Category: Reviews of Television Shows

Gotham Knights: Created by Natalie Abrams, Chad Fiveash, James Patrick Stoteraux. With Oscar Morgan, Olivia Rose Keegan, Navia Ziraili Robinson, Fallon Smythe. Bruce Wayne is murdered and his adopted son forges an alliance with the children of Batman’s enemies. As the city becomes more dangerous, these mismatched fugitives will become its next generation of saviors, known as the Gotham Knights. Only lasted a single season on the tail end of the CW comic book infatuation in early 2023, “Gotham Knights” does what so many other Batman related properties have done, which is to immediately remove the caped crusader from the...

What If…?: With Jeffrey Wright, Terri Douglas, Matthew Wood, Robin Atkin Downes. Exploring pivotal moments from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and turning them on their head, leading the audience into uncharted territory. This is some of the best content from Marvel in the last few years, from the great music, to the fantastic action, to stories and new characters that are both captivating and have a strong future in the franchise. It’s a shame that the the best stuff is animated, but at least we’re getting great stuff still. Buy On Amazon!

Upload: Created by Greg Daniels. With Robbie Amell, Andy Allo, Allegra Edwards, Zainab Johnson. A man is able to choose his own afterlife after his untimely death by having his consciousness uploaded into a virtual world. As he gets used to his new life and befriends his angel (real world handler), questions about his death arise. Continues it’s pattern of being a sophisticated show that’s not taking it’s core concept serious enough for my tastes, but has just enough wit and humor to keep me coming back for more. Buy On Amazon!

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Created by Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland. With John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly, Abbie Cornish. Up-and-coming CIA analyst, Jack Ryan, is thrust into dangerous field assignments. A delightfully small stakes but still entertaining season with great action, great acting, and a definite eating. It’s a shame they still haven’t figured out how to make their fake weapon shots look like more realistic, but that’s the current movie climate we find ourselves in. A solid series that’s easily bingable. Buy On Amazon!

The Wheel of Time: Created by Rafe Judkins. With Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney, Zoë Robins, Madeleine Madden. Set in a high fantasy world where magic exists, but only some can access it, a woman named Moiraine crosses paths with five young men and women. This sparks a dangerous, world-spanning journey. Based on the book series by Robert Jordan. The first season was good enough to get me to watch the second and the second is just good enough to get me to watch the third, which feels like a backhanded compliment, but I honestly found the show has way too...

Beacon 23: Created by Zak Penn. With Lena Headey, Stephan James, Wade Bogert-O’Brien, Natasha Mumba. A man living in the 23rd Century works at a remote “lighthouse” in space that serves as a beacon to help passing ships. I had no clue that MGM had their own streaming service and I don’t think I knew that Lena Headey was doing a hard science fiction series until about a week before it started. It’s a well done short season with one or two sets, but with multiple groups of actors, I don’t think there was a single episode where it was...

Faraway Downs: With Shea Adams, Eddie Baroo, Ray Barrett, Tony Barry. An aristocrat, Sarah has a cattle station in Australia. Following death of her husband, a barons plots to take her land but she joins forces with cattle drover Jackman to protect her station. it’s been a bit since I’ve seen the original movie, but this episodic version of the story is different in great ways, like how each episode has a real focus, but worse in others, like that new theme song that you get to listen to several times over. It’s worth checking out, especially if you already...

The Continental: From the World of John Wick: Created by Greg Coolidge, Shawn Simmons, Kirk Ward. With Mel Gibson, Colin Woodell, Mishel Prada, Hubert Point-Du Jour. Set in 1970s New York City, The Continental explores the origin of the iconic hotel-for-assassins centerpiece of the John Wick universe seen through the eyes and action of a young Winston Scott. Overladen with CGI sets, CGI action, and CGI weapons, this series is set in an uninteresting time period and featured characters that I just didn’t find interesting at all. I know that the Wick franchise relies heavily on CGI elements, particularly the...

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: With Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Satya Bhabha, Kieran Culkin. A 20-something Toronto indie rocker’s adventures in getting and keeping jobs, avoiding being kicked out of his apartment, and surviving encounters with the seven evil exes of the new girl in town on whom he has a crush. A sorta sequel / parallel story to the 2010 live active film, features the same cast but this time it’s all animated to great effect. There’s some well done misdirection and welcome modifications to the story you think you’re getting, with animation that’s rough around all the right...

In the early 21st century, mankind has colonized the oceans. The United Earth Oceans Organization enlists Captain Nathan Bridger and the submarine seaQuest DSV to keep the peace and explore the last frontier on Earth. Seaquest was an action adventure / fantasy science fiction / military science fiction series that ran from 1993 – 1996 for three seasons, all of which were as different from each other as they could be and still be part of a serialize television show. The first two seasons featured Roy Scheider of “Jaws” fame as the captain of the titular submarine, the beautiful Stacy...

Loki: Created by Michael Waldron. With Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Wunmi Mosaku. The mercurial villain Loki resumes his role as the God of Mischief in a new series that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.” Now that there’s over 12 hours of dedicated Loki content, I think we can fully say that he’s on the same level as Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America. After the final episode of Season Two, I think I can say that they’ve captured the lightning in the bottle that I so enjoyed from Endgame and while this isn’t technically...

Star Trek: Prodigy: Created by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman. With Rylee Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, Brett Gray, Angus Imrie. A group of enslaved teenagers steal a derelict Starfleet vessel to escape and explore the galaxy. The second half the first season was released a while ago on BR but I’m just now getting around to watching it on disc instead of streaming and there’s not much difference between the two. This second half is a better watch than the first half with some amazing spaceship content that blew me away the first time I watched it and it held up...

Gen V: Created by Evan Goldberg, Eric Kripke, Craig Rosenberg. With Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Lizze Broadway, Maddie Phillips. From the world of “The Boys” comes “Gen V,” which explores the first generation of superheroes to know that their super powers are from Compound V. These heroes put their physical and moral boundaries to the test competing for the school’s top ranking. If there was any doubt that they were going to be able to keep up the quality from the transition from “The Boys” to “Gen V”, let me assure you, this is among the best content in that...

Ms. Marvel: Created by Bisha K. Ali. With Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Zenobia Shroff, Yasmeen Fletcher. Kamala, a superhero fan with an imagination–particularly when it comes to Captain Marvel–feels like she doesn’t fit in at school and sometimes even at home, that is until she gets superpowers like the heroes she admires. Doing a quick rewatch to remind me how much I loved the character, the actor, and just about everything about this show. i think I like it even more this second time around and I really liked it the first time. Now it’s on to Secret Wars, maybe...

Babylon 5: Created by J. Michael Straczynski. With Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Stephen Furst, Andreas Katsulas. In the mid 23rd century, the Earth Alliance space station Babylon 5, located in neutral territory, is a major focal point for political intrigue, racial tensions and various wars over the course of five years. With a new movie out (“The Road Home”) I figured I’d check out my purchased copy of B5 on Vudu, but then I remembered that they refused to upgrade it to HD when I had purchased it just days before the HD version dropped, so instead I ended up...

Foundation: Created by Josh Friedman, David S. Goyer. With Jared Harris, Lou Llobell, Leah Harvey, Terrence Mann. A complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. There’s some really amazing space stuff happening in this second season and they’ve worked their way around the obvious issues of adapting a book series set over the span of thousands of years to the realities of doing a long form television show with actors that need to be contracted for more than just a couple episodes. They’ve luckily avoided the weird shift...

Jen is a self-aware young woman who lives in a world where everybody except her has a superpower. So much different than what I thought I was in for, but in a fun and good way. The show has a high enough budget and whimsical enough premise that the lack of super heroics in a series about people with super powers isn’t at all noticeable. In fact, like all good shows, this is more about the personal journey than it is about the power set of the main characters. Buy On Amazon!

American college football coach Ted Lasso heads to London to manage AFC Richmond, a struggling English Premier League football team. This is the third and final season and honestly I’m not sure if my heart would have been able to handle any more than the 12 episodes we got. The series already had a reputation for being emotionally raw and they went all in for the ending of the show with topics ranging from anxiety to depression to thruples to racist fans to bigots on and off the field to just being plain old homesick and needing a change of...

A look at the formative years of superstar Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as he grows up through life. This was ultimately the final season of the show, but what a great season it was. The story set in the future was pretty mediocre, but the stuff in the past was fantastic. I’ll always be grateful to the show for introducing me to both Stacey Leilua and Joseph Lee Anderson who played The Rock’s parents. Buy On Amazon!

Follows a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. While it’s much better than it has any right to be, it’s still a streaming only series based on a series of games that had a plot of “cars with guns shoot at each other in an arena”, so any amount of plot in the TV show is going to outshine the barebones premise of the classic games, of which I remember more for their ads than the gameplay. I honestly don’t even know if...

Men and women live in a giant silo underground with several regulations which they believe are in place to protect them from the toxic and ruined world on the surface. Based on a book series of the same name, the basic premise of a group of people living underground being lied to by the people in power is familiar enough (City of Ember, Logan’s Run) that the only real question I have is what will they find when they eventually get out of the vault? In this case it wasn’t something that I really expected but fell in line with...

After her husband leaves her, young mother of two Miriam “Midge” Maisel discovers that she has a talent for stand-up comedy. Could this be her calling? I think this series could have gone for another 5 years and still be one of the best comedies on television, but it’s nice to see them go out on an exceptionally high note. This final season wrapped up a bucket load of emotional loose ends and opened up another bucket load worth, but we had 5 good seasons that all stand on their own and make for an enjoyable and eminently watchable series....

Fury and Talos try to stop the Skrulls who have infiltrated the highest spheres of the Marvel Universe. “A six hour mini series that should have been a two hour movie” is how I’m seeing it described on the blogosphere and I agree, there’s way too much padding, too little story, and some of the action beats just didn’t make sense to me. There’s also some really open questions about who was a skrull and when they were switched out, questions that were not answered by the end of the series and will likely never be touched on by the...

Doctors and nurses at the intensive care unit of a New Orleans hospital struggle with treating patients during Hurricane Katrina when the facility is without power for 5 days. This is a series that spends 5 episodes outlining how absolutely terrible and dire the situation was at a hospital with no power, no food, no water, no real security, and no plan to get patients out locally and no real support from their corporate offices, then turns around and spends another 3 episodes vilifying a single doctor for the decisions that she may or may not have made during the...

Arnold: With Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Danny DeVito. Follows the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, from his days of lifting weights to his successes in Hollywood, his time serving as governor of California, and both the joys and volatility of his family life. Told in three parts, this is a glowing documentary mini series about the trials and triumphs of Arnold Schwarzenegger, as told by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with interviews of people that were close to him during his life. It doesn’t necessarily shy away from the negatives, but they’re clearly stated, not lingered on, then moved on from. All...

Star Trek: Short Treks: Created by Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, Akiva Goldsman. With Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Jenette Goldstein. A series of stand-alone short films featuring characters and storylines from Star Trek: Discovery (2017). I had completely forgotten about these but saw them for $20 on Amazon and boy I’m happy I grabbed them. The shorts themselves are all pretty ok, ranging from pretty silly to pretty good, but what really makes them worth my time are the behind the scenes and interviews that go along with nearly all of them. Buy On Amazon!

Titans: Created by Greg Berlanti, Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns. With Brenton Thwaites, Anna Diop, Ryan Potter, Teagan Croft. Dick and Rachel, a girl possessed by a strange darkness, get embroiled in a conspiracy that could bring Hell on Earth. Joining them along the way are the hot-headed Starfire and lovable Beast Boy. Together they become a team of heroes. A good ending for an ok series that never really hit the highs that I had hoped for, but never hit the lows that many other comic shows have fallen to recently. I was particularly impressed with the end of the...

Star Trek: Prodigy: Created by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman. With Rylee Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, Brett Gray, Angus Imrie. A group of enslaved teenagers steal a derelict Starfleet vessel to escape and explore the galaxy. It’s only the first 10 episodes, but what a great set of episodes they are! There’s a ton of really weird stuff going on in the real world about the show’s future, but for my money this is some of the best Trek out there. Buy On Amazon!

Barry: Created by Alec Berg, Bill Hader. With Bill Hader, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan. A hit man from the Midwest moves to Los Angeles and gets caught up in the city’s theatre arts scene. This final season was good, but completely unfulfilling for me. Bill Hader took the middling concept of a ex military guy struggling to adapt to civilian life and choosing violence into realms that I don’t think that particular genre has gone before. I didn’t really care for where they ended up, but it was one hell of a journey to get there. Buy On...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet. With Melissa Navia, Christina Chong, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck. A prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, the show follows the crew of the USS Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike. With season 2 starting up in just a few days, I figured I’d go back through season 1 to remind myself how utterly amazing it ended up being and how big my expectations are for the future of this franchise. It’s a short season with only 10 episodes and there isn’t a single stinker in the whole...

Star Wars: Visions: With Michael Sinterniklaas, Neil Kaplan, Adam Sietz, JP Karliak. Star Wars anthology series that will see some of the world’s best anime creators bring their talent to this beloved universe. > Sith – A former Sith apprentice, leading a peaceful, but isolated life, is confronted by the past when her old master tracks her down. This one has some really trippy visuals and a great story > Screecher’s Reach – A young girl, seeking reprieve from her days in a rural workhouse, discovers a legendary haunted cave with her friends. The cave’s dark pull will change the...

The Mandalorian: Created by Jon Favreau. With Pedro Pascal, Chris Bartlett, Katee Sackhoff, Carl Weathers. The travels of a lone bounty hunter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic. The strongest season of one of the strongest science fiction series currently on tv. I loved nearly every moment of season three and really look forward to what season 4 brings. Of course, there’s going to be like two other series between now and then, so I’m looking forward to that too. Buy On Amazon!

Star Trek: Picard: Created by Kirsten Beyer, Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman. With Patrick Stewart, Michelle Hurd, Jeri Ryan, Alison Pill. Follow-up series to Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) that centers on Jean-Luc Picard in the next chapter of his life. Season three has come and gone and while it was 100% fan service with a heaping helping of nostalgia, it worked for me in most regards. I still have some issues with the naming of the final ship seen, and it felt silly to have that “old friend” show up in the...

Primal: Created by Genndy Tartakovsky. With Aaron LaPlante, Laëtitia Eïdo, Fred Tatasciore, Imari Williams. A caveman and a dinosaur bond over shared tragedy and work together to survive in a perilous prehistoric world. I somehow never reviewed this show, and now that it’s over I fully regret not mentioning every season. It’s a show about a guy that loses everything, who then finds a companion to keep him company, a companion that had a similar loss and is a lot more bitey about the situation. I say it’s over, and maybe the main storyline is, but from what I’m hearing...

Tulsa King: Created by Taylor Sheridan. With Sylvester Stallone, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Jay Will. Following his release from prison, Mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi is exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he builds a new criminal empire with a group of unlikely characters. All the big movie stars are moving from the silver screen to the boob tube and Sly’s move has been one of the better ones. It’s essentially a wise guy fish out of water type of story, just that this wise guy isn’t really all that fishy at all and is actually pretty smart about the...

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Created by Jeffrey M. Howard, Kate Kondell, Steve Loter. With Diamond White, Fred Tatasciore, Alfre Woodard, Libe Barer. After 13-year-old super-genius Lunella accidentally brings ten-ton T-Rex, Devil Dinosaur into present-day New York City via a time vortex, the duo works together to protect the city’s Lower East Side from danger. With animation that seems to be inspired by the Spider-verse and character designs that resemble Brats dolls, I was both interested and leery of this cartoon series, though it turns out that it’s a perfectly fine series that I’m not really in the target...

The Ark: Created by Dean Devlin. With Christie Burke, Reece Ritchie, Richard Fleeshman, Stacey Read. Follows the remaining crew of a spacecraft known as Ark One, who must become the best versions of themselves to stay on course and survive after experiencing a catastrophic event that caused massive destruction and loss of life. This feels equal parts “Origin” and “Ascension” but never really gets it’s feet under it, at least not in the first couple episodes I watched. There’s a paradox in the series with some heavy science fiction, which I appreciate, but then a complete lack of respect for...

Glimpse: Directed by Michael Robison. With Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Erica Cerra. Carter and Jo try out Zane’s new high-powered risk assessment system, but find that even it may not be a match for the dangerous level of competition among Eureka’s scientists. I bought the entire blue ray set of the show “Eureka” just to have the one episode that Stan Lee guest starred it. I had watched the entire thing back when it was originally airing and really enjoyed it, so it was nice to revisit the series and remember how good it was. The show follows...

Lexx: Created by Jeffrey Hirschfield, Paul Donovan, Lex Gigeroff. With Brian Downey, Michael McManus, Jeffrey Hirschfield, Xenia Seeberg. A group of disparate fugitives from an interplanetary tyranny find themselves in control of a massively powerful starship. I really wanted to finish this, but I just couldnt’ get through the modified version of the show that came after the first few tv movies and they swapped out the main lead actress. Not that it was the actress that was the problem, but it was the writing that just changed course completely and went from a edgy unique science fiction to standard...

Fleishman Is in Trouble: With Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan, Adam Brody. Toby Fleishman knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost 15 years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, and the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. I honestly thought this was going to be crazier than what it ended up being, but there’s a ton of spoilers involved in talking about that situation, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you’re in the mood to really ruin your mood, watch the 8 episodes first, then...

Star Trek: Enterprise: Created by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga. With Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating. A century before Captain Kirk’s five-year mission, Jonathan Archer captains the United Earth ship Enterprise during the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation. I’ve struggled through yet another viewing of the entire series, this time staying 100% awake for 100% of the episodes, mostly because we were watching one or two episodes a night with dinner. It’s a shame the series never really got the resolution that I rightly deserved, as that...

Wednesday: Created by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar. With Jenna Ortega, Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane. Follows Wednesday Addams’ years as a student, when she attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart and solve the mystery that embroiled her parents. A tv show about a character that was in a couple movies that were based on a tv show which in turn was based on a cult comic series. It’s good though! Not as good as I was lead to believe, but still eminently watchable and entertaining. Buy On Amazon!

Stargirl: Created by Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti. With Brec Bassinger, Trae Romano, Amy Smart, Luke Wilson. Teenager Courtney Whitmore joins the Justice Society of America. Based on the character from DC Comics. Yet another satisfying season, it’s a shame this is it for the show, but I’m happy they went out on top. I’ll miss seeing Brec grow as a superhero, but I’m sure she has a great career ahead of her. Buy On Amazon!

The Peripheral: With Chloë Grace Moretz, Gary Carr, Jack Reynor, JJ Feild. Set in the future when technology has subtly altered society, a woman discovers a secret connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own. The season isn’t over with yet at the time that I’m writing this, but I’m so happy with what they’re doing so far that I figured I’d throw it out there to suggest that you watch it before the end of the year. It’s included with Amazon Prime and the story is a near future / not so near...

Andor: Created by Tony Gilroy. With Diego Luna, Kyle Soller, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly. Prequel series to Star Wars’ ‘Rogue One’. In an era filled with danger, deception and intrigue, Cassian will embark on the path that is destined to turn him into a Rebel hero. Is this the best Star Wars show that Disney has done since their acquisition of the franchise? Quite possibly yes, with some small caveats: there are no Jedi, there are no Sith, just regular people getting all mixed up with the creeping bureaucratic horrors of the Empire, rebeling in their own small ways that...

Tales of the Jedi: Created by Dave Filoni. With Corey Burton, Ashley Eckstein, Dee Bradley Baker, Ian McDiarmid. It showcases animated shorts that feature Jedi from the prequel era. Entirely way too short, this is a collection of six tangentially related short stories that are all under 20 minutes in length, with quality ranging from “ok” to “oh my”. Obviously I’m head over heels about seeing Ahsoka on screen again, if you like the character as much as I do, you should check these out. Buy On Amazon!

House of the Dragon: Created by Ryan J. Condal, George R.R. Martin. With Rhys Ifans, Matt Smith, Fabien Frankel, Graham McTavish. An internal succession war within House Targaryen at the height of its power, 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen. The first season is done, and boy was I underwhelmed. The CGI was great to middling, the acting was ok to middling, and there were at least 3 massive time jumps, one of which involved replacing many of the main leads, a decision that had me scratching my head. It took me right out of the show and...

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Created by Jessica Gao. With Tatiana Maslany, Ginger Gonzaga, Malia Arrayah, Jameela Jamil. Jennifer Walters navigates the complicated life of a single, 30-something attorney who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered Hulk. If you judge this series on what it set out to do, it did it very well and stuck the landing. I’m not here to judge that though, I’m here to judge the basic premise of the show. In a prefect world, She-hulk could stand on her own story without the meta-meta commentary that’s inherent with the character. I think I would...

See: Created by Steven Knight. With Jason Momoa, Sylvia Hoeks, Hera Hilmar, Christian Camargo. Far in a dystopian future, the human race has lost the sense of sight, and society has had to find new ways to interact, build, hunt, and to survive. All of that is challenged when a set of twins are born with sight. A glorious ending to an amazing series.. That ending unfortunately went about 20 minutes longer than it should have and introduced all sorts of things that I didn’t appreciate, but none the less I still enjoyed the entirety of the series for how...