Welcome to 2024. Yes, I’m still working through these 2023 recaps. I know it’s all “New Year, New Me” to some people, but I’ve got a lot of media groundwork to cover here. Okay? Got it? Good.
Here’s some more televisual programming for you all. Some great, some mediocre, and some just plain despicable. Get amongst it, you filthy animals.
Hijack (Apple TV+)
Synopsis: “A plane from Dubai to London is hijacked over a 7-hour flight, while authorities on the ground scramble for answers.”
As a staple of 2000s television drama, 24 personified the impulses of Bush-era cultural hysteria, where a hyperrealistic conceit involved making “real-time” and “run-time” synonymous. Each episode of the show focused on one hour of a single day, as US counter-terrorist federal agent Jack Bauer (played by a breathless Kiefer Sutherland) bounced around from one world-ending crisis to the next. Hijack (stylized as H/JACK; lmao) takes this conceit and goes airborne, albeit after some curious changes.
Taking place between Dubai and London, temporal compression pulls the episode count down for the single hours of a seven-hour direct flight. Likewise, Idris Elba’s dour protagonist, Sam, is a slightly more vague narrative construction. Sure, he’s competent, motivated, and resourceful, but he’s not a cop or special agent: he’s a “corporate business negotiator”. Cool, I guess. And the enemy, you ask? Terrorists? Rogue state actors? Crazed psychos? Tsk, tsk. They’re simply disgruntled mob-adjacent employees looking to get in on that most time-honoured of criminal enterprises: stock manipulation. Money, folks, ain’t it grand?
The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix)
Synopsis: “To secure their fortune (and future) two ruthless siblings build a family dynasty that begins to crumble when their heirs mysteriously die, one by one.”
As I mentioned in my Best TV of 2021 edition, I’m a huge fan of writer, director, producer and Netflix wunderkind Mike Flanagan. And while I gave his 2022 adaptation of The Midnight Club a pass (having back-to-back shows with ‘midnight’ in the title certainly didn’t help there), I’m pleased to see that none other than Edgar Allan Poe has been given the mighty Flanagan touch this time around.
Taking the 1840 short story of the same name as a loose framing device, the limited series features a stacked cast of Flanagan devotees hamming it up as flawed heirs to a ruthless billionaire CEO’s pharmaceutical fortune. As they get retroactively killed off in an increasingly gruesome, non-linear fashion, the plot rolls through several contemporary updates on classic Poe tropes, including ravens, tell-tale hearts, black cats, pendulums, and morbid masques. It’s gore for the goths, and I’m here for it.
Justified: City Primeval (Disney+)
Synopsis: “Series based on Elmore Leonard's novel ‘City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit.’”
All hail the mighty return of Raylan Givens, a salt’n’pepper, shoot-first-and-beg-for-forgiveness-later lawman for my own heart. While I’ve certainly missed Justified since it wrapped up its incredibly strong sixth-season run in 2015, I was a little dubious about the prospect of a revival/renewal in this current studio environment.
Thankfully, City Primeval knows what it is and exactly how to deliver on the premise of an older, grumpier, and perhaps wiser(?) Givens reluctantly involving himself in messy shenanigans in the concrete jungle of Detroit. Olyphant was born for this role and fits it like a leather gun holster, while Boyd Holbrook’s portrayal of “The Oklahoma Wildman,” Clement Mansell, adds just enough smarmy chaos to the mix. Exceptional stuff.
Beacon 23 (MGM+)
Synopsis: “A man living in the 23rd Century works at a remote ‘lighthouse’ in space that serves as a beacon to help passing ships.”
In Part V of this series, I mentioned how I enjoy playfully stupid sci-fi trash. Now, I stand by that description, and it’s this desire that led me to a little-known series called Beacon 23—the first of two TV adaptations from novelist Hugh Howey in this edition—that popped up unceremoniously on a streaming service I’m convinced no one even knew existed (MGM-who?).
The basic premise here is straightforward enough. It’s like a lighthouse but in space. How does that work, you ask? Well, you see, the “Beacon” is a remote space station on the edge of the galaxy that shines a big light on passing ships, travelling at superlight speeds, to warn them about hazardous “gravity waves”. Get it? Is the nautical allegory doing anything for you yet?
If you push past this silly setup, there are some bottle episode shenanigans involving scheming bounty hunters, military veterans with inexplicable amnesia, and glowing space rocks that, for sure, won’t turn out to be alien relics. Oh, and Lena Headey from Game of Thrones is here to make it all seem serious and prestige-worthy. Warning: Your space mileage may vary.
Silo (Apple TV+)
Synopsis: “Men and women live in a giant silo underground with several regulations which they believe are in place to protect them from the toxic and ruined world on the surface.”
In the grand tradition of innervating Mystery Box storytelling, the big-budget TV adaptation of Hugh Howey’s Silo series boils down to one titular question: “What’s the deal with the Silo?” Over the show’s introductory first season, this overarching premise eventually morphs and evolves into several parallel lines of enquiry. What happened before the Silo? Is there more than one? What are the IT Department hiding? And perhaps the most important one of all: What’s outside the Silo?
For dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction, you certainly couldn’t do much better. Apple have sunk a bunch of money into this one, so it looks superb. The cast is top-notch as well, with Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins bringing their A-game throughout the series. And yet, like all mystery boxes, the answer—no matter how withheld and seemingly distant—becomes too enticing to justify the wait for more inevitable reveals. Am I telling you to go online and skip ahead to the end of Howey’s series to find out more? No spoilers.
The Curse (Paramount+)
Synopsis: “A newlywed couple struggles to make their vision for eco-living a reality in a small New Mexico town.”
While I’m still reeling from the experience of trying to parse the meta-mindfuck that was The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder is back once again to mess with the fabric of reality in entirely new and perverse ways. This time Fielder has teamed up with gutter auteur and acting journeyman Benny Safdie (of Good Time, Uncut Gems and Oppenheimer fame) alongside Academy Award-winner Emma Stone for a pitch-black skewering of gentrification and millennial narcissism.
It’s hard to describe the exact “tone” going on here, especially when moments feel like you’re watching a voyeuristic trainwreck through the lens of reality TV while also being entirely cognizant of the scripted artifice of the show, the ridiculous lives of these characters, and the very famous people inhabiting this world that feels just as incomprehensibly dark and twisted as our own. Endlessly fascinating and skincrawlingly watchable.
Reacher (Amazon)
Synopsis: “Itinerant former military policeman Jack Reacher solves crimes and metes out his own brand of street justice. Based on the books by Lee Child.”
If you’re already sold on the premise of Reacher (the lovable big guy who means well and solves crimes with punches and military-grade street smarts), then I don’t need to convert you here. The second season of the show hasn’t even fully aired yet, and I’m already fully on board. But if you’re still on the fence, I have a question for you.
If you saw a man the size of a mountain cross a street in broad daylight only to kick the front of a sedan so hard that it triggered the driver-side airbag and severely incapacitated the vehicle’s occupant, would you not think that was likely one of the coolest things you’d seen that day? Possibly ever? (Watch Reacher.)
The Idol (Max)
Synopsis: “Jocelyn is desperate to reclaim her rightful title as the greatest and sexiest pop diva in America after a nervous breakdown disrupted her most recent tour after Tedros, a notorious nightclub entrepreneur, reignites her passions.”
Lest this be taken as a direct endorsement, I’ll put this upfront for the unadventurous and morbidly curious alike: HBO’s The Idol, a show billed as the racier, more transgressive, Hollywood-focused answer to the network’s hit teen drama Euphoria, is bad. Like, really, really bad, bordering on go-to-director-jail awful.
But don’t just take my word for it: "One of the worst programmes ever made" (The Guardian); "Overheated, overhated, and finally over" (FADER); "Why HBO’s The Idol Is So Fascinatingly Bad" (Pitchfork); "‘The Idol’ Is More Toxic and Way Worse Than You’ve Heard" (Rolling Stone); "...an HBO Series That’s More Regressive Than Transgressive" (The Hollywood Reporter).
Everything about The Idol, from the glossy visuals to the thin characterisation and wince-inducing dialogue, feels maximised for social media regurgitation. Taken holistically, it’s less a cohesive, resonant, well-intentioned story about lust, power, and corruption than a series of clippable moments; the shallow product of two rich men (Euphoria’s Sam Levinson and The Weeknd) jacking off over each other’s big-brain egotism. And don’t get me wrong, folks, I’m all for sweaty, exploitative visual media and general horniness on screen (please, bring it back), but this isn’t it…