It’s been almost a year since the last episode aired of season five of Fargo, the best crime drama on television since Breaking Bad, and I miss it every day. While Breaking Bad still stands as my favorite show of all time, Fargo has rapidly risen to be among my all-time faves, with season after season of crime-filled dramatic brilliance from creator Noah Hawley.

While there can be no true substitute for Fargo, I am always looking for something to scratch that itch between seasons—which take way too long to come—and right now there is The Sticky, a light, somewhat silly but certainly entertaining Fargo wannabe that doesn’t come anywhere close to the gravitas or quality of its illustrious inspiration, but is just charming enough to win me over.

Starring the great Margo Martindale, The Sticky is a new short-and-sweet (pun intended) 6-episode series on Prime Video about a maple syrup farmer who schemes to steal syrup from the Canadian Syrup Association, who she feels is ripping off the small-town farmers in their rural Quebec town. Martindale’s character, Ruth, teams up with a bumbling security guard and a small-time mobster to try to pull off the heist, which, of course, hits multiple obstacles, including the cops, who are just a step behind them.

The series is funny and fast-paced—it has to be, when the whole story is told in six half-hour episodes—and dark when it needs to be. There’s nothing original here and everything feels ripped off from something else, whether it’s Fargo or Breaking Bad or every heist film ever, but that’s totally not the point. This is brisk and silly, a crime drama almost mocking itself, yet never reaching over too far into campiness (except when one specific famous guest star goes over the top, but that’s not the show’s fault).

So, if you’re looking for a show that won’t require a long investment, will engage you ever so slightly, will amuse you and keep you entertained and not force you to think too much—or really at all–I recommend The Sticky, aka Coens, Canadian style.

Law & Order, the original, AKA Mother Ship, uber producer Dick Wolf’s first and best series that birthed an entire genre and hundreds of spinoff and copycats, is FINALLY available to stream. It may seem strange that I’m so excited about this, but, trust me, this is news.

Two years ago, when I wanted to compile a list of my Top 10 favorite Law & Order episodes from the show’s first 20 seasons in honor of it returning for a new season in 2022 after having been off the air for twelve years, I thought it would be easy to quickly blitz through the seasons to find the episodes I liked best, as I assumed it was streaming SOMEWHERE. I mean, after all, every time I turn on the TV, it’s airing on some channel. BBC America, Sundance, WETV, and Pop all have the show on heavy rotation. And that’s, of course, in addition to the new episodes airing on NBC.

Because Law & Order is an NBC staple, I assumed all seasons would be on Peacock, but I was sorely mistaken. It turns out, only the later seasons were on Peacock. If I wanted to re-watch any episode prior to season 15, I was out of luck. So what did I do? I literally set my DVR to record every episode that aired on every channel to catch all the earlier episodes, so I could cull through all the older episodes. Yes, it took a lot of time and a really large DVR capacity to finally put together my list, and it was a huge ordeal.

But now, just a scant two years later, the world is a MUCH better place. As of TODAY, December 16, 2024, every episode of the original run of Law & Order—all 20 seasons, every one of the 456 episodes—are now available to stream on Hulu. And there is much celebrating.

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When Southland ended in 2013, I thought I would never see another L.A. cop show that good ever again. While I was partially right—nothing, for me, still has come close to Southland as a street beat cop show—the next year, Bosch started its run, and I have to say, it comes pretty darn close. Bosch is the best set-in-Los Angeles-detective show ever, and I dare you to challenge me.

Bosch, available on Prime Video, ran for seven seasons, from 2014 to 2021, and was one of the first Amazon Original television series. It stars Titus Welliver as an LAPD homicide detective who plays by his own rules, has trouble with authority, is a loner and is, of course, the best. He’s also got a troubled past, a complicated history with his ex-wife and a daughter he’s trying to figure out how to communicate with. All of this is tailor-made for Welliver, an actor who is clearly from the wrong decade, as is this show. This is such a ‘70s throwback, in all the right ways, minus the misogyny and racism. It’s all action and nitty gritty detective work, with Bosch hunting down the bad guys through good old detective work. This show is seriously catnip for all of us who miss shows like Magnum P.I. and Simon & Simon and Cagney & Lacey, where cops and detectives bantered and did real police work out in the field.

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Justified was one of those shows that was on our list forever. We had heard people talk about it, we knew we would get to it, but it just never happened. Then the pandemic came and we needed a show to binge that had a lot of episodes. We said, ok, now’s the time.

Six seasons have never flown by so quickly.

Justified was one of the most enjoyable discoveries we’ve had in a long time. The series aired from 2010 to 2015 on FX and is now available to stream on Hulu, and was created by Graham Yost, who went on to executive produce The Americans and Slow Horses. It stars Timothy Olyphant as a U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who goes back home to the Appalachian Mountain area of eastern Kentucky to try to keep the peace. It is based on a series of stories by Elmore Leonard.

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Most of you know my love of Germany, so I most certainly wasn’t going to ignore AppleTV+’s first original German-language series, which just dropped last month. I’m happy to report that Where’s Wanda? is a delightfully genre-bending puzzle of a series in the style and tone of Bad Sisters and Bodkin, but with all the charming German eccentricities I was hoping for—and not a Nazi or World War II reference anywhere in sight.

Where’s Wanda? is a dark comedy thriller about Wanda, played by Lea Drinda, a teenager who goes missing in a small town on the day of the town’s biggest holiday. Wanda’s parents, Carlotta and Dedo, played by Heike Makatsch and Axel Stein, are frustrated by the lack of leads the police are finding, so they take it upon themselves to investigate all their neighbors on their own by planting cameras and bugs in each house, because they absolutely believe Wanda is still alive and being held captive somewhere in their town.

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If you’re like me, the five words “based on a true story” at the beginning of a movie or TV show hook me every time. While I will never deny the power of a writer’s imagination, reality is still stranger than any fiction and the best stories do still come from real life. And, most horrifying, the worse a tale is, the more likely it’s based on something that really happened.

When it comes to stories about The Troubles, I’m always riveted. That dark period in Northern Ireland, which lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 which pitted Catholics versus Protestants, English versus Irish and nationalists versus unionists, was a violent and destructive time during which thousands lost their lives and millions of lives were affected, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Now, nearly thirty years after the peace treaty that ended the active violence, we are in a fascinating time to be looking back. There is enough distance to allow proper historical perspective and yet it is recent enough to still trigger emotional responses, largely due to the fact that there are still so many victims, participants, witnesses, aggressors and accused still alive who can tell their stories, some whom have never spoken before.

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Here are some interesting facts about my household:

-When we bought our first DVD player, which was probably in 2002 when they became mainstream, Gladiator (2000) was the very first DVD we purchased.

-When a social media poll recently asked, “what movie do you think you’ve watched the most,” my answer was, not surprisingly, Star Wars, and my wife’s answer was Gladiator.

-The Gladiator score was composed by Hans Zimmer and featured memorable vocals by Lisa Gerrard, who is one half of an Australian duo named Dead Can Dance, who is one of our household’s most favorite bands. Gerrard’s work on the Gladiator score is, in my opinion, what makes it so unique and memorable. Zimmer and Gerrard share the credit for composing the score and they both were officially nominated when the score was one of the film’s twelve Oscar nominations in 2001. It is, in my opinion, one of the best film scores of all time, despite having lost the Oscar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Dun Tan).

-Whenever we want to have fun, we love to re-create Elizabeth Taylor’s seemingly drunken announcement of Gladiator’s Best Picture win at the 2001 Golden Globes.

So, needless to say, Gladiator has had a large presence in my life. Since it came out in 2000, it has been in seemingly constant rotation on cable, so, like Godfather or Ocean’s Eleven, it’s one of those films that we are never able to scroll by when we see it’s on. If Gladiator is on, no matter where it is in the movie, we stop and watch. It is a film that is the perfect combination of action and art, of sentiment and brutality, of heart and heroism, of beauty and violence. It is Ridley Scott’s finest film and that’s saying a LOT, considering he also made Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner and Alien. It delivered Russell Crowe’s finest performance, features the best score in cinema history, and, as previously noted, was nominated for twelve Oscars, winning five, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Oh, and it also was a huge hit, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2000.

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I am most definitely not one to swoon over superheroes–unless Marvel’s next franchise is titled Nandor the Relentless, I really couldn’t care less about even the smallest star in that entire universe. But, if forced, I would have to confess that Batman is the one superhero who has managed to capture my imagination the most in recent years. Now, granted, that is largely due to Christopher Nolan’s genius and his trilogy of Batman films that wandered so far away from what could be considered superhero fare that you almost forgot you were watching characters that originated in comic books. Credit also needs to go to Warner Bros and DC Entertainment for keeping Nolan’s flame lit by continuing to produce visionary, imaginative, innovative and artistically expansive stories from the Batman universe. Recent films like Birds of Prey, Joker and The Batman all generated rave reviews and the series Harley Quinn is one of the most heralded animated series on television. And now comes The Penguin, a limited series spinoff from Matt Reeves’ The Batman film from 2022, and this series is the best Batman offspring since Nolan’s films.

First of all, do not worry if you aren’t a Batman connoisseur. Unlike the Marvel films, where you have to know every character’s backstory and understand all the easter eggs and inside jokes to get the least bit of pleasure out of them, The Penguin can be enjoyed truly as a standalone series, even if you know nothing about the Batman universe.

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During the height of the pandemic, I was desperate for “feel good” TV. While I normally gravitate towards serious dramas, that was a time when I needed to find refuge in sweetness, in a more of a Zen approach to narrative storytelling, in being distracted by kindness and hope, decency and optimism. It’s clear I’m not the only one who felt that way, proven by the phenomenons Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek became during those years. Not that either show wouldn’t have done so at any other time, but coming out as they did during the pandemic, these two shows really hit the emotional bullseye, tapping into the zeitgeist, delivering positivity, kindness and sweetness to a nation desperately in need of it.

Now I find myself strangely in need of some goodness again, and, thankfully, Detectorists has come to my rescue. An unbelievably simple but sweet show that aired from 2014 to 2017 and is now available to stream on Freevee (through Prime Video), Detectorists stars Toby Jones as Lance and Mackenzie Crook as Andy, two guys for whom metal detecting has become more of a passion and a way of life than just a hobby to pass the time. There is a poetry in the way they approach their passion, as they trudge across farms and fields of England with their trusty detectors, listening for a faint ping to indicate the site of possible buried treasure. An awful lot has happened in these open fields in the English countryside, a lot of history could be buried here, and Lance and Andy can’t help but be just a bit romantic about it all.

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There’s no mincing words when it comes to Rivals, a new show on Hulu. It is all sex, soap, silliness and sleaze, wrapped up in an addictive package with a killer soundtrack and shoulder pads.

A soapy drama in the spirit of ‘80s primetime hits like Dallas and Dynasty, Rivals is about two rich men, one from new money, one from old, who take their rivalry to new heights by battling for control of the region’s television programming. But of course, their rivalry doesn’t stay professional, spilling over into their tony, upper crust neighborhood of the Cotswolds region of southwest England. The Cotswolds is commonly thought of as the English version of the Hamptons, but with way more castles and fox hunts. And parties. Lots and lots of parties.

And sex, did I mention all the sex? I don’t know what’s in the water in the Cotswolds, but whatever it is, it makes everybody incredibly horny. Rivals is as classic a country sex romp as they come, on top of all the backroom backstabbing that goes on between the business rivals. Yeah, it’s pretty over the top, but it’s SO ‘80s. It’s set in 1986, and everything just exudes mid-‘80s, pre-AIDS ‘80s excesses, from the clothes, the music, the hair, and, yes, the sex.

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