And Just Like That…, Sex And The City is back—this time, on HBO Max
Plus, Star Trek: Discovery, Creamerie, Bloods, Sex Lives Of College Girls, Anne Boleyn, and The Housewives Of The North Pole
TV Lists HBO
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, December 9. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
And Just Like That… (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m., series premiere): We can’t help but wonder what surprises are in store in the series debut of HBO Max’s Sex And The City revival, given that screeners weren’t made available ahead of the premiere. What we can tell you is that Samantha Jones is missing in action, there are a bunch of new cast members, including Sara Ramírez, and Gwen Ihnat is recapping.
The Sex Lives Of College Girls (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m.): Look at that, one of the many shows inspired by Sex And The City is having its season-one finale on the same day that the revival launches.
Regular coverage
Star Trek: Discovery (Paramount+, 3:01 a.m.)
Season’s streamings
The Housewives Of The North Pole (Peacock, 3:01 a.m.): The holiday movie parodies this year have gone next level. From Marah Eakin: “A brand-friendly holiday movie that has almost nothing to do with the Real Housewives franchise save Beverly Hills housewife Kyle Richards, The Housewives Of The North Pole finds Richards and Breaking Bad veteran Betsy Brandt cast as best friends who’ve had a falling out over their town’s annual Best Holiday House decorating competition.”
Merry Switchmas (BET+, 3:01 a.m.): Identical twins switch places at their parents’ Christmas party. Coincidentally, the original twin-switching movie, The Parent Trap (1961), is on Disney+.
Wild cards
Anne Boleyn (AMC+, 3:01 a.m., series premiere): Jodie Turner-Smith stars as the titular queen in this psychological thriller depicting the final months of Boleyn’s life, before Henry VIII had her executed so he could marry whatever woman he had his eyes on next. (Without checking, our guess is Jane Seymour.)
Creamerie (Hulu, 12:01 a.m., complete first season available at premiere): Between Y: The Last Man, Woman World, and one of the best short stories in Izumi Suzuki’s Terminal Boredom, a world without men has become a subgenre in and of itself. This New Zealand iteration is the first one in a while that has felt fresh and exciting and terrifying—perhaps because the main protagonist isn’t a white woman and it’s not set in the United States, so the ideas of femininity and power are subverted in ways that feel unexpected and yet somehow even more relatable.
Bloods (Hulu, 12:01 a.m., complete first season available at premiere): Lucy Punch stars in this paramedic comedy that has the exact premise as the British TV series Sirens, which has already been adapted in the U.S. Paramedics are great for comedy, apparently! There’s an ensemble cast, but Lucy Punch always tips the scales for any British comedy—a show becomes an instant watch when she’s starring in it.
17 Comments
Tonight is Brian Williams’ last night on MSNBC. Speaking for myself, I like the guy. I like The 11th Hour. He delivered his snark with a velvet glove – a couple three times per show. It’s not fair to apply “both-sideserism” to Fox and MSNBC. A sham Both Sides comparison would state that if Fox News is like drinking a warm glass of flaming dogshit, then MSNBC is the same only it’s a glass with a pink umbrella. The real comparison is that if Fox is a flaming glass of dog diarrhea, MSNBC is a glass of whisky gingerale & a bowl of bar peanuts.MSNBC leans left most intensly in the Joy Reid & Chris Hayes hours, gets more hard newsy with Maddow, leans a little more left with Lawrence O’Donnell, but then Williams was there to ease viewers gently off the live schedule with a very lightly wry news round-up – a pallette cleanser before bed. I can’t imagine who’d replace him. (Same with Maddow in three months or so) My guess is some combination of Ali Velshi & Ayman Mohyeldin, possibly Alicia Menendez. I really like Hallie Jackson but Hallie & Chris Jansing both came out of on-the-scene political reporting where it’s shouty and competitive. Williams and Maddow could read you a killer bedtime story. Jackson and Jansing haven’t found that low-key gear yet.
Solid write up. I’m going to miss Brian Williams’ voice. He was such a good presence, even during challenging news. Never one of the over-the-top hype machines, just a steward of the news. But Maddie, I will miss her dearly. I could listen to her weave a story interconnecting 18th Century grain milling to an island off Antarctica through a court decision in the Nixon administration and then tie it all up in a bow related to today’s news. These absolutely amazing throughlines that somehow always work. And then leading up to the Interview, where her first question is always, “Did I explain that correctly?” followed by the interviewees affirmation of everything she distilled.
“Never one of the over-the-top hype machines….”You cannot be serious. Dude lied and lied about his experiences. He should have been fired and never allowed back on air. Same with Joy Reid. Both lost all credibility(for different reasons/lies).
See, there’s the “both sides”isms that make everything trash. Equivocating a single error in reporting with the over-the-top hypism that is rampant daily on many prime time shows across Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN – not to mention the dumpster fires of OANN and Newsmax – is silly. Brian Williams made a mistake, not a lifetime of errors.
Where are you getting a “single error” from? He lied. Repeatedly. For YEARS. Multiple stories, multiple lies. If you’re a journalist and you do shit like that, yeah- you kind of shouldn’t be allowed on air anymore or given multi-million dollar contracts. His credibility went to shit. It’s not both sides- all those idiots lying on other news networks should go, as well. There is just a freaking bar and Brian Williams fell well below it. You’re the one both siding this. It is like saying there is only a gigantic pool of potential talent out there that is filled with assholes. Is that what you are saying?
Citations please.
Poor you, if that’s what you’ve been fed to believe. I wish you the best of luck and encourage you to take a step back from the hysteria that gets repeated ad nauseum.
Hillary did almost the exact same thing with her sniper story, and Biden tells more made up stories than Reagan famously did.And they’re dishonesty is more important than some late night cable host.
Yeah no. He lied about one personal story and that was gradual and over time.
She did one the other day that included James Earl Ray and his travels, his lawyer, his lawyer’s almost endearingly heinous Nathan Bedford Forrest statue (if it was possible to use endearingly and NBF in the same sentence) and on to other statues and such. It was almost like the old BBC show, Connections.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary)That being said, she’s turning into a Biden flack.
Dude lost all credibility years ago. I can understand that credibility isn’t exactly a critical or even desirable trait in a journalist/anchor for everyone these days, but my opinion is that he’s entirely untrustworthy and should have been fired.I’ll also say that ‘both sideisms’ work well enough if we’re just looking at the network/cable news providers…. especially when you remember that there are plenty of other sides that aren’t MSNBC or FOX.
I get your point. I feel like the guilt over his transgression is what has kept him in check over his run at the 11th Hour.
Fair enough, and I’m not in the business of making subjective decisions for other people. I think I’m just at a point where I don’t believe anyone reporting the news for any network or cable news station is credible enough to defend… it’s a business, and the pursuit of attention and money is corrupting everything.
I didn’t notice how bad MSNBC was when they were attacking Trump, cause let’s face it, they were doing God’s work, but when they swallowed Biden’s “EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS” in Afghanistan without question, I realized Fox and MSNBC are both just cults of personality.I guess I prefer a cult to incompetence to a cult to evil, but they both disgust me.
MSNBC was definitely critical of the execution of Biden’s withdrawal.
Maybe for a day or two, but it’s like it never happened now.CNN’s done reports of little girls being sold into marriage, but I haven’t seen anything on MSNBC (and I might start watching CNN more if it’s not All Cuomo/Lemon All Night).It’s like George W calling his Katrina response an “EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS” because of all the people the Coast Guard airlifted.MSNBC got completely and willingly gaslit. They should be embarrassed.
The complete pull-out from Afghanistan was the correct thing to do. But MSNBC completely admits the withdrawal was botched and looked completely unplanned.