What's To Watch? - Mar 10-16 - Including some Fans, Fixations and Obsessions

 

     Another personally draining week, I'll be trying to use most of my Friday to catch my breath and get my bearings while still keeping some things moving.

     This week's tv/streaming highlights for me came Thursday, with the fourth episode of this third (and final) season of Star Trek: Picard (Paramount+), and the first season-capper for Poker Face (Peacock.)
     This season of Picard continues to be one that's understandably drawing praise, even from those older, crankier fans who continue to otherwise find so much to complain about all things modern Trek. Lots of good character moments, many including some newer faces, mixed with those of the Next Generation cast mostly reaching for a possible last adventure.
 

    Meanwhile, Rian Johnson's creation, the lie-detecting Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), hit that tenth episode, completing the larger story arc of season one - the incidents that set her on the road back in episode one - and setting up the premise for season two. For me it was a thoroughly enjoyable season, and it was almost zero surprise that it was officially picked up for a second season just before episode 7 aired in mid-February -- mostly just a question of why they'd waited even that long. Just spreading the buzz around more evenly, I suppose, as it was drawing most of its own press for the first several weeks.
     The closest thing to irritation I've had with the series involves some of that buzz around it, specifically the constant drumming of it as another Columbo. Sure, it's been like Columbo inasmuch as it's been a case-of-the-week murder mystery, the lead is a distinct but often disheveled, unimposing, lightly gravel-voiced presence who is initially underestimated, and that it makes use of the howcatchem format of showing us the crime - the who and the how - and then letting us see how the lead figures things out and fences with that week's evildoer(s). That's a considerable mound of parallels, to be sure, but I'd hate to think that some people are showing up looking for someone doing a Peter Falk impersonation. (Especially in a modern, culture wars context where some people are hyper-vigilant for something being "taken from" a white man.) The series also draws much of its pacing and visual style from mystery series of the 1970s, something that Johnson was enthusiastically candid about during the run-up to the show's debut.
     Certainly, Peacock is leaning into all of it, including their own site's algorithms. I was rolling back over memories of the episode and the season while the closing credits of episode ten played, not immediately jumping away to something else. In the way of many of the streaming platforms, it started to queue up a likely next feature... which turned out to be the first formal episode of Columbo (distinct from the two pilot movies, in '68 and '71), from September 1971, the Steven Bochco-written, Spielberg-directed, "Murder by the Book."
 
    It's been just over four years since we last saw the obsessively dedicated Detective John Luther. In the parlance of British tv, the show - starring Idris Elba as DCI John Luther - had five series between 2010 and very early 2019, making for a combined 20 episodes. Three of the five series were only 4 episodes long, and one was only 2.
     Across his various stories we find that Luther has sacrificed nearly all in the pursuit of generally murderous criminals. Indeed, when we first met him back in 2010, he was just coming back onto active duty following a nervous breakdown brought on by the conclusion of a serial kidnapper and murderer, whom he allowed to fall from a considerable height, leaving the man in a coma. That first series found many treating Luther as a pariah, an often violent, rogue agent who would place himself above the law, the ends justifying the means. As perspicacious as he his persistent, though, he did seem to be the best fit for dire cases. Still, we soon saw that he's a dangerous man to be associated with, be it because of his own actions or those of adversaries.
     The creation of Neil Cross, Cross has written all of the episodes, and now a film, which had a brief theatrical release last month before arriving today on Netflix. It's Luther: The Fallen Sun (R 129 m)

     I bent my usual rules a little in a moment of weakness, and read the New York Times review ahead of watching this - something I'll likely get to this weekend. The review tended to confirm my fear that something would have to give with them trying to contain a Luther story in a theatrical film -- as a longer, serial form's worked so much better for him. Characters may be underwritten, with Cross and director Jamie Payne trying to pack a little too much into the format. The reviewer had particular issues with the over-the-top villain of the piece, played by Andy Serkis, including his general styling and coiffure, being a questionable adversary for Luther, particularly in a mad-dash of just over two hours of trying to cram it all in.
     As with the series, with its lengthening stretches between them, I'm once again left with refreshing my memory of what's gone before via Wikis. I suspect it'll still be reasonably accessible to someone stepping in cold, though they won't have the same sense of history with key characters.
      While I likely watched the series earlier on Netflix, it's since moved on in the way of the streaming world. If you're interested in (re)watching it, here in the states the five series/20 episodes are currently on Hulu, or can be found via BritBox. Outside the U.S. this seems to be another item to look for on Disney+.

     I don't find myself with the combination of fortitude and interest to try to muster a list of where to look for all of the streaming locations for all of the films in contentions for awards this Sunday. However, among this season's Oscar contenders I did notice that Women Talking, once of those in the running for Best Picture, is available for just the next few days as part of Amazon Prime. Here's the trailer for that:

     Next Tuesday, the 14th, the CW will see two DC comics-derived series running back to back, with the third season return of Superman & Lois, followed by the premier of a new Batman-derived, next generation-themed series Gotham Knights.
 

    The former stars the eternally five o'clock shadowed Tyler Hoechlin as Clark/Superman, and Elizabeth "Bitsie" Tulloch as Lois. The series has them all living on the Kent's farm near the very flyover town of Smallville, where they're raising their two sons. I enjoyed the first two, slightly abbreviated (15 episodes each) seasons enough to want to come back. Having so recently revisited the full run of Grimm (2011-17), where Tulloch was series regular Juliette/Eve, I expect that aspect to suddenly pop a little more for me... which really can't hurt, as Lois Lane has generally been a drag for me.
     The latter series will introduce us to a version of Gotham City where Bruce Wayne's recently been killed, leaving behind an adopted son character I don't know, and some version of the Carrie Kelley Robin, to team up with the sons and daughters of various Batman villains to both clear their names and find Wayne's real killer(s). The always good to see Misha Collins (who I'll likely always first think of as Supernatural's Castiel) is for some odd reason playing district attorney Harvey Dent, who I'm presuming will be the at least initially on-the-wrong-track mission of accusing those villains' kids of the murder. Collins has been enthusiastic about the series, and at this point yet another timeline version of Gotham really can't hurt anything, so I'm in to at least give it a try. Here's the tv trailer for it.

     The subject of these DC comics shows on the CW (all of which trace back to Greg Berlanti's production company) reminds me of one of the last of the "Arrowverse" spin-off series, The Flash, which is currently in its final season run, its ninth(!), on Wednesday nights. All indications are that it's going to go out on an attempted high note, including guest appearances by characters we haven't seen in a while. The show nearly lost me a few times, the formula and some of the relationships wearing very thin for me at times, but I've been with it from the start and this final season will only be 13 episodes, 5 of which have already aired.
     It does bring to mind a question, as I'm sure I'm not the only one: Have you stuck with a series past a point of genuine interest simply because an end point has been announced, and as you saw it through so far you figure you'll stick with it to the end, both in the hopes of some of what you saw in it early on re-emerging, and simply for a sense of completion? I know I've done it more than once, though the only series that comes straight to mind that way was the HBO series Big Love.
 

    That was the series where the late Bill Paxton played a modern-day fundamentalist Mormon who was covertly a polygamist with three wives, each set up in their own homes in the same neighborhood. For me, as I suspect with a great many, it wasn't a premise I expected to really go for had someone just pitched it at me, but it launched with a lead-in from The Sopranos, that HBO Sunday night marketing magic at work.
     The first three seasons were strong, but it seemed to wobble enough during the fourth that I likely would have just let it slide had they not announced ahead of time that season five would be the final one, me feeling the premise had largely worn itself out, and the family's public gambit seeming less and less sustainable. There was also the personal viewing factor of this being one of the shows that Sue and I would watch together, and she was suddenly gone less than a month after the fourth season wrapped. I came back to watch that final season, though, mainly to see the story through to such an end as they'd come up with. I don't regret it, but I also have yet to feel a strong desire to rewatch the 53 episode series.
     So, how about you? Did you stick with a series for one, last season past your point of real interest, mainly because it was going to be the end?

     Having nothing to do with anything else, but wanting to end on a free-to-all and hopefully fun note, I happened to see that a mid-'90s horror film I had fond memories of was on Tubi. Sam Neill stars as

John Trent. When we first meet Trent he's an inmate at an asylum, who's coaxed into telling the story of how he ended up there. Trent was an ace insurance investigator, generally called in to uncover plots and scams designed to collect on policies. He's put on the trail of horror novelist Sutter Cane, and odd, reclusive man with an increasingly fanatical fan base and a growing body of work which seems to be tipping some of his less mentally-stable readers over the edge. Cane's gone missing, and of more immediate interest to his publisher, so has his promised next novel. An element of the marketing reveals a puzzle, and reinforces Trent's belief that this is all a publicity stunt. The puzzle leads to a map, leading to a road trip... and things rapidly become stranger from there.
     With overtly Lovecraftian elements of subjective, suggestible, shifting reality, creeping madness and mutations, and ancient, monstrous beings, massing to reclaim the Earth. It's In the Mouth of Madness (1994/'95  R  95m)

     I recall it with some general fondness, and may appropriately enough work it in sometime this Saturday as a creature feature.

     Well, look at that. I've run out of time again. (Should I set that aside as a suggested epitaph?)
     Let's all slow down and enjoy the weekend as best we can, indoor and/or outdoor as mood, health, and weather best suggest. See you next week! - Mike