This is a pretty masterful documentary about Robert Durst, the son of a New York real estate baron who inspired the fictionalized film All Good Things and who was accused of murdering three people. I saw All Good Things sometime after this came out. But, fortunately, I waited something less than eight years to watch …
Tag: TV
The Last Movies Stars (2022)
This is an engrossing, fascinating and occasionally moving miniseries about the lives of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. It has a rather big problem, but it’s still worth watching.
Inside No. 9 (2014)
At first glance, this feels like the sitcom version of Black Mirror, minus the science fiction, and with an addition or horror elements (or, less frequently, thriller elements). But that’s not quite accurate, it’s just hard to compare it to much other contemporary TV. So, I guess, think of it as a comedic version of …
Russian Doll (2019)
So let me try to tell you as little as possible: this is a funny show with lots of pathos that deftly balances dark comedy with strong performances of people with metal health problems. If any of that interests you, see this without learning anything else about it. Ideally, if you can even avoid knowing …
Trapped (2015)
This is an unusual police procedural TV show, set in a small town in Iceland, and bearing lots of thematic similarities to Fortitude, a show which is more unique and original, if not superior. SPOILERS!
Edvard Munch (1974, Peter Watkins)
This film was actually a Norwegian TV series that was slightly abridged for a theatrical release in the rest of the world. (Unfortunately I watched the abridged version.) It’s a typical Peter Watkins approach to a documentary about a historical subject – filmed as if the film crew had travelled into the past.
When the Levees Broke (2006)
This is a detail and devastating miniseries about Hurricane Katrina and what happened in New Orleans that I have been meaning to watch for a decade and a half. It is essential viewing, even all these years later. (I might say especially all these years later given how many more serious hurricanes have hit the …
Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul (2022, David Terry Fine)
This is an interesting, compelling and entertaining documentary about Tim Donaghy for most of its run, and then it runs into conspiracy territory at the end and becomes rather frustrating.
Rubicon (2010)
This is an entertaining, refreshingly slowed paced spy mystery series that I guess just didn’t capture enough attention to get a second season.
Norm Macdonald: Hitler’s Dog, Gossip and Trickery (2017, Liz Plonka)
This is a pretty amusing but otherwise very standard standup special from someone who has long been one of my favourite standup comedians. (If I can be said to have favourites because I’m definitely a sketch comedy person.)
South Park 25th Anniversary Concert
South Park premiered just before my 16th birthday. Though it took me a little while to watch it, I was at the very right age for it. I was still 16 when BASEketball came out and I was only 17 when Bigger, Longer & Uncut premiered. I was only 23 when Team America was released. …
Penny Dreadful (2014)
This is a slightly campy (but somehow very serious) British horror fantasy show with the rather old, but somehow not tired conceit of a bunch of characters from famous 19th century history novels exist in the same universe. (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of horror, basically.) It’s a show that sometimes works well for what it …
The Up Documentaries (1964, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, 2019)
When I first was trying to figure out how I would sum this up, I said “probably the most ambitious documentary project ever.” I should have said “in English” as this idea was actually not invented by this series. Rather, the Germans beat the British to it by a few years. Due to typical Anglo …
Slow Horses (2022)
I’m always a little unsure of whether to review a series at the end of the first season if I know for sure there is more coming. But with shows where the second season hasn’t even premiered yet, I feel much more inclined if only because I’m not sure if I’ll get there. And given …
Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills (2006) by David Milch, David Samuels
For me, Deadwood is probably the second greatest English-language dramatic, fictional television show in the history of the medium. But it is also horribly under-watched (if not completely under-known). I have watched the show through at least 3 times and I still believe it’s kind of a marvel of combining big ideas with a compelling …
Arcane (2021)
This was recommended to me by work colleagues whose pop culture tastes I don’t yet know. I mention that because I might not have started this show if I’d known much about it. It is apparently associated with the League of Legends game franchise, something I know nothing about.
Sports Night (1998)
We watched the first season of this show a month ago now, but I didn’t write the review until today because it’s only this week that I finally committed to giving up on the show. So I’m slightly concerned that I won’t remember everything I thought about it when we first began watching it back …
Muhammad Ali (2021)
Burns and Co’s second documentary series focused entirely on one person is even longer than and more in-depth than Hemingway. But, fortunately, Ali’s life is, in many ways, a grander subject. At least for the first half, the series is in many ways an alternate history of the post war United States. And even when …
Lonesome Dove (1989)
I was aware of the existence of this ever since it aired decades ago. But I wasn’t really sure what it was or who was in it. (I thought it starred someone other than Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, like Sam Elliott or somebody. I was not super aware that it was a traditional …
Hemingway (2021)
This 3-part series is, to my knowledge, the first time a single person has gotten the “Ken Burns Treatment.” Given how much stuff Ken Burns’ has created, I certainly could be wrong. But it’s the first of the prestige PBS Ken Burns’ series I am aware of that focuses on one person. (The Roosevelts is …
The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
Full disclosure: I’ve actually never seen Let It Be, believe it or not.
Only Murders in the Building (2021)
This is an inventive and consistently funny mystery comedy that pokes fun at our obsession with true crime podcasts. As Jenn said, it fees kind of miraculous, a show like this with a central relationship that is basically grandchild-grandparents, rather than a friendship, a romantic relationship or even a parent-child dynamic. It feels like a …
Chernobyl (2019)
This is a mostly quite well-done dramatization of the reaction to and investigation into the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This is actually a relatively uncommon narrative topic – not just Chernobyl but nuclear energy in particular – and honestly I can only think of one narrative film off the top of my head that’s about something …
Parks and Recreation (2009)
This is a good-hearted but often hysterical situation comedy that it took me entirely too long to watch. I’m not sure exactly why but I guess I was at least slightly aware that it was a little bit wholesome and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t into wholesome in, like, 2011. Anyway…
Fortitude (2015)
So this is a hard show to review for me because we watched the first season a few years ago, we watched the second season maybe at the beginning of the pandemic and we just watched the abbreviated final season this week. My memory of both the first and second season has faded and it’s …
LuLaRich (2021)
This is a pretty good overview of the history of the “multi-level marketing” clothing company LuLaRoe, and a summary of why MLMs are bad in general. Unlike most Netflix documentaries (this one is on Prime), it’s an appropriate length for the material.
The Bob’s Burgers Music Album Vol. 2 (2021)
The second volume of music from Bob’s Burgers is another massive collection of original songs interspersed with some deliberately bad covers. Like the first volume it is full of catchy stuff performed extremely campily. It’s more evidence that this show has about the best use of music of any similar “sitcom” since The Simpsons. There …
I, Claudius [I·CLAVDIVS] (1976)
I don’t know when the first TV adaptation of a novel or series of novels was, but I suspect this has a claim to be one of the earlier ones. Even if we spread out to movies, there were very few thorough and complete adaptations of novels, as movies were just too short. So, whatever …
Untold: Malice at the Palace (2021, Floyd Russ)
This is a roughly hour-long episode from a new Netflix documentary series about the infamous “Malice at the Palace.” I was just getting into basketball then – I think Pistons/Lakers may have been the first NBA finals I really watched – but I did not watch this game live as far as I know. But …
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
If you thought the 2011 remake was deliberate well, this is a deliberate six episode miniseries adaptation of the John le Carre novel. It takes its time. And if that’s a problem for you, I highly recommend avoiding this version. But, if you are interested in TV adaptations of novels and you like slow-burning plots, …