TV 2023
The Last Of Us
I was unkeen on watching this as it is based on a video game and I'm not a gamer. Plus I watched most of The Walking Dead, so I feel like I've done zombies, culturally. But the show had good reviews, and Pedro P fills out a pair of jeans nicely, even in an apocalypse - he's pretty much the only man who can rock a moustache. This isn't The Walking Dead, there are no roving gangs battling each other under the Mason-Dixon line. There is still a putative (military) government with the attendant corruption and black marketeering, and I was more interested in this world than the actual fungus-zombies. Pedro has to accompany a teenager to a safe house because she might have the clue to a cure and also because he is quite tough. I thought it would be the gruff old man has his heart melted by daughter-substitute kind of tale, but the teen is quite an annoying, stroppy girl who is not being played by a doe-eyed former child model but Bella Ramsey who, and I hope she wouldn't be too offended, kinda weird looking. The show held my attention more than anything else at the beginning of the year. Also, it's the only survivalist show I've seen where the issue of periods is raised (one of the adults gives Bella a menstrual cup). In Lost, the women had time to shave their pits whilst running away from the smoke monster.
Party Down
I started watching this purely because it was a Rob Thomas TV show (he of Veronica Mars and iZombie). Indeed, most of the cast, including the guest stars have been in Veronica Mars - even Kristen Bell shows up (no Teddy Dunn though). Each episode takes place at a different event at which the depressed cater-waiters turn up and get into scrapes. A senior singles party, a Sweet 16, a dodgy investors' event, a corporate away-day. Each time, something goes wrong and it's a surprise that they're hired ever again. Their google reviews must make atrocious reading. My favourite episode was when Kevin Hart told Ron, the team leader, not to invest in a franchise of "Soup 'n' Crackers" because no black person would go to that. My least favourite was the porn star awards in which a pre-Me Too Ryan Hansen squeezes all the breasts of the participants to see whose are false/real. The second series relaxes the format a bit and the characters start to get a few wins. So they cater an aftershow for a Marilyn Manson type pop star (the lovely Jimmi Simpson), in which he befriends the crew, a funeral at which the gang actively tries to do good (to no avail), a party at Steve Gutenberg's house, where he praises everyone's abilities, an am-dram evening at which Ronan, the sci-fi nerd, finally gets a snog. Also in S2, Jane Lynch is replaced by the sublime Megan Mullally. No disrespect to JL but her playing nicey didn't really work, whereas MM brings a chaotic naivety to the proceedings.
Reboot
Keegan-Michael Key is a jinx. This is the second sitcom he's been in that I've watched that has been cancelled by Netflix, the first being Friends From College, which I, and only I, liked. This is not KMK's fault, he is brilliant in this show as a network TV actor with pretensions of the theatre, but goes back to a Malcolm In The Middle-esque mid-'00s sitcom reboot because it has an "edgy" new writer (Rachel Bloom) who has her own reasons for wanting to revive it. The second best character is the cute kid who is now not such a cute adult, desperate to fit in but being ignored by his aging co-stars.
Some of the episodes are written by John Enbom, who wrote the aforementioned porn episode of Party Down and in one of his episodes, Judy Greer is exposed topless. Does John Enbom just write TV episodes in order to see boobies? You know there's an internet now, don't you John?
The Gold
I had not heard of the Brinks-Mat robbery but I'm a sucker for anything set in the '80s. Plus it was written by Neil Forsyth who wrote the excellent Guilt, and as such has a lot of "state of the nation" speeches from the main characters. If I'd played a drinking game in which I took a drink every time someone said "villains", I'd have been half cut by half eight.
Poker Face
When I first head that Rian "Knives Out" Johnson was doing a whodunnit series staring the divine Natasha Lyonne (and her lioness's mane), I was thrilled. When I first watched it though, I was slightly underwhelmed. It seemed - from the stylised opening credits to Lyonne's laconic delivery, to the plots (when we see whodunnit and are waiting for our heroine to catch up and nab the bad guy) - that Johnson was paying homage to Colombo. However there's a reason for Natasha to be in a different town each week - she's on the run from a casino criminal so there's an extra, thriller side to it rather than it being Murder, She Croaked. Each different scenario, from barbecue restaurant to stock car racing track was conceived brilliantly, my fave being the 90s riot grrl band (fronted by Chloe Sevigny) going back out on the road.
High Desert
More sleuthing from middle aged women, this time Patricia Arquette, fresh from being creepy as hell in Severance. This is a pretty different character - an ex-junkie deadbeat working in a wild west re-enactment park who decides to turn her life around and become a PI. She achieves this by bullying a local private detective into taking her on as his assistant and then solving the mystery of the disappeared wife of a local weatherman-turned-guru, helped and hindered by Matt Dillon, who's in it for some reason as Peggy's ex. Unfortunately, we'll never see what happens next as Apple cancelled it.
Dolores Roach
Reviewers of this show said you could have it on in the background or they didn't understand why a mild mannered woman would turn to serial killing. It seemed obvious to me - here was a woman at the end of her tether: her old boyfriend had fitted her up for his crimes then disappeared whilst she'd spent 15 years in prison, her new boyfriend was a cannibal, her area had been gentrified by hipsters and podcasters, every man she massaged in her new masseuse business was a pervert and wanted a release of the sexual glands ratter than tired muscles. It wasn't social realism but body horror with a bit of gentrification satire thrown in, a gender reversed Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett. Another one that got cancelled. Maybe viewers just don't like stories about middle aged women?
Beef
Tiny, ferocious Ali Wong went up against Steven Yeun, playing against type as a dodgy slacker, after some road rage beef. Forget about an act of revenge necessitating the digging of two graves, these two pulled everyone in their orbit into their row. As well as the dramatic amusement of their argument, it had stuff to say about the various Asian-American communities, something Iknow very little about: the Chinese feel established and secure in their status and look down on the Koreans whom they view as the working class, but both hate the pretentious, bougie Japanese-Americans.
Deadloch
This is a Nordic noir set in Australia, as far south as possible (Tasmania) so as to get grey skies and grim vistas rather than sun 'n' surf. Usually, local crime involves a seal trying to steal a fridge - until a dead body is found on the beach. Solving the case are the trad. odd couple buddy buddy cop duo (the uptight and by the book local cop vs the slobby and maverick foul mouthed big city 'tec) - the twist being that they're both women, and the dead naked bodies that keep turning up are - for a change - male. This being set in Australia, there's some funny bits, but it's a police procedural mystery rather than a comedy-pastiche. Most of the humour comes from the bogans, who are forever throwing dead livestock into the lake/loch and wanking at funerals vs the bougies who are worried that the murders are going to ruin the food and art festival (Feastival).
City on Fire
This came off as a kind of 500 Days Of A NYC Summer until some disparate characters (other than smoochy teen comic book geeks) came along to solve the crime, notably Jemima Kirke's brittle mum, the beautiful Xavier Clyde as Mercer, a beleaguered boyfriend of Jemima's brother, plus Jemima's husband who was having an affair with the manic pixie dream victim (but didn't kill her).
Bodies
High concept detective show whereby four police detectives in four different eras (Victorian, wartime, present day, apocalyptic future) try to solve the same murder of a naked man who suddenly appears in an alley in Whitechapel with markings on his hand. It was on Netflix, but felt very Sunday night BBC crime drama (with a sci-fi twist).
Only Murders In the Building S3
I didn't think much would top OMITB S2 (these things usually run out of steam by S3) but this series just got better and better. Add a touch of megalomanic Paul Rudd, Dame Meryl Streep playing a failed actress (complete with terrible accents), and moving the action from the Arconia to Broadway was just brilliant. Plus getting rid of Martin Short's son and Steve Martin's step-daughter was a good way to clear the decks of mush. I loved the songs and really want to see the off-off-off-Broadway version of Death Rattle Dazzle. I don't think we ever found out which of the Pickwick triplets did it, did we?
Boat Story
This seemed to be an attempt to create a British Fargo (the TV series, not the film), You've got the cold, out of the way setting (east and west Yorkshire), with the generally nice people, the hapless amateur crims, the ultra-violent gangsters, the voiceover, the episode titles. The only thing missing was the dogged female cop. Instead we have the chubby lummox who's determined to hunt down the criminals. I already liked Daisy H and Ptterson J, but my MVP was Vincent (Adam Gillen), the leader of the local drug dealers, last seen playing a hopeless teenager in Benidorm, now all grown up and qute terrifying.
Fisk
A half hour comedy from Melbourne in which divorced small time lawyer Helen-Tudor-Fisk tries to get through the day without being harassed by Roz, the amazing/terrible office manager/mediator. Fisk's main concern is getting un-banned from the local hipster coffee shop so she doesn't have to drink $1 java from the convenience store. Because Fisk (Kitty Flanagan) is Gen X, there's no mental health stuff, no dealing with bad relationships, just a terrible brown suit, baby boomer parents who are having a better time than her, dealing with the idiots who come through the door and bonding with the firm's millennial webmaster (receptionist). Fisk is pure slacker.
A Murder At The End of the World
I watched the first series of the OA, the Brit Marling-written series about interpretive dance saving the world via kidnap, Russian aristos and restored eyesight. I didn't watch the 2nd series as I'd had enough by then. So I was a little dubious about Ms Marling's new TV show, but I love a scrappy heroine solving crimes, so I was immediately hooked. The series runs on two timelines: Darby's attempts to track down the serial killer of Jane Does and six years later, when the publicity of her true crime book leads to an invite to a retreat by a Zuckberg-cum-Musk tech bro who wants to bring together brilliant minds to solve climate change and other ills. Then someone is murdered and it very much becomes a country house murder, except in a hotel-slash-survivalist bunker in Iceland. There was a lot going on and I felt the true crime solving could have sufficed for S1 but then maybe Marling is wary of another show being cancelled. Plus I loved the two different timelines, the first taking place in a golden mid-west summer, the second in a Nordic blizzard.
Emma Corrie was brilliant as the vulnerable Darby and her boyf Harris Dickinson, who is so hot right now (even with that mullet), was great also. My only issue was the under-used supporting cast who only seemed to exist to fulfil a Benetton-style diversity clause. So the African-African character talks about the oral tradition and his Baptist church, the Chinese character discusses the Cultural Revolution, the Iranian character just talks about Iran, the disabled character is there to remind you that disabled people enjoy sex etc.