MOONING OVER THE RIVER

 

Stellan Skarsgard and Nicola Walker lead a uniformly excellent cast in River, an offbeat police procedural which I can recommend with only one reservation: watch early enough in the evening so there is little chance of falling asleep while viewing.

The plot is convoluted, and the British dialect is thick enough to require focused attention. Very well acted and more than simply interesting. It is more than worth your time. Producer Chris Carey does it all in only six episodes on Amazon Prime.

Ms. Walker, who is a most agreeable TV lead, has another series also on Amazon Prime and, yet another, British Police procedural. This one is Unforgotten which plows the same cold-case ground as the very good Department Q. The difference is that the latter is set in Scotland and is much better written than its predecessor.

I barely remember Natasha Lyonne from Orange is the New Black but almost always recall her leaping off the TV screen in Russian Doll with a real tour de force performance. She comes close to that in Poker Face on Peacock but there is a caveat. After the first episode, the format of the show changes so that Ms. Lyonne rarely makes her appearance before the hour’s midway point. Big mistake.

I moved on after the third episode and you may feel that urge as well.

Paradise is sort of a mixed bag. Episode seven is terrific television, episode eight was a bore. The premise barely holds water… in fact, on close inspection, the plot has holes that would be the envy of a wheel of Swiss cheese. Nice cast, though… particularly Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden and Sterling K. Brown. Hulu has it.

I gave pretty much a rave review for The Last of Us when it first premiered on Max.  I am not a particular fan of dystopian views of the future on Planet Earth but this, I thought, was exceptional… especially the third episode (hope, I am right about that episode number as I am writing this from memory). I am not taking the time to research my last statement because what is important to this article is that the show is back… post pandemic and years after the first season premiered. Same cast, same premise and I just could not get into it. There was no “romancing” the audience. You come on board, or you don’t, seems to be the attitude of the show runner who I guess expected the viewers to rest in place until he got around to making the show again. Sorry. No cigar.

For several episodes… almost until the end of this new season… I feared for the future of Hacks on Max starring Jean Smart. The creators of the show did such a complete job of having the rivalry between the two leads come to an intense boil that I almost turned away from the show. Happily, I stayed on board long enough to see the two lead characters finally repair.

There was a lesson I learned from director Reza Badiyi in the early days of Cagney & Lacey. The teleplay called for a major argument between the two leads when Reza said “Cut,” halting the action. The director moved in close to his two actors and gave them what both later said was the best piece of direction they ever received:

“Don’t forget the love.”

This season, for a half dozen episodes, Hacks made that mistake and I felt it nearly ruined a terrific television series.

A break from episodic TV to watch an easy movie to sit through, pretty much describes Nonnas on Netflix. It stars Vince Vaughn, liked by some but not a guy I feel can headline a movie.  The film is based on a true story about the creation of a unique Italian restaurant in Staten Island, New York. What makes it special is that the chefs are all Italian grandmothers (nonnas) and each has a special favorite family recipe. Cute, huh? Not my kinda flick but my pal, Brenda Vaccaro, plays one of the nonnas; I couldn’t resist tuning in. As usual, Brenda was terrific; proof of that? I sat through the whole thing. It was sweet.

While thinking (and writing) of friends and associates, I must take note of the passing of yet another Cagney & Lacey alumnus, Mark Snow. He was with us in the earliest of days… writing the music for perhaps a half dozen episodes. As the show moved on… so did I and so did Mark, but he more than left his imprint by introducing me to composer Ron Ramin who scored dozens of Cagney & Lacey shows and who also wrote the music for just about every one of The Trials of Rosie O’Neill episodes. You probably would know Mark Snow’s work best for his composition that was the theme for the TV mega hit, The X-Files. A sincere salute to Mr. Snow and his family, which includes sister-in-law, Tyne Daly.

Readers send in suggestions of TV shows and movies for my review and I tried looking at three this week, The Rookies, The Agency and No Good Deed. At least the last one (which I looked at first) had Ray Romano in the lead. I could not get through the first episode. Purportedly there are a lot of Cagney & Lacey references in The Rookies, for which I am a known sucker. Not this time. What an awful show. The Agency…? Even worse.

Back to season five of The Gilmore Girls.

Barney Rosenzweig