Upstart Crow: My new Favorite Thing; thank you, British Television Industry, for giving me this gift. A winking, retro-sitcom reimagining of Shakespeare’s life, it turns Will into a harried-but-dedicated family man with a horrible London-to-Stratford commute, Christopher Marlow into a gregarious, talentless, heterosexual rake who occasionally rips off Will’s work, and Robert Green into a high-born, officious, Elizabethan derivative of Sallieri from Amadeus. If you’re aware of how absurd those characterizations are, then you’re well on your way to enjoying what’s on offer. It doesn’t hurt that UC features more historical misogyny jokes per minute than anything this side of Boardwalk Empire, and casts Yara Greyjoy from Game of Thrones as a wannabe actress who’s sort of a proto-Kimmy Schmidt/Sue Heck, on an endless, fruitless quest to be the first actual girl to play a girl on the English stage.
The Orville: This show confuses me. With every episode, I expect it to dissolve into a mess of repurposed Family Guy dick jokes or Spaceballs-esque satire… but it never does. Its biggest sin turns out to be a fondness for awkwardly anachronistic pop culture references; the rest of the time, it sticks to being a quirky, utterly sincere piece of upbeat space fantasy. It’s Doctor Who in Star Trek: The Next Generation drag, which turns out to be a rather nice thing.
Channel Zero: I admire CZ’s willingness to take itself seriously; in contrast to the regurgitated Kevin Williamson-isms of pop-junk like American Horror Story, it never deflates its own atmosphere with unnecessary, self-aware comedy. And they make excellent use of an obviously minuscule budget, with the mundane, flatly-lit settings and deliberately underplayed performances contributing to a constant level of unease and dread. The first season is creepier, but the second is more coherent.
Stranger Things 2: Well, that was more of that thing I liked.
Fear the Walking Dead: With this season’s relentless pruning of the core cast, and a delightful mini-Deadwood reunion giving it a little extra spark, I’m actually enjoying Fear more than the original show at this point. Where TWD’s Rick, Negan, and Ezekiel stand around giving speeches and launching wars, Fear’s Madison continues to smoothly alternate between shrewd emotional manipulation and brief, purposeful bursts of murderous violence in her efforts to Get Shit Done. Her ice-cold competence is a nice change of pace in this particular zombie apocalypse.
Star Trek: Discovery: The first two eps were very strong, with a completely unexpected shift in the status quo making a case for Discovery as a New Thing in the Trek universe. To my frustration, it doesn’t maintain that inventive energy throughout the run, with a couple episodes (the ones featuring Rainn Wilson, sadly) sagging into mediocrity. Sonequa Martin-Green’s stoic lead performance is fine, but Jason Isaacs steals every scene he’s in with a character that is basically a morally-modulated version of Hap from The OA. I’m optimistic that they’re going somewhere promising, but I’m still not completely sold.
Love: As much as I enjoyed Community, I really didn’t like Britta. I know she was kind of unlikable-by-design, but the result was that I dismissed Gillian Jacobs as an actor. Love proves that I was wrong to do so; I am now deeply in love with her.
Rick and Morty: For the good of everyone, the first episode should be banished from existence. I watched it ages ago, and was so turned off that it took four years for me to finally give the show another chance. I still don’t find belching and phlegm to be the comedy gold that Dan Harmon and company seem to believe, but there’s a huge leap in quality between the first and subsequent episodes. So okay, I kind of get it now.
The Punisher: We’ve only watched the first couple installments, but so far, I have no idea why this thing is getting so much critical shit. Barring as-yet-unseen narrative disasters or production failures, The Punisher is already better than Iron Fist and The Defenders. Yeah, it’s a little disorienting, seeing fucking Desi from Girls playing Micro, but my only complaint is the Netflix Universe’s insistence on wedging an increasingly boring Karen Page into the cast; Frank doesn’t need a will-they-won’t-they romantic subplot, so I hope that shit stops soon.
