The Plot Against America

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

Previously on TMINE

So, erm, yes. There’s this virus thing and we’re all being quarantined. How about that for fun? Still, rather than giving me more TV viewing time, it just gave me more work, which meant that things have been a bit quieter than planned on TMINE this past week.

In fact, there have been no TV reviews this week at all. I have been watching season 3 of Babylon Berlin but I’m only up to episode 8 of 12, so I’ll hold off reviewing that until next week. Although, to be honest, I’m not sure I can muster a whole Boxset Monday review for it, so that’ll probably sneak in with WHYBW next Wednesday.

Orange Thursday did manage to take in both Radioactive (2020) and Joker (2019). But given that that naughty virus, which has already cancelled all the scheduled BFI and BAFTA events, has now closed down all the cinemas, that’ll be the last for reviews and previews of current movies for a while.

Next on TMINE

Although pretty much every TV show you can name, UK or overseas, has now shut down production, we do at least have a few new shows that have already been completed coming our way, some of which I hope to watch. What else am I going to do? Go out?

After the jump, though, I’ll take in the latest bit of work from The Wire‘s Ed Burns and David Simon – an adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which sees what happens in a parallel universe America when Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the presidential election of 1940.

Coming later this week (hopefully) are reviews of Hulu (US)’s Little Fires Everywhere and Freeform (US)’s Motherland: Fort Salem, both of which start today. I’m less likely to watch Julian Fellowes’ dramatisation of the history of football, The English Game (Netflix), teen knight drama The Letter For the King (Netflix) or period fashion biopic Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (Netflix), but they’re on the table at least. I might be able to add Council of Dads (US: NBC) to next week’s WHYBW, as it’s airing on Tuesday, but we’ll wait and see on that.

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s Orange Thursday will head into the exciting world of TV movies. No, not TV Movies – TV movies. First up will be Netflix’s Spenser Confidential (2020), which is a very loose remake of 80s TV show Spenser For Hire (US: ABC) (or at least the original source material).

And then we’re going to head even further back in TV time to the 60s for The Man From UNCLE‘s The Helicopter Spies (1968). Spoiler for the second of those – there aren’t that many helicopters in it.

The regulars

Stumptown took another holiday again, which means I’ll only be reviewing the following regulars after the jump: Devs, For Life, Star Trek: Picard, Stateless, Transplant, and War of the Worlds. At least one of them’s getting a promotion to the recommended list – isn’t that exciting?

I did try to watch the second episode of Amazing Stories (Apple TV+), but “It’s A Wonderful Life with an aspiring urban female 400m runner” really put me off after about 15 minutes, so that’s not going to be a regular, just something I dip into occasionally, I suspect.