BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: April 29, 2024

Welcome to my Monday newsletter. With no new shows I wanted to talk about, I decided to pivot for this week and talk about the Tony nominations, which are getting revealed tomorrow morning. So, check out that post or if Broadway isn't your thing, I also have my Emmy Preview for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and brief thoughts on Palm Royale and The Big Door Prize. And I'll be back to more TV talk next week!

TONY NOMINATIONS PREDICTIONS

It's been a wild and busy Broadway season with a record 15 new musicals opening this year (along with many revivals, plays and play revivals). But what's also been interesting is very few shows have gotten unanimous raves. The revival of Merrily We Roll Along has been the hit of the season, which is wild since the original was an all-time flop. Plays Stereophonic, Appropriate, Prayer for the French Republic and late dance entry Illinoise were also met with rave reviews. But the rest of the musicals all had their supporters and detractors so it's really anyone's guess what will happen tomorrow. It feels like it could truly be spread out like never before or we might see nominators coalesce around some of the upper tier of shows. But it's certainly more unknown than usual so it should be fun!

For musicals, it was better to be late to the game this year. The frontrunners are all recent openings: Suffs, Hell's Kitchen and the aforementioned Illinoise. The other musicals with the best reviews from the season are Days of Wine and Roses and Here Lies Love. The problem is both of them are closed and did not do well with audiences despite the critical love. If you take out the non-starters like Once Upon a One More Time, How to Dance in Ohio, Harmony (save for Chip Zien maybe) and Lempicka (save for Eden Espinosa maybe), there are a bunch of shows in the middle looking to upend the race and overtake the closed shows and frontrunners. The Outsiders probably stands the best chance followed by similar chances for The Notebook and Water For Elephants (though it's highly unlikely both do well). Then there's the big budget spectacles Back to the Future and The Great Gatsby. They seem to have a much better shot at technical nominations than anything above the line. Finally, there's The Heart of Rock and Roll which got better than expected reviews but still seems closer to the "no chance" column than the "contender" column.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: April 22, 2024

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at Under the Bridge and Dinner with the Parents plus giving thoughts on the Emmy race for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. I also have a few thoughts on Palm Royale and Manhunt!

UNDER THE BRIDGE

Hulu premiered the first two episodes of their murder mystery series Under the Bridge last week and although it follows most standard murder mystery tropes, it does them well and creates a solid mystery through the first pair of episodes. The Canadian-set drama was not immune to some eyeroll moments. Like nearly every TV limited series whodunit, the series splits time between getting to know the victim before the murder and the murder investigation. It has a standard opening for the shows with a melodramatic voiceover and darkness that then leads into a much happier time months earlier.

The show shines at times though thanks to its very strong cast. That includes Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone, who play former friends now coming at this murder from very different angles. It also includes Archie Panjabi, who is in a different type of role for her as the mother of the victim. But those three awards-baity actresses don't have the best moments in the first two episodes. That belongs to a group of teenage characters who are a bit like a very dark re-imagining of Mean Girls. At least through two episodes, the story seems to propel forward much quicker when it's focused on those characters and not on the adult ones, whose stories were hit and miss in the first two episodes despite the solid performances.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: April 15, 2024

Welcome to a busy Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at new shows The Sympathizer, Franklin and Fallout as well as more of Ripley and my Emmys Preview for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Plus I have a few thoughts on the latest episodes of The Girls on the Bus and Sugar. Enjoy!

THE SYMPATHIZER

HBO's newest Sunday night entry is The Sympathizer, which premiered last night. Based on the 2015 debut, Pulitzer Price-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the series is centered on a man named The Captain who is a spy for the Viet Cong of North Vietnam while being part of the South Vietnam army. The series is notable for featuring recent Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. in a wide variety of roles, all mostly white antagonists. 

I wasn't quite sure what to make of the first episode but there was definitely enough I liked to make me keep going. I often rail against shows for hopping time periods too much but in this show, it seems to be a feature not a bug. The show has a frenetic pacing and seems to enjoy aggressively jumping back and forth in time. I'm also not quite sure what to make of the Robert Downey Jr. factor of it all. In the first episode, he only played one character of the many he is supposedly playing so it felt a little more like a regular supporting performance than something unique but I'll reserve judgment until I see him in other roles. But Downey is, of course, a rock solid actor.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: April 8, 2024

Welcome to my Monday Newsletter! This week, I am looking at Ripley and Sugar and kicking off my Emmys Preview with the Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series race. Plus, I have some thoughts on Loot, Palm Royale, The Girls on the Bus and more!

RIPLEY

I've watched half of the season of Ripley, which dropped all eight episodes on Netflix last Thursday after a long and torturous road to getting on the air. The project was announced for Showtime way back in Fall 2019. Filming in Italy was delayed due to COVID and then after the series had been filmed, Netflix ended up picking up the show from Showtime as the premium channel's priorities changed. The show doesn't really feel like a current era Showtime show but it also doesn't really feel like a Netflix show.

I don't really care where it fits though because I really enjoyed the four episodes I watched and can't wait to watch the rest of the series. The series, which is set in the 1960s and mostly in Italy, is famously shot completely in black and white and it is STUNNING. It is one of the best looking series I have seen in a long time and the black and white filming, which might feel like a gimmick in lesser hands, is the perfect choice for the type of story the show wants to tell. The show was a little slow moving at first (the second episode was my least favorite of the four) but once the plot got going in the third episode, it really put it all together. Before that, it was coasting a bit on vibes but the vibes were so good, I hardly cared.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: April 1, 2024

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! Today I am looking at Hulu's We Were the Lucky Ones, the latest episodes of Palm Royale and The Girls on the Bus and more!

WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

We Were the Lucky Ones is a new Hulu limited series that premiered this past week with the first three episodes. Based on the novel of the same name, it tells the harrowing tale of a Polish Jewish family ripped apart by the Holocaust and scattered in many different directions.

I watched the first three episodes and was definitely intrigued by some of it even if has a bit of a "paint by numbers" feel to the way so many limited series are produced these days. Still, it's a story worth telling and there are some interesting performances, most notably from Joey King. She really steals the show here and I found her scenes to be by far the most interesting of the first three episodes (her travel to the border in the second episode was both intense and surprisingly funny at times). King has struck the right balance for a show that can be this heavy with its subject matter.