Critics’ Conversation: A Topsy-Turvy Television Winter
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DANIEL FIENBERG With nearly 600 scripted shows to distribute across the calendar, TV networks and streamers haven’t made the winter into a wasteland — but with many of the biggest titles being saved for spring releases ahead of the May 31 Emmy eligibility deadline, the months of January and February have become as topsy-turvy as the industry itself.
Look around! The winter’s most critically acclaimed series is a video game adaptation; the comeback kid of streaming services is Peacock; the busiest TV star in all the land is Harrison Ford; and TV fans are spending much more time obsessing over which shows are being pulled from the digital space than which shows are being added.
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What we need to discuss first is HBO’s The Last of Us. Because otherwise the winter narrative for Warner Bros. Discovery would center on disappearing shows on HBO and the fact that new episodes of formerly hyped originals like The Nevers and Minx will now be found on Tubi and Starz, respectively.
I don’t know if it’s more unlikely that the winter’s demographic-unifying (unless you’re one of those people who took exception to the show’s decision to dedicate its spectacular third episode to a heartbreaking gay love story) smash stems from a game or that it’s a revitalization of the recently wheel-spinning zombie genre. Either way, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s adaptation has cemented Pedro Pascal’s stardom, made Game of Thrones favorite Bella Ramsey into a household name and spawned a cottage industry of articles about whether or not mushrooms are actually out to kill us.
Angie, are you lichen — see what I did there? — this mixture of terrifying effects and empathetic post-apocalyptic humanism?
ANGIE HAN I’m lichen the show, not so much your puns. To your point about demographics, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed The Last of Us as a lifelong non-gamer. Pascal and Ramsey are utterly lovable, the supporting cast is exciting (Melanie Lynskey! Anna Torv! A bunch of voice actors from the game I didn’t play!), the monsters are appropriately stomach-churning and the production values are off the charts.
But it’s the aforementioned third episode, starring Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, that struck me as the key to what makes this series special, even though (or really because) it’s a detour from the main plot. In casting its gaze around this ruined world, then choosing to highlight the beauty and dignity and humanity still within it, the installment serves as a thesis statement for the series as a whole. So powerful is its emotional wallop that it seems to reverberate across the entire season … not unlike the way a mushroom network might spread its tendrils all across the globe.
It strikes me as an early contender for one of the best episodes of the year, and — along with other winter hits like Poker Face and Paul T. Goldman — a reminder that buzzworthy TV isn’t limited to those few weeks before the Emmys deadline.
FIENBERG No apologies for the puns. I’m just a fun guy. Get it?
I have no gaming connection to The Last of Us either — when they make a Candy Crush prestige drama, I’ll be very invested in retaining the integrity of the game — but the series has emerged as an exceptional blend of peak-value The Walking Dead with the pandemic prestige gloss of Station Eleven. There’s still at least one more episode-of-the-year contender to go, featuring Storm Reid as the season’s latest remarkable brand-name guest, though the last episode or two are perhaps a little too rushed for my taste. HBO and HBO Max will get a big bump next month with the return of Succession and the premieres of several new promising-looking shows, but it’s hard to understate how bleak this winter would have been for these formerly bulletproof entities if viewers hadn’t readily embraced bloaters and clickers and other malignant morels.
Speaking of bleak — that’s what things were for Peacock, which was more punchline than streaming go-to until suddenly the NBCUni service kicked off 2023 with a generally adored mystery/dramedy (Poker Face), a compulsively bingeable reality format (Traitors) and a conversation-starting hybrid (Paul T. Goldman).
I started off intrigued by Paul T. Goldman and its mixture of documentary elements and comedy, but I ended up feeling like the series was a disconcertingly smug example of punching-down. I didn’t need six episodes of punishing the real Paul T. Goldman for being delusional, or the self-congratulatory way series creator Jason Woliner presented his lesson-teaching mission. But people are talking about Paul T. Goldman, which is all you dream of if you’re Peacock.
Remember that NBC marking slogan from a decade ago? “We (Peacock) Comedy”? Are you peacocking Peacock?
HAN I mean, I don’t know if I’m ready to say the P-word quite yet. But it’s certainly been a good stretch for Peacock. It’s not that the service hasn’t had good shows before — I adored We Are Lady Parts and the late Saved By the Bell — but I don’t know that they’ve ever commanded so much sustained attention.
Paul T. Goldman had the advantage of coming out at a relatively slow time for TV (what else were people gonna watch in early January, Kaleidoscope?), but also of being so compellingly odd. True, it wasn’t for everyone; I myself felt too queasy about Paul’s misogyny to buy into the pat “everyone just wants their story told” messaging. But the people who loved it really loved it, and even those like me who didn’t found it interesting enough to keep tuning in.
And while Poker Face isn’t like Paul T. Goldman at all in most respects (though God, I would love to see what Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie would make of Paul), it benefits from a similar sense of confidence. Rian Johnson’s “howcatchem,” as you described it, wears its influences on its sleeve, most notably Columbo. But with its ’70s visual flair, wry sense of humor and sprawling, star-studded collection of oddballs, Poker Face feels completely and delightfully itself.
FIENBERG I still wish I loved Poker Face as much as I like it, but I appreciate the weekly cavalcade of guest stars, Natasha Lyonne snark and standalone murder hijinks (hard pass on Benjamin Bratt’s appearances, a pointless attempt at serialization). Mostly, I give Peacock credit for checking the comedy/drama/reality boxes this efficiently. It gives the impression of curation, which Peacock never had before.
Curation is hard to maintain, even if you’re Paramount+ and your curation is “Star Trek and however many shows Taylor Sheridan has time to write.” Apple TV+, for example, had a tremendous spring last year (Pachinko, Severance, Slow Horses); this winter, its output is a lot of intriguing elements with caveats. Dear Edward finds Jason Katims reuniting with Connie Britton, but its treatment of grief becomes one-note too often. Hello Tomorrow! has a super lead performance from Billy Crudup and superb retro-futuristic production design, but I’m not sure what the show is. Shrinking has some of those Ted Lasso warm fuzzies and a rarely funnier Harrison Ford, but the actual plot is frequently head-scratching.
It befits the topsy-turvy nature of this winter’s TV landscape that a lot of my favorite recent streaming shows have bordered on being after-thoughts for their services. Netflix’s The Lying Life of Adults has scratched that Elena Ferrante itch between seasons of My Brilliant Friend, but is anybody talking about it? Hulu’s Extraordinary actually adds fresh details to the superhero comedy template — and stars Máiréad Tyers, Sofia Oxenham and Luke Rollason are having a blast — but has needed to generate attention mostly via word-of-mouth. Still, at least people do seem to be finding Extraordinary and even the hilarious mockumentary Cunk on Earth, which didn’t get the biggest of Netflix pushes.
HAN Yeah, there have been some real gems (often foreign) for those willing to dig beyond the first couple rows of algorithmically determined Netflix recs. In addition to the titles you mentioned, there’s Hirozaku Kore-eda’s The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, a drama about a home for apprentice geisha that’s as cozy as a warm bowl of homemade soup. Or for those who like their auteur-filmmaker-driven TV a little spikier, there’s Nicolas Winding Refn’s very Nicolas Winding Refn-y Copenhagen Cowboy.
And, of course, Physical: 100, a South Korean fitness competition that’s drawn frequent comparisons to Squid Game, including by the contestants themselves. In truth, Physical: 100 is sweet — downright heartwarming, even. But like Squid Game, it’s a show that seems to have broken through in the U.S. based purely on people talking about it to friends or on social. That’s how I heard about it, and I’m a TV critic whose job it is to know what’s coming to Netflix.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen plenty of banner ads or TV spots for HBO Max’s obnoxious Velma or AMC’s deadly dull Mayfair Witches. I get it; people love Scooby-Doo and Interview with the Vampire. But I sure do sometimes wish I had the power to reallocate some of those Shrinking billboards on Sunset to, say, Freeridge, Netflix’s charming and lightly witchy On My Block spinoff.
I’m not trying to crap on franchises here. For the record, I enjoyed both Netflix’s That ’90s Show and NBC’s Night Court — they’re not the most ambitious shows I’ve seen this year, but both have a pleasant throwback vibe that goes down easy. I just wish there were more time and space to enjoy all those other shows as well, especially now that streaming services seem to be yanking existing shows even faster than they’re greenlighting new ones.
FIENBERG Ha. No, That ’90s Show and Night Court surely are not the most ambitious of shows, but at least they’re chasing nostalgia where it lives — replicating the extremely broad, character-driven multi-cam rhythms of the originals — rather than whatever it is Velma is doing. There are occasional meta laughs in Velma, but it feels like it exists exclusively to antagonize Newsmax pundits who don’t actually care but feel the need to freak out whenever something that was once white and straight — assuming you were able to pretend Velma was ever straight — ceases to be so. That’s not the same thing as storytelling.
Night Court also stands out as a reminder of what January used to look like, with broadcast networks rolling out fertile midseason schedules for mass audiences seeking middle-of-the-road entertainment. That’s actually exactly what ABC’s Will Trent does. It rewrites none of the rules of the format, but the adaptation of the Karin Slaughter novels has a specific location (Atlanta), characters with a specific backstory (several grew up in the same group home) and some likable performances (Ramon Rodriguez, Erika Christensen and Sonja Sohn in particular). If that sounds easy, watch Fox’s inept Alert: Missing Persons Unit.
HAN Finding a time-tested formula to replicate is easy; figuring out how to make this particular iteration of the formula stand out amid literally hundreds of other shows is hard. Frankly, it probably helps to drop it in the relative doldrums of January or February. Because if there’s one thing I can tell about the March calendar just by looking at it? We’re in for a bloodbath.
A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
