Author: aliceklar

A Spy Among Friends (2022)

Where to find it: itvX
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Boring historical fiction about the Cambridge Five
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasional intriguing conversations, acting
What I don’t like about it: no plot, no pace, no interest

Review:
Like le Carré on sedatives, this imagining of historical MI5 investigations into Kim Philby starts out lost in the weeds and only gets less interesting as it goes. Damien Lewis and Guy Pearce are good but not good enough to carry six hours of slow British spy mystery.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, explosion

Mythic Quest (2020)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Thirty 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Workplace comedy about a game developer
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: game industry satire, good characters and cast
What I don’t like about it: not very funny or great, can’t figure out its tone

Review:
Mythic Quest is a fictional MMORPG and this show follows the studio which creates it: self-obsessed creative lead Ian (pronounced like ‘iron’, Rob McElhenney), messy lead dev Poppy (Aussie newcomer Charlotte Nicdao), ineffectual producer David (David Hornsby), evil monetiser Brad (Danny Pudi), creative consultant C.W. (F. Murray Abraham), beleagured head of H.R. Carol (Naomi Ekperigin) and testers Dana (Imani Hakim) and Rachel (the multi-talented Ashly Burch), whose cute romance is a highlight.

The satirical workplace comedy is quite good, with some of the satire being so sharp that it’s a wonder they have Ubisoft’s help making this, but once per season they drop this format for a tangentially-related flashback drama episode. It’s a comfortable comedy if you’re in the market for one.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

The Patient (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Ten 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: A psychotherapist is held hostage by a serial killer who demands to be cured
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: short episodes, good acting
What I don’t like about it: it’s bad in just about every way, never delivers on its premise

Review:
A grieving therapist (Steve Carell) is visited by a new patient (Domhnall Gleeson) who soon chains him up in his basement. The worst thing is it isn’t even psychologically interesting. It could have been better without the kidnapping; that kind of killed their ability to get any actual therapy done.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, the holocaust

Welcome to Chippendales (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Eight 35-50 minute episodes
Synopsis: Decent drama about dancers
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: good acting (especially Bartlett)
What I don’t like about it: drags in the middle, doesn’t say much

Review:
Kumail Nanjiani stars as Steve Banerjee, yuppie founder of a Los Angeles club which became known for male exotic dancing, and Murray Bartlett is Nick De Noia, the never-satisfied choreographer who takes the brand to new heights and incurs Steve’s jealous wrath. It’s a moderately interesting story with plenty of sex, drugs and disco music pulling it along.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, drugs, violence

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Where to find it: Rent or buy on Amazon
Length: two and a half hours
Synopsis: A luxury megayacht is the setting for an angry metaphor
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: clever, funny, great images
What I don’t like about it: slow in parts, very gross in parts, long (though not overlong)

Review:
Ruben Östlund’s (The Square) English-language debut is inconsistent and disjointed but full of brilliant satire and further showcases his gift for visual symbolism and metaphor, while pacier than his previous European work. It opens with a modelling audition and smoothly dunks on many fashion targets before focusing on Carl, whose career has hit the skids, and girlfriend Yaya, who is doing just fine as a model/influencer and “finds it unsexy to talk about money”. They argue over dinner (providing Östlund’s signature intellectual cringe comedy) but soon reconcile and ship off for a luxury cruise on a megayacht.

Onboard, the crew is split between obsequious customer-facing staff hoping for a big tip and blue-collar boatmen hoping they don’t get noticed. Everything is luxurious and artificial and it seems to please the passengers, including Carl and Yaya – whose follower count has got them here as a freebie -, a post-Soviet oligarch, elderly English weapons manufacturers and a Swedish game developer who bears a striking resemblance to Minecraft’s notorious founder. On top of furnishing the absurd requests of their passengers, the crew are also dealing with an absentee captain, Woody Harrelson, whose alcoholism and devout Marxism bring about an encounter with the oligarch which was the funniest scene in the movie for me.

The highlight is the act two finale, when the boat is wracked by stormy seas and everyone tries to keep things ‘business as usual’ in a potent metaphor for climate change under capitalism. Unfortunately, this coincides with a highly graphic bout with seasickness and food poisoning – both brought about by poor priorities on the part of those who run the ship, further enhancing the metaphor. The final hour of the movie drags as the ship is destroyed and the survivors cope with a new social order but it ends well (an early line points out that the start and the end are the most important parts of a cruise as well as a movie, I found that cute).

Content notes (may contain spoilers): nudity, sex (coercion), vomit, defecation, corpse

Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: 130 minutes
Synopsis: DCI Luther returns for a sub-Bond adventure
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: Elba, Serkis hamming it up
What I don’t like about it: disgusting, chewy dialogue, flimsy plot, risible fight scenes, obvious product placement

Review:
Idris Elba returns as gritty London cop John Loofah in a pointless big screen(ish) outing and seemingly a favour to hack writer Neil Cross. In the first half-hour, Luther is sent to prison by this week’s villain (Andy Serkis), then quickly broken out and sent on Serkis’ trail.

This show has always been an odd mix of grim and cheesy and both elements are turned up to 11 in this. It revels in human misery and violence, with the edgiest and most unrealistic villains imaginable. If you want to feel sick and like you can’t stop laughing at the same time, you might like it.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence including sexual, cop worship

Harley Quinn (2019)

Where to find it: Amazon
Length: Thirty seven 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Superhero shitposting, starring everyone’s favourite Halloween costume
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: DC Comics gags, gets better as it goes, voices
What I don’t like about it: adolescent animation ultra-violence and coarse jokes, stinks of male feminism

Review:
In this cartoon, Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) decides she’s been fucked over by the Joker for the last time and strikes out on her own, personally and professionally. She forms her own crime squad consisting of best friend Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), King Shark (Ron Funches), grandiose thesp Clayface (Alan Tudyk at full ham) and misogynist Doctor Psycho (Tony Hale), largely replaced in later seasons by talking plant Frank (J.B. Smoove). It’s an impressive cast and they do fun work, especially when the material works as it largely does when they’re dunking on Jordan Peterson guys or some of DC Comics’ sillier Silver Age villains.

Unfortunately, much of the material doesn’t work, such as whenever romance, plot or anything other than jokes are included. It contains many gratuitous bloodsoaked action sequences and many of the jokes, especially in early seasons, betray a core problem: Warner wanted a show primarily about the friendship between Harley and Ivy and they handed it to three people named Dean, Justin and Patrick. The show gets a lot of mileage out of Quinn’s coarseness when it’s really only funny to teenage boys and those who share their mindset.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence and blood, sexual references and swear words, lots of death

Slumberkins (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Twenty 10-minute episodes
Synopsis: Toddler TV
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: puppets, focus on emotional learning
What I don’t like about it: weird mix of animation styles

Review:
The latest product of Apple’s partnership with the Jim Henson company finds a welcome return to their adorable puppet work in this adaptation of the popular childrens books. Each episode features at least one of the main cast (Bigfoot, Fox, Sloth, Unicorn and Yak) as they explore and play with their friends and families. As is inevitable at every stage of life, their social interactions bring them hurt feelings before they demonstrate a helpful ritual of taking a moment to examine their feelings, decide on a course of action and repeat a reassuring, rhyming mantra. The emotional lessons seem very valuable and generally applicable and the project is, overall, a worthy effort.

Unfortunately the show, combining green-screen muppets with flat animation and occasional full-body puppets for long shots, is disconcerting for adult eyes. Individually, the puppetry and the backgrounds are bright and pretty but they don’t so much combine as clash.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): one episode is about asking to use the toilet – they say poop a lot

Irma Vep (2022)

Where to find it: NowTV
Length: Eight 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: TV show based on a movie about making a movie based on a movie
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: good scenes, satire
What I don’t like about it: unbearably pretentious and mumbly

Review:
In this meta-mess, Alicia Vikander plays a Hollywood actor filming a passion project, a remake of Les Vampires by Louis Feuillade. The show gives behind-the-scenes satire, restored footage of the original serial and modern remakes of key scenes in each episode. Not bad by any means but very slow and ultimately pointless.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, drugs, violence

Reboot (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Eight 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: It’s a sitcom about a sitcom
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: good cast, relatively inoffensive
What I don’t like about it: missable, forgets its premise

Review:
A fictional early-2000s sitcom is revived (not rebooted, as the title suggests) and this sitcom follows the behind-the-scenes production. Has a similar tone to the creator’s earlier Modern Family but the setting is bound to limit its appeal to those who can tolerate television about making television.

As an aside, I believe you can judge how confident a show is in its own pilot using a metric I call “Time to Tits”. Essentially, if a show has little else to offer, it will offer nipples as early as possible. I hope Judy Greer was paid well for providing this, just over ten minutes into the pilot.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sexual references and brief nudity