NOW SEE THIS

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg's weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com.

Back to School

The initial seven episodes of the second season of Hulu's Pen15 are more confident in their awkwardly comic coming-of-age glory than the already strong first season, highlighting Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle's award-worthy performances and co-creator Sam Zvibleman's versatile direction. Plus, check out this week's TV's Top 5 podcast for a great chat with Erskine and Konkle about how Pen15 avoids feeling like simply a gimmick.

The 'Ratched' Refuse of Your Teeming Shore

The fastest way to hate Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest prequel is to care at all about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Instead, put the tonally uneven, undeniably eye-popping pastiche of Hitchcock and Sirk alongside American Horror Story: Asylum and season two of Scream Queens and in the larger context of Murphy's exploration into the mental health industry's historical antipathy toward women and the LGBTQ+ community — then you know what to expect. Plus, there's a monkey. THR's Inkoo Kang raves about the drama's visuals, but laments that "the whole feels lesser than the sum of its parts." Very much so.

'Enola,' Yay!

Coming to Netflix on Wednesday is the feature Enola Holmes, starring Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown as Sherlock Holmes' intrepid sister. THR's John DeFore deemed it "light but enjoyable."  If you just can't wait for this game to be afoot, then boy do you have options. The four-season run of the BBC's Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is available on Netflix. All seven seasons of CBS' Elementary, featuring Jonny Lee Miller, are on Hulu. And if you're in the mood for something a bit more OG, Amazon has several of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes features, including The Woman in Green and Sherlock Holmes & The Secret Weapon, as well as several of Christopher Lee's tales in the deerstalker cap.

L'Shanah Tovah

Unfortunately, the late great Garry Marshall never got around to turning Rosh Hashanah into a lively rom-com, so you'll have to find a different way to ring in 5781 on your Jewish calendar. Maybe this would be a good time to check out Netflix’s Shtisel or Fauda or Unorthodox, or to check out some of the entries from my column about a surprisingly fruitful year in specifically Semitic television.

Emmys at the Gates

Assuming you've read Michael O'Connell's interview with the Emmy producers, you know as much as we do about what to expect from TV's biggest, most virtual night. Make sure you're caught up on Succession, Watchmen and Schitt's Creek and you should be prepared for the sure-to-be-odd telecast, at least based on Scott Feinberg and my Will Win/Should Win prognostications.

'The Jinx,' Buy Me a Coke

It's hard to find legal versions of Fatal Vision or Final Vision, the two TV projects focused on the notorious Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, so if you want to do a little homework ahead of FX's five-part documentary series A Wilderness of Error, watch director Marc Smerling's previous true crime mini The Jinx on HBO Max. Then, if you're a Criterion Collection subscriber, watch Errol Morris' — author of the Wilderness of Error book — Thin Blue Line for a playbook on how Smerling is using reenactments.

This Week's THR Staff Pick

THR newsletter editor Alex Weprin writes: "TV is a sports lover’s dream right now. MLB, NBA, the NFL, the U.S. Open — it's incredible. So obviously I've been bingeing the last season of The Great British Bake-Off (The Great British Baking Show here in the U.S. for trademark reasons), to get mentally prepared for the new season hitting Netflix later this month. All the kneading and proofing is a relaxing escape from thinking about the Jets, Mets and Knicks.”

Is this e-mail not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser. 

©2020 The Hollywood Reporter. 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 All rights reserved.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

UNSUBSCRIBE 

MANAGE PREFERENCES

PRIVACY POLICY

TERMS OF USE