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.

Mendelsohn of Anarchy

I checked out after three episodes of Apple TV+'s The New Look. I thought the soapy drama about how famous designers — including Ben Mendelsohn's Christian Dior and Juliette Binoche's Coco Chanel — survived World War II and helped reinvent popular conceptions of fashion featured too much Nazi appeasement pragmatizing and wallowed excessively in biopic clichés. Our Angie Han, however, deemed it "handsome and heartbreaking." (Diff'rent Strokes is now streaming on Tubi!) If you're looking for something quirkier, if not always fully realized, Netflix's  The Vince Staples Show gives the five-episode Curb Your Enthusiasm treatment to rapper and Abbott Elementary guest star Vince Staples. Netflix is only calling it a "limited series," though, so if you want more, you'd better let the streamer know you're a fan in a hurry.

'Beth' and Other Details

I liked the first season of Hulu's Life & Beth. Obviously it requires an appreciation for Amy Schumer , but the halting love story that developed between the creator-star's Beth and the character played by the excellent Michael Cera was surprisingly sweet and frequently funny. The second season leans a little heavily into the ensemble aspects of the show, especially in the first half. Honestly, other than the great Susannah Flood as Beth's sister Ann, I care very little about any of the supporting characters, though a lot of the seemingly flaccid secondary storylines have solid payoffs in the excellent homestretch. Also, it's pretty pointless to resist a show that can carve out guest roles for the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Amy Sedaris and Maria Bamford. 

Tinker, Taylor!

Capitalizing on the apparent early success of CBS' new After Midnight, Netflix launched Taylor Tomlinson's new comedy special, Have It All, this week. In some ways, Have It All  feels like a small regression for Tomlinson. It's a lot of solid, but familiar, "I'm single again and it's hard to be single!" material. Things get interesting when the talk of dating apps and whatnot intersect with her feelings of satisfaction in her career — she has, after all, had three Netflix specials — and there's a wave of grappling with simultaneous success and insecurity that makes even the rehashed material seem more interesting. The closing series of jokes — making a big deal about turning 30, pondering whether she could be bisexual — point to a new maturity for the reliably chipper comic. I also really appreciate Tomlinson's ability to crowd work in a large, theatrical setting. That's not easy.

Franklin, My Dear

Apple TV+'s Snoopy Presents Welcome Home, Franklin is a welcome, so-to-speak, if long overdue, celebration of Franklin Armstrong, who became the first Black character in the Peanuts universe when he made his comic debut on July 31, 1968. The 40-minute special, co-written by JumpStart creator Robb Armstrong, whose last name Charles Schultz eventually gave to Franklin, is energetic, big-hearted and filled with Easter eggs for Peanuts and Franklin fans. It also includes a wildly necessary corrective to the somewhat notorious Franklin-alone-on-one-side-of-the-table visual from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Note: Welcome Home, Franklin , with its plot set around a big soapbox derby race, is not to be confused with Apple TV+'s upcoming Ben Franklin miniseries Franklin, which stars Michael Douglas and presumably does not build to a big soapbox derby race.

I'm Not a 'Players,' I Just Blurb a Lot

Congratulations to THR arts and culture critic Lovia Gyarkye, recipient of an ASME NEXT Award presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors for journalists under 30. Lovia, who is awesome even if she probably doesn't read this newsletter, just happened to review both of this weekend's "major" new streaming feature releases. She had some affection for Netflix's Players , a rom-com featuring Gina Rodriguez and Damon Wayans Jr., which she praised for delivering genre conventions done right. Lovia was a little less excited about Amazon's Jennifer Lopez thingamajig This Is Me… Now, a semi-autobiographical fairy tale directed by Dave Meyers. She salutes the actress-singer's "unapologetic vision and uniquely powerful self-confidence," but also deems it "absolutely chaotic," noting the 65-minute project is "not good, but it is singular." 

'Bottoms' 'Opp'

Two of 2023's best and least similar films are new to streaming. If you're in the mood for an exceptionally complex three-hour exploration of the myopia and moral calculus behind the development of the atomic bomb, you really don't want to watch Bottoms on Amazon. If you're in the mood for a weirdly brutal and frequently hilarious 90-minute black comedy about two high school lesbians who start a fight club to pick up cheerleaders, Oppenheimer on Peacock is a dreadfully bad choice. Plan accordingly.