
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE, hope youāre enjoying a well-deserved break. Folks seemed to enjoy last weekās streaming churn guide (featuring Max, Netflix, and the Criterion Channel), so weāre back with Part Two this week. As a reminder, the idea here is to select a couple of shows you can watch in a month or two before switching services and picking up a new streaming service to binge shows on. This weekās services are Apple TV+, Hulu, and Peacock.
Apple TV+
Apple TV+ is probably the closest thing we have to old-school HBO in the current iteration of the streaming wars: They donāt have a ton of shows, but the shows they do have are all pretty damn great. Oh, and donāt worry: I wrote a couple of months back about Slow Horses and how itās the best show on streaming. So donāt think Iāve forgotten Gary Oldmanās spy series in the list to come. Iāll also assume that everyone has seen Ted Lasso, since itās more or less Appleās only show to make the major charts.
Also, as a heads up: If youāve bought an Apple product in the last few years, odds are you have an offer for several free months of Apple TV+. It is very much worth taking advantage of this offer, trust me.
Mythic Quest
Length: Three seasons, 30 episodes, typically 25ā30 minutes per episode
Premise: A workplace comedy from Itās Always Sunny in Philadelphiaās Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz about a video game company headed by visionary creator Ian Grimm (McElhenney) and kept running by virtuoso programmer Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao), who come to realize they not only need each other but all the amusing weirdos in their orbit.
Highlighted Episode: āDinner Partyā (Season One, Episode Three)
Look, Iāll be straight with you: The best episode of the first season, and maybe the show, is āA Dark Quiet Death.ā However, itās unrepresentative of what the rest of the show is like. So Iām instead going to recommend āDinner Party,ā in which the Mythic Quest team realizes that Nazis are flocking to their game and must come up with a novel way to figure out how to ensure that the image of the brand isnāt destroyed by being affiliated with white supremacists.
Best Supporting Character: Brad Bakshi, Head of Monetization
Played by Danny Pudi, best known for portraying Abed in Community, Brad is the sort of amoral cretin who is both the bane of the entertainment industryās existence and the only reason it keeps running. Sure, his methods are unsound. But who are the employees at Mythic Quest to question them as long as theyāre cashing bonus checks?
Severance
Length: One season, nine episodes, typically 45ā55 minutes per episode
Premise: Mark (Adam Scott) undergoes a radical procedure that essentially separates his work life from his personal life: He does not remember his personal life at work and does not remember his working hours when at home. Needless to say, this is not what therapists mean when they recommend maintaining a work-life balance, which is probably why new hire Helly (Britt Lower) is so desperate to escape.
Highlighted Episode: āGood News About Hellā (Season One, Episode One)
This is very much one of those shows that you just need to watch from start to finish: the world builds slowly but surely, revealing its mysteries to those who are willing to pay attention. And you do need to pay attention; this isnāt a show you half-watch while scrolling on your phone. If you donāt note who is doing what and where, youāre sure to miss something when the show shifts settings halfway through. Season two is scheduled to start January 17, so nowās the perfect time to catch up.
Best Supporting Character: Dylan George
This was the hardest entry Iāve had to write, because there are so many wonderfully memorable characters on Severance, from the preternaturally perky security man Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) to Markās brother-in-law and would-be self-help guru Ricken (Michael Chernus) to Irving and Burt, played by John Turturro and Christopher Walken, respectively. But I have to go with Dylan George, whom Zach Cherry plays with a sort of officiousness early in the season that curdles into desperate longing as the episodes progress. His closing moments in the eighth episode are both bizarre and weirdly fitting and mildly terrifying; the whole thing calls to mind certain sequences in Eyes Wide Shut, minus the extravagant nudity.
Other Apple TV+ Shows to Watch: Sugar, Bad Monkey, Hijack, Dark Matter, Physical, Palm Royale
Apple TV+ Films to Watch: Greyhound, On the Rocks, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Tetris, The Family Plan, Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon, Wolfs
Hulu
Hulu is, possibly, the most underrated of the streaming services, in large part thanks to the addition of FX a few years back. This has created some weird branding issuesātrying to explain to folks why the majority of Alex Garlandās brilliant, mind-bending show Devs (which we reviewed on a very early episode of Across the Movie Aisle) was only on streaming despite the first couple of episodes appearing on the cable network was very taxing back in 2020ābut itās worth it, as Hulu is now a one-stop shop for great shows like The Shield, Fargo, Justified, and more.
Iāll list a bunch of those classic shows from cable TVās golden age at the end of this section; theyāre all worth checking out. For now, Iām just going to highlight two of my favorites that feel a bit underappreciated and may have been lost in the streaming shuffle these last few years.
Reservation Dogs
Length: Three seasons, 28 episodes, typically 25ā30 minutes per episode
Premise: Elora (Devery Jacobs), Bear (DāPharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Cheese (Lane Factor), and Wilhelmina (Paulina Alexis) are four teens living on a Muscogee reservation wrestling with their place in the world and trying to come to terms with one of their friends having committed suicide before the show begins.
Highlighted Episode: āDecolonativationā (Season Two, Episode Six)
I donāt like recommending episodes this far in to a show without any precursors, as there are relationship cues youāll miss if you havenāt watched previous episodes. But this remains my favorite episode of Reservation Dogs in no small part because it perfectly captures the complete hollowness of modern āinfluencersā who attended Ivy League schools and latched on to the language of oppression without understanding what it means to those who actually live the lives theyāre discussing. Top-notch comedy throughout this 2022 episode that also served as a big flashing warning sign to an audience that needs to hear that a certain way of speaking about identity is rapidly going out of style.
Best Supporting Character: William āSpiritā Knifeman
One of the funniest running bits on the show is the appearance of William Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth), an Indian warrior slain at Little Big Horn who shows up to impart words of wisdom to Bear. However, heās not the typical, stoic spirit; heās kind of goofy, has his own problems, and is sometimes more trouble than help.
What We Do in the Shadows
Length: Six seasons, 61 episodes, typically 22ā25 minutes per episode
Premise: Three blood-sucking vampires from the Old WorldāNandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) and the married couple Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry) and Nadja Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou)ālive with energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and Nandorās familiar Guillermo (Harvey GuillĆ©n) in modern-day Staten Island, navigating the worlds of vampire and human alike with mixed success.
Highlighted Episode: āWerewolf Feudā (Season One, Episode Three)
What We Do in the Shadows is based on a film of the same name and itās one of the few television shows to markedly improve on the source material. (Iām sorry, I know the original mockumentary has many fans and Iām sure theyāll yell at me but that film really wears out its welcome despite being just 80 minutes long.) A big reason for the showās success is the introduction of Colin Robinson and the idea of āenergy vampires,ā creatures who both cause and feed on the boredom and despair of those around them, and this episode is a fairly representative example of what Colin Robinson (always two names) brings to the table.
Bonus Highlighted Episode: āOn the Runā (Season Two, Episode Six)
The other reason this show is superior to its original incarnation is the work of Matt Berry, one of the funniest people in all of television. (If youāve never seen Toast of London, you really must; itās streaming on BritBox. Seriously, Berry does things with pronunciation that would make Christopher Walken say āHey thatās . . . good, work.ā) In this episode, Berryās Laszlo goes on the lam because he doesnāt want to repay a century-old debt to a vampire played by Mark Hamill, eventually settling and working in a bar under the name of Jackie Daytona.
Best Supporting Character: The Guide
Kristen Schaal plays the Guide, who works for the Vampiric Council and wavers between wanting to help the quartet and hoping for their demise. This is one of these roles thatās really only funny because Schaalās face has this natural look of annoyed incredulity, like she canāt believe sheās forced to deal with these people on a regular basis. Just a perfect piece of casting.
Other Hulu Shows to Watch: I could probably list a dozen shows here from the FX tab alone. But some of my favorites: Itās Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Fargo, The Shield, Atlanta, The Americans, Shogun, The Bear, and Justified. Also worth watching despite not being an FX original: Only Murders in the Building.
Peacock
Peacock is an interesting service in that I find myself using it for original programming less than as a substitute for NBC proper. Which is to say that what I find myself watching most frequently are Sunday Night Football and old NBC programs (as well as a raft of Universal movies that find their home here, particularly the kiddie-oriented fare put out by Illumination) rather than original programming like The Day of the Jackal (about which Iāve heard good things, I just havenāt had time to watch). Still, Iāll include an original in this roundup, as well as one of my favorite classic NBC shows.
Poker Face
Length: One season, 10 episodes, typically 50ā60 minutes per episode
Premise: Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is a poker whiz whose innate ability to sniff out a lie makes her an unlikely detective as she crosses the country attempting to flee a vengeful casino owner.
Highlighted Episode: āTime of the Monkeyā (Season One, Episode Five)
Poker Face is in the vein of Columbo: We see a crime take place, we see the person or people who commit the crime, and then we watch Charlie go to work and try to see how sheās going to catch them as well as come to understand why the criminals did the deed in the first place. (This type of show is sometimes referred to as a āhowcatchem,ā the inverse of a āwhodunit.ā) In this episode, we meet some elderly hippies living in a retirement home and see them kill one of their former comrades, and learn alongside Charlie why aging radicals remain one of our greatest threats.
Best Supporting Character: Michael Graves
One of the great pleasures of this show is the plethora of guest stars, the recognizable actors who pop in for an episode, either kill someone or get killed, and then go about their business. And it was the greatest pleasure to see Tim Meadows pop up as Michael Graves in āExit Stage Death,ā as Meadows was always one of my favorite SNL stars and has been decidedly underused by Hollywood in recent years.
Community
Length: Six seasons and a movie. (Maybe.) Episodes ran 22 minutes for the first five seasons (network TV, baby!) and 24ā30 minutes for the sixth season (Yahoo! TV, baby!).
Premise: Disgraced lawyer Jeffrey Winger (Joel McHale), would-be psychologist Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), autistic film student Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), mother and aspiring restauranteur Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), Type A recovering addict Annie Edison (Alison Brie), Type B recovering jock Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), and Type Racist Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) become fast friends at Greendale Community College where they get into a series of adventures that mimic genres and plots of the media consumed by Abed.
Highlighted Episode: āRemedial Chaos Theoryā (Season Three, Episode Four)
The most impressive thing about Community is how incredibly dense every episode is. As in, heavy with plot, heavy with concepts, and, most importantly, heavy with jokes. āRemedial Chaos Theory,ā released in 2011, demonstrates the show firing on all cylinders. The gang has gathered for a housewarming party at Troy and Abedās new place and, when the pizza arrives, Jeff suggests they roll a die to see who has to go down and pick it up. Rolling the die creates a series of multiversesāsix outcomes mean six different possible futuresāand we run through all of them, a cascading pileup of callbacks and sight gags and one-liners, all stuffed into 21 black-hole-dense minutes of TV. No wonder Rolling Stone picked it as the fifteenth greatest episode of TV ever.
Best Supporting Character: Vice Dean Robert Laybourne
Community is another show with an embarrassment of guest star riches. Do I pick Michael K. Williamsās cranky ex-con professor? Or Andy Dickās repeated appearances as one of Pierceās drug-induced hallucinations? Betty White as an anthropology professor? John Oliver as a drunk Brit? But I had to go with John Goodmanās dean of the air-conditioning repair school, a man who reveals himself to be the real power at Greendale as the show goes along. His booming presence and absurd fiefdom form the perfect combination of hilarious and absurd.
Other Peacock shows to watch: Yellowstone, 30 Rock, The Office
How can you not mention Shrinking? I just discovered this week and watched it all. Itās delightful! Also, Peacock brought back Homocide: Life on the Streets. Thatās definitely worth paying for a month or two of the service.
"What We Do in the Shadows" is hilarious. I've seen every episode, and the writing and acting are top-notch. The recurring guest role of "The Baron", played by Doug Jones, is one of the funniest sit-com characters I've ever seen. Every word out of his mouth has me in stitches.