MICHAEL AUSIELLO SAYS…
WATCH!
THE UNDOING (HBO): A COVID-related schedule shuffle pushed the Nicole Kidman vehicle from spring to fall, but believe me when I tell you the six-part thriller is more than worth the wait. Fans of the 2014 Jean Hanff Korelitz novel You Should Have Known, on which the limited series is based, are obviously well-versed on the central conceit, but it’s best to strap into this smartly paced, beautifully acted, profoundly suspenseful roller coaster blindly, as I did. (HBO’s aggressively vague, cryptic trailers certainly offered nary a clue as to what awaited me.) As an added bonus, director Susanne Bier (The Night Manager) gifts us with dozens of sumptuous shots of a supremely elegant Kidman purposefully strolling the wintry, romantic streets of Manhattan. (Premieres Sunday, Oct. 25 at 9/8c)
THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR (Netflix): Spooky, well-timed lightning has indeed struck twice: The streamer’s follow-up to 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House is as gripping and grounded as its predecessor — with 10 times more Victoria Pedretti, to boot! (Releases Friday, Oct. 9; all nine episodes)
SKIP!
THE WALKING DEAD: WORLD BEYOND (AMC): The network is very wisely limiting this pointless, painfully inert, blatantly money-grabbing spinoff’s run to two seasons. A two-hour movie would’ve been way more than enough.
Sorry. I’m a HUGE Muppets fan but couldn’t stand Earth to Ned. Didn’t laugh once.
So few of these shows are on networks that I’m already paying for (and will NOT be paying for additional channels) that it’s almost pointless to read this list.
You have heard of this little thing called piracy, right?
You have heard piracy is illegal, right?
As far as I know, it’s only illegal if you distribute and/or download stuff, and I do neither of those. Besides, I would gladly pay for legal access to watch all my shows, but Polish Netflix, Prime Video and HBO Go are very limited compared to their American counterparts and all 3 combined don’t even cover 20% of all the shows I watch. Hulu, Disney+ and many other streaming services aren’t available over here. Most of my TV shows aren’t released on DVD here so if I want to buy them, I have to use German or British Amazon, and sometimes I can’t even find them there. Sometimes illegal is the only way to go, my dude. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Isn’t there enough stuff to watch legally? No one is entitled to entertainment.
Like I said, maybe if you live in the US then there is enough stuff to watch legally. But over here? Not so much. I already pay roughly the same amount for Netflix as an American does (factoring in the currency exchange rate of course) and in return I get what, maybe 20% of the content that Americans are given for the same amount of money? And that’s being generous. Prime and HBO Go are even worse. So if I can’t find it through legal means, I turn to other solutions. I don’t feel entitled to anything, I just wanna watch a TV show lmao.
No one is ever prosecuted
Are you suggesting that TVLine not review new shows unless you *personally* receive those channels? A bit self-centered, don’t you think?
Perhaps a show will be so good that you’ll *want* to subscribe to a new channel. I’m sure I’m not the only one who picked up a month of Disney+ just to watch Hamilton and The Mandalorian.
Happy to see the good notices for Bly Manor, Undoing, Utopia, Woke, We Are Who We Are as really looking forward to those. Hoping Fargo is good too.
I’ve never heard of 90% of these. I’ll be sticking to my old faithfuls even though I’m not sure when they’ll be on again. I do like Transplant on NBC and plan to check out Soulmates in October. I didn’t plan on watching TWD: World Beyond but seeing as it’s only a two year deal that made it more appealing to me.
Well now you’ve heard 100% of these. And before your “old faithfuls”were announced, you’d never heard of those.
Every show has to start somewhere, sometime.
This. (Also reminds me of Hannah Gadsby’s bit in “Douglas” where she talks about people who shout “NEVER HEARD OF IT!” about new things…)
Woke squandered an interesting concept and was mostly dissappointing
I agree. It bored me silly. Probably because it was too…silly. And since these reviews say “watch it,” I don’t think I can trust any of their other recommendations.
Transplant is a great show.
100% agreed!
I feel sorry for neXt, I can tell that show is going to get cancelled but Im sorry the story of AI gone bad is being done to death nowadays, the people who make this dont understand what made terminator so special, cause that kind of story had not been done on a scale of that sorts, and they tried to redo it more or less with the matrix but we’ve got that all over nowadays-westworld, humans, devs, raised with wolves, im sure i missing some.
And I like robots and AI but I dont care to see another story of humanity vs AI and how bad it is
people want to say the superhero genre is overdone but this AI turning against humans is worse and at the end of the day it seems like no one ever takes responsibility that like frankensteins monster, humanity is what made it and we have no one to blame but ourselves
plus the irony is the AI doesnt actually turn against humans, they are programmed to take the most logical action the scientists built in and the machines think its to eliminate their creators and the rest of humanity to save the world and whatnot.
Shades of I, Robot?
I don’t think A.I. has ever been portrayed more horrifyingly and more sympathetically at the same time than H.A.L. in Kubrick’s still brilliant 1968 classic “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
No mentions for the return of PEN15?
New shows. –Mgmt.
This is typical of how I so often disagree with critics. I don’t know if I will like Next, but it has looked good from the ads and I am looking forward to October 6. Already the critics are trying to sabotage Next like they did Carol’s Second Act last year. The Unicorn was heavily pushed by critics but did really terrible after Young Sheldon, was lucky to get renewed and dragged down the rest of the night after it. The Unicorn had an absolutely terrible trailer and the constant ads for it are annoying enough. It will die a painful death being sent an hour later away from Young Sheldon’s lead-in, where it already had lousy retention. Carol was nowhere near The Middle’s level but still a decent show to watch. CBS refusing to even advertise the season finale with Kelsey Grammer (which set up a promising season 2 that would have improved) but pushing awful Unicorn finale ads down our throats still shows how desperate they are to have a critical success, which really shouldn’t be necessary. Never mind the actual ratings being very unimpressive. And yes, I know Patricia Heaton’s husband had issues, but it would have been easy to replace him since he was not one of the on screen stars. CBS also screwed over Man With a Plan and Broke for their horrible Unicorn that doesn’t fit with any of their other comedies. MWAP was much more compatible with Young Sheldon.
Your post is why there are a variety of shows out there. I love The Unicorn. I also liked Carol, until the end when they were going to bring in Kelsey Grammer. Didn’t like that plot point at all. Cliche. The Unicorn has an awesome ensemble and I loved it paired with Young Sheldon.
This article proves if anything that the old school world of broadcast tv is now just one part of a greater viewing world. Sure broadcast will still get the largest audience simply because it’s free, but its importance has been diminished. There is great programming everywhere and the quality level is sky high now. Enjoy!
Netflix absolutely has a larger audience than broadcast.
To be clear, it’s also reflective of the fact that most new broadcast shows did not even get to film pilots, let alone start production on their first seasons yet/be available for consideration. Whereas the cable/streaming picks all filmed pre-pandemic.–Mgmt.
I consider myself lucky because I subscribe to Comcast which hives me, at no extra charge, Peacock, Netflix and Hbo Max. Having a Sprint phone gives me ad based Hulu for free. And Having a sister that subscribes to Prime, I get that for free. I myself subscribed to Disney+ which I share with family members. Not to mention the many free options such as Xumo, Tubi, Vudu, IMDB, Pluto, Crackle, etc etc. I figure if I can’t find something good to watch with all of that, then I will pick up a book.
I’m in the same boat… I have access to all the major streaming services sharing accounts between family members. I go from one streaming service to the other just binging whatever catches my eye.
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I just finished Julie and the Phantoms on Netflix – such a fun show for all ages. I’m already want to see more; Netflix needs to renew it ASAP!
I’ll probably check out The Haunting of Bly House even though I was very disappointed with Hill House. It has great potential with a very ho hum ending.
And you will be able to binge evil, season 1 if you have Netflix as it has evil and the unicorn as 2 of there 3rd party content coming to Netflix in october
Glad to see Julie and the Phantoms on this list of positives. I’ve watched it twice now, utterly love it. It’s such a feel-good watch in such awful times. Fingers crossed for a second season.
We have one critic who says “skip” Filthy Rich, and the rest don’t mention it either way.
Its premise seemed interesting, and the promos looked promising & fun to me. That makes me want to hear if any of the other critics have thoughts on it… Is it only “OK?” Or is it maybe just not Ryan’s cup of tea?
More insight would be loved here!
Great non- streaming has like nothing new on offer and apparently what they do have sucks. Guess I’ll go back to watching what I can from my teenage years on Prime or On Demand this fall too
There is this global pandemic going on. Since the typical network filming schedule is in the summer, what did you think was going to happen come fall?
Truthfully nothing you have listed appears to be worth watching.
I watched the whole season of Departure and I have to say that the quality nosedives (no pun intended) after the pilot (seriously, no pun intended). It becomes very predictable and there are too many convenient events and baffling plot holes just to move the investigation ahead. Very disappointed that they asked Archie Panjabi to reprise Kalinda – I’ve seen her do different roles and she’s capable of much better
I already watched “Woke” and enjoyed it. I was impressed by the character development they could do in only 8 20-ish minute episodes. I never heard of “The Duchess” so I am happy I read this article! It sounds perfect for me. I am looking forward to trying “Utopia” and “Helstrom” too. “Helstrom” had me at Tom Austen. I am happy the streaming channels have so much new content while we wait for the networks to begin filming.
Real shame about NOUGHTS + CROSSES but I agree the concept is intriguing but it was painful to watch (which I did in the UK back when) as it is all so simplistic and the characters have zero chemistry. Hope someone does a good adaptation some day as I understand the book is superior to the very boring TV show.
Why am I not getting emails from TVLine anymore with the new posts? Ive checked and i’m subscribed to everything.
isn’t utopia another remake? pretty sure i watched this show about 7 years ago.
I wish you would add original programs on Apple +.
No new series from Apple TV+ made any of our Pick or Pass lists. –Mgmt.
Just saw Departure overnight. Only planned to see the first two episodes but the show had me hooked and wanting to know more about what happened. Can’t wait for season two!
Filthy Rich is awful. What a dismal generic poorly executed mess.