Thursday, June 1, 2023

SISTERS, among striking TV Notes, during WGA's attempt for decent treatment for writers, against the wishes (and greed) of producers/the moneyfolk

With the wrapping up of Barry on HBO, those looking for more work from Sarah Goldberg could do worse that turn to SisterS, a co-production of Irish broadcast network RTE, US-based cable station IFC (and thus streaming on AMC+), and the Canadian video-on-demand  outlet Crave, featuring Goldberg as a Canadian woman seeking to meet her biological father, an Irishman who had a brief encounter with her mother on a visit across the Atlantic...who at first meets mostly her half-sister, Suze (Susan Stanley) a bitter and long-abandoned offspring as well, along with the latter's long-suffering mother, and wife of the rambling fellow. Apparently six episodes produced for the first season, and one of the sharper improvement curves I've seen in the first three episodes, as the first was mostly devoted to easy fish-out-of-water humor and mild exploitation at the Goldberg character Sare's expense, the second show giving Sare a bit more gumption as well as demonstrating more than selfish desire to connect with her sperm donor at whatever cost to his theoretical closer family, and the third episode dealing with any number of off the wall aspects of life, death, and women who take care of each other out of necessity and compassion in more or less equal measure. Looking forward to where the remaining episode are going. 


Meanwhile, FXX's intentionally obnoxious but reasonably clever sitcom DAVE has finally forced its way into my attention, about a caricature of its co-creator/star "Li'l Dicky" (legally David Burd) the rapper and his life, which has managed by the currently-most-recently-released episode (the third season finale)
 to dragoon Rachel McAdams (I will give anything she does a chance) and Brad Pitt (playing themselves) into a video-shoot, and while the last couple of  episodes are all I've seen, I gather this series has been improving as it goes along as well.



With a Justified sequel series coming and Awkwafina is Nora from Queens wrapping up a season with an almost inevitable take-off on Everything Everywhere All at Once, small favors as we wait for Disney, et al., to quit emulating the Governor Meatballs of the world and give the professionals in their employ their due.  Particularly after a tv season which saw the US broadcast nets dump such decent or better series as The Company You Keep (or cancel) and East New York in favor of new piles of game shows next season, and we don't mean more Jeopardy! (though probably that, at least, as well...though I wonder if their writing staff is Not WGA...).

Meanwhile, apparently the greed-piles who have taken over and remade the HBO-owning corporate entity into Warner Discovery (having run Discovery Networks into a set of garbage-fire cable stations) have greenlit a third season for Somebody Somwhere, perhaps the least glamorous dramatic series on US television, and Lyz Lenz suggests, at least jokingly, that her advocacy of it in her Iowa-based newsletter Men Yell at Me might've helped that happen. Maybe! Now let's see if the strike(s) will allow for that...or the greed-piles will settle amicably.

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