HOMELAND: Sunday 9PM on Showtime The endgame has begun for Showtime’s HOMELAND–the reported plan is for next year’s Season 8 to be the last, although the network hasn’t confirmed that–and we’re past the point where it makes sense to bewail the fact that the series has never again equaled the heights of its first […]
HERE AND NOW: Sunday 9PM on HBO – In the Queue HERE AND NOW is sort of the Alan Ball/HBO version of The Fosters, which means that its characters are a generation older, it has a lot of sex, a lot of talk, and a lot of angst, and there’s a mystical “mystery” element. […]
There are certain inevitabilities at Sundance, apart from snow: something will go wrong (after I waited on line for 2 hours on opening day, the box office discovered that it had lost one of my passes), and no matter how carefully one chooses one’s film selections, some of the hottest titles will be missed. For […]
It would have been impossible for the Season 2 finale of THE GOOD PLACE to match the gut-punch of Season 1’s climactic twist, partly because until it happened, we hadn’t even known to look for one. The Good Place was a broadcast network sitcom, albeit a whimsical one, and its creator Michael Schur, while […]
AP BIO: Thursday 9:30PM on NBC (regular run starts March 1) – Change the Channel Most of the braintrust behind NBC’s new sitcom AP BIO hails from Saturday Night Live, starting with series creator Mike O’Brien and including Executive Producers Lorne Michaels, Seth Meyers and Michael Shoemaker, so it’s not hard to see why the pilot […]
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (no distrib): Pop culture seems to have an endless fascination with the post-apocalypse, and I Think We’re Alone Now has plenty of pedigree, hailing from Handmaid’s Tale pilot director Reed Morano, and with Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning as seemingly the last people on Earth. Nevertheless, it’s a misfire, […]
A KID LIKE JAKE (no distrib): Silas Howard’s dramedy is a small-scale triumph, successfully navigating its way from a wry account of upper-middle-class Brooklynites Alex and Greg (Claire Danes and Jim Parsons) trying to get their 4-year old into private school, into a wrenching story of the family being pulled apart as Jake’s behavior […]
DAMSEL (no distrib): A hipster representation of comedy rather than anything comic itself. Written and directed by David and Nathan Zellner, whose previous work includes the similarly film festival-targeted Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (they also appear in the film, David in a leading role), Damsel initially presents itself as the tall tale of Samuel […]