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.

When Dolly Parton died this week at 80, it prompted the sort of universal outpouring of shared sadness we haven’t seen since Betty White. That, I suppose, is what happens when your career includes (but surely is not limited to) writing “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in a single week (or day, depending on which version you believe); launching your own theme park; starring in beloved films including 9 to 5; silently executive producing the Oscar-winning Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt and the beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and launching the Imagination Library literacy project that has gifted 300+ million books in 31 years. A champion of the LGBTQ+ community, inner city schools, bald eagle preservation, various hospitals and the Moderna COVID vaccine (among other things), Parton was the best of us. Be sure to read David Rooney’s tribute. When it comes to streaming her films, you’ll have to rent Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, while Rhinestone isn’t even available to rent. However, 9 to 5 is newly added to Hulu, with Steel Magnolias on Paramount+ and Joyful Noise on Tubi and Roku. Tubi has a lot of random Dolly Parton made-for-TV movies as well, including 1996’s Unlikely Angel and 2013’s A Country Christmas Story, along with several concert specials. Oh, and Buffy is on Hulu and Common Threads is on Kanopy. 

One day after Dolly left us, Tim Curry died, also at 80. Curry was a force of nature as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the screen adaptation of the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show, in which he originated the role. Unfortunately, The Rocky Horror Picture Show isn’t streaming anywhere, though it can be rented. He’s nearly as good and nearly as irrepressible in Clue, which is on Paramount+ and MGM+. Curry was an all-time great Muppet collaborator in Muppet Treasure Island, streaming on Disney+, and for all of the zillions of dollars spent on the recent two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s It, there is no improving on Curry’s Pennywise from the 1990 miniseries, streaming on HBO Max. Curry received three Tony nominations and I would kill for a time machine that would let me go back and see his performance in the original Broadway cast of Amadeus.

At its worst, the second season of Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw’s FX comedy Adults feels like a formulaic but fully amusing broadcast hangout comedy in the vein of Friends or Happy Endings, with more swearing. It’s far from the worst way to spend 24 minutes of Hulu time, even if it’s entirely fair to prefer certain storylines when they involved Chandler and Phoebe. At its best, the second season of Adults is one of the silliest and most laugh-inducing comedies of the year, enthusiastically performed farce with Gen Z specificity. I’d say the eight new episodes are roughly 2/3rds “at its best,” with standouts including the breathlessly hilarious “Raccoon,” the surprisingly poignant “Fake ID” and the cleverly arced finale, “Vote for Paul Baker.” While the latter does steer into several romantic dynamics that I either don’t like or don’t love the speed at which they’re unfolding, it’s not a disaster given how little of the series is actually invested in serialization. The key to the show’s improvement is sharper writing for each of the five leads. It’s so consistent that when I’ve observed that this season clearly belongs to Amita Rao’s Issa, multiple people who’ve watched the season have countered with their own choice for its most dominant performer, suggesting that it’s mostly a good and well-served ensemble.

The fifth episode of the new season of Dark Matter is probably my favorite installment of Apple’s Blake Crouch-created sci-fi drama, which ditches the cumbersome mythology to tell a convoluted but self-contained story of a single version of Joel Edgerton’s Jason. Unfortunately, it also reminded me of two things: that my already limited emotional investment in the core plot has been thoroughly drained by the two-plus years since the first season finale, and how perplexing it is that that an actor as talented as Edgerton, given the chance to play countless alternate versions of his character, has chosen to play each one nearly identically. This, in turn, made me realize that I had no desire to continue bingeing the season, which remains as murky, monochromatic and generally humorless as the first. The 10 new episodes, entirely written by Crouch and life/professional partner Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, take place in more alternative universes and feature more plotlines than the last outing did, but they still haven’t advanced past the need to explain (poorly) the show’s world-hopping mechanics time and time again. The pleasures of watching ongoing drama featuring Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly and the rest of the cast remain intact, but I remain convinced that this is absolutely the least fun and most glum version of this story that could possibly be told. But hey, it’s not like they called it Light Matter. 

I tend to assume that any entertainment industry newsletter will have a healthy cross-section of readers who are Canadians, USC alums or both. If those things apply to you, it’s a big weekend. The college football season kicks off this weekend with a handful of loosely competitive games, including Saturday’s tilt between the San Jose State Spartans and the USC Trojans, airing on NBC. Presumably, the game will not be mythologically true to form. As for the Canadians, another streaming holy grail becomes available here in the U.S. on Tuesday (Sept. 1) with the arrival of SCTV on Netflix. The legendary sketch series, whose ensemble featured Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis and Martin Short, has been lacking from American platforms possibly forever and certainly for a long, long time. You’ll have plenty of time to work your way through the spoofing hilarity before the long-awaited documentary SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of — not you, obviously — hits Netflix Oct. 30.

The weekend’s biggest new theatrical release is Coyote vs. Acme, a movie that Warner Bros. didn’t especially want you to see, but is now earning enthusiastic reviews from the likes of our Frank Scheck, who says it “proves consistently funny in its intermingling of human and classic cartoon characters.” If it whets your appetite for more animation/live-action hybrids, the obvious starting point is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the pinnacle of the genre and an astonishing technological feat that, nearly 40 years after its release, still somehow has not been equaled. Kudos to Robert Zemeckis. If you’re feeling nostalgic, Disney+ has Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Pete’s Dragon and Mary Poppins, though Song of the South will eternally be locked in the Disney vault. If you’re in the mood for something edgier, Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin is on Kanopy, while Cool World is on Hoopla. If you’re looking for something less edgy, Osmosis Jones is on Tubi and the original Space Jam is on YouTube, with ads.