Tag: TV reviews (Page 8 of 8)

Watchable Aug. 9 to 15, 2021

August 9, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Brand New Cherry Flavor (Aug. 13, Netflix)

Rosa Salazar as Lisa and Catherine Keener as Boro in “Brand New Cherry Flavor.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sergei Bachlakov/Netflix

Hell hath no fury like an aspiring filmmaker scorned.

This limited series, based on the occult novel by Todd Grimson and created by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion of “Channel Zero” fame, takes a thwarted Hollywood newcomer-with-a-dream tale and turns it into a noirish nightmare of revenge, sex, witchcraft and death.

Rosa Salazar (“American Horror Story,” “Alita: Battle Angel”) is Lisa Nova, a young woman who’s come to 1990s L.A. to turn her short “paranoid thriller” into a full-length film with the help of Lou Burke (Eric Lange, “Narcos,” “Escape at Dannemora”), a producer who’s won three Oscars but who hasn’t had a hit in years.

But when Lou double crosses her, hiring another director and getting violent when Lisa demands her movie back, Lisa turns to Boro (Oscar nominee Catherine Keener), a mysterious woman she meets at a party, to put a curse on Lou.

Boro lives in a crumbling mansion with zombie servants, creating potions from guinea pig guts and other revolting substances, and makes Lisa pay for her services by vomiting up kittens.

But after the man who was meant to direct Lisa’s film is horribly injured and Lou’s son Jonathan (Daniel Doheny) almost dies, Lisa tries to call off the curse. Boro refuses and it’s clear that Lisa is in her power. Besides the kittens, she’s got a plant that’s taken over her shabby chic apartment, a scary, alien-like spirit that follows her and a terrifying being living beneath a trap door that suddenly appears in her floor.

Her one hope is to try to find out who Boro was in her past life and use that against her.

Likewise, when Lou demands that Boro reverse the curse, she advises him to fight back by digging into the darkness in Lisa’s past.

Also in the mix is movie star Roy Hardaway (Jeff Ward, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”), who’s got a dark history of his own and becomes Lisa’s ally and romantic interest of sorts.

This could be ridiculous in the wrong hands, but Salazar, Lange and Keener, fine actors all, keep the weirdness from tipping into camp. Salazar in particular is a mesmerizing presence who brings a matter-of-fact reality to the strangeness.

And the period L.A. setting (although it was actually shot mostly in Vancouver and Burnaby, B.C.) adds a veneer of glamour-tinged sleaziness.

The series walks a line between horror, mystery and character-driven drama. It’s scary, funny, loopy and entertaining.

Netflix also has the series “Bake Squad” (Aug. 11); the comedy special “Phil Wang: Philly Philly Wang Wang” (Aug. 10); and the films “The Kissing Booth 3” (Aug. 11) and “Beckett” (Aug. 13).

Short Takes

Roselyn Sanchez as Elena Roarke in “Fantasy Island.” PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Magruder/Fox

Fantasy Island (Aug. 10, 9 p.m., Global TV)

Look, I barely remember the original “Fantasy Island,” other than Ricardo Montalban in his white suit and Herve Villechaize and “The plane! The plane!” but it would not have topped my list of TV shows that deserved remakes. In this version, Elena (Roselyn Sanchez), the great-niece of the original Mr. Roarke, is the one charged with making dreams come true, dressed all in white like her great-uncle, natch. I could only stand to screen one episode but, other than offering a more diverse, female-heavy cast, it didn’t feel to me like it had anything worth revisiting in 2021. My advice if you want to see a show about rich people in a facsimile of paradise is to watch or rewatch “The White Lotus.”

Odds and Ends

T+E is trying to do for UFOs what it did for ghost stories with the new series “Encounter: UFO” (Aug. 10, 9 p.m.). It has the usual mix of eyewitness accounts, re-enactments and talking heads in eight episodes’ worth of tales that go beyond UFO sightings to cover alleged alien encounters and abductions.

CBC and CBC Gem have the documentary “Terry Fox: The Power of One” (Aug. 9, 8 p.m.) 41 years after Fox’s Marathon of Hope and 40 years after his death from cancer.

Amazon has Season 2 of the anthology series “Modern Love” dropping Aug. 13.

If you’re a fan of the gaffer on “Line of Duty,” you might enjoy “Adrian Dunbar’s Coastal Ireland” (Aug. 9, Acorn), in which the actor takes us on a tour of his native land.

Disney Plus has “What If . . . ?” (Aug. 11), which reimagines events from Marvel Universe films.

Wrestling fans might enjoy the new Starz series “Heels,” which debuts on Crave Aug. 15. The drama is about a community of pro wrestlers in a small Georgia town. Stephen Amell of “Arrow” and Alexander Ludwig of “Vikings” star.

NOTE: The times listed here are in Eastern Standard Time, and reflect information provided to me and cross-checked 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.

Watchable July 19 to 25, 2021

July 19, 2021 / Debra Yeo

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (July 23, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Attendees navigate a sea of trash at Woodstock ’99. PHOTO CREDIT: Catherine Lash/Courtesy of HBO

I had two thoughts after watching this documentary film, part of “Music Box,” a new series by Bill Simmons exploring pivotal moments in music: How did more people not die? And thank goodness I wasn’t there.

Not that I would have been: the original Woodstock, which the ’99 festival was meant to emulate, happened when I was 7; and I was well past the demographic that thinks braving the elements and peeing in Porta Potties is an acceptable tradeoff for a concert experience by the time ’99 happened.

This doc’s POV about Woodstock ’99, in case you were still wondering, is that it was a disaster. You’ll not hear from fans raving that they had the time of their lives. After watching footage of attendees packed into a former air force base in Rome, N.Y., in 110 F heat without adequate water; of backed up portable toilets and people literally smeared in shit and piss; of mobs of young men roaming the grounds fixated on “titties”; of the Night 3 riot that included looting and burning everything in sight, I can’t disagree that the festival looks in hindsight like one of Dante’s circles of hell.

The official toll was one dead — David DeRosia, who died of hyperthermia due to overheating during the Metallica set — 44 arrests; eight sexual assaults, although it’s estimated there were hundreds more; and one big black eye for the promoters. (Curiously, the doc omits the number of physical injuries in its statistics, although an ambulance technician who was there says medical staff were transporting 1,000 people a night from the scene overcome by the heat.)

The various talking heads in the film, interspersed with footage of the event, try to pin down a why for the mayhem that ensued, which is perhaps a fool’s errand.

Among the targets are promoters Michael Lang and John Scher. Scher, in particular, does himself no favours in footage of the daily press conferences on site, being combative and dismissive with journalists bringing up the problems they were seeing. He also, in an interview, blames the victims for all the instances of women being groped by men in the crowd.

Also faulted in the film: MTV, which covered the event live; an audience made up largely of young, white men and some of the bands that played, with the latter criticized for fuelling unrest in the crowd.

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. The security guards, largely undertrained and unprofessional according to the doc, were confiscating water from attendees, and bottles of it were selling for $4 apiece, an outrageous price back in 1999. Among other things, the doc shows people bathing in fountains meant to provide free drinking water and a long line for the ATMs as concert-goers sought more cash so they could pay to stay hydrated and fed.

Some of the interviewees say the problems began with trying to replicate a 30-year-old event that wasn’t as idyllic as it was made out to be at a time of social unrest in the United States (it was the year of Columbine and Y2K), with a lineup that included bands that appealed mainly to angry young men.

Obviously outdoor music festivals can happen without turning into “Lord of the Flies” — the film mentions Coachella, which began just a few months after Woodstock ’99 and is still going strong — but it strikes me it’s not a bad thing that plans for Woodstock 50 fell apart.

Short Takes

Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square in 2016. He’s one of the subjects of “In Their Own Words.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Stefano Spaziani/Courtesy of UPI/ALAMY

In Their Own Words, Season 2 (July 20, 8 p.m., PBS)

The new season of this docuseries about the lives of people who have transformed history, told in their own words but mostly the words of others, kicks off with Pope Francis, the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Obviously such a series seems predisposed to take a positive view of its subjects, although the episode does mention the Pope’s missteps, especially his early mishandling of reports of sexual abuse by clergy in Chile. There is no question Francis has also done good, particularly in his focus on the plight of migrants, the destruction of the planet and the role of women in the Church, even if those efforts haven’t led to substantive change. Future episodes profile Chuck Berry and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Chewbacca greets visitors near the Millennium Falcon replica at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Disney Plus

Behind the Attraction (July 21, Disney Plus)

Look, I can’t pretend that this 10-part series is anything more than an extended promotion for Disneyland, but if you enjoy the theme park or just aspire to go someday, you might like this insiders’ view of its more popular rides and displays. I screened the first episode, which looks at the history of its “Star Wars”-themed Star Tours as well as the newish Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. And I’m not gonna lie: Disneyland has never been on my wish list of places to visit, but I was kind of itching for a chance to pilot the Millennium Falcon. Other episodes cover It’s a Small World, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the Castles, Space Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, the Hall of Presidents, the Jungle Cruise, the Disneyland Hotel, and the park’s trains, trams and monorails.

Scott Turner (Josh Peck) and Hooch in “Turner & Hooch.” PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Milner/Disney Plus

Turner & Hooch (July 21, Disney Plus)

This series is a sequel of sorts to the 1989 movie with the son of the original Scott Turner (Tom Hanks), also named Scott (Josh Peck, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), teaming up with a dog named Hooch who’s the spitting image of the drooly movie canine. The premise is that Scott Sr. has died, leaving the dog to his son, a rookie U.S. marshal, who spends a big part of the first episode predictably resisting the ill-behaved Hooch. But, of course, Hooch ends up helping Scott and his partner (Carra Patterson) crack a case and then gets assigned to the canine unit. I only had time to watch one episode, which veered unconvincingly between a corny, family-friendly comedy and a cop drama with explosions, car chases and shootouts. Personally, if I wanted to watch a show about dogs and police officers working together, I’d tune in to Citytv’s “Hudson & Rex.”

Model Emma disguised as a demon to try to meet her match on “Sexy Beasts.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

Sexy Beasts (July 21, Netflix)

The word that came to my mind after watching one episode of this new reality series was “vapid,” which seemed a good fit for both the premise and the contestants. The ostensible idea is that by having everyone dressed in weird costumes, the daters and their potential flames can bypass looks to fall for someone based on their personality. But in the premiere, demon Emma appeared to make her choice from three men dressed as a mandrill, a mouse and a statue based on how much she enjoyed snogging one of them. I can’t see how she would have deduced anything about their personalities based on the brief snippets of shallow conversation we overhead on their speed dates. At least on “Love Is Blind,” in which men and women also formed connections without laying eyes on each other, the couples talked about subjects beyond “What’s the craziest place you’ve ever had sex?” I don’t get the impression that “Sexy Beasts” is focused on anyone getting engaged or married. Just as well. I figure the most these pairs can hope for are a few weeks of hooking up.

Netflix also debuts animated superhero series “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” on July 23, but reviews of that one are embargoed until Wednesday.

Odds and Ends

If you’ve followed Keeley Hawes’ career through shows like “Spooks” (a.k.a. “MI-5”), “Bodyguard,” “Honour” and “Line of Duty,” you might want to add the 2008 “Life on Mars” sequel “Ashes to Ashes” to your viewing list, in which she stars alongside Philip Glenister (“Belgravia”) as a time-travelling police psychologist and detective. It comes to BritBox July 20.

This post has been updated to add “Turner & Hooch” to the list of reviews.

Watchable July 5 to 11, 2021

July 5, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The White Lotus (July 11, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Jolene Purdy, Murray Bartlett, Alexandra Daddario and Jake Lacy in “The White Lotus.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Mario Perez/HBO

The opening credits of “The White Lotus” — glimpses of expensive wallpaper festooned with nature scenes that go from idyllic to alarming — perfectly encapsulate the show: stylish and sophisticated with an undercurrent of menace.

We know from the get-go that something has gone wrong at the Hawaiian resort where this “social satire” is set: there’s a body being loaded on the plane heading home and newlywed Shane Patton (Jake Lacy, “The Office”) is without his wife.

Over six episodes, Mike White (“School of Rock”), who wrote, directed and executive produced, skilfully lays out the stories of three sets of tourists during a weeklong stay at the resort, events that weave together to bring about a violent denouement. He’s aided by excellent acting, charged cinematography by Ben Kutchins (“Ozark”) and an evocative score by Chilean-Canadian Cristobal Tapia de Veer.

The tone of luxury underlain with ugliness is set before the rich guests of the White Lotus have even set foot on the island, as spoiled college student Olivia (Sydney Sweeney, “Euphoria”) and her friend Paula (Brittany O’Grady, “Little Voice”) spend the ferry ride secretly observing and denigrating the other passengers.

Unctuous manager Armond (Murray Bartlett, “Looking”) and his staff greet the “VIPs,” whom Armond privately describes as “sensitive children.”

Shane turns out to be a particular problem child. He discovers that he and new wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario, “Why Women Kill”) didn’t get the “Pineapple Suite” Shane’s mother (Molly Shannon) booked for them. He and Armond get into a war of attrition over the mistake, which horrifies Rachel, who’s only beginning to grasp the level of Shane’s materialism and entitlement.

All of the guests we’re following experience crises during their weeklong stay.

A skeleton in the closet of tech entrepreneur Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton) and emasculated husband Mark (Steve Zahn) resurfaces after Mark learns an unsettling secret about his dead father; Olivia and Paula lose a bag full of recreational drugs and have a falling out over handsome staff member Kai (Kekoa Kekumano); tech-obsessed Quinn (Fred Hechinger) loses all his toys when he’s forced by sister Olivia to sleep on the beach; Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge in a brava performance) is trying to make peace with the death of her cruel mother, whose ashes she brought to spread in the ocean.

At least Tanya is up front about her failings: “At the core of the onion I’m just a straight up alcoholic lunatic,” she tells Belinda (Natasha Rothwell, “Insecure”), the resort spa manager whom Tanya befriends and promises to help start her own business.

The guests all display varying degrees of unlikeability but, when push comes to shove, relative outsiders like Paula and Rachel aren’t willing to give up their proximity to privilege, even if the attitudes of the moneyed disgust them.

The people who suffer are those whose livelihoods depend on the resort, people like Armond and Kai and Belinda. The wealthy visitors upend their lives but neatly sidestep the consequences. And the next boat of rich people is coming into view.

Short Takes

Cutter (Alanna Ubach), Val (Mindy Kaling), Fritz (Henry Winkler) and Tylor (Ben Feldman)
in “Monsters at Work.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Disney

Monsters at Work (July 7, Disney Plus)

This is one case in which a TV series version of a beloved movie gets things right, at least based on the two episodes made available to critics. “Monsters at Work” is set in the factory that gave the 2001 animated blockbuster “Monsters, Inc.” its name, but big changes are afoot, which throw new recruit Tylor Tuskmon (Ben Feldman) for a loop. The top scarer in his class at Monsters University will now have to learn how to make children laugh instead of frightening them to keep the lights on. In the meantime he’s stuck working with a crew of misfits known as the Monsters Inc. Facilities Team or MIFT. Some old favourites are back from the film, including John Goodman and Billy Crystal as Sully and Mike, who are now in charge of the joint. The new characters include over-eager MIFT boss Fritz (Henry Winkler), gregarious co-worker Val (Mindy Kaling) and winged saboteur Duncan (Lucas Neff), who think’s Tylor is after his deputy supervisor job. The animation is top notch, the jokes are clever and snappy, and the little details stand out, like a hard hat with a hole cut out for Fritz’s single eye. So pop a can of Drooler Cooler and enjoy.

“Corner Gas Animated” is back for one final season. PHOTO CREDIT: Bell Media

Corner Gas Animated, Season 4 (July 5, 8 p.m., CTV Comedy Channel/Crave)

“You can stay so long, When there’s not a lot goin’ on,” says the theme song, but there’s an expiry date on this spinoff of the beloved “Corner Gas” sitcom. It wraps with this fourth season after CTV declined to pick it up for another. Based on the episode I previewed I wouldn’t expect the series to diverge from its proven formula for its swan song. The cartoon residents of Dog River — including Brent (series creator Brent Butt), Lacey (Gabrielle Miller), Hank (Fred Ewanuick), Wanda (Nancy Robertson), Oscar (Eric Peterson), Emma (Corinne Koslo), Davis (Lorne Cardinal) and Karen (Tara Spencer-Nairn) — are as they ever were. In the first episode, with guest voice Mark McKinney, Lacey decides to fulfil her childhood dream of jumping out of a plane and Wanda to fulfill hers of pushing someone out of a plane. Future guest stars include Kim Coates (“Sons of Anarchy”), Simu Liu (“Kim’s Convenience”) and a “Hollywood A-lister” yet to be named.

Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nicola Walker as Sunny and Cassie in Season 2 of “Unforgotten.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Mainstreet Pictures Ltd.

Unforgotten, Season 4 (July 11, 9 p.m., PBS)

Among the glut of British detective shows, “Unforgotten” has always stood out for me, mainly for its sensitive and intelligent handling of the cold cases that fuel its plots but also for the depth that Nicola Walker brings to her portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart: a middle-aged divorcee juggling a job she’s devoted to with being a mother to two young adult sons and a daughter to her aging father. She and police partner Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar), himself a single father, have a close, respectful relationship that makes it a joy to watch them solve cases together, so I’m delighted they’re back. I had almost given up hope of seeing a fourth season. This season’s case involves the discovery of a headless, handless body of a man inside a freezer at a scrapyard.

Odds and Ends

Cindy Sampson and Jason Priestley in Season 5 of “Private Eyes.” PHOTO CREDIT: Corus Entertainment

Five seasons in, “Private Eyes” (July 7, 9:30 p.m., Global/StackTV) has one burning question to answer: do will-they-or-won’t-they private detective partners Angie Everett (Cindy Sampson) and Matt Shade (Jason Priestley) finally get together? My guess is yes since this is the final season, but expect the tease to last a while since Matt acquires a new love interest (Kandyse McClure) in the second episode.

Global also has a new season of the American version of “Big Brother” beginning July 7 at 8 p.m.

Crave has the new iteration of “Gossip Girl” (July 8), which like the original is about nasty rich kids at a Manhattan private school except now the kids aren’t all white and they’re getting called out on Instagram. Guess you can tell it’s not one of my faves.

There’s a flurry of stuff on Netflix this week, including Season 2 of sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave” (July 6); Season 2 of the docuseries “Dogs” and Season 1 of the companion series “Cat People” (both July 7); Season 3 of the popular romantic drama “Virgin River” (July 9); and Season 4 of dramedy “Atypical” (July 9).

“Bridgerton” fans, take note: Ben Miller (Lord Featherington in that series) gets to lead his own show as “Professor T” (July 11, PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel), a Cambridge professor with OCD who helps a former student catch a serial rapist.

BritBox has a twist on the true crime docuseries, “In the Footsteps of Killers” (July 6), in which the star of a crime drama, Emilia Fox of “Silent Witness,” is the one trying to solve the murders alongside criminologist David Wilson. The series plays like a crime drama but, alas, in the episode I previewed, didn’t do much more than rehash the case. BritBox also has TV movie comedy dramas “Murder on the Blackpool Express,” “Death on the Tyne” and “Dial M for Middlesbrough” (July 9).

NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, 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.

Watchable the week of June 21, 2021

June 21, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell (June 25, Crave)

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a poster image used at a news conference by the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. PHOTO CREDIT: *John Minchillo*/AP file photo

A Toronto filmmaker, Barbara Shearer, made this three-part docuseries about the woman accused of procuring young victims for notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and it’s a fascinating and horrifying tale.

Epstein died in 2019, his death ruled a suicide, although there are still some who theorize he was murdered to hide the identities of famous and powerful men who shared his taste for sex with teenagers.

Maxwell is currently in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges — a far cry from the life of luxury she lived as daughter of notorious U.K. newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. Her father figures largely in Shearer’s portrait of Ghislaine, a 59-year-old, Oxford-educated, one-time British socialite.

More than one of the former friends and acquaintances interviewed in the series suggests the key to Maxwell’s identity lies in her relationship as a “daddy’s girl” to a demanding, terrifying father and that, when Robert died under mysterious circumstances in 1991, Epstein took his place as a father figure.

The doc also gives credence to that famous quote about the rich being “different from you and me.” In the milieu of enormous wealth and privilege that Maxwell grew up in, rules were for other people, as one interviewee notes. One gets the sense of billionaire Epstein ordering up schoolgirls to defile as casually as a meal or a bottle of Champagne.

But why would Maxwell, who’s accused of acting as a madam for Epstein —procuring girls from places like the New York Academy of Art and Central Park, or Mar-a-Lago when she and Epstein were in Palm Springs — take part in such vile debauchery? Speculation about daddy issues and codependency aside, no one can really say.

Maxwell refused to be interviewed for the series and her case won’t come to trial until November.

When it does, some observers believe Maxwell’s defence will be that she was just another victim of Epstein’s, but that strikes me as an inherently sexist view and also an offensive one. If Maxwell is guilty, surely she exercised some free will in what she did. It’s as hard to picture her as a victim as it was to view Karla Homolka as a victim of her serial killer and rapist husband, Paul Bernardo.

There is another entity painted in a damning light in “Epstein’s Shadow”: a justice system that treats the rich differently than other people. Epstein was given a slap on the wrist in 2008 despite copious evidence of his sexual activity with underage girls uncovered by police in Palm Beach. It wasn’t until 2019 that he was arrested on multiple sex trafficking charges after a Miami Herald investigation embarrassed the FBI into taking action.

Some believe the case against Maxwell will never make it to open court, either because she’ll be killed in jail or because she’ll be given a deal to prevent her giving evidence against public figures who were part of Epstein’s sordid world.

From Earth to Sky (June 21, 9 p.m., TVO/TVO.org)

Douglas Cardinal is one of the Indigenous architects featured in “From Earth to Sky.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Chapman Productions/TVO

On Monday, National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada, attention will still naturally be focused on atrocities of the past, particularly the 215 children found buried at a former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C, but this documentary film offers a narrative of inspiration and hope without minimizing the pain of what came before.

In 2017, Toronto musician and concert promoter turned filmmaker Ron Chapman met Indigenous North American architects who were preparing an installation for the 2018 Venice Biennale. That lit the spark of “From Earth to Sky,” in which seven of those architects are profiled.

The film begins with Douglas Cardinal, who’s Siksika from the Blackfoot Nation in Calgary and credited as the the first Indigenous architect in Canada, if not North America. Among his buildings are the Canadian Museum of History and the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Not bad for someone who was told as a student it would be impossible for him to become an architect.

Also included in the doc are the first female Indigenous architect in America, Tammy Eagle Bull of Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota; Wanda Dalla Costa of Saddle Lake First Nation in Alberta; Alfred Waugh, who’s Chipweyan from the Fond du Lac Band in Saskatchewan; Brian Porter of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario; Daniel Glenn of the Crow Nation in Montana; and Patrick Stewart of the Nisga’a Nation in British Columbia.

All of them have faced obstacles that white architects wouldn’t have to surmount. Cardinal is a residential school survivor; others have endured the generational trauma of residential schools and other fallout of colonialism. But there is an optimism in their work: a pride in traditions and hopefulness for the future that is expressed in the beauty and purpose of what they create.

Common themes emerge as the subjects discuss their practices: involving the communities the buildings will serve in the planning; incorporating traditional Indigenous designs and values in the construction; respecting the natural environment.

For Cardinal, these are practices that can benefit architecture as a whole, especially in the face of global warming.

“The Indigenous teachings can be the foundation for replanning and redesigning our cities,” he says. “We have the responsibility of set(ting) an example not only to our own nations, ultimately to the world as a whole.”

Short Takes

From left, Donald MacLean Jr., Sandy Sidhu, Jordan Johnson-Hinds, Natasha Calis and Tiera Skovbye
in Season 2 of “Nurses.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Corus Entertainment

Nurses (June 21, 9 p.m., Global TV/StackTV)

The conceit of this Canadian drama is that it’s about, yes, nurses, rather than the doctors who are the usual heroes of medical dramas. Let’s not pretend it’s reinventing the wheel; the beats will be familiar to anyone who regularly consumes medical shows as the five lead cast members juggle patient care with personal issues and romantic entanglements. But they’re a generally likeable crew and you get to see familiar Canadian actors guest-starring as patients, including Jean Yoon of “Kim’s Convenience” in the first episode of the new season. A couple of new regulars join the cast, including Rachael Ancheril (“Rookie Blue,” “Killjoys”) as new boss Kate Faulkner and Jordan Connor (“Riverdale”) as nurse Matteo Rey, a potential love interest for Grace (Skovbye).

A teenaged Michelle McNamara as seen in a new special episode of “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of HBO

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (June 21, 10 p.m., HBO/Crave)

This special episode of the popular true crime series is a postscript of sorts. It deals with the 2020 sentencing of Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer — whose identity writer Michelle McNamara relentlessly chased before her death in 2016 — and the victims finally venting their fury directly to the man whose rapes and murders irreparably altered their lives. That story is woven together with the one that set McNamara on her lifelong true crime obsession: the unsolved murder of Kathleen Lombardo in Oak Park, Ill., in August 1984. But the fact that killing is still unsolved, along with the possibly related stabbing of a neighbour of Kathleen’s who survived, Grace Puccetti, leaves the viewer without a sense of catharsis and makes the whole episode an awkward addition to the original series.

Odds and Ends

Adam Demos and Sarah Shahi in “Sex/Life.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Matlovich/Netflix

I have seen a couple of episodes of the new Netflix drama “Sex/Life” (June 25), but reviews are embargoed so I’m not allowed to tell you what I think of them. It stars Sarah Shahi (“The L Word,” “Person of Interest”) as a wife and mother of two with a seemingly picture perfect life who suddenly starts lusting after her bad boy ex (Adam Demos, “UnREAL”).

Honestly, I think Helen Mirren could make reciting the phone book sound interesting, but I’ll have to reserve judgment on “When Nature Calls With Helen Mirren” (June 24, 8 p.m., Global TV) since I haven’t seen it yet and it looks kind of dumb in the trailer. Mirren narrates the “unscripted comedy,” in which humans give voice to animals.

Also arriving on June 25 is Season 7 of “Bosch” (Amazon Prime Video). Alas, the screeners I requested never materialized, but I recommend it on the strength of the other six seasons and the excellence of Titus Welliver in the title role. Amazon also has “September Mornings” (June 25), a Brazilian drama about a transgender woman whose new life is complicated when she learns she fathered a son in her previous life.

Disney Plus has “The Mysterious Benedict Society” (June 25), based on the kids’ books by Trenton Lee Stewart, about a group of orphaned children recruited for a secret mission inside a boarding school. Tony Hale (“Veep,” “Arrested Development”) stars as Mr. Benedict.

Watchable the week of June 14, 2021

June 14, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK (Kevin Can F**k Himself, June 20, 9 p.m., AMC)

From left, *Brian Howe*, *Annie Murphy*, *Alex Bonifer*, Eric Petersen and Mary Hollis Inboden
in “Kevin Can F**k Himself.” PHOTO CREDIT: Jojo Whilden/AMC

Toxic masculinity can come with a laugh track and a punch line.

That’s one of the takeaways from “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” an inventive new dramedy starring Annie Murphy in her first post-“Schitt’s Creek” role.

Murphy is Allison McRoberts, sitcom wife. She’s married to Kevin (Eric Petersen, “Kirstie”), a man child who’s more interested in beer and sports memorabilia than in anything his wife has to say.

In the parts of the series shot in brightly lit, multi-camera sitcom style, Allison is the butt of the jokes, trying unsuccessfully to rein in Kevin’s juvenile behaviour — which is abetted by his dim bulb best friend Neil (Alex Bonifer), his father Pete (Brian Howe) and Neil’s sister Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) — while keeping the fresh beers and the scrambled eggs and hot dogs coming.

When the show switches into single camera mode we see the cost of Kevin’s selfishness. After 10 years of marriage, Allison feels like she has nothing to show for her life and that everything that was hers has been systematically taken away by Kevin, revealing an insidiousness to his pranks and his punch-line putdowns.

But Allison isn’t just mad; she plans to get her life back, hatching a deadly serious scheme of her own.

When Allison isn’t being minimized by Kevin’s buffoonery she comes across as intelligent and resourceful, which makes you wonder what she saw in Kevin all those years ago.

And in playing the role, Murphy, who gained fame as the ditzy Alexis on “Schitt’s Creek,” proves she’s not a one-trick pony.

Just as interesting as Allison’s journey from resignation to revenge is neighbour Patty’s transformation. She starts out being one of the boys, scoffing at Allison right along with them while denying the disappointment of her own dead-end life. By the end of the fourth episode, the only ones provided to critics for review, she’s become Allison’s friend and co-conspirator.

I’m curious to see, in the final four instalments, just how far Allison and Patty will go, and also how audiences will react given the show’s very unflattering portrait of male entitlement.

On the other hand, after a decade or two of Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos and Walter Whites, why shouldn’t we cheer when a woman gets mad as hell and decides she’s not going to take it anymore?

Penguin Town (June 16, Netflix)

A pair of African penguins on the hunt for a nesting site
in Simon’s Town, South Africa, in “Penguin Town.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix

We’re all used to earnest nature documentaries that seek to inspire our empathy by showing us the majesty of the animals that share our planet. Those are worthy programs, but there’s something to be said for treating members of one of the most beloved of bird species like reality TV stars.

“Penguin Town” anthropomorphizes the heck out of a particular group of African penguins spending their summer (our winter) in Simon’s Town, South Africa, but that doesn’t distract from the knowledge that these creatures are endangered. Arguably, the viewer’s sympathies are even more engaged by the series’ focus on specific birds, who are given names and storylines.

Narrator Patton Oswalt tells us that these penguins, also known as jackass penguins for their distinctive braying cry, arrive in Simon’s Town every November to mate and have babies: activities that are essential given that “if they get it wrong they face extinction.”

The birds are inherently comical as they waddle around town in their tuxedo-like plumage. The comedy is enhanced by the narration as we follow several couples, the middle-aged Bougainvilleas, the newlywed Culverts and “aristocrats” Lord and Lady Courtyard (named after the spots where they make their nests); a misfit named Junior and a group of disaffected singles called the Car Park Gang.

But there’s also tragedy to be found: a mother penguin who disappears while out catching fish for her chicks, possibly eaten by a Cape fur seal, or eggs that are swept away by the rushing waters of a storm.

The dangers are many, the quest to survive and reproduce daunting — Oswalt tells us one of every three chicks born here won’t live to adulthood — but that just makes the successes feel all the more important.

And the birds have some help from the “giants,” as humans are dubbed in “Penguin Town,” thanks to the work of SANCCOB, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. If you’d like to help too you can adopt a penguin here.

Netflix also has Season 2 of zombie apocalypse drama “Black Summer” (June 17) and Season 4 of Spanish teen drama “Elite” (June 18).

Catching Up

From left, Rebecca Benson, Anna Paquin and Lydia Wilson in “Flack” Season 2.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Amazon Studios

I wasn’t allowed to share a review of “Flack” (Amazon Prime Video) last week because of an embargo, but I can tell you that I like this second season better than the first, which I found overly cynical despite the hits of humour. The female PR fixers that we met in Season 1 are still doing deals for monstrous celebrity clients and Robyn (Anna Paquin) is still spinning dangerously out of control in her personal life, but in Season 2 we learn something about the women’s backgrounds, which makes them more relatable. Sam Neill guest stars as the ex-husband of imperious boss Caroline (Sophie Okonedo) and Martha Plimpton as Robyn’s suicidal mother. We also meet the mother of Eve (Lydia Wilson) and the parents of Melody (Rebecca Benson). The professional world these women inhabit is still a sordid one, but now I see them more as canny survivors than as predators.

You can read my interview with Paquin and her husband Stephen Moyer, who directed two episodes of “Flack,” here.

Another show I couldn’t talk about was “Loki,” now on Disney Plus. Tom Hiddleston is reliably entertaining as the arrogant God of Mischief, and he and Owen Wilson, playing a civil servant at the Time Variance Authority, mesh well when they’re onscreen together. After the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” Loki gets scooped up by the TVA and is about to be sentenced for crimes against the “sacred timeline” when Wilson’s Mobius convinces the powers that be to lend him Loki for a mission. Variants of the god are wreaking havoc on the timeline and Mobius wants Loki to help him stop them. Naturally, with Loki involved, things don’t go quite as planned. The series will probably appeal most to viewers who are up on their Marvel lore.

Short Takes

Colin Sutton was a detective chief inspector with London’s Metropolitan Police. PHOTO CREDIT: Acorn

The Real Manhunter (June 14, Acorn TV)

I quite enjoyed the Acorn drama “Manhunt,” in which Martin Clunes played a fictional version of Colin Sutton, the real-life detective who solved a 2004 murder in London’s Twickenham neighbourhood and caught a serial killer in the process. If you liked how that miniseries showed the methodical way that Sutton and his team cracked the crime, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this companion series about Sutton and eight of his cases. The murder of Amelie Delagrange in Twickenham Green is covered in the second episode. The first — and the longest at almost two hours — details perhaps Sutton’s most famous case, the capture of a serial burglar and rapist known as the Night Stalker who terrorized senior citizens in Southeast London between 1992 and 2009.

Odds and Ends

“Rick and Morty” are back for Season 5. PHOTO CREDIT: Corus Entertainment

Adult Swim has Season 5 of animated comedy “Rick and Morty” (June 20, 11 p.m.) with sociopathic Rick (series co-creator Justin Roiland) dragging grandson Morty (also voiced by Roiland) and the rest of his family along on dangerous intergalactic adventures.

Family Channel has the new competition series “Baketopia” (June 14, 7:30 p.m.), hosted by YouTube star Rosanna Pansino, in which the competitors are tasked with creating Instagram-worthy desserts.

It’s finale time for Season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (June 16, Crave) and since past season finales have traditionally brought big, cliffhanger twists it’s anybody’s guess what this season ender will bring.

Tag: TV reviews (Page 8 of 8)

Watchable Aug. 9 to 15, 2021

Watchable July 19 to 25, 2021

Watchable July 5 to 11, 2021

Watchable the week of June 21, 2021

Watchable the week of June 14, 2021

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta