I didn’t know much about the show Ramy other than it was about a Muslim named Ramy trying to figure out his life, and the lead was stand-up comedian Ramy Youssef. It wasn’t clear if it was a slice of life, a light Everybody Hates Ramy, or a laugh-out loud the whole world is nuts Seinfeld-esque show. I’ve now watched the first episode and I still don’t know.
There are a string of scenes thrown together, and I suppose some of them are mildly amusing. The show basically shows him going to a Muslim wedding of his friend at the mosque, and everybody giving him a hard time that he’s single…his mother, his friends, strangers he doesn’t even know. And so he needs to figure his life out and maybe date a Muslim woman for a change. After he goes through a Muslim Tindr profile, and asks around, he ends up on a date with a woman where it goes REALLY well. Right up until the sex where she wants to be choked (she tells him to grab tighter, it’s not a massage). Each of the scenes look and feel like one-offs, there’s almost no flow between them.
And I didn’t get a feel for much of any of the characters — his friends, his coworkers, his family — other than very short snippets in the half-hour. Ultimately, none of it was very funny, although I did smile a couple of times. It seemed more like Coming to America than it did a Muslim man living in Jersey. The only parts that really sang was when he was riffing like he was doing stand-up (which didn’t fit the scene, but at least it was amusing).
Overall? I don’t care if he finds love. Nor enough to even try and rate the rest of the actors. I definitely am predicting CANCELLATION.
From the brief descriptions I had seen of the show Queens of Mystery, it sounded like Murder They Wrote — three crime-writing aunts help their niece with her police investigations. It wasn’t sounding promising, but shows with smaller ideas have made it to renewal. On a coin toss, I would predict CANCELLATION, sight unseen.
Now that I’ve watched Episode 1 and 2 (they’re two parters), I’m not completely sure what to predict. The basic description is still apt — DS Mattie Stone returns to the area she grew up, and starts working for the local constabulary. Her first case? A murder at a small mystery writers festival, and one of the suspects is an aunt. The story unfolds a bit like a Christie whodunnit, with each person getting a turn in the barrel as the lead suspect, and slowly they are eliminated until the killer is found.
Mattie is played by Olivia Vinall and I’ve not only never seen her before, I also don’t care if I see her again. For 90 minutes of the two-parter, she is wooden. A completely passive character. There is no emotion, no movement, NOTHING. An android would show more emotive capacity. Her character is done as a Sabrina look-alike for some reason, but I thought I was watching a zombie movie. In the one scene where she actually has to move and do something, a small action scene, she’s relatively alive, and relatively bad. Pass.
By contrast, her three aunts all have some presence. Aunt Cat is played by Julie Graham, and while she has a long list of credits, I’ve seen none of them. Here she plays an aging rocker with a bit of hard-living sass to her. Not perfect, but at least she’s interesting. Siobhan Redmond plays a very bookish Aunt Jane, and while I have seen none of her credits either, she is good here. Very prim and proper but an active little sleuth…could easily see her playing a young Miss Marple. Sarah Woodward plays a down-to-earth simple Aunt Beth, and she has very little to do in the episode (except get arrested for murder), and it’s hard to see if she has much to offer other than looking dough-eyed.
There are five or six guest stars as the suspects of the week, and they’re okay, but nothing exceptional. Ditto the supporting police cast.
But, if I’m being honest, the real problem with the show is the narration. The whole show is set up as if someone is narrating different connecting bits of the show…so the backstory for Mattie is told by a narrator who has a “Once Upon A Time” style with a Brothers Grimm-type voice doling out the details. When Mattie meets an attractive man, she shakes his hand, all action stops, and the narration explains how for a moment her heart is going pitter-patter, etc. The problem is that it is constantly taking you out of the story. CONSTANTLY. It is hard to get into the episode when every couple of minutes, the narration does some exposition of context before moving on.
In the end, I thought the murderer was obvious (if not the motive), the acting okay but not stellar, and the narration very oft-putting. Pushing Daisies-like, though, which some people love.
Overall, I’m still going to predict CANCELLATION even though it has a different business model (two double episodes at a time, more like little mini-series).
Wow. I’ve been going through a whole bunch of premieres of various shows, and for a lot of them, my initial reaction is often that it is a quirky premise, not much plot, and nowhere to go. I just watched The Order (Netflix) and it has plot, room to grow, and a whole of mystery out the wazoo. Holy cow, it’s awesome.
So here’s the basic premise. A secret society known as the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose selects 7 pledges each year from a private university, of which 3 are then invited / selected / winners of entry. The other 4 forget all about it. And success in the contest / selection process leads to power to unlock your potential. With a key element being magic.
Jack Morton is a young man, ready for college, and hoping to go to the special college and join the Order so he can help his grandfather solve the murder of his daughter (Jack’s mom) at what was believed to be the hands of the father, a member of the Blue Rose. The nature of her death and the mystery isn’t exactly clear, but it seems like the gist. Grandpa is a bit obsessed to be honest, and Jack is heavily focused on figuring it all out. But first he must make it into the Order. In Ep1, he arrives on campus, gets selected, gets some hints, makes it to the finals, and then, just for fun, gets attacked by a werewolf. Yes, a werewolf. Which has been killing other pledges (with 2 dead already).
Jack is played by Jake Manley, and I vaguely remember him from Heroes Reborn. Here he is great. Very serious, very friendly, a fantastic lead to keep the mystery alive and grounded in a motivated fish out of water take on the new happenings. Meanwhile, an upper year member, Alyssa Drake has taken a returned-interest in him, and she is played by Sarah Grey. I’ve seen her in small roles on Lucifer and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but didn’t recognizer her here. She’s pretty great, has the girl-next-door thing going on that is the classic look and love interest of every show ever written about guys in college, and she’s pretty dang good. I’m amazed at how comfortable the two of them seem together. Like best friends, not work-buddies on a new show. There isn’t much sexual chemistry yet, it’s early days, but they sparkle together.
Grandpa is played by Matt Frewer, and whether he was Max Headroom or running a #CloneClub, Frewer does an amazing job on simple emotions or seeming like a grade A whackadoodle. Awesome here for both. Love his character, even if the first EP doesn’t really give you full insights into him or where he fits in.
Some other members of the cast include Sam Trammell (True Blood) as an ethics professor, Katherine Isabelle (Being Human) as the Chancellor and local head of the Blue Order for students, Jedidiah Goodacre (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as a jerky head of initiation, and Hiro Kanagawa (Altered Carbon) as the police detective trying to figure out who’s killing college kids. All four are relatively solid.
And did I mention plot out the wazoo? There is so much room for this show to go, and the lead actors were good, so I have to predict RENEWAL.
I somehow missed the premiere last year of the show Pure, about the Mennonite mob (yep, that’s a thing) running drugs all the way from Mexico to Canada. The show is a quirky take on the popular themes in many shows where they show a small-town hood running drugs. Maybe big time hoods. But always the “personal” day / life of the drug runner. Basically showing all the stuff they have to deal with in the business, as opposed to the classic deals going down where they usually only show the police role.
This one has a new take, where the people dealing and moving the drugs are doing so under the cover of Mennonite colonies. In a sense, it’s an ideal cover — people who already naturally avoid outsiders and therefore are unlikely to tell anyone of their problem or what’s going on around them. Even when they don’t want the scourge in their colony, they are unlikely to talk to the police. Natural protection for a drug-running predator.
Except there’s a new pastor in town, and while he is not Clint Eastwood from Pale Rider, he does glow with the righteousness of God. And he intends to avoid the drug problems and just be a pastor. Until the drug runners kill a Mennonite family from another colony in Mexico, except for a son who escapes. Now the kid turns up at the colony, and the pastor wants to protect him while the drug runners plan to kill him.
The lead charactor, the pastor Noah, is played by Ryan Robbins and he is awesome. I like him in almost everything he is in, even when I don’t always like the character. Small parts like The Collector and Stargate: Atlantis, bigger parts like Continuum, and now leading here. He has a wife with views, and two kids in school, but the opening EP has little for them to do. His wife is all over the place as a character — wanting him not to be pastor, wanting him to keep the family safe, wanting him not to go to the police, wanting him to go to the police, etc. I found her annoying, honestly…pick a view!
The active mid-level drug runner, Gerry Epp, is played by Patrick Garrow and he is always menacing. Whether as Turin in Killjoys or in 12 Monkeys, there’s always something a bit sinister with him. However, in the other shows, he often has a slight lapse / grin / comedic failing that takes a bit of the edge off…here, he is pure aggression. He’s flat out awesome.
Gerry’s boss, Eli, aka Uncle, is played by Peter Outerbridge and he is appropriately ruthless. Just seeing him, you can believe he’s a perfect bad guy, even without the black cowboy hat.
The other main character in Ep1 is A.J. Buckley as the police detective, Bronco Novak. The vibe is kind of broken down cop, not the best representation of the city’s finest, which is in line with one of his previous roles on Justified where he was on the other side of the law as Danny Crowe. Total sleaze pit, but at least he seems competent in this incarnation. Before he was just a loser. I was thinking I knew him from somewhere else, and I totally did NOT recognize him from CSI: NY. Wow, what a change.
So, here’s my challenge. Four decent performances by four of the leads in the show. Or at least by 2 of the main leads, and two important characters. So I should be watching, right?
Well, no. I am not really interested in the storyline. There is very little about the Mennonite community storyline that attracts me, nor the life of drug dealers. I just don’t care, and never watched Breaking Bad for example for similar reasons. Not stories that interest me. There was a huge twist at the end of Ep1 to take it into a new direction, but not enough to hold my attention.
But I recognize it’s decently done and would predict RENEWAL if I didn’t already know it was renewed. For me, I’ll pass.
The only thing I knew about the show Miracle Workers was that it had Daniel Radcliffe in it. You know, #HarryPotterForLife. Now that I’ve watched Ep1, I have to say, it is the strangest show I have ever watched.
The premise is that Steve Buscemi, playing God, runs a company called Heaven Inc., a giant factory that basically runs/serves Earth. Making animals. Monitoring dirt. Controlling volcanic pressure. And a lot of the people who work at the factory are about as smart as Homer Simpson.
Anyway, God isn’t too happy with the whole Earth situation, he’s depressed, hates his job and his life, and is thinking of blowing up Earth and starting a restaurant in space based on a lazy Susan design.
Enter Geraldine Viswanathan as hopeful Eliza. She’s been working in the Department of Dirt for a long time, and wants a transfer to a job with more responsibility. She ends up in the one-man Department of Answered Prayers, where Daniel Radcliffe as Craig is turning into Robin Williams Castaway role. He’s a hermit, no friends, and unable to do much about most of the prayers. So while he gets 2M a day, he answers 4 or so. Mostly people looking for lost keys. Anything more complicated, and he sends it upstairs to God who ignores it.
She’s young, she’s vibrant, she wants to make a difference. So when she sees what’s happening, she barges into God’s office and challenges him to solve everything. Which God agrees to do. By blowing up the Earth and moving on. In order to save Earth, Eliza bets God that she can answer one “impossible” prayer — two Earthlings who like each other wanting to “make it happen” and fall in love. If she wins, he spares Earth; if she loses, Earth is gone AND she has to eat a live worm in front of everyone and pretend to enjoy it. Yeah, God is a bit of a childish dick. But, whatever, the bet is ON!
Buscemi is mildly amusing. The people around him, not so much. The other workers, not so much. Yawn. But Eliza and Craig? They have some spunk. And I’m likely going to tune in for seven episodes to see what happens.
If it was just this premise, and it’s not a “prayer of the week” plot, I would predict CANCELLATION. If they answered a different prayer each week, could be like God Friended Me, and I might give it a bigger chance. Like Touched By An Angel but with an irreverent view of the cosmos. But apparently the show has an anthology idea behind it, i.e. each season will be something different. Okay, I guess I’ll go with RENEWAL then? Because it is more like a new pilot each year.
