Apple TV Plus transports Isaac Asimov’s Foundation from page to screen
Also this weekend: Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, Goliath ends, Discovery+ dives into Curse Of The Chippendales, Melissa McCarthy in The Starling
TV Lists Isaac Asimov
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, September 24, and Saturday, September 25. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
Foundation (Apple TV+, Friday, 12:01 a.m.): Created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, this science-fiction series is based on Isaac Asimov’s novels of the same name. It chronicles an epic thousand-year saga of a band of exiles known as The Foundation, who discover that the only way to save the Galactic empire from destruction is to defy it. When revolutionary Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) predicts the impending fall of the Empire, he ventures to the far reaches of the galaxy with a band of loyal followers in an attempt to rebuild and preserve the future of civilization. The cast includes Lee Pace, Alfred Enoch, Terrence Mann, Leah Harvey, and Laura Birn. Nick Wanserski will be recapping the series weekly. Season one premieres with two new episodes.
Midnight Mass (Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): “Mike Flanagan’s limited series considers religion both as a horror subgenre and as a philosophical question, blending cinematic tributes to films like The Exorcist with serious-minded monologues about faith. On the more intellectual side, Flanagan explores the theme from a handful of angles, including addiction recovery programs and prayer in public schools. When it comes time for sturm und drang, however, the writer-director turns to monsters and miracles, the ‘signs and wonders’ the Bible attributes both to Jesus and to ‘false prophets’ who ‘shall deceive the very elect.’” Here’s the rest of Katie Rife’s review.
Regular coverage
Ted Lasso (Apple TV+, Friday, 12:01 a.m.)
The Great British Bake Off (Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): Leila Latif is tapping into the ninth season premiere.
Wild cards
Curse Of The Chippendales (Discovery+, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): This four-part documentary series unravels the dark saga of the infamous male-stripping club Chippendales, founded by Indian immigrant Steve Banerjee in 1979. Filmmakers Simon and Jonathan Chinn interview former Chippendale employees and law enforcement officers, and use archival footage to showcase the club’s rise, involvement with crime, and eventual downfall. Keep an eye out for a review of the series on the site later today.
Goliath (Amazon Prime Video, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): In the fourth and final season of this legal drama, Billy Bob Thornton returns as down-and-out lawyer Billy McBride, despite last season’s cliffhanger in which he was shot and left for dead. He will now face off against leaders of the opioid industry, played by J.K. Simmons and Bruce Dern. The season also stars Haley Joel Osment, Nina Arianda, and Tania Raymonde.
Wolfboy And The Everything Factory (Apple TV+, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): Inspired by the work of visual artist Toff “Wirrow” Mazery, the animated series follows Wolfboy (Kassian Akhtar), an imaginative oddball who discovers a strange realm at the centre of the earth where fantastical beings called Sprytes create things for the natural world on the surface. With his newfound friends, Wolfboy learns to use the creative energy of the Everything Factory and plays a central role in an age-old battle between the forces of creation and destruction. The voice cast includes executive producer Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lilly Williams, and Archie Yates.
Movie night
Birds Of Paradise (Amazon Prime Video, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): “Sarah Adina Smith’s Birds Of Paradise, about two American dance students competing for a slot in the Paris Opera Ballet, has the boilerplate tensions, the trauma (a twin’s suicide), the overbearing parent. Of the two main characters, Kate (Diana Silvers), is the naïve one who’s come to Paris on scholarship. Marine (Kristine Forseth) is the glamorous one who smokes and knows her way around. We are reminded, as in all movies about ballet, that dancers’ feet are too horrific for the camera to even look at; that the teachers and coaches are manipulative and cruel; that dance is torture. The thought arises, as it often does with these movies: Why are these people dancing? Wouldn’t they be happier doing literally anything else?” Read Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s entire review here.
The Starling (Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.): “The Starling helmer Theodore Melfi broke out directing Melissa McCarthy in a similarly cloying, smile-through-the-tears type of film, 2014’s St. Vincent. At that time, the actor was working exclusively in broad comedies, and needed a role that proved that she was good at more than just pratfalls. Now it’s McCarthy who’s doing Melfi the favor—without her in the lead role, his movie would be completely unbearable. McCarthy is loyal to her collaborators, which is an admirable trait in a person but sometimes lands her in stinkers like this one. Now they’re even, and she can move on.” Here’s Katie Rife’s full review of the dramedy.
6 Comments
So, notifications are just dead, yes? They no longer are sent out at all? Seems pretty fucking stupid if the goal is to drive eyeballs to this site but hey, what do I know?
Kinja has always had problems, but recently it’s been losing features (like showing how many people have saved your posts/replies).
I still get notifications for replies, but not stars. And of course it still doesn’t take you directly to the reply, you have to hunt for it. And because Kinja has always cut off reply threads, you have to expand them all, then Ctrl-F your name or the respondent’s name until you find it.
…all of which take forever if you’re lucky.
I watched the first two episodes of Foundation last night and unfortunately Rob Bricken’s scathing reviews over on io9 are closer to the mark than Wanserski’s.There are a few elements of the books in them, but probably 80% of the material doesn’t relate to the Decline and Fall of the (Galactic) Empire saga that Asimov wrote. I don’t actually have a problem with the fact it’s been heavily altered; adaptations that are more ‘inspired’ by than ‘based off of’ can be terrific when they take something murky like your average Philip K. Dick short story and use the outline and a lot of creativity to create Blade Runner or Total Recall – or in this case as a multiple season miniseries, possibly something like Man In the High Castle. That would have been fine, especially since the source material mostly provides a framework rather than good characters (and in fact, having just reread Foundation and Earth to remind me of the ultimate ending here, Asimov often wrote some cringeworthy ones.)Unfortunately, the 80% here is just generic, bland, mediocre sci fi that’s been done better elsewhere many many times, and adding in a Chosen One that has a Family Relationship with the Old Mentor was just the first of many questionable plot decisions, and it gets worse despite some capable acting. One bit of unintentional amusement came from how they treat math; I kept flashing back to the episode of Springfield Elementary being split by genders, where Lisa Simpson goes to the girl’s side and instead of being taught is urged to embrace pretty sounds and pictures rather than figure out equations. If it were better set up, the scene where base 12 and base 27 come up in terms of ‘how do we give value to preserving how people think?’ might have been really well done, but instead it was quite a bit too little, too late – and this just in Episode 2.I may watch a couple more episodes but this is shaping up to be one of those shows that has people explain why they don’t watch science fiction since it’s brain dead.
TUAYPCWStar Wars Rebels
Having finished The Clone Wars (sort of — there are still a lot of episodes in the middle of the series I haven’t seen yet), my kids and I moved on to Rebels. Disney clearly wanted a more kid-oriented show than TCW, but you still have things like Sabine Wren shooting a stormtrooper point-blank in the head. We’re only about midway through the first season (that Pitch Black-esque episode where Hera and Sabine run out of fuel is the last one we watched), so I hope it gets more Clone Warsy and less like the ‘80s Droids cartoon as it goes on. I’m also eagerly awaiting Lord Vader and Ahsoka becoming more involved. And muthafuckin’ Rex!I’m LOLing over the AV Club commenters dubbing Sabine “My Little Mando.” From what I gather, that character took a little longer to develop than the others.I’m also reading a lot of complaints about Chopper’s homicidal dickishness. Some people are turned off by it, some people love it. My take on it is someone during the show’s development must have asked, “What if Futurama’s Bender were an astromech?”King of the Hill
This is my latest Hulu re-watch. It’s amazing how solid this show was from the moment it started. In a lot of ways, its humor makes me think of The Andy GriffithShow, but with occasional jokes about sex and conspiracies. And its theme is pretty kick-ass.