5 things you have to watch on TV this Christmas weekend
Rian Johnson's Knives Out sequel, The Witcher prequel, a new Netflix K-drama, and more
TV Lists Witcher
Welcome to the weekend edition of What’s On. Here are the big things happening on TV from Friday, December 23, to Sunday, December 25. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekly What’s On will publish on Sundays.]
1. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is finally here
Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which got a one-week-only theatrical release in November, is finally releasing globally on the streaming platform. Rian Johnson directs the whodunit, which follows Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc on a new case after the first Knives Out film. He goes to tech billionaire Miles Bron’s (Edward Norton) private island to find out who among Miles’ group of friends might want to murder him. The cast includes Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline. Here’s an excerpt from The A.V. Club’s review:
“Without spoiling anything, a delightfully inventive pivot that occurs more than halfway through the film reminds viewers that some of the murder mystery genre’s foundational expectations have not even been met, and the story is already closer to its payoff than to the crime that set their hunt in motion.”
2. Michelle Yeoh leads The Witcher spin-off
Netflix, Sunday, 3:01 a.m.: Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s limited series is a prequel to Netflix’s The Witcher. Blood Origin, set 1200 years in the past, will explore the creation of the first Witcher and the ancient Elven civilization before its demise. Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown, Laurence O’Fuarain, and Lenny Henry lead the cast. Here’s an excerpt from The A.V. Club’s review:
Coming in at only four episodes, most of which feature the great Michelle Yeoh and a cast of surprisingly engaging (if not wholly fleshed out) adventurers, it doesn’t really require a big investment—and at the end of the day you still get to see someone become a proto-witcher and watch them destroy a big monster. The fight scenes are well done (even when a ton of CG is involved), and the costumes and general art design are both impressive and varied.
3. Disney brings Strange World to your TV screens
Disney+, Friday, 3:01 a.m.: The animated sci-film film Strange World comes to the small screen. It follows a legendary family of explorers who must set aside their differences for a journey to a mysterious land inhabited by surreal lifeforms. The voice cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu, and Gabrielle Union. Check out The A.V. Club’s review here.
4. Get ready for a brand new K-drama, The Fabulous
Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m.: Netflix ends the year with another promising K-drama, The Fabulous, about the friendship between four young people who begin working in the fashion industry, navigating their work/life balance. The show will consist of eight episodes.
5. Peacock reflects on 2022 with Kenan Thompson and Kevin Hart
Peacock, Friday, 3:01 a.m.: In the retrospective special 2022 Back That Up, Kenan Thompson and Kevin Hart team up to revisit the year that went by. Ready or not, they’ll deliver their unfiltered takes on everything from politics to sports to pop culture. There will be cameos from Quinta Brunson, Terry Crews, Lauren Lapkus, and Amber Ruffin, among others.
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Don’t forget to enjoy some SPR3 music videos with your loved ones this holiday season!
Season 2 of Alice in the Borderland was finally released as well!
Yea…binged through it yesterday and today and was a bit disappointed. Felt like the games were better in S1.
I haven’t seen any of it yet, but is it like a cross between Squid Game and Battle Royale? And is it good?
On the surface it is kind of like both because all three feature life or death games. But I would say Alice feels much less serious, it really feels like a live-action anime, complete with extended scenes of characters emoting and giving speeches about how they’re going to keep going on despite the hardships they’re facing.I enjoyed it overall – just wouldn’t go in with your expectations sky high. It’s a good show to watch when you’re just looking for a bit of fun and can accept some shortcomings.
Thanks for taking the time to tell me. Happy holidays!
“There has been uh muh-dur!”
Does anyone have numbers on the size of Knives Out/Glass Onion’s marketing budgets? I’ve never seen movies get near as much press as these did/do. There’s no way they live up to the hype. I’ve always felt that if the movie’s any good, there’s no need to plaster every available space with ads for it.
A bit of Googling has some potentially unreliabel sources like CBR saying it was minimal marketing spend.Honestly makes sense to me – I really don’t feel like the movie is actually everywhere as you do. It barely had any campaign whatsoever prior to right before its release. And it would be easy to see the current campaign right before its release really just being marketing for Netflix as a whole – likely replacing their typical ads vs being net new. It’s definitely not at the level of a typical superhero movie or Tom Cruise blockbuster, where you see trailers dropped months and months ahead of time and played during every major sporting event in the 3-4 weeks leading up to its release.
Maybe their whole marketing budget went to the A/V Club. At this very moment, there are eight different stories (ads) about Glass Onion on just the front page. Seems like a lot to me.
lol you think a studio is paying the AV Club for these useless articles? The AV Club creates a dozen thinly-written articles about one particular release or interview every single week because all they care about these days are clicks.
Yeah, but do “Glass Onion” articles generate clicks? If they’re not getting paid for this drivel they’re idiots (which, I’m sure, is a distinct possibility).
I mean this isn’t even a Glass Onion article – this is a top # list article. I assume that these do get clicks because AV Club spits them out often. But yes, I assume a movie that is coming out and popular would get clicks. Their article volume isn’t unique to this movie only…they write this much about everything popular nowadays. I think its just your perception here.
I agree that AV Club spits out article after article discussing whatever is popular that particular week. But, I still think they’re getting paid to do it much of the time. At least they should be. I guess it’s possible that they write one article on everything they can and then once one gets more clicks than the others, they grind out ten more. How do they choose what show to recap? Is that a purely agnostic process? Perhaps you’re right – I’m too cynical.On a related note: The director of Glass Onion hosted an entire category on Jeopardy, AND there was quite a long spiel where Ken Jennings plugged the new movie. I would assume they pay a great deal for that kind of exposure. Jeopardy has no need of Rian Johnson.
I enjoyed Glass Onion much more than Knives Out, and I was prepared to hate it after all the hype. Then again, I also enjoy running on a squeaky wheel in the middle of the night.