Benjamonster's TV

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week I am looking at Poppa's House , the third and final season of Somebody Somewhere and the sixth and final season of What We Do in the Shadows ! Plus, thoughts on Before, Abbott Elementary and Elsbeth ! "POPPA'S HOUSE" I always hold my breath when new multi-cam sitcoms appear on Broadcast TV because some of them are just so cringey and then I have to go on my regular rant about how the artform has died and lament how we can go from the format boasting shows like  Cheers  and  The Mary Tyler Moore Show  to being the lowest form of scripted TV. I was expecting to feel those feelings after watching  Happy's Place  and/or  Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage  but I didn't end up hating either one of those. Then I watched  Poppa's House  and well... you know what I want to say.

Welcome to a busy Monday newsletter! It's a comedy heavy week this week. I am looking at Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage , Happy's Place , Season 2 of Shrinking and the pairing of Matlock and Elsbeth . Plus thoughts on English Teacher, The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, Agatha All Along, Abbott Elementary and Frasier ! "GEORGIE & MANDY'S FIRST MARRIAGE" Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage is the third series in the Big Bang universe. I never watched The Big Bang Theory but when it went from a raucous multi-cam sitcom to the single camera family sitcom, Young Sheldon , I was on board and watched the entire seven season run. I never loved the show but I liked it quite a bit at times. Now the show is shifting back to a multi-cam format with Montana Jordan and Emily Osment taking their Young Sheldon characters to their own show. Big Bang didn't share any actors so the format switch seemed fine but this is jarring because its characters we've seen in...

Welcome to my Monday newsletter. This week, I am looking at Disclaimer, the fourth season of Abbott Elementary and the end of the first season of Bad Monkey . Also I have some quick thoughts on English Teacher, Only Murders in the Building and American Sports Story ! "DISCLAIMER" Disclaimer is a new star-studded limited series on Apple TV+ and it comes from acclaimed filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron. In press for the show, Cuaron has committed the cardinal sin of calling it a "seven hour movie" which TV fans (including this one) hate to here. There's a reason TV is a different medium than movies. There needs to be an episodic nature to them even when they are serialized stories and there's a reason very few people want to watch a seven hour movie. I feel like when people like Cuaron (or others in the past including lots of Marvel people) say things like that, they truly feel like they are saying something that would be enticing to people but it has the exact opposit...

Welcome to a shorter Monday newsletter than the last two weeks. This week, I am looking at HBO's The Franchise and the second half of the season of Netflix's Nobody Wants This . Plus I have some thoughts on English Teacher, Only Murders in the Building and Agatha All Along . THE FRANCHISE HBO's new comedy The Franchise  debuted last night. The series comes from the acclaimed trio of Jon Brown, Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes and is a behind-the-scenes satire of a troubled franchise superhero movie. I know this series was ordered in 2022 but I'm going to guess it was kicking around for a bit before that because this feels more like a 2019 premise for a TV show when the Marvel franchise was still flying high. Now it almost feels like kicking something while its down because both Marvel and DC have sputtered in film and TV in recent years. I'm not a big fan of superhero movies but I follow the industry enough to know the many things that have gone wrong in recent years...