Every weekday, TMINE brings you the latest TV news from around the world
UK TV
- Walter Presents acquires: VRT (Belgium)’s De Twaalf (The Twelve) and RTL4/Videoland/VTM (The Netherlands)’s Amsterdam Vice
News
Year: 2020
Film reviews
Covideodrome: Just Mercy (2019)
A temporary replacement for TMINE’s Orange Thursday feature in which I review a readily available movie you’ve probably already seen
It’s funny what a difference a couple of weeks makes. When I watched this over the Bank Holiday weekend in May, Just Mercy (2019) was just a movie about an important subject – something more or less in the same vein as The Banker (2020), being about historic discrimination against African-Americans.
It was a bit more potent than The Banker, however, seeing as it also directly addressed the issue of capital punishment in the modern day, particularly in southern states like Alabama that have a 10% inaccuracy rate when it comes to Death Row prisoners. But that was more or less its scope.
But with the current situation in America, Just Mercy is taking on new significance, since it’s also an indictment of racism and the police’s attitudes to black people, particularly black men. In the US, Warner Bros is making the movie free on all digital platforms for the whole of June.
That’s apparently a step too far for the rest of the world – apparently, whatever lessons the movie has to offer that make it important everyone see it in the US aren’t applicable elsewhere – so you’re all going to have to pay to watch this real-life story about a Harvard lawyer (Michael B Jordan) who decides to open a service in Alabama dedicated to correcting judicial injustices, starting with the wrongful incarceration of small business owner Jamie Foxx.
I’ll let you know if it’s worth it after the trailer and the jump.
Film
Quarantine viral video: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter give San Dimas High School’s graduation address
Most of the current crop of quarantine viral videos are reunions where people talk about past work, are new episodes made during lockdown about lockdown itself, or are read-throughs of previous episodes.
So today’s Quarantine Viral Video is a little different in that it’s a genuine High School Graduation Ceremony address made during lockdown. The celebrities involved? Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who played/are playing Bill and Ted in the various Bill and Ted movies. The High School? San Dimas High.
Apt.
[via]
News
TMINE’s Daily Global TV News: Almost Paradise cancelled; The Heights, Trauma acquired; The Capture renewed; + more
Every weekday, TMINE brings you the latest TV news from around the world
UK TV
- BBC One acquires: ABC (Australia)’s The Heights…
- …renews: The Capture
- Walter Presents acquires: 13th Street Channel (France)’s Trauma
US TV
- WGN America cancels: Almost Paradise
US TV show casting
- Someone’s leaving The CW’s DC’s Legends of Tomorrow [spoilers]
New US TV shows
- Trailer for HBO’s Lovecraft Country
Streaming TV
Third-episode verdict: Space Force (Netflix)
In the UK: Available on Netflix
It’s one of the clichés of modern times that the Trump presidency is beyond satire – it’s so inherently ridiculous that nothing satirists can do can possibly trump Trump.
That’s not quite true. Plenty of shows mock Trump every day and we’ve had the likes of the self-explanatory Our Cartoon President (US: Showtime) built entirely around sending him up. The Good Fight (US: CBS All Access; UK: More 4) has also done a decent job of mocking Trump’s input into the US’s legal and political systems:
However, most of the mockery is largely targeted at the man himself. His policies, meanwhile, are normally so horrifying that no one can think of anything funny to say in response. Maybe in that sense Trump might be beyond satire.
So you’ve got to hand it to Netflix’s new comedy, Space Force, for at least trying to satirise an actual policy position of Donald Trump – namely Space Force, for those of us who have been avoiding the news as much as possible. The question is: is this first real stab at Trumpian policy satire good or even funny?
A space force to be reckoned with?
Co-created by and starring Steve Carrell (The Office (US), Anchorman, The Daily Show, The Morning Show), Space Force sees Carrell playing a newly promoted 4* Air Force general at the height of his game. His predecessor and general bête noire Noah Emmerich (The Americans, The Spy) is about to retire and Carrell is set to replace him.
However, almost immediately, Carrell learns he is instead set to head up and largely create from scratch Trump’s Space Force, with the perpetual aim of ‘boots on the Moon by 2024’! That means moving to Colorado, something about which his wife, Lisa Kudrow (Friends), and teenage daughter (Diana Silvers) are not 100% jubilant.
Soon, Carrell is butting heads not just with chief scientist John Malkovich but with science itself, as he learns that reality has a liberal bias.