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.
The Drugs Don't Work
Assuming you've already checked out early-week premieres like Only Murders in the Building on Hulu and Strange Planet on Apple TV+, the week's biggest new show is probably Netflix's Painkiller. The six-part limited series is basically Dopesickif it were directed by Peter Berg, with nearly identical flaws in their attempts to blend the factual struggle of the justice system's attempts to bring down the Sackler family with fictional stories of addiction. It isn't better or worse than Dopesick, just more in-your-face. Oddly, it also has less onscreen drug use than HBO's occasionally funny, occasionally infuriating, sometimes inspiring doc Telemarketers, about two burnouts who become whistleblowing journalists against the telemarketing scheme that once employed them. That premieres Sunday.
Markie Post
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of a back-to-school party thrown by DJ Kool Herc and sister Cindy, credited for the sake of convenience as the birth of hip-hop. Tied to this loose jubilee, Showtime is debuting Sacha Jenkins' All Up in the Biz , a documentary that smartly contextualizes Biz Markie's position as rap royalty for audiences who only know "Just a Friend." The affection for the "Vapors" and "Make the Music With Your Mouth" emcee is evident throughout the playful film, which utilizes animation and puppetry, as well as interviews with the likes of Big Daddy Kane, Rakim and Doug E. Fresh. It's full of the sort of rollicking humor you would expect from a portrait of the so-called Clown Prince of Hip-Hop. But Jenkins is fully respectful of Biz Markie's musical legacy as well, as a rapper, a beatboxer and even, thanks to "Just a Friend," the centerpiece of a landmark sampling lawsuit.
Woop-woop, That's the Sound of da Beast
Did Hulu schedule the ABC News Studio documentary Sound of the Police for the hip-hop anniversary as well? While Sound of the Police takes its title from a 1993 KRS-One track and utilizes the song within a hip-hop-driven soundtrack, Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon's doc is generally a more straightforward examination of the historical roots and evolution of tensions between the African American community and the police. Many elements will seem familiar if you've watched any of a dozen recent PBS documentaries, Ava DuVernay's Oscar-nominated 13thor parts of Hulu's own adaptation of The 1619 Project. Without exactly being fresh in most of its big-picture ideas, Sound of the Police is still consistently powerful, especially when the directors interview people whose unfortunate interactions with police or self-deputized white civilians were caught on video and went viral.
Dippin' Gadots
After a couple of slow weeks in the streaming movie space, Friday brings a pair of big new titles, not that either is getting raves. The Inheritance Tony winner Matthew López's adaptation of Casey McQuiston's bestseller Red, White & Royal Bluefails to capture the charm of the book, our Lovia Gyarkye says, in part because the "aspirational eroticism" of its gay love story never really materializes. Meanwhile, David Rooney calls the Gal Gadot action thriller Heart of Stone "a few notches up" from her last Netflix offering, the ultra-generic Red Notice, but still "only marginally less manufactured from the spare parts of other movies."
Honoring William Friedkin
You can't sum up William Friedkin's directing career exclusively with the back-to-back classics The French Connection and The Exorcist, but what a one-two punch that represents. Friedkin, versatile and outspoken to the end, died this week at 87. Unfortunately, entirely too many of Friedkin's best or best-known films — the aforementioned duo, plus To Live and Die in L.A. and even Cruising — are between streaming homes at the moment. But you have options, including The Night They Raided Minsky's(Pluto TV), the terrific TV remake of 12 Angry Men (Tubi), Bug (Amazon) and Blue Chips (Amazon). For a sense of Friedkin's outsize personality, check out Alexandre O. Philippe's documentary Leap of Faith, about The Exorcist, on AMC+, as well as Francesco Zippel's Friedkin Uncut on Amazon.
Honoring Robbie Robertson and Sixto Rodriguez
The last time I watched Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, I convinced myself that in addition to being the best concert film ever made, it was also possibly my favorite Scorsese film. In a documentary filled with geniuses, Robbie Robertson comes across as the genius of geniuses. Watch The Last Waltz on Tubi to celebrate the legendary guitarist, composer and songwriter, who died this week at 80. Then head over to HBO Max to check out the Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man , in honor of lost-then-found '70s troubadour Sixto Rodriguez, who died this week at 81. Two damn fine documentaries. Two exceptional, if very different, musical legacies.
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