Tonight (and the next, and the next), Russian Doll resuscitates the Groundhog Day concept to surprising effect
TV Lists What's On Tonight
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, February 1 and Saturday, February 2. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Russian Doll (Netflix, Friday): It’s no accident that a dramedy series about a woman reliving the same day over and over again—and suffering a different horrific death each time—premieres the day before Groundhog Day. Sure, based on the trailer alone, it’s easy to make the comparison to that hit Bill Murray film, not to mention dime-store knockoffs Happy Death Day and its upcoming sequel. Groundhog Day fas may be hesitant to visit Russian Doll for fear of reliving this plot gimmick over and over again.
But please take our word for it: This series really does give the trope new life. Yes, it resurrects a gimmick thought to have been played out. But it manages to find new complexity in it, revealing more and more layers with each well-crafted episode and each resuscitation. Plus, Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is The New Black) and Charlie Barnett (Chicago Fire) are brilliant as two souls stuck in time, and the show boasts an incredible creative team to boot (including Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Sleeping With Other People writer Leslye Headland). We’ll just leave it at that, because the less you know going into this series, the better.
Regular coverage
Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars (VH1, Friday, 8 p.m.)
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW, Friday, 9 p.m.)
Saturday Night Live (NBC, Saturday, 11:30 p.m.)
Wild card
The ABC Murders (Prime Video, Friday): After turning out two hits with The Witness For The Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence, writer Sarah Phelps is back with another three-part Agatha Christie adaptation. Starring John Malkovich as the latest iteration of Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot, the miniseries shows its beloved hero attempting to catch a serial killer—self-dubbed “A.B.C.”— who helpfully chooses their victims and murder locations in alphabetical order. As in the other recent Christie adaptations, The ABC Murders offers a fresh new ending, which—like Malkovich’s casting—seems to be pretty hit or miss with fans of the books. Still, the series has turned out some pretty good reviews since its initial run on the BBC, and with a supporting cast that includes Shirley Henderson, Rupert Grint, Broadchurch’s Andrew Buchan, and Game Of Thrones’ Tara Fitzgerald, it might not be a bad way to spend your weekend.
20 Comments
Politics Corner – Updating Trump’s feud with reality, as represented by his tantrum against his own intelligence services. FBI Director Wray and Director of National Intelligence Coats backed this up, but I want to focus on the person he put in charge of the CIA, Gina Haspell. I opposed her confirmation because of her senior role in managing renditions to secret blacksite prisons where we tortured people with no oversight, some of whom were innocent. I am not a fan.The thing she isn’t is a political hack. War criminal? You can make that case. But not a Trumpist hack. If you sold 90% of your soul for gathering intelligence for the CIA, you wouldn’t want to sign off on lies some idiot is telling that contradicts all CIA’s conclusions, against ALL evidence, because it means you sold your soul for nothing. So when she says that our best intelligence indicates that North Korea isn’t denuclearizing, ISIS is far from defeated, Russia is an enemy that continuously attacks us and our allies, and Iran didn’t break the nuclear deal, I believe she is telling us about the best intelligence conclusions we have. Backed up by the rest of the intelligence we have. Backed up by our DNI and FBI Director, who also aren’t political hacks.Trump didn’t like that, because it contradicts his tweets and the Fox News folks repeating his tweets as facts and Trump taking that as confirmation. So he attacked them as naive. This idiot who ignores his daily presidential briefing in favor of Fox News repeating the fantasies he tweets ignores the intelligence assets risking their lives on the ground, or actually intercepting their communications from behind their computer, in favor of an echo chamber where he says the thing he wants to be true on Twitter and Hannity repeats it as fact.Reality doesn’t conform to his fantasies. Our allies have intelligence services that are also capable of discerning actual goddamned reality. But today, Trump falsely claimed his intelligence leaders were ‘misquoted’ by the media that played their PUBLIC testimony, on video, contradicting his fantasies. How does that work?
And even if he was right, how does that justify him insulting them a day earlier by saying ‘intelligence has to go back to school’? If the disconnect was because of the media, Trump, doesn’t that mean you were duped by the media when you threw them under the bus?They weren’t misquoted. They know better than this fool. And the idiot in chief contradicts himself daily while the 30% of the country in his cult eagerly swallows every internally contradictory word.Fuck this shit. But it’s too important to ignore.
Take it to a proper political site.
Fuck this shit. But it’s too important to ignore.I would imagine that you lead a very, very fulfilling and interesting life.
I have to go back to the very beginning when he said he didn’t need daily intelligence briefings because he was already smart. I don’t really think he knows what “intelligence” means in this connotation. He probably has difficulty with “connotation” too, but wouldn’t admit it.
One of the biggest problems I have with Trump is that it seems impossible to figure out his position on any one subject; it shifts so often that it’s not easy to figure out what it is. In theory, it’s not a bad thing to change your position as you learn new things and reflect on it, but in practice (with Trump anyway), the change is so mercurial and sudden. The whole military transgender ban is a good example; he starts out making a blanket statement that the ban is going to happen, then he waffles on it saying he would never do that, then he just orders the ban in the middle of the shutdown.
That entire presser he held after meeting w Haspell and Cotes was insane. He was fully detached from reality. The clip at which he lied was far faster than his average. He was a man flailing.
Get off the CIA’s dick. You’re being played
I grew up reading Agatha Christie novels and I’ve almost always been somewhat disappointed by modern adaptations. That ABC Murders looks pretty damn good though.
Russian Doll looks fun. You know what else would be fun?Regular coverage of The Magicians. Per my promise, here’s today’s photo of the cast:These comments sections will continue to be plagued with these attractive arcanists until coverage resumes.
Weird threat. I’m here for it. I’m also only on like, episode three of season one.
You gotta catch up, because some of these cast photos will be, as we say in the South, “sperlers.”
If the comment section meant anything to Univision they wouldn’t have switched to Kinja.
Univision doesn’t give a shit about anything that happens on here except for ad impressions, but the AVC staff do listen to us.
Don’t follow the show myself, but this is hilarious.
Thanks for your support, I guess?
Not sure how I feel about season for so far. The main plot thus far has not grabbed me. Season three’s best moments were almost stand-alone episodes though, so I’m hoping for some good moments still.
To be fair, we’re only two episodes in right now. I’m glad that they broke free of the identity glamour early on so that the plot can get more traction.
I loved all the Dean Fogg goodbye scenes. But why glamour him, only to undo it two seconds later? It’s all been a bit head scratching so far.
Superheroes as surrogate families is about as boring these days as scifi concepts being metaphors for depression. Let’s move past internalised trauma and try something new, please.
“Russian Doll” also sounds like “RePlay”, a comedy series on the go90 app (Verizon’s failed attempt to do original programing) that no one had a chance to see but was really good.In that one, the actress who played the daughter on “How I Met Your Mother” (and is in her 20s now) was reliving the same day over and over as her character was a DJ trying to get noticed by record producers. The main kid from “Everybody Hates Chris”(now an adult) was in it too. They didn’t overdo the DJ thing (that is trying to make it “hip”), and kept it more a character comedy about young people (while starring former child actors who were now older to make you feel, well, not young.)