Premieres
A lot has been made about HBO’s problems with dramas these days, but you would have no idea that they’re in a bit of a slump watching The Night Of, a new eight-episode miniseries that debuts Sunday 10 July at 9pm ET. Based on the 2008 UK drama Criminal Justice, this tense, brooding tale is about Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani college student who wakes up in a house with a dead girl, and Jack Stone (John Turturro), the lawyer tasked with defending him. James Gandolfini was originally slated to play Stone, but Turturro stepped in after his death. While the premise is far fetched – it hinges on Nasir stealing his father’s cab and giving a complete stranger a ride – and the first episode takes a while to get going, this is a tense and twisty series with resonances about the undercurrent of race and class that inevitably become part of any legal proceedings. HBO needs to figure out a way to bring this back for season two.
Part one of The Night Of is currently available on HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO On Demand
New to streaming
Two of our favorite shows are finally available for all of those cord cutters who wouldn’t have access to them if they were on regular cable. Season three of NBC’s dearly departed Hannibal finally made its way to Amazon Prime after coming to a close last summer. The final 13 episodes join the first two seasons on the service, so now viewers can feast on the tale of serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and FBI agent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who was both in his thrall and out to catch him. As you catch up, be sure to check out the Guardian’s recaps.
Thanks to Netflix, UK’s Marcella has finally made its way to our shores. In the vein of dark British mysteries with female leads like Happy Valley and Broadchurch, Marcella (Anna Friel) is a former detective who is brought back to the force after a decade of being a housewife when a serial killer she was previously tracking becomes active again. The six-episode series starts with Marcella bloody in a bathtub, and her fugue states and identification with the killer suggest she might actually be the one committing the crimes. Once again, there are recaps, so you can get another perspective on what it’s like to live in this dark world where no one is untouched by evil.
Around the web
Adult Swim, the world’s finest purveyor of adult animation products, is always innovative and now it’s even working on disrupting the way it delivers shows to the public. It put the first episode of Brad Neely’s Harg Nallin’ Sclopio Peepio up for free on Vine before its premiere on Sunday 10 July at 11.45pm ET. The 10-ish minute first episode is perfect for the looping video service, because it’s less of an actual program and more of a collection of unconnected vignettes. This is definitely for those who already love Adult Swim’s brand of surreal poop humor, but it gets points for originality both in the content and the delivery.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s reality show The Runner has been a long time coming. Its development was cancelled in the wake of September 11, when ABC had serious concerns about how secure they could make the elaborate production. Five teams of two have to try to catch the Runner to win a bounty on his head and they have to track him by using clues they win by completing challenges. The trick is that viewers at home need to feed the teams information to help them complete the tasks. There will be three short episodes of the show each day for the next 30 days on Verizon’s Go90 app and streaming online. Whether or not the show will have the penetration to get a legion of fans helping the teams is questionable, but this noble experiment has got to be way more fun than watching Batman v Superman or Affleck curse his way through a discussion of Deflategate.
What to catch up on
Many might not think that an animated comedy about a talking horse that is a discourse on the nature of fame and the plague of clinical depression would be one of the best shows on television, but that just proves that many have not yet watched Netflix’s excellent BoJack Horseman. There’s only 24 episodes of this program, so one could binge it in the space of a day, but it’s not recommended unless you want to become a sad horse yourself. Season three drops Friday 22 July, so now is the time to see what all the TV critics will be talking about.
Last summer’s critically acclaimed Mr Robot returns to USA on 13 July, so you have a little over a week to get hip to the show’s first 10 episodes. (All 10 are on Amazon Prime and episodes 5-10 are on Hulu.) Once you start, you won’t need a week because this addictive show about hackers who are trying to take down a global company they call Evil Corp and bring an end to the free market as we know it will fly right by. Mr Robot is never what you will expect, so be ready to keep guessing until the very end.
Last week’s TV news in brief
- James Corden’s show is coming to the UK
- Jessica Williams is leaving The Daily Show
- Top Gear’s Chris Evans steps down amid stories of bad behavior
- Everyone’s already freaking out about Game of Thrones season seven
- Netflix orders a Lost in Space remake
- The Cruel Intentions TV show isn’t quite dead yet
- Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere will stick with Nashville as it moves to CMT
