📺 Paradise comes with a price
A new thriller, an original ensemble comedy, and a reality drama with big houses and bigger personalities
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In today’s edition:
Wilderness (Prime Video)
Reservation Dogs - Season 3 (Hulu)
Ghosts - Season 2 (Paramount+, CBS)
Selling the OC - Season 2 (Netflix)
— Jenni Cullen and Jess Spoll
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This newsletter was written during the WGA and SAG strikes, without the work of the actors and writers, the shows we review wouldn’t exist.
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Wilderness
Keywords: thriller, suspense, drama
Watch if you like: How to Get Away With Murder, You, Gone Girl
Jess’s Rating: C
Wilderness, adapted from a B.E. Jones novel of the same name, is a thriller starring Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (The Haunting of Hill House) as Liv and Will, a married couple going through a rough patch. When Liv discovers something heartbreaking about Will that threatens their relationship, she turns vengeful, and no one is safe.
This series hooked me from the first trailer — Jenna Coleman as an Amy Dunne facsimile, underscored by TSwift’s Look What You Made Me Do?! — say less. It had all the potential to be an over-the-top, soapy thriller, à la You. The show starts off strong, with a split timeline that builds suspense and a sequence of threatening events that create a looming sense of dread. After the first couple of episodes, though, things take a turn for the worse. What was campy becomes cringey, the storyline becomes monotonous, and with all the plot holes you would think you were at Camp Green Lake.
All of that said, I would still recommend this series purely for Jenna Coleman’s spectacular performance. In a role that could have easily become a parody of itself, she nails Liv’s complexity, navigating the love-hate spectrum with ease. Watch it for her! Or maybe just watch her in Doctor Who instead. My hopes for this were high, and maybe they were too high — I blame Taylor. Although it comes out swinging, this series loses itself along the way, ends up with not much to say, and feels like a bad copy of all the “women can be bad too” movies of the last decade.
— Jess
Length: 60-min runtime, 1 season / 6 episodes (All episodes drop tomorrow, 9/15)
Watch on: Prime Video
Where we each choose a recent-ish show to review and feature.
Reservation Dogs - Season 3
Keywords: dry comedy, drama, magical realism
Watch if you like: Atlanta, What We Do In The Shadows, Los Espookys
Jenni’s Rating: A
This incredibly original show knew what it was from minute one and has spent its three seasons digging in, expanding, and getting a little more serious — and somehow also more charming — with every episode. If you haven’t gotten on board with Reservation Dogs yet, now is the perfect time. The series finale airs September 27th.
Reservation Dogs follows four indigenous teens from rural Oklahoma who are grappling with loss, identity, and their place in the world. An unassuming character-driven comedy, its first seasons balance quite a bit of kookiness with perfect touches of dramatic weight. But this third and final season bends in a slightly different direction. Similar to the last season of Atlanta, it feels like with these episodes, the writers of Reservation Dogs are finally delving into the darker and more nuanced stories they’ve been wanting to tell. There are more generational flashbacks, more single-character episodes, and most notably, a deeper focus on both the brutal history of indigenous life and its far-reaching, vibrant culture.
As sad as I am to see a good show end, I think this series is going out on a perfect note. It hasn’t dragged for a single second and (I don’t want to speak too soon, but) it seems like every one of the main quartet will get a satisfying conclusion in the episodes to come. This is a truly special show thanks to a marriage of incredibly nuanced, authentic performances and stellar writing. I can’t wait to see what these actors and the creative team will do next.
Length: 30-min runtime, 3 seasons / 26 of 28 episodes out, new on Wednesdays
Watch on: FX on Hulu
Ghosts - Season 2
Keywords: ensemble comedy, wholesome, paranormal
Watch if you like: Abbott Elementary, Superstore, The Good Place
Jess’s Rating: A-
In this TV desert that we’re in, now is the perfect time to catch up on shows that premiered in recent years that you never picked up. If you’re a lover of ensemble comedies and you haven’t yet watched Ghosts, here is your sign.
Ghosts is about a young married couple, Sam (Rose McIver of iZombie) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who move upstate from Manhattan upon learning that they’ve inherited a large family estate. After Sam gets into an accident and technically dies for a minute, she discovers that she can now see and talk to ghosts, and — surprise! — there are a bunch of them inhabiting their home. Since this is a comedy, they are more Casper The Friendly Ghost than Poltergeist; there’s the 1920s jazz musician, the centuries-old Viking, the frat bro finance guy of the 90s, and so on.
In its second season, Ghosts re-establishes itself as a consistently laugh-out-loud funny series. The characters that weren’t as well explored in the first season get their time to shine, and there are plenty of excellent guest stars throughout, including Nichole Sakura (Superstore). There’s something special about a comedy that is wholesome but still witty, and feel-good but not overly sentimental; it’s like Abbott Elementary in that way. Ghosts has major rewatch potential if you’ve already seen it, and is a great binge watch if you haven’t.
Length: 30-min runtime, 2 seasons / 40 episodes
Watch on: CBS / Paramount+
Where we give our takes on reality TV and give unscripted shows a time to shine.
Selling the OC (2022 - present)
Reality genre: luxury real estate, drama
Watch if you like: Selling Sunset, Fixer Upper, The Hills
I binge-watched the first season of Selling Sunset while recovering from Covid and have been chasing that feverish high ever since. No subsequent season or spinoff has quite done the trick and unfortunately, Selling the OC is no exception.
If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of these chaotic shows, the basic gist is that twin brothers Jason and Brett Oppenheim have formed a luxury real estate empire on the west coast that employs (seemingly!) the worst, messiest people on earth. Selling Sunset — and its spinoff series — follows these elite real estate brokers at the Oppenheim Group as they sell a luxurious life to their affluent buyers. The franchise in question for this review takes place in the company’s Orange County offices.
Now don’t get me wrong, I will still endorse Selling the OC as a guilty pleasure show to some extent. I, myself have already background-watched all eight episodes of Season 2 that premiered just last week. My qualm is that this spinoff just doesn’t have the same sparkle as the original Los Angeles edition. Similar to Selling Tampa, Selling the OC focuses far too much on the the clashing personalities and personal dramas of the cast and not enough on the real estate of it all. There’s simply too much inappropriate in-office flirting — and fighting — and not enough selling of luxury homes! I want at least a little bit more balance.
This series also feels more glossy and scripted than Sunset and lacks a single person to reliably root for. If you’re into endless conflict and mercurial alliances amongst glamorously dressed real estate agents as they every-so-often walk through an enormous beach-front $20 million property, this is the show for you. (But I’d still recommend you try Selling Sunset first).
— Jenni
Length: 40-min runtime, 2 seasons / 16 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
Your shows, returned:
American Horror Story, Season 12: September 20 on FX/Hulu
The D’Amelio Show, Season 3: September 20 on Hulu
Sex Education, Season 4: September 21 on Netflix
Upcoming new releases:
Miseducation (Comedy): Premieres September 15 on Netflix
Wilderness (Thriller): September 15 on Prime Video
Written in the Stars (Reality): September 15 on Prime Video
The Gold (Crime Drama): September 17 on Paramount+
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