Amy Adams Sees Ghosts in HBO's 'Sharp Objects'

Summer shows are starting to stack up here. I've got Luke Cage, Casual, GLOW, Cloak & Dagger and now this, an HBO limited series based on the book by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl). What's kinda cool is that the young version of Amy is Sophia Lillis, who played Beverly in It, and who looks so much like a young Amy Adams that I was distracted by it at the time- it appears I'm not the only one who saw the resemblance.

REVIEW: "One Day at a Time" (2017) Season 1 & 2

In this era of 24/7 remakes and reboots, it’s become essential to weed out the value of shows that are actually worth resurrecting and those that are simply garbage cash grabs (Fuller House, anyone?) that should have stayed dead.

I’m not sure a reboot of the 1970’s Norman Lear sitcom One Day at a Time would have struck many people as necessarily worth trying out again, but as it turns out, the nature of this updated premise in 2018 has real cultural value. While the original series was about a single mom working to raise her two daughters, this new version developed by Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce (with the legendary Lear serving as executive producer) sets the show in Los Angeles, where a single, working class Cuban-American nurse named Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado) struggles to raise her two kids with the help of her mother Lydia (Rita Moreno). 

Although I do still watch and love a lot of old sitcoms, not being a current CBS viewer myself, it’s been a long time since I tuned in to a new one, and so it took me a few episodes to get used to the rhythms of the multi-camera setup again. But as I did, I was reminded that the best of these shows get to be a kind of comfort food, with characters who become almost familial to the audience, and once you get back into it, you start to love and appreciate the Alvarez family and the struggles they face with a sunny attitude, even while tackling topical issues in classic Norman Lear fashion, such as post-traumatic stress (Penelope is also a vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan), divorce, racism, and LGBT issues (Isabella Gomez plays the teenage oldest daughter Elena, a progressive activist who comes out to her family in the first season). 

At 86, Rita Moreno still has perfect comic timing

The great Rita Moreno co-stars as Penelope’s scene-stealing mother Lydia, a Cuban immigrant whose flair and excess produce big laughs, while Gomez and Marcel Ruiz are cute as the kids, and Todd Grinell serves up some fine Paul Rudd realness as the Canadian landlord of the apartment building and pop-in neighbor (every classic sitcom’s got to have one of those, right?) Completing the fine ensemble is the always reliable Stephen Tobolowsky as Dr. Berkowitz, Penelope’s hapless boss and love interest to Lydia. But Justina Machado is the one who holds it all together as Penelope. The limits of the multi camera format play largely to the charisma of the actors, and her capable toughness and complete embrace of and ability to sell whatever comedic or dramatic situation she faces, whether it’s dealing with family, work, men or her own inner turmoil, truly makes the show hers.

In this era where the only working class you hear about are so-called “economically anxious” white people who knowingly and callously put a racist monster in the White House, this show serves as a reminder of the real working class Americans- the majority of whom are people of color struggling to survive on a budget and with minimum wage jobs in the face of a nasty racist backlash after eight years of a black president left a lot of white people suffering from mass hysteria and panic over rising demographic change. But you know what? This is the real America, and we are not going anywhere.

Grade: B+

High energy and cast chemistry keeps the new version running smoothly

Streaming Shows Dominate 2018 Peabody Winners

The 2018 winners of the prestigious Peabody awards for Entertainment were announced today. The news and journalism awards will come later, but here's what got the television prizes:

• A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix)
• American Vandal (Netflix)
• Better Call Saul (AMC)
• Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (Netflix)
• Insecure (HBO)
• Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)
• Saturday Night Live: Political Satire 2017 (NBC)
• The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu)
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

I'm a little out of loop this year, having only watched John Oliver, SNL and Handmaid's Tale. I'm still considering catching up on Better Call Saul, but it hasn't happened yet and despite the praise, I'm reluctant to check out Mrs. Maisel (I really couldn't stand Gilmore Girls, and I've always hated Amy Sherman-Palladino's dialogue, so something tells me it wouldn't work for me).

GLOW Announces Season 2 With a Flashdance Spoof

Yess!! One of my favorite shows of last year is back on June 29th, with all ten episodes available on Netflix- summer's the perfect time for this show, which is definitely one of the funnest new series on TV (or streaming). Everyone should catch up on the first season- just ten half hour episodes will take you maybe three days. It's worth it.

An Old Mystery is Revived in Amazon's Miniseries 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'

I can't wait for this! Everyone should watch the classic Peter Weir Australian film from 1975, which is one of the most dazzling, mysteriously allegorical films ever made. I expect this one will be a little more straightforward, but the source material from the novel should still hold up. It's a limited series, so all six episodes will drop on Amazon Prime May 25th.

REVIEW: "Howards End"

It’s difficult when you’re tasked with creating a new filmed version of one of the greatest novels ever written, which was itself already adapted into one of the great literary adaptations nearly three decades ago. As it is, the new Howards End, which premiered on the BBC last fall, and is now airing on Starz starting this Sunday, is quite good on its own, without quite measuring up to either the original work or the 1992 Merchant-Ivory film.

Starring Hayley Atwell as Margaret Shlegel and Mathew McFayden as Mr. Wilcox, this new miniseries is a lush, literate rendering of the book, which gets to include even more of it, due to the four one-hour episodes. Every extra moment with the Shlegel sisters and the Wilcox family they become entangled with is time well spent, and the novel’s themes of practicality and cold rationalization versus philosophy and art, juxtaposed against E.M. Forster’s ruminations on the British class system circa 1910 London are on display in all their worth, themes that have just as much resonance in today’s world. The Shlegel and Wilcox debates and the tragic consequences of their meddling in the life of poor Leonard Bast remain as effective as it ever was and ever will be in Forster’s exquisite and timeless prose.

The Shlegel sisters for a new era

But the characters are the heart of the story and are luckily played by fine performers in this new version. Hayley Atwell’s Margaret is a far tougher, more practical character than Emma Thompson’s, who emphasized the emotional flightiness of Margaret (and gave an Oscar winning performance in the original film), while this new version gives us a more hardlined, rational Meg who can easily withstand the tragedies and scandals that befall her family. Philippa Coulthard and Joseph Quinn play Helen Schlegel and Leonard Bast with an eager naivete and hopelessness that complement each other well, while 22-year-old Alex Lawther is in fine form as Tibby, the consistently bemused and laconic younger brother of Meg and Helen, who appears to have a far bigger part than I remember in either the previous film or even the book, and rightly so, since his scrappy way with a quip nearly steals the whole show (I was reminded of Hugh Laurie’s bit part as sarcastic Mr. Palmer in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility- fellow Austenites will surely know what I’m talking about).

The head of the Wilcox family is played splendidly by Mathew McFadyen (otherwise known as my Mr. Darcy), who nails the stiff yet well meaning, oblivious Henry with nuance and shades of good intentions not yet steered in the right direction that make him a fine successor to the character that Anthony Hopkins captured so well in the original film. Kenneth Lonergan’s script, directed in an easy, well paced manner by Hettie MacDonald, who helmed all four episodes, is a rich, very faithful adaptation that clearly conveys the themes and relationships drawn in the novel- lovers of the book will have no quibble with any attempts to take liberties on his part. There are really no liberties taken at all actually, except perhaps in one subtle regard- race was never mentioned in Forster’s novel but is here seen in the character of Leonard Bast’s wife Jackie, now played by Rosalind Eleazar, a black actress. I at first wondered if this was meant to make their marriage even more scandalous for the time, but this fact is never commented on in the show. It might have been more provocative (and interesting) to do so, but as that would require diverting a bit from the source material, here it can only be taken as a mild attempt to add diversity into the world created onscreen.

All in all, lovers of period costume drama will have a lovely, elegant new addition to the canon beginning Sunday night. I would urge everyone to tune in.

Grade: A

A Dystopian Future Awaits in Full Trailer for HBO's 'Fahrenheit 451'

This looks really good. Can't think of a more timely story right now and I'm almost ready to declare this the best filmed version of the novel just by the trailer (there hasn't been a definitive version of this to my mind). Be sure to tune in May 11th at 8pm.

'Legion' is Back Tonight

Woo-hoo! TV's nuttiest show returns for a similarly surreal and bizarre experience, according to the all the early word so far. As a recap, check out this first look at the new season, which catches you up on everything that happened last year:

REVIEW: "Jessica Jones" Season 2

It was one of my favorite shows of 2015, and it took so long in coming back that it’s even more disappointing that the second season of Jessica Jones turned out to be as dismal as it was. Perhaps losing both Kilgrave and Luke Cage was a blow the show simply could not sustain.

The driving force of the first season of Marvel’s noir-esque Netflix series was Jessica Jones’s battle against her former abductor and rapist Kilgrave (David Tennant), who rapidly ascended the throne of the very best onscreen Marvel villain (in movies or television), and without his presence in the second season, it’s undeniable that the show lost a significant amount of focus. Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is still a hardboiled, hard drinking PI, but her bitterness and anger seems to lack concentration. In Kilgrave’s absence a new villain has to be formed, and the backflips the show does to forge a meaningful identity and relationship to Jessica for this season’s antagonist (Janet McTeer) strains credulity and really wears itself thin by the time the climactic part of the season rolls around. Story beats regarding Ritter and McTeer’s relationship repeat themselves multiple times over the course of the last 4-5 episodes, to the point where I was genuinely wondering if I had accidentally rewound the tracking order.

What Trish Walker does this season is certainly not heroic

Then there’s Trish. Oh, Trish. Jessica’s best friend and wannabe sidekick (played by Aussie Rachael Taylor, still struggling mightily with an American accent) suffered a brutal character assassination this year in terms of a writers room that clearly despises her, or perhaps was simply battling itself regarding a plan to turn her into a half-baked villain of sorts. At least, I hope that was the intention, because that’s the only way Trish’s actions throughout the season even make a smidge of sense. Trish antagonizes and bothers Jessica about her past, is revealed as having a hidden agenda, ruins another addict’s life and then bizarrely decides to ruin Jessica’s life even further, for absolutely no apparent reason, and for an outcome for herself that seemed intended to reveal a new hero's origin. Umm, are you kidding me? Trish Walker is so beyond dead to me that I never want to see her again, much less root for her to get what she wants.

So, did anything work this season? Well, even though Geri Hogarth’s terminal illness subplot was severely disconnected from the rest of the show, Carrie-Anne Moss played it convincingly and managed to turn her diabolical lawyer into a somewhat sympathetic figure, and there was one flashback episode to Jessica and Trish’s past that revealed an interesting backstory, but I honestly can’t pinpoint much else here. Ritter is still a capable and compelling antiheroine, but saddled with too many miserable and repulsive supporting characters this season (including a totally bland and anti-charismatic love interest in the new super named Oscar- for the love of god, please don’t bring that guy and his annoying kid back).

This season was a real bummer. Let’s hope the next one figures out some way to right itself.

Grade: D+

Complicated mommy issues

'The Handmaid's Tale' Moves Past the Book in Season 2 Trailer

Finally, we have a full trailer for the new season of The Handmaid's Tale, which is now free to make up its own storylines. It still looks pretty similar to last season, but now June is (presumably) free and on the run. The show premieres on April 25th, so still about a month away.