Benjamonster's TV

For the fifth annual year, I will be presenting an extended end of season awards show. It will have some similarities to the Emmys in terms of categories and eligibility but will of course be completely based on my preferences and what I have watched.  Here are the rules for eligibility: - Shows had to have aired the majority of its season between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024. - A show is considered eligible if I watched at least four episodes of it. Many of them I have watched the full season, but four episodes is the cutoff for eligibility. - I am making my own calls for whether an actor/actress fits into a leading or supporting category as well as genre categories (comedy, drama, limited/anthology). That will often align with Emmy categorizations but that is not always the case. For example, I am classifying  The Bear  as a drama and Hannah Einbinder as a Lead Actress for Hacks . - A limited series is any series that was designed to be close-ended. An anthology series...

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at Presumed Innocent  and the Emmy Race for Lead Actor in a Limited Series!  Please note there will be no newsletter next Monday, it will return on July 1! PRESUMED INNOCENT Presumed Innocent is a new limited series on Apple TV+ based on the very successful 1987 novel and moderately successful 1990 film. Jake Gyllenhaal takes the Harrison Ford role of a prosecutor who becomes embroiled with, and then a suspect in, a grisly murder case. While that may have been a unique premise in 1987, we have seen things like this a bazillion times in recent years. And this series, which comes from David E. Kelley, offers a few strengths but often failed to meet its potential in the first two episodes, which dropped last week.  First of all, the series is supposedly set in Chicago. Now I'm no expert but it's the least Chicago-looking show I've ever seen. We have seen a recent hit show ( The Bear ) make great use of its Chicago loca...

Welcome to my newsletter! This week, I am looking at Clipped and the second season of Criminal Minds: Evolution plus previews of the Tony Awards and the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series Emmy race! "CLIPPED" Clipped is a new FX/Hulu series focused on the 2014 scandal that brought down long-time Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. It's one of the first shows that feels like a period piece from the 2010s. The show takes a lot of care in really trying to create the world of Los Angeles and online circa 2013-2014 and it is effective at doing so. Going into this miniseries, I knew the broad strokes of this story from when it happened, but I'm not a close followed of basketball so I didn't know the ins and outs or the characters involved. When I watched the trailer, I was worried it was going to be hyper stylized - perhaps a bit like that other basketball drama Winning Time  - and the first episode sort of was but then I felt like it grounded it...

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at the season finale of Hacks , my most anticipated Summer 2024 shows and my Emmy nominations preview for Supporting Actor in a Limited Series. HACKS "Bulletproof" (Season Finale) Hacks concluded its terrific third season with another banger of an episode. Spoilers abound in this post of course. It took awhile for the episode to ramp up. For the first half of it, I was thinking "not much has really happened" as Deborah ramped up to becoming a late night host. But then we got the bombshell moment, courtesy of Helen Hunt's network executive, that Deborah lied to Ava and it was Deborah making the choice to not make Ava head writer, not the network's. That catapulted the show to a really brilliant finish. I have been skeptical of the late night arc in general and I've been kind of worried that Ava's character seems to sometimes be stuck in neutral, especially when she's apart from Deborah. Well...