Season two of the Netflix series The Diplomat is a wonderful addition to season one and the writing of the show’s very interesting marriage of its lead characters is a true highlight. The addition of Allison Janney as the American Vice President is a very real plus as well. I recommend this series highly along with Nobody Wants This, a new romantic comedy series, starring Kristen Bell, the wonderful female lead from multiple seasons of The Good Place. Her co-star, Adam Brody, also does a fine job along with a delightful supporting cast, including the always marvelous Tovah Feldshuh. Like The Diplomat, Nobody Wants This is on Netflix.
Having now finished season two of The Old Man on Hulu I can commend that as well. The show features some terrific action sequences, convoluted spy plotting, and sharp dialogue, but it is the relationships that make the series soar. Jeff Bridges and Amy Brenneman as lovers, with Bridges and John Lithgow as life-long allies, fellow spies, and adoptive parents of Alia Shawkat. Jessica Harper and Janet McTeer move things along as current and former spouses to Lithgow, while Navid Negahban reunites as Shawkat’s “real” dad. I could reveal who Joel Grey is coupled up with but that would require a major spoiler alert, or, in the parlance of the CIA, if I told you, I would have to kill you.
I was disappointed with the new Ted Danson comedy, A Man on the Inside. The idea is strong enough, but the writing is lame, the pace is laborious, and just perhaps the absence of a strong co-star contributes to the demise of this well-intentioned Netflix series. Danson does his best, which should be plenty good enough, but I had to turn this off after two episodes. It really made my teeth hurt. Oh yes, Sally Struthers (Archie Bunker’s daughter in that famed series of yesteryear) has a nice, albeit small part and does well by it.
A Real Pain is a motion picture starring Kieran Culkin, the Emmy winner for Succession, and Jesse Eisenberg, who also directs. I got into a fair amount of trouble the last time I reviewed one of these third generation Holocaust movies and so I re-enter this arena with some trepidation.
I am sorry… I just do not have much of an idea what this movie is supposed to be or why anyone would take the time/trouble to make it. And Culkin? I had grown weary of his scatological speech patterns in Succession long before his “triumph” of the final season. Now I discover… this is what he does. He is playing that same “I don’t finish my sentences” character in this movie that paved his way to an Emmy in the HBO series… only this time in Bermuda shorts. Forgive me while I pass.
Black Doves on Netflix is an action spy series all about relationships with some terrific acting made all the more necessary by the really over the top plotting… even for an international spy thriller. The weird thing is that despite the extreme stretching of any kind of credulity at all, the thing works… really well… and it owes it all to this very solid cast who take their roles seriously and never once look at the camera to ask if any of us are following this thing. To the Producer’s credit, every so often, the show bounces backward in time to a partial flashback to sort of explain what the heck it was we had viewed twenty or thirty minutes before.
Keira Knightley is the principal lead (and one of the Executive Producers) in this series, and she is very credible in what really is a not very credible role. Her naïve husband (Andrew Buchan) gets my award for TV’s most sound sleeper, a quality which enables him to remain oblivious to all of his wife’s various shenanigans. Ben Whishaw is wonderful in supplying support as well as humor and a little romance.
I could not understand one word said by Sarah Lancashire as the very British boss of the spy team but, in the end, it really did not matter that I could not get my subtitles to work. Somehow, I managed to understand enough of her part in the plot to get by without her help. The remainder of the show’s ensemble is particularly good. I highly recommend this and, if I am wrong and you hate it, the good news is you will figure that out in the first hour of the series and you can turn it off with little time lost.
For something totally different, let me also recommend a tiny motion picture just released in theatres and on Amazon Prime, unhappily titled, My Old Ass.
It is a small, coming of age movie that deserves a better title. Maisy Stella, who is new on the scene to me, is particularly good. No pyrotechnics, nothing earth shattering. Just a sweet story, nicely told. Percy Hynes White is about as cute a leading man as his name might indicate. I think you will thank me for the recommendation.
That’s it from me for a while, I am off for the redux of last summer’s hernia surgery. Should give me lots of time for more TV bingeing.
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