Maggie

As is tradition, once I find a tv show I really like it gets unceremoniously canceled. So that is to say there is only one season of Maggie on Hulu and there will only ever be one season. If you like lighthearted rom com type shows I still recommend you watch the episodes that do exist. The titular Maggie is an actual psychic who has stayed away from dating because she has always been able to see glimpses of problems in her relationships. She meets a guy who she finally thinks is the one, but then her visions seems to be telling her something else so she breaks it off and then he winds up living in the apartment beneath her with his fiance, a long time girlfriend he got back together with after Maggie breaks up with him. It’s a funny and sweet show with good characters. I’m sad that more people don’t seem to like these types of shows because I would love more lighthearted character based shows.

Five Days at Memorial

Five Days at Memorial is absolutely compelling misery porn. It details the five days that patients and staff spent at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. It’s all completely depressing and reveling in terribleness. It’s also extremely watchable, especially the first five episodes that take place during those days in the hospital. The final three episodes focus on the investigation and trial of Dr. Anna Pou, who was accused of killing patients as the hospital was being evacuated. I didn’t like those episodes as much.

Junior Baking Show

Apparently for years there has been a kids version of the Great British Baking Show called Junior Baking Show, but we’ve never been given access to it in the United States until this, the sixth season. Netflix didn’t bother obtaining the rights to the previous five seasons. I’m curious if all the seasons were set up like this one or if this was structured differently due to COVID. They have 2 different heats with 8 kids each that last a week and then 4 bakers from each heat compete in the finals week. I generally found it enjoyable to watch though it’s not as good as the adult version. The age range is too big so there are vast differences in abilities between the kids, and some of the challenges seemed a bit too difficult for their skill level. I seriously wonder if the judges know how much food they ate off the floor. There was one kid who I think was 10 whose confidence I totally want to have. Every challenge his bakes looked terrible, but every time he was so proud of himself and convinced that the judges were going to love whatever he made.

Loot

Loot is an AppleTV+ show starring Maya Rudolph as a woman who inherits a vast fortune after getting divorced from her rich husband after he cheats on her. Up to this point she has just been enjoying being a rich woman of leisure but decides to actually get involved with a charity that bears her name much to the chagrin of the people who actually work there. It’s essentially workplace comedy. It’s decent enough.

Echoes

Echoes had a chance to be a good show, but it really wasn’t. It stars Michelle Monaghan as twins who switch places in each other’s lives every year on their birthday. There are lots of dark secrets in their past including how their sister wound up in a wheelchair when they were kids and how they might have been involved with a man dying in a fire when they were teenagers. Now one of the twins decides she wants out and tries to fake her death and run, but the other one steps back into her life and forces the other one to come back. The story constantly tries to switch who you’re supposed to think is the good twin and which is the bad one. I do actually really like Michelle Monaghan as an actress, but I’m also starting to wonder if she actually knows how to smile because I feel like she just plays all these really dour characters. They really did her no favors making her give one of the twins some heavy Southern accent that sounded super fake to try and help the audience differentiate between the twins. For a show that included so many actors that I like, the story was not great and ended in a very cliched way.

The Great

The Great is loosely based on Catherine the Great. It stars Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult who does a great job as Peter the Great. For some reason it was not a show that I ever felt compelled to watch. We took an extremely long break in the middle of season one before eventually picking it back up again. I also fell asleep during many episodes, so I probably only really saw about 3/4 of the show because I never felt like I needed to go back and rewatch what I slept through. Despite all that I usually enjoyed watching the episodes when we actually thought to put it on and was actually awake during them.

Julie and the Phantoms

Julie and the Phantoms is another show that will only ever see one season. It is a young adult show about a boy band in the 90s who are killed just as they are about to make it big and the teenage girl trying to get over the death of her mother who can somehow see them. Magically when they’re performing together other people can see the ghosts as well, but only then. It was a sweet little show with some decently catchy music.

Boo, Bitch

I watched one episode of this show and then never felt compelled to watch another one until the day I had a colonoscopy and was just resting up until the anesthesia wore completely off and I binged the whole season. That was about what it was good for. It’s another teen show about a girl who dies but is a ghost because she needs to fulfill some destiny before she passes completely on. She now adjusts her life so that she can become popular and date the boy she had a crush on. She becomes completely insufferable in a way that isn’t really fun to watch, and then there is a twist at the end of the series that makes no sense looking back at everything that happened in the show before that.

Paper Girls

Paper Girls on Amazon is based off of a graphic novel of the same name. It involves 4 girls in the 1980s who are delivering papers on their bikes early in the morning the day after Halloween when they are chased by what they think are just people who were out causing trouble for the holiday, but then they wind up time traveling to the present day where they have to rely on adult versions of themselves to figure out how to get back to the past while also battling the people who made them time travel in the first place. It had its moments, but I slept through a lot of this and don’t really even know how it ended.