As mentioned last week, we’re now in a two-week period where there’s very little coming on through most avenues. My TiVo to-do list is quite empty outside of recording a couple of HGTV shows through January 3rd. So that means it’s a chance to catch up on some other stuff.
We’ve got a look at the recent finale of See as well as checking out the finale for The Mandalorian and the latest on Harley Quinn.
The main show that I’ve been checking out so far this week is another Apple TV+ series with For All Mankind. I grew up during the 70s when a lot of this was going through the teardown phase but we had so many books being produced and specials on TV and more that I had a ton of reading material to enjoy, which made me a big fan of space exploration. This alternate history take on it is pretty solid overall but it’s not trying to overdo going in on the visuals of the era in a sense. It’s all accurate to the time but it’s not going for a flashy Ms Maisel approach. The money is clearly spent more on set design and the actual science and space flight scenes and the Lunar aspects. It’s an interesting series to watch from the perspective of a nation that took a hard hit in seeing the Soviets get to the moon first and put women in their program first and how we reacted to it, all with Nixon as president. I’m halfway through the first season and thoroughly enjoying its reactive take, coming from Ronald D. Moore, who helped usher DS9 to greatness and got Battlestar Galaactica underway with its reboot.
If you open the new Nancy Drew series in its first episode with her having sex by showing the bookcase rocking, is that a good or a bad sign? Or just a sign that it’s on The CW. Much as I read a lot of NASA related stuff in the 70s I also read things like Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew. I liked mysteries. With the property attempting live-action relevance every few years with minimal success, The CW got it underway as part of the fall season but I opted to wait til the first half was over to catch it in slight-binge mode. Watching the first couple of episodes, it sets up a number of things in the little coastal town she lives in that we’ve seen for years, including in the more recent mature-style comic books that we’ve reviewed. The mysteries are only starting to grow as it’s very early in the run but what’s interesting is that it wants to work, seemingly, with the premise that the ghosts that go bump in the night may actually be real. That’s not exactly the norm in the property and makes for an interesting change.
At this early of a stage I’m hard-pressed to feel strongly one way or another because it feels like a similar attempt at bringing Riverdale to life without being quite so… over the top? Kennedy McMann is a solid enough Nancy Drew here and she holds the attention of the camera/audience well. I’m still trying to get a handle on the support cast though I like that Scott Wolf is in this since I always liked him. Mostly, the cast is made up of a lot of young up and coming actors and a few others that have had smaller careers over the years so it’s easy to get just into the characters themselves.
