Reviews

Justified was one of those shows that was on our list forever. We had heard people talk about it, we knew we would get to it, but it just never happened. Then the pandemic came and we needed a show to binge that had a lot of episodes. We said, ok, now’s the time.

Six seasons have never flown by so quickly.

Justified was one of the most enjoyable discoveries we’ve had in a long time. The series aired from 2010 to 2015 on FX and is now available to stream on Hulu, and was created by Graham Yost, who went on to executive produce The Americans and Slow Horses. It stars Timothy Olyphant as a U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who goes back home to the Appalachian Mountain area of eastern Kentucky to try to keep the peace. It is based on a series of stories by Elmore Leonard.

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Most of you know my love of Germany, so I most certainly wasn’t going to ignore AppleTV+’s first original German-language series, which just dropped last month. I’m happy to report that Where’s Wanda? is a delightfully genre-bending puzzle of a series in the style and tone of Bad Sisters and Bodkin, but with all the charming German eccentricities I was hoping for—and not a Nazi or World War II reference anywhere in sight.

Where’s Wanda? is a dark comedy thriller about Wanda, played by Lea Drinda, a teenager who goes missing in a small town on the day of the town’s biggest holiday. Wanda’s parents, Carlotta and Dedo, played by Heike Makatsch and Axel Stein, are frustrated by the lack of leads the police are finding, so they take it upon themselves to investigate all their neighbors on their own by planting cameras and bugs in each house, because they absolutely believe Wanda is still alive and being held captive somewhere in their town.

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If you’re like me, the five words “based on a true story” at the beginning of a movie or TV show hook me every time. While I will never deny the power of a writer’s imagination, reality is still stranger than any fiction and the best stories do still come from real life. And, most horrifying, the worse a tale is, the more likely it’s based on something that really happened.

When it comes to stories about The Troubles, I’m always riveted. That dark period in Northern Ireland, which lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 which pitted Catholics versus Protestants, English versus Irish and nationalists versus unionists, was a violent and destructive time during which thousands lost their lives and millions of lives were affected, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Now, nearly thirty years after the peace treaty that ended the active violence, we are in a fascinating time to be looking back. There is enough distance to allow proper historical perspective and yet it is recent enough to still trigger emotional responses, largely due to the fact that there are still so many victims, participants, witnesses, aggressors and accused still alive who can tell their stories, some whom have never spoken before.

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Here are some interesting facts about my household:

-When we bought our first DVD player, which was probably in 2002 when they became mainstream, Gladiator (2000) was the very first DVD we purchased.

-When a social media poll recently asked, “what movie do you think you’ve watched the most,” my answer was, not surprisingly, Star Wars, and my wife’s answer was Gladiator.

-The Gladiator score was composed by Hans Zimmer and featured memorable vocals by Lisa Gerrard, who is one half of an Australian duo named Dead Can Dance, who is one of our household’s most favorite bands. Gerrard’s work on the Gladiator score is, in my opinion, what makes it so unique and memorable. Zimmer and Gerrard share the credit for composing the score and they both were officially nominated when the score was one of the film’s twelve Oscar nominations in 2001. It is, in my opinion, one of the best film scores of all time, despite having lost the Oscar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Dun Tan).

-Whenever we want to have fun, we love to re-create Elizabeth Taylor’s seemingly drunken announcement of Gladiator’s Best Picture win at the 2001 Golden Globes.

So, needless to say, Gladiator has had a large presence in my life. Since it came out in 2000, it has been in seemingly constant rotation on cable, so, like Godfather or Ocean’s Eleven, it’s one of those films that we are never able to scroll by when we see it’s on. If Gladiator is on, no matter where it is in the movie, we stop and watch. It is a film that is the perfect combination of action and art, of sentiment and brutality, of heart and heroism, of beauty and violence. It is Ridley Scott’s finest film and that’s saying a LOT, considering he also made Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner and Alien. It delivered Russell Crowe’s finest performance, features the best score in cinema history, and, as previously noted, was nominated for twelve Oscars, winning five, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Oh, and it also was a huge hit, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2000.

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I am most definitely not one to swoon over superheroes–unless Marvel’s next franchise is titled Nandor the Relentless, I really couldn’t care less about even the smallest star in that entire universe. But, if forced, I would have to confess that Batman is the one superhero who has managed to capture my imagination the most in recent years. Now, granted, that is largely due to Christopher Nolan’s genius and his trilogy of Batman films that wandered so far away from what could be considered superhero fare that you almost forgot you were watching characters that originated in comic books. Credit also needs to go to Warner Bros and DC Entertainment for keeping Nolan’s flame lit by continuing to produce visionary, imaginative, innovative and artistically expansive stories from the Batman universe. Recent films like Birds of Prey, Joker and The Batman all generated rave reviews and the series Harley Quinn is one of the most heralded animated series on television. And now comes The Penguin, a limited series spinoff from Matt Reeves’ The Batman film from 2022, and this series is the best Batman offspring since Nolan’s films.

First of all, do not worry if you aren’t a Batman connoisseur. Unlike the Marvel films, where you have to know every character’s backstory and understand all the easter eggs and inside jokes to get the least bit of pleasure out of them, The Penguin can be enjoyed truly as a standalone series, even if you know nothing about the Batman universe.

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During the height of the pandemic, I was desperate for “feel good” TV. While I normally gravitate towards serious dramas, that was a time when I needed to find refuge in sweetness, in a more of a Zen approach to narrative storytelling, in being distracted by kindness and hope, decency and optimism. It’s clear I’m not the only one who felt that way, proven by the phenomenons Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek became during those years. Not that either show wouldn’t have done so at any other time, but coming out as they did during the pandemic, these two shows really hit the emotional bullseye, tapping into the zeitgeist, delivering positivity, kindness and sweetness to a nation desperately in need of it.

Now I find myself strangely in need of some goodness again, and, thankfully, Detectorists has come to my rescue. An unbelievably simple but sweet show that aired from 2014 to 2017 and is now available to stream on Freevee (through Prime Video), Detectorists stars Toby Jones as Lance and Mackenzie Crook as Andy, two guys for whom metal detecting has become more of a passion and a way of life than just a hobby to pass the time. There is a poetry in the way they approach their passion, as they trudge across farms and fields of England with their trusty detectors, listening for a faint ping to indicate the site of possible buried treasure. An awful lot has happened in these open fields in the English countryside, a lot of history could be buried here, and Lance and Andy can’t help but be just a bit romantic about it all.

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There’s no mincing words when it comes to Rivals, a new show on Hulu. It is all sex, soap, silliness and sleaze, wrapped up in an addictive package with a killer soundtrack and shoulder pads.

A soapy drama in the spirit of ‘80s primetime hits like Dallas and Dynasty, Rivals is about two rich men, one from new money, one from old, who take their rivalry to new heights by battling for control of the region’s television programming. But of course, their rivalry doesn’t stay professional, spilling over into their tony, upper crust neighborhood of the Cotswolds region of southwest England. The Cotswolds is commonly thought of as the English version of the Hamptons, but with way more castles and fox hunts. And parties. Lots and lots of parties.

And sex, did I mention all the sex? I don’t know what’s in the water in the Cotswolds, but whatever it is, it makes everybody incredibly horny. Rivals is as classic a country sex romp as they come, on top of all the backroom backstabbing that goes on between the business rivals. Yeah, it’s pretty over the top, but it’s SO ‘80s. It’s set in 1986, and everything just exudes mid-‘80s, pre-AIDS ‘80s excesses, from the clothes, the music, the hair, and, yes, the sex.

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I admit I am easily drawn to film or TV shows by who’s in them or who made them. While I do love certain genres and stories, what drives me to watch something is, more often than not, who is in it rather than what it is about. So, when I heard AppleTV+ had an original series starring Cate Blanchett, I was in. But then I heard Kevin Kline was also in it and I didn’t even care what it was about. THEN I heard it was written and directed by Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón and I started counting the days until its premiere. Cuarón has written and directed some of the most prestigious films of the last twenty years, including Children of Men and Roma, for which he won Academy Awards for Directing and Cinematography, but, for me, he will forever be known for Gravity, which still stands as the most mind-blowing experience I’ve ever had in a movie theater.

Still, it was the idea of Blanchett and Kline together that got me most excited for Disclaimer, this new AppleTV+ series, which premiered on October 11. Kline, the icon of stage and cinema, is very picky with his roles, so those of us who love him are incredibly grateful when we get a chance to see him on screen, and to see him opposite Blanchett, who is at the absolute peak of her powers, is exciting, to say the least. I was hoping this pairing would bear sweeter fruit than the last Kline coupling I had had my hopes raised and dashed by back in 2021 when Sigourney Weaver and Kline starred in The Good House, a film that was far from the Dave reunion I had hoped for. Kline has been long overdue for a renaissance, a la Michael Keaton, and I am totally here for it—but still waiting.

Well, hold onto your hats, kids, because Kevin Kline is back. And he’s making the most of it.

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It’s gotten to the point where I would watch Olivia Colman read the phone book, and, in her latest film, Wicked Little Letters, it’s almost that simple. The film, directed by Thea Sharrock and written by Jonny Sweet based on a true story, is a deceptively uproarious dark comedy set in a small town in England after World War I.

The plot revolves around the mystery of profanity-laced letters which have been sent to buttoned-up good Christian woman, Edith Swan, played by Colman. Edith’s parents, played by the marvelous Gemma Jones and Timothy Spall, go to the police, insisting they get to the bottom of the cruel prank, as the letters become increasingly vulgar. They insist the main suspect has to be their neighbor, the foul-mouthed single mother Rose Gooding, played by Jessie Buckley, an Irish immigrant whose husband died in the war. Even though Rose insists she had nothing to do with the letters and there is no evidence or motive linking her to them, the police arrest her and put her on trial. Local policewoman Gladys Moss, played by Anjana Vasan, suspects there may be more to the story however, and takes it upon herself, with the help of some ladies from town, to do their own “off the books” investigation to try to get to the truth.

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Word on the street is that sitcoms are dying. If that seems hard to believe, let me remind you that we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Friends this year. While Friends could easily be called the last great traditional American sitcom (that’s THIRTY years ago, I’ll remind you), the modern network sitcom is still clinging to life support, with occasional flashes of brilliance (see Abbott Elementary) proving that perhaps the format is not quite ready to die just yet.

One such example of comedy genius is English Teacher, a series which just finished its first season of eight episodes on FX, which you can find streaming on Hulu. But don’t be fooled, English Teacher may look like a traditional sitcom, but it’s far from. While there may be the basic elements of traditional format within (one central character, an ensemble cast made up of basic tropes, and one open setting that allows for revolving stories each week), English Teacher makes up its own rules, including a killer retro ‘80s soundtrack (heaven), zero laugh track, and no true cliché in sight.

And it’s so good.

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