NOW SEE THIS

FEBRUARY 12, 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.

If You Strip Away the Myth From the Man

No, HBO Max's unveiling of the Warner Bros. theatrical slate didn't get off to a great start with The Little Things (though awards voters inexplicably seem to love Jared Leto's performance). But all signs point to Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah as being more substantive stuff. THR’s chief film critic David Rooney raved about Daniel Kaluuya's turn as murdered Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield's as FBI agent William O'Neal. For something very different on the theatrical front, Epix has the TV premiere of the psychological thriller Saint Maud, which our Leslie Felperin loved back at the Toronto Film Festival in 2019. Yes, 2019. 

All I Love's My Dope and Dead Presidents

It's a thin weekend for new TV, but if you're a hip-hop head, you should definitely check out FX's six-part Hip Hop Uncovered, focusing on a quintet of OG power brokers who moved up from the streets and would help shape a cultural movement, inspiring countless rappers, as well as movies like New Jack City. Folks like Dr. Dre, Ice-T and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels offer background. Oh, and it's President's Day weekend as well, so check out CNN's Lincoln: Divided We Stand to ponder how many of today's Republican politicians would vote for Abraham Lincoln. (Hint: None.) 

The Odd Thruple

Fair warning: If you google to see if the Josh Charles/Stephen Baldwin/Lara Flynn Boyle film Threesome is streaming anywhere — it isn't — be specific in your search terms. Anyway, THR's Inkoo Kang quite liked HBO Max's There Is No I in Threesome, a meta-documentary she called "full of cerebral surprises." Other TV odds and ends? I enjoyed the cerebral side of Starz's adaptation of The Luminaries much more than the romance or mystery elements. And if you liked or had questions about CBS' Clarice, check out this week's TV's Top 5 podcast for an in-depth interview with co-creator Jenny Lumet. 

A Fine Romance[s]

Sunday night is apparently Valentine's Day and you might notice that this is one of those holidays television doesn't exactly know how to program around. Discovery+ has a couple of 90 Day Fiancé specials and Starz has Men in Kilts for people who love, well, men in kilts. Fortunately, earlier in the quarantine, Inkoo and I compiled a list of 12 of our favorite small-screen couples, from Philip and Elizabeth on The Americans to Angel and Lil Papi on Pose. 

Sitting Up in Your Room

Perhaps sensing the paucity of love in the air, Disney+ chose this particular weekend to bring 1997's ABC telefilm of Cinderella to the service. When it premiered, this adaptation of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical received only tepid reviews, but it was a crazy hit; for an entire generation, the performances by Brandy, Whitney Houston and Bernadette Peters are iconic.  

This Week's THR Staff Pick

Associate editor Sharareh Drury raves, "I recently binged both seasons of Amazon's The Boys, where Karl Urban delivers a profoundly enjoyable albeit vulgar Billy Butcher. The Kiwi actor is fantastic at taking on Butcher's Machiavellian nature and versatility with swearing, made all the more humorous thanks to some unique style choices (tropical button-down shirts with trench coats). The show (adapted from Garth Ennis' comics) offers a complicated antihero in Butcher, who despite wanting to destroy superheroes, has elements of a hero himself." 

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

©2021 The Hollywood Reporter, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. 11175 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles, CA, 90025 All rights reserved.

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

UNSUBSCRIBE 

MANAGE PREFERENCES

PRIVACY POLICY

TERMS OF USE