screw-ups like incorrect orders from suppliers, kitchen accidents, a bad rating from the board of health, an exploding toilet and a power failure, and it’s a wonder anyone’s getting fed.

Series creator Christopher Storer told Esquire he saw the chaos of a restaurant kitchen firsthand when he spent a couple of days as a line cook, but there was also a lot of research done and the show has a secret weapon in Canadian chef Matty Matheson, a co-producer who also plays the Beef’s resident handyman, Neil Fak.

If it seems like a restaurant kitchen is an unlikely setting for drama, I can tell you the show is fast, intense and never boring, and some of its most dramatic scenes take place in that cramped space .

In particular, in Episode 7, part of which was filmed in one continuous shot, something as ordinary as a restaurant review kicks off a nightmare of a shift in which many harsh words are exchanged, two people quit and another is accidentally stabbed.

But there is a resolution — a little too neat of one, but one that points the way to the already greenlit Season 2 — and the team pulls together.

Cooking is life for people like Carmy, Sydney and aspiring pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce).

For those of us who would rather just enjoy the end result, a show like “The Bear” makes it entertaining to see how the sausage is made.

Paper Girls (Prime Video)

From left, Fina Strazza, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet and Camryn Jones in “Paper Girls.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Studios

(Note: I don’t normally include shows that have already debuted on the Watchable list, but I missed out on reviewing “Paper Girls” last week because of an embargo.)

There’s been an inevitable linking of “Paper Girls” with Netflix juggernaut “Stranger Things,” but aside from the fact both start in the 1980s with bike-riding preteen protagonists confronted by supernatural forces, they’re not anything alike.

The girls of the title — 12-year-olds Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), KJ (Fina Strazza) and Mac (Sofia Rosinsky) — are battling humans, not monsters, albeit ones that possess advanced technology and can jump through time. And our heroines, despite their youth, shed their innocence more quickly than the Hawkins gang of “Stranger Things” and in ways that feel truer to real life.

In the early hours of Nov. 1, 1988, the girls are on their paper routes when they band together to avoid Hell Day hooligans and finish their deliveries. But it looks like nobody in this part of Stony Stream, Ohio, is getting their paper on time, because Erin is jumped by a couple of men in black who steal the walkie talkie that Tiffany lent her and the quartet gives chase.

That pursuit kicks off a series of events that puts them smack in the middle of a fire fight between two groups of time travellers known as the Old Watch and the Standard Time Fighters, or STF.

The walkie thieves save the girls’ lives but at the cost of them travelling 31 years into the future. They spend the rest of the eight episodes trying to get back to 1988, while avoiding an Old Watch assassin (Adina Porter) who is hunting them, with the help of an STF member named Larry (Nate Corddry) and older versions of Erin (Ali Wong) and Tiffany (Sekai Abeni).

That last wrinkle adds depth to “Paper Girls.” Each of them learns disappointing or confusing things about their futures and the people they become. Youthful optimism runs smack into the compromises that adult life demands and the girls don’t take it gracefully.

But they’re 12, so why would we expect them to?

The time-travel plot line is fine if not always well explained. It’s the performances of the show’s young and relatively unknown stars that elevate the material.

These girls have layers that are sympathetically and thoughtfully excavated, whether it’s KJ, who’s from a wealthy Jewish family, glimpsing a sexuality she doesn’t even know how to name; Tiffany, who is African-American, fighting to preserve her vision of what success means; Chinese-American Erin coming to terms with fractures in a once close family; or Mac, who lives in the rough part of town, realizing she might never escape the violent blight of her upbringing.

The girls straddle the line between childhood and young adulthood. One moment they’re eluding Old Watch travellers after seeing people they know die; the next they’re trying to figure out how a tampon works after Erin gets her period.

They start out as near strangers and end up friends, and it feels both earned and rewarding.

There is one other way that “Paper Girls” is like “Stranger Things”: it’s at its best when its young characters come together to grapple with whatever is plaguing them, whether it’s warring time travellers or the pain of growing up too fast.

Short Takes

Concert-goers dance as what’s left of Woodstock ’99 burns in “Trainwreck.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Aug. 3, Netflix)

The title of this three-part docuseries is appropriate because, as with the proverbial train wreck, it’s hard to look away as it documents this disaster of a music festival day by day and hour by hour. If it all seems familiar, it might be because HBO’s “Music Box” series also covered the chaos in the doc “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” last summer. The Reader’s Digest version is this: what was supposed to be a three-day sequel to the blissed out hippie vibe of the 1969 Woodstock festival turned into a sort of “Lord of the Flies” nightmare of anger and violence that culminated in a riot on the final night. “Trainwreck” (whose original title was “Clusterf**k,” also very appropriate) is long on details of the mayhem but short on explanations. Promoters Michael Lang and John Scher; musician Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit; untrained security guards; aggressive, young men in the crowd: all get fingered for some part of the blame. Scher, in particular, still seems determined to deflect any responsibility for what happened and still seems to blame the women who got raped at the festival for their own misfortune. As far as I can tell, the die for the catastrophe was cast the minute it was decided the festival would be more about squeezing participants for every possible dollar than keeping them comfortable and safe. And as I said in my review of “Peace, Love, and Rage,” “One does wonder what geniuses thought packing 220,000 or so people onto a largely asphalt surface in searing July heat was a good idea.” This series makes no mention of the one (and only one, surprisingly) death from the festival: that of David DeRosia due to hyperthermia from overheating. But it does provide a cross-section of voices, including Lang (who died three months after he was interviewed), Scher, event staff, musicians, reporters, MTV personalities who covered it live and concert-goers, a couple of whom say they’d do it all over again despite the fear they felt that weekend. Lucky for them and for us, there will never be another Woodstock.

Netflix also has the rom-com “Wedding Season” (Aug. 4) and, of far more interest, “The Sandman” (Aug. 5), based on the comic book series by Neil Gaiman about what happens to the Master of Dreams (Tom Sturridge) and the world after he is imprisoned for a century. Reviews for this one are embargoed until release.

Odds and Ends

CBC and CBC Gem have “FreeUp! Emancipation Day” (Aug. 1, 8 p.m.), celebrating the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, including Canada, on Aug. 1, 1834. The two-hour show includes a special about Emancipation Day celebrations across Canada, talks about what emancipation means, and performances by Jully Black, TiKA and Measha Brueggergosman. CBC Gem also has Season 2 of the Quebec series “C’est comme ca que je t’aime” (Aug. 1) and reality sitcom “Bobby & Harriet Get Married” (Aug. 5) in which a real-life couple, Brit Harriet Kemsley and Canadian Bobby Mair, play heightened versions of themselves.

Crave has the second season of workplace drama “Industry” (Aug. 1) about young traders in London, England. And if you missed Guillermo del Toro’s latest Toronto-shot, Oscar-nominated movie, “Nightmare Alley” comes to Crave Aug. 5.

Speaking of movies, “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear” is on Disney+ Aug. 3.

Apple TV+ has the animated film “Luck” (Aug. 5) and Season 2 of “The Snoopy Show.”

Finally, Prime Video has another film, “Thirteen Lives” (Aug. 5), a fictionalized account directed by Ron Howard of the rescue of young members of a soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand. I’m sorry I missed the chance to screen this one because the Disney+ doc about the event (“The Rescue”) was fascinating. Also new to Prime Video is Season 2 of “The Outlaws” (Aug. 5), about ne-er-do-wells banding together while doing community service in London.

Watchable on Crave, Netflix, Prime Video July 25 to 31, 2022

July 25, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: City on a Hill (July 29, Crave)

Kevin Bacon as Jackie Rohr and Aldis Hodge as DeCourcy Ward in “City on a Hill.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Francisco Roman/SHOWTIME

Jackie Rohr is a bastard: a corrupt ex-FBI agent, a murderer, a booze- and drug-abusing philanderer, someone who’ll throw just about anyone under the bus to save his own skin. There’s no good reason to root for him and yet the character, as played by Kevin Bacon, compels you to watch him.

As Season 3 of this Boston-set crime drama opens, Jackie — having quit the FBI last season rather than be fired — is tending bar and burning through his emergency funds when his old FBI mentor offers him a private security job at $2,000 a week, which would be a real windfall in 1993.

But it soon becomes clear that his rich boss, Sinclair Dryden (Corbin Bernsen), is doing reprehensible things, which means Jackie has to decide whether to take the high road or keep his mouth shut for the money.

The other star of the series, Jackie’s sometime nemesis, sometime collaborator DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge), who is as moral as Jackie is bent, has a shot at becoming Suffolk County district attorney if he gets his boss some high profile wins. But he resists quickly prosecuting the case of an alleged police killer when it becomes clear the young Black man was likely set up.

Both Jackie’s and DeCourcy’s wives are dealing with their own trauma: Jenny Rohr (Jill Hennessy) from sexual abuse at the hands of her estranged father and Siobhan Quays (Lauren E. Banks) from being shot last season and having a miscarriage.

Jenny finds new purpose volunteering at a community centre, where she re-establishes contact with Irish priest Diarmuid Doyle (Mark Ryder), which angers Jackie. And Siobhan, who has quit her law firm to work with the American Civil Liberties Union, goes up against the powerful forces behind the Big Dig megaproject when a worker is injured on the job.

This season also gives Boston police officer Chris Caysen (Matthew Del Negro) way more to do, helping root out corruption within the force.

The series is reminiscent of “The Wire” in its focus on the rot within the political and justice systems, although it doesn’t have that series’ finesse. There’s also a little “Homicide: Life on the Street” DNA, with Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson executive-producing both shows. (Boston boosters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are also EPs on “Hill.”)

“City on a Hill” doesn’t tread new ground in the genre, but if you’ve already seen seasons 1 and 2 — and I’d recommend doing so before digging into Season 3 — you’ll want to keep following its characters, particularly the reprehensible but irresistible Jackie.

As Siobhan’s therapist says, “Most of life falls into grey areas,” which is certainly the case in “City on a Hill.”

Crave also has the spinoff “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” (July 28), in which a new set of teenagers is tormented by someone who goes by the initial “A”; and the comedy special “Dave Merheje: I Love You Habibi” (July 29).

Short Takes

Charlotte Law, a mother who fought to take down the Is Anyone Up? porn site after her daughter
was victimized, in “The Most Hated Man on the Internet.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix © 2022

The Most Hated Man on the Internet (July 27, Netflix)

I’ll be honest, I watched this docuseries because the Netflix releases that I most wanted to review were embargoed, but I only got through two of the three episodes. I was so thoroughly disgusted by Hunter Moore, the “man” of the title, who started a repository of internet evil in 2010 known as IsAnyoneUp.com, that’s all I could stomach. Sure, the series is meant to be about the victims and the people who brought Moore down, chiefly Charlotte Law — a mother whose daughter’s topless photos were hacked and displayed on the “revenge porn” site — but it also devotes time to the nastiness spewed by Moore and his degenerate cult of followers. Do we need this show to remind us that crap posted on the internet can ruin people’s lives to the point of making them want to kill themselves? I’m not sure we do but, if you disagree, “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” is there for the watching.

Netflix also has “Keep Breathing” (July 28), the British Columbia-filmed drama about a lawyer (Melissa Barrera) who has to fend for herself when a small plane crashes in the wilderness; “Uncoupled” (July 29), the Neil Patrick Harris comedy about a gay real estate agent whose life is upended when his partner leaves him; the docuseries “Street Food: USA” (July 26); the third season of “Dream Home Makeover” (July 27); Season 4 of car-flipping show “Car Masters: Rust to Riches” (July 27) and rom-com “Purple Hearts” (July 29).

Odds and Ends

Fina Strazza, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet and Camryn Jones in ” Paper Girls.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Anjali Pinto/Amazon Studios

“Paper Girls,” the sci-fi drama about four 12-year-olds who get caught in a war between time travellers while out delivering papers in 1988, would have likely been my show of the week had reviews not been embargoed until July 29, the day it debuts on Prime Video.

Apple TV+ has “Surface” (July 29), which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman trying to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and “Amber Brown” (July 29), based on the Paula Danziger books, about a young girl using art and music to cope with her parents’ divorce.

Disney+ has Season 3 of “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (July 27); and “Light & Magic” (July 27), a behind-the-scenes look at  Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects arm of “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’s Lucasfilm,

Before he was Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek,” Patrick Stewart was a science professor who helped the British government solve dangerous cases in “Eleventh Hour,” which comes to BritBox on July 26.

Finally, if you’re a fan of Gordie Lucius’s daffy science show “Frick, I Love Nature,” CBC Gem has a bonus episode on July 27 about animals that live in the Arctic.

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.

Watchable on Netflix, Crave, Prime Video July 18-24, 2022

July 18, 2022 /

There is no show of the week this week, partly because I didn’t have that much to screen and partly because I didn’t have much time to screen what I did have.

Short Takes

From left, Trenton Quiocho, Rob Stern, evaluator Katherine Gray, John Moran, Claire Kelly, Maddy Hughes, Dan Friday, host Nick Uhas, Brenna Baker, Minhi England, John Sharvin and Grace Whiteside
in Season 3 of “Blown Away.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Blown Away (July 22, Netflix)

Reality competition series are a dime a dozen these days, but this Canadian-made entry has managed to stand out and accumulate a loyal following. Fans are in for more of what they love in the third season as a new group of 10 contestants competes in the Hamilton hot shop for a chance at $60,000 in prizes. They’re a delightfully diverse group, each with their own unique reasons for their devotion to the art of blowing glass. There’s something almost hypnotic about watching the pieces take shape although, at the same time, it looks frenetic, sweaty and extremely difficult, especially given the time constraints for each challenge. And part of the fun is not knowing who’ll come out on top week to week since victory does not alway go to the most experienced glass blowers or those with the most high profile reputations. Former “Big Brother” contestant Nick Uhas returns as genial host and Canadian glass artist Katherine Gray as resident evaluator with a rotating cast of guest judges.

Netflix also has Season 4 of “Virgin River” on July 20, a bandwagon I confess I have yet to jump on; and action movie “The Gray Man” (July 22), which was unavailable to screen. Blow-em-up and shoot-em-up films are not generally to my taste, although I might have watched this one just to see what else “Duke of Hastings” Rege-Jean Page can do.

Dougray Scott as detective Ray Lennox in “Crime.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

Crime (July 22, CBC Gem)

This is a fairly standard crime drama, complete with young adolescent girl kidnapped and murdered, but with the added distinction of being set in one of my favourite cities, Edinburgh, and being the maiden TV effort of Irvine Welsh, the author whose “Trainspotting” novel was turned into a seminal film by Danny Boyle. Several well-worn tropes are found here: the tortured lead detective (although Ray Lennox, played by Dougray Scott, is more tortured than most); the clever serial killer who’s eluded the police for years; the bureaucratic boss (Ken Stott) who wants the case tied up fast, to hell with the evidence. That being said, Scott does some decent work as Lennox, who’s battling not only an alcohol addiction but trauma from his own past that’s stirred up by the case. Joanna Vanderham (“The Paradise,” “Warrior”) holds her own as a young detective partnered with Ray and Jamie Sives (“Frontier,” “Guilt”) stands out as an uncouth, bigoted, sexist cop investigating a murder of his own. If this seems familiar, it’s because the BritBox original first debuted on that streamer in December.

CBC Gem also has the British real estate reality series “Extraordinary Extensions” (July 18) and the Canadian broadcast premiere of the Charles Officer film “Akilla’s Escape” on July 23 at 9 p.m., also on CBC TV.

Odds and Ends

KaMillion and Aida Osman in “Rap Sh!t.” PHOTO CREDIT: Alicia Vera/HBO Max

Sisters are trying to do it for themselves in “Rap Sh!t” (July 21, 10 p.m., Crave). The comedy from Issa Rae (“Insecure”) follows two high school friends who decide to form a rap duo, and try to rise above the sexism and misogyny of the rap music industry. I only watched one episode, not enough to give it a fair review. Crave and CTV also have Season 4 of “Love Island USA” (July 19, 9 p.m.), with episodes every Tuesday to Friday and Sunday, and who the hell has that kind of time?

Prime Video’s premiere of the week is “Anything’s Possible” (July 22), the feature film directing debut of Billy Porter of “Pose.” It’s a high school romance in which one half of the couple is a transgender girl, played by trans actor Eva Reign.

Apple TV Plus offerings include Season 3 of parenting comedy “Trying” (July 22) and “Best Foot Forward” (July22), which follows Josh (Logan Marmino), an engaging youngster with a prosthetic leg, as he switches from home-schooling to public school in Grade 7. It’s based on the true story of paralympic athlete Josh Sundquist.

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.

Watchable on Crave, FX, StackTV, Netflix July 11-17, 2022

July 11, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Rehearsal (July 15, 11 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Nathan Fielder in the New York bar meticulously recreated on set for a scenario in “The Rehearsal.”
PHOTO CREDIT: HBO

It struck me after watching all six episodes of “The Rehearsal” that an alternative title might be “A Fool’s Errand,” since the idea that variables in a life event can be controlled by repeated rehearsal of the event is inherently preposterous, which is clearly the point here.

But I suppose it also works if you think of Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder as a fool in the sense of a person employed by royalty or other aristocratic households to entertain.

In this case, HBO is the one paying the bills and I’m thinking they must have been enormous.

In the first episode, for instance, Fielder has an entire Brooklyn bar recreated in a studio in meticulous detail, right down to the balloon stuck in a corner of the ceiling. All this so that a man who’s been lying to his trivia teammates for years about the master’s degree he doesn’t have can rehearse coming clean to the teammate he thinks most likely to react badly to the lie.

Fielder also rehearses his own interactions with the subject, using a look-alike actor and a replica of the man’s apartment — secretly digitally mapped during a fake visit by the gas company.

It’s a staggering amount of preparation for something so relatively mundane, and the awkwardness between Nathan and his subject shows that the rehearsal hasn’t really done the trick.

Likewise, the real-life meeting between the man and his teammate doesn’t go as it did in the 13 rehearsals; I won’t spoil things by telling you how it turns out.

Nevertheless, Fielder persists and his next rehearsal is a doozy: a 44-year-old woman named Angela is considering whether she wants to have a baby. So Fielder moves her into a house in rural Oregon where she parents a fake child named Adam, who’s meant to grow from infant to 18 years over two months.

Adam, of course, is really a series of child actors. It’s a trip watching crew members quietly sneak a replacement baby through a window into a crib to conform to Oregon’s child labour laws while simultaneously maintaining the seamlessness of the illusion.

Touches like that emphasize the falsity of the whole endeavour. Crew members “plant” store-bought vegetables in the garden — Angela’s idea of playing house includes living off the land — and she maintains a fake business selling fake skin-care products that a fake mail carrier picks up to fake ship.

Fielder, meanwhile, manipulates his subjects every step of the way, not just the ordinary people he aims to help with these rehearsals, but the actors he’s hired to stage the scenarios.

The trivia player compares Fielder to Willy Wonka, an analogy that seems to disturb Fielder — or does it? It’s difficult to distinguish Nathan the person from Nathan the character, which I’m sure is by design.

Mind you, after he gets more deeply involved in the fake parenting rehearsal — the network has asked media not to reveal how — things seem to get very real.

There appears to be genuine conflict between Angela, who is aggressively Christian, and Nathan, who is Jewish, on the subject of religion. Nathan’s attempts to rehearse his way into a detente with Angela, with an actor playing her, get uncomfortably nasty.

And there are heartbreaking side effects on one of the youngsters playing Adam at age 6. Fielder seems genuinely stricken by the development. Are those real tears in his eyes when he visits the child and his mother? Or is it just another part of the spoof?

With Fielder, it’s hard to say. As he himself says, “How do you ever know you truly understand someone?” The short answer is that you don’t.

“The Rehearsal” is billed as a comedy but, like Fielder himself, the show’s true nature is hard to pin down. Poking through the absurdity is a sense of melancholy, that no matter what bridges we strive to build in life there will always be some detail we get wrong and real connection will elude us.

Short Takes

Kayvan Novak as Nandor and Harvey Guillén as Guillermo in “What We Do in the Shadows.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Russ Martin/FX

What We Do in the Shadows (July 12, 10 p.m., FX)

The TV world’s most entertainingly dysfunctional vampire household is back, but it’s not quite business as usual in Season 4 of the comedy. For one thing, their Staten Island house is falling apart given that Laszlo (Matt Berry) couldn’t be bothered to maintain it while Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Nandor (Kayvan Novak) were off on a year of adventures. (Look for cameos amid the decrepitude by one of Toronto’s better known creatures, the raccoon.) Laszlo was too busy raising the thing that crawled out of dead Colin Robinson’s chest at the end of last season — and props to the special effects crew for doing such a great job of putting Mark Proksch’s head on various child bodies. Guillermo (Harvey Guillen) is back as well, having survived two trans-Atlantic sea voyages in a crate with nothing but Oreos and Pedialyte for sustenance. But his plan to finally stop catering to the vampires is derailed when Nandor announces he’s getting married — to a yet unknown bride — and asks Guillermo to be his best man. And Nadja is determined to open a vampire nightclub in the vampiric council headquarters to the alarm of the Guide (Kristen Schaal). If you already love this incorrigible group of undead narcissists and their human caretaker, you’re in for more of what you love. And if you don’t, the seasons and episodes are short, so go ahead and catch up.

Felix Scholkmann takes part in a Swiss LSD study in “How to Change Your Mind.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

How to Change Your Mind (July 12, Netflix)

If I can shamelessly paraphrase American LSD proponent Timothy Leary, why not turn on, tune in and drop your preconceptions with this docuseries about psychedelic drugs? Based on the book by Michael Pollan, who also narrates the series, it considers the potential benefits of demonized substances like, yes, LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), MDMA (ecstasy) and mescaline. In the 1950s, for instance, Pollan tells us there was much promising research into LSD and other psychedelics that got buried when the United States under Richard Nixon began its war on drugs, a destructive and counterproductive campaign that continues to this day. It was the Swiss who jumped back into LSD research more than three decades later and now the drug is being studied as a possible antidote to depression, anxiety and pain, while people in the U.S. are doing their own experimentation with microdosing. Pollan proposes that psychedelics offer a way to penetrate the mystery of consciousness itself. No one’s telling you to go out and drop acid — the show includes a disclaimer that it’s meant as entertainment not medical advice — but it offers at the very least a drug-free opportunity for some mind expansion.

Netflix also has the comedy special “Bill Burr: Live at Red Rocks” (July 12), the horror series “Resident Evil” (July 14) and the animated series “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight” (July 14). And while I hear the Jane Austen purists are up in arms over the new movie version of “Persuasion” (July 15), starring Dakota Johnson, this Austen devotee will reserve judgment until she’s seen it for herself.

Theo (Mark Rendall) and Kendra (Archie Panjabi) on the scene of a train crash in “Departure.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Stranks/Shaftesbury/Deadpan Pictures

Departure (July 13, 9 p.m., Global TV/StackTV)

Buckle up for another season of this fast-paced series in which a crew of intrepid investigators solve transportation accidents with all the intensity of a true crime drama. Last season it was a plane crash over the Atlantic; this season an automated high-speed train has derailed between Toronto and Chicago. Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi, “The Good Wife”) once again leads the probe. Some of the plot devices are well worn, such as the suspicious FBI agent (Karen LeBlanc) who won’t share information, but you tend to get swept along with the speed of the show. Panjabi is still magnetic as Kendra, ably backed by senior investigators Dom (Kris Holden-Ried) and Theo (Mark Rendall). And ex-boss Howard (the magnificent Christopher Plummer) is still helping from the sidelines, although he’s only ever seen on phone calls, with Plummer shooting all his scenes at his home in Connecticut, completing them before his death in February 2021. Welcome newcomers to the cast include Kelly McCormack as a new investigator, Donal Logue as a helpful local sheriff and Irish actor Jason O’Mara as an FBI prisoner who escapes the crash.

Odds and Ends

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler and Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill in “Better Call Saul.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

I would have loved to get an advance look at the final episodes of “Better Call Saul,” but the fact I didn’t hasn’t diminished my enthusiasm for this masterful “Breaking Bad” spinoff, which concludes its sixth and final season beginning July 11 at 9 p.m. on AMC.

We “Bachelor” franchise fans are suckers for punishment, so of course we’ll watch “The Bachelorette” when Season 19 debuts July 11 at 8 p.m. on Citytv. One of the few good things to come out of the shit show that was Clayton Echard’s “Bachelor” season was the friendship between Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia, who are sharing the season as dual Bachelorettes. With 32 suitors to start out with, it’s going to be a lot.

Fans of Canadian fabulousness will want to check out the Season 3 premiere of “Canada’s Drag Race” (July 14, 9 p.m., Crave). There are 12 new artists competing to be Canada’s Drag Superstar; Brooke Lynn Hytes, Traci Melchor and Brad Goreski are back as judges; and the guest judges include legends like Carole Pope, JIMBO and Vanessa Vanjie Mateo. Crave also has the documentary “Julia” (July 11, 9 p.m.) for those who want to check out the real Julia Child.

Finally, you can catch “Forever Summer: Hamptons” (July 15, Prime Video) if you want to watch rich kids and townies mixing it up on the beach in the exclusive Long Island vacation destination.

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.

Watchable on Apple, AMC+, CBC, Netflix July 4 to 10, 2022

July 4, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Black Bird (July 8, Apple TV+)

Paul Walter Hauser and Taron Egerton in “Black Bird.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

It’s not the crime scenes that are the most chilling in the miniseries “Black Bird”; it’s the moments when murderer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) is describing to fellow prisoner Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) what he’s done.

There’s one scene in particular in the fifth episode that is harrowing.

Jimmy, a charismatic cocaine dealer who’s cut a deal with the FBI to reduce his sentence in exchange for getting information from Larry about his victims, has finally got the cagey, paranoid killer to open up. As they sit across a table from each other in the prison woodworking shop, the camera jumps back and forth between their faces: Larry’s as he matter-of-factly recounts raping, beating and strangling a teenage girl; Jimmy’s as he listens and struggles to disguise his growing horror.

Later, when they return to their separate cells, Jimmy sobs quietly into his hands.

The stellar work of Hauser (“Cobra Kai,” “Richard Jewell”) and Egerton (“Kingsman,” “Rocketman”) is more than enough to recommend “Black Bird,” but it’s not the only reason.

Ray Liotta, who died at age 67 shortly after shooting wrapped on “Black Bird,” gives a performance that is in some ways the heart of the series. He plays Big Jim Keene, Jimmy’s father, an ex-cop whose love for Jimmy is never in doubt even when his actions put Jimmy in danger.

There’s a poignancy to the fact that Liotta’s character is in ill health; one wonders how much of Big Jim’s frailty was also Liotta’s with scenes in which you can see his hands shaking. But the acting is still top notch, fiercely and deeply emotional.

The bond between father and son explains why Jimmy takes the deal in the first place, which involves moving from a minimum-security institution where he’s well-liked and comfortable to a maximum security prison specializing in the criminally insane where his life might be in danger.

We go into the show knowing that Jimmy will survive since the series is based on the real James Keene’s memoir, “In With the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption,” but that doesn’t make the prison scenes any less tense, especially after a guard outs Jimmy as a snitch.

The jail footage is intercut with scenes of the investigation into Larry’s crimes — in which both Greg Kinnear as detective Brian Miller and Sepideh Moafi as FBI agent Lauren McCauley also give excellent performances — and flashbacks to Larry’s and Jimmy’s childhoods.

These suggest that both men grew up with negligent fathers and indifferent mothers, although only Larry — a harmless weirdo to the cops in his hometown of Wabash, Indiana, who loved fixing up old vans and civil war re-enactments — turned into a killer.

In any event, the series doesn’t go too deeply into the why of Larry’s crimes — and in real life, he has never been convicted of murder, although he’s serving a life sentence for kidnapping. It’s about the cat and mouse game between Keene and Hall and is at its most gripping when Hauser and Egerton are onscreen together.

Short Takes

Emma McDonald as Bella Sway in “Moonhaven.” PHOTO CREDIT: Szymon Lazewski/AMC

Moonhaven (July 7, AMC+)

I preface this by letting you know I’ve watched only two episodes of this six-episode sci-fi series, so consider this more of a first impression than a full review. The premise is that Earth is dying (that part is clearly not entirely fiction), but there’s a plan to save the planet and all its people via a revolutionary new form of machine learning that’s been developed in a colony on the moon. But “the bridge,” the name given for the imminent transfer by a giant corporation of tech and colonists back to Earth, is threatened by a couple of murders in the Garden of Eden-like colony, which might be part of a larger plot to sabotage the mission. Caught up in all of this is an earther named Bella Sway (Emma McDonald), a pilot and smuggler whose half-sister was the first murder victim and who witnesses the murder of the second. She teams up with a moon detective named Paul (played by Dominic Monaghan of “Lost” and “Lord of the Rings”) to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. Monaghan is charismatic in the role and McDonald starts to grow on you once her character lightens up on the cynicism, but you have to wade through some hokeyness to get to the meat of the matter. The colonists come off as cultists, wandering around in colourful robes singing and dancing, and speaking in a stilted combination of very old-fashioned language and made-up words. If you can get past the new-agey trappings there might be a decent show under there. Joe Manganiello also stars.

Reel Black: Our Film Stories (July 8, CBC Gem; July 9, 8 p.m., CBC)

Got 20 minutes to spare? Then watch this documentary for a bit of a history lesson about Black filmmaking in Canada. It includes interviews with filmmakers Claire Prieto, Clement Virgo, Christene Browne,  Karen Chapman, Karen King and Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, some of whom have been making documentaries and feature films for decades. But even with that wealth of experience, barriers remain thanks to ingrained racism in the screen industry. Yet the doc also imparts a sense of hope, highlighting a new generation of artists such as Ajahnis Charley and Christian Anderson, part of a mentorship program through the OYA Media Group. As Ajahnis points out, it’s not just about getting more Black faces onscreen and behind the camera, but more Black crews, writers, producers and executives. “I want more slices or let’s make a new, better pie,” he says.

From left, Praneet Akilla, Morgan Holmstrom, Ace (Aason) Nadjiwon, Natasha Calis
and Mercedes Morris in “SkyMed.” PHOTO CREDIT: CBC

SkyMed (July 10, 9 p.m., CBC, CBC Gem)

If you like your medical dramas with liberal helpings of romantic entanglements this might be the show for you. The drama follows a group of young, attractive pilots and nurses providing medical care in northern Manitoba. Their ministrations are mostly provided in the back of a plane, which means they have to be fearless and quick on their feet. Back on the ground, the crews share a house, which means partying and hooking up are also on the agenda. But apart from the medical and relationship emergencies, the series — inspired by creator Julie Puckrin’s nurse sister and pilot brother-in-law, who met while serving on an airborne medical crew —also casts an eye on the racism and health care barriers faced by patients in remote Indigenous communities. And the natural scenery is a hell of a lot better than anything you’ll see on “Grey’s Anatomy.”

CBC and CBC Gem also have Season 2 of the sand-sculpting competition series “Race Against the Tide” (July 10, 8:30 p.m.). Gem has “Sorry for Your Loss” (July 4), which stars Elizabeth Olsen of “WandaVision” fame as a widow dealing with the loss of her husband; Season 3 of British comedy “Stath Lets Flats” (July 8) and Season 12 of “The Great British Baking Show” (July 10, 7 p.m., also on CBC TV).

Odds and Ends

Lana Condor as Erika in “Boo, Bitch.” PHOTO CREDIT: Erik Voake/Netflix

Netflix’s offerings this week include “Boo, Bitch” (July 8), which stars Lana Condor of “To All the Boys” fame as a high school senior who uses her death to catch up on all the life she missed when she was trying not to get noticed. It has the usual high school tropes and is intermittently entertaining but doesn’t resemble any ghost story I’ve ever seen in the two episodes I watched. There’s also reality series “How to Build a Sex Room” (July 8), in which designer Melanie Rose, yes, helps couples build hanky panky spaces in their homes. True crime doc “Girl in the Picture” and rom-com “Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between” both debut July 6, and animated comedy “The Sea Beast” is out July 8.

I don’t watch much reality TV anymore, despite my handle, but I do make time for “The Amazing Race Canada,” which returns July 5 at 9 p.m. on CTV after a three-year absence due to the pandemic.

BBC Earth has the latest David Attenborough nature show, “The Green Planet” (July 6, 9 p.m.), which explores “the hidden life of plants,” including maple trees in northern Ontario and lodgepole pines in British Columbia.

The big PBS offering this week is “The Great Muslim American Road Trip” (July 5, 10 p.m.), featuring rapper Mona Haydar and husband Sebastian Robins travelling Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, and visiting Muslim communities and people along the way.

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.

Watchable on Netflix, StackTV, OUTtv June 20 to 26, 2022

June 20, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Umbrella Academy (June 22, Netflix)

From left, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Elliot Page, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher and Robert Sheehan
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

Drag queen BeBe Zahara Benet in “Being BeBe.”

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.

Jesse James Keitel as Ruthie and Devin Way as Brodie in “Queer as Folk.”
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.

Watchable on FX, Prime Video, PBS, Netflix June 13 to 19, 2022

June 13, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Old Man (June 16, 10 p.m., FX)

Jeff Bridges with canine co-stars Dave and Carol in “The Old Man.” PHOTO CREDIT: Prashant Gupta/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

Jordan Gavaris and Madison Shamoun in “The Lake.” PHOTO CREDIT: Peter H. Stranks/Amazon Studios

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.

Natascha McElhone as proprietor Bella Ainsworth in “Hotel Portofino.”
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

From left, Paula Pell, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Busy Philipps and Sara Bareilles in Season 2 of “Girls5eva.” PHOTO CREDIT: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

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.

Watchable on Disney, Apple, Netflix June 6 to 12, 2022

June 6, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Under the Banner of Heaven (June 8, Disney+)

Wyatt Russell as Dan Lafferty and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Brenda Lafferty
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

Wrenn Schmidt and Joel Kinnaman in Season 3 of “For All Mankind.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

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.

Zahn McClarnon stars in “Dark Winds.” PHOTO CREDIT: AMC Networks

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

Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby in Season 6 of “Peaky Blinders.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix

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.

Watchable on Disney, StackTV, Netflix May 30 to June 5, 2022

May 30, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Pistol (May 31, Disney+)

From left, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Toby Wallace as Steve Jones
and Jacob Slater as Paul Cook in “Pistol.” PHOTO CREDIT: Rebecca Brenneman/FX

How you feel about the Sex Pistols probably depends to some extent on how old you were when the U.K. punks burst onto the music scene. I was 15 when they released the single “God Save the Queen” and, while I didn’t fully grasp the anti-establishment roots of the music, I appreciated the safety pin-adorned punk rock style, just the thing to allow a good Catholic girl to flirt with non-conformity.

This miniseries based on guitarist Steve Jones’ memoir “Lonely Boy: Tales of a Sex Pistol” takes us to the band’s roots at the forefront of a musical revolution. And dare I say, although it doesn’t shy away from Jones’ own troubled history or the band’s notorious ending tainted by drugs and death, it also makes those early days of punk seem like a helluva lot of fun.

Jones (Toby Wallace) is our way into the show, although all the band members get screen time, as does manager Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), his partner, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley), and a young Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler), Jones’ sometime romantic interest.

The top-notch cast also includes Anson Boon (“1917”), who’s particularly compelling as Johnny Rotten, Jacob Slater as drummer Paul Cook, Christian Lees as original bassist Glen Matlock, who was replaced by the doomed Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge), Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen and Maisie Williams of “Game of Thrones” as punk fashion icon Jordan (the real Jordan, a.k.a. Pamela Rooke, died in April).

(There’s a particularly entertaining scene in which Jordan, on her way to her job at McLaren’s and Westwood’s Sex boutique, commutes wearing a see-through coat and no bra, completely unconcerned by the outraged glares of the women and lascivious stares of the men on the train.)

Creator Craig Pearce (“Moulin Rouge!” and the upcoming “Elvis”) and director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting” and Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire”) attempt to ground the story of the band in the unrest of the times, so episodes are sprinkled with real footage of Britain in the 1970s, contrasting the monarchy and bowler-hatted toffs with the blue collar masses.

When Jones, Cook, Matlock and guitarist Wally Nightingale (Dylan Llewellyn of “Derry Girls”) are trying to decide on a look for their pre-Pistols band, the Swankers, Cook says they should dress like what they are: “four broke working class kids who can’t play for shit.”

We first meet Jones stealing equipment from a David Bowie gig at the Hammersmith Odeon (in real life, he reportedly stole it from a truck behind the venue, not the actual stage). A chronic thief, homeless, nearly illiterate, scarred by the verbal and sexual abuse of his stepfather, in the estimation of the manipulative McLaren, Jones has nothing to live for but his band.

McLaren sets about shaping the group, which is renamed the Sex Pistols, to fulfil his and Westwood’s dream of fomenting a revolution against the class-based stodginess of British society. So Nightingale is out and McLaren recruits live wire John Lydon, nicknamed Johnny Rotten for his bad teeth, to sing. As the series tells it, McLaren later pressures Jones to fire Matlock so he can bring in Lydon’s friend John Ritchie, nicknamed Sid Vicious after a nasty hamster. He can’t play, but he has the right punk rock look and a tendency toward self-destruction.

If you’re at all familiar with the Sex Pistols, you’ll be familiar with the band’s arc, including the infamy of their profanity-laced interview on “The Grundy Show”; being dropped by two record labels; the banning of No. 1 single “God Save the Queen” in the U.K.; the boat cruise/concert on the Thames that ended with Malcolm and Vivienne and others getting arrested; the disastrous U.S. tour that led to the band’s breakup; the subsequent filming of McLaren’s vanity project “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle”; the arrest of Vicious for the murder of his girlfriend, Spungen, and his subsequent death by heroin overdose.

The sadness of Sid’s and Nancy’s deaths notwithstanding, the tragic bits aren’t what stuck with me after watching all six episodes; it was the initial excitement of the music.

Thank goodness Lydon wasn’t successful in his bid to prohibit “Pistol” from using the band’s songs. The young cast do their own playing and singing, and Doyle shot performances in one take, which brings fresh energy to tracks like “Bodies,” “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.”

“Pistol” isn’t flawless. Boyle’s hyperkinetic directing style can be distracting. And one suspects the real punk scene was a lot messier, more sharp-edged and less attractive than what comes across onscreen.

With Jones as lead character, we learn little about the more famous members of the group, Rotten and Vicious, let alone Cook, Matlock and poor Wally Nightingale, who was more influential in the pre-Pistol days than the show lets on.

Each episode starts with a disclaimer that it’s “inspired” by true events so it’s clearly an approximation, a bit like me putting on fake leather and safety pins in high school.

And Boyle and Pearce give the story an unlikely happy ending of sorts, with Jones and Lydon burying the hatchet after Sid’s death, and a flashback to a feel-good Christmas Day benefit concert the band played for the children of striking firefighters in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

But all that being said, it’s still an entertaining look back at a band that continues to be influential despite lasting for just two and a half years.

Short Takes

Emmy Rossum as the title character in “Angelyne.” PHOTO CREDIT: Isabella Vosmikova/Peacock

Angelyne (June 1, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV)

Who is Angelyne? That’s the question posed in this Peacock miniseries about a real Hollywood legend, a blond, one-named bombshell who essentially became famous for being famous. Angelyne’s path to notoriety came through the provocative billboards of her that appeared all over Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s. There were several albums; film, TV and music video appearances; a foray into art via self-portraits; sales of merchandise and tours; even a run for California governor. Now in her 70s, she can apparently still be seen driving around town in one of her pink Corvettes. But who is the woman behind the blond hair, tight dresses and Barbie doll figure, which star and executive producer Emmy Rossum endured hours in the makeup chair to portray? This five-part series doesn’t give us any answers beyond facts already revealed in a 2017 Hollywood Reporter article: a Polish-born child of Holocaust survivors who cut ties with her past when she reinvented herself. The miniseries presents fictionalized versions of influential people in her life: her ex-husband (Michael Angarano), her fan club manager (Hamish Linklater), her boyfriend from the punk band Baby Blue (Philip Ettinger), the entrepreneur who financed her first billboards (Martin Freeman), the reporter who revealed her story (Alex Karpovsky), the student who tried to make a documentary about her (Lukas Gage). It’s an impressive roster of talent, led by Rossum, who disappears into the role, but it doesn’t get us any closer to the why of Angelyne. Given the preference of the real woman to remain a mystery — she told the Guardian newspaper in an interview she’s an alien “sitting on top of a pink cloud, sending inspiration to the world” — that probably suits her just fine. But it keeps the series from being elucidating as well as entertaining.

Odds and Ends

Norm Macdonald in the 2018 series “Norm Macdonald Has a Show.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Eddy Chen/Netflix

The title of Norm Macdonald’s posthumous comedy special, “Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special” (May 30), is of course a complete misnomer. Getting a last hour of standup from the beloved Canadian comedian, who died last September of cancer at the age of 61, is extremely special. Like his illness, Macdonald kept the program, filmed in his living room during the pandemic, a secret. And we will all discover what it contains together since screeners weren’t made available beforehand, but his producing partner told the Hollywood Reporter the material is fantastic. The Netflix show also includes tributes from other comedians filmed during the Netflix Is a Joke festival.

CBC Gem has a couple of imports for you to check out: Australian comedy “Preppers” (June 1), about an Aboriginal woman who joins a community of people prepping for the apocalypse; and Irish dramedy “The Dry” (June 3), about a woman whose newfound sobriety is tested when she moves back to Dublin.

I’m sorry, fans of “The Boys,” which returns to Prime Video for its third season June 3, but I didn’t watch the screeners on purpose because I just don’t love the show, despite the fact it’s made in Toronto. But for those of you who do, enjoy. Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) are reportedly going to get up to more mayhem after they learn about an anti-superhero weapon and start a war.

Apple TV has Season 2 of “Physical” (June 3), which sees aerobics instructor hero Sheila (Rose Byrne) struggling to expand her fitness empire.

If you enjoyed the HBO Max series “Julia” — and I certainly did — you might want to check out CNN’s documentary, also called “Julia” (May 30, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.), about celebrity chef Julia Child. It repeats June 4 at 9 p.m.

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.

This post has been edited to add additional thoughts I had after a second watch of “Pistol.”

Watchable on Netflix, Apple, BritBox May 23 to 29, 2022

May 23, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Stranger Things (May 27, Netflix)

Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp in Season 4 of “Stranger Things.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

What do you do when your mega-hit of a show is coming back almost three years after it was last seen, to towering expectations? You give the fans more, a lot more.

I don’t mean just the supersized episodes in Season 4 of “Stranger Things” (the season finale reportedly clocks in at two and a half hours) but the breadth of the content in the seven episodes I’ve seen so far.

It’s not just about what’s going on in haunted Hawkins, Indiana, where Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are navigating high school. The series also takes us to California, where Joyce (Winona Ryder), Will (Noah Schnapp), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) moved at the end of Season 3; to Russia, where former police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is being held prisoner; to the Upside Down, where a creepy humanoid monster named Vecna holds sway; even to Salt Lake City, where Dustin’s hacker girlfriend Suzie lives; and to other locations I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you about.

It’s March 1986 and a new creature is stalking the troubled teenagers of Hawkins, meaning the town is still endangered despite the defeat of the Mind Flayer at the Starcourt Mall eight months before.

The Duffer Brothers give us classic horror references here, sometimes dark and graphic ones. There’s even a haunted house and Freddie Krueger himself, Robert Englund, appears as the former homeowner, accused of murdering his family. But the scenes in which aspiring journalist Nancy (Natalia Dyer) visits him in an asylum are all “Silence of the Lambs.”

Plus all the kids are wrestling with adolescence — shades of 1980s high school movies.

Couples Mike and El, and Nancy and Jonathan are trying to keep the spark alive thousands of miles apart; Lucas and Max (Sadie Sink) have broken up and Max is in denial about the after-effects of seeing stepbrother Billy die in front of her; besties Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke) are still searching for girlfriends and keeping us entertained with their banter. And friendships are being strained: Will feels abandoned by Mike, and Lucas has chosen the high school athlete path to popularity while Mike and Dustin stay firmly in the nerd camp.

But El has it worst of all.

Stripped of her psychic abilities, still mourning her adoptive father Hopper and missing Mike, she’s preyed upon by bullies at her new high school. And once again, with her friends in Hawkins at risk, she’s asked to make tremendous personal sacrifices for the greater good.

It’s no spoiler to say that the Hawkins National Laboratories are back in play in flashback, particularly a 1979 massacre that killed all the children in Dr. Brenner’s (Matthew Modine) experimental group except Eleven, and which holds great significance to this season’s mysteries.

And I haven’t even touched on Hopper’s attempts to escape from his Russian prison with the help of a guard named Antonov (Tom Wlaschiha of “Game of Thrones”); the government agents who are hunting El; the “satanic panic” that grips Hawkins, directed at the Hellfire Club, Mike’s and Dustin’s Dungeons & Dragons team; the fact that ex-journalist Murray (Brett Gelman) teams up with Joyce when she learns that Hopper might still be alive; or any of the new characters.

British actor Joseph Quinn (“Dickensian”) joins the cast as Eddie, charismatic metalhead and leader of the Hellfire Club, and Eduardo Franco (“American Vandal”) is Jonathan’s stoner friend Argyle. Fan favourite Erica (Priah Ferguson), Lucas’s witheringly smart sister, is back as a season regular. And fans of the late, lamented “Anne With an E” will be pleased to see Amybeth McNulty in a small part as Robin’s crush, Vickie.

Sure, it’s a lot, but it’s entertaining as hell. And when the kids are working together to keep each other safe, you’ll likely feel some of those Season 1 thrills. I plan to rewatch all seven episodes and look forward to the last two of the season when they arrive July 1.

Short Takes

A swimming Tyrannosaurus rex is among the wonders in “Prehistoric Planet.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

Prehistoric Planet (May 23, Apple TV+)

What do you get when you combine the latest scientific research in paleontology with state-of-the-art CGI? A fascinating look at creatures that have commanded our imaginations for centuries. “Prehistoric Planet,” produced by BBC Studios, is described as a docuseries, but it’s more like a fantasy nature show. MPC, the company that did the photorealistic critters for movies “The Lion King” and “The Jungle Book,” gives us dinosaurs that look as startlingly life-like as the animals you’d see in any other nature documentary, except they haven’t roamed the Earth for 66 million years. As in regular nature docs, you’ll see dinosaurs hunting, mating, fighting, tending their young and whatever else is required to survive in five types of landscapes: coasts, deserts, freshwater, ice worlds and forests (the landscape footage is all real). Things kick off with the rock star of the dino world, Tyrannosaurus rex, but the series covers everything from lizards just a few inches long to titanosaurs 85 feet long, and lots in between, including some never before seen onscreen like the long-snouted Qianzhousaurus and the feathered Nanuqsaurus. The series also presents new information about dinosaurs that have been familiarized by popular culture. Those T-rexes, for instance, could swim and those “Jurassic Park” Velociraptors should have had feathers. The series was produced by “Mandalorian” creator Jon Favreau and Mike Gunton, and stars the eminence grise of nature docs, David Attenborough, who narrates. But the real reason you should watch is because it will give you a whole new appreciation for what was lost when that asteroid struck Earth and wiped out so many amazing animals.

Martin Freeman stars as street cop Chris Carson in “The Responder.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Screen grab/BritBox

The Responder (May 24, BritBox)

In a TV genre more often populated by detectives solving murders, creator Tony Schumacher and star Martin Freeman give us a far less glamorous side of policing. Freeman plays Chris Carson, a first responder working the night shift in Liverpool where he’s regularly confronted by the dregs of society. i.e. the people that society doesn’t give a shit about. He’s been demoted for a past transgression, his marriage is falling apart and he’s being watched by another cop (Warren Brown of “Luther”) who wants him fired. It’s a lot to shoulder on top of the human misery he’s confronted with night after night, and it’s little wonder that the cracks in Chris’s psyche are showing. Then he’s saddled with a suspicious new partner (Adelayo Adedayo), and his attempt to do a good deed by helping a young drug addict (Emily Fairn) who’s in trouble with a dealer goes spectacularly wrong. Schumacher was a Liverpool cop before he was a TV writer and it shows in the execution of “The Responder,” in which the grind that wears down officers like Carson is all too palpable. And then there’s Freeman, such a joy to watch in everything from “The Office” to “Fargo” to “Sherlock” to “A Confession.” Here he’s a decent man struggling against the pummelling of an indecent world and every bit of that struggle shows in his fine performance.

Odds and Ends

Clearly, all “Star Wars” fans will be awaiting the May 27 debut on Disney+ of the series “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” which begins 10 years after the events of “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” and sees Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen reprising their roles as Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. I chose not to ask for screeners since reviews are embargoed until the day of the premiere.

Netflix this week also has Season 5 of food and travel show “Somebody Feed Phil” (May 25) and the standup special “Ricky Gervais: SuperNature” (May 24).

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.

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