Recommendations: Week of 11/11/24

What's even on HBO these days?

First, I want to acknowledge what I am not watching on HBO. I have still not seen My Brilliant Friend, The Franchise, or Somebody Somewhere. I do not intend to watch The Penguin (I need to keep Colin Farrell hot in my mind). HBO thinks I should watch Dirty Harry, Krampus, and Now You See Me 2. The algorithm just doesn’t get me, man.

But I have watched three wildly different programs on HBO in recent days that I would like to pass on to you, in case you’re rationing your streaming services and HBO’s turn is coming up soon. So, I give you a sketch comedy, a lush romantic drama, and an Arctic thriller.

It’s Florida, Man: The strange and violent misadventures of the Florida Man are well-known to anyone with the internet or television, but believe me when I say you ain’t seen nothing yet. This anthology series collects real stories of strange happenings in Florida and has famous actors and comedians reenact them while the real participants/victims/perpetrators/unfortunate bystanders narrate them. The show revels in how incredibly weird people are while maintaining a slight distance from the events themselves, allowing for embellishment and interpretation. Think Drunk History but for Craigslist fetishes, alligator incidents, and “professional mermaids.”

Content warning on this: there’s some over-the-top gore that, while comedically effective is also very in your face, so don’t tune in unless you can either handle that or are good at quickly looking away.

Like Water for Chocolate: Based on a 1989 novel by Laura Esquivel, this series from Salma Hayek breathes new life into an already beloved story. There was a well-regarded film in 1993 and by all accounts, this miniseries has remained faithful to the original project. It follows Tita, a young woman who puts her emotions into her cooking. If you eat a quesadilla she’s made while thinking of her lover, you start to believe in the power of love. You eat her sweets and find yourself weeping. When some complications arise between her and the man she loves, her cooking becomes even more infused with her thoughts and feelings. The series utilizes magical realism (a favorite of mine) and is beautifully shot. The lovers are beautiful too, so beautiful they almost look unreal, but the story has a more tragic backdrop as Tita’s lover is a secret freedom fighter in the impending Mexican Revolution.

My only critique of this show is how confusing it can be to follow at times. The storytelling is dreamy and doesn’t always stop to ensure you have a firm grasp on its hand, leaving you wandering a bit before it comes back to pull you along, but it’s so lush and lovely you may find yourself happily drifting in its current (how many metaphors does one sentence need?) There are two episodes up with new ones coming every Sunday.

The Head: There are many shows set in an Arctic somewhere, be it Alaska, Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland… etc. If it is really cold and you can get trapped there without consistent sunlight for months, they’ve made a show about it. There’s something inherently frightening about that scenario and these shows tend to follow a similar pattern in responding to that fear. A detective or detective-like figure comes in to solve a murder or a disappearance and to battle against the disorder that has descended on something that should be orderly. A luxury hotel, a town, a scientific research station: these are human institutions set up along lines of order and safety and against an Arctic backdrop it is even more important that these institutions hold. When something comes in to disrupt them, that order must be restored. But is it possible to ever truly have order in such an inhospitable place? Or has man tread too far beyond where he should go?

This series also features a murder mystery/disappearance when an entire station full of scientists is wiped out, leaving one survivor and a missing wife. the series is violent and somewhat gory, as these tend to be, so if frostbite or ancient Arctic bacteria or polar bears give you the ick, I’d stay away. But if you’re ready to let a chill run up your spine, this is a great place to start.