Happy New Year! Here’s what I’m thinking about for the first two months:
True Detective: Night Country (Max): My mileage has varied on the loosely connected True Detective installations. I tend to agree with Emily Nussbaum’s review of season one, which roughly boils down to “too many men talking too much nonsense and too many dead naked women on display.” Each season has its strengths, including its wonderful actors, but every season also has serious flaws that threaten my enjoyment. I don’t think I every trust this show, at the end of the day, but I do keep coming back to it. This season, many of the people I blame for its flaws have exited and several people have entered the picture I would trust with my tv-watching life (Barry Jenkins foremost).
Until this premieres on January 14, consider watching the most recent season, starring Mahershala Ali.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Amazon): People often ask me what Phoebe Waller-Bridge is doing with her career and I really don’t know! I do know that I probably wouldn’t have been wildly interested in this remake if she hadn’t originally been attached to it. Remake fatigue is so prevalent as to be almost boring to mention these days, and although the original film is very fun, I wouldn’t have said there was a vast contingent crying on their knees for a limited series remake version. And yet, here we are, with Maya Erskine and Donald Glover playing our main couple. One can only hope some whiff of Waller-Bridge’s genius remains.
Until this premieres on February 2, consider watching the original movie, which really holds up.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix): I love the original series deeply, which means any remake is terribly scary to contemplate. Pair that with the fact they’re attempting to make a live action remake AND that one was already made to universal boos, and this is in no way a full throated recommendation from me. And yet, hope springs eternal. The story is incredible and although it is very difficult to convert an animated piece of content to a live action one, when it’s done well it can really provide a new window into the story. So I invite you to watch this with me, covers pulled up to our noses, desperate hope in our eyes.
Until this premieres on February 22, watch the original series on Netflix. Starting your new year with a rewatch or a first watch of such a wonderful series is a great way to kick off 2024.
Shōgun (FX): And lo, we come to our first series recommendation that isn’t a remake or continuation of an existing series. Just kidding, this is from a 1975 novel, but as that’s as close as we’re going to get to an original idea on this list, we’ll take it. This is a new limited series for FX set in 1600 Japan and focuses on the beginnings of a civil war. The series stars primarily Japanese actors and looks to at least partially be in Japanese, so this firmly falls in the category of can’t look at your phone, which I always count as a positive. It will likely be striving for awards alongside True Detective, so if you’re looking to continue calling this the golden age of television, check it out.
Until this premieres on February 27, consider watching some Miyazaki movies, which are also concerned with the tolls of war and are probably just dark enough to get you ready for some live action war stories.
Tokyo Vice season two (Max): I really liked season one of this show and wasn’t entirely certain we were going to get a second season, so I highly recommend you spend time getting to know it. Season one ran very under the radar, which surprised me. It stars Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, two wonderful actors who are at least pretty well known to audiences (very much so for Elgort). It is about an American journalist living in Japan in the late 90s and is based on a memoir of the same name. He begins to investigate a series of deaths he believes to be murders by the yakuza, and encounters many challenges in trying to infiltrate both the police department and the Japanese underworld. This series really opens a world to the viewer they may not know at all, and has been praised by Japanese audiences for its accuracy.
Until this premieres sometime in February check out season one.