What's To Watch? - Mar 17-23 - New & Returning, and There Is a Season

 

      This past week some smiles returned, as Ted Lasso (Apple TV+) arrived Wednesday to start its third and final season. This will be a 12-episode season (same as season 2), with a straight-through schedule, a new episode each Wednesday through May 31st.
     This season picks up just before the start of the next football season, with some relationships in flux and the pre-season's anticipation and posturing becoming the focus for the sports press. We get to catch up with most of the main characters. Many moments of doubt and angst for several of them, but Ted ultimately remains Ted, and this pocket universe remains the better for it. These will be difficult characters to let go of, but ideally they'll be left in a good and hopeful places at the end. In my dotage I'm more desirous than ever for the notion of a happily ever after.
     Bonus: I have/found the captions option, something to get switched on just before playing each show or movie, finally, so my befuddlement especially as to many of the accented voices (everyone) is gone. Maybe I'll eventually find a blanket/default setting for it there, too.

     I'm in no hurry to have this end, so the one-per-week release schedule, at least knowing there won't be skip weeks, works well enough for me.

     This upcoming Sunday night at 9 Eastern, Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Nobody) is back with the start of a new series. Here he's the chairman of the English department at an underfunded college, careening into a mid-life crisis, showing signs of a melt-down in both his personal and professional lives. One does not generally tend to go far, much less smoothly, removing the filter and letting every honest reaction and comment flow.
     As bet I can tell so far, this will be an eight-episode debut season, and looks promising. I don't believe Odenkirk chooses his projects cavalierly, and so am expecting something engaging... so I've been trying to avoid spoilers. It's Lucky Hank.

     It's an AMC (and therefore AMC+) series, but it appears they're casting the net extremely wide for the first episode, as that will also be on BBC America, Sundance, and IFC. If you want to see episode 2, etc., though, you'll need to have either AMC or be an AMC+ subscriber. They're continuing to aggressively build their streaming platform by only airing the shows on AMC for a very limited time each week, while reminding you at every opportunity that an AMC+ subscription will allow access any time, not only to previous episodes but almost certainly early access to later ones.
     Anyway, for now (not yet an AMC+ subscriber) my DVR will be catching this for me each Sunday night off AMC. Sunday night shows are precariously placed - too horribly close to Monday to want to rush to them, no matter how much I might enjoy them.

     Among the recent offerings that I not only still haven't made time for, but turned out to be something I'd dropped into "My List" on Netflix only to forget about it, is a horror flick from Norway, which adds Viking lore - some historical, some newly-contrived - to the subject of werewolves. I've been trying to avoid spoilers, but have seen enough to realize that in this treatment there are likely going to be some parallel elements to the curse of the wendigo. It's Viking Wolf (2022 TV-MA  1h 37m)

     When I get to this, I'm going to aim to let this be its own thing, appreciate intentional hommages without getting caught up in where I've seen various elements before. Generally, I'll try to add it directly to my movie memories of 1981, when we were suddenly given a generous mix of modern werewolf stories with An American Werewolf In London, The Howling, and Wolfen.

     Newly-arrived on Peacock, and getting some good reactions, is something that I'd all but overlooked. An animated movie, spinning out from the Shrek franchise, it's Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.

     The premise of a late life change - as the adventurer retires to a questionable, and far less dignified, existence - makes this a little more to conjure with. It's still out in theaters, but as mentioned above it's newly-arrived on Peacock.

     Some recent turns (primarily in social media) have reminded me of how critical timing can be whether or not a show favorably captures my attention. In an evolving streaming environment, this now includes series that are decades old.
     Starting with something from our streaming age, though, I turn to Netflix and the series that was

their first, exclusive series: Lilyhammer. A crime comedy-drama starring Steven Van Zandt (musician, singer, songwriter and actor), the only American in the cast of this Norwegian series. It premiered to great local success in Norway late January 2012, and that first, eight-episode season hit North America via Netflix in early February.
     Now, all of this was happening off to the side for me, as at that time I wasn't plugged into any streaming platform beyond Amazon Prime -- which was initially just a side-benefit of paying the annual fee for the sake of free shipping. I'd see mentions of the show here and there, and increasingly would find friends name-dropping it, but for most of three years it was as good as on another planet for me. It took my comics mania to finally lure me in in 2015, when the first of the Marvel Netflix series (Daredevil, which as of last year transferred to Disney+) debuted in April. From then on, I had access to Netflix. By that point, while it would still be years before the final nail was driven in the coffin, the three seasons of the show had all been in place since late 2014. Video artifacts, a little over two years into their initially-planned ten-year stay on Netflix.
     Still, there's the old saw about the limitations of leading a horse to water.

     I can't recall when it was I finally started to take a look at the show, but at the time I wasn't feeling the love. As best I can recall, my general sense was that Van Zandt's character, Frank Tagliano/Giovanni "Johnny" Henriksen, a former organized crime underboss, was too close to being a lightweight, borderline parody knock-off of his Silvio Dante character from The Sopranos to feel... right.
     In hindsight, I was taking a look at the show for the wrong reasons -- some vague desire to tap into conversations that, frankly, had ceased months earlier. I couldn't remember how far my attempt had gotten, much less the specifics of it, but it felt as if I'd dragged myself well into it. I tend to be pig-headed that way, and if I approach something as if it's homework... well, chances are I'm going to be fighting it every step, and that it will never be finished. So it was that my enthusiasm remained low, and I abandoned the attempt.
     Something recently reminded me that it was still there. Probably the periphery of the late-2022 coverage of how in the 11th hour, when the ten-year agreement with Netflix was about to see rights revert to Norway, Netflix struck a new deal to keep their first exclusive series in place.
     Anyway, I decided to pull up the show again, and as Netflix remembers things so I don't have to, it picked up right where I'd left off however many years ago. That turned out to be at the start of episode three. The recap brought most of the details quickly back, and I've casually rolled on from there. I'm now a couple episodes into the final season, and have been enjoying it. The ideological and moral lines for the characters, most specifically for the culturally-transplanted lead, are a little fuzzy, but it's within the margins of being accepted as character growth in his new environment, and a reminder that Frank was never quite Silvio in the first place.
     So, this is a reminder that this Netflix landmark show is still available on the platform. Here's the initial trailer for it.

     Several facebook friends who are accomplished professional writers noted that they'd recently noted that Hulu had added the four seasons of CBS family drama series Picket Fences (1992-'96) to their offerings. (I've since seen that Amazon Prime has them included, too.) They cited this David E. Kelley-created and -produced series as being a masterclass in both dialogue and character-driven storytelling. This was one of those critically-acclaimed series that was never a commercial hit (the best ratings ranking it had was during its second season, when it was #61, and in its final season it had dropped to #98) but was sufficiently well thought-of to be protected, lasting those four seasons/88 episodes.
     From spring of 1988 through all of 2000, my life included a long work commute, along with frequently long work hours. Even with a VHS system in place to be able to record things for me, my tv viewing plummeted during those dozen years. So it was that I was only barely aware this series existed back in the day. I know I had some awareness that there were some character crossovers during one season between this show and Chicago Hope - a series we did watch - but those must have been handled in a way that wasn't plot-essential, mainly a value-added perk for fans of each show.
     So far I've only gotten as far as adding the series to my Hulu queue, but I'm interested to give it a try soon. Here's a bit of fuzzy-eyeball video from when CBS was promoting it in advance of the premier in '92: Picket Fences.

     Then, there are shows that I loved decades ago, and that are still a treat to be able to dive back into full versions of - especially if they were syndicated for years, and in broadcast had been nipped and

tucked to make way for more commercials. One such series, currently available to Amazon Primer members (though, as ever with that platform, we have no idea for how brief a time before they slip back behind the paywall) is the 1960s British superspy series The Avengers. Here in the states, back in the day when these were first imported as summer replacement programming in prime time, we only saw the final three seasons of the show, seasons four through six; four and five had Patrick Macnee's John Steed paired up with Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, and season six (after an understandably dissatisfied Rigg - who had initially been paid less than one of the cameramen - departed the series) with newcomer, 20 year-old Linda Thorson as Tara King.
     The media format the show was initially shot in, along with the way the BBC treated television shows well into the '60s as ephemera that no one would want later on, resulted in the first season/series of the show being almost completely lost. (This show made out remarkably better than, say, Doctor Who did, with so many of that show's seasons during the '60s having pieces gone, or being entirely

missing as far as final versions are concerned.) Only three complete episodes remain, as I understand it. Consequently, what's available on Amazon Prime is just seasons two through six. Balancing this, as the show was being retooled all along, really only hitting the players, themes and format once Rigg arrived, the real nostalgic hits are only found in those final three episodes anyway. The earlier shows have their points of curiosity, but are quite a different experience than the later shows. Occasionally one runs across those (mostly posers, though a few I suppose who are dedicated Honor Blackman fans; Blackman left the show to be in Goldfinger, btw.) who claim that those earlier episodes were their favorites.
     It's been seasons four through six that have gotten my nostalgia's attention, seeing me skipping to well-remembered favorites, however flimsy some of the premises were, and some sillier moments. Season four's introduction of the Cybernauts, and their return (in color) in season five.
     Anyway, as noted above, when it comes to Amazon Prime, if you're interested it's likely best to move quickly. They slide things back behind paywalls suddenly.

     Shifting to this falling on St. Patrick's Day, and with the caveat that I'm aware that it's rife with cultural stereotypes & pitfalls, a politically-charged star, coming out of an often politically ugly era, and desperately showing its age (can it really be 71 years old?!), it was an Academy Award-winner (Best Director and Best Picture) and nonetheless has its comedic moments. It's The Quiet Man (1952 2h 9m)

     I don't know... at over two hours long it's likely too lengthy to be the subject of a reaction video, but part of me would love to get a sampling of first-time audience reactions from people under 40. Even for me, with over 20 years above that line, there's plenty to react to with pursed lipped "ooo!"s and cringes.
     Still, I happened to notice it's among the offerings on Paramount+, and so in conjunction with this sketchy holiday and recent awards season event, I thought I'd at least mention it here. Will I be watching it this weekend? Can't say for sure. I might end up skipping around through it. The itinerant fist fight scene, complete with pub break, is still fondly remembered.

     Choosing to end on a less-charged, and open to anyone (thanks, Tubi!) is a three-part miniseries from 2005 that... I didn't see and have no recollection of having been aware of. And, much as with last week's closing item (In the Mouth of Madness) it stars include Sam Neill. It's about an investigation into The Bermuda Triangle, with consequences as the timeline's reset. It's The Triangle

     I haven't watched it yet -- I just came across it ten minutes ago -- but this Sci-Fi Channel/BBC collaboration should have its points of interest... not that I'm by any stretch expecting it to be an intellectual landmark.

    That's all I have the time for today. I still have a busy Friday to make it through, and have to handle items with care because as strong as the impulse will be to dash something out and make a break for the weekend, I'll have to live with the consequences come Monday.  Before all that, though, I have to do a pre-dawn crockpot set-up of corned beef, carrots, potatoes and cabbage, so it can casually cook away all day. Take care! - Mike