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.

'Slow' Pas

Based on Mick Herron's Real Tigers, the third season of Apple TV+'s Slow Horses is probably my favorite so far. It isn't just that Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb, whose every stage direction ought to be "Exit farting, chased by a beer," is more uncouth and more brilliant than ever before, though that helps. The third season has the entire team of Slough House misfits working on the same case, toward the same objective, for the first time and the season is tighter and more efficient as a result. Beyond Oldman, this season offers best-ever showcases for Saskia Reeves' Catherine and Rosalind Eleazar's Louisa, plus it features several icy scenes of perfect verbal sparring between Kristin Scott Thomas and Sophie Okonedo. Like AMC's Dark Winds , Slow Horses understands that the best way to adapt a fast-moving potboiler novel is with six 44-minute episodes. No narrative fat here at all.

'B' is for 'Bookie'

Max only sent out one episode of its new Chuck Lorre/Nick Bakay comedy Bookie, starring Sebastian Maniscalco and featuring, in an unlikely reunion with Lorre, Charlie Sheen. That didn't seem like enough to review off of, though the backdrop — the partially legalized world of sports gambling — is interesting and the ensemble has definite potential if the show can move beyond Maniscalco's character taking perpetual umbrage at the changing world around him. For more on the show's origins and what it took to bring Sheen and the creator of Two and a Half Men back into creative partnership, give a listen to this week's  TV's Top 5 podcast, featuring Lorre as our guest.

Sauced Vegas

Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald love them some '80s and '90s action films and some '80s and '90s coarse and raunchy comedies, and they've squished the genres together in the proudly puerile new Netflix series Obliterated. The story of a special forces team trying to fight through inebriation to stop a nuclear attack offers a lot of hit-and-miss amusement — plus ample nudity and violence and violent nudity — if you take it on its intentionally low-brow level. It's still a 100-minute movie masquerading as a TV series. And SPEAKING OF… Baz Luhrmann's  Faraway Downs — neither better nor worse than Australia, just longer! — is now on Hulu.

Awards Rain Mainly on the Haynes

Oscar season has finally hit streaming! No, I'm not talking about Eddie Murphy's Candy Cane Lane on Amazon, which our Lovia Gyarkye says is "so preoccupied with its own clever detours and zany plotlines" that it forgets its heart. No, I'm talking about Netflix's new Todd Haynes film May December, featuring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and, on the verge of apparent career explosion, Riverdale veteran Charles Melton. Our David Rooney found May December  to be too detached for its own good, but the film, with its uncredited inspirations dating back to the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, picked up key precursor awards this week from the Gothams and the New York Film Critics Circle. 

Bittersweet 'Symphony'

Am I annoyed that Netflix hasn't used my blurb, "A celebration of art, resilience and the mutability of the human spirit" in trailers for Matthew Heineman's documentary American Symphony? Yes, I am. I just wanted to get “mutability” out there in advertising. Regardless, I really liked American Symphony , which uses Heineman's reliably intimate access and photography to chronicle the joyful, bittersweet and consistently tumultuous 2022 experienced by Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste and life partner Suleika Jaouad, a musician/artist/writer in her own right. Part concert film, part love story, part medical drama, the documentary leaves very few feelings unfelt in a remarkably efficient 103 minutes. This one is a crowd-pleaser.

MMMSwap

I really liked the idea behind McG's Netflix comedy Family Switch. I mean… Anybody can do a body-swap movie, but a TRIPLE body-swap movie? With a dog and a baby swapping, too? Crazy. Unfortunately, Angie Han's kindest words for the Jennifer Garner vehicle are that it's "passable enough" and "completely and totally innocuous." So where to get superior body-swap amusement? Well, both the 1976 and 2003 versions of Freaky Friday are on Disney+. Vice Versa is on Tubi, which also has Like Father, Like Son . And for a bit more horror with your body-swap comedy, there's always Freaky, streaming on Freevee. Disclaimer: Big (streaming on Disney+) isn't a body-swap movie. He just gets older. Face/Off (streaming on AMC+) isn't a body-swap movie. They swap FACES. It's right there in the title. And All of Me (streaming with ads on Tubi, Pluto and Freevee) isn't a body-swap movie. It's a brilliant soul-possession comedy.