My Cultural Diet

Colin Farrell reprises his role as John Sugar, the unfailingly polite P.I. who finds himself mixing up with the worst that Los Angeles has to offer. This time around, he’s asked to track down the junkie brother of an up-and-coming boxer, only to cross paths with one of L.A.‘s most notorious street gangs, some crooked cops, and corruption that possibly reaches all the way up to the highest levels of city hall. But the longer Sugar stays in L.A., the more he risks losing sight of who he really is, especially now that all of his friends have left (as seen in the previous season’s finale). I’m trying hard not to spoil anything, but if you know, you know. Some of the first season’s stylistic excesses have been thankfully trimmed back, which allows us to really focus on the character of Sugar himself, as well as Farrell’s warmly humanistic performance. This Apple original series is clearly indebted to film noir, but it feels more like a deconstruction or inversion of the genre, starting with a P.I. who’s doing everything humanly possible to resist sinking into cynicism and despair.

Debbie Claybourne has it all. Her husband is an up-and-coming British politician, she lives in a beautiful home, and best of all, she has her best friend, Judith. That perfect life comes tumbling down, however, when Debbie’s husband announces that he wants a divorce, only to then be murdered at a charity event. But worst of all, she discovers that Judith is, in fact, an international assassin. So now, Debbie’s on the run across Europe with both the Albanian mob and Interpol on her tail, and the only person she can trust is Judith, a woman — it turns out — she barely knows. But their biggest threat might be a dark secret from Judith’s past. Ride or Die largely hinges on the chemistry between Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham as Debbie and Judith, respectively, and fortunately, they’ve got chemistry to spare. Indeed, it looks like everyone involved in this action comedy had fun making it. Unfortunately, the series does suffer at first from a too-strong reliance on genre tropes. But its final act takes things up a notch with some surprisingly gut-wrenching twists and turns. Ride or Die’s first season ends in a pretty satisfying manner, with just enough room left for a second season. Which, if it gets made, we’ll definitely watch.

John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is a private investigator who specializes in finding lost and missing people, and he’s very good at what he does. But when he’s hired by a legendary film producer to track down the man’s missing granddaughter, Sugar — who is unfailingly polite, immaculately dressed, and something of a cinephile — may just be in over his head, especially when he heads down some particularly unsavory trails. There’s no denying that Sugar oozes neo-noir atmosphere, and Farrell delivers a solid performance. But there’s also no denying that series creator Mark Protosevich had a lot of ideas for Sugar when he started making it, beginning with some genre-bending twists concerning secrets about Sugar’s past. The series frequently embraces non-linear editing and storytelling, various cinematographic and filmmaking styles, and the inclusion of classic Hollywood clips as meta-commentary on Sugar’s noir exploits. Sometimes it really works, adding to the mood, and sometimes it feels really arch and affected. When I described it to my wife, she said it sounded exhausting to watch — and she’s not entirely wrong. But it’s also never not intriguing. A second season drops later this month (watch the trailer), and it’ll be interesting to see how Sugar builds on the big revelations of its first season.

Two seasons in, and I’m still not sure why this series exists. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more Godzilla in the world, but Monarch: Legacy of Monsters isn’t really a Godzilla series. Indeed, the Big G scarcely appears at all during this season; the monster action is primarily focused on Kong and the bizarre Titan X. The series isn’t terrible, but in trying to expand the Monsterverse, Monarch just feels like it’s constantly trying to make something out of nothing. The globe-trotting storyline doesn’t seem to matter, and as hard as the cast tries, they can only do so much with the storyline. It also doesn’t help that a lot of season two hinges on characters doing stupid things — like opening an extra-dimensional rift, writing computer code to control a skyscraper-tall monster’s nervous system, or siding with an obvious villain — when they really ought to know better. Although Apple has yet to announce a third season, season two totally sets one up. And all criticisms aside, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little thrill when — spoilers! — Rodan appeared in the final moments of the season finale.

I’m always a sucker for a good hitman/assassin movie, and this British TV series is a remake of one of the most famous ones. The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) is a meticulous and unstoppable hitman who specializes in killing seemingly unreachable targets with his preternatural sniper skills. Those skills land him on the radar of Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch), a dogged and determined MI6 agent. What ensues is a game of cat-and-mouse between the two as the Jackal begins planning his next mission: the assassination of a billionaire who plans to release technology that could up-end the world order. Meanwhile, events in both the Jackal and Pullman’s personal lives complicate their respective missions even as a much bigger conspiracy looms in the background. Like a good heist movie, a lot of the fun of watching The Day of the Jackal is seeing how the Jackal plots his missions while evading detection and arrest. The series gets bogged down, however, when it delves into the two leads’ personal lives or tries to draw parallels between their obsessive personalities. It also engages in some hand-waving, encouraging you to overlook a few unexplained twists and turns that — although they don’t ruin the series — do fall apart when you stop to think about them for 30 seconds. A second season has already been announced, and I plan on watching it.

Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) stars in this taut thriller about a low-ranking office worker trying to move on with her life after her office is raided by armed thieves who make off with billions. The series premier had me on the edge of my seat as the thieves execute their heist with ruthless precision, and the remaining episodes did a good job of maintaining that pace as secrets are revealed, including secrets about our traumatized heroine. And just when things seemed all wrapped up, Steal would reveal yet another layer of conspiracy — which is precisely what you want from a thriller like this. Without spoiling anything, Steal is ultimately a condemnation of our current financial system, which benefits the ultra-wealthy while leaving the rest of us to fall further and further behind. Which, I suppose, makes it more than a little ironic that it’s currently streaming on Amazon, whose former CEO Jeff Bezos has almost certainly benefited from that aforementioned system. Nevertheless, Steal possesses a blend of righteous anger and moral ambiguity that makes for a very compelling watch.

Between this and Reacher, Amazon really have cornered the market on middle-aged dad programming. Aldis Hodge — who I still remember as the geeky hacker on Leverage — reprises his role as detective Alex Cross, who uses psychology to get into the minds of the worst of the worst. And it doesn’t get much worse than the billionaire with a messiah complex whom Cross and his team are tasked with protecting after the former is targeted by a serial killer with a quasi-religious vendetta. As expected, the season is filled with various storylines that you know will inevitably converge, with twists and turns aplenty. It’s certainly entertaining, though not exactly gripping, and the labyrinthian storytelling eventually requires an info dump in the season finale to try and wrap everything up. It also ends with the biggest fantasy of all: a United States senator actually standing up to wealthy CEOs and holding them accountable, which feels just a tad bit ironic given that this is an Amazon series we’re talking about. This season got bonus points from me for starring Wes Chatham (aka, The Expanse’s Amos Burton) as one of the bad guys and though Hodge gets top billing, he’s ably matched by his co-stars, especially Isaiah Mustafa — who you probably recognize from the Old Spice commercials — as his best friend and partner, John “Two John” Sampson.

Amazon’s live-action adaptation of the best-selling video game series continues apace in its second season, with plenty of black humor and post-apocalyptic gore. On the negative side, the season’s story does get a bit too muddled at times. The bits concerning the Brotherhood of Steel’s politics and especially Lucy’s brother Norm, as he uncovers more of the Vaults’ secrets, feel like they should be more meaningful than they are. (Norm’s plot line, at least, does promise to pay off in the already-announced third season.) But Hank MacLean’s plans, Lucy’s attempts to bring her father to justice, and Maximus’s heroic evolution are all satisfying to watch. And of course, Walton Goggins continues to rule as the Ghoul, a cynical mutant bounty hunter who used to be a famous movie star before the nuclear apocalypse. The flashbacks to his pre-war life, which depict his moral struggles with his wife’s plans and machinations, were the real heart of the series for me.

It took us quite awhile to make it through this season of The Expanse, so much so, in fact, that I was worried that we’d lost momentum and might never finish. But I needn’t have worried. Every time we watched another episode, I slipped right back into the world of the Rocinante with ease. Time and again, I’m impressed at just how good an adaptation this turned out to be, given the original book’s wide-ranging scope. Season three is arguably my favorite season of The Expanse, and it contains some of my favorite moments in the series, be it the culmination of the Earth/Mars war, Amos’s “You’re not that guy” speech, or Anna Volovodov’s faithful introspection in the face of the unknown.

Slow Horses remains one of the eminently watchable series on TV. I blazed through all six episodes of this latest season in two nights, thanks once again to Gary Oldman’s performance as the delightfully loathsome Jackson Lamb. This time, Lamb and his MI5 screwups are unceremoniously pulled into the action when an assault rifle-toting incel shoots up a quiet London mall. Before too long, the entire city is caught up in seemingly random acts of violence that threaten to reveal one of the government’s dirty little secrets. Oldman is, of course, fantastic as always — his performance really is the heart of the show — and the propulsive storyline kept me watching way past my bedtime. The already announced sixth season promises to build on season four’s storyline, and you’d better believe I’ll be tuning in (though I am a little worried that head writer Will Smith, who wrote most of Slow Horses’ episodes to date, is no longer working on the series).

I don’t have the same nostalgic attachment to Kermit, Miss Piggy, et al., as other people (like my wife) do. As such, I can’t really say how well this most recent 30-minute special stacks up against their classic material. That said, I still enjoyed its willingness to lean into the absurd and nonsensical, which elicited some hearty laughter from both my wife and myself. And kudos to guest Sabrina Carpenter for going along with the zaniness in good fun. (On a related note, I now have “Islands in the Stream” stuck in my head.) Jeffrey Overstreet, who’s the biggest Jim Henson fan I know, is calling for several seasons’ worth of new Muppets episodes, and I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all.

After an unusual alien invasion converts the vast majority of humanity into a hive mind, Earth is now at peace with everyone living in a perpetual state of bliss. Everyone, that is, except for a handful of survivors that includes romantasy author Carol Sturka, who might just be the most miserable person alive. Will she successfully resist the hive mind and return humanity back to the way it was, or will all of the shiny happy people wear her down? Make no mistake, Pluribus’s premise is fascinating and creator Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) poses some interesting questions. What value does individuality have in a world where the alternative means peace, contentedness, and perfect understanding? Is it worth saving your identity if that means forever being alone? Also, there’s no denying that Pluribus looks fantastic, with gorgeously framed and lensed scenes galore. (Don’t be surprised if you feel an urge to move to Albuquerque while you’re watching it.) So why the “meh” rating? Put simply, I never found Carol Sturka to be a particularly compelling protagonist. I agree with Jason Kottke when he writes, “I like plenty of shows with unlikable protagonists… but I often can’t get past stubborn & incurious ones — it just seems fake to me and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.” She got a little better near the season’s end, but even then, she remained just this side of insufferable.

There was absolutely no way that Stranger Things’ final season was going to answer every question and solve every mystery to everyone’s satisfaction. In many ways, the series was a victim of its own success following a near-perfect first season, with the Duffer brothers expanding their mythology, introducing more and more characters, and so on. It’s easy to nitpick the fifth and final season, be it Netflix’s strange (npi) decision to chop it up into three volumes, the military side plot that wasted Linda Hamilton and ultimately felt like a non sequitur, or the ambiguous ending that’s currently igniting debates across social media. (For the record, I’d like to believe Mike’s version but it does require some pretty hefty suspension of disbelief. If you know, you know.) That said, the final season still delivered those emotional touch points that have always been my favorite part of the series, secret government conspiracies and psychic warfare notwithstanding. Stranger Things’ emphasis on friendship above all else might’ve been too earnest for its own good at times, but it was also a welcome respite from the cynicism that floods our world these days. Plus, the finale’s focus on the end of childhood and the inevitable loss that growing up and moving out into the world entails lent it a bittersweetness that, all other criticisms aside, rang true and proved quite affecting.

After his activist daughter is brutally murdered in front of him, police officer Ronald Craven is determined to catch her killer. But when he learns more about his daughter’s association with a radical environmentalist group opposed to nuclear power, he becomes increasingly convinced that her death was no simple murder, much to his superiors’ consternation. When Edge of Darkness premiered on British TV in 1985, it became a massive hit and was widely acclaimed for tapping into the nascent concerns around nuclear power and proliferation. To this day, it’s frequently counted as one of the best British TV series of all time. As a child of the ’80s myself, the series’ nuclear concerns had a certain nostalgic whiff, and I was never not intrigued by its twists and turns, especially once Joe Don Baker’s unorthodox CIA agent made his entrance. But if I’m honest, I kept expecting the series to get a lot weirder than it did (though I could’ve done without the implied subtext in Craven’s relationship with his daughter). Bits and pieces are dropped here and there that hint at something more surreal and perhaps even supernatural, but in the end, the series remains a more conventional political thriller.

Watching season four a second time, I still feel the same after my first viewing, i.e., the Duffer Brothers wrote themselves into a corner after season three, especially with regards to Hopper’s fate. As such, season four feels like a lot of reshuffling as our beloved characters find themselves spread out from Hawkins to the Nevada desert to the frozen wastes of Russia, with some detours into the past added for good measure. Unfortunately, the season doesn’t always juggle all of its storylines very well, and the transitions between them get awkward. However, the season does benefit from some of Stranger Things’ most iconic and satisfying moments to date — specifically, Max’s Kate Bush-powered escape from Vecna’s clutches and Eddie Munson’s climactic “Master of Puppets” performance — while the Hawkins gang’s brave and resourceful plan to defeat Vecna was fun to watch.

Stranger Things has never been one to hide its influences, be it Steven Spielberg-style adventure, Stephen King-esque horror, or of course, Dungeons & Dragons. But in its first two seasons, it handily rose above those influences, using them to create something that felt fresh and original. Not so with season three. Make no mistake, season three has some delightful aspects, such as the growing dynamic between Steve and Dustin and the inclusion of new characters like Robin and Erica. Story-wise, however, it was incredibly uneven. On the one hand, you had lots of super-icky Cronenberg-esque body and zombie horror, and on the other hand, a secret Russian base located far below Hawkins’ brand new shopping mall, which felt like a ridiculous homage to cheesy ’80s action movies. (The season even had a Terminator-esque bad guy, for good measure.) And don’t get me started on the teen romance hijinks and melodrama. It was all just a bit too forced and over-the-top, and yes, I know I’m saying that about a show in which a girl with psychic powers battles horrors from another dimension.

After a near-perfect first season, The Duffer Brothers had their work cut out for them with Stranger Things’ second season. They manage to stick the landing with a climactic finale that finds Eleven fully embracing her powers against the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer. Unfortunately, the season takes awhile to get there, as our our beloved characters run all over the place, leading to some wasted opportunities. Case in point: Eleven’s search for her mother, which ultimately leads her to Chicago where she connects with another one of Dr. Brenner’s psychically powered test subjects, should be a major turning point for the character, but it comes off as more perfunctory than anything. But season two is not without its delights. Sean Astin is wonderful as Bob Newby, Joyce’s dweeby boyfriend who brings a nice touch of normalcy to the Byers household. There are some wonderful character moments, including a powerful scene as Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike try to reconnect with a possessed Will. And most importantly, season two reveals that Steve Harrington isn’t just some fancy hairdo; he’s also the best damn babysitter in all of Hawkins, Indiana.

Given that Stranger Things’ fifth and final season starts later this month, now seemed like a good time to rewatch the first season with my kids. Not surprisingly, they loved it. (In fact, we blew through all eight episodes in just two days.) My wife likes to say that Stranger Things’ first season was healing for me, and that’s a pretty good way of putting it. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a slice of television that so perfectly aligned with the nerdy themes and narrative tropes that are near and dear to my heart. As I’ve written elsewhere, “it’s almost like Matt and Ross Duffer tapped directly into my subconscious when they were creating the show.” Rewatching it nearly ten years later, it still holds up well, and “The Vanishing of Will Byers” is one of the best series premieres I’ve ever seen. Sure, the season might be a little too crammed with ideas, as if the Duffers were scared they might not get additional seasons. But I’ll take a wealth of ideas any day of the week, especially when they’re delivered with as much heart and charm — and as little cynicism — as they are here.

Sam Fisher is an ex-government agent who just wants to retire in peace. However, he’s pulled back into action when another agent goes missing during her investigation into a wealthy industrialist’s clean energy plans. What seems like a simple rescue mission soon grows more complicated, though, thanks to the other agent’s vendetta and some ghosts from Fisher’s past. Based on the popular video games, and created by Derek Kolstad — who also created the John Wick franchise — Splinter Cell: Deathwatch doesn’t skimp on the action and violence. Unfortunately, the story’s not very compelling — we all know you can’t trust billionaire industrialists who want to save the world — and suffers from clunky and overwrought dialog.

Make no mistake, Foundation looks and feels as epic as anything streaming today. Every single dollar in the series’ budget is on screen in terms of effects and production design, so it’s pretty easy on the eyes. (The same goes for Lee Pace’s flowing locks.) But I find the storyline less compelling. Some of that has to do with the fact that each season so far is set a century or more after its predecessor, essentially rebooting things while still holding to the overarching storyline about galactic decline. Which, on the one hand, makes sense given the epic scope, but it also makes for a jarring transition. That’s especially so in season three, which finds both the Foundation and the Galactic Empire battling a powerful psychic known only as The Mule. But the season’s narrative feels fractured and prone to revelations that make no sense whatsoever. Granted, it ends on a cliffhanger to set up season four, and I’ll be watching. But less for the story, and more the ambitious scope and elaborate production.