I finished off the most recent season of The Gentlemen on Netflix, which overall I enjoy, though maybe the first season a bit more. I also kept up with Youth on HBO for the full season and enjoy Sharon Horgan’s flawed characters. I stumbled onto The Z-Suite on Tubi and while I enjoy Lauren Graham in all things this over the top generational divide with a ridiculous premise I found lacking. And of course I’m still cranking along through my Apple shows with Your Friends and Neighbors, which did a pretty good job finding new tension in the latest season, and Lucky which might not be on best lists but I thought was a lot of fun with an appealing cast.

As for the flicks, maybe watching Carolina Caroline in the midst of Lucky with similar themes lost some of its freshness. And then the silly Masterplan was fun enough but you know, ridiculous. I also meant to mention my slightly delayed Halloween watch Hokum which did a good job of weaving the what is actually happening scares.

• The Altruists (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 11/19 – Young, idealistic and suddenly worth billions, the founders at the center of a crypto empire set out to do good and unleash the worst in each other, with Anthony Boyle as Sam Bankman-Fried in a limited series inspired by a real fraud, I have a short leash for these annoying youngsters.
• Yellowjackets (Para+/Show) Season Premiere, Sunday 11/22, 9pm – Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey and the rest of the team return for a fourth and final season, with rescue drawing closer and long-buried secrets surfacing in the present, this was great at the beginning and there are still great moments but mostly just sticking it out, will need to tap back into Paramount+ for this.
• Secret Service (MGM+) Series Premiere, Sunday 11/22, 10pm – Gemma Arterton plays a senior MI6 officer whose covert investigation turns up evidence that a high-ranking British politician is working as a Russian asset.
• Dig (Pea) Series Premiere, Monday 11/23 – A team of dedicated archaeologists and some decidedly less dedicated college students spend the summer at a dig site in Greece, where a rare artifact sends them on the adventure of a lifetime, with Amy Poehler, Hugh Laurie and Geraldine Viswanathan, Mike Schur and Amy Poehler, yes please.
• Blade Runner 2099 (Am) Series Premiere, Wednesday 11/25 – In the Los Angeles of 2099, a veteran Blade Runner days from dying partners with a mysterious new recruit to investigate a conspiracy that reaches back to the city’s darkest origins, with Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer across all eight episodes, I mean I’ve watched the movie but I couldn’t really tell you what these are even about.
• The Hunting Wives (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 11/26 – Brittany Snow’s Sophie returns to East Texas and the orbit of the wealthy socialite whose circle of housewives keep deadly secrets, with Chrissy Metz and Dermot Mulroney back as well, this show definitely had a junk food of tv feel and while I might hate watch it a bit I might still watch.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

Continuing my Apple watching I finished the latest season of Slow Horses which I enjoy and caught the new and pretty good Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. Of course there was also watching elsewhere, I immediately binged Nobody Wants This which is still charming. I finally caught Off Campus after all the buzz and found it a little mid, there was sex but also a little too much YA after school special vibe. I remembered to go back and finish Big Mood on Tubi, which was pretty uneven but the protagonists are worth a watch. And can’t believe RJ Decker is already done with its season, I like a good Hiaasen vibe.

Movie wise, The Invite was well done but I am not so in love with watching couples fight. Then Mayday, which was lighter action fare somehow started losing my attention, I was admittedly tired.

• St. Denis Medical (NBC) Season Premiere, Monday 11/2, 8pm – The doctors and nurses of an underfunded Oregon hospital return for a third season, these characters are growing on me.
• The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (NBC) Season Premiere, Monday 11/2, 8:30pm – The disgraced ex-football star and the washed-up filmmaker return for a second season, I want to like this show a little more than I do but it is funny and the cast is great.
• Bass x Machina (Net) Series Premiere, Tuesday 11/3 – An adult animated series set in a lawless steampunk west overrun by outlaws, machines and supernatural terrors, where a father becomes judge, jury and executioner to protect his family, with Brian Tyree Henry and Tati Gabrielle among the voices.
• Curfew (MHz) Series Premiere, Tuesday 11/3 – A six-part British thriller set in a society where every man is ankle-tagged and bound to a seven to seven curfew, and the veteran officer investigating a woman’s murder during curfew hours cannot get anyone to accept that a man is responsible, I’m still not sure what MHz is.
• Stick (App+) Season Premiere, Wednesday 11/4 – Owen Wilson’s washed-up golf pro and the teenage phenom he is coaching return for a second season, I watched the first of this almost entirely during a bout of insomnia, it’s somewhat formulaic but sweet and funny.
• The Greatest (Am) Series Premiere, Wednesday 11/4 – An eight-episode account of the life of Muhammad Ali from creator Ben Watkins, with Jaalen Best as Cassius Clay and Michael Ealy among the cast.
• Church Wives (BET) Series Premiere, Wednesday 11/4, 10pm – Two ambitious women inside a prominent megachurch go to war over a coveted leadership role.
• North of North (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 11/5 – The young woman reinventing herself in her tiny Arctic hometown returns for a second season, this show is definitely a vibe, and again the characters grew on me.
• It Gets Worse (Para+/Show) Series Premiere, Friday 11/6, 9pm – Leo Reich created and stars in a six-part comedy about three young people taking stock of their humiliating jobs and nonexistent love lives.
• Charmed by a Southern Monster (Pea) Series Premiere, Monday 11/9 – Bravo’s first scripted microdrama, on the Peacock mobile app only, with Craig Conover as a rumored murderer and Nicole Mattox as the corporate fixer sent to seduce him into selling his family’s estate.
• The Body (Net) Series Premiere, Wednesday 11/11 – From Quinn Shephard, an all-girls dance squad’s Halloween initiation goes wrong and tips a Catholic school into guilt, unholy desire and ghostly visions.
• The Good Daughter (Pea) Series Premiere, Thursday 11/12 – Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne play sisters still piecing together the lives fractured by a single night of violence twenty years earlier, until a new attack hits their small town.
• 12 12 12 (App+) Series Premiere, Friday 11/13 – Anthony Mackie’s disgraced FBI agent and Jamie Dornan’s career criminal play cat and mouse across Europe around a raid on a bank vault beneath Zurich, with every episode spanning the twelve months of planning, the twelve hours of the heist and the twelve days after, I like a good heist.
• Cunk on Cinema (Net) Series Premiere, Sunday 11/15 – Diane Morgan’s Philomena Cunk, who I’m not really a fan of, turns her attention to the movies, putting hard-hitting questions to experts on everything from the invention of the camera to the future of AI.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

My Apple TV subscription continues with finishing up the mostly enjoyable Widow’s Bay and the still weird but pretty good noir mystery Sugar. And I also kept up with Lanterns on HBO which for the most part I enjoyed, I like most of my superhero when it’s not too tied to all the other superheroes.

On the movies front I caught Disclosure Day in flight, and I expected to like it more than I did, I got the premise but wasn’t sure why we were caring about these people. Then the dumb but mildly entertaining Matchbox, which had a tenuous Mattel premise. The Housemaid which I found both a little boring and a little predictable, and The Death of Robin Hood which I kept pausing and scrolling my phone, I was kind of tired.

• Phony (Hulu) Series Premiere, Tuesday 10/20 – A teenager wakes up in the hospital after a car accident to find that his mom, his only parent and his best friend, appears to have been replaced by an impostor, with Connie Britton who is at least usually great.
• Nobody Wants This (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 10/22 – Kristen Bell and Adam Brody return for a third season as the agnostic sex podcaster and the newly single rabbi who move in together, last season I thought was a little repetitive, but I enjoy them and their chemistry enough to binge through it.
• Yaga (AMC+) Series Premiere, Friday 10/23 – Noah Reid plays a private investigator who arrives in a small coastal town to look into the disappearance of a young fishery heir, in an adaptation of Kat Sandler’s play co-starring Carrie-Anne Moss.
• Happy’s Place (NBC) Season Premiere, Friday 10/23, 8pm – Reba McEntire returns for a third season running her late father’s Tennessee tavern alongside the half-sister she never knew she had, and this isn’t good but for a very mindless sitcom it can do the trick.
• Newlyweds (NBC) Series Premiere, Friday 10/23, 8:30pm – Téa Leoni and her real-life husband Tim Daly star as a free spirit and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship, in a multi-camera comedy co-created by Jamie Lee Curtis, all charming enough that this could work.
• Lupin (Net) Season Premiere, Friday 10/23 – Omar Sy returns as gentleman thief Assane Diop for a fourth part, this have gotten a little convoluted but he’s still good so I’m in.
• Minimum Wage (Net) Series Premiere, Monday 10/26 – Teens juggle school, a manic boss and minimum wage while trying to run a local pizzeria, in a series based on the hit social media shorts, with Randall Park.
• Nocturne (App+) Series Premiere, Friday 10/30 – Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz star in a crime drama drawn from Lars Kepler’s bestselling novels Lazarus and The Sandman.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

A couple tough chick shows with Neagley and Furious, while Furious edges out Neagley the latter was a decent spinoff in the Reacher world. I also finished the first season of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, which I liked more than the other spinoffs for its originality, though I didn’t find enough of a story in each episode to really pull me in. I have now started an Apple TV round and lots to do there.

On the movie side, Best of the Best was cute enough though I am sometimes pained by the plot contrivances, I thought the leads and dance were fun. I also appreciated By Design probably more than I enjoyed it but for a very weird movie it kept me engaged. And I thought Backrooms was disappointing, an interesting horror take but again narratively not sure what they were doing.

• Private Eyes West Coast (CW) Series Premiere, Monday 10/5, 8pm – Jason Priestley and Cindy Sampson reprise their Private Eyes investigators, now married with a baby and relocated from Toronto to Victoria, British Columbia, I’m sure this isn’t great but I like these fluffy detective type shows.
• Thou Shalt Not Steal (The Network) Series Premiere, Tuesday 10/6 – Robyn breaks out of juvenile detention and sets off across the Australian outback, in a series that ran on Stan back in 2024 and is only now reaching the US, with Miranda Otto.
• NCIS: New York (CBS) Series Premiere, Tuesday 10/6, 9pm – LL Cool J’s Sam Hanna returns to his hometown and partners with a roguish agent played by Scott Caan, with Jennifer Beals as the field office director, I don’t do these but am for some reason pleased to see LL Cool J keep going.
• Small Prophets (App+) Series Premiere, Wednesday 10/7 – A six-episode British comedy, looks very weird but is already getting good buzz from its BBC run.
• Carrie (Am) Series Premiere, Wednesday 10/7 – Mike Flanagan reinvents Stephen King’s debut novel as a series, I could see how this could be an interesting modernization as a series but we shall see.
• Her Baby (BET) Series Premiere, Wednesday 10/7, 10pm – A psychological thriller about a surrogate, produced for the vertical format.
• Leonard & Hungry Paul (Wonder) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/8 – Two board-gaming friends in their thirties, a children’s encyclopaedia writer and a part-time postal worker, in a six-part Northern Irish comedy narrated by Julia Roberts.
• Eternally Yours (CBS) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/8, 8:30pm – From the Ghosts team, two vampires married 500 years contend with the human dating their daughter, looks dumb but I like Ghosts quite a bit so there’s hope.
• Cupertino (CBS) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/8, 10pm – Robert and Michelle King’s Silicon Valley legal drama, with Mike Colter as a lawyer cheated out of his stock options by his former startup, who opens a firm to fight back, a big fan of the Kings so worth a watch.
• Treasure Island (MGM+) Series Premiere, Sunday 10/11, 10pm – A new adventure series built from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, I don’t get MGM so this isn’t top of my list but David Oyelowo as lead is promising.
• This Is Not a Murder Mystery (Acorn) Series Premiere, Monday 10/12 – In 1930s England, a houseful of Surrealist painters including a young Dali and Magritte are trapped in a mansion with a killer and Scotland Yard at the door.
• VisionQuest (Dis+) Series Premiere, Wednesday 10/14, 9pm – Marvel’s Vision gets his own series, closing the trilogy that began with WandaVision and continued through Agatha All Along, I might need to look up the story here to dive back in.
• Crystal Lake (Pea) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/15 – The Friday the 13th prequel series, from Peacock and A24, Linda Cardellini steps in as Jason’s grieving(?) mother.
• Abbott Elementary (ABC) Season Premiere, Wednesday 10/7, 8:30pm – Back for a sixth season and glad for a great comfort comedy.
• Elsbeth (CBS) Season Premiere, Thursday 10/8, 9pm – Carrie Preston’s Elsbeth Tascioni returns for a fourth season, I enjoy her quirks and the crime solving.
• The Lowdown (Fx) Season Premiere, Wednesday 10/14, 9pm – Ethan Hawke’s truthstorian returns for a second season, the first season of this was great, here’s to avoiding a sophomore slump.
• The Diplomat (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 10/15 – Keri Russell’s ambassador returns for a fourth season, this show stresses me out but I can’t stop watching, so good.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

I had Paramount+ this month so finished up Matlock, Watson, and Tracker, all meh. I fell asleep watching the final episode of Colin From Accounts and think I might want to wait renew for another month until something else comes in, though hearing good things about the recent season of Lioness. I also finished Leanne on Netflix which has a very dated tv comedy feel. The Shards on Hulu was infuriating, I like an old Brett Easton Ellis but maybe not so much Ryan Murphy, mildly tempted to check out the book. And I apparently can’t stop watching Reacher even though it is ridiculous it is what it is, checking out Neagley next also on Prime.

As for movies I watched The Christophers which I liked a lot of the ingredients to but ended up not loving. Supergirl was fun in a way that didn’t need to be much more, plus I like a good origin story. And Mother Mary was definitely odder than I thought it was going to be but Hathaway and Coel make it work.

• Line of Fire (NBC) Series Premiere, Monday 9/21, 10pm – Peter Krause and Hope Davis head a family of law enforcement agents tangled in a deadly conspiracy, with Jenna Bush Hager executive producing from her own Secret Service years, I guess this is kind of Blue Bloods-ish, which actually doesn’t make me want to like it but generally like the leads.
• Best Medicine (Fox) Season Premiere, Tuesday 9/22, 8pm – Josh Charles’s medical dramedy is a ridiculous premise and he’s too too in the role but I like the small town charm so will check in for a second season.
• Doc (Fox) Season Premiere, Tuesday 9/22, 9pm – Molly Parker’s memory gapped doc is back, and this one also has become totally dumb and how are we still uncovering mysteries but the cast is pretty good and there’s the general medical procedural happening.
• Brothers (App+) Series Premiere, Wednesday 9/23 – Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play versions of themselves whose lifelong friendship is upended by the discovery that they might actually be brothers, I mean sure.
• A Different World (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 9/24 – I mostly watched this original spinoff from the one who will not be named and can’t argue with a college experience so curious what tone this revival will hit as it brings in the daughter of two of the original characters to return to this historically Black college.
• S.W.A.T. Exiles (Starz) Series Premiere, Friday 9/25, 10pm – Shemar Moore’s Hondo Harrelson is pulled back in after a high-profile mission goes sideways, in the S.W.A.T. spinoff, I did not stick with the original.
• Animal Control (Fox) Season Premiere, Sunday 9/27, 8:30pm – Joel McHale’s Seattle animal control officers return for a fifth season, this is funny enough between cast and critters.
• Scrubs (ABC) Season Premiere, Wednesday 9/30, 8pm – I was pleasantly surprised at how well the tone and characters picked up for this reboot/continuation so glad it’s back for another season.
• East of Eden (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/1 – Zoe Kazan’s seven-episode adaptation of the Steinbeck novel, with Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames alongside Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist.
• Coven Academy (Free/Hulu) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/1, 8pm – Three teenage witches navigate the haunted heart of New Orleans, I have a soft spot for teen supernatural.
• War (HBO) Series Premiere, Thursday 10/1, 9pm – A legal drama following London’s most powerful lawyers as two rival firms go to war, the first season gives us the explosive divorce of British tech entrepreneur Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and international film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller).
• Kill Jackie (AMC+) Series Premiere, Friday 10/2 – Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a retired drug smuggler who learns a crew of elite hitmen has been hired to kill her, from the creators behind Killing Eve and Gangs of London, intrigued but tend to wait for AMC to roll around to Netflix.
• Tip Toe (Starz) Series Premiere, Friday 10/2, 9pm – Russell T Davies’s five-part thriller stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey as warring Manchester neighbors, the cast has me in but who gets Starz?
• Bite Size Terror (Tubi) Series Premiere, Friday 10/2 – An anthology of short-form horror stories spanning the genre, sure.
• Get Jiro (AdSw) Series Premiere, Sunday 10/4, 12am – An adult animated take on Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose’s graphic novel about a sushi chef in a Los Angeles ruled by rival celebrity chefs.
• Tracker (CBS) Season Premiere, Sunday 10/4, 9:30pm – Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw returns for a fourth season, this show kind of bores me but it’s good for a mindless procedural.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

I picked up a Paramount+ subscription for the month and finished off already-started Elsbeth, DMV, and Ghosts. DMV had potential and the other two are faves. I also cranked through Adults (Hulu) which last season I thought was ok but this season I actually laughed out loud at a couple of points.

On the movie side I caught Don’t Say Good Luck, touching but too sappy for me, and Is God Is, which while I appreciated elements didn’t quite hang together enough for me. I also enjoyed Normal, a totally bonkers movie, which sometimes hits the spot.

• DANG! (Net) Series Premiere, Tuesday 9/8 – Siblings Andrew and Eunice are living out their messy New York dreams until their high-achieving older sister Ruthie turns up wanting to hang out, in an adult animated comedy from creator Andrew Law with Mike Schur executive producing.
• Last Seen (App+) Series Premiere, Wednesday 9/9 – Patrick Brammall stars in a six-episode Australian thriller adapted from Ryan David Jahn’s novel The Dispatcher.
• The Paper (Pea) Season Premiere, Wednesday 9/9 – I liked enough of the first season to come back for this one, in which the documentary crew from Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch keeps covering the struggling Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it.
• Cooper and Fry (Brit) Series Premiere, Thursday 9/10 – Set in the Peak District, an affable local detective is thrown together with a prickly new partner, played by Robert James-Collier and Mandip Gill.
• Crew Girl (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 9/10 – After a family scandal upends her rowing career, sixteen-year-old Teagan Tao starts over at a prestigious prep school as coxswain of its dysfunctional boys’ varsity crew.
• Colin from Accounts (Para+) Season Premiere, Thursday 9/10 – A final season on this fun rom com which is titling aside not a workplace comedy, now Gordon and Ashley face the fallout of an ill-fated proposal in the third and final season (a different side of Patrick Brammall than Last Seen).
• High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam (TNT) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/13, 9pm – Joel Kinnaman stars in an eight-episode political thriller inspired by CIA analyst John Nixon’s memoir Debriefing the President.
• Ghosts Australia (Para+) Series Premiere, Monday 9/14 – As noted just finished the latest on the US version and haven’t caught the original British version, now a new couple inherits a crumbling country mansion crowded with ghosts only one of them can see, in the Australian version of the BBC format.
• Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence (Brit) Series Premiere, Tuesday 9/15 – A six-part adaptation of Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence stories starring Antonia Thomas, Josh Dylan and Imelda Staunton.
• R.J. Decker (ABC) Season Premiere, Tuesday 9/15, 10pm – The investigation into the murder of Emi’s corrupt father strains her partnership with Decker in the second season of the Carl Hiaasen adaptation starring Scott Speedman, I have a soft spot for a kookie Hiaasen and while I might give Bad Monkey the edge this is also fun.
• Neagley (Am) Series Premiere, Wednesday 9/16 – Maria Sten’s Reacher character gets a case of her own in this spinoff of the Lee Child adaptation, I’m not sure the character wowed me in Reacher but happy to see what her part of the world has going on.
• Route 187 (Para+) Series Premiere, Wednesday 9/16 – Along a bus route nicknamed for the police code for homicide, a dogged print journalist sets out to uncover the truth after a routine ride erupts in tragedy.
• Slow Horses (App+) Season Premiere, Wednesday 9/16 – I binged all the previous seasons this last year and can’t wait for the MI5 rejects of Slough House and their appalling boss Jackson Lamb to return for a sixth season.
• Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 9/17 – The anthology’s next installment centers on Lizzie Borden and the ax murders that shocked Victorian New England, I’m kind of not into the Ryan Murphy stuff.
• American Hostage (MGM+) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/20, 9pm – Jon Hamm stars in and executive produces an eight-episode anthology from Shawn Ryan and Eileen Myers, beginning with a two-episode premiere.
• Trespasses (PBS) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/20, 10pm – In 1975 Northern Ireland, a young Catholic schoolteacher falls for an older, married Protestant man against the backdrop of the Troubles.
• Youth (HBO) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/20, 10pm – A fifty-year-old divorcee looks for sex and love while caring for her ailing parents and parenting her grown son, Sharon Horgan doing anything is a yes.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

A little Netflix catch up with the latest season of Dark Winds, which in general I quite like, though I might not have been as pulled into this season, and Man on Fire based on the Denzel movie was fun and compelling (though not light). Sunny Nights on Hulu is giving the typical regular people get pulled into criminal stuff with a fun Australian bent. And I just finished rewatching BoJack Horseman on Netflix which is fantastic and absolutely holds up.

Movie-wise I did Redux Redux, a good twist on parallel universes and a little revenge. And not-so-entertaining Pizza Movie, I wouldn’t have normally bothered but it was on someone’s best movies so far list.

• Blue Murder Motel (Acorn) Series Premiere, Monday 8/24 – A married pair of retired detectives leave the force to run a motel in a sunny beachside New Zealand town, and a week after opening there is a body in Unit 3.
• The Airport Chaplain (Net) Series Premiere, Wednesday 8/26 – An airport chaplain who can fix any problem inside the terminal runs up against a new boss who thinks he is meddling, with Hugo Weaving.
• Dalliance (Para+) Series Premiere, Thursday 8/27 – A longtime circle of friends in their sixties dealing with imploding marriages, new relationships, and old wounds resurfacing.
• Leanne (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 8/27 – Leanne Morgan’s character is still starting over after her husband left, with the loving and unfiltered family weighing in, this is totally mid but a good background binge.
• Adults (Hulu) Season Premiere, Thursday 8/27, 9pm – Twenty-somethings in New York trying to be good people despite being neither good nor people yet, I was underwhelmed by the first season of this, might be oversaturation of this gen but I did find it pretty consumable.
• The Varnell Hill Show (Para+) Series Premiere, Tuesday 9/1 – Tommy Davidson brings back the talk show host he first played on Martin, an eight-episode workplace comedy from Martin Lawrence and Bentley Kyle Evans, I don’t think I ever watched Martin.
• The Gentlemen (Net) Season Premiere, Thursday 9/3 – Eddie wants to expand the weed empire with or without Bobby’s blessing while Susie goes looking for a way to diversify, I’m mixed on Guy Ritchie but this one hit well, and are we to believe rumors Meghan Markle is in talks to join next season?
• Marble Hall Murders (PBS) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/6, 9pm – Masterpiece closes out the Susan Ryeland trilogy from Anthony Horowitz, six episodes with Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan.
• A Tale of Two Cities (MGM+) Series Premiere, Sunday 9/6, 9pm – A four part take on the Dickens novel with Kit Harington, François Civil, and Mirren Mack.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.

It’s a slow season for new shows, though a couple good ones ahead. I’m still doing some catchup before I dabble with adding Paramount+ or Apple for a month or so. I did crank through Ride or Die (Am) which I thought was a lot of fun. I caught the second season of the updated King of the Hill (Hulu), which is fine. And Vladimir (Net) which I kind of hated but at least the episodes were short, I generally like Rachel Weisz but found her character insufferable.

On the movie side I caught Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie which got pretty good reviews but while it did some fun things, I found the two characters ridiculous. I also did Ready or Not 1 & 2 because I’m a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan and she was promoting the latest, and in general they are what you’d expect from blood-soaked horror-comedy. My dad recently rewatched Big Country so I gave it a go and it was definitely a sweeping epic western and while personally I think a run time over two hours is rarely warranted, I get it.

• Reacher (Am) Season Premiere, Wednesday 8/12 – Reacher does what Reacher does, digs into a vast criminal enterprise while trying to rescue an undercover DEA informant, and ends up confronting some unfinished business of his own, these have lost a bit of their luster for me but they still scratch an itch.
• My Brilliant Career (Net) Series Premiere, Thursday 8/13 – A rebellious young writer must choose between a safe marriage and the literary career she actually wants in this Australian romantic drama.
• Lanterns (HBO) Series Premiere, Sunday 8/16, 9pm – Rookie Green Lantern John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and veteran Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) investigate a murder with cosmic implications in small-town America, color me intrigued.
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Fx) Season 18 Premiere, Monday 8/17, 9pm – The gang returns to Paddy’s for an eighteenth season of scheming, they are somehow able to endlessly keep these characters going and not growing.

The procrastinator lists mostly scripted items that may not be on your regular season pass, though notation does not imply recommendation. Times noted are typically PST, please check your local listings.