The OA

The Murders
US TV

What have you been watching? Including The Murders

27 March 2019 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

The OA - Part II
The OA – Part II

This week’s reviews

‘Tis the lull before the Easter storm, as there’s a plethora of new and returning shows about to hit the world’s airwaves. Indeed, WHYBW is momentarily shifting to Wednesday and maybe to Tuesday next week to take account of the fact that not only is Wednesday now the busiest TV night of the week (incumbents: The Magicians, Whiskey Cavalier, The Good Fight), a load of shows are joining them tonight (Happy!, What We Do In The Shadows) , so I won’t have time to watch them all tomorrow. I do need to do some work.

This week, however, I was able to review:

Orange Wednesday is taking a break this week, too, since

  1. I haven’t watched any movies yet this week
  2. I can’t do both WHYBW and Orange Wednesday on a Wednesday

Fingers crossed for next week, though, assuming WHYBW moves to Tuesday, which it probably will.

CityTV (Canada)’s The Murders

New shows

After the jump, I’ll be looking at The Murders (Canada: CityTV; UK: Universal). Last week, I did mention Hulu’s The Act; however, I belatedly realise that’s not just an anthology show but a dramatised true crime anthology show, so that’s now off the menu.

Coming our way tonight is FX (US)’s What We Do In The Shadows and later on in the week there’s NBC (US)’s Abby’s, so I’ll definitely be reviewing them. But I suspect there’ll be more shows for me to look at than that.

Friday, for example, should be bringing us Netflix’s French sci-fi original Osmosis and despite last week’s claim to the contrary, Amazon’s Hanna will also be hitting our screens on Friday, so either one of those is likely to be next week’s Boxset Monday.

CBS (US)’s Magnum P.I.

The regulars

Since we’re a day early, I’ve not had time to watch any more episodes of Il Miracolo (The Miracle) and lovely wife hasn’t yet felt the urge to watch the latest Star Trek: Discovery, so they’ll both have to wait until next time.

But Magnum P.I. and The Orville are both back. Can you guess which episode of Star Trek they knocked off this week in The Orville? All will be revealed after the jump.

Joining them are Doom Patrol and The Good Fight. See you in a mo!

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Murders”
The OA
Streaming TV

Boxset Monday: The OA – Part II (Netflix)

25 March 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Available on Netflix

When The OA first came to Netflix, it was to minimal fanfare. Just as Stranger Things came to us with almost no publicity, so The OA came with a not especially informative trailer and a title and that was about it.

Then, of course, we got to watch them and marvel in projects that at times bordered on genius. The first season of The OA wasn’t exactly plain sailing or without its ups and downs, however. Indeed, it took me a little while to get through all the episodes, rather than just boxsetting them (episode reviews: 1, 2-4, 5-8).

But Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s story about a blind girl (Marling) who disappeared and then reappeared seven years later, her sight restored, and now claiming to be ‘The OA’ (the original angel), was nevertheless a stunningly original piece of work, unlike pretty much anything you’ll see on TV, outside David Lynch’s most auteured piece. In parts supernatural, in parts fairy tale, it was a musing on a musing on the power of storytelling – and of the need to tell stories – as well as of art, music, dance, nature, life, love, masculinity, femininity and more.

The ending, however, wasn’t so much ambiguous as diminishing, suggesting that the whole thing was just made up by The OA based on things she’d seen and read, in the style of The Usual Suspects.

Marling also suggested that she hadn’t even considered a second season and that was that for the story – until the show’s success inevitably resulted in its renewal.

Britt Marling in Netflix’s The OA

A fairytale sequel

What then for season two – or Part II as it now is? How do you create a sequel to a fairy tale? And how do you do it when you no longer have the element of surprise, as you did with your first season?

As you might expect, Marling’s answer is not whatever answer you just came up with but is something staggeringly different. Indeed, there’s one key line in Part II that sums it up: “I think logic is over-rated.”

And I mean that in a good way, because in terms of ideas, I’d say Britt Marling is the closest we now have to a young, female David Lynch. Or maybe David Lynch is just the older male version of Marling.

Continue reading “Boxset Monday: The OA – Part II (Netflix)”
Aidy Bryant and Lolly Adefope in Hulu's Shrill
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Shrill, Shadow, The Order and The Village

21 March 2019 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

This week’s reviews

It’s not been super, super busy this week for reviews, since although there have been quite a few new shows that I’ve been watching, not many have been worth full-on reviews. But elsewhere, I’ve covered:

And for Orange Wednesday‘s film reviews, I turned my attention to: Triple Frontier (2019), Hotel Artemis (2018) and Special Correspondents (2016).

The Village

New shows

Last week, I listed a whole bunch of new shows that arrived on the scene and after the jump, I’ll be dealing with a whole bunch of them: Shrill (US: Hulu), Shadow (Netflix), The Order (Netflix) and The Village (US: NBC).

There are others on the way, but given how lukewarm the first episode was, I doubt I’ll be tuning in for the rest of Hanna (Amazon). And seeing as I didn’t watch all 160 episodes or whatever of Pretty Little Liars, I doubt I’ll be turning my attention to Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. I have a pretty strong feeling that next week’s Boxset Monday is going to be season two of The OA, but let’s wait to see what else turns up. Me and schedules, hey?

The Good Fight

The regulars

Magnum P.I. took another holiday this week – these lazy Hawaii-based detectives, hey? – as did The Orville – these lazy, barely concealed Star Trek knock-offs, hey? – so that means that after the jump, we’ll be talking about the latest episodes of Doom Patrol, Il Miracolo, The Magicians, Star Trek: Discovery and Whiskey Cavalier. Also returning is The Good Fight, but I’ve only managed to watch one episode of that this week – episode two next week.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Shrill, Shadow, The Order and The Village”

Star Trek: Discovery
News

Star Trek: Discovery, Strike Back, Brooklyn Nine-Nine renewed; Ray Liotta joins The Sopranos prequel; + more

28 February 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every weekday, TMINE brings you the latest TV news from around the world

Film

  • Ray Liotta joins Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark

Internet TV

  • Trailer for season 2 of Amazon’s The Tick
  • Trailer for season 2 of Netflix’s The OA
  • Teaser for Netflix’s Ares
  • Arden Myrin promoted to regular on Netflix’s Insatiable

European TV

UK TV

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

Seg-El and Adam Strange in Krypton
News

Krypton, Step Up: High Water renewed; (Three Days of the) Condor trailer; Richard Gere on UK TV; + more

23 May 2018 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Internet TV

UK TV

  • Richard Gere, Helen McCrory and Billy Howle to star in BBC Two’s MotherFatherSon

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting