📺 A new Ted Lasso (or not), a Nordic noir, and a messy season finale
Reviews of Stick (Apple TV+), Dept. Q (Netflix), Your Friends and Neighbors (Apple TV+), Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney (Netflix)
Happy Thursday! The Emmy eligibility window has officially closed, which means our big Spring watches have wrapped and we’re heading into the sparser stretch of Summer TV. This week, we’re revisiting a few finales, checking out a new buzzy Netflix title, and looking at Apple TV’s new Ted Lasso knock-off.
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
Stick (Apple TV+)
Dept. Q (Netflix)
Your Friends and Neighbors (Apple TV+)
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney (Netflix)
— Jess Spoll and Jenni Cullen
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Below is a selection of new shows and movies premiering this week on streaming. Our unabridged list of June releases, including an additional 8 movies and TV shows this week is available for premium subscribers.
Ginny & Georgia (Season 3) — The mother-daughter duo returns as Ginny navigates high school challenges while Georgia's past continues to cast shadows over their new beginnings.
Watch on Netflix: June 5 (all 10 episodes)Tires (Season 2) — Shane Gillis’s raunchy workplace comedy returns with more antics at the struggling family-run tire shop. Guest stars this season include Vince Vaughn and Thomas Hayden Church.
Watch on Netflix: June 5 (all 12 episodes)The Survivors (Limited Series) — Based on Jane Harper’s 2020 novel, this Australian murder mystery follows a young man who returns to his coastal hometown and dredges up long-buried secrets.
Watch on Netflix: June 6 (all 6 episodes)Straw — Taraji P. Henson stars in Tyler Perry’s newest Netflix movie about a hardworking single mother pushed to the brink and into a shocking act of desperation.
Watch on Netflix: June 6The Alto Knights* — Robert De Niro stars in this mob drama chronicling the decades-long rivalry between two crime families fighting for control of 20th-century New York.
Watch on Max: June 6 (*Streaming Premiere)Parthenope* — From A24 comes this Naples-set drama about the life of a transcendently gorgeous woman.
Watch on Max: June 6 (*Streaming Premiere)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Stick
Keywords: comedy, sports, family drama
Watch if you like: Ted Lasso, Lucky Hank, Cobra Kai
Jess’s Rating: C+
Apple TV+ is clearly chasing what they had with Ted Lasso in their new sports comedy Stick. Owen Wilson stars as Pryce “Stick” Cahill, a washed-up former pro golfer whose public flameout leaves him hustling locals and selling equipment. His shot at redemption arrives in the form of an unsuspecting teenage prodigy, giving him the chance to re-enter the competitive world and get his life back into gear. It’s the set-up for a predictable road-trip narrative filled with father-son bonding and neatly packaged life lessons.
No shade to the development team that put this together, because the pieces are all there: a likable lead, a rough-around-the-edges teen with potential, and a cast of oddball side characters ready to form a makeshift family. But what drags the show down isn’t one fatal flaw so much as a lack of guts. While Ted Lasso was willing to introduce truly unlikeable characters and tangible stakes, Stick seems content to rehash a narrative that we’ve seen a million times, with characters that are neither particularly likable or unlikeable.
Having seen only five of the ten episodes, I reserve the right to be proven wrong; maybe the series grows into something greater. But so far, every beat is expected and every character arc is telegraphed. If Stick is just aiming to be light summer filler, it succeeds. But in reaching for something deeper, it doesn’t make it under par.
— Jess
Length: 30-min runtime, 1 season / 10 episodes (3 of 10 available now, new on Wednesdays)
Watch on: Apple TV+
Dept. Q
Keywords: crime, thriller, gritty
Watch if you like: Slow Horses, Dark Matter, Sherlock
Jenni’s Rating: B+
Department Q (stylized as Dept. Q) is a new thriller adapted from the best-selling Danish crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Writer-director Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) shifts the setting of this version from Copenhagen to Scotland, but keeps the bleak, brooding tone of a classic Nordic noir. After a botched mission leaves his partner wounded and another officer dead, Detective Carl Morck returns to duty, scarred and bitter, and is exiled to a dank basement to lead a cold-case division no one expects to succeed.
Matthew Goode stars as the arrogant but self-loathing Morck, who begrudgingly begins to assemble a small team to investigate the unit’s first case. There’s Akram (Alexej Manvelov), a quietly intense Syrian refugee with a background in law enforcement; Rose (Leah Byrne), a young analyst eager to prove herself; and Morck’s former partner James (Jamie Sives), now bedridden but still bringing insights and weary humor from the sidelines. The ensemble is further bolstered by strong supporting turns from Chloe Pirrie, Kelly Macdonald, and Kate Dickie, all of whom add emotional weight to a story that twists through overlapping timelines and some morally murky terrain.
The whole production feels confident from the jump. Its pacing is deliberate but never sluggish, allowing for a character-driven approach that rewards close attention by the viewer. The one iffy note for me was Morck’s relationship with his stepson, a subplot that often feels emotionally inconsistent in an otherwise well-grounded series. Still, Dept. Q has such a sturdy foundation, it’s easy to overlook the occasional stumble. This series trusts its audience—there’s minimal exposition, and the narrative threads gradually interweave in satisfying ways. With a compelling premise, a standout cast, and many boxes of cold case files to dig into, this series has all the makings of a procedural built to last.
— Jenni
Length: 60-min runtime, 1 season / 9 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
We reviewed a show in its early days on air. Now that we’ve watched more of it, would we change our initial rating?
Your Friends & Neighbors
Keywords: dark comedy, crime drama, mystery
Watch if you like: Breaking Bad, Weeds, Desperate Housewives
Jess’s Rating: C+
When Your Friends & Neighbors premiered, it felt like it could be something. Jon Hamm plays Coop, a disgraced hedge fund manager turned suburban thief, now robbing the same people he used to host at dinner parties. It’s a setup that lets Hamm play the part he does best: a man who’s equal parts charming, smug, and self-loathing. The tone was slick, the premise familiar but fun, and the writing hinted at something sharper to come.
For the first half of the season, it works. The show balances satire and mystery well, and it shows signs of expanding beyond Coop’s one-percenter POV. Characters like Barney, his money manager, and Elena, his former housekeeper, seem poised to bring depth and dimension—and for a brief stretch, the show seems to know it might be better off following them. But that possibility is abandoned almost as quickly as it’s introduced.
And while the stubbornly narrow perspective is frustrating, it’s not as bad as what comes later. After spending most of the season carefully teasing out a central mystery, the finale provides every answer in a rushed, momentum-killing exposition dump. I wrote after the first two episodes that if Your Friends & Neighbors could tighten its tone and dig deeper, it might become one of Apple’s most interesting originals. Instead, it fumbles the landing and takes the rest of the season down with it.
— Jess
Length: 50-min runtime, 1 season / 9 episodes
Watch on: Apple TV+
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney
Keywords: talk show, comedy, zany
Watch if you like: Everybody’s in L.A., Hound Tall with Moshe Kasher, the vibe of free-wheeling variety shows
Jenni’s Rating: B+
In an extended bit from episode four of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, John and guest Andy Samberg read fan fiction about themselves, in which their old SNL boss Lorne Michaels appears briefly to offer the advice: “You only have to be funny for one person: yourself.” Had it aired in the premiere, I might’ve assumed Mulaney had derived the mission statement for the entire show from this AO3 nugget.
In my initial review of the series, I wrote that Everybody’s Live felt like it was built to house anything Mulaney found remotely funny—a comedy playground with only the loosest constraints of a variety hour in place. Now, having seen the full season, that rings even more true. From the chaotic call-ins to the hyper-specific musical guests, off-beat digital shorts, and unstructured interviews, the show is unmistakably Mulaney’s. There’s a strange and deeply silly freedom to it all, a spirit of “yes, and” that allows bits to stretch to their natural (or unnatural) conclusions. I found myself sucked further and further in as the series went on, never quite sure where the show was going, but increasingly enjoying the feeling of being in on the joke and along for the ride.
The season finale aired last week with a perfect callback (I won’t spoil it) and a final confirmation: this isn’t a talk show so much as a sandbox for Mulaney’s strangest ideas. Though it’s theoretically been renewed for a second season, the comedian has been cagey about what’s next. But if we’ve learned anything from this first run, it’s that this show’s unpredictability is part of the charm.
— Jenni
Length: 55-min runtime, 1 season / 12 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
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I wanted to laugh watching Stick but kept coming up short :/