NOW SEE THIS

JANUARY 15, 2021

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.

'Wanda' at Large

Marvel's TV operations, now an extension of its film operations, leap to Disney+ with the company's oddest show to date. WandaVision uses the characters played by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany to deliver a half-hour show that's maybe five percent conspiracy thriller and 95 percent deconstruction of the sitcom format. In my review I compared it to something like Chris Elliott's Get a Life or the viral sensation Too Many Cooks rather than previous Marvel TV offerings like Jessica Jones or Luke Cage. TV's Top 5 podcast will have an interview with WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer next week, but check out our chat with Dickinson creator Alena Smith in this week's episode!

'Vision' Quest

You don't need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of comics or sitcom history to watch and enjoy WandaVision, but it doesn't hurt. Various classic half-hour shows, the reference points for early WandaVision episodes, are scattered around various streaming platforms. You can find I Love Lucy on Hulu and CBS All Access, while The Dick Van Dyke Show is on Hulu and Amazon's IMDbTV. Bewitched is on Crackle, which should help you for the second WandaVision episode. Then for the third, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is on Hulu and The Brady Bunch is basically everywhere — Hulu, Amazon and CBS All Access.

'Miami' Heat

As TV fans already knew, when Regina King hasn't been winning Emmys at a basically unprecedented rate, she's become an in-demand director on shows like This Is Us, Insecure and Scandal. Her feature debut, the historical drama One Night in Miami, has been earning rave reviews and hits Amazon on Friday. THR chief film critic David Rooney calls it "a stirring power play" and celebrates the performances including those of Leslie Odom Jr., Aldis Hodge and especially Kingsley Ben-Adir, who plays Malcolm X.

Cops, Robbers and Millennial Douchebags

There are certainly an assortment of other options to watch this weekend. I had issues with a couple stylistic choices in Netflix's four-part docuseries Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, but I appreciated its concentration on the investigation to catch Richard Ramirez and not the salaciousness of his crimes. My colleague Inkoo Kang had reservations about the second half of the new season of Search Party on HBO Max, but raved about star Alia Shawkat's performance. Both sound better than HBO Max's Anne Hathaway/Chiwetel Ejiofor heist drama/rom-com Locked Down, which Rooney deemed "supremely annoying."

Honoring Michael Apted

Michael Apted died last Friday just after this newsletter was released, but my reverence for the British director, especially the Up documentary series, is so great I can't not acknowledge him. The every-seven-years non-fiction franchise, which has operated as both a TV and film project, is available largely on BritBox and I stand by the contention that it's on the Mount Rushmore of filmed properties… ever. Some of Apted's other career highlights — Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist, etc. — are harder to find on streaming, but you can always watch the underrated HBO drama Rome, for which Apted directed three episodes, on HBO Max.

This Week's THR Staff Pick

International editor Abid Rahman says: "I've rewatched the endlessly quotable Peep Show. Created by Sam Bain and a pre-Succession Jesse Armstrong, Peep Show is a series where the characters and their horizons are small and petty. But there's so much joy in the small and petty, especially seen through the eyes of Mark and Jez. The misery, anxiety and insecurity make it painfully hilarious and incredibly relatable. Peep Show is available on Hulu, Crackle and Amazon's IMDbTV."

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JANUARY 15, 2021

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