NOW SEE THIS

DECEMBER 04, 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.

What You Really Know About the Dirty 'Mouth'?

We don't have a full review of the fourth season of Netflix's Big Mouth, but the 10 new episodes are perhaps grosser, more cringe-worthy and more audaciously, empathetically hilarious than the seasons that came before. Big Mouth and Hulu's Pen15 — another show I enjoy raving about — have taken their place at a pinnacle of uncomfortable and introspective TV treatments of adolescence, and the new Big Mouth season has possibly my favorite vocal guest stars and my favorite song parody in the show's run. 

They Put Me in the Mix

The weekend's other big TV launches are getting mixed reviews. I found Netflix's Selena: The Series to be an interesting experiment in earnest, family-friendly hagiography, which means "not really for critics" — or, as THR's Inkoo Kang put it, "only for Selena completists." Creator Moises Zamora explained the tonal strategy in last week's TV's Top 5 podcast. Meanwhile, Showtime's Your Honor launches on Sunday, and for all of its spectacular actors and compelling premise, I compared it to Peak TV Bingo. Peter Moffat, creator of Your Honor, was this week's TV's Top 5 podcast guest.

'Axe'-imum Overdrive

A riddle: What do you call a series telling stories in a common milieu and financed by a TV/streaming service that premiere weekly on a TV/streaming service under a common umbrella title? Apropos of nothing, the third installment in Steve McQueen's Amazon TV series of movies Small Axe is titled Red, White and Blue, and like the previous installments, it's getting rave reviews. An examination of racism in London's Metropolitan Police Force, this new episode stars John Boyega in a performance of "smoldering gravitas, maturity and integrity," per THR's David Rooney, who called the entire endeavor "one of the most satisfying prestige streaming events of the year."

The Streams Are Alive With the 'Sound of Metal'

The news is all about Warner Brothers' decision to debut its 2021 theatrical slate on HBO Max, but there are some big movie titles coming to streaming this week. Netflix has David Fincher's Mank, about the Citizen Kane screenwriter, and Rooney calls the black-and-white pastiche "aesthetically ravishing but emotionally remote." Meanwhile, Amazon is dropping Darius Marder's Sound of Metal, featuring a widely acclaimed performance from Riz Ahmed as a drummer experiencing hearing loss. It played festivals in 2019 and THR's John DeFore called it "deeply felt."

No Country for Old Menorah

Next week marks the start of Hanukkah, a holiday Hollywood only occasionally remembers. Sure, you could watch Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights on several streaming platforms, but why would you want to? Better pair your latkes or jelly donuts with a couple select Hanukkah episodes like "A Rugrats Chanukah," available on Hulu as the start of that show's fourth season, or any of the "Chrismukkah" episodes of The OC, which is streaming on HBO Max. Heck, this week's The Goldbergs had a vague Hanukkah backdrop, albeit without even an iota of religious content. 

Hallmark's the Spot

Have you been gorging on Hallmark holiday movies and enjoying how much better and more inclusive this year's crop seems to be? Enjoy one last TV's Top 5 podcast interview, as Hallmark's Michelle Vicary discusses the challenges of keeping the seasonal spirit alive in COVID times.

This Week's THR Staff Pick

THR senior editor — and resident obituarist Mike Barnes — writes: "As a guy who always admired Mike Connor's moralistic Joe Mannix, I've been digging Amazon's Bosch and the outstanding performance of Titus Welliver as another noble crime solver who's determined to get to the truth, no matter the cost. I flipped through the first 60 episodes like pages of the Michael Connelly novels and love how it's shot all over L.A. — though couldn't they have come up with something more pleasant for the Original Farmers Market? (I also relish the way Jamie Hector pronounces ‘Harry.’) To borrow from a note inside Bosch's cubicle at police headquarters: get off your ass and watch this!"

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DECEMBER 04, 2020

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