Matlock-Masterful series that managed in the first season to be both political and personal. Maddie’s (Kathy Bates) ongoing quest to hold the drug company Wellbrexa, liable for the overdose death of her daughter also had her championing down-on-their-luck clients each week. The added bonus was that this series was also a powerful examination of the triumphs and tribulations facing seniors, appropriate because its network CBS has a largely geriatric audience. The second season was a disappointment and illustrates that the show should have ended after one glorious season but that doesn’t happen in network or streaming TV where a profitable series must go on until the audience deserts it.
Prime Target-From the opening ATM explosion in Baghdad duplicating the Israeli beeper attack on Lebanon, to the nefarious darkness shrouding and linking Cambridge tech to a group of Brit intelligence, American NSA and financial interests, this Apple TV+ series stood out, not only for its take on the interconnections in this linkage but also for its ability to make mathematics sexy, focusing on the power of prime numbers, here harnessed to Western power. Its Cambridge grad student who bucks the security state is aided by an NSA agent who must overcome her own allegiance to her intelligence godmother which she does in an elegant statement when accused of betraying a plot that involves assassination and global domination: “I don’t want your forgiveness; I don’t need it.”
The White Lotus-Season 3 of this HBO Max series, set in Thailand, largely abandons the focus on the colonial aspect of Club Med type luxury vacation resorts but amps up the violence and fraud that the American tourists bring with them when “at leisure.” The group consists of one killer, one swindler who contemplates doing in himself and his family because his corrupt business practices have been exposed at home, a sexually incompetent son who covers his incompetence with aggression and a masterful turn by Parker Posey as a pill-popping matriarch oblivious to it all. This is to say nothing of a female threesome whose supposed renewal of their friendship consists mainly of backbiting and betrayal. Nice example of how the sins of the American home front accompany Americans abroad, as series creator Mike Young continues his tour de force.
The Long Bright River-(Peacock) Oscar winner Amanda Seyfried shedding her blonde trophy wife Marion Davies image (from Mank) and instead embracing a role as a working-class Philadelphia cop who, on her beat in Baltimore’s Kensington, due to her empathy for the street women because of her sister being a victim of the streets, is able to spot a serial killer who the rest of the force simply ignores. Series, in the Mare of Eastwick mode, has a street worker’s eloquent denouncement of the real perils of her surroundings: “We don’t need protection from each other; we need protection from the police.”
Dark Winds-Third season of this Lakota crime series on AMC+ has officer Lighthorn (Zahn McLarnon) pursued by Jena Elfman’s FBI agent for last season’s dumping in the desert of the rancher who killed his son while he tracks two missing boys. In the stronger plot, Jessica Matten’s border agent uncovers a trafficking outfit tied to a prominent rancher while taking up with a fellow agent who may not even be half of what he seems. Ingenious linking of the two plots as all roads lead back to the reservation.
Rainmaker-This series based on a John Grisham novel that was first a film is a welcome return to liberal values now abandoned by most contemporary liberals. A smart young lawyer takes on a corporate law firm in a case involving the death of an African-American woman’s son, reinvigorating the old liberal alliance between a white enlightened middle class and a black working class, an alliance which has since Grisham’s novel all but been shattered as white elites campaign for war not social justice under the guise of “human rights.” Lana Parilla (Snow White’s evil queen in Once Upon A Time) as the young lawyer’s vivacious and hard-bitten but ultimately ethical boss is spectacular and contrasts nicely with the cruel efficiency of the head of the corporate firm. Streaming on Amazon Prime.
Special Top Series: The Lowdown Episode 9-(Hulu) The rest of this Ethan Hawke series set in Tulsa, Oklahoma with the lead actor as a Jim Thompson-reading, muckraking though mawkish Hunter S. Thompson “truthstorian” is good enough to watch but Episode 9, written by Walter Mosely, is superior to any hour of television this year. Mosley cross cuts between a white supremacist preacher calling his congregation “warriors for God” to a joyful reenactment by the town’s children of the Oklahoma land rush, a monstrous theft of Native American land. Graham Greene appears as a partially demented, partially truth telling, Osage deed holder that a developer is trying to swindle, warning the developer’s agent that “land will drive you crazy,” echoing the perpetual thirst for land and resources that still motivates much of today’s imperial thieves. Episode ends on a cliffhanger as Hawkes journalist breaks into the church and is ordered by the preacher to be shot by an armed congregation.
Honorable Mention
Black Snow-Wondrous second season of this Australian series set in Queensland with a mixed detective agency of an indigenous Va’natu female ex-con and a falsely accused Anglo ex-cop. This season involves the town’s former mayor, now a senator, a developer and a murder victim who seemingly got in the way of that development. Streaming on AMC+.
Lioness-(Showmax) Twisty South African thriller where an embezzling husband traps his wife in his crime and she, after serving eight years, has to work her way through the maze of men in her life who betrayed her. A look behind the gated walls of Afrikaner society at its enduring patriarchal structure.
Sheriff Country-CBS nearly duplicated the success of last season’s Matlock with this series starring a superb Morena Baccarin (of Firefly fame) as a sheriff of a small town who acts more like a social worker than a typical CBS FBI-franchise law enforcer. Pilot is superb with nary a murder in sight but then the network likely intervened and required the series to conform and now the town is overrun with murder, but the social work and domestic aspect of the show remains and makes it worth watching.
The Gone-(AMC+) Season 2 of this joint Irish-New Zealand series features a deepening of the connections between the Gaelic rowdiness of the Irish cop and female journalist and the indigenous Maori, both victims of British colonialism which persists in the present as two Maori women feud because the tribe of one joined the British in massacring the tribe of the other.
Marked-Netflix South African heist series about a female armored car driver whose daughter will die if she does not come up with a million dollars for an operation. Hence the heist from her company. Great moment when she visits a gangster in the ghetto who points out that in the poorer neighborhood of Soweto, they eat cabbage while the rich across the way dine on caviar.
Beneath the Undertow -This season featured Chinese series attempting global relevance Undertow follows a socially awkward detective as he pursues the murder of a young girl, and as the trail leads him to the dark corners of the society including the exploitation of Chinese cam girls, factory owners who profit from closures and developers who care nothing for those they are displacing.
Smila’s Sense of Snow-Sy-fi, horror and mystery series, British/Scandinavian effort of ITV and Viaplay, set in a future Denmark whose populace is cold, alienated and hostile to their colony Greenland. Smilla, who holds a mathematics Ph.D., remains in touch with her indigenous Greenland heritage in this struggle between a murderous Western science and life-giving nature. Remake of the ‘90s film but with far sharper, nicely updated, thematics.
Log Out-Series features a wife and mother whose husband dies in a mysterious explosion but who then recognizes as a passenger in her cab, the last person she saw before the bomb. She has to flee, and the point of the series is how difficult it is, even if one’s life depends upon it, to escape the digital devices which track our every movement, that is, how it is impossible in today’s wired societies to literally or metaphorically log out.
