📺 Perfect Couple, Fight Night, Pachinko...
plus an old fave and 3 new movies & 8 new and returning series to watch this week
Happy Thursday. Big weekend for Netflix — Emily in Paris Season 4b is now streaming, and Uglies the movie will be available tomorrow. Also, if it escaped your notice, it is now officially football season and our Philly roots obligate us to say: Go Birds!
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
The Perfect Couple (Netflix)
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock)
Pachinko - S2 (Apple TV+)
Homicide: Life on the Street (Peacock)
— Jenni Cullen and Jess Spoll
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Below is a selection of new shows and movies premiering this week. Our unabridged list of September releases, including theatrical releases and streaming debuts, is available here and published monthly for our premium subscribers.
Emily in Paris (Season 4b) — It’s time for Emily (Lily Collins) to update her language-learning app, because our favorite American in Paris is headed to Rome.
Watch on Netflix: September 12 (all 5 episodes)Uglies (Movie) — Joey King and Chase Stokes star in this long-awaited movie based on the popular YA dystopian novel by Scott Westerfeld.
Watch on Netflix: September 13The Old Man (Season 2) — In this action-drama, Jeff Bridges plays a former CIA operative and war vet who is forced to go into hiding.
Watch on FX/Hulu: September 12/13 (2 of 8 episodes, then weekly)How to Die Alone (Season 1) — Created by and starring Natasha Rothwell, this comedy follows a woman who decides to change her life after a near-death experience.
Watch on Hulu: September 13 (4 of 8 episodes, then weekly)Three Women (Limited) — Based on the bestseller by Lisa Taddeo and starring Shailene Woodley and Betty Gilpin, this series explores the true stories of three women who fought for what they wanted from life.
Watch on Starz: September 13 (1 of 10 episodes, then weekly)Tulsa King (Season 2) — The Taylor Sheridan-created series starring Sylvester Stallone as a mob boss returns for a second season.
Watch on Paramount+: September 15 (1 of 10 episodes, then weekly)High Potential (Season 1) — This new crime procedural stars Kaitlin Olson as a highly intelligent woman who begins consulting with the police department.
Watch on ABC/Hulu: September 17/18 (1 episode, then weekly)American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez (Season 1) — From producer Ryan Murphy comes this limited series charting the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez.
Watch on FX/Hulu: September 17/18 (2 of 10 episodes, then weekly)Agatha All Along (Limited) — Kathryn Hahn reprises her role as Agatha Harkness from WandaVision in this spin-off. Aubrey Plaza also stars.
Watch on Disney+: September 18 (2 of 9 episodes, then weekly)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
The Perfect Couple
Keywords: murder mystery, thriller, soapy
Watch if you like: Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall, The Undoing
Jess’s Rating: B-
If you’re like me and can’t get enough of the rich people murder mystery genre, The Perfect Couple is a perfectly adequate iteration. Like many before it, it’s adapted from a bestselling novel, in this case by Elin Hilderbrand. Set during the opulent wedding weekend of a lower-class outsider (Eve Hewson, Bad Sisters), to a privileged trust-fund baby (Billy Howle), the proceedings kick off with — what else? — a dead body found on the beach. If that setup doesn’t hook you, the cast list should do the trick, with Dakota Fanning, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, and the ubiquitous Nicole Kidman joining Hewson and Howle.
Although this has all the markers of a prestige drama, Big Little Lies or The White Lotus it is not. The problem isn’t that the characters are unlikeable — they always are in this sub-genre — it’s that they seem inauthentic due to a staggering lack of depth or development. Everyone fits neatly into a stereotype: the spoiled frat bro, the rich but aloof enigma, the rakish father, the harpy mother, and so on, but we don’t understand what drives any of them.
From a mystery perspective, the show does enough to keep you engaged, making it really easy to accidentally watch the entirety in one sitting. But is it a well-plotted mystery? Not quite. The momentum relies entirely on misdirects and creating false suspense by withholding trivial information. With only six episodes to work with, the show spends so much time trying to heighten anticipation that it has nothing left for any sort of commentary or perspective on class and family.
In other words, if you’re expecting a creative, boundary pushing entry to the genre, you will be disappointed. But like the strangely infectious choreographed dance intro suggests, this is just breezy, brainless escapism.
— Jess
Length: 60-min runtime, Limited Series / 6 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist
Keywords: 70s, crime drama, based on a true story
Watch if you like: Power, Sneaky Pete, The Big Cigar
Jess’s Rating: B
Based on a 2020 podcast, Fight Night: The Million-Dollar Heist dramatizes the events following Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta, in which an afterparty turns into a major heist. But that’s not what’s alluring about this limited series; the cast list is one of the most star-studded ever seen on the small screen. Kevin Hart plays Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams, a small-time hustler hoping to get in with gangster Frank Moten (Samuel L. Jackson). Taraji P. Henson is Williams’s mistress and partner in illicit gambling, and Don Cheadle portrays a detective who was one of the Atlanta police department’s first Black recruits. Williams plans to throw an afterparty for Ali to impress Moten, but he’s blamed when a group of armed robbers attack the celebration and rob the mob bosses.
On the surface, it would be easy to write off Fight Night as a product of our current TV landscape, in which true crime dramatizations are plentiful and the big corporate-backed streamers are throwing buckets of money at mega stars. But from the outset, it’s clear that this creative team did more than just show up and take their checks. Hart, in particular, shows a new depth to his range, deviating from his typical goofy, larger-than-life persona to depict Chicken Man’s scrambling desperation. Jackson does what he does best, with an opening scene that could be straight out of Pulp Fiction. And the art direction and production design perfectly nail the 70s vibes, hearkening back to crime dramas of that era.
If you like heist dramas (and who doesn’t?), Fight Night is energetic and sharp, if occasionally formulaic. It remains to be seen if the momentum will carry throughout the eight episodes, but I’ll be tuning in to see.
— Jess
Length: 60-min runtime, Limited Series / 8 episodes (4 available now, new on Thursdays)
Watch on: Peacock
These popular shows came back with new episodes. Here’s what we thought and where you can watch them.
Pachinko - Season 2
Keywords: drama, historical epic, cinematic
Watch if you like: Mr. Sunshine, Promised Land, Heimat
Jenni’s Rating: A-
Two years after the first season quietly rocked a small group of TV reviewers and Apple TV+ subscribers, Pachinko is back and just as good, if not better, than ever.
Based on the novel by Min Jin Lee, this historical epic spans multiple generations — using two, interwoven timelines — to tell the story of a Korean family displaced from their homeland and living in Japan. The new episodes pick up pretty much where the first season left off: Sunja (Minha Kim) is still struggling to support her young family in 1945 Osaka during the last years of Japanese colonial rule over Korea. Meanwhile, forty-four years later in Tokyo, Sunja’s grandson, Solomon (Jin Ha) attempts to make his fortune amid economic uncertainty and ongoing prejudice.
The nuanced performances, especially by Minha Kim and Yuh-jung Youn (older Sunja), bring a heartbreaking humanity to the ongoing struggles of the family as they grapple with identity, loyalty, and survival in a country that never quite feels like home. And while the series maintains its visual splendor thanks to Apple’s seemingly unending budget, it is the delicate storytelling and emotional weight of the source material that continues to anchor it.
Pachinko is a gorgeous period drama that is slowly but steadily inching toward “classic” status in my mind. Never exaggerated or melodramatic, every episode captures a deeply personal tale of resilience in the face of grand historical forces. While it won’t be for everyone, Pachinko is absolutely succeeding at bringing a beautiful piece of literary fiction to life.
— Jenni
Length: 55-min runtime, 2 seasons / 16 episodes, new on Fridays
Watch on: Apple TV+
Where we highlight shows that have long-since ended or been canceled, that are well-worth digging back up.
Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999)
Keywords: crime drama, police procedural, David Simon
Watch if you like: The Wire, The Sopranos, Southland
Jenni’s Rating: A-
After decades off the air, the highly lauded but under-watched 90s crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street is now streaming for the first time ever.
Based on David Simon’s book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the show chronicles the work of a fictionalized version of the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit. Just as with his better-known project The Wire, this show draws heavily from Simon’s meticulous research, basing stories and characters off his year spent following real detectives and their cases.
The ensemble cast of this show is strong throughout, but a few standout performances emerge early on — particularly Andre Braugher, whose portrayal of the grave Detective Frank Pembleton earned him fans and acclaim before he ever set foot on the set of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Praised for its raw performances and no-frills portrayal of detective work, Homicide was ahead of its time in many ways. Refusing to conform to the typical network blueprint for the high-octane, neatly tied procedural, it is infamous for letting some cases remain unresolved or stretch across seasons — showcasing the often frustratingly slow grind of police work. The show’s realism set a new bar for future crime dramas, balancing gritty, intense moments with slower, relationship-focused scenes that delve into the everyday drudgeries of the job.
I do want to appropriately set expectations for any new viewers, however. While Homicide may have broken the mold in many ways, it still is a product of its time. Today's prestige dramas often trust audiences to make certain narrative leaps, but Homicide tends to spell out things more explicitly, a choice that certainly feels very 90s and network-driven. Despite this, the groundbreaking storytelling, unflinching realism, and rich characters of Homicide: Life on the Street make it a must-watch for The Wire diehards or fans of the crime drama genre.
— Jenni
Length: 60-min runtime, 7 seasons / 122 episodes (+1 Movie)
Watch on: Peacock
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