📺 What to Watch: Mr. & Mrs Smith, Masters of the Air, Griselda, and In the Know
plus 2 new and 5 returning series this week
Happy February! Joining the ranks of limited series that were unexpectedly renewed for a follow-up installment, Hijack will be getting a second season on Apple. Will Idris Elba be on a hijacked train next time? Bus? Water taxi? Guess we’ll find out.
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Prime Video)
Masters of the Air (Apple TV+)
Griselda (Netflix)
In the Know (Peacock)
— Jenni Cullen and Jess Spoll
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We keep an eye on all of the new streaming content that is set to premiere. Here’s a list of new shows and movies to watch this week.
FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans (Season 2) — Ryan Murphy's docudrama anthology series returns. After Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) publishes a thinly-veiled account of the scandalous activities of a group of NYC socialites, they vow to ruin his life as revenge. Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, and Diane Lane star.
Watch on FX/Hulu: January 31 / February 1 (2 of 8 episodes, then weekly)
Genius: MLK/X (Season 4) — the latest installment in this anthology bio drama series highlights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, examining how their dueling philosophies helped usher America through the Civil Rights Movement.
Watch on NatGeo/Disney+: February 1 / 2 (2 of 8 episodes, then weekly)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Season 1) — Donald Glover and Maya Erskine star in this comedy drama about a pair of spies whose cover involves them impersonating a married couple. Hijinks and feelings ensue.
Watch on Prime Video: February 2 (all 8 episodes)Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 12) — Seinfeld co-creator Larry David plays a heightened version of himself poorly handling a barrage of life's little annoyances for the last time in the final season of this sitcom.
Watch on Max: February 4 (1 of 10 episodes)Abbott Elementary (Season 3) — School is (almost) back in session for our favorite new workplace comedy about a group of dedicated Philadelphia public school teachers and their tone deaf principal.
Watch on ABC/Hulu: February 7 / 8 (1 of 10 episodes)Not Dead Yet (Season 2) — This network sitcom about an obituary writer (Gina Rodriguez) who can talk to the dead people she’s writing about returns.
Watch on ABC/Hulu: February 7 / 8 (1 of 13 episodes)One Day (Limited Series) — Based on David Nicholls’ 2009 novel of the same name, this romantic drama tells the decades-spanning love story of Dexter (Leo Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod) who reunite on the same day every year.
Watch on Netflix: February 8 (all 14 episodes)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Keywords: dark comedy, action, spy thriller, romance
Watch if you like: Barry, Dead to Me, Fargo
Jess’s Rating: C+
When it was announced that Francesca Sloane (Fargo) and Donald Glover were working on a new Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the popular response was: why do we need this? A better question would be: what will you be doing differently to make this worthwhile? Take last year’s Dead Ringers; they didn’t just gender-swap the lead roles, they successfully reimagined the tale as a horror-satire.
To its credit, Mr. & Mrs. Smith sets out to tell a very different version of the story you know from the 2005 movie. Maya Erskine and Donald Glover play Jane and John Smith, two strangers who land jobs working for a shadowy spy organization. Part of the deal? Entering into an arranged marriage. So while the 2005 version sees our title characters fall in love before discovering that they’re both spies, this version flips that around.
It’s not just the premise that’s revamped, the series also dramatically subverts traditional spy drama tropes. Jane and John might be super spies on paper, but they’re bumbling and ineffectual most of the time. And rather than focusing on their risky escapades, the series puts their nascent relationship at the forefront and the action in the background.
The result, however, is not as revelatory as Sloane and Glover may have hoped. Yes, it’s unique to flip the script and highlight the day-to-day realities of being international spies, but the characters fail to become fully relatable, which negates the “spies— they’re just like us!” messaging. In a show that wants to focus on two people navigating the milestones of a budding connection, it doesn’t do enough to make the viewer care about that bond. As much as I like Glover and Erskine, they don’t save this series from feeling muddled and underwhelming.
— Jess
Length: 45-min runtime, 1 season / 8 episodes
Watch on: Prime Video
Masters of the Air
Keywords: World War II, prestige drama, miniseries
Watch if you like: Band of Brothers, Memphis Belle, Saving Private Ryan
Jenni’s Rating: C+
Masters of the Air is a war drama that follows the members of the 100th Bomb Group — an American aviation unit stationed in eastern England during World War II — and the challenges they faced testing air warfare tactics against the Germans. It is the third World War II miniseries produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg (along with Band of Brothers and The Pacific) and so far, it feels like a worthy addition to the pack.
Before I go further, I should mention that I am not the target audience for war dramas and know next to nothing about planes. I can appreciate production value and exquisite cinematography as much as the next guy, but I can only watch so many detailed ‘fight in flight’ scenes before I lose interest. I don’t understand the strategies shouted through the planes or how bad it really is if a wing engine fails. Does it happen all the time? Is the crew done for? I will never fully appreciate how accurate (or possibly inaccurate) this series is, because I simply don’t care to know.
What I can say is that every episode of Masters of the Air is indeed visually stunning, and the production value is through the roof. Like its spiritual predecessors, the series is invested in endearing viewers to these young men who are forced to harden in the face of violence and form a brotherhood to maintain some sense of humanity. It is predictably moving at times, but on the whole, there’s no real compelling arc for any of the characters and the plot feels a little thin.
The show is good for what it is, but if I’m any indication, it will likely have a hard time winning over audiences who aren’t already interested in archetypal war dramas.
— Jenni
Length: 60-min runtime, 1 season / 2 of 9 episodes out, new on Fridays
Watch on: Apple TV+
Griselda
Keywords: cartel drama, biopic, crime, violence
Watch if you like: Narcos, Cocaine Cowboys, Snowfall
Jess’s Rating: B-
Griselda is based on the real story of Griselda Blanco, a Colombian woman who climbed her way to the top of Miami’s drug underworld in the 70s and 80s. The limited series comes to us from the team behind Narcos, another Netflix cartel drama, and stars Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara in the title role.
Blanco’s story follows a classic underdog arc: forced to leave Colombia with nothing but the clothes on her back, her three children, and a kilo of cocaine, she uses her business acumen to rise through the ranks and become the ruthless crime boss who even Pablo Escobar feared. It’s the kind of tale that morphs over time into mythology, and it certainly makes for entertaining TV. I would be remiss not to point out that it glorifies a violent criminal, but to be fair, it’s nothing that Narcos didn’t already do for the male drug kingpins.
As a person who does not typically enjoy gratuitously violent crime dramas, I mainly kept watching for Vergara’s star turn. She immerses herself so completely into this role that you don’t see even a glimpse of Gloria Pritchett, a feat that made me sad to realize she’s been pigeonholed in Hollywood for as long as she has. Even when the series settles for being a typical drug trafficking tale, Vergara brings her A game, exuding both vulnerability and power. For viewers who want a binge watch and don’t mind a lot of violence, you could do worse than Griselda.
— Jess
Length: 60-min runtime, Limited Series / 6 episodes
Watch on: Netflix
In the Know
Keywords: stop-action animation, workplace comedy, quirky
Watch if you like: BoJack Horseman, The Office, Between Two Ferns
Jenni’s Rating: B-
Created by Brandon Gardner, Mike Judge, and Zach Woods, In the Know is half stop-motion animated sitcom, half live-action interview series. In it, Woods voices the well-meaning but hypocritical and narcissistic host of NPR's third most popular radio show, who causes trouble for his coworkers and makes his real (non-animated) celebrity guests a little uncomfortable.
I hate being disappointed, and this premise is so promising and so far up my alley, I was borderline scared to watch. The good news is that I liked it enough to essentially binge all six episodes, but the less good news is that I did unfortunately have some qualms. To start with the positive: I love the writing in this series. The dialogue is well-paced and witty, the characters are sharp and well-formed, and the parody of hyper-liberal topics is clever. The public radio personalities and office antics made me laugh out loud more than once, which is always a feat for new sitcoms. It’s the less-scripted-feeling live action interview sections — with guests like Nicole Byer, Hugh Laurie, and Mike Tyson playing versions of themselves — that give me pause.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching Zach Woods improvise and make other actors and famous figures break — it just feels out of place with the rest of the show’s energy. I almost wish the interview scenes had instead been included as cold opens or bonus end credit material. While entertaining, they seem off in this otherwise tightly scripted (and animated) show.
Though I can’t quite get over the feeling of being jolted between worlds at least twice per episode, I still love all the individual puzzle pieces of In the Know. It’s funny, does a decent job at creating well-rounded characters, and delivers effective satire. I would watch a second season if one came along.
— Jenni
Length: 25-minute runtime, 1 season / 6 episodes
Watch on: Peacock
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