Show of the Week: Kindred (Feb. 8, Disney+)
This miniseries opens with what I can only imagine would seem like twin terrors for Black Americans: a young Black woman is lying in the middle of a room in obvious pain, her back striped with the marks of a whipping, and then, once she’s bathed the wounds and dressed, white police officers come pounding on her door.
The woman is Dana (Mallori Johnson, “WeCrashed”) and, when the show jumps back two days, we learn that she has just moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn with aspirations of becoming a TV writer.
But she hasn’t even unpacked all the boxes in the house she bought after selling her late grandmother’s brownstone when she finds herself being sent back in time some 200 years to a Maryland plantation. The trips continue, lasting seconds, minutes and hours in the present day (2016) but hours, days and weeks in the past.
And Kevin (Micah Stock, “The Right Stuff”), the white waiter whom Dana has just had sex with, accidentally gets sent back with her where they pose as slave and slave owner to fend off the suspicions of plantation owner Thomas Whelin (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife Margaret (Gayle Rankin).
Those are the broad strokes of this time travel drama based on the 1979 novel by Octavia E. Butler.
Without getting too spoilery, Dana comes to learn that her travel is tied to the Whelins’ son Rufus (David Alexander Kaplan): whenever Rufus is in danger Dana comes back to save him. Likewise, whenever Dana feels her own life is in danger she returns to her own time, but she has no control over when she comes and goes.
She also encounters a relative of hers (Sheria Irving), thought long dead in the present but who has similarly travelled back in time and become trapped.
But Dana’s attempt to confide about these alarming episodes to her aunt Denise (Eisa Davis) in the present day is interpreted as a sign of mental illness; her almost cartoonishly nosy white neighbours (Louis Cancelmi and Brooke Bloom) keep intrusively demanding to know what’s going on when they hear Dana screaming each time she returns to the present; and Kevin’s sister (Elizabeth Stanley) sends the police to Dana’s door when her brother disappears.
From what I have read, Butler’s book was meant to explore how a modern Black woman would experience slavery and there is certainly some sense of that in this adaptation — as well as a sense of Kevin’s disgust at the dehumanizing of the enslaved by the Whelins and other white people he encounters.
(Some reviewers have taken issue with the romance between Dana and Kevin, who is Dana’s husband in the book but a virtual stranger to her in the series. I, however, can imagine how people trapped in a foreign, hostile situation would gravitate to, and draw comfort from, each other.)
But I had a hard time buying Kwanten, an Australian actor known mainly for his role in “True Blood,” as a fearsome slave owner, at least up until the very end when he perpetrates violence on Dana and threatens the life of Kevin. Not that I’m suggesting “12 Years a Slave”-style brutality would have been preferable, but Dana seems to experience a fair amount of latitude on the plantation, at least until she doesn’t.
Johnson is sympathetic as an alternately confused, angry, terrified and guilt-ridden 20-something woman, the latter since the slaves she encounters can’t escape their reality the way that she can.
Despite the flaws in this adaptation — developed by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (“An Octoroon”) — you’ll likely be invested enough in what happens to Dana and Kevin to watch all eight episodes.
The bad news is that the cliff-hangers in the final episode might never get a resolution. FX declined to renew the show for a second season, although Jacobs-Jenkins is said to be shopping it around.
Short Takes
Bloodlands (Feb. 6, Acorn)
I don’t want to spoil anything for anybody, but if you watched Season 1 of this Northern Irish drama you already know that Detective Chief Inspector Tom Brannick (Northern Irish actor James Nesbitt of “Murphy’s Law” and “The Missing”) is not a good cop. Season 2 ties into Tom’s past sins when a crooked accountant is murdered and found to have connections to a trove of gold that was bound for the IRA but disappeared along with the two men in charge of it, whose skeletal remains turned up at the end of last season. Tom leads the official investigation into the murder while also pursuing a clandestine operation to find the gold with the help of the accountant’s widow, Olivia (Victoria Smurfit, “Ballykissangel,” “Once Upon a Time”). How long can Tom keep all those balls in the air without his clever underlings, Niamh McGovern (Charlene McKenna) and Billy “Birdy” Bird (Chris Walley, “The Young Offenders”), catching on? Also in the mix is the gold’s American gangster owner (Jonjo O’Neill, “The Fall,” “Bad Sisters”), who turns up in Dunfolan demanding its return. It can be taxing to connect all the dots in this series, but it moves along smartly and compellingly, with some emotional payoff in the latter episodes of the season. The final episode leaves some big questions unanswered, but it seems there’s still a chance for a third season, so we’ll see.
Acorn also has Season 2 of “The Madame Blanc Mysteries” (Feb. 6), the very light but pleasant series about crime-solving antiques dealer Jean White (Sally Lindsay) and her compatriots in the French village of Sainte Victoire.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of HBO
All That Breathes (Feb. 7, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)
Beauty can exist in very unlikely places. This documentary finds it in garbage-strewn streets in Delhi, India, where brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, and their co-worker Salik Rehman, rescue and treat injured black kites and other birds. The brothers, who were filmed over three years by doc maker Shaunak Sen, do this at great cost — financial, physical, emotional — and also at the expense of their long-suffering wives and children. Their devotion is writ large in one scene in particular, in which Saud and Salik swim through very cold water to rescue a single kite on a far shore; Nadeem has to wade in himself when they become so exhausted on the way back they feel unable to keep going. The brothers initially treat the birds in a dingy and sometimes flooded basement before an international grant enables them to open a hospital for their Wildlife Rescue organization. Adding to the tension of caring for the thousands of birds — injured by pollution and other human-made causes — is the political unrest and violence taking place in Delhi during filming. Saud, Nadeem and Salik persevere, seemingly unable to stop even if they wanted to. “Delhi is a gaping wound and we’re a tiny Band-Aid on it,” Nadeem says. He adds that “one shouldn’t differentiate between all that breathes” hence the title. Indeed, Sen’s camera frequently documents the creatures that share Delhi with its human population, from rats swarming a garbage-covered lot to monkeys, boars, dogs, goats, cows, horses, even invertebrates swarming a murky puddle. As Nadeem says, “Life itself is kinship.” This doc is up for a Best Documentary Oscar and won the Golden Eye prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The Spencer Sisters (Feb. 10, 9 p.m., CTV/CTV.ca)
Despite all the sexy, serialized TV out there sucking up buzz and awards, the procedural isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, particularly the mystery procedural. So you can’t fault CTV for getting in on the action with this new series, particularly when the cast includes Lea Thompson, a legend for the “Back to the Future” films, and Stacey Farber, no slouch herself thanks to “Degrassi” and other credits. Here they play a mother and daughter who stumble into a partnership solving crimes. Victoria (Thompson) is a rich and famous mystery writer whose star is waning; Darby (Farber) is an ex-cop forced to move back in with Mom despite the huge chip on her shoulder over Victoria putting career ahead of family in earlier years. I have some quibbles — for example, how perfunctorily the blow-up of Darby’s police career is handled in the first episode — but if you’re looking for something light that won’t overtax your grey matter you could do worse than this. Thompson and Farber certainly seemed to have a hoot making the show together (you can read my Toronto Star interview with them here).
Ghosts (Feb. 10, CBC Gem)
No, sorry folks, I don’t mean the American remake that has become a hit for CBS. I continue to prefer this British original version about Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and the spirts she learns to co-exist with on the country estate she inherited from a distant relative. This fourth season, based on the two episodes I screened, perhaps doesn’t have as many laugh-out-loud moments as past seasons, but it continues to find sweetness and relatability in the relationship between Alison and the ghosts, and between the spectres themselves. There’s an endearing plot, for instance, in which ever cheerful Georgian lady Kitty (Lolly Adefope) teaches the by-the-books Captain (Ben Willbond) how to stop and smell the roses or, in his case, count the ants. Meanwhile, romantic poet Thomas (Mathew Baynton) develops a fan club among the plague victims in the basement and tries to kick his infatuation with Alison cold turkey; cave man Robin (Laurence Rickard) recognizes an acquaintance in a TV segment; witch-burning victim Mary (Katy Wix) finally reveals some details about her past; and Alison and husband Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) soft-launch a B&B at Button House.
CBC Gem also has the CBC Kids preschool series “Mittens & Pants” (Feb. 6), about best friends Mittens the kitten and Pants the puppy, and their other animal friends.
Odds and Ends
In keeping with the topic of TV characters who see dead people, ABC is launching sitcom “Not Dead Yet” (Feb. 8, 9:30 p.m., CTV2), in which Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”) plays a down-on-her-luck journalist who gets hired at her old paper as an obituary writer and gets an assist from the dead people she writes about, who hang around until she gives them a proper send-off. Also starring Hannah Simone, Lauren Ash, Josh Banday and Rick Glassman, it tends to a schmaltzy “you go girl” tone, but it has its moments. CTV also has Season 2 of reality series “Auntie Jillian” (Feb. 11, 8 p.m.), starring YouTube personality Jillian Danford, husband Warren and grown-up kids Myles and Milan.
I would image the big release for many people on Netflix this week is Season 4 of “You” (Feb. 9), its drama about a serial killer (Penn Badgley). The streamer also has Season 6 of time travel romance “Outlander” (Feb. 6); the doc “Bill Russell: Legend” (Feb. 8) about the civil rights icon; and Season 3 of reality after-show “Love Is Blind: After the Altar” (Feb. 10).
W and StackTV are going all in on romcoms with “The Love Club” (Feb. 10, 8 p.m.), four original movies that will debut on subsequent Fridays about four friends who form a club to keep each other out of romantic crises. Each film follows a different woman on her quest to find love. How much you want to bet they all succeed?
Prime Video’s releases include another romantic film — it is almost Valentine’s Day after all — “Somebody I Used to Know” (Feb. 10), starring Dave Franco and Allison Brie; and the series “One Night Only” (Feb. 10), featuring Francophone comedians PA Méthot, Dominic Paquet, Rachid Badouri and Mariana Mazza.
Paramount+ has the docuseries “Boys in Blue” (Feb. 10), about a high school football team coached by members of the Minneapolis Police Department in the post-George Floyd era.
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.
Recent Comments