I finished up Poker Face (US: Peacock, CA: Citytv+, UK: Sky/Now, AU: Stan) and Murderbot (Apple TV+) this week.

Poker Face is simply the best time I’ve had watching TV in recent memory. It’s currently two seasons in and consistently has me smiling and laughing. It’s not “premium TV” in the way that a Breaking Bad or Severance is; instead, it’s very much a throwback to '70s murder mysteries and especially Columbo. While there is some serialization, it’s mostly episodic in nature. If you like Rian Johnson’s Knives Out trilogy, Columbo, Natasha Lyonne in general, or even the 1970s Incredible Hulk TV series, you should have a good time with it.

The basic concept is that Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale is a drifter with the innate ability to detect lies. Broadly she is reading people’s involuntary physiological responses to being deceptive, but as Cale says when asked how her ability works, “I’m not exactly sure, but that’s not really the point.” She travels the country, getting tangled up with a different set of guest stars, one of whom inevitably gets murdered. The structure of Poker Face is such that the week’s guest stars get a ton of screen time, which means they’re able to cast big in every episode. There’s at least a couple of heavy-hitters turning up in every mystery, which often skew toward the comical end of the murder spectrum.

I’m always impressed that they’re consistently able to write murder mysteries for a character who has the X-Men mutant superpower of being a perfect lie detector, which in theory should break the entire genre. The perp-of-the-week doesn’t just walk into a scene and say “I did not commit any murders recently” and set off Cale’s ability. Rather, she catches them in some small innocuous lie that leads her to spiral into figuring out why they would lie about something so outwardly meaningless.

Lyonne is great in it, as are the handful of recurring cast we get besides her, but most of all, getting a star-studded miniature murder-mystery film once a week has just been fantastic. I don’t necessarily want to give the impression that these are Knives Out-quality movies, but I don’t really want to give the impression that they’re not, either. It’s kind of damning the show with faint praise to say that it is relentlessly so much fun while not really offering the kind of deep meditation on human nature that is the hallmark of “premium TV”, but I can’t fault a show where I am consistently having a great time.

No season 3 pick-up yet. I imagine the show is pretty expensive given the names attached, but as far as I know it’s Peacock’s biggest hit by far, so hopefully they see the benefit of having a show people seem to care about.

Murderbot was also pretty fun. It’s a relatively straight retelling of the first book in Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red. Alexander Skarsgård plays a very autistically-coded security android who is deeply uncomfortable with social interaction and self-soothes with futuristic sci-fi soap opera TV. It’s a pretty different take on the “android learns how to be human” trope, because his behavior is already very human at the outset. For anybody worried, he doesn’t adapt by masking or curing his autism-coded behavior. People do remark on his awkwardness, but it’s mostly just accepted as part of his nature.

My one problem with the show is that to me it felt like one long movie cut into 22-minute episodes. The plot of each episode felt unsatisfying on its own. There just weren’t enough plot elements introduced and resolved in any individual episode to tell a meaningful story within that episode. I don’t have this problem with any other heavily serialized shows, as even then they usually have the standard three-act play structure where some specific event is the focus of the episode. I don’t know what it was about Murderbot, but many of the episodes just felt like they were built to serve only the season-long arc.

Obviously, this comes from the fact that the original book is one book, not 10 episodes of television, and the show basically just splits the book into segments of roughly equal length. Now that the series (which released weekly) is complete, I’m thinking about rewatching from the beginning without having to deal with the arbitrary delay to get the next section of one overall story, because I did enjoy basically everything else about it. Generally, I like the slower pace of weekly episode releases, I just don’t think that format suited this show at all; it should have gone up all at once as a binge show.

Murderbot has been picked up for a second season and I’m 100% going to continue watching. Maybe I’ll wait for the full season to be out before watching, though.

Just started the Nautilus TV show, the prequel to 20000 leagues under the sea. It’s giving me Black Sails vibes in the best way

Just watched both seasons of Severance for the first time. I’ve never watched a show faster. One of the most gripping stories I’ve seen and the casting is excellent.

I’ve seen a vocal minority hate on it, and I could imagine that if you didn’t have at least some preexisting appreciation for the aesthetic and premise, there’s not a lot actually happening for the first many episodes outside of context reveal, but then again, that’s sort of the point.

I found the dialogue very uniquely simple and refreshing. Like the characters were still learning how to use language and nuance themselves. It felt very raw and personal in that way.

And I will just never get over how good this show looks.

It’s like if Control, Cube, and The Stanley Parable all had a very unique offspring.

Watching Squid game season 3 right now, still a rather good story and wanna see how they keep going with it though the split season od 2 and 3 is annoying.

Watched The Waterfront on Netflix because I live in NC and really enjoy Holt McCallany. Was good, kind of a more southern and ocean based Ozark with CW drama sprinkled in.

Season two of the Gold since apparently I missed it back when it released. Show is very well done and still enjoying it.

Trailer Park Boys in Jail

I found I was getting tired of the show over the years but gave this one a shot when I noticed it on Netflix and it’s not bad. Mind you, it’s still TPB, so if you never liked them, it probably won’t be for you, but if you did enjoy them but found the show getting stale for following the same pattern, this one freshens it up again with a major change to the premise: trying to enjoy life in jail despite a crackdown on the flow of weed and booze that kept them from not hating it so much previously (or in Ricky’s case, actually liking it).

Oh, also if you haven’t been watching for it, Squid Games S3 is out and it was a pretty good ending to the series IMO.

king of the hill. hanks dirty laundry episode. such a good one

Dexter Resurrection starts tomorrow with the first 2 episodes, I’m pretty excited for that. It has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes right now with 21 reviews, apparently that’s based on the first 4 episodes.

Ozark, The Sopranos, and Mr. Robot.

Ozark is definitely riveting and binge worthy. Only have 8 more episodes left :(

The Sopranos is kind of losing my interest halfway through the 2nd season.

Mr. Robot is good 4 episodes in. Looking forward to what comes next!

The Rings of Power, Season 2.

I’m all caught up, and honestly I liked it. There was a hell of a lot to cram into 8 episodes, but I thought it was still fun. At the very least it’s a very beautiful show.

Tatort! And more Tatort!

The Decameron