Watchable Dec. 13 to 19, 2021

First things first, this will be my last Watchable list until Jan. 3, 2022, so I’ll wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year now. Secondly, I don’t have a show of the week this week but have devoted the most space to reviewing “And Just Like That . . .” which I was unable to do last week as I didn’t yet have the screeners.

And Like Just That . . . (Crave)

WARNING: If you haven’t yet watched “And Just Like That . . .” stop reading now. There is a major spoiler ahead.

My feeling after watching three of four episodes of this “Sex and the City” reboot is less “it’s great to see these women again” than “why am I seeing these women again?”

It’s not that I have an aversion to characters aging. I would welcome more shows that focus on 50-something women. And there are things that ring true here — like the sense when someone you love dies that you actually knew very little about them, or how marriage can slide into a comfortable but sexless companionship — but there are also things that don’t, like Miranda’s drinking problem and her patronizing cluelessness around her Black law professor Nya (Karen Pittman).

There’s also a sense that characters like that professor, or Charlotte’s Black school parent friend and gender non-conforming daughter, have been shoehorned in just to make the show less white and straight. (The most well-rounded new addition is Sara Ramirez as non-binary podcast host Che, although even she seems less her own person and more a means to advance Carrie’s and Miranda’s storylines.)

This series, like the original, is at its best when it’s focused on the friendship between the main characters, but therein also lies its biggest problem: the absence of Samantha (Kim Cattrall).

To have Samantha move to London after an argument with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) probably seemed kinder than killing her off, but it’s also a betrayal of the character. Would Samantha really have cut all ties not just with Carrie, but also Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis), over a professional disagreement? And, I’m sorry, but having her send flowers to a funeral doesn’t solve the problem.

The bigger issue is that you can’t help but feel Samantha’s (and Cattrall’s) absence in every scene between the other three. If there were any doubt that Samantha was the heart and soul of “Sex and the City” it’s now been laid to rest.

And speaking of laying to rest, the show gets its water-cooler moment with the death of Mr. Big (Chris Noth) in the first episode after a particularly vigorous workout on his Peloton bike, a death that seems simultaneously contrived and inevitable. Maybe Noth was too busy with other jobs to stick around for 10 episodes; maybe the writers felt a grieving Carrie would give them more to work with than a happily married one, I don’t know.

But Carrie’s grief sometimes feels less like an honest examination of what it’s like to suddenly lose a spouse and more about showcasing her fashion sense — the tasteful funeral ensemble, the high heels she wears as she soothes herself by walking endlessly around the city — and bringing back characters you might not even remember (Susan Sharon, Natasha).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the show. I’ll probably even watch all 10 episodes if I have the time. But as I watched the first three, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was trying a little too hard to justify its existence.

“Sex and the City” was landmark, groundbreaking TV, a show that many of us rightfully adore. But the TV landscape is so much different now than it was in 1998. You have to know when to hang up the Manolos.

Short Takes

The Larkins (Dec. 13, Acorn)

Unless you’re a snotty aristocrat, you’ll probably be charmed by the Larkin family. Ma and Pop (Joanna Scanlan and “Coronation Street” vet Bradley Walsh) and their six kids live on a farm in an uproar of animals and salvage and vast quantities of food but also a huge amount of love. Pop may be a schemer — one does wonder how he acquired so much land and ready cash — but he’s smart and shrewd as well as kind and generous. Alas, their idyllic lifestyle is threatened when vindictive blue blood Alec Norman (Tony Gardner) sics a tax collector on them. But the family launches a charm offensive on tax man Charley (Tok Stephen), with beautiful daughter Mariette (Sabrina Barlett) as their secret weapon. Although this adaptation, like the source novel “The Darling Buds of May,” is set in 1958, the fact that this is 2021 means some period-appropriate updates. Charley is Black, for instance, and neighbour the Brigadier is Indian, and Pop doesn’t pinch or caress every woman he meets, as he does in the book.

Building Bastille (Dec. 14, 9 p.m., TVO)

If someone pitched the story of how an unknown Uruguayan Canadian architect who had never actually built anything before somehow won the commission for a grand new Paris opera house, it might seem too far-fetched for fiction, but that is indeed what happened to Carlos Ott. This doc details the saga: the blind competition he won in 1983 (possibly because the jury thought his design was actually by famed American architect Richard Meier); the fact he almost got sent back home just hours after arriving in Paris because of an expired passport; the team of student architects and Toronto colleagues he quickly rounded up, working day and night to meet a 30-day deadline to submit drawings; the Herculean task of building the world’s most technically advanced opera house; the fact the project was nearly scrapped partway through due to French political rivalries. As one observer says, “This was brain surgery and you’ve never seen a brain before.” But against all odds, the Opera Bastille opened to acclaim on July 14, 1989, the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille prison that kick-started the French Revolution.

Firebite (Dec. 16, AMC Plus)

Pop culture has given us sparkly vampires, sexy vampires, lovelorn vampires, vampires that make us laugh and ones that spread viruses, to name a few. This Australian import gives us vampires who are symbols of colonialism. Set in the Australian outback, its heroes are a disgruntled Aboriginal teenager and her somewhat shiftless legal guardian. They hunt and kill the “suckers” that live underground in tunnels left behind by white settlers who stripped the land for opals. In a class presentation, for which she’s ridiculed by a white bully, Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan) says the original vamps were brought to Oz in the hold of a British ship as part of a deliberate plan to kill off the “Black fellows.” But it’s Indigenous hunters like her and Tyson (Rob Collins) who seem the best chance of keeping the vamps from overrunning the human population, particularly after the vampire king (Callan Mulvey) takes the bus into town (yes, in an example of the show’s humour, new vampires arrive by public transportation). A mix of gory action, laughs, character drama and political message, the show was co-created by Indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton.

Odds and Ends

I didn’t have a chance to screen this, but anything that stars the wonderful Mahershala Ali tends to get a pass from me. In the Apple TV Plus original movie “Swan Song” (Dec. 17), he stars as a husband and father diagnosed with a terminal illness. Glenn Close co-stars.

Given that “Snowbird” is one of the first singles I remember listening to on my parents’ turntable, I would be remiss not to mention “Anne Murray: Full Circle” (Dec. 17, 8 p.m., CBC), a documentary about one of Canada’s most successful female performers.

Can taking off your clothes change your life for the better? “Finding Magic Mike” (Dec. 16, Crave) would like us to think so. This reality competition takes 10 men, chosen from an initial group of 50, and preps them to perform in the “Magic Mike Live” show in Vegas, a spinoff of the movie franchise. One will win a $100,000 prize. They aren’t your typical beefcakes, but the show will do its best to help them get their sexy on.

Among Netflix’s offerings this week are the new real estate porn series “Selling Tampa” (Dec. 15) and Season 2 of “The Witcher” (Dec. 17).

Disney Plus has “Foodtastic” (Dec. 15), in which contestants create edible art by making Disney scenes out of food.

Amazon Prime Video gives us “With Love” (Dec. 17), a family dramedy that follows a pair of Mexican American siblings, one straight, one gay, and their loved ones through holidays, beginning with Christmas.

BritBox has the North American premiere of “Crime” (Dec. 14), a detective drama starring Dougray Scott as a cop with demons (aren’t they all?) investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl.

EDITED to include the Anne Murray documentary.

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 some shows that I have not watched.