Over the holidays Roku had a subscription sale, as did a few other streaming channels, some of them even offering up discounts on the ad free versions of their services… I have another post brewing about how services treat ads… which meant that during that happy few days off of work between Christmas and New Years where time had no meaning and we seemed to live in a continuous state of napping, snacking, and watching TV… kind of like that Black Mirror episode with John Hamm, only good… we watched a lot of TV.
Warning – AI Detected
Since I was in the zone where I had to use the block editor when I started this post I had access to all the AI enhancements WP.com has added… another endorsement of the classic editor in my world view… and on parsing this post, the above is what it gave me as a featured image. For the record, we rarely have that many containers of popcorn strewn about the family room and our TV isn’t nearly that big.
This post also took a bit of time to bring together in large part because I had to actually remember what we watched, a task not enhanced by that timeless state during the holidays. At some point I might write a post about the shows we started and did not finish, if only because every service likes to encourage us to continue, so they are easy to find!
Anyway, here in the cold reality of the new year I think this is mostly what we watched… though I’ll probably remember something else later.
The Penguin – Max
I wasn’t that interested in this, but Max had a $3 a month for 3 months sale and I was keen to see Dune Prophecy, but after that we had almost 3 months left to go when my wife suggested this, having heard from a friend that it was good.
I was personally uninterested in yet another telling of yet another Batman origin story, but having my wife on board… and getting her to commit can be an issue as she has much higher standards than I… was the selling point.
And it was pretty good. I mean, I remain aggressively disinterested in the city of Gotham and its various heroes and villains, plus this was a filler between The Batman and the next movie in the current series (more people have played Batman than been president in my adult life), which puts this reboot in danger of requiring people to have watched the show in order to get the next movie, but for what it was, it was well done.
The most difficult/amazing bit is that it was Colin Farrell under all that makeup and prosthesis stuff. Otherwise it tells the tale of Oswald Cobb and his life of crime where he is in way over his head and is constantly having to improvise and adapt to survive. His name is on the title card… sort of… only a couple of people call him The Penguin and it is to insult him… so he gets through to the end. But if you’re looking for billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman to show up, you’ll have to wait for the next film. All you get here is a brief glimpse of the Bat Signal.
Cross – Prime Video
Handsome, lantern jawed Alex Cross, a DC homicide detective and forensic psychologist, stumbles on to then plays a cat and mouse game with a serial killed who is always a step or two ahead of him. Based on a James Patterson novel, it does keep you engaged even if you do eventually begin to expect that every thing Cross tries will be somehow thwarted by the killer… up until the final episode at least. A billionaire doesn’t get away with it, so extra points for that even it it marks it as complete fiction.
The Madness – Netflix
Handsome, lantern jawed Muncie Daniels, a journalist and TV political pundit, stumbles on to then plays a cat and mouse game with a serial killer… no, wait… was it a serial killer? No, I think it was a dark corporate conspiracy run by a billionaire who attempts to frame Muncie which leads to all sorts of revelations as the conspiracy is always a step or two ahead of him. There was a serial killing sociopath Pretty good, stars Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead, and it actually worth a watch… I just get it mixed up in my head with Cross, likely due to the holidays trance we were in. Also, a billionaire gets what is coming, so extra points for that even if it marks this as a fantasy world.
Landman – Paramount+
From the duo who brought you Yellowstone, Landman attempts to do for oil companies what Yellowstone did for land owning cattle barons, which is to make it clear that they are the noble saviors of out national heritage and that anybody who stands in their way deserves what they get… only with slightly less overt murder. The oil companies prefer to cheat widows and orphans, not kill them.
In the midst of this oil industry love fest, where we are clearly supposed to appreciate their sacrifice to keep oil prices between $65 and $78 a barrel so they can continue making money that dwarfs tech, is Billy Bob Thorton, an oil company landman, which is the ranking person in the field… and that means it is all on him to gets things done.
He is the Kevin Costner of this outing and his performance up against his problems with co-workers, locals, regulation, theft, drug cartels, his boss, lawyers, his son, and his ex-wife and daughter anchors the series and makes it worth watching. Also, a billionaire dies and we’re supposed to feel sad… but we don’t because he was a jerk.
Black Doves – Netflix
Keira Knightley, a Black Dove, who are undercover operatives working for a mysterious entity, has as part of her assignment married an up and coming government minister and had kids with him, only for their to be infidelity and she is a bit too into this and wants a divorce which her handlers very much do not want because her husband could become Prime Minister and that would be a gold mine for them… has somebody who is now after her which brings in her old partner from early in the career, played by Ben Whishaw of James Bond Q fame, who has his own issues including an assassination he failed on that has come back to haunt him and there is a lot going on… but it is only 6 episodes and worth the investment. No billionaires were harmed… though they were no doubt pulling the strings.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith – Peacock
Very different than the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie outing, this features the duo of Donald Glover and Maya Erskind as a pair with some intelligence/military backgrounds signed up for a service that assigned them identities of husband and wife and sends them on missions, for which they are well paid. Styled as John and Jane Smith, the show is as much about their relationship struggles as their struggles to complete their missions.
I enjoyed the show, but I feel like Donald Glover has one character he likes to play and he just plays that. If you enjoyed his work in Community or Atlanta, you will be very comfortable with his performance. Maya Erskind is the wild card that the Glover standard role plays against. Billionaires… not pictured, but clearly pulling the strings here as well.
Dune Prophecy – Max
You want sandworms? You can’t handle the sandworms! No Muad’Dib for you! Instead we’re going back 10,000 years, to the early days of the Bene Gesserit where Mark Strong looks so very good in that imperial uniform and the sisters are trying to really chart their way forward in the universe… you know, decide on a mission statement they can run with… and there are all sorts of machinations and betrayal and not a few murders as the sisters play a game of “Voice, voice, who has the voice” while Mark Strong stands around looking very handsome while trying to juggle wife, daughter, and mistress, all who want something. Also, does controlling the spice make you a spice billionaire?
I mean, it isn’t Frank Herbert level of work, but until the next Dune movie comes out, this is what you’ve got.
Missing You – Netflix
Somebody got a bulk deal of some sort on converting Harlan Coben mysteries into series on Netflix, because I think this must be the third or fourth we’ve watched and… we’re not fans at this point. This time around Detective Kat Donavan, played by the same actress who has the Louisa Guy role in Slow Horses, wants to know who killed her father, what happened to her fiancee who up and left 11 years ago, and what became of some guy name Rishi… and it is all hooked together by a dating app. It wasn’t horrible, but it felt pretty unconvincing while also managing to telegraph the coming twists over and over. It is, at least, only five episodes long, so the commitment wasn’t huge. A lot of strange people, but no billionaires.
Silo – Season 2 – Apple TV+
In the silo everybody has just one spoon and that’s your spoon for the rest of your life. You can’t get another unless somebody wills it to you on their death. And if you lose it you starve to death. And there are spoon billionaires.
Wait, no, I think that was a bit from Kids in the Hall. I must have dozed off while watching Season 2 because it suffers from what a lot of follow on seasons struggle with, which is that we learned the structure and had a big reveal in season one, so it is tough to kick it up a notch from there.
So the cleaning at the end of season 1 failed, there was dissent, Juliette finds another silo where Steve Zahn continues to excel as “that annoying guy” character actor… seriously, he is the best at that… and we learn a bit more about the truth and history of the whole silo project, but not so much as to reveal all because they have two more seasons of this to run. My wife declared at the end that we do not need to watch the next two seasons. As for billionaires, I suspect the climate catastrophe that put everybody in silos was caused by them in an effort to increase shareholder value.
The Diplomat – Season 2 – Netflix
This was kind of off the rails in season one and season two doesn’t do much to reign that in. It became less of a gripping political drama for me and more of a comedy with my wife and I calling out the next plot twist before it was revealed. Still, I did not see the season ending twist coming, though honestly I probably should have given how silly things got. Glad to see Rory Kinnear channeling some of the frustrated rage his father was so good at projecting on screen.
The only billionaires mentioned were Russian, which means they were called “oligarchs” because we need to distinguish them from our billionaire who… really dislike being called oligarchs.
The Day of the Jackal – Peacock
Eddie Redmayne plays The Jackal in this remake/re-envisioning of the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel and the 1973 movie starring Edward Fox. The originals were about attempting to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, but given that the general has been dead for about 55 years as of this writing and kids these days probably don’t know who he is, the only thing re-used was the name and the premise of a professional assassin for hire.
In the remake an evil, old school billionaire hires The Jackal to kill a younger, brilliant, progressive, visionary billionaire because the old guy feels threatened by the new guy’s plans to make it more difficult to hide shady financial transactions. I want to say Musk was the model for the young billionaire, except in the show he isn’t greedy, blinded by sycophants, trans-phobic, caught up in petty politics, and actively supporting neo-nazis. But we knew this was fiction when I wrote “progressive billionaire.”
Anyway, both The Jackal and the British SIS agent pursuing him are basically tools of the billionaires and are called upon to sacrifice their home lives in pursuit of the goals they have been assigned. Nobody hates “work/life balance” more than somebody rich enough to not worry about it. And both are betrayed by the same billionaire, with the climax being a head to head confrontation between the two. Pretty exciting and doesn’t waste much run time as it drips out the back story of The Jackal and the hunt to find him.
I think that was our binge count over the holidays. Our media consumption has slowed down with the reality of the new year. But we are still watching The Agency and a couple of others. I am interested to see what happens with season 2 of Severance.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 