Don't Even Try to 'Say No to This' Sure, you can do dozens of different things this holiday weekend, or you can just stay at home and watch Hamilton over and over again on Disney+. Broadway might be closed until 2021 and the original Hamilton cast might be scattered to the wind (and various CBS procedurals), but director Thomas Kail shot that original cast in a series of 2016 performances for a staged film that THR chief film critic David Rooney raves “puts you smack-bang in the room where it happens.” Check out the rest of Rooney’s review, too. The guy knows his Hamilton. Praise For 'The Baby-Sitters Club' Look, let’s be frank. I’m not the target demographic for Netflix’s adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s YA franchise, so take these words with as many grains of salt as you like, but: The Baby-Sitter’s Club is a delight — big-hearted, clever, surprisingly deep and deft. Much praise to the cast led by Sophie Grace, who gives off strong Early Lindsay Lohan vibes, Malia Baker, Momona Tanada, Shay Rudolph and Xochitl Gomez. What Other Critics Say About BSC I’m not alone! THR’s Robyn Bahr calls it “warm and effervescent” and one of Netflix’s best shows to date. Meghan O’Keefe of Decider calls it “a total triumph.” Kathryn VanArendonk of Vulture praises both its updates for a 2020 word and its fidelity to the source material. More Serious 'Mysteries' and 'Outcry' If you want something more serious this weekend, skip Netflix’s reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, which eliminates the host and cheesy re-enactments from the original and is generally pointless. Far superior, though maybe better watched in a binge, is Showtime’s Outcry, focusing on a Texas high-school football player accused of a heinous crime while maintaining his innocence. It’s meant to get you ticked off about the system. And it succeeds. Honor Carl Reiner We lost an all-timer this week when Carl Reiner passed away at the age of 98. Reiner’s career covered so much writing, directing and acting ground that there’s no bad place to start, but a great place would be with The Dick Van Dyke Show, streaming on Hulu. If you have HBO Max, you can stream All of Me, possibly the best of Reiner’s collaborations with Steve Martin. Or you can just settle in on YouTube and go down a rabbit hole of clips from Reiner’s variety show roots and his many, many great team-ups with Mel Brooks. Truly, they don’t get much better. America to Us Ahead of the 4th of July holiday, Inkoo Kang and I wrote about 10 shows that represent America to us. This Week's THR Staff Pick Continuing this newsletter’s devotion to food programming, TV staff writer Rick Porter writes: “I devoured all six episodes of PBS' Dishing With Julia Child, wherein famous chefs including José Andres, Marcus Samuelsson and Sara Moulton (who once worked with Child) watch and comment on old episodes of The French Chef. The reverence the present-day culinary stars show for Child, both as a chef and a TV host, is touching, and the old episodes themselves can be a hoot. It's a lovely half-hour.”
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