NOW SEE THIS

JANUARY 08, 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.

You'll Find Happiness Without an End, Whenever You 'Pretend'

What can I say? I'm a sucker for urban portraits in documentary form. Both HBO's quirky and funny How To with John Wilson and NatGeo's nuanced and provocative City So Real made my Top 10 for 2020 and Netflix's Pretend It's a City is definitely the year's best show so far. As of January 8. It's director Martin Scorsese's second project to focus on cultural critic and Manhattan icon Fran Lebowitz and it's a tremendous portrait of New York City through the eyes of an always trenchant, thoughtful commentator. It's only seven half-hour episodes, and it's consistently funny and clever, if not quite as moving as Scorsese's previous Lebowitz feature Public Speaking. 

What Immortal Hand or Eye, Could Frame Thy Fearful Symmetry

ESPN's tremendous O.J.: Made in America and extremely entertaining The Last Dance have set certain standards for long-form sports documentary storytelling, standards HBO's very by-the-numbers two-part Tiger, focusing on the rise and fall and rise of Tiger Woods, mostly fails to meet. It has some good footage and a couple decent interviews, but it's superficial and fails to reconcile Tiger Woods the Icon and Tiger Woods the Man. ESPN did much better last month with Tiger Woods: America's Son, which lacks as detailed an overview on the golfer's career but is far smarter in exploring what Tiger Woods meant to his sport, to America and specifically to Black America.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Your other new weekend TV options are decidedly eclectic and have earned decidedly mixed critical notices. I appreciated that Nicolas Cage goes fully committed gonzo as host of Netflix's History of Swear Words and if episodes maybe feel a little light on substance, at least they're only 20 minutes long. The same cannot be said of CBS All Access' Coyote, a border drama featuring Michael Chiklis and, per THR's Inkoo Kang, "stock characterizations and messy contrivance-dependent plotting." Robyn Bahr was more enthusiastic about the second season of Apple TV+'s endearingly odd period dramedy Dickinson, calling it "a thinking-woman's sex dramedy."

I Fall to 'Pieces'

Desperately craving something light after yet another exhausting week? The solution is probably not Pieces of a Woman, which premieres on Netflix after its buzzy bow at the Venice Film Festival. THR chief film critic David Rooney called the story of a couple coping with the death of a newborn "heavy but absorbing,” praising star Vanessa Kirby (as well as costar Shia LaBeouf, whom you also may not be in the mood to spend time with these days).

Are You There God, It's Stream 'Margaret'

One of the fun things about our streaming era is when a strange treasure pops up on a service with no real fanfare. Case in point: HBO Max now has Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret available. The Anna Paquin film wasn't hugely well received upon its long-delayed, aggressively doctored theatrical release in 2011, but Lonergan’s three-hour extended version was hailed in some circles as a modern classic the next year. The 150-minute cut is still the default if you search for Margaret on HBO Max, but look under that and the 187-minute cut is there as an "Extra." Enjoy!

This Week's THR Staff Pick

Speaking of distractions, Associate Editor Trilby Beresford raves, "Each episode of The Flight Attendant hits the ground running with a number of equally hysterical and painful scenes involving the perils of alcoholism, the beauty of sibling concern, the nuances of friendship — and, of course, the shock, horror and mystery of a very questionable death on crisp white sheets in a fancy hotel room. I knew that Kaley Cuoco had range as an actor, but this plops her into a new category. But more to the point, it's 2021 now, and I’m not looking for slow burns that allow my mind to wander to the horrific realities the world is facing (as much as I do admire The Queen’s Gambit). I’m looking for shows that get it done."

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JANUARY 08, 2021

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