📺 What to Watch: Dead Boy Detectives, The Sympathizer...
plus 'Dinner with the Parents' and 5 upcoming TV shows
Happy Thursday! Shōgun — the best show of the year so far — aired its finale this week, so if you’re one of those “I’ll wait ‘til all the episodes are out” people, now’s your time. We’ve been covering it on the podcast, if you want to follow along as you watch. And if you want to discuss it further, Jess started a “TV Club” (like a book club!) this week on the app Fable, and Shōgun is the first selection. Join the club!
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix)
Dinner with the Parents (Freevee)
The Sympathizer (Max)
— 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 April releases, including theatrical releases and streaming debuts, is available here and published monthly for our premium subscribers.
Them: The Scare (Season 2) — Set in Los Angeles, this second installment of the horror anthology series follows an LAPD homicide detective who is assigned to the gruesome murder of a foster home mother.
Watch on Prime Video: April 25 (all 8 episodes)Dead Boy Detectives (Season 1) — A new supernatural detective series follows two teen ghost characters from Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner’s Sandman comics. They work to solve mysteries for their supernatural clientele until a powerful witch complicates things.
Watch on Netflix: April 25 (all 8 episodes)We’re Here (Season 4) — This reality series features drag queens who travel across the United States and invite small-town residents to step outside their comfort zones to participate in one-night-only drag shows.
Watch on Max: April 26 (1 of 6 episodes, then weekly)Knuckles (Limited Series) — In this new entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog live-action franchise, Knuckles (Idris Elba) goes on an action-packed journey of self-discovery as he agrees to train a protégé in the ways of the Echidna warrior.
Watch on Paramount+: April 26 (all 6 episodes)The Veil (Limited Series) — Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan star in a new thriller series surrounding a major secret and the global cat-and-mouse chase to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.
Watch on Hulu: April 30 (2 of 6 episodes, then weekly)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Dead Boy Detectives
Keywords: supernatural, YA, Neil Gaiman
Watch if you like: The Sandman, Doctor Who, Lockwood & Co
Jess’s Rating: B+
Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed series The Sandman is expanding its cinematic universe. Developed by Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant), this new supernatural YA drama is based on the eponymous characters who appear in the comic books that were previously adapted into the hit 2022 Netflix series. Dead Boy Detectives follows a detective agency run by two teenage ghosts: Edwin, who died in 1916, is polite and compliant, in contrast to his partner Charles, who is a product of the grunge era and frequently shirks the rules. Together, they help the living and the dead by investigating supernatural mysteries.
Supernatural mystery teen shows are hot right now; just in the last couple of years there’s been Locke & Key, Lockwood & Co, Goosebumps, and School Spirits. I can’t say that I was overly excited about another in the genre, but Dead Boy Detectives is shaping up to be the best of the bunch. (Editor’s note: I’ve seen the first two episodes at the time of writing). While it’s nothing groundbreaking, it’s incredibly solid, and even better than The Sandman. With a new mystery and adventure in every episode, engaging storytelling and well-developed characters make it an entertaining watch. It’s lighter than its predecessor, hearkening to Doctor Who in its embrace of the outlandish (positive). The chemistry between Edwin and Charles adds depth to the otherwise procedural conceit, providing both comedic moments and more emotionally resonant exchanges.
Whether you’re typically a fan of the supernatural genre or not, the mysteries are intriguing and Dead Boy Detectives strikes that delicate balance between episodic storytelling and overarching narrative threads. I’ll certainly be tuning in for the rest of the series.
— Jess
Length: 55-min runtime, 1 season / 8 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
Dinner with the Parents
Keywords: sitcom, episodic, cringe chaos
Watch if you like: Friday Night Dinner, Life in Pieces, The Big Bang Theory
Jenni’s Rating: C-
While there are a few successful American remakes of British sitcoms out there — The Office is the obvious example — I tend to think of them as outliers and am generally wary at the news of another in the genre. Enter: Dinner with the Parents, a new Freevee comedy based on the BAFTA nominated Friday Night Dinner which stemmed from creator Robert Popper’s real experiences with his secular Jewish family and their weekly Shabbat meals. The original series has been praised for finding humor in the wonderful specificity of life in a suburban Jewish London family. Unfortunately, this American remake is mostly bland and slapsticky and serves to reaffirm my pessimism.
The premise of Dinner with the Parents is simple. Every episode sees the Langers — mom, dad, two adult sons, and live-in grandma — gathering on a Friday night. Sometimes other invited (and uninvited) guests join them, but the main constant throughout is the inevitability that something will go wrong. While an impressive list of comedic greats makes up the core cast — Carol Kane (The Princess Bride), Michaela Watkins (Search Party), and Dan Bakkedahl (Veep) to name a few — the writing doesn’t feel commensurate with the talent. In fact, the main detractor for me is how big and exaggerated everything feels. The pilot comes out swinging with a sibling prank war, a fake date, and a nosey neighbor plot, and it doesn’t really get any tamer from there. Usually I’d advise anyone (including myself) watching a new sitcom to give it time, to get to know the characters a little more and to give the comedy room to bloom. But these characters all still feel like caricatures four episodes in, and I don’t see them getting more nuanced any time soon.
Dinner with the Parents is by no means a terrible comedy. But it has lost the intimacy and draw of its source material by leaning more heavily into the “broadly generic network sitcom” energy of shows like Everybody Loves Raymond or The Big Bang Theory. If quick and dirty laughs with not a lot of backstory is your thing, this series might be for you, but it mostly just makes me want to go watch the original.
— Jenni
Length: 25-min runtime, 1 season / 4 of 10 episodes out, new on Thursdays
Watch on: Freevee (Also available via Prime Video)
The Sympathizer
Keywords: historical drama, Vietnam war, satire
Watch if you like: The Americans, Counterpart, White House Plumbers
Jess’s Rating: B
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer offers a unique perspective on the aftermath of the Vietnam War, focusing on the experiences of a North Vietnamese spy living in a post-war refugee community in Los Angeles. The series delves into the moral dilemmas faced by its protagonist, known only as the Captain, as he grapples with loyalty, identity, and the consequences of his actions.
Central to the series is the Captain's complicated web of espionage. During the conflict he serves as a police captain in the South while secretly spying for the communist North, later forced to report on the activities of his fellow Vietnamese expats once in America. Although it’s not definitively required, it would certainly be helpful to refresh yourself on the state of Vietnam in the 70s before watching. With shifting timelines and a lack of exposition, I found myself re-watching scenes and giving myself quick history lessons in between.
It’s a dense narrative that requires active focus and engagement, and I’m not sure yet if it’ll pay off. There is plenty going for the series, though. It’s stylistically vibrant, intelligently satirical, and dives into the lingering aftermath of this war in a way that we haven’t seen before. Hoa Xuande delivers a compelling performance, masterfully portraying the Captain's internal struggles and the weight of his divided loyalties. Robert Downey Jr. plays four different characters — featuring a variety of wigs — in a move that feels a little hokey, but is nonetheless pulled off well.
Sometimes after two episodes of a new series, I can predict exactly how much I will enjoy the rest, but there’s so much happening in these that it’s hard to feel out where the tone and story will settle. I’ll be tuning in for at least a few more, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it yet.
— Jess
Length: 60-min runtime, Limited Series / 7 episodes (2 available now, new on Sundays)
Watch on: HBO / Max
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