Oh Television, my true and trusted friend. Sometimes you lead me astray, but more often than not you fill my days and nights with endless wonder. This TV renaissance is nothing but fantastic, so much so that I’ve now opted to pay eight bucks a month for Hulu Plus, a service that has the audacity to charge me money and then STILL show advertisements. I never had a compelling desire to watch a lot of prime time major channel soap opera-ness. That is, until now. Were you aware that 98% of people on prime time shows are insanely pretty? Like, inhuman levels of pretty? That is something I had forgotten watching Nat Geo and Investigation Discovery. Everyone on 2, 4, 5 and 7, regardless of your preference, are super-bangable. Fun fact. Another fun fact: I apparently like pseudo-intellectual dramas. All three of the shows I’m going to talk about have smartish undertones. How To Get Away With Murder is good. I mean, the way the show treats the legal system is laughable and their logo is beyond irritating to me, but it’s engrossing. Seriously, though, why couldn’t you kern the word “away”? Why is it so gap-y? I always read it as HOW TO GET A W A Y WITH MURDER.
Why couldn’t you use your other title lockup? It was so nice, with the text and then the calligraphic swooshery. Y U no use, ABC? U make disappoint.
Hulu has introduced me to Sleepy Hollow. I would have never pegged myself for a Sleepy Hollow-show-liker, but here we are. Coupla reasons: I love that they use my home area as reference points. The show is about the return of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and it tickles my fancy that all this wizardry would be going on down the street from me. The show writers make up names for places, like The Rockefeller Estate Park and the Westchester Hospital, but I know where they are. Another reason is I like the two lead actors. One is a slight delicate British man, and I gots me a weakness for slight delicate British men. His name on the show is Ichabod Crane but they do everything in their power to make him look like Jesus, so I of course call him Ichabod Christ. Ichabod, since returning from the dead (it’s been 250 years! He doesn’t understand how plastic works! It’s like Freaky Friday, but with demons!), has a sidekick, a strong African-American female police officer named Abby Mills. These two actors have some awful dialogue to say that would be bad coming out of the mouths of lesser performers, but they make it work. It’s evocative and engaging. I feel like it’s my Doctor Who (since I could never get into Doctor Who, much to my chagrin). It’s a time traveler with a companion fighting off ancient evils. Lotta parallels.
The last show I binge-watched was a show on WGN, a network I had never heard of before. The show is called Manh(a)ttan, and it’s a fictionalized account of the Manhattan Project. It’s similar in structure to the Showtime program Masters of Sex – based on actual events, but everyone’s very attractive and sleeping with each other. I loved it. It’s got thirteen hour-long episodes and they were great, populated by so many amazing character actors you will recognize. There’s the guy from City Slickers and the Jewish speech writer from The West Wing and the jerky blonde dragon prince from Game of Thrones and the prostitute from House of Cards and the weird brother from Orange is the New Black, etc. I just read that a season two is in the works and I am so excited. Make a point to check it out. It made me want to learn more about the real Manhattan Project. When Manh(a)ttan comes out on Netflix I’m going to watch it again. I’m sure there are things I missed the first time around.