I really don’t know why I’ve slept on Danny McBride for so long. As a baseball lover, everyone has told me I should watch McBride’s first series, Eastbound and Down, which ran on HBO for four seasons, from 2009 to 2013, developing a huge cult following. And, as an even bigger fan of Walton Goggins, I should have already been on board for McBride’s second HBO series, Vice Principals, which ran for 2 seasons in 2016 and 2017, which starred McBride and Goggins as two high school vice principals competing for the top job. But no, for some reason I instead let both of those series pass me by without any interest at all. There was just something about McBride that didn’t appeal to me–his comedy just wasn’t my cup of tea. Or so I thought.
Just shows you how much I know.
It took Walton Goggins, John Goodman AND three years of overwhelming buzz for me to finally give McBride’s current series a chance, and it has become the most enjoyable binge we’ve had since six seasons of Schitt’s Creek got us through the early days of lockdown.
I know I totally need to catch up on Insecure, the HBO series that made a star of Issa Rae. But there are 44 episodes over five seasons of that show, whereas there are just 8 episodes of the first season of How to Die Alone, a new show that just premiered on Hulu, starring an Insecure alum, Natasha Rothwell, so I admit I chose the smaller bite. But if Insecure is anywhere near as enjoyable, easy to watch and satisfying as How to Die Alone is, those five seasons will just fly by.
plane. She recently broke up with a man she really liked because she was afraid to fall in love. She had a near-death experience, and her emergency contact was herself. These are all things that she is forced to confront in very neurotic and hilarious ways and leading the charge is Rothwell, an exceedingly charismatic performer who deserves her own show and makes the most of it.
There have been two recent dramatizations of the 2019 bombshell Prince Andrew interview that ended up sending unintended shockwaves through the English monarchy, but one is so much better than the other, which is why I’m highly recommending, if you are interested in either, choosing A Very Royal Scandal on Prime Video instead of Scoop on Netflix. 
rumors and to apologize specifically to one victim in particular, who claimed the Prince had raped her. But what was hoped, at least by the Palace, to put rumors to bed, only served to fan the flames as Andrew’s disastrous performance in the interview led to his essential banishment from the Royal Family in one of the most scandalous turn of events in the history of the modern English Monarchy.
I was trying to think of a way to describe the series Bodkin, a seven-episode series which dropped last May on Netflix, and I kept coming back to the same thing over and over again: Only Murders in the Building, but in Ireland. I really tried, but that really captures it perfectly.
Gomez about three residents of a building in Manhattan who love true crime podcasts who decide to host their own podcast when someone in their own building gets murdered. The essence of the show is that these three adorable people are surrounded by other adorable people and they all seem unfazed by people dropping dead all around them, probably because they are adorable people in adorable surroundings. Well, Bodkin is like that, but it’s Ireland.
Rashida Jones has long ago shed her nepo baby label and deserves credit for crafting her own fascinating, well-rounded career that I bet nobody saw coming. As the daughter of music legend Quincy Jones and actress/model Peggy Lipton, she probably could have done anything she wanted (especially after graduating from Harvard in 1997), but she decided to follow her mother’s footsteps into acting and soared to fame as the loveable best friend Ann Perkins on the long-running NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (2009-2015). Since then, she’s made indie films (On the Rocks), adult animation (Duncanville), apocalyptic sci-fi (Silo), another mainstream sitcom (Angie Tribeca) and an 
offbeat, off-the-radar comedy series (Toast of Tinseltown). In other words, there’s no anticipating her next move and there’s nothing she won’t—or can’t—do.
If you didn’t already believe Martin Freeman could do anything, you need to check out The Responder, a dark and unforgiving BritBox original that has Freeman as far away from Bilbo Baggins as one could possibly imagine. 
Love, Actually or his stint in the MCU as Everett K. Ross in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. More hip American audiences may recognize Freeman as Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes in four seasons of Sherlock, but Martin’s best American work was in the stellar first season of Noah Hawley’s masterpiece series Fargo, which continues to be one of the best shows to have ever existed.
Somehow, I missed this show when it first aired back in 2013 to 2016. The Fall is a drama starring Gillian Anderson as a British policewoman who becomes obsessed with catching a Northern Irish serial killer, played by Jamie Dornan. Played out over three seasons of six episodes each, The Fall is a gripping, often thrilling but extremely disturbing series that gives you all you want from a drama like this, with the added benefit of Anderson and Dornan’s considerable talents.
In honor of Dexter now being available on Netflix and the recent announcements of both a new 
It’s easy to forget Stephen Merchant. Everyone knows that Ricky Gervais created The Office, both the original, British version, and the massively popular American version, which now has found a renewed popularity in a post-pandemic world. But most people don’t realize that Gervais partnered with Merchant to create The Office, and as much of its brilliance is due to Merchant as it is to Gervais. Much of the credit to Gervais has possibly come to the fact that Gervais has continued to be so visible in his post-Office career, while Merchant has struggled to make an impact anywhere close to The Office since. That’s not to say he hasn’t been quietly delivering solid work, from his under-appreciated HBO series Hello Ladies (2013) to being a producer of the massively popular Lip Sync Battle TV show, to producing the great little indie movie Fighting with My Family (2019), but nothing nearly as notable as hosting the Golden Globes or breaking the