This week on TV we chase Abe Lincoln's killer, celebrate girl power on a bus, and watch a woman turn into a chicken nuggest
This week's TV is wild and wonderful
This is a very full week of TV, so lets cut to it:
The Good
I rather like Apple TV+’s new thriller Manhunt - it concerns the days that follow the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln as Edwin Stanton, the then Secretary of War, is involved in the hunt for killer John Wilkes Booth. It’s a great premise for a show (it runs 7 episodes) and it is astounding that this hasn’t yet been made as a movie (has it???).
The only real problem with the show is that it is played far too conservatively. The performances and production design are all good-to-great, but it needs to feel more propulsive. I’d have liked it to move quicker, with greater energy than this relatively lethargic version.
There’s a moment as Stanton starts the investigation that made me laugh - he’s at Ford’s Theatre and encounters a worker on the stairs who he then questions. The entire scene plays like a scene out of Law & Order with a Lenny Briscoe-type questioning a possible witness in the middle of their days work.
Speaking of Law & Order, this week’s episode of it is notable with the show introducing a new District Attorney into the show. Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) has joined the cast, replacing Sam Waterston. It’s a real changing of the guard on the show and shifts the moral centre of the series from a noble pursuit of truth to a DA who has a questionable approach while balancing politics, self-interest, and a bit of a focus on justice.
Law & Order is undergoing a really interesting refresh at the moment as it evolves to more contemporary thinking about, uh, law and order. This season has been a great jumping on point to a once-again vibrant and compelling procedural drama.
The hours in my week are short and I haven’t had a moment to catch Apples Never Fall, but reviews have been positive. I’m pretty keen to press play over the weekend.
The Strange
South Korean comedy Chicken Nugget debuted yesterday. Yes, this is the show about a young woman who turns into a chicken nugget. Delicious premise. I haven’t had the chance to watch this one yet, but if I am honest with myself, I know I will press play on this before Apples Never Fall.
The Ugly
Okay, it is just me being silly labelling this as ugly considering the very attractive cast in the show, but The Girls on The Bus… oh, how I wish this was better and a bit more aware of the challenges it needed to meet.
The show feels like a throwback to late 90s/early 00s US network dramas (with a strong ABC/The WB lean), with the series following a group of women journalists on candidate buses during a presidential election campaign. And there’s nothing wrong with it feeling like a throwback if it weren’t for the fact that the show feels like it is out of time. This is a world where Trump politics exist, but the man himself does not, Twitter is still a central platform to consider, and one of the journalists works for a newspaper where the print product is its primary concern.
I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but it would be nice if we saw these journalists actually doing some… what’s the term for it… journalism. Instead of seeing these professionals doing their jobs, this is instead focused more on the inbetween moments - waiting for media events, drinks at the end of the day, etc. It is rare that we see much footwork being done.
It is still very watchable.
And sitting in neutral
I haven’t seen any commentary about it, nor have I seen it (I put a pause on my account a few months ago), but new Stan series Population 11 has me a bit interested. I’m a big Ben Feldman fan (Mad Men’s Ginsberg!), so am keen to give it a look. There’s a genre of “I would like to get international funding for my Australian production” storytelling that this fits into, which involves an American being dropped into the Australian outback. Will Feldman be enough to get me to renew my subscription? Maybe.