📺 Watching: Presumed Innocent, The Acolyte, Fantasmas, Maxton Hall
plus 1 streaming movie premiere + 3 new and returning shows
Thursday is here again. And with it, the second half of Bridgerton Season 3 (you can stream it on Netflix literally right now) and another weekend just around the corner. This Sunday brings a new version of the Barbenheimer conundrum: will you be watching the premiere of the second season of House of the Dragon, or will you be tuned into the Tony Awards?
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
Fantasmas (Max)
The Acolyte (Disney+)
Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+)
Maxton Hall (Prime Video)
— Jess Spoll and Jenni Cullen
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Below is a selection of new shows and movies premiering this week. Our full list of June releases, including theatrical releases and streaming debuts, is available here and published monthly for our premium subscribers.
The Boys (Season 4) — The stakes have never been higher in the latest season of this satirical action dark comedy series about super heroes going rogue and abusing their powers.
Watch on Prime Video: June 13 (3 of 8 episodes, then weekly)Bridgerton (Season 3, Part 2) — Penelope and Colin’s friends-to-lovers story continues in the second half of the third installment of this incredibly popular and soapy period drama.
Watch on Netflix: June 13 (all 4 episodes)Monkey Man (Movie) — Dev Patel writes, directs, and stars in his directorial debut about a young fighter who seeks revenge against the men who took everything from him.
Watch on Peacock: June 14 (Streaming Premiere)House of the Dragon (Season 2) — George R. R. Martin’s prequel series to Game of Thrones returns to a realm divided and full of dragons. A Targaryen civil war is imminent with Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) as major players.
Watch on Max: June 16 (1 of 8 episodes, then weekly)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Fantasmas
Keywords: comedy, offbeat, satire
Watch if you like: Los Espookys, Problemista, What We Do in The Shadows
Jess’s Rating: A-
It’s hard to explain just what’s going on in Fantasmas, and its particular brand of oddity will certainly not appeal to everyone. The series utilizes a mix of deadpan humor, absurdism, fantasy-realism, and satire that defies comparisons. If you’ve seen Los Espookys or Problemista — two prior works from creator Julio Torres — you’ll roughly know what’s in store, but even then, be prepared for the unexpected.
On paper, the premise of Fantasmas is that Julio Torres, playing a lightly fictionalized version of himself, searches for a lost oyster earring in a dreamscape version of New York City. In reality, each episode is a series of sketches threaded very loosely together by that pursuit. This version of Julio has a unique connection with the world, with a synesthetic relationship with numbers and letters. One sketch features Steve Buscemi as an anthropomorphized letter “Q.” (And that’s not even the weirdest thing that happens in the first episode). Throughout, Torres examines the difficulty of self-expression and connection in an increasingly capitalistic society, parodying everything from the entertainment industry to the medical industrial complex.
A testament to Torres’s talent and niche popularity, the eclectic list of guest stars in Fantasmas includes not only Buscemi but Emma Stone, Julia Fox, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Sedaris, Tilda Swinton, Bowen Yang, and Paul Dano, among others. If nothing else, let their endorsement steer you towards giving Fantasmas a try.
— Jess
Length: 30-min runtime, 1 season / 6 episodes (1 available now, new on Fridays)
Watch on: HBO, Max
The Acolyte
Keywords: Star Wars, revenge, sci-fi, action
Watch if you like: The Mandalorian, Grimm, Carnival Row
Jenni’s Rating: C
The latest stand-alone addition to the Star Wars franchise is set a century before Anakin Skywalker was born and follows a Jedi investigation into a series of crimes and the underground society responsible. When a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg, The Hunger Games) becomes the prime suspect of a murder despite being no where near the scene of the crime, her old Jedi master (Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game) leads the charge to clear her name and find the real sinister forces at play.
Three episodes in, The Acolyte is reading like a police drama meets revenge plot set in a fantasy/sci-fi world. Even with a slightly overdone “evil twin” scheme at its center, the show’s ensemble is decently compelling and the underlying mystery of the main character’s backstory has been interesting to watch so far. After seeing hundreds of one-star reviews online panning the series as unoriginal and poorly wrought, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the action and social dynamics of The Acolyte pulled me in.
It’s not my favorite new show by any means, and there are certainly some clunky lines of dialogue and overdrawn fight scenes, but what else would you expect from Star Wars? Any way I look at it, the review bombing seems like a huge overreaction to the series’ female lead and slight deviations from the roots of the franchise. Whatever the die-hard fans may think, for a casual enjoyer of the Star Wars universe (or a lover of the sci-fi genre in general) this is a satisfying enough series.
— Jenni
Length: 35-min runtime, 1 season / 3 of 8 episodes available, new on Tuesdays
Watch on: Disney+
Presumed Innocent
Keywords: legal drama, thriller, mystery
Watch if you like: The Lincoln Lawyer, Primal Fear, Basic Instinct
Jess’s Rating: B
The legal thriller is a television mainstay that we may never get away from, especially not while David E. Kelley is around. The creator behind early aughts dramas such as The Practice and Boston Legal, and more recent hits Big Little Lies and The Undoing, is back for another courtroom nail-biter with Presumed Innocent. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal — in his first leading role on the small screen — the series is an adaptation of a novel by Scott Turow that had previously been made into a movie starring Harrison Ford. Whether you call it a remake or not, it’s a story that’s been told more than once before.
If you’ve seen the 1990 film, then you may not feel inclined to spend another eight hours on a mystery that, to you, is solved. But for those who haven’t been inducted, the central question of the series will certainly hook you. Gyllenhaal stars as a chief deputy prosecutor assigned to the case of his colleague’s violent murder, only to eventually become a suspect in that same case. Is he guilty? If he isn’t, who committed the crime?
While the big screen has gotten away from this type of straightforward mystery-thriller, TV is doubling down on them with extended versions of stories we’ve seen before (see: 2022’s The Lincoln Lawyer and last year’s Fatal Attraction.) This type of remake works decently well when there’s more psychological territory to unpack, but it can be tricky to toe the line between successfully bringing something new to the story and messing with a tried-and-true plot just for the sake of freshness. With only two episodes available, it’s hard to tell where this will fall on the spectrum. So far, it’s slick and well-paced with grabby cliffhangers; it may not be reinventing the wheel, but it’s perfectly adequate entertainment.
— Jess
Length: 45-min runtime, Limited Series / 8 episodes (2 available now, new on Wednesdays)
Watch on: Apple TV+
Maxton Hall — The World Between Us
Keywords: romantic drama, German language, YA
Watch if you like: Geek Girl, Bridgerton, The Summer I Turned Pretty
Jenni’s Rating: C-
This slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers teen romantic drama was one of the most searched series on Prime Video in May, and as of this week, it’s officially getting a second season.
Set in a UK private school, but filmed in Germany with a German cast, Maxton Hall — The World Between Us follows the clash and attraction between working-class scholarship student Ruby Bell (Harriet Herbig-Matten) and devil-may-care millionaire James Beaufort (Damian Hardung) as they navigate their elite private school and follow their dreams of attending Oxford. The series is firmly YA and more of a smooth-brain watch than anything else, but with the right expectations it could be a fun and engaging way to bide time while waiting for the next season of Bridgerton or The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The leads have good chemistry and with the class tensions and fancy school backdrop, it’s so close to being this generation’s German-language Gossip Girl. However, the music and other production choices — including a constant diary-like narration by Ruby — keep the show feeling rather young. If you’re in the market for a mindless emotive romance though, it’s not the worst choice out there.
— Jenni
Length: 45-min runtime, 1 season / 6 episodes
Watch on: Prime Video
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I only watched Fantasias off your recommendations from and, gotta say, you nailed it