Though it ended several months ago, the writers and actors strike that halted most movie and television production remains with us.
You see it in the trickle of upcoming premieres or season openers that, at this time of the year, is usually a flood.
Some interesting series have managed to seep through — Apple TV’s “Masters of the Air,” HBO’s “True Detectives: Night Country,” and FX/Hulu’s “Capote vs. The Swans” — being three of them, but in general, we will have to wait for a gush of streaming programs while companies catch up with material and schedules that were in abeyance for a big chunk of 2023.
Among this week’s returns are Sunday’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in its last season for HBO and ABC’s Philadelphia-set “Abbott Elementary” along with the best sitcom on network television, “The Conners,” and “Judge Steve Harvey” on Wednesday.
CBS kicks in with a new skein of “Bob Hearts Abishola” and “NCIS” fare next Monday, Feb. 12, while its “FBI” lineup returns next Tuesday.
Also next Tuesday, Jon Stewart returns as host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” perhaps the vehicle that turned alleged news into entertainment.
Among upcoming shows, the most attractive seem to be Apple TV’s “The New Look” with Ben Mendelsohn as designer Christian Dior and guest appearances from Glenn Close, Juliette Binoche and John Malkovich on Thursday, Feb. 14; Apple TV’s “Constellation” with Noomi Rapace as a woman who returns from years in space to find aspects of her life on Earth missing, starting Thursday, Feb. 21; a series of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” that appears of Netflix starting Friday, Feb. 22; and Kate Winslet as figure in a crumbling totalitarian government in “The Regime,” also featuring Hugh Grant (hilarious in “Wonka”) and Andrea Riseborough and debuting Sunday, March 3 on HBO.
Of the three current series cited above, “True Detectives” rates the most attention while “Capote vs. the Swans” contains some well-acted juicy passages, and “Masters of the Air” provides moments of deep dramatic intensity, if not enough of them.
“Masters of the Air” might build in texture beyond where I left it at the end of two episodes. It shows promise of doing so.
I was not as impressed as other reviewers. Movies, which will be the ultimate sociological resource in defining an era, offer so much of the ’40’s wartime sensibility, I wonder at feeling so little of that in the production and acting styles of “Masters of the Air.”
I enjoyed some performances, especially Anthony Boyle as bomber crew member Crosby, but I kept wanting to swap Austin Butler and most of the cast for John Garfield, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift and John Wayne.
The point of view seemed too modern. The acting styles did as well.
Apple TV+
Callum Turner as Maj. John “Bucky” Egan, left, and Austin Butler as Maj. Gale “Buck” Cleven in the Apple TV+ limited series “Masters of the Air,” from executive producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. Our columnist wasn’t as enamored with the show as were other reviewers.(Robert Viglasky/Apple TV+)
What surprised me most is how little the series made me care about the individual members of the squadrons depicted in “Masters.”
I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, or bomber crew movies, and I always keyed into the personalities and interactions of the soldiers involved.
“Masters of the Air,” like its model, “The Band of Brothers,” purports to focus on those individuals and make you aware of quirks such as airsickness or the proclivity of crew members in the gunner’s position to both frostbite and burns. You see all of these elements, but I found myself watching them passively.
Air base politics among commanders was comme il faut and added little drama. The relationships between the men, or how they spend their leisure, also did not grab as fully as even “The Band of Brothers” did.
I kept waiting for genuine drama, for something that would draw me in and demand I pay more than perfunctory attention.
This came during battle scenes. In these, whether you have some stake in specific individuals or not, you see fighters, in the opening episodes new at both warfare and their roles aboard the bombers called forts, in the thick of a fight.
Because Austin Butler’s Buck Cleven and Callum Turner’s Buck Egan have been given most focus, the tendency is to key in on them, even when Egan is on the ground supervising instead of in the air battling.
Once bullets start flying, the danger and immediacy of the in-air combat with Nazi fighters, takes general hold. Whether a particular character has registered with you or not, you become concerned for his safety and experience with him, even when unrecognizable, the turmoil of a pitched contest in which life or death can be determined within seconds.
“Masters of the Air” is most successful when it depicts such battles. They are the scenes that bring you to the edge of your seat and root mightily for Allied victory and the survival of crews.
Interestingly, the character you watch most and care about most is Boyle’s Harry Crosby, whose chronic airsickness provides comic and serious effects because a bout of it at the wrong moment can jeopardize or scuttle a mission.
Boyle will be taking the London stage this spring opposite “Succession’s Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”
I intend to watch the entire series with the hope and the intensity and emotion I find and feel during battle scenes extend to barracks life and more regard for individual characters.
The suspense and curiosity I felt only sporadically while watching “Masters of the Air” was present nonstop from the first scene of “True Detectives: Night Country,” the fourth entry in the “True Detective” series.
A scene of caribou running from an unseen danger, not the one posed by a hunter about to fell one of them, triggered excitement, apprehension, and a thirst to know what all of this is about in a way “Masters” never mustered.
Inquisitiveness continues when the viewer is introduced to a remote station occupied by an international band of scientists studying various geologic and ecologic phenomena in a town that advertises itself as “the end of the Earth.”
In one shot, the scientists are making sandwiches, grabbing books and sitting down to read, or having casual phone conversations with someone outside the complex. In the next, the research station is vacated, entirely empty, though no one knows where the scientists went or if they’re returning.
Kali Reis, playing an Alaskan police officer, begins to investigate, but she is soon relieved of sleuth duties by her superior, Jodie Foster, and her more trusted assistant, played by Finn Bennett.
“True Detectives” evolves the mystery of the scientist’s disappearance in a way that makes you want to know what happen. The story also introduces a cold case, a murder of a townswoman years before the conundrum about the researchers, weaving it in seamlessly and making it as interesting as the main plot.
Foster, as she’s known in a 50-year career, has a knack for showing the thoughts of her characters. She endows her police chief with a steel-like efficiency that leaves room for wonder about the seeming impossible and empathy for lives ended violently or for no apparent reason.
Kai Reis, John Hawkes as a foxy police veteran who seems to withhold all he knows on purpose, and Fiona Shaw as a town misfit who made have an important story to tell also bring texture and individuality to their characters.
The closing scene of the season’s first episode is particularly chilling, and not just because it is set in a field and solid snow and ice.
Portraying Truman Capote has earned Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar (“Capote,” 2005) and Robert Morse a Tony (“Tru,” 1990). It may bring an Emmy to Tom Hollander’s mantel given his charming and accurate performance as the famous author and socialite in “Capote vs The Swans.”
The mini-series is part of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” series that previously entertained with its look into the polar relationship of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
This installment centers on Capote’s place as friend, companion, and confidante to some of the world’s most stylish women in the ’50’s through the ’70s, when style was much more elegant than today.
Specifically, it jumps time to show how relationships developed with these queens of society and how betrayed they felt when several of their secrets were transparently exposed in an alleged fictional piece, “La Cote Basque 1965,” a reference to a restaurant the doyennes frequented, Capote published in a 1975 edition of Esquire Magazine.
The first episode of “Capote vs. The Swans” is almost complete in itself, opening with Capote comforting his closest friend, Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), as she stews over her husband, Bill’s, latest affair and end with “La Cote Basque’s” publication, reaction to the socialites’ betrayal, and Slim Keith’s (Diane Lane) delicious line about Capote having killed and needing to be killed, slowly and painfully, in return.
Typical Murphy mush quickly gives way to Hollander, Watts, Lane, Demi Moore and others making “Capote vs. The Swans” becoming a smart, sophisticated look at a group of people who are wittier, more stylish, and more substantial that we may expect from their current cognates on reality TV.
The opening episode’s second scene, of a dinner party at a Paley getaway in Montego Bay, when Capote meets the Paleys, sets the real tone for the series. That tone is beneficially maintained throughout.
‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ to play Philly
A mystery, as great to me as any sparked by “True Detectives: Night Country,” is why the 2022 musical of the 1993 movie classics, “Mrs. Doubtfire,” is not running on Broadway right now and destined to last for decades.
The show is terrific and was easily, to me, the best musical of that season on Broadway. That it lost a Tony to some populist bit of goop called “A Strange Loop,” perplexes me to this day.
That is wasn’t nominated for Best Musical, makes me wonder of how trustworthy Tony nominators are.
In an era when musicals made from movies are often shlocky affairs that fail to catch the spirit of their models and have scores that are simplistically cookie-cutter with lyrics that make one want to bash lyricists with rhyming dictionaries and make them read the works of Percy Shelley, playwrights Kasey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell scrupulously and hilariously translated Chris Columbus’ movie into a rollicking show enhanced by the direction of Jerry Zaks and choreography by Lorin Lotarro.
The lyrics by Kasey Kirkpatrick and Wayne Kirkpatrick recalled the glorious days when songwriters did not rely on clichés, borrowed lines, and dime-store doggerel for sentiment.
Then there was the brilliant lead performance by Philadelphian Rob McClure and others including 2023 Tony winner, J. Harrison Ghee. Well, fear not, Philadelphia! Justice and salvation are at hand.
“Mrs. Doubtfire” opens Tuesday at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music and stays until Sunday, Feb. 18. Best of all, the national tour presented by Ensemble Arts Philly, stars the show’s original, our own McClure.
The guy is a sensational comedian, able to do everything from pathos to pratfalls.
His quick-change artistry, occurring right before your eyes, is breathtaking as his singing, dancing, and way with a comic or arch line, Scottish accent and all.
I first saw McClure performing in an Olde City garage in 11th Hour’s “Bombitty of Errors.”
His loose-limbed walks and sharp line reading earned him my annual award — usually from seeing more than 100 shows — for Best Supporting Actor.
In performance after performance since “Where’s Charley?” “Something Rotten,” also by the Kirkpatricks, he hasn’t disappointed.
In “Mrs. Doubtfire,” he positively glows. The whole production does. See it.
Super Bowl particulars
Word has it a little old football game deciding 2023-24 NFL champion takes place at 6:30 p.m. Sunday when the AFC Kansas City Chiefs play the NFC San Francisco ‘49ers, at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Super Bowl LVIII airs on CBS (Channel 3). It streams on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon.
Jim Nance and (oh-no) Tony Romo do play-by-play. Reba McEntire sings the national anthem.
Usher provides the half-time show.
Kevin Harlan and Kurt Warner provide are the radio team on Westwood One and can be heard locally on WIP (94.1 FM).
