Happy Streaming Friday. We’ve got major new series from the Gleeson Brothers and David E. Kelly as well as the stateside arrival of a popular Australian comedy. It’s also the RuPaul equivalent of the Pro Bowl, although a bit more consequential as Miss Congeniality is likely crowned–if it’s not Olivia, we riot… or more likely are simply confused–and frankly we don’t see TJ Watt spilling the tea about rigged matches, but Tamisha Iman’s got a lion in her pocket that, baby, seems ready to roar.
KATHERINE’S PICK:
Frank of Ireland [Amazon Prime]
The Gleeson Brothers (it’s a thing now!) bring their six-episode half-hour series to North America. The comedy follows a human “catastrope,” a misanthropic fantasist in arrested development who’s convinced that the world owes him.” I’d be against that, but the trailer is charming, and Irish comedies (Derry Girls, Bridget & Eamon) are a vibe that work for me.
BRAD’S PICK:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier [Disney+]
Last week ended on a shocker. The new cap will likely be on the run. Who will help him? Where did Zeno run off to? Oh this week will surely hold answers. Two more episodes people. Let’s do this.
FIONA’S PICK:
RuPaul’s Drag Race [VH1, 8p]
We have a top four! Next week they will battle it out for the crown, but this week it’s reunion time. What unshown footage will they pull out tonight? Will we find out who wins Miss Congeniality? Tune in tonight to find out.
BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE:
- John Stamos plays a former big-time basketball coach who through a series of events we can probably guess winds up coaching girls’ high school basketball. The trailer dialogue for Big Shot plays like one of those viral scripts written by feeding every youth sports film script into an algorithm that writes its own script, or as if David E. Kelley stopped caring and outsourced his latest to those Mitchell & Webb Look “Lazy Writers” characters. But who knows, maybe once they get the standard establishing coach in small town battles sarcastic kids out of the way, it could be good. It’s on Disney+.
- German Netflix import Into The Beat offers us the standard trope of a classically trained dancer who becomes bewitched with street-style dancing. We do love that trope though.
- In the spirit of movies like Four Rooms or Go or Playing By Heart, Netflix’s Hindi-language Ajeeb Daastaan weaves together multiple (in this case: four) stories that likely somehow have a connecting fiber, but we may or may not know that from the start.
- Cult-beloved video maker comedy Mythic Quest officially returns for a second season in three weeks, but dream team creators Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz give us another taste of the Apple TV show to hold us over and/or whet our appetites.
- Perhaps You’re The Worst or Difficult People with a plus one, Why Are You Like This? debuted in Australia in 2018, but the adventures of the delightfully offputting trio of friends–Penny, Mia, and Austin–comes stateside to Netflix today.
- The legendary(?) characters of the Furious franchise get the Muppet Babies treatment as the fourth season of Fast & Furious: Spy Racer drops on Netflix.
- B-movie connoisseur John Irving Bloom has been doing his offbeat thang in character as Joe Bob Briggs for about 40 years now, starting with an off-Broadway play before appearing on TVs and syndicated columns throughout the land. Now 68, the enthusiastic Texan returns for a third season–on AMC+ and Shudder–of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs.
- Let’s close this out, as is our standard, in the LHV with its latest Saving My Daughter on LMN, which is surely what it sounds like.
Screen Scholars 