TV gets fun again this weekend thanks to Donald Glover

Mr & Mrs Smith is surprisingly rather good.

I’m not a fan of Phoebe Waller Bridge. I mean, she’s fine. I’d be a bit excited to find her across from me at a dinner party. But the hype around her and Fleabag was a bit much.

And then there’s Donald Glover. My feelings around him are not dissimilar to my feelings on PWB. But, I gotta say… when in early 2021 Prime Video announced that the two of them were pairing up to star in a TV series based on the Brangelina film Mr & Mrs Smith, I got pretty excited. I really didn’t like that movie, but there was something about the idea of two of TV’s hottest auteurs getting together to make something seemingly so trivial and disposable.

Less than a year later, Waller Bridge was out of it. She may have been 50% of the draw for the show, but without either her or Glover, 90% of what made the show interesting was gone.

Glover stuck with it. He’s now starring opposite Maya Erskine (Pen15, Blue Eyed Samurai). I really like her. But she has zero sexual chemistry with Donald Glover and that’s a problem for a show like this - one built off the chemistry of its two leads.

You know who did have chemistry? Maria Bello and Scott Bakula in the 1996 TV show Mr & Mrs Smith, which was about two spies who pretend to be married when they go out on missions.

The 2024 TV show has far more in common with the 1996 TV show of the same name than it does the 2005 movie also of the same name. Apparently the new show is based on the movie, which was supposedly not based on the TV show (despite the very similar name and very similar premise).

You can watch the not-very-good 1996 show on YouTube.

But you know what is actually very good? The 2024 TV show Mr & Mrs Smith. It is so good that the lack of sexual chemistry isn’t a problem for the show. If you’re looking for a case-of-the-week style spy show with great production value, two appealing leads, and great guest stars every week, this show has you covered.

Something else that is pretty good? New BBC3 drama Domino - it’s a modern day Buffy: The Vampire Slayer wannabe. Now, I haven’t seen this one... Heck, until 20 minutes ago I didn’t know this existed. But I’ve been reading the reviews and all of them are rather positive. Here’s Lucy Mangan (my favourite!) at The Guardian:

Every generation deserves an attempt to get its own Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am not quite sure what generation we are up to now – I took my eye off the ball sometime around Z – but whatever it is, they should be glad they fall into the one that gets Domino Day as its submission. As supernaturally slanted stories of young women discovering their power and its temptations, the dark ways of the world, solidarity and sisterhood go, it is not half bad.

Domino (Siena Kelly) is a young Mancunian witch (and barista and part-time tattooist) who must feed off the energy of others to stay alive. She sources her meat from dating apps – I do not know how un-hot young witches manage – and rare is it that one of her hookups doesn’t prove himself worthy of being drained.

Things go awry in the first episode, however, when one dirtbag-cum-attempted-rapist secretly sets up a device to film them together. Thus he ends up with video evidence of her secret. Soon, Domino learns that her powers have a scorched-earth setting.