Ongoing personal series highlights this past week have been with HBO Max's Peacemaker and Disney+'s The Book of Boba Fett. In the case of the latter, fans of The Mandalorian should have been especially interested in the past two weeks' episodes. I will not spoil the details. That is The Way.
Most of what follows are movies and shows I haven't yet watched. Where there's an exception I'll mention it.
Arrived on Netflix yesterday is season 1 of Murderville. A six-episode, procedural crime comedy with an improv element, it stars Will Arnett as Senior Detective Terry Seattle with a guest celebrity detective. The hook is that the guest detective isn't given a script, and so has to react to the situations, characters and information they're presented with. The list of guests is Annie Murphy, Conan O'Brien, Ken Jeong, Kumail Nanjiani, Marshawn Lynch, and Sharon Stone.
The mysteries are all at an Encyclopedia Brown level of challenge, with nearly all of the fun coming from the improv
from the guest detective, how each rolls with what they're given, and if
they can manage to throw off some the the scripted players with their
responses.
I watched the first three casually enough that I made a point of
switching to something else to help slow it down. With only six,
standalone episodes, each ranging from 29 to 35 minutes, they'd be too
easy to burn through.
This is another case of an adaptation of a (presumably successful) Brit show, in this case Murder In Successville, which ran in three seasons/series from 2015 to 2017. Currently, outside the U.K., it appears that's only available via Britbox -- so I guess I'll add that to the list of shows to motivate me to eventually give that service a trial run.
Likely
amplified by being arguably in year three of a pandemic, the unrequited
press for human contact seems to be lining February with more
Valentiney fare than usual. While I'm going to ignore most of it, it
seems I'm going to almost randomly select some thing(s) in the spirit of
rounding out the type of offerings here. After all, there's more than
one kind of escapist fantasy.
For
instance, today on Amazon Prime we have a romcom involving Henry, a
young, repressed, English writer whose novel has been of little to no
interest to anyone, who is suddenly sent on a promotional tour of Mexico
by his publisher. Why? Because his book has suddenly become a hit
there. Henry soon discovers that this is because the book's translator
(a career-frustrated novelist herself) has rewritten the dull text into a
steamy, erotic romance. No advanced degree is required to figure out
where this is headed. It's Book of Love (2022 1h 46m)
Seemingly to demonstrate that a formulaic action format can also support a romantic subplot, as of today Amazon also sports the start of a new series based on Lee Child's Jack Reacher book series, centered on a former military policemen who becomes something of a knight errant as a civilian. Part of the character concept is that unlike so many in this genre, Reacher isn't a brooding, troubled, alcoholic, but is instead a fairly positive sort, his wandering driven by a strong peripatetic urge. The character in the novels is an imposing, 6' 5" blond, running in sharp contrast to the feature film casting in 2012 (and, for a sequel in 2016) of 5' 6" brunette, Tom Cruise. During those years, Childs focused on the positive - the breakthrough to a new audience, and the checks - and suggested his readers (for the time) think of the Reacher's physical stats in the novels to be thought of more as a blunt metaphor for his imposing, unstoppable nature.
For this series, as one reviewer noted, they went "full size", casting Alan Ritchson in the part. Ritchson has most recently played Hank Hall/Hawk during the first three seasons of DC's Titans series, and wouldn't look out of place in an NFL lineup.
This 8-episode debut series is based on Killing Floor, Child's 1997 debut novel, and the introduction of that character. As there are currently some 26 novels in the Jack Reacher series, the potential is there for more seasons than are ever likely to be made. It's Reacher:
Ideally, the trailer is presenting us with a deceptively simplified, streamlined flow of scene cuts, and doesn't bluntly presage it being crafted for the dull-witted. That the series' showrunner and principal writer is Nick Santora, creator of Scorpion (whose mind-numbingly insipid debut episode was so intellectually insulting that I never circled back to try any more. I can only hope it improved radically as it ran for four seasons on CBS) was a tidbit that didn't fill me with confidence, but I'm open to see what they do with this.
I rolled through the first half of it Friday - here at the end of a week where I realized any attempt to express myself was only creating more problems, so I may as well just shut up and watch something. Almost amazingly on point with the previous paragraph, it was the Nick Santora-written first episode that was particularly heavy on cliche and formula, and really seemed to epitomize the phrase "a stupid person's idea of a smart person." The level raises variously after that, with different writers for each episode, but I'm bracing myself for the end because Nick is bookending the season's writing.
While in a significantly different tone, this reminds me to remember to watch for announcements of when the new Bosch series (the first of which ran seven seasons on Prime), Bosch: Legacy, begins on the free streaming service IMBD some still unspecified time this year. Filming of the first season for that, with a newly-retired Bosch becoming a private investigator, wrapped by early November last year.
Next Wednesday, the 9th, Netflix will see the return of Matt Groening's animated fantasy comedy adventure Disenchantment, back with its 4th season. Season 3 dropped just over a year ago, in mid-January of 2021, and as they'd been weaving an elaborate web of past and present intrigue I'm going to have to bring myself back up to speed on where everyone is and how they got there. The weave of prophecies, portents and character histories makes this something that has to be taken from the start, rather than trying to jump in with a random episode.
Launched last week on Amazon Prime is another animated series with both a fantasy setting and humor aimed not so much at an adult audience as not really at kids, unless they're into drunken debauchery, dismemberment, etc. Based on the first Dungeons and Dragons campaign from what I'm told is a "beloved" web series, Critical Role, it's been adapted into a series of roughly half-hour, animated episodes following an adventuring band trying to find paying work to cover their bar tab. I've watched the first couple, and there's probably just enough interest to string me along...
At its core it's a frat house comedy. All in all it feels more familiar than it should, but the pace has been kept brisk so far, there are enough characters to keep it from grinding to a halt, and the episode length helps keep it at the level of popcorn viewing. I predict it would quickly become unwatchable were one trapped in a room with someone who was a fan of the source web series, who was intent on sharing why a particular reference was even funnier because of the circumstances in hour 46 of the gaming series, because of a running joke between two of the players.
It's The Legend of Vox Machina.
Next Thursday (the 10th) Paramount + sees the return (following an irritating mid-season break after December 30th) of the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery, for the final six episodes of the season.
On the positive Trek side, this nearly half-season will overlap with the return of Star Trek: Picard (second season beginning March 3), after which we'll be getting the start of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds off on May 5th -- and we've also seen that a fifth season of Discovery was officially ordered earlier this month. Much more on those as they get closer.
Also on the 10th, but over on HBO Max, a new thriller from Steven Soderbergh debuts. In Seattle, during the pandemic, an agorophobic tech worker finds evidence of a violent crime while reviewing a data stream. Bureaucratic resistance from within her company finds her conscience-prompted to overcome her fears and leave her apartment to better investigate. Zoë Kravitz stars in Kimi (2022 149m)
Before closing, I wanted to note that one of the latest Netflix import series from Korea, All of Us Are Dead,
drew me in. (Quick note, the title is for the benefit of English
speakers, who need to be hit over the head, it seems. The actual title
translation of what the Koreans watched was the innocuous Now At Our School.)
This fast zombie apocalypse series is centered on a high school,
generally extending out from there with respect to their families. It's
essentially a 12-hour viral zombie movie -- and I'm nearly through it,
but I still don't know exactly where it settles. Then again, I know that
it's technically season one, so there may be more in our future,
depending on how well Netflix judges its pull with an audience.
They've
managed to bring in a few interesting conceptual twists into what's
become a well-trod (arguably overly-trod) genre. Via the setting they've
also made it in no small part, ultimately, about both class snobbery
and bullying -- getting the most out of the high school experience. I'll
toss out as a warning that the bullying, which essentially includes
rape, was for me the harshest part of the series so far. I come into a
zombie apocalypse expecting violence and gore.
Despite
the length, it so far hasn't felt padded to me. We get into the action
fairly quickly, so it's not as if we have hours of pre-event build-up.
It's a fair-sized cast, and most of them offer unique perspectives on
and windows into both this event and Korean society. Revelations, some
via conversation and some via looping around to fill us in on some
things we didn't see, also play a little with our evaluation of a few of
the characters along the way. Near the end we start to get a higher
incidence of convenient occurrences, though the losses keep coming,
leaving more of the survivors wondering what they're surviving for.
As the season rolled on, especially as I look back on it, I would say its primary weakness became notes of convenience. They seemed to become casually selective about how easy or difficult it was to disable one of the infected, varying mostly with the purpose of a given scene. Also, especially in the final couple of episodes it seemed that if they needed a quiet moment scene they got it, a trifle too casually and easily. These weren't enough to knock me completely out of the moment, but it was difficult not to be aware of them.
Anyway,
as I'd first mentioned this way back on January 14th, when it was still
a couple weeks in the future, here again is the trailer.
If you're in any of the places facing a(nother) winter storm this weekend, may your power and cable/Internet be uninterrupted, your kitchen be well-stocked, and you have no travel demands. Stay warm, safe, and see you back here next Friday! - Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment