Category: Reviews

A successful sitcom boils down to two things: characters and chemistry. Even the most inspired premise doesn’t matter after the first few episodes, if the show doesn’t have characters we care about and actors who work well together. Case in point: CBS’ new fall sitcom B Positive, debuting this Thursday, Nov. 5 at 8:30/7:30c. (I’ve seen the first two episodes.) It has an admittedly odd premise and does fall into certain CBS sitcom pitfalls along the way, but it’s redeemed by stars Thomas Middleditch and Annaleigh Ashford, who make a stellar comedic duo right away.

Middleditch stars as Drew, a divorced sad sack of a therapist who learns that he’s in renal failure and needs a kidney donor; he is reluctant to ask his family (“Oh great, a Republican kidney!”) and doesn’t have many friends. (His ex-wife, played by Sara Rue, and daughter don’t like him much, either.) But he has a chance run-in with high school classmate Gina (Ashford), a space cadet party girl with lots of vocal fry and several regrettable tattoos. They haven’t seen each other in years — Gina remembers Drew as “the one guy I didn’t hook up with in high school” — but she happily volunteers to give him one of her kidneys, almost on a whim. She has to stay clean and sober for three months to donate, though… and that clock keeps getting reset.

A potentially fatal medical diagnosis doesn’t exactly scream belly laughs, and the premise could be limiting down the road, if this runs as long as executive producer Chuck Lorre’s other CBS shows. (How long can Drew be on the verge of death, really?) And the dialogue in the first two episodes could be sharper, relying too heavily on tired pop culture references to Hamilton and (oof) “Baby Got Back.” (Like a lot of CBS comedies, this one seems to be trapped in a mid-’90s time warp.) But series creator Marco Pennette also writes for Mom — his own kidney transplant inspired this show — and it has a bit of Mom‘s dark, spiky sense of humor. Drew faces some harsh medical realities, but the show manages to mine that scary subject matter for comedy gold. (I should warn you, though, that the opening credits are truly upsetting, complete with singing bodily organs; if there were a “Skip Intro” button here like there is on Netflix, I would press it every time.)

B Positive‘s supporting cast is sprinkled with old favorites, like Kether Donohue as Gina’s helium-voiced friend Gabby, who’s a carbon copy of her You’re the Worst character Lindsay. (She’s so ditzy, she’s practically brain-dead.) Plus, Great News‘ Briga Heelan plays a hard-nosed corporate executive who’s one of Drew’s new “dialysis buddies,” and the great Linda Lavin pops up as a saucy old lady who rides on the nursing home bus Gina drives for a living. But the show ultimately works because Middleditch and Ashford work.

From his days as Silicon Valley‘s awkward tech CEO Richard Hendricks, Middleditch specializes in playing tightly wound nerds; he has a hilariously frantic energy, along with some serious physical comedy chops. Ashford nails Gina’s hedonistic vibe — when she hears Drew is a therapist, her first question is: “Can you prescribe drugs?” — and Gina’s stoned enthusiasm balances out Drew’s sour intellectualism. They bounce off of each other in intriguing ways, and both of them have a subtle sadness around the edges that deepens things as well. (The looming question: Will the writers resist the urge to pair them off romantically? I think I like them better as sparring sibling types, but I’m keeping an open mind.)

CBS sitcoms used to be depressingly predictable: Take a fat funny guy, add a hot wife, mix until you reach 300 episodes. But they’re taking some interesting chances lately, and B Positive is another step in the right direction. I like Middleditch and Ashford together enough to hope that Pennette and the writers find a way to work out the kinks and tap into this pairing’s considerable potential. Sitcoms are a lot like kidney donations, it turns out: It’s all about finding the right match.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: The premise is grim and the writing is shaky early on, but B Positive has a great comedic pair in stars Thomas Middleditch and Annaleigh Ashford.

True-crime TV has found its new obsession: The twisted saga of the NVIXM cult, with famous followers like Smallville alum Allison Mack and salacious accusations of sex slavery, has inspired not one but two long-form TV documentaries, along with a number of one-off investigative specials. HBO’s The Vow, which premiered in August, was billed as the definitive look at the cult’s inner workings, told by the members themselves. But is it even good? And does another TV documentary actually do a better job at bringing NXIVM’s shocking deeds to light? Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

The Vow is the higher-profile of the two, and benefits greatly from the participation of several former NXIVM members, including Mark Vicente, Bonnie Piesse and Sarah Edmondson, who relate their personal stories of being under cult leader Keith Raniere’s spell. It feels artsy and intimate, and is chock full of incriminating details, with access to countless documents and video and audio recordings from within the cult. Directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer spent more than a year and a half filming, and their patience pays off: They were filming as the New York Times bombshell exposé of NXIVM and Raniere went live, and as word spread of Raniere’s arrest.

But, as you may have already heard, it is also loooooong: nine hours long, for a story that could be probably be covered perfectly well by a two-hour film. The pace at times is agonizingly slow, with lots of footage of Vicente scrolling through his email or Edmondson on the phone. But with all that overkill, it’s also badly muddled, missing the big picture story of NXIVM by getting too far in the weeds. We’re often not clear on who did what to whom, and what it all means; we end up feeling as disoriented as the former cult members do.

Meanwhile, Starz’s Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, which wrapped up its four-episode run this past Sunday, approaches the scandal with much greater clarity and focus, zooming in on the story of former cult member India Oxenberg. She’s mentioned in The Vow — her mother Catherine documents her frantic efforts to get India out of the cult — but India gets the spotlight here, and the narrow focus on her helps immeasurably. India makes a compelling witness to the horrors of NXIVM, and her personal story gives Seduced a sturdy narrative arc to follow, as opposed to The Vow‘s disparate story threads.

Seduced also paints a more damning picture of NXIVM and Raniere, with shockingly graphic accusations and details about his crimes. (It’s tempting to think that The Vow held back on exposing the full scope of the crimes so as not to scare off its subjects from participating, since they were in leadership positions at NXIVM at the time.) Plus, Seduced adds important context from cult experts and prosecutors, who put NXIVM’s sins into proper perspective. And yes, it’s less than half as long as The Vow — which is a huge selling point these days.

Having watched both series in full now, I do feel like The Vow helped fill in some of the blanks left by Seduced, so if you want every last detail about what went on inside NXIVM, the two series complement each other well. But if you only have time for one, Seduced covers all of the drama far more efficiently and effectively. The story doesn’t end there, though: HBO has renewed The Vow for Season 2, which will focus on Raniere’s arrest and trial on sex trafficking charges. Because nine hours wasn’t nearly enough, apparently.

Tell us, true-crime fans: Did you prefer The Vow or Seduced, and why? Hit the comments below to share your thoughts.

If you’re a TV viewer of a certain vintage (like me), Saved by the Bell imprinted on you at an early age, whether you liked it or not. (In our defense, there wasn’t much TV to choose from back then.) Yes, the cheesy ’90s high school antics of Zack, Kelly, Slater, et al do have a certain nostalgic allure… but they were never “good,” really. So it’s a nice surprise that the Saved by the Bell revival — debuting Wednesday, Nov. 25 on Peacock; I’ve seen three episodes — is actually, surprisingly good: a cleverly constructed, highly tongue-in-cheek reinvention that pokes plenty of fun at its inspiration while finding genuine laughs of its own.

Several decades after we last walked the halls of Bayside High, teen prankster Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) is now the governor of California — he only ran in the first place to get out of parking tickets — and faces a serious budget crunch, with overcrowded schools being forced to shut down. (“You can learn everything you need on the Internet,” an outgoing teacher reassures his stranded students.) Zack decides to ship these students off to well-funded schools… like his alma mater Bayside High, where Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley Lauren) is now the school counselor, and A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) is the gym teacher/football coach. (She’s married to someone else, but he still tries to call her “mama.”)

The revival’s Bayside High is a comedic triumph: a cheerfully clueless time warp where the students are insanely rich, insanely privileged and fond of harmless sitcom hi-jinks. Zack’s son Mac (Mitchell Hoog) is a preppy clone of his dad, and Jessie’s son Jamie (Belmont Cameli) is a Slater-esque jock, with Hoog and Cameli making an appealing pair of lunkheads. In a perfect bit of casting, comedy veteran John Michael Higgins plays the harried, pitiful Principal Toddman, who ends up living out of his office after his wife kicks him out. A major culture clash ensues when the new students from less affluent schools arrive; when newbie Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez) tries to run for class president, she has to go up against kids endorsed by LeBron James and a Kardashian. (OK, it’s Rob, but still.)

The not-so-secret weapon here is writer/executive producer Tracey Wigfield, who won a writing Emmy for 30 Rock before creating the severely underrated Great News, which featured Higgins and lasted just a pair of seasons on NBC. She’s got a real knack for rapid-fire punchlines, and she gives this revival a fun, Brady Bunch Movie vibe: goofy and self-deprecating, with lots of knowing winks to fans. The teens’ hangout The Max is exactly like we remember, to an unsettling degree, complete with pay phone and original owner Max still slinging burgers and shakes. (“You guys go to a sit-down restaurant every day? Isn’t that expensive?” “Yeah!”) It taps into the same retro vein as Netflix’s Cobra Kai, paying homage to a beloved classic and also bringing it into the present; Slater clings to his rapidly fading glory days in the same strangely poignant way that Cobra Kai‘s Johnny Lawrence does.

But make no mistake: The new teens take center stage here. (Gosselaar only makes a few cameos, and Daisy handles the fourth-wall-breaking timeouts now.) The teen dynamics are a little familiar at times, but the revival dares to tackle class disparity and white privilege while playfully mocking the original’s consequence-free antics. It still has heartfelt inspirational speeches… but it makes fun of them at the same time. Plenty of longtime SBTB fans are bound to tune in just to see their old favorites together again — and the revival does reward that instinct — but they might end up sticking around to see where Bayside’s new class is headed, too.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Get so excited, Saved by the Bell fans: Peacock’s revival is surprisingly good, putting a clever, self-referential spin on the beloved series.

Bryan Cranston‘s return to dramatic television should be cause for celebration, right? After all, his turn as Breaking Bad‘s Walter White, a meek chemistry teacher who transformed into a sinister drug lord before our very eyes, is one of TV’s all-time great performances. It’s a shame, then, that his new Showtime limited series Your Honor — premiering this Sunday, Dec. 6 at 10/9c; I’ve seen the first four episodes — is such a letdown. Graphically violent and morose, it rubs our noses in the ugly side of humanity for no good reason, and for a legal thriller, it’s remarkably dumb, with its characters making unforgivably boneheaded decisions at every turn.

The premise is intriguing, to be fair: Cranston plays respected New Orleans judge Michael Desiato, whose son Adam (Truth Be Told‘s Hunter Doohan) accidentally strikes and kills a mob boss’ son in a hit-and-run car accident. (The death scene is so harrowing and bloody, it’s actually hard to stomach.) As soon as Adam confesses his crime to his dad, Michael’s wheels start turning. “Don’t tell anyone. Not ever,” he sternly instructs his son as he plots out how to cover his tracks before the authorities — or worse, the mob boss — gets to him. Playing a conflicted dad who treads into a moral gray area is a natural fit for Cranston, of course, and his haunted face, creased with worry, does its best to sell it as Michael frantically lies, cheats and steals in order to protect his son.

But Your Honor‘s dramatic potential is squandered by the brutally grim and badly contrived developments that follow. (Peter Moffat, who created the British crime drama that HBO’s The Night Of was based on, is the writer and showrunner here, with The Good Fight‘s Robert and Michelle King as executive producers.) It tries to be a morality play, a twist-filled thriller and an acting showcase all at once, but it falls short on all fronts. We want to see Michael put his considerable legal expertise to use saving his son… but for a judge, he shows surprisingly terrible judgment. (We get our first taste of his legal approach in a courtroom scene that is so bizarre and outlandish, Ally McBeal would blush.) And it’s not just him: Your Honor is riddled with nagging leaps of logic, absurd coincidences and people openly yelling in public about their various criminal conspiracies.

Cranston’s presence helped to attract a strong supporting cast, but the material fails them, too. As mob boss Jimmy Baxter, Michael Stuhlbarg — so good on Boardwalk Empire and Fargo — is more idea than character: a generically menacing bad guy who never develops beyond a vague sketch of villainy. Skilled actresses like Carmen Ejogo, Amy Landecker and Hope Davis are given little to do. And it’s not Doohan’s fault, but Adam quickly becomes one of the most irritating TV characters in recent memory. Yes, I understand the boy is in a guilt-ridden panic, but he can’t stop himself from making incriminating mistakes, and watching him totally fall apart isn’t compelling; it’s agonizing.

In fact, Your Honor is a tough watch in general: Mired in a sad, blue visual palette, it wallows in cynicism and cruelty, but never provides enough insight to make the cruelty worth it. It finds a decent enough groove when it stays focused on Michael and his morally questionable schemes, but it gets less interesting the more it expands its scope, trying to juggle half-baked subplots about political maneuvering, corruption within the prison system, racial inequality and on and on. The great Margo Martindale does show up in Episode 4 to provide a much-needed dose of common sense, but by then, it’s too late. The verdict is already in.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Bryan Cranston does his best, but his Showtime legal thriller Your Honor is a brutally grim and remarkably dumb misfire.

What would Silence of the Lambs be without Hannibal Lecter? The coldblooded cannibal genius played by Anthony Hopkins is one of the most iconic villains in film history — but, due to nagging rights issues, his name can’t even be uttered in CBS’ new drama Clarice, which follows FBI agent Clarice Starling a year after the events of Lambs.

The absence of Lecter and his indelible dynamic with Clarice leaves a huge void that Clarice (premiering Thursday, Feb. 11 at 10/9c; I’ve seen the first three episodes) struggles to fill. The result is a disappointingly run-of-the-mill procedural — another dark, grim Criminal Minds clone with a shiny brand name slapped on the front of it.

In the wake of catching serial killer Buffalo Bill, Clarice (played by The Originals alum Rebecca Breeds) is a tabloid sensation, but is content to stay out of the spotlight crunching numbers behind a desk and living on ramen noodles and Twizzlers. (She’s also lost touch with Catherine, the victim she rescued from Buffalo Bill.) But she’s called to D.C. by the new Attorney General — who’s also Catherine’s mother — and recruited to join a newly formed task force to catch serial killers. Clarice can’t seem to shake her lingering PTSD from the Buffalo Bill ordeal, though, along with her own demons from childhood.

The premiere kicks off a serialized story thread that finds Clarice untangling a conspiracy to silence whistleblowers, but that just serves as a thin excuse to keep Clarice on the job. Otherwise, the cases of the week are bland and often solved by Clarice magically getting criminals to blurt out confessions. (The Clarice of Lambs was a plucky everywoman, but here, she’s a crime-solving savant.) Co-creators Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman both work on Star Trek: Discovery and Picard, so they’re used to revamping big-name brands. But the ghost of Hannibal Lecter looms large here: Without the good doctor to spar with, Clarice isn’t all that interesting.

Breeds has a daunting task replacing Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance as Clarice, and she does an admirable job. (She nails the West Virginia accent, for one thing.) But it’s hard not to feel like we’re being served a prettied-up, Hollywood version of Clarice, and it rings false that, given the strong bond she and Lecter had in Lambs, she’d barely mention him here. Meanwhile, the supporting cast is short on memorable characters. Kal Penn only gets to bark out exposition as agent Shaan Tripathi, and Devyn Tyler is mostly reduced to playing the “Black Friend” as Clarice’s sounding board Ardelia. Worst of all, Michael Cudlitz — a fine actor with a lengthy TV résumé — plays Clarice’s superior Paul Krendler, who speaks exclusively in hard-boiled cop clichés and exists only to be completely wrong at every turn. He’s not a character; he’s an obstacle, dictated by the plot.

The exploration of Catherine (Marnee Carpenter) and her residual trauma from her kidnapping does have potential: She still has Precious the dog, and keeps herself thin because Buffalo Bill liked larger women. But the show’s psychology is shallow, and too often confuses darkness for depth. It boils down complex issues like PTSD and childhood trauma and uses them just to add creepy color. Clarice’s battle to be taken seriously as a woman in a male-dominated field, such a key component of Silence of the Lambs, is relegated to a few throwaway lines here.

But Clarice isn’t also chasing Silence of the Lambs: It also pales in comparison to NBC’s magnificently strange Hannibal, which deconstructed and elevated the Thomas Harris novels with a vicious, flamboyant flair. (Years later, it’s still astonishing that it managed to air for three seasons on a broadcast network.) It may have been too bold and bloody for some to stomach (and that’s their loss), but Hannibal proved that, to successfully adapt a well-known property, one can’t afford to be timid. That’s ultimately Clarice‘s downfall: Like one of Lecter’s victims, it seems drained of all vitality.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: It may have the Silence of the Lambs brand name behind it, but CBS’ Clarice is a disappointingly bland and grim procedural.

I’d love to say that I was wowed by Netflix’s series adaption of Kristin Hannah’s novel, Firefly Lane (dropping Wednesday, Feb. 3). Truth be told, I dive into every show that I’m tasked with reviewing hoping the same thing — to be dazzled, stunned, impressed.

I was none of those things. There was nothing there that we haven’t seen before, done smarter, more wittily and incisively, simply better.

Yet I didn’t hate it, as the trailer made me fear that I would. In the end, the show, developed by Maggie Friedman (late of ABC’s short-lived Eastwick and Lifetime’s also-short-lived Witches of East End) was a run-of-the-mill soap opera, an inoffensive diversion shining a spotlight on two extremely appealing actors — Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke — who were making the best of what… well, simply wasn’t the best.

The plot follows a pair of lifelong friends, impulsive firecracker Tully Hall (Heigl as an adult) and bookish sparkler Kate Mularkey (Chalke as an adult), through their introduction as eighth-graders to their grownup relationship. What happens in between is sorta like a game of chick-flick bingo. If it’s a cliché, if it’s expected, if it’s obvious, as surely as the BFFs call each other bitch as a term of endearment, it’s in there.

Yet at no point could I turn away. At no point did I even want to. Early on, I was hooked. After that, Season 1 washed over me like a dose of bedtime Benadryl. It was strangely enjoyable, from the terrible ’80s wigs to the “Wait, did I read this book already?” predictability of the plot twists.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, not great. Not original. Not inventive. Not challenging in any way. But maybe because of the stressful times we’ve been through of late, it was just what I wanted.

It asks literally zilch of us.

Subtlety isn’t a consideration on Firefly Lane. The series is a sledgehammer. A pretty, pretty sledgehammer. From the yin/yang differences between Tully and Kate (as kids, the excellent tag team of Ali Skovbye and Roan Curtis, the former working a full pound of lip gloss, the latter saddled with glasses the size of dinner plates) to the Very Big Issues that concern their ’80s TV-station boss, Johnny (Ben Lawson), everything is written in oversized, bold text.

And underlined.

Along the way, actors make the most of their material. In particular, Beau Garrett is a “Whoa!” as Tully’s pothead mom, Brandon Jay McLaren charms as an eventual crush, and Jenna Rosenow makes a fine Leslie Grossman stand-in as an early-oughts Edina Monsoon. And there’s not an instance in which Chalke’s earthiness doesn’t serve her well. Even when the scenarios into which Kate is thrown feel utterly fake and manipulative, her portrayer’s innate likability reels us right in.

Heigl, on the other hand, comes across like she knows she’s headlining a paint-by-numbers dramedy that will stay with us for… Oops. Already forgotten. And it’s confounding. She’s an executive producer on the project as well as one of its leads, yet she walks through it like it was a pilot that she didn’t ever expect to make it to air.

So, is Firefly Lane good? Alas, no. But is it entertaining? Kinda — and not even in a mean way. It’s an adequate time-passer till the shows for which you’re really jonesing are back on. There’s no more shame in indulging in it than there is in equating sex to ice cream.

I don’t need to tell you that Firefly Lane does that, too, do I? Yeah, at this point, I didn’t think so.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Firefly Lane is the definition of C-grade television. It’s not going to KO anyone, but if you’ve got 10 hours to waste, it’s OK.