Temporary TV doldrums

July 15, 2018 5:31 PM

With so many good shows having ended their seasons in the past few months, are there any newer television-like-entertainment-products that people are liking? FFT include any streaming service.

I'd hope to discover first seasons of things here. Netflix is shoveling so much stuff out that I don't know where to start. HBO must have something going on too?

I feel like all I have to look forward to is Better Call Saul in August(?).

posted by sylvanshine (26 comments total)

Free Rein (Netflix) is an utterly glorious horse girl show that has an adult following as well.

Netflix also just dropped "Sugar Rush" which is a baking show we've been enjoying a lot -- bakers have 3 hours for the first two rounds combined (a cupcake round and a confection round), and any time they have left over at the end they can bank for the third (huge cake) round -- so some people have 4 1/2 hours in the third round and some have just 3!

Take Two on ABC is a gloriously dumb procedural about a private investigator with a past and the Hollywood star, fresh out of rehab, who accidentally ends up his partner, starring Rachel Bilson and Eddie Cibrian and there's not a whole lot to TALK about but it's great fun (but also I'd watch Rachel Bilson in anything, she's always great).

Elementary (CBS) is summer-airing this year, don't know why, but that's a reliably good show.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:36 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't have anything new for August (Venture Bros returns and that's it).

If it's this years' premieres, Pose (FX) is excellent, but ends this season next week.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:43 PM on July 16, 2018

The fourth and final season of UnReal is now out. The last two seasons haven't been good (at all) but I figured I'd take a look to see how much of a mess they can make of this season.

Also Younger, is back showing new episodes. It's very dumb and chick-flicky but it's easy to watch.
posted by sardonyx at 8:15 PM on July 16, 2018

I don't have anything new for August (Venture Bros returns and that's it).

And Better Call Saul is back on Monday, Aug. 6 at 9/8c on AMC! (Vince Gilligan talks to TV Guide about the upcoming season, with teasers of what's to come).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:23 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Free Rein (Netflix) is an utterly glorious horse girl show that has an adult following as well.

seriously thought you were talking about Uma Musume Pretty Derby and I had forgotten the name
posted by numaner at 12:53 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I recommend Cloak & Dagger, which is on Hulu and Freeform. It's a superhero show but there's good characterization.
posted by numaner at 12:55 PM on July 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

If you're a fan of brutality, the third season of Preacher started recently - it's on Amazon in the UK, AMC in the US.
posted by Grangousier at 1:32 AM on July 19, 2018

also, American Ninja Warrior is always entertaining. the current season is on Hulu
posted by numaner at 12:46 PM on July 19, 2018

If you like kind of over-the-top goofy humor, Trial and Error just started season 2 on NBC.

If you don't mind subtitles, Head Over Heels on HBO is enjoyable and interesting.

(Not sure what you mean by FFT.)
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 9:55 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm looking forward to the new season of Better Call Saul starting on Monday, Aug. 6 at 9/8c on AMC!
posted by rickjh at 6:50 PM on July 20, 2018

Free Rein (Netflix) is an utterly glorious horse girl show that has an adult following as well.

Thanks for recommending this! Just watched the first ep, and I like it. Of course, basically anything that involves girls who love horses + beautiful British scenery is going to be a winner for me.
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:15 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

HBO must have something going on too?

HBO has Sharp Objects with Amy Adams, from the director of Big Little Lies, on Sunday nights. It's good so far.
posted by Mothlight at 9:31 AM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

(Not sure what you mean by FFT.)
I am guessing "Food For Thought"
posted by soelo at 7:59 AM on July 25, 2018

I put Final Space on the other day (it's on Netflix here in Canada, TBS in the US) expecting basically nothing from it at all, and have been enjoying it way more than I expected to.

Letterkenny is a constant joy; if you're in the US the first two seasons just dropped on Hulu earlier this month, and season 5 just dropped on CraveTV here in Canada (and it's one of the best seasons they've done).

I'm also going to second Eyebrows McGee and say if you haven't given Elementary a look yet, it's worth the time. It's sort of like Sherlock, except it takes things like Sherlock's drug addiction and the consequences of his poor behaviour seriously, the characters actually grow and change over the course of the series, and it's not built around fan service (also Lucy Liu is a fantastic Watson). It starts weaker but eventually became a much better show than Sherlock.

Finally, I'd also recommend The Good Fight, which recently finished season 2. It's got most of the things that made The Good Wife so, uh, good, but also works hard to fix a lot of the problems that show had, like how super white it was. A really solid show that not enough people are watching, imo. (Plus Carrie Preston is back as Elsbeth, one of the best characters on TV.)
posted by Fish Sauce at 9:48 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Have you seen Patriot on Amazon Prime? This is a show that has gotten a curiously low amount of love in mass media, despite being well regarded critically (and by many MeFites). The likely cause is that the show a person would expect form the title and plot description is wildly different tonally from the actual program.

The plot, from Wikipedia: To prevent Iran from going nuclear, intelligence officer John Tavner must forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous non-official cover ("NOC") — that of a mid-level employee at a Milwaukee industrial piping firm.

The actual show: a chronically depressed folk-singing stoner reluctantly re-enters the family business: espionage. His mission is to infiltrate a desperately boring industrial firm long enough to deliver a bag of money in Luxembourg. Due to his comparative incompetence at this cover job and a series of bits of bad luck, he fails spectacularly, with quickly snowballing complications. Co-stars Terry O'Quinn as his actual father and Kurtwood Smith as his would-be father figure/tormentor at the piping company.

This show is darkly fucking hilarious.

As a taster, consider one of his folk songs, virtually all of which are hilariously literal recountings of both his personal mental state and his exact literal actions in intelligence.

Season one is up in its entirety and season two wrapped recently/wraps soon on production and has added Debra Fucking Winger to the cast as John's mom. And if bringing Debra Winger out of retirement isn't an endorsement of a show, I sincerely don't know what fucking is.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:09 AM on July 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the recommendations! (FFT stood for "feel free to" and I don't know why I abbreviated that.)

The list, TLDR:

Cloak & Dagger (Hulu)
Elementary (CBS, 6th season)
Final Space
Free Rein (Netflix)
Head Over Heels
Letterkenny
Patriot (Amazon)
Pose (FX)
Preacher (FX, 3rd season)
Sharp Objects (HBO miniseries)
Take Two (ABC)
The Good Fight
Trial and Error
UnReal
Younger (or Also Younger? Italics people jk)

Back in reality (""):
American Ninja Warrior (Hulu)
Sugar Rush (Netflix)

Better Call Saul later.
posted by sylvanshine at 9:46 PM on July 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Better Call Saul Season 4: Official Comic-Con Trailer | BCS returns a week from today, on Aug. 6.

Found via The Daily Beast's short interview with Bob Odenkirk, wherein he says Saul Goodman Would Love to Be Trump’s New Michael Cohen ... which might poison my viewing of the show, or be just the thing I need to shake off reality for an hour a week.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:44 AM on July 30, 2018

lmfsilva: Venture Bros returns !!!

August 5, 2018 !!!
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now I'm thinking if the dude with bigfoot erotica is actually Steve Summers and this is all a publicity stunt.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:16 PM on July 30, 2018

Getting into Patriot - seems like a home run - thanks for that. I guess the first season has been around a while now.
posted by sylvanshine at 7:12 PM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm eagerly awaiting season 2 of The Good Place to appear on Netflix near the end of August (I couldn't watch when it was airing on network tv).
posted by acidnova at 11:35 PM on July 30, 2018

I started watching The Good Place also thanks to Fanfare, much later than it started.

I wish there was a way to find Fanfare shows where, like, "the people who like them, really like them". This Patriot show was around for a year+, and it was posted on Fanfare, but attracted few comments and of course a person who hasn't watched something probably doesn't want to read later episodes' comments too closely. If I had read those later episodes' comments, maybe I would have seen the "really like it" part.

I think there is a place for some kind of numerical enthusiasm measure here, akin to (gasp) thumbs up. Number of comments doesn't really correlate with what people are really liking (except in ... exceptional ... cases - The Good Place, Game of Thrones, etc). While Marvel shows get more comments even though most of the series just do their thing year after year. In general, shows that have a 'pedigree' get more comments, whether they're particularly good or not.
posted by sylvanshine at 4:33 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]

The final season of Casual just dropped the other day.

Like a lot of shows, this has been up and down in terms of quality, and while I'm not expecting the final episodes will be as good as the first season, I'm hoping that they're closer to the good end of the scale than the bad one. That, and I'm hoping the series gets a decent send-off.
posted by sardonyx at 11:23 AM on August 2, 2018

I just finished Casual.

Outside of the weird future-tech plot, that was absolutely, positively the way to write a final season. All of the key moments of the previous seasons were referenced or recalled, and so were some of the smaller, quirkier parts. The characters grew in ways that were positive but realistic, and didn't change so much that they were unrecognizable from who they were when this journey started. Emotionally, the last episode was tough to watch, but in a good way. I'm sorry this is over, but I can say to anybody who wants to start watching it, it won't leave you disappointed with a bad or sloppy ending.
posted by sardonyx at 4:05 PM on August 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

American Woman has Alicia Silverstone starring as a divorced mother working to make it in 1970s Beverly Hills loosely based on the mother of a Real Housewife. The sets, clothes and acting are all great and there's a backdrop of the growing feminist movement. It's also pretty funny.
posted by roolya_boolya at 2:22 PM on August 7, 2018

n-thing Letterkenny.

Get Shorty (TV series, halfway through S2) is fantastic.
posted by porpoise at 4:48 PM on August 29, 2018