I'll note that the second season of Sweet Tooth (Netflix) not only ended on interesting notes, but let us know that a final, third season is already in the works.
Also, the sci-fi, female empowerment series The Power wrapped its first season on Amazon Prime this past Friday, and I'm hoping in the near future we'll receive word that a second season has been approved. I'm unsure how much the writers' strike may slow down even this process. I'm well enough invested in several of the characters, and in the overall narrative arc, to want that second season to happen.
Adding something, in large part because of it being time-sensitive:
From is a science fiction horror series created for the former EPIX channel (since re-branded as MGM+), now halfway through its second season, has briefly been mentioned a few times by friend Pat, usually as part of the lunch conversation mix. I don't have the channel in my cable package, so each time we moved along from it fairly quickly. Also, Sunday C7 contributor D recently asked if I'd written anything about the series. This reminded me that I'd casually noticed that the first season had appeared on Amazon Prime as part of a come-on, in their endless quest to get users to add more and more sub-subscriptions to their Prime account. Give the people a "free" taste of a show via access to the first season, while the second season is currently rolling out. As with so many things one sees on Prime, unless it's been made specifically for them, one is best to move on it quickly because it'll shift back behind a paywall soon enough. So it is with this show's first season, which will only continue to be available to Prime members through the end of the month. Come June 1st, it'll be back behind the paywall with season two and whatever else MGM+ has.
The show has extremely intentional theme echoes of LOST - even their promotions point out that it's from some of the executive producers of that series - as people from very different backgrounds find themselves trapped in an unknown locale, menaced by things beyond their immediate understanding. Here the threats come each night, tapping at windows and trying to talk to the tasty treats trapped indoors. Here's a season one trailer.
As of this writing I'm halfway through the first season -- I'm susceptible to binges, especially if I have a great deal of things I'm avoiding doing.
I've been enjoying it on the balance, but as with LOST there's definitely the sense that they're piling on and piling on with the twists and mysteries, and very well may not have (satisfying) answers to questions they're raising. The questions have been piling up, and I'm watching to see which of them receive answers by the end of season one. I know in general that as of the early roll-out of season two, there will still be questions raised early in the first season awaiting answers, based on what Pat's told me.
This is TV-MA material, with some sexual matters and shadowy nudity, along with violence and some gore, often of the oddly sanitized "there should be much more blood" variety... though they're fairly generous with blood spatter on walls. This wouldn't be on a broadcast network without some edits.
As something I have already-paid access to through the end of this month, I'm enjoying it. The mysteries draw one in, inviting the making of lists, and resulting fan discussion, the mix of characters and the social dynamics of the two sub-communities keep us watching, listening, and anticipating.
Will I be likely to add an MGM+ subscription in order to reason season two? Probably not. Maybe I'll wait until after season two is completed near the end of June, then add it for a month to binge it -- and watch whatever else they might have of interest. (Based on the MGM+ promo trailer - which is played Before Every Single Episode - I don't know what that might be, because nothing else they're pushing is getting my attention.)
Anyway, knowing how many people have Prime because of their Amazon accounts, and that the clock is ticking on the availability, I wanted to get this in now.
Oh! While I'm here, I'll toss in a couple of genre notes for Tuesday, for people who have TCM.
I often feel quilty when I single an item or two out on TCM, because there's so much there, and I'm frequently failing to mention superior material.
Much of Tuesday, the 22nd, appears to have an effects and fantasy tilt (almost certainly a George Pal theme), including both The Time Machine (1960) and potentially culturally fraught The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) but I'm going to mention the next two items following Lao: (All times Eastern) At 4:30 there's the unfortunate, camp, someththing less than classic Doc Savage: Man of Bronze. It could have been very good, including the visually solid casting of Ron Ely in the lead, but it sure as Hell wasn't. Indications are that part of the reason they kept it roughly as a period piece, in the 1930s, was that they wanted to have Doc and his companions sell the brand of heroism as originally written, and that trying to shift that to more modern times would make it more difficult to avoid being seen as corny. Unfortunately, pretty much everything they did with it leaned not into the potential corn of sincerity, but as a camp send-up that made 1960s TV Batman seem dignified.
Timing was such that an old buddy and my schedules were strongly out of sync around then, with his family relocating a couple times, such that we weren't getting together to go see movies that summer. There's some mercy in that, because especially with the pulp roots this likely would have been something we'd have checked out, and it would have been such a disappointment. Oh, years later we could have laughed at the memory, but for a couple of fourteen year-olds it would have been borderline tragic.
The film effectively buried itself at the box office, soon forgotten by the world as that summer's blockbuster, Jaws, hit theaters later that month.
Immediately after that is Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961), which is one of those films I saw (on tv) early enough to be be drawn into it for the effects and themes, and come away from it with fond, if decidedly fuzzy, memories. A bit of a mess from production onward, it was (broadly) part of the wave of sand and sandal films being made at the time, it's thick with stock footage from Quo Vadis and The Naked Jungle, and props borrowed from such diverse films as Forbidden Planet, The Prodigal, Diane and Ben-Hur. Leonard Maltin marked it as George "Pal's worst film", and that while it had funny moments they weren't on purpose. Even the Paul Frees narration has a hard time selling it.
I have my DVR set to catch both, and I'll mention them next time, especially if one or both films get added to TCM's streaming Watch TCM library for a little while.
I find myself out of touch with when various shows are set to premiere or return, so I'm doing some casting about for them, reaching farther ahead than the usual week for these Friday pieces. I'll lay these out by date as best I can.
Something that's already just arrived is a five-part documentary series (on Peacock): Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss.
Next
Tuesday, May 23rd, is the big rebranding day for what we've known until
now as HBO Max, it becomes, simply, Max. As the streaming arm of Warner
Bros. Discovery, it's to be a mix of formally scripted shows and the
also-scripted "unscripted" programming that Discovery generally traffics
in. Three new items are set to debut that day:
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, a computer-animated prequel to the 1984 film.
BAMA RUSH: A documentary following four women who attempt to join a sorority at the University of Alabama.
and What Am I Eating? With Zooey Deschanel is a six-part series where host Deschanel attempts to demystify various foods.
I might take a look at the third item, but that's as close to interested I've gotten. Your mileage may vary greatly.
The dystopic science fiction anthology series Black Mirror is set to return to Netflix for a sixth series sometime in June. It'll have five stories, all standalone efforts as always, so they can be watched in any order. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (FX, appearing on Hulu the following day) is set to return for its 16th season starting June 7. It's not currently clear if it'll be 10 episodes, or only 8. Note, too, that after season 14 the show was renewed for a block of four seasons, so it should be sticking around at least through its 18th season. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+) will be returning with a 10-episode second season starting June 15th, running weekly through August 17th. Secret Invasion (Disney+; 6-episode miniseries) the first official series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase 5, is set to begin June 21st. Reaching relatively way off on July 18th, Raylan Givens will be back - this time in Detroit - with Justified: City Primeval as an FX on Hulu effort. Animated spy- (mostly) spoof series Archer will begin its 14th and final season August 30th on FXX, arriving on Hulu the next day. This one's still far enough off that we really don't have even a good teaser trailer.
I'm going to close with three films offered as free for all, sitting over on YouTube.
First is a film shot in 1977, originally intended for theatrical release but instead going straight to cable in June of '78. It's a piece from its own time, and for most people the farther under 50 they are the less likely the faces will pop and the period cultural touches will resonate.
From one perspective, it's a largely plotless (attempt at a) comedy. McGavin plays recently-divorced Michael Nolan, who's been freshly and about as completely as possible been cleaned out by his ex. Indeed, we meet him just as he's exiting the building where the final arrangements were just confirmed, in the company of his own attorney (played by comedic actor and then still well-known co-host of late '60s/early '70s Laugh-In, Dick Martin), who seems terribly unconcerned with his client's ongoing trauma. In short order we see that the man's effectively lost everything except a car he'd gifted his now ex-wife with, which seems to be the one thing she ceded to him in the settlement. Worse, instead of making the payments on it - which he'd been giving her - for months she'd been stashing that cash, too, so now the car is better than $1000 in arrears. Worse, chance finds a young repo agent "Larry" Wilde
(Quick aside: The hard-luck newby falling in with repo agents, and then being shown the ropes, would independently be put to much better use in 1984's Repo Man.)
The movie unfolds, or more accurately unravels, from there, mostly being a mix of lowbrow, slapstick comedy, so, so many vehicle chases and collisions, and sex farces. A very '70s film giving the audience a peek at how bad the '80s would be.
The image I used as the lead this week was the first still I'd seen from the film, and will forever be associated in memory with something one commenter said about McGavin: "He's built like an old leprechaun!" Indeed... indeed he was. Not a turn of phrase that would have come to mind for me, but once having read it I could only agree.
The cast includes Joan Collins (in a prominent role), and various other familiar faces, including Lorraine Gary (who was in the mid-stages of playing Ellen Brody in the soon to be deteriorating Jaws series of films), and Lyle Waggoner (primarily known at the time as being part of The Carol Burnette Show, and playing Steve Trevor on Wonder Woman), who in this film appears credited solely as "Gay Bar Tender," yet another of those touches to remind us of the era.
All of this and more (or is that less? Yeah, this does appear to have been cut down by about 4 minutes from the official run time) in Zero To Sixty (1978)
Then we jump back four years to 1974, and a blaxsploitation, supernatural horror film pulled together to ride the wave of the previous year's The Exorcist, as a woman is possessed by a Yoruba sex spirit. Carol Speed stars as the lead, along with William H.Marshall and Terry Carter, it's Abby (1974 R 89 min)
This was one I don't recall being aware of - if I had been, I've forgotten - but looks like a good one to try out. Indications are that there was more than passing thought that went into this one, including the nature of the spirit they're contending with, and specifics of the Yoruba religion.
Shot in Louisville, KY, and released in U.S. theaters Christmas day 1974, the film was very successful during its brief, month-long run, taking in a reported $4 million against its $100,000 production budget. Unfortunately, it was pulled from theaters when Warner Brothers brought suit against the film's distributor, American International Pictures, claiming copyright violations over The Exorcist.
Either not knowing when to stop, or for the sake of variety, I've added one more.
A tv movie originally aired January 17, 1982, it's based on Ray Bradbury's 1969 "I Sing the Body Electric", which was adapted from the only Twilight Zone screenplay he'd written.
This version is apparently very fondly remembered by many who not only saw it when it aired, but saw it over the years as it was played in many primary school classrooms. I've recently seen fond remembrances both from those who saw it as students, and from now-retired teachers who screened it for their classes. Among other things, this won a Peabody Award. Starring Maureen Stapleton and Edward Herrmann, it's The Electric Grandmother
Ideally this week will have gone better than expected and I'll be home and reasonably happily settling in for the weekend by late Friday afternoon. I needed to give myself as much of an opportunity to relax Thursday night, though, and expect to be tied up in medical matters come Friday morning, so I've gotten this together the previous weekend. Here's hoping we're each in good spaces and states by now, heading into welcome weekends. - Mike
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