It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when former Saturday Night Live cast members just could not get any traction at all in TV or movies after they left the iconic late-night show. There was the occasional exception, but for the most part, former SNL cast members’ careers ended up dying a slow death, despite many, many attempts at finding Eddie Murphy-like glory. In the nineties, it became somewhat of a sad joke that if you were on SNL, that meant your career had peaked.

Well, things have certainly changed.

Not only is SNL now considered a proving ground for some of the best talent around, it has demonstrated, time and time again, to be a place for some of the most immensely talented artists to test their boundaries, make connections and, most important of all, gain the confidence and fame they need to be able to make challenging and brilliant work once they’ve left the show. We saw it with Kristen Wiig and Bridesmaids. We saw it with Adam Samberg and Palm Springs. We saw it with Jason and Ted Lasso. And we saw it with Bill Hader and a show called Barry, one of the best television shows produced in the last twenty years.

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Don’t be put off by the title. Murderbot, a new series on AppleTV+, is sci-fi, but it’s a comedy, not an apocalyptic, Terminator-type vision of our near-future where machines destroy humanity. Of course, as of this writing, only seven of the ten episodes of season one have dropped, so who knows what could happen. BUT, for what I’ve seen so far of Murderbot, it is a delightful, even goofy at times, warm and endearingly offbeat comedy about a service robot who has gained free will, and every indication is that it won’t go rogue like its main character.

The great Alexander Skarsgård plays the titular, newly-sentient robot, nicknamed “sec unit,” because he was initially programmed to be a security robot, designed to assist and protect humans on missions to distant planets. He is chosen to escort a group of scientists, whose leader, Mensah, played by Noma Dumezweni, selects him specifically because he strikes her as a little odd, a little different than all the other, more polished, newer robots. That’s because he’s been refurbished—something happened in his past that had to be wiped from his memory, maybe this is where the series title comes from? Hmmm. But this is where the “glitch” may have happened that prompted our loveable sec unit to gain self-awareness. And it is here where Murderbot gains all of its momentum.

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The premise of conquering the beast has been around as long as storytelling has captured human imagination. Myths, fairy tales, superhero sagas, they all tell tales of ordinary men and women going up against an unconquerable foe, armed only with their courage, wit and, more often than not, immeasurable luck.

There is something uniquely human about our species that makes us seek the danger, seek the challenge, seek the beast—for some, facing imminent death is the only way they can feel alive. But most of those challenges here on earth, mountain-climbing, skydiving, cliff-diving, etc, usually feature man vs a stationary object. Climb Mt. Everest, jump out of a plane towards Earth, jump off a cliff into the ocean–it’s hard enough to do any of those things, to master any of those skills, to overcome any of those fears, to have the stamina, strength, endurance and ability to do any of those things just as they are. Now imagine doing any of them while they are moving and trying to devour you at the same time. Imagine if, as you were climbing Mt. Everest, it was trying to swallow you whole while you’re just trying to stay on your feet—just trying to survive.

That is what big wave surfing is.

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I heard the latest Netflix series sensation Dept. Q described as a cross between Slow Horses and House. Now, if you know anything about those two other beloved but decidedly un-traditional shows, one which ran from 2004 to 2012 and the other which is currently running on AppleTV+, they both are centered around one certifiably grumpy guy who also happens to be—of course—somewhat of a genius at what he does, despite how he makes everyone around him crazy. In House, the crazy-maker was played by the always-perfect Hugh Laurie and in Slow Horses, he’s played by the great unwashed master Gary Oldman, so, to be considered in the same creative arena as them is quite high praise indeed, but certainly one that is deserved by Matthew Goode, who earns his misanthropic stripes in Dept. Q with just as much bitterness as Laurie and rueful resentment but thankfully more soap (and certainly fewer farts) than Oldman.

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I was in the mood for action again, so I looked around for a show that could scratch my itch and I found one that did just that. It’s not the typical kind of action, there aren’t car chases or spy shenanigans, but there are explosions and tension galore. If you are looking for a show that will keep you fully engaged, on the edge of your seat and never once bored enough to look at your phone, Trigger Point on Peacock and BritBox is the show for you.

Trigger Point is a workplace drama that centers on Lana Washington, played by Vicky McClure. Lana is very good at her job, which is to diffuse bombs. Yes, this is like the movie the Hurt Locker, which won the Oscar for Best Picture back in 2008, except without war, the desert or all that testosterone.

Lana does have military training and background—she served in Afghanistan in the British military, so there is a Hurt Locker angle—so she certainly knows what she’s doing, but the bombs she is now faced with diffusing are set in and around London, not Bagdad, and that truly makes all the difference.

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Netflix’s first Canadian original series has arrived and it’s a winner. North of North is a half-hour comedy series starring Anna Lambe as Siaja, a twenty-six-year-old Inuk woman in the small fictional town of Ice Cove in the province of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. Siaja is having a bit of an identity crisis and wants desperately to break out of the rut she’s in, starting with her marriage to a self-absorbed husband, who happens to be the most popular guy in town. But breaking away from her husband, who is also the father of her young daughter, won’t be easy, and neither will forging a new life for herself, including getting a job and figuring out what she wants to do with her life and who exactly she is, other than being a wife and mother.

If this all sounds really deep, the best part about North of North is that creators Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Amaquq-Baril sprinkle the meaningful themes so lightly and subtly throughout the eight episodes of the first season that you hardly even notice because you are having such a good time just vibing with these fun people in this amazing place.

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Normally I use this space to recommend a single show, but I found myself recently binging two separate shows that distinguished themselves so similarly that I thought it might be fun to bring them together in a single post and offer my fair readers a choice—and because I guarantee it’s probably the only time these two shows will ever be mentioned in the same article.

We are currently living in a world of sides, of factions. I hate to make anything here political because I personally use TV as a means of escaping the current horrors of the real world, but there are two current fictional shows on now that are such good examples of each side of the current political spectrum, I thought it might be fun to put them up next to each other, recommend them together, both as a way of being wholly inclusive and, honestly, because each one is so ideologically tilted, the only way to feel balanced is to present them together. (Also: I have significant issues with each one, so I didn’t want either one to stand alone, but presenting them as a pair makes it fun and I’ll leave it to you to try one or both, depending on your taste.)

Now, to be clear: neither show is political. Neither show is presented as leaning right or left and neither show is, I assume, intended to be interpreted as a reflected vision of today’s America. But the fact is, there are no two shows that are more opposite from each other, in every possible way, than Shrinking and Landman. Both shows are really good and worthy of your binging. But each show also is far from perfect and may get on your last nerve at some point, but if you are in a couple that can never agree on what to watch, this may be your perfect solution. I promise you: in Shrinking and Landman, there is something for everyone.

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I know, I know, another British detective show. Is it my fault that detective shows are all the Brits seem to make? And is it my fault that they all are so good?

But hear me out, this one is just a little different.

Ludwig is a British detective show, which aired last year in Britain to much acclaim and is now finally available here on Brit Box, but it’s a little different. Ludwig stars popular British comedian David Mitchell as John Taylor, a reclusive puzzlemaker who is asked by his twin brother’s wife Lucy, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, to help when his twin brother goes missing. John’s brother was a police detective, so Lucy thinks the best way to figure out what happened to her husband is to ask John to pretend to be him and see what he can figure out. Of course, as soon as John goes into the police station and passes as his brother, the police detective, he gets pulled into a murder investigation and uses his puzzle-solving skills to solve the case.

So, over the course of the six episodes of the first season, the structure of each episode is relatively formulaic and straightforward: there is a new murder that the fake detective must solve using his real puzzle brain while working with his fake wife to find his missing twin brother. Simple!

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There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about the mass exodus of film and television production from Hollywood. For a town so identified with show business—Hollywood literally defines the term “industry town”—Los Angeles has found itself at quite a crossroads, watching the vast majority of its core jobs being shipped out of town, out of state and even out of country, where it’s cheaper to produce. In a recent viral conversation in a podcast that shed a very sad but true light on the state of the industry at the moment, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, two former castmates in the television series Parks & Recreation, which shot entirely in Los Angeles back from 2009-2015, lamented the fact that shows don’t film in Hollywood anymore. Lowe, who hosts a game show called The Floor, noted that he films the show in Ireland because it is cheaper to fly 100 people over to Ireland than it is to film on the Fox lot just down the street from where they live in Southern California.

This current state of the business of show is one of the many underlying themes behind the newest Apple TV+ genius show The Studio. Creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg aren’t going to let Hollywood go down without a fight, as not only have they made a show that is clearly and very intentionally filmed entirely in Los Angeles, including on studio lots, but they have made a show that is a love letter to the industry, with all its flaws and foibles, egos and eccentricities, talents and tantrums, in a show electric with satire and yet purring with sentimentality. The Studio is one of the most rewarding experiences available on television and well worth that AppleTV+ subscription you’ve been putting off.

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I’ve been needing to laugh much more than usual lately–probably because the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale is airing while we are living it—so I’ve been seeking out the funny in every possible format: sitcoms, talk shows, stand-up specials, whatever it takes. What I wasn’t expecting was belly laughs from a reality show. Now, normally, I despise reality shows (Survivor, Great British Baking Show and Amazing Race are, of course, forgiven because they are, well, forever in the pantheon) but sometimes you just have to go outside your comfort zone and test the waters to see if something off the radar just might be worthwhile.

Raise your hand if you knew that there has been an international reality series airing on Prime since 2016 whose premise is to lock ten comedians in a room, Big Brother-style, for 6 hours and challenge them to make each other laugh. But here’s the rub: if ANYONE laughs, giggles or even smiles, they are out. The last one left wins. That’s it. In most cases, what they win is money, in some cases, it’s just a trophy. But the point is to be the last one without a smile on their face. And, trust me, that is so much funnier than it sounds.

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