Category Archives: Reviews

Television in the Time of COVID

Tiger King, The Queen’s Gambit

The pandemic put the movie industry on ice. But it has set TV on fire.

From Tiger King to The Queen’s Gambit, COVID has treated the small screen like royalty. Television viewing nationwide increased for the first time in nine years in 2020. Warner Bros. announced it was turning its 2021 film slate into movies of the week airing on HBO Max (though Warners will still toss flicks to the few theater chains still dog paddling).

That doesn’t mean all was right on the boob tube last year. Sports have lost their competitive zeal, and some game shows simply don’t translate without a live audience.

Here, then, are the TV lab reports from from some iconic shows facing pandemic programming.

Sports Athletics saw some truly dramatic storylines in 2020, including LeBron James becoming the first NBA player to win championships with three teams and the Cleveland Browns winning their first football playoff game since, well, maybe leather.

Baltimore Ravens: Overreaction Monday - Browns Got Lucky, Actually...

But there’s no getting around it: Pro sports are just glamorous scrimmages without crowds. Part of every athletes’ measure is the ability to perform the craft in public. Otherwise, you’re just a musician with agoraphobia; the talent may be there, but you gotta show the guts.

dwarfishly Scripted television Screenplays — particularly dramatic ones — felt as rare as toilet paper last year. Most series simply weren’t (aren’t) ready to reflect a society forced to wear a mask (after all, COVID hides your dimples). The upside is that those who did venture out, like Fargo and Better Call Saul, felt like oases in ash.

Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk in “Better Call Saul,” the “Breaking Bad” prequel series.
Better Call Saul

Game shows Here’s where TV went manic.

For the sake of reporting I swear! I looked up the opening minuts of The Bachelor on Comcast’s On-Demand. I know it’s been ABC’s (thus Disney’s) shinier mantle piece for a quarter-century, where it has hovered about the top 10.

I don’t know who the bachelor is, I don’t know who Miss Etiquette is. But the series begins with Sweet Polly Purebread announcing to the bachelor, with her hand behind her back: “The pandemic was really hard on me, but I got through the tough times with this,” producing a dildo.

Where to begin? Howbout: Was? Is the pandemic over if you find true love? And what did you want him to do with that? Wouldn’t you have been concerned if, instead of laughing, he’d said, “Oh, thanks! Mine broke!”

Clearly, some shows need to be put into a medically-induced coma until the storm passes.

Bachelor' Premiere: Matt James on Being Distracted by a 'Big Dildo' (Exclusive) | Entertainment Tonight
Miss Etiquette and The Bachelor

You have to feel for The Price is Right. Sure, Drew Carey looks like he’s about to mail bombs from a woodshed, but they’re trying. But it doesn’t feel the same without your second-cousin Terry shouting at you that you’re paying too much for sandwich bags.

The Price Is Right At Night's Drew Carey Talks COVID-19 Changes, Including His New Beard - CINEMABLEND
Drew Carey

Some TV hosts seem utterly unfazed by a worldwide plague. Judge Judy may be better in a pandemic. She looks a lot like the New York city judge featured on 60 Minutes because of her straight talk to lawyers and laymen alike. And the show benefits without a courtroom to ooh and ahh at courtroom antics, which Judith Sheindlin always detested, anyway.

Judith Sheindlin and her bailiff, Petri Hawkins Byrd, in 1997, during the first season of ‘‘Judge Judy.’’
Judge Judy and Officer Byrd

Some shows are not only pandemic-proof; they’re people-proof. Battlebots may be a peek into an AI future. If anything, the show drags to a near-standstill when the humans cackle about what’s at stake in the pursuit of the show’s “Giant Nut” championship.

BattleBots crowns a new champion - Nerd Reactor
The Giant Nut

So what does that mean for viewing in ’21? At least on the news front, things are going to get pretty boring. Already, the 24/7s are replaying footage from the Capitol insurrection as if they were seeing Charlie Bit My Finger for the first time. As much as they bitch about inciting unrest, CNN and MSNBC need to examine their stoking insistence to highlight lowlifes. Saul is entering its final season, and Fargo has no plans in place for a fifth season.

But COVID, which has proved to be a pandemic that teaches us what we can live without, has also improved some of the things we hold dear. Phone calls now really are a way to reach out and touch someone. Zoom has strengthened enumerable family relationships. Drive-ins are back. Dog shelters aren’t teeming with the abandoned and abused. Imagine what a hug is going to feel like again.

From surface to soul, COVID has been a human cleansing. If TV is a reflection of — or reaction to — that profound metamorphosis, it will see a new heyday. Just pass on the dildos.

Tracking ‘The Night Stalker’

Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker - Crime Museum

Maybe it’s the sun, but California is a magnet for serial killers. The Zodiac Killer, The Hillside Strangler, The Manson Family; all called the Golden State home.

But non were as chilling as The Night Stalker.

The Night Stalker is one of the most terrifying serial killers in American history. Typically, psychopathic killers follow a pattern that can make them relatively predictable.

But Richard Ramirez, who would become dubbed the Night Stalker in the press, was a tornado of random violence. Murders, assaults, rapes, kidnappings—he terrorized the West Coast in 1984 and 1985, and was ultimately convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault, and 14 counts of burglary, although those are probably only a fraction of his actual crimes.

His rampage became known around the world but, the new Netflix series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer re-frames the Ramirez story through the prism of those who chased and ran from him. And while Stalker can feel a bit like a Lifetime TV movie, it aptly documents a crime spree that would not only freeze the state; it transfixed a nation.

Stalker starts with a montage that sets the tone for Los Angeles in the 1980s, painting it as one of the most vibrant communities in the world, but possessing a criminal underbelly that emerged after dark.

The star of the docu=series is Detective Gil Carrillo, who was an inexperienced kid cop when he led the investigation into the Night Stalker crimes with legendary detective Frank Salerno, who broke the Hillside Strangler case and is an eloquent interview here. Their recollections of tips, leads and almost-hads give the film its police-procedural edge.

Too bad director Tiller Russell didn’t use their narrative to lead into an examination of the killer himself. Ramirez, who granted a handful of prison interview before his death from cancer in 2013, is given little attention in the film — just the final chapter in a four-piece series. It’s not enough, and the film would have been better served if Ramirez, a professed Satanist and fan of AC/DC, had been the center of at least the last two chapter.

It doesn’t completely derail Stalker, which has some binge-worthy moments, including the cliffhanger end of every episode.

Perhaps, though, this is the fitting film for the Ramirez case, which ended in a death sentence that was never carried out.

The movie feels similar: A relief that it wasn’t worse, but a shame it didn’t go farther.

The Rock Docs of 2020

Music documentaries

Sure, 2020 has done its damndest to ruin everyone’s year. But the calendar wasn’t cruel to everyone; just ask the Supreme Court lawyers representing equal LGBTQ rights.

And sure, COVID pretty much screwed over the notion of concerts and live music. But that hasn’t stopped rock gods from reigning o’er a world in need of a beat. Here are some of the rock documentaries that landed this year, despite a pandemic ruling the tarmac:

  • Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys Story
Beastie Boys Story - Apple TV+ Press

Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys tell Spike Jonze an intimate, personal story of their band, the late Mike Yauch and their 40 years of friendship together.

  • David Byrne, David Byrne’s America Utopia
David Byrne

Spike Lee documents the former Talking Heads frontman’s 2019 Broadway show, based on his recent album and tour of the same name.

  • Nick Cave, Idiot Prayer
Nick Cave

Nick Cave performs solo at the piano, at Alexandra Palace, playing songs from his extensive catalog, and including rare tracks that most fans will be hearing for the first time.

  • Billie Holiday, Billie
Billie Holiday Documentary Chronicles Two Lives

A documentary biopic of the great and mysterious jazz singer, whose death was ruled a suicide in 1978.

  • Shannon Hoon, All I Can Say
Watch Documentary About Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon Directed By Danny Clinch

An archive of ’90s culture and a philosophical study of fame via the intimate video-diary of Shannon Hoon, the late lead singer of alt-rock band Blind Melon.

  • Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You
Bruce Springsteen's Letter To You

Behind-the-scenes look at Springsteen’s creative process with full performances from The E Street Band, in-studio footage, and never-before-seen archival material.

  • Frank Zappa, Zappa
Zappa': See Trailer for 'Definitive' Doc About Unclassifiable Artist - Rolling Stone

An in-depth look into the life and work of musician Frank Zappa, from rock star to congressional educator.