NOW SEE THIS NOVEMBER 13, 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.
'Crown' by Law The standard-bearer for traditional-yet-exceptional prestige TV — I compared Netflix's great The Queen's Gambit to it as the highest praise — The Crown returns for its fourth season this weekend. Peter Morgan's drama still focuses on Queen Elizabeth, with Olivia Colman's performance remaining a reactive delight, but this season looks more at royalty as an abstraction, with the queen pondering her successors and her legacy. Gillian Anderson's very actorly take on Margaret Thatcher will be polarizing, but Emma Corrin gets an instant star-is-born showcase as Diana Spencer. THR's Inkoo Kang deems it "the best season yet" and I may be inclined to agree. Thunberg. Greta Thunberg. Could Greta Thunberg be the next James Bond? Probably not, but she does get her own documentary with Nathan Grossman's I Am Greta premiering on Hulu. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where THR's Caryn James called it "a smoothly constructed view of a heroine in the making." For a very different sort of underaged antics, head over to Amazon and IMDb TV's Alex Rider, which comes much closer to getting the spirit of Anthony Horowitz's bestselling teenage spy franchise than the 2006 feature Stormbreaker, which you've probably forgotten existed. We Have to 'Fargo' Back When FX's Fargo returned, I acknowledged that as much as I love the show's look and feel and the tremendous ensemble cast, the ambitions of the fourth season may have been more than Noah Hawley had the time or space to fulfill. I also said that in a season of hit-and-miss episodes — still more hits than misses, if you ask me — there was one masterpiece. That episode, the black-and-white "East/West," finally premieres this Sunday. Written by Hawley and Lee Edward Colston and directed by Michael Uppendahl, it's one of my favorite Fargo episodes ever. So if you've been waiting to catch up, now's the time! The Hero Gotham Deserves It's a Friday the 13th weekend, but the chronicles of Jason Vorhees are available for online streaming only in piecemeal fashion. Instead, why not catch up on the Breakthrough TV nominees for the Gotham Awards, determined by a jury of critics including yours truly. It's a fun list including recent favorites like Starz's P-Valley, FX's Dave, HBO's I May Destroy You and Betty, Netflix's Immigration Nation and, of course, Watchmen from HBO. Now Eat This Another of the Gotham TV nominees is Hulu's Taste the Nation and it isn't a “Now See This” newsletter if I'm not recommending at least one new travel/food hybrid. This week, check out Eater's Guide to the World, which offers a global foodie experience curated by the website Eater. The lack of a single, on-camera host like Phil Rosenthal or Padma Lakshmi drains some of the personal connection to the various chefs and aficionados we meet along the way. But the international delicacies still look delicious and Maya Rudolph's off-camera narration is surprisingly and amusingly racy. Remembering Alex Trebek Last weekend, news of iconic Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek's passing was greeting with a sea of clips from his beloved game show, but don't forget that nobody did as-themselves cameos as well as Trebek. A good place to start is Cheers — available on Hulu and CBS All Access — and the season eight episode "What Is … Cliff Clavin?" Then head over to The X Files, also on Hulu these days, for the season three episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Place,'" where he doesn't technically play Alex Trebek but…well, if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Also check out our tribute to Trebek at the top of this week's TV's Top 5 podcast. This Week's THR Staff Pick Senior copy editor Lisa de los Reyes writes: "When the lockdown started, my husband and I were looking for something light to get us through the weeks. Now we've made it all the way to season six of Netflix’s Grace and Frankie. It's like a modern-day Odd Couple, and it's so heartwarming to see these two ladies stick together through everything life throws their way. Plus, we love seeing all the celebrity guest stars they've dated — Sam Elliott, Ernie Hudson, Craig T. Nelson, Michael McKean, bring 'em on! Lily Tomlin's antics are endlessly entertaining, Jane Fonda plays the perfect foil, and Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston are clearly having fun playing against type. Now if only they could get back in production on season seven before we run out of episodes!"
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