Gary SteelA regular column in which GARY STEEL sifts through the mountain of available streaming TV and brings your attention to great new and old shows as well as those to avoid.
The Boys – Season 4 (Netflix) 9/10
Is there a better or more courageous or more needed TV show in 2024 than The Boys? My resounding answer to that is a definitive “No!” And amazingly, it keeps getting better and more pointed and more necessary with each season. For those of you who haven’t indulged in the first three seasons, The Boys is a very adult-oriented and rather bloody satire on superhero shows. I don’t even particularly like superheroes, which somewhat proves that it has a lot more to offer than superpowers. The basic premise is that “supes” were created by an evil conglomerate to provide hero figures for the masses and con the average human into believing that they were being protected. But it couldn’t be further from the truth, and the most powerful superhero, Homelander (brilliantly by Kiwi actor Antony Starr) is a mentally unstable and very dangerous sociopath. There are seven “supes” with very different powers and only one of them, Starlight (Erin Moriarty) has integrity.
Contrasting the actions of the “supes” is Billy Butcher (played by another Kiwi, Karl Urban) and his ragtag team of terrorist anti-“supe” warriors who are super-keen to expose them for what they are and bring down the corporation that spawned them. Not since True Blood has there been a long-running series that’s as much fun (as well as blood and guts) but unlike that show, The Boys is clearly scoring points about the political dilemma America finds itself in today, and Homelander is in some way analogous to Trump, albeit much younger. The fourth season finds the stakes higher than ever as Starlight joins Butcher and crew in a mad dash once and for all end the “supe” era. There’s so much that’s great about the series that a short review can’t encapsulate, and it’s packed full with memorable characters. Miss it at your peril!
Clive Davis: The Soundtrack Of Our Lives (Netflix) 5/10
The problem with this overlong, shiny, conventional TV profile is that, like other similar so-called documentaries on the likes of Quincy Jones, it’s so thoroughly endorsed and approved that there’s no room for anyone who might think that the guy was an asshole. You can feel the conceit in its title: The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. I mean, really? It’s not that the story of record executive Davis isn’t worth telling, just that it gets a bit dull hearing relentlessly what a stone-cold genius he is, especially when about 90 per cent of the acts he had such extraordinary success with over the years were fucking awful.
Yes, it’s interesting to learn that Davis didn’t have a background in music and that his background was law. It turns out that his ability to know how to choose an artist and match them with a song was intuitive, and it made him the top record executive of all time. But while it crows about the artists with which he had success (Whitney Houston and Barry Manilow, Earth Wind & Fire, Aerosmith and many others) it barely mentions the ones that died a quick death. There’s no distinction between shitty artists that are successful with shitty songs and genuine legends, and because it concentrates on the last 30 years (Houston especially gets a load of time) there’s a disappointing void of memories about his early signings like Janis Joplin and Sly & The Family Stone.
Enlightened (Neon) 7/10
I’m not sure whether this 2011 comedy drama made it to NZ at the time, but it’s turned up recently on Neon and, well, I’m a sucker for Laura Dern, who has lost little of her allure in the years since her big debut in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. There are two seasons and 18 30-minute episodes of Enlightened, in which Dern takes centre stage as the flaky and unfulfilled 40-year-old Amy Jellicoe, who moves in with her mum (Dern’s real mum, Diane Ladd) after the fallout from an office affair that went horribly wrong. Amy signs up for a $20K “enlightenment” course in Hawaii and returns burning with a naïve new age perspective and determined to right the corporate wrongs of her employer.
Frequently, the story revolves about her often cringe-inducing, embarrassing actions, and being sensitive about such things, I found that hard to watch. But as the series proceeds it does what all great stories aspire to do: suck you into Amy’s psyche and put flesh, bones and feelings to the characters it portrays. Ultimately, Amy has the balls to take the immoral corporate she works for to the cleaners, and you can’t help feeling that for all her faults, the world needs people like that. But to me, the real success of Enlightened is around the way it stops every now and then to take a long, humanistic contemplation of its supporting characters, especially Amy’s substance-abusing ex-husband (Luke Wilson), her duplicitous former assistant (Sarah Burns), her hilariously obnoxious boss (Timm Sharp) and her shy, lonely workmate Tyler (Mike White).
Finding Fela (DocPlay) 7/10
This 2014 documentary tells the extraordinary story of Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who changed the shape of music with his afrobeat style and used music as a weapon against the post-colonial military rulers. Although from the 1970s on he became a genuine cultural hero in Nigeria and to some degree in Europe, his celebrity never broke through to the same extent in America, largely because record companies didn’t know what to do with songs that lasted a minimum of 20 minutes. Even for fans who know the facts of his life, Finding Fela will be an eye-opener, due to its footage of his bizarre lifestyle amidst the harshness of life in Nigeria. Sons Sean and Femi as well as former drummer Tony Allen and others who knew him fill in the details of his life in a “commune” or compound surrounded by electric fences, where he kept 27 wives and composed his anti-authoritarian music… just down the road from the HQ of the ruling junta!
The film also documents his ongoing stoush with the powers that be and beatings and incarceration that followed, including the raid that resulted in his mother being thrown from a second storey window and subsequently dying. Unfortunately, the powerful raw material of this story is diluted by monotonous rehearsal scenes from a Broadway show about Fela, and it’s annoying to be diverted from the telling of his life to the discussions about a show about his life and music. From a 21st century perspective (Fela died of AIDS in 1997) it can be hard to forgive his chauvinism and careless promiscuity, and personally, as a very casual fan I struggle with why Fela’s music is held in such high esteem, but Finding Fela certainly shows just why he became such a massive cultural force.
Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (TV3) 6/10
I don’t often bother with the streaming content of NZ broadcast channels and, having endured this four-part series, I remember why: the repetition of ads is infuriating. But is Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed worth seeing? This four-part series is at least two episodes too long and could easily have been chopped down by condensing some of the leisurely interviews with the church’s alleged victims. Too often, as with the recent show on Kevin Spacey, it’s a case of he said/she said and superficially, at least, many of the allegations seem minor. Had it instead have concentrated on research and documentation and spent longer on a cogent history of the church, it would have been a much better series. But… despite its failings, it’s valuable to learn about this organisation and its wealth strategies.
Shockingly, Hillsong was started by a paedophile Kiwi with a religious background in the Assembly Of God (AOG) and carried on in Australia by his son, who was inspired by the 1980s wave of American televangelists who got rich from the donations of the poor and operated like a corporation rather than a genuine church. Hillsong’s genius was in the way it sucked believers into a web of cool music and ignored all the boring, stratified aspects of traditional churches. Many of the interviewees claim that it’s a cult and Hillsong certainly bears many of the hallmarks of cults of the past, but the worst thing about it is undoubtedly the way it fleeces the poor of their money while its pastors prance around in expensive designer-wear. Around the time this 2021 documentary came out (the fourth episode is a 2023 follow-up) the so-called church was being hit with one scandal after another. The question will undoubtedly be whether the corporation have the business skills to survive the bad publicity.
Interview With The Vampire (AMC/Shudder) 6/10
I’d heard really great things about this televisual adaptation of the Anne Rice novel, which managed a stunning 98 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Certainly, its 15 hour-long episodes over two seasons gives the narrative a chance to reveal the detail and nuance missing from the Tom Cruise-starring 1994 film version. But there’s a problem. Several, actually. Setting the first series (told in flashback) in early 20thcentury New Orleans makes sense, but the frequent street scenes look like a fabrication and have none of the dirt or implied smell of the real deal. Yes, it’s ambitious to faithfully evoke an era in history, even if it is CG-enhanced, and there’s no getting around the fact that it costs. My guess is that the budget just didn’t quite stretch to getting enough people to fill those street scenes and make them feel real. But it’s not just that, the lighting’s too bright as well.
There’s plenty to like though. Though neither Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac or Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt have readymade star power, Reid does convincingly portrays the boredom and promiscuity of a very old vampire searching for connection. Eric Bogosian also makes a decent fist of playing the Parkinson’s plagued journalist/interviewer, while Bailey Bass as the terminally 14-year-old Claudia (whose cherry is popped each time she has sex) is effectively cute/wicked. When it comes, there’s impactful and shocking violence, but it just reminds the viewer that there’s simply too much talking. I couldn’t help remembering the much-missed True Blood and how scary, funny and entertaining that show was compared to this mostly dull mumble-fest. The second season (or Part II), set in France, made it to the small screen a couple of months back, but I’m having a hard time convincing myself to watch it.
Jared From Subway: Catching A Monster (Neon) 7/10
Why are we so attracted to stories about awful, awful people and the terrible, terrible things they do? That’s a question for another time, but this 3-part 2023 documentary really made me feel the unease. Thing is, I’d never heard of Jared Fogel, known for many years as “the Subway guy”, and was surprised right from the get-go to discover that he’d been a huge celebrity in America (and even visited New Zealand!) not so many years ago touring the USA and other territories in which the glorified sandwich franchise operates as an example of the health its food can bring to former fatties. That’s right, Fogel was a fat nobody who lost a good deal of weight when he ate nothing but Subway sandwiches for a month, was a news story sensation as a result, and ended up with a promotional job at the food chain.
But that’s not all, unfortunately. It turns out that this seemingly pleasant and unremarkable chap was a predator and a paedophile who used his privileged lifestyle – travelling around spreading the Subway message – to prey on and abuse kids. The series spends a lot of time with former radio host Rochelle Herman who interviewed Fogel and ended up befriending him and then spending years trying to get the FBI to take action against him. Basically, her life was destroyed by the inaction of the authorities. It’s an incredible story, really, but not exactly family viewing. Eventually, the cops get their man and Fogel is put away for a long, long time but Jared From Subway: Catching A Monster, as the name suggests, shows just how tough that can be.
Presumed Innocent (Apple+) 6/10
I’m still not convinced that we really needed an eight-part television adaptation of a story that already seemed rather dry when it screened in 1990. That film had the benefit, at least, of starring Harrison Ford, who was somewhat likable as Rusty, the New York prosecutor who becomes the suspect in the grisly murder of a female colleague. I’ve got nothing especially against Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) his is just not a face I want to stare at for the best part of eight hours. Similarly, Ruth Negga (Preacher) just doesn’t feel quite right as his beleaguered wife.
Still, for those who like to pore over the forensic details and who like courtroom dramas with a bit of a police procedural about them, then Presumed Innocent might fit the bill. Of course, the whole idea is that while we inevitably side with Rusty, we don’t really know that he’s innocent of the crime and there are plenty of red herrings thrown around that suggest the murderer could have been one of the other characters. Personally, I wish I’d chosen a show that had a bit more originality but it’s beautifully shot and edited and the music backgrounds are especially good as they fuse the organic with the synthetic in a compelling fashion.
Sunny (Apple+) 7/10
What an odd show this is. Sunny is (obliquely) a kind of sci-fi drama set in the claustrophobic streets of Tokyo and starring Rashida Jones (incredibly, the daughter of former Mod Squad hottie Peggy Lipton and legendary record producer Quincy Jones) as Suzy Sakamoto, an American in Japan who receives a very clever domestic robot (Sunny) from her husband’s robotics company after he goes missing (along with their young son) when their plane goes down. It’s a quaint drama that kind of wanders along whimsically with an edge of Yakuza danger but finds much of its intrigue in the quaint Japanese ways that Suzy can’t quite comprehend.
While it’s not exactly thrill-a-minute territory, Sunny has a quiet charm and there’s a sense of “wow, this is different!” about the whole enterprise. Each episode of the seven-episode series is only around 30 minutes, so it never feels like things are dragging. The highlight for me was the dishevelled Mixxi, played by someone who calls herself annie the clumsy, a Japanese woman with either a Kiwi or Aussie accent (when speaking English) who has a parallel career via her Flight Of The Conchords-inspired YouTube clips. Worth a punt!
You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment (Netflix) 8/10
I’ll normally do anything imaginable to avoid having to watch so-called “reality” TV, but this odd hybrid is unmissable. Twenty-two identical twins are put on an eight-week course where one is fed a vegan diet and the other an omnivorous diet. During this time they’re put through a fitness plan and tested in all kinds of scientific ways. But that’s not all. During its three episodes, the show frequently breaks off to explain about different facets of how and what we eat. We learn that the so-called Standard American Diet (SAD) since depression times in the 1930s has had a heavy emphasis on meat and heavily processed foods and is largely responsible for the obesity epidemic. We learn that the industrialisation of animals for meat production is threatening human health through the hormones that are fed to the animals and threatening life on earth by deforestation (at an alarming rate). But it’s not all bad news.
In fact, despite the horrors that are clearly described, You Are What You Eat gives reason to hope. We meet some of the geniuses behind the evolving vegan food scene who have successfully created tasty plant-based “cheese” and even “bacon” and visit the 3-star Michelin restaurant in New York that successfully dishes out $300-per-head vegan meals. Then there’s the chicken farmer who became so appalled at the cruelty that he transitioned to growing mushrooms, and the beef farmer who now only keeps a small herd that grazes on regenerative grasses for both the health of the animals and consumers. But back to the scientific tests on the twins. Yes, those portions of the show are “reality TV” but they’re not showy or manufactured. You get to know a selection of the twins and there’s a lot of good humour going around. A lot of assumptions about veganism are quashed in the process, including the revelation that it’s just as easy to put on muscles with a vegan diet than with a protein-heavy meat diet. Unsurprisingly, You Are What You Eat has been slaughtered (so to speak) by meat-loving critics, but unlike them, it’s dealing in hard facts and it’s not so much ramming home the message as simply suggesting that there’s a better way. It’s not even telling people to give up meat, just to consider at least eating less of it, for the planet. An important show and one that our eggheaded government representatives should watch, but of course, won’t.
The Best & Worst Streaming TV is a regular column in which Gary Steel assesses the worth – or otherwise – of the vast trove available to stream. Unlike other media, our policy is to dig deep and go further than just Netflix or what’s new this week.
