Happy Twin Peaks Day, everyone! To go with your morning coffee and cherry pie, here is an interview with the Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino on how David Lynch’s masterpiece influenced her own show.
📺 Ars Technica’s list of best television in 2024 goes on and on (and on, and on). This is why I barely watched anything this year, and most of what I did see were Modern Family reruns.
Today I learned that Max canceled Scavengers Reign, a show that was in fact the best thing to come out on TV last year. A pox on HBO/Max and a pox on anyone in the TV industry who doesn’t care about good TV. May YouTubers dance on your graves.
📺 Only Murders… Season 4: a better-than-average mystery, now with a movie industry twist that makes it even more self-aware. At this pace I fully expect the show itself to become an independent life form and gain consciousness by Season 6.
📺 The Great British Baking Show had more serious and professional bakers this year than the last, but also more panic attacks, insecurity, large swings in quality and overall lack of composure that kind of reminded me of the NBA. Entertaining nevertheless.
📺 Slow Horses, Season 4 has reached a plateau, in that it is “only” as brilliant as the previous season. Which is to say, it continues to be the best live-action show of the decade. Has there been a better TV character than Jackson Lamb as played by Gary Oldman?
Gravity Falls (2012–2016) is the king of our household, but if there were ever a contender to replace Dipper and Mable it could only be Over the Garden Wall (2014). Well, November 3–7 were the 10-year anniversary of it coming out on Cartoon Network, and there is a stop motion short voiced by the original cast to commemorate. It’s been a busy few weeks so I only saw it now, but it made my day (and will quite possibly be the highlight of my week). (ᔥwaxy.org)
Is Yellowstone that good of a soap opera that a NYT reporter cries when interviewing the lead actress, who in turn reveals that she has to sleep for days after filming a particularly emotional scene. Or have we reached peak snowflake?
📺 Bodkin (2024) is the clearest example yet that Netflix has a deeper problem than just its flat style: they are deeply, thoroughly, undeniably unoriginal. To make a slightly comedic murder mystery they took the concept from Only Murders… (podcasters!), credits from Afterparty (2D!) and soundtrack from The White Lotus (all that whooping and whistling), then added a good dose of completely uncalled-for Ireland bashing, a plot that meanders without making sense, background drama that seemingly raises stakes only to be resolved deus ex machina, and some ridiculous cold open intro patter that again tries to mimic Only Murders… in suspenseful and mysterious vibes but can at best arouse only slight discomfort to the banality of it all.
What a way to waste Siobhán Cullen and David Wilmot, who were the only reason I stuck through all seven episodes.
Here are four good articles on this fourth day of the week: