The Law According to Lidia Poet
This is an Italian show available on Netflix. It’s based on the true story of Lidia Poet, who was a woman trying to become a lawyer before it was legal to do so in Italy. I loved this show so much. It’s my favorite kind of show. It has a good season long overarching story while also having fun and interesting cases of the week. The period costuming in this show is amazing, especially all of Lidia’s outfits. I adore them, but would never want to wear any of them because they have to be super uncomfortable. Serious A+ to the costume designer(s) on this show. As I mentioned in a recent post, the season also ends absolutely perfectly set to the song “King” by Florence + the Machine. I can’t recommend this show highly enough. I hope they make more episodes.
Mrs. Davis
Mrs. Davis is a Peacock show that I can’t really explain what it’s about because it mostly makes no sense. I guess at the heart of it, it’s about a nun trying to defeat an AI named Mrs. Davis that has taken over the world by finding the holy grail. See makes no sense. There are also a lot of sort of side plots that tie into the main plot. I’m not entirely sure how they all relate. The storylines only vaguely hold together. None of this matters. This show is bonkers crazy and so much fun to watch. I do not care that it I mostly have no idea what happened it in it. Betty Gilpin is fantastic in it. She definitely deserves some awards for it come awards season. This is probably not a show that everyone is going to like because they’re not going to get it, but if you just want to go along for the ride it’s a good time.
Poker Face
Poker Face stars Natasha Lyonne as a women who can tell when people are lying. It’s interesting that the show just presents that information to you and then just expects that because you as the audience have already been given enough information to know when someone is lying that you know she knows they’re lying. You never get any kind of particular tick or cue or anything that it’s happening like you would on most shows. There’s the smallest of storylines pulling through from the first episode that I gather the network told the writers they had to include, but mostly it’s just an old school case of the week murder mystery in which she’s traveling across the country and encounters a murder that she helps solve at every stop. Some of them are better than others, but overall an enjoyable show and I am very much not a someone who typically watches your case of the week procedural type shows. This is more like Colombo or Murder She Wrote than your Laws and Order and CSIs.
The Watchful Eye
The Watchful Eye is a Freefrom show also streaming on Hulu that is about a creepy old building full of apartments for rich people that holds lots of secrets. The lead character takes a job as a nanny there for a family where the wife has recently died on mysterious circumstances. She also has ulterior motives as her cop boyfriend has told her of some hidden treasure there that he wants her to find. Kelly Bishop and Amy Acker play supporting characters, which is how I sort of got sold on watching it. I wouldn’t say it’s a great show, but I enjoyed it well enough and plan to keep watching next season.
Beef
Beef is a Netflix show about a man and a woman that get into a road rage incident with each other that neither one will let go of and they continue to plague each other’s lives trying to get even for perceived wrongs that they think the other one did to them. It’s definitely a show that’s different from anything I’ve seen before. I think it would have been better if it had ended on the penultimate episode and the ending of that episode was it instead of there being one more episode after that.
Yellowstone
We’ve watched all the episodes of Yellowstone that are available on Peacock. At some point we’ll subscribe to Paramount+ and catch up with the newest season. I can’t decide how I feel about this show. In the first few seasons it felt like there was an effort to balance things about between the ranchers and the Native Americans, but that felt like it got dropped in later seasons. My biggest thought from watching this show has been thinking about all the people who watch this and champion the Duttons fighting for their ranch by whatever means necessary including killing people and down right ignoring the law. I’m not advocating for it in either case as I think it’s just a bunch of macho bs, but it did strike me that these people having turf wars is literally just the same thing as urban gang wars that the same people would tell you is wrong and makes those people monsters while celebrating it in the wild west or whatever.
The Reluctant Traveler
I was hoping The Reluctant Traveler would fill in some of the void left by the ending of Travel Man, which I loved. I figured it starred Eugene Levy who is a comedian, so it should be funny. I did not find it a particularly funny show. Also, all the locations he went to were ridiculously expensive and exclusive and nowhere that I would ever be able to go. I’m sure some people enjoy watching aspirational travel shows, but I prefer to watch travel shows about things I might actually be able to do. Basically I was disappointed in this show.
How I Met Your Father
I heard nothing good about How I Met Your Father from critics when it premiered, so I never intended on watching it. However, a couple of my friends kept mentioning it in our group text, so I finally decided to throw it on tv when I just wanted something mindless to watch. It is not good, and yet I also can’t stop watching it. I’m all caught up and intend to keep watching the rest of this season when it resumes this week. The characters are ridiculous and do not function like actual humans in any way, shape, or form to an annoying degree. It tries to follow the same schtick as the original show providing all these random clues and asides that you’re supposed to remember that then get referenced again later. I know they’re also doing some callbacks to the original show, but it’s been way too long since I’ve watched it for me to understand them. I remember enough to know they’re callbacks, I just don’t necessarily get them. Even though I did love most of that show, I will never, ever rewatch it because I’m still so mad about how much they ruined it in the last season and especially the finale. Also, I suspect that a lot of it will not hold up to today, especially Barney Stinson. That show used to make me laugh a lot, and I thought there were certain things about it that were so clever. This sequel is unfunny and thinks it’s clever but it’s not. As I said not good. I do not recommend watching it. I can’t explain why I still am, but apparently I’m going to watch it for a little while longer at least.
Rain Dogs
Rain Dogs is a British show available on HBOMax about a single mom trying to make a buck and support her daughter through whatever means necessary. She reconnects with an old friend who may or may not be a romantic partner of sorts and who serves as a father figure to her daughter. While helping to support them it is also a toxic relationship. It was an okay show. I didn’t love it.
Lockwood & Co.
Lockwood & Co. is a Netflix show based on a series of books. It takes place in an alternate version of modern day Britain where ghosts are haunting the country and people are rising from the dead to wreak havoc, but only children are able to see them. Thus teenagers are trained to become ghost hunters. The titular Lockwood has set up his own agency with no adult supervisors and takes on Lucy who was forced to leave her previous position after she was scapegoated for a mission gone wrong. She has additional powers that make her able to do things others aren’t. I know there was a contingent of fans who adored this show. I thought it was an interesting premise that I was only mildly interested in in practice. I don’t have to worry about whether I care to watch a second season because Netflix canceled it.
Up Here
I was super excited about this musical show starring Mae Whitman, so I was very disappointed that it was so terrible. It was not good at all. The songs were horrible. It’s been awhile since I watched it, so I actually can no longer remember all the reasons that I hated it but trust that I did. I also did not understand why it was set in the 90s. Like literally nothing about it made it so that it needed to be set in the past instead of modern day. I’d give this one a hard pass.