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.
Forget Your Troubles, Come on Watch 'Happy'
It's been seven years, but Happy Valley returns on Monday (unless you live in the U.K., in which case it was back in January), with new episodes airing on AMC+, Acorn and BBC America. The third and final season of Sally Wainwright's crime thriller finds star Sarah Lancashire in top form as Catherine Cawood, a small-city police sergeant on the verge of retirement but still haunted by the string of violence that ripped her family apart. Lancashire's performance is as good as any currently on TV, and she's very nearly matched by the chilling and gleefully demonic James Norton. Or at least his character is chilling and gleefully demonic. Norton probably isn't. It's not too late to catch up on the first two six-episode seasons on AMC+ or Acorn.
Smoked With the 'Ghosts' in the Back of My Head
Showtime's four-part Ghosts of Beirut was created by Fauda veterans Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, along with Lebanese writer Joëlle Touma and writer-director Greg Barker of HBO's Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden. The series, about the multidecade search for Islamic Jihad co-founder Imad Mughniyeh, plays like, well, Fauda meets Manhunt , with a compassionate and personal interest in the human collateral of violence in the Middle East. Recognizable stars including Dermot Mulroney and Garret Dillahunt only appear sparingly in this drama, which is ultimately more about fact-based process — documentary interviews and scripted re-enactment blend in a way that's interesting, even if it blurs reality and fictionalization uncomfortably — than Homeland-style thrills. Premieres on Showtime OnDemand on Friday and on the network on Sunday.
Seen Through a Lentz
Formerly hunky celebrity pastor — or maybe hunkily former celebrity pastor — Carl Lentz expresses some trepidation as he sits down for his interview with The Secrets of Hillsong director Stacey Lee. He needn't worry. Lee guilelessly accepts Lentz's version of his downfall because when it comes to the megachurch, she has bigger targets. The four-part FX series often feels like yet another in an apparently endless string of cult-based documentaries. But after a slightly superficial first half, Lee digs deeper and deeper into the Hillsong scandal and comes to some interesting conclusions about the dangerous corporatization of churches like Hillsong and how that structure helps them cover up corruption and pervert whatever concept of "faith" helped lure eager parishioners. It's very watchable, occasionally fascinating and way too soft on Lentz.
Optimus 'Primo'
Look, "likability" is overrated, but that doesn't mean it's not an occasional asset. They can't ALL be the horrifying freak show of venality that was last Sunday's Succession. Fortunately, Angie Han and I used "likable" or "charming" to describe several of this weekend's new offerings. Angie was a fan of Netflix's To All the Boys spinoff XO, Kittyand enjoyed Apple TV+'s offbeat comic mystery High Desert. (I was not as big a fan of the Patricia Arquette-fronted series, but it's definitely a sensibility thing.) For my part, I was won over by Primo, Shea Serrano's coming-of-age Freevee comedy, and found quirky, if familiar fish-out-of-water pleasures in co-creator and co-star Sarah Goldberg's IFC offering SisterS.
Harlow, Is It Me You're Looking For?
Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump is streaming on Hulu! Also streaming on Hulu is a new basketball comedy called White Men Can't Jumpstarring Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls, which our Frank Scheck calls "an uninspired retread." But don't cry for Jack Harlow! I mean, why would you anyway? But the rapper and surprisingly decent SNL host guest-starred on this week's ridiculously star-studded Dave, the FXX comedy's funniest episode of the season, and that's on Hulu, too.
The Vanishing
The abrupt pulling of streaming titles with little warning and no immediate prospect of future distribution all in the name of tax write-offs is surely one of the worst new industry trends. It was reported this week that Disney is about to remove more than 30 shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu. Some are as relatively new as the TV adaptation of Willow, some as ambitious as Y: The Last Man(pictured). Some will pop up on other services. Others? Who knows. But here's the list. You have until May 26. And for more on unsettling industry trends, check out this week's TV's Top 5 podcast, as ABC's head of scheduling discusses the network's reality-dominated schedule as a fall without scripted broadcast programming looms.
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