Dial it up, Dial it down: What's worth watching this month
From basketball to "Running up that hill" with Sadie Sink to frolicking in the Essex fog in Victorian-era sweaters and tunics with Claire Danes, here's what to bother with.
I’ve been neglecting you all and I feel bad about this. I’ve been watching a decent amount of TV and not posting about it. Is this considered cheating? To be fair, the TV watching has been happening during the Celtics playoffs so all of my energy when not engaged with work, family, end of year activities and escapist TV (to deal with all of the other stuff) has been channeled towards basketball and making loud, sometimes foul sounds at the TV.
And 1:
On topic of basketball, because after like 10 months of a basketball season, NBA is officially taking a break and I can’t seem to break up with it, my 12-year-old son recommends, Adam Sandler’s newly released Hustle on Netflix which is a collaboration between LeBron James’ SpringHill production Studios and Sandler.
In the movie, Sandler plays a basketball scout who, after a career setback, puts it all on the line for a talent he believes in and others don’t. The film has a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score so it appears the James and Sandler partnership is a winning combination that scores. (too much? sorry…)
In transparency, my son will consume pretty much any sports biopic (queue: They Call me Magic on Apple TV+ - He also liked this one). His taste is solid and he likes sports stories that have an emotional core and underdog theme so if this is also your barometer then you’re in luck because both the Magic show and the Sandler/James movie will be treats.
Sci-Fi/Fantasy Stuff:
Nothing has me shouting for the rafters wanting to proclaim “ultimate viewing experience” apart from Stranger Things - Season 4/Part 1 on Netflix which just had me wondering how I went 3 years and a full on pandemic without new episodes of this show to keep me comfort.
Sure there was R.L. Stine’s Fear Street trilogy last Summer but that was more horror slashing kicks than sci-fi, 80’s dork out nostalgia, Steve Spielberg vibes. Still, I watched and I was horrified, stupefied, and entertained.
Back to Stranger Things…the tweens are no longer tweens and are full on teens which takes an adjustment but the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers, have always done a good job with introducing new, albeit more mature kid characters that we immediately are drawn to like Robyn (Maya Hawke) in Season 3, Steve (Joe Keery) from the first season, and Eddie (Joseph Quinn) from the current season, because they are interesting, quirky and don’t quite fit in. Not that Dustin, El, Mike, Lucas, Max or Will fit in either but these kids are still like younger high school students and need some supervision and it’s clear that their parents aren’t doing that. Mind you, the fact that the younger crew are a little more intelligent in most cases than the older kids, is not lost on any of us, but a source of entertainment and laughs.
Best episode of Season 4 (so far) is the Max-focused (Sadie Sink) episode which coincidentally also skyrocketed a resurgence in singer Kate Bush’s popularity. Post Season 4 release on Netflix, there was a 8,700% increase in global streams of the song from the day prior to the release. How is that even a percentage btw?
Season 4, Part 2 releases on July 1st and I’m here for it:
Also for those of us staying up at night, unable to get over how much money is dumped into a show of this caliber’s production only to make us all cringe at the bad CGI on Eleven’s flashback scenes with her as a little Eleven, the mystery is over and spoiler: it’s not just bad CGI…
Historical Fiction, emphasis on the Fiction:
From the 1980s we travel back in time to ~100 years to London England and the period of time known for: debate over science vs faith, barbarian medicine (in which surgery was conducted without a whole hell of a lot of anesthesia), and abusive husbands (apparently) who brand their wives with serpents but luckily die in the first episode because they don’t believe in science and cures that will save their lives.
I’m reluctant to wholeheartedly get behind The Essex Serpent on Apple TV+ because even with a frou frou cast of Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Homeland), Tom Hiddleston (one of Taylor Swift’s exes), Frank Dillane (Fear the Walking Dead) and Clemence Poesy, looking divine and emoting onscreen for episode upon episode, the weight of the story is not holding ground with the amount of talent recruited for the effort.
Do sea serpents exist? And are they swallowing whole people? Why is everyone in Essex shady or are they? This is essentially what Danes’ Cora is setting out to figure out as she relocates to Essex from London with her son (a prop), picking up a bevy of paramours along the way including a doctor/man of science (Dillane) and a preacher/man of faith (Hiddleston) and her maid who moonlights as a socialist revolutionary Martha (Hayley Squires), and is also the one beacon of hope in the whole production, likely because someone forgot to send her the memo that she’s on a sinking ship and everyone else has jumped off, or been eaten by the mythical serpent.
Spoiler alert, sorry. At least you didn’t have to watch all the episodes to figure that one out.
But watch the trailer because the costumes, people and cinematography are #thirst-trap.
If you are hungering for a Victorian show about the goriness and primitive state of medicine in the early 1900s, watch The Knick on Cinemax. As its name tips you off it, it takes place in New York City (Knickerbocker).
Millennial Adulting & Emoting:
From one far SW corner of the British Isle to a non part of the Isle by way of the Republic of Ireland (Dublin), we find ourselves in famed Millennial author Sally Rooney’s latest Hulu adaptation, Conversations with Friends.
Unlike the serpent show, watching its characters emoting & the intoxicating combination of beautiful people + costumes + lovely scenery lends itself to a more interesting tale about the adulting period between college and growing up and similarly the at college time period.
It stars Irish newcomer, Alison Oliver, as the show’s leading character, the introspective Frances who is navigating her college years, wrestling with wanting to be an author, finding love or lust, but passion anyways; and crippled with pain rooted from undiagnosed endometriosis, in which misdiagnosis is common btw.
Frances makes up one of the quartet with her best friend and former lover, the extroverted Bobbi (Sasha Lane) and Nick (Joe Alwyn, Taylor Swift’s current bf) and Melissa (Jemima Kirke, Girls and Sex Education) playing a married couple on the verge of something - finding their way back to one another, leaving one another, swinging (?). Either way, the crux of the book and its adaptation centers around Frances and Nick’s pairing up and begs the question if one partner is enough or if there’s more to romantic love in the form of open relationships and partner transparency. Cave woman in me is dubious.
I’ll leave you to answer that one. For now, here’s the trailer: