My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Saturday, December 24, 2016

The 10 Best TV Programs I watched in 2016

Each year, TV seems to provide us with more great dramas, comedies, and documentaries. Can we doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he'd write for TV? Or at least watch it? Here are the 10 best TV programs I watched in 2016:

American Crime (Season 2). This excellent anthology series uses many of the same actors to tell a completely different crime narrative in each (of the first 2) season. Season 2, about an allegation of homosexual rape at a high-school party, is just as good as Season 1. Kudos to Felicity Huffman for her lead role.

Black Mirror. The totally disturbing and provocative series from England, picked up by Netflix in Season 3, about how technology could further change and disrupt our lives in the near future. Suggestion, skip the first 2 episodes (this is another anthology series; no need to see all or in sequence) and begin with episode 3.

The Crown. Possibly the most expensive TV series ever made, accurate in period detail both at the macro (WWI-era airplanes, cars, and Jeeps) and the micro (the flowers, the chinaware, the clothing), and on top of that a fine personal and political drama about the first years of QEII's reign.

House of Cards (Season 4). The Kevin Spacey-Robin Wright White House psycho-drama continues, with his career (and their marriage?) on the wane and hers on the rise?

Last Chance U. A great and under-the-radar Netflix documentary series about the players at a Mississippi junior-college football powerhouse, with particular focus on the academic counselor who does all she can to keep these young men, who are completely unprepared for (and largely uninterested in) academic work, in the program.

Making a Murderer. The extremely popular series about a man who was unjustly convicted of rape and, on release from prison, runs into deeper, and more suspicious, problems with the law.

The People v O.J. Simpson. I know you think you're already familiar with this story - but believe me you're not. Even if you don't care about football, this is a totally gripping account of the trial and its effect on the involved parties, the LA communities, and the nation. Good idea to see this first and then, if your curiosity is aroused, watch the ESPN documentary.

Stranger Things. Yes it's rather preposterous even as sci-fi, but it's effective and moving as a portrait of teenage and preteen life in the U.S. in the 1980s. In the spirit of ET: innocent kids v evil scientists, clueless parents, and the establishment in general.

Transparent. Would have been so easy to make this series lurid and sensational, and it's anything but: It's smart, informative, sensitive, sexy, funny (esp the opening sequence of Season 2), and credible. A must-see.

Veep (Seasons 1 and 2). Really funny, esp but not only Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and an over-the-top but recognizable image of what life is like on the staff of a high-level government agency. Hoping that HBO/Amazon will make subsequent seasons available in Prime.

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