Friday Rundown

5 recommendations for this chilly March weekend

WandaVision

I mean, duh.

You’ve been hearing about this one, I’ll bet. This piece from Vox analyzes what has made the show such a phenom and if you’re already hooked and want to switch to analysis mode, that’s where I would go. If you’re new and want to know what the show is all about, the 9 episodes are about 20 minutes long streaming on Disney+ so the best thing you can do for yourself is to order some Chinese takeout, grab a box of tissues, and settle in. It’s the first of a lot of new Marvel content coming in the next two years and a haunting meditation on grief and isolation! Check it out here.

Don’t watch if: you don’t like superhero content or haunting meditations on grief.

Ides of March

They’re coming, after all.

As previously stated in my review of the tv show Scandal, old political thrillers hit differently now but that can make for a nice perspective shift. Ides of March is a 2011 film starring George Clooney, Evan Rachel Wood, and Ryan Gosling (as well as many other fine actors you’ll recognize). It’s a bit of a relic of an earlier time where we felt comfortable indulging in fantasies of dark political hijinks and the honorable men and women who try to reform a bad system. Maybe if we watch enough of these again real politics will become more boring? Watch it here.

Don’t watch if: the first season of House of Cards or Scandal was too much for you or seeing Ryan Gosling will trigger too much yearning.

Hannibal

Because Clarice is not good!

If you listen to as many podcasts as I do, you’ve been bombarded with ads for the new CBS drama Clarice, which takes place a year after the events of Silence of the Lambs. Let me save you some trouble and inform you that Clarice is not good. I suffered through three episodes so you didn’t have to, dear reader. Hannibal, however, is extremely good. Hannibal is a Bryan Fuller show that ran for three seasons from 2013 to 2015 on NBC. It is a prequel to Silence of the Lambs and tells the story of Hannibal and Will Graham before anyone knew what that wily cannibal was up to. It is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, taking huge swings every episode and consistently hitting the proverbial home run. Network television has seldom been so good. This review by The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum will knock your socks off (and helped win her a Pulitzer). Watch it here.

Do not watch if: you don’t have a strong tolerance for gore and violence. This is not a show for everyone. The violence and gore are often poetic and beautiful, but unless you’re willing to sit through a scene where a man is fed his own legs (exquisitely prepared of course), this is not your show.

Dickinson

A lot about bees.

Did you ever imagine to yourself while reading an Emily Dickinson poem in high school how absurdly weird she must have been to know? Most of us have a few Emily snippets rattling around in our heads that slip out into our prose without our consent (ok maybe just me?) but if you really dig into her work beyond the oft-quoted it’s deeply weird and wonderful and goth and imagining her as a teenager up in her room scribbling about death and bees is exactly the kind of content I am here for. Most Dickinson biopics concentrate on her solitude and seriousness but Dickinson finds the key to understanding her in her humor. The show stars Hailee Steinfeld as a teenage Emily and everyone in the show speaks in pseudo-2021 parlance (“Let’s get this party commenced!”). It incorporates magical realism (Wiz Khalifa showing up as Death in episode one) and features gut-busting cameos from actors like John Mulaney (as Thoreau) and Zosia Mamet (as Louisa May Alcott omg). It just wrapped its second season on AppleTV+ and is pretty perfect! Watch it here.

Don’t watch if: you don’t like Emily Dickinson I guess? Honestly, this might make you like Emily Dickinson so maybe ignore that. There are a lot of literary in-jokes in this series that might annoy you if you aren’t a reader, though.

Miss Scarlet and the Duke

It’s cozy British mystery time.

I’ve been a bit hard on you all with my inaugural Friday recommendations newsletter. These are all good but they’re none of them exactly cozy fun watches. So my final gift to you is Miss Scarlet and the Duke, a show so harmless and cozy it is guaranteed to make you forget your troubles and think only of the flirty banter between a spunky adorable female detective and a grizzled sarcastic male detective in Victorian London. I have my own issues with Masterpiece pushing their content further and further into the twee realm of tea cozies and very clean Victorians and winsome Scottish veterinarians but also who am I to talk?! I watched this show and I enjoyed it! I’ve been told that is actually a sufficient and totally fine reaction to a piece of media! Is it going to shake the heavens with its acting or dialogue or costume design? No! But it is cozy and that’s absolutely fine right now. Watch it here.

Don’t watch if: you don’t like cozy British mysteries or Victorian detective melodrama, in which case where is your heart you bastard?