But there were a few things worth mentioning, many of which we’ve covered on this site. This is the Official Josie Kafka List of Pretty Good TV©:
True Detective: Night Country. I loved Season One. I hated Season Two so much that I skipped Season Three. The buzz around Night Country convinced me to give it a try, and it was everything I didn’t know I needed: a female-focused, semi-mystical show that subverts scientific authoritarianism in the name of Indigenous resistance.
Jodie Foster is always amazing, but Kali Reis held my attention throughout. The showrunner, Issa López, is apparently working with Noah Hawley on something, and I’m very excited to see how that turns out. (Yes, I later watched Season Three and really liked it. Thank you, Logan!)
(Random sidenote: looking up López’s work and then clicking on Hawley’s name led me to discover that he did the show The Unusuals, an offbeat cop show with Jeremy Renner and Harold Perrineau, among others. Have any of you watched it?)
Fallout. I don’t play video games, but people I trust told me to watch this, and when I realized Michael Emerson had a role, I went all-in. A post-nuclear apocalypse show that manages to be both heartfelt and deeply ironic, all set in the wasteland we all know is inevitable? And it’s got Kyle McLachlan? Amazing.
Kaos. Speaking of Harold Perrineau: his daughter is one of the stars of this short-lived Netflix series about the modern-day world if the Greek gods were real, and just as mean as in the old stories. Jeff Goldblum is an age-obsessed Zeus, Stephen Dillane (Stannis Baratheon!) is a deadpan Prometheus, Aurora Perrineau is Eurydice, Misia Butler is Caeneus, and every single one of them is wonderful.
The show’s pacing is a bit odd, I will admit. It almost works best if you don’t sit down to watch an entire episode—I kept watching two-thirds of an episode, or one-and-a-half episodes, since the natural breaks weren’t where I expected them to be. But any show with Eddie Izzard as one of the Fates and Matt Fraser as Daedelus is worth your time, even though Netflix canceled with all the cruelty of a bitter Titan struggling to hold on to relevance.
Black Doves and Giri/Haji. The former premiered just a few weeks ago, the latter back in 2019. I’m completely in love with showrunner Joe Barton’s approach and intend to review both of these shows very soon. Start with Black Doves: it’s about assassins, spies, Christmas, and found families. It’s got Kiera Knightley and Ben Whishaw.
Killing Eve. I watched this. I couldn’t stop. Was it good? It kept tricking me into thinking it was good. But then each season got a new showrunner, so it’d try to be good in a different way, and none of it was actually, I think, good. Bingeable, yes. Quality? Meh.
Honorable Mentions: I reviewed these shows, so I’ll just link to what I said about them. If you haven’t tried The Tourist yet, then we need to have a serious talk.
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Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
Every time I see Kaos like that I think of the bad guys in 'Get Smart', although I haven't watched that in years!
ReplyDeleteI do play video games, in fact video games and board games eat up easily 75% or more of my leisure time, but never have been a huge Fallout fan, although especially the debacle that is Fallout 76.
Josie, an interesting list, and most of these I missed. I liked Kaos a lot, but I hated the ending, and I'll admit the descriptions of Fallout are grossing me out so I haven't tried it. I'm looking forward to Black Doves.
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