Four people, each missing something in his or her life, embark on a real life “scavenger hunt” type game. Richard E Grant is delicious as the game-runner. Deals directly and with complexity with depression, loss and change but is also magical and inspiring. At the end it becomes very meta as Jason Segel deals with …
Made for children. When a mysterious fire kills their parents, the Baudelaire children are sent to live with their evil uncle Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris). They soon learn that he is after the family fortune, and leave him to live with a series of other relatives. This series is quirky, highly stylized and funny …
A Masterpiece BBC drama. Poldark tells the story of Captain Ross Poldark (Aiden Turner), an idealistic man always fighting against an unfair and difficult world when he returns to Cornwall after fighting for the losing side in the American Revolutionary War. Ross is constantly in conflict with the scheming and wealthy Warleggans as he tries …
An anthology series (different actors and stories each episode), with each episode telling a love story. Amazing actors – Dev Patel, Andrew Scott, Catherine Keener, Tina Fey and more. Importantly, the stories are not necessarily about romantic love – there is friendship, family, and yes – romance, but romance is usually not the main love …
A Masterpiece Theater dramatization of the true story of Allison Wilson, played by the one of my favorite actresses, Ruth Wilson – Allison’s real-life granddaughter. After her husband dies, a widow (Allison) learns that he had another wife and family and she starts investigating the man who she thought she knew. There are no simple …
Beloved show about the lives and loves of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their three daughters and their staff in the years from 1912 into the 1920’s. Touching, witty, sentimental. Sometimes there is a heavy hand with the sappiness, but we don’t care because we love these characters so much.
A short series, very Dickensian. The story of two families, and more importantly, the two matriarchs, bound together by a secret. A trademan’s wife and a Duchess find themselves adversaries and surprising allies, while villains are villainous. Some are redeemed, the just prevail and virtue is rewarded. The wonderful Tamsin Grieg and Harriet Walter lead …
Billed as a comedy, I did not find anything funny about this show. It tells the story of a week at an exclusive Hawaiian resort. Well-done character study of people behaving terribly, with terrible consequences.
What if the devil got tired of Hell and decided to take a break in Los Angeles as a nightclub owner and then amateur detective? Lucifer is charming and intent on punishing evil (remember that not only does the devil tempt people into sin, he also punishes sin). The tone is generally tongue in cheek …
In the land of ultra-wealthy New Yorkers, Nicole Kidman plays a psychologist married to an oncologist (Hugh Grant). When a mother of another student at their child’s exclusive private school is killed, their world is thrown into turmoil when the husband is arrested for the murder. Twists and turns, no one is likeable.