This week’s TV Recommendations are not in Silo: we got an Inside Man to explore Interior Chinatown, The Sex Lives of College Girls and more! If you want The Skinny here’s #SetTheVCR.
Monday, November 18
Cobra Kai: Season Part 2 (Anytime / Netflix)
Picking up with Cobra Kai eliminated from the Valley, our senseis and students must decide if and how they will compete in the Sekai Taikai — the world championships of karate. Good News? Cobra Kai never dies…today. The third and final part of Season 6 will arrive in 2025. All three batches will consist of five episodes each.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: LEONARDO DA VINCI (8:00 P.M. / PBS)
Exploring the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, including how the artist influenced and inspired future generations.
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Ken Burns! Leonardo da Vinci! Sounds fun. This docuseries “tells the story of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, best known as Leonardo da Vinci, a fifteenth century Italian polymath of soaring imagination and profound intellect, who left behind artistic works of staggering beauty and detailed sketches of futuristic contraptions of warfare and flight that today are marveled at for their technical ingenuity and foresight.” da Vinci is remarkable. Most people will only know him from say Star Trek: Voyager. Hopefully this compelling series by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns & David McMahon injects him into the mainstream once again. Programming Note: This two-part, four-hour documentary will air on November 18 and 19 at 8:00-10:00 p.m. so #SetTheVCR accordingly.
Tuesday, November 19
Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special (Anytime / Prime Video)
Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special is inspired by Dunham’s vision to recreate the beloved holiday story, A Christmas Carol, with his iconic characters in the classic roles. Walter is obvious – there’s only one man who can play Scrooge! But when Jeff assigns Bubba J, Peanut, Little Jeff and Achmed their thespian parts, they don’t quite agree and his plan spins hilariously out-of-control during this stand-up comedy special. This counts as Christmas Crap!!
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: INTERIOR CHINATOWN: LIMITED SERIES (ANYTIME / HULU & DISNEY+ CANADA)
There’s something going on in Chinatown. A background character trapped in a police procedural discovers secrets about the strange world he inhabits and his family’s buried history.
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Limited Series Premiere: Based on Charles Yu’s award-winning book of the same name, the show follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural called Black & White. “Relegated to the background, Willis goes through the motions of his on-screen job, waiting tables, dreaming about a world beyond Chinatown, and aspiring to be the lead of his own story. When Willis inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, he begins to unravel a criminal web in Chinatown while discovering his own family’s buried history and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.” Programming Note: This is a binge drop; all 10 episodes stream today. So if you wanna discover what’s going on in Chinatown, here ya go.
Wednesday, November 20
The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth (Anytime / Hulu & Disney+)
This three-part docuseries is an unprecedented look at one of history’s most infamous psychology studies through the firsthand accounts of the original “guards” and “prisoners,” many of whom are speaking on camera for the very first time. Their stories unravel a new narrative that interrogates the motives of the man in charge, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, while exploring larger questions of human nature and the power of perspective.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: SILO: SEASON 2 (ANYTIME / APPLE TV+)
In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant underground silo that plunges hundreds of stories deep; there, people live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them.
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How about a dystopian mystery based on the Silo series of novels by Hugh Howey? Silo is the story of the last ten thousand people on earth, their massive 144-story underground bunker protects them from an unnamed fatal and toxic environment. Sounds good; one slight problem: you must also live in an information silo as a well. No one knows when or why the silo was built and any who try to find out face fatal consequences. Fun! Rebecca Ferguson stars as Juliette, an engineer, who doggedly seeks answers following a loved one’s murder. She tumbles onto a underground mystery that goes far deeper than she could have ever imagined. Like the best sci-fi this…will not end well. Season 2 picks up with Rebecca Ferguson rejecting the information Silo. She’s on a determined mission to share the truth about their dark dystopian world where the ultimate crime is overturning the status quo and unleashing a rebellion. Sounds more like she’ll be doing this…Solo. Programming Note: The 10-episode second season premiered on Friday, November 15 with the first episode. It’ll be followed by one new episode every Friday through January 17.
Thursday, November 21
Cruel Intentions: Season 1 (Anytime / Prime Video)
Series Premiere: 25 years after the iconic film captivated audiences with its provocative drama, sex, and scandal, this series introduces a new class of cruel characters who are ready to take their games and manipulation to a whole new level. In this new adaptation, Cruel Intentions follows the elite students of Manchester College, a Washington, D.C.-adjacent university, where reputation means everything, fraternities and sororities are the gold standard, and two ruthless step-siblings, Caroline Merteuil and Lucien Belmont, will do anything to stay on top of the cutthroat social hierarchy. It Is What It Is.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS: SEASON 3 (ANYTIME / HBO MAX & CRAVE)
The series follows a group of college students at New England’s prestigious Essex College. Sex and the City but younger.
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Time to step it up for sophomore year. Whatever. It Is What It Is. I paired with Cruel Intentions. Not exactly a Fresh Friday, eh?
Friday, November 22
Based on a True Story: Season 2 (Anytime / Peacock)
Season 2 finds new parents Ava and Nathan Bartlett three months into parenthood. Focused on taking care of her family, Ava is determined to resist her true crime obsession and return to work as a real estate agent while Nathan trains private tennis clients. But a series of new murders pulls her back in – is Matt behind the slayings? Is Tory, now entangled in a relationship with Matt, in danger? For a while, life is good — Ava’s TikTok habit and her new friend Drew provide a welcome distraction, and Nathan’s all in on reigniting his tennis career as well as his friendship with Matt—until danger comes knocking, literally.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: JIM GAFFIGAN: THE SKINNY (ANYTIME / HULU & DISNEY+ CANADA)
It’s Jim like you’ve never seen him before. In his new #Hularious stand-up special The Skinny, Jim Gaffigan weighs in on everything from teenagers to brunch to weight-loss medication – but he’s never light on laughs. The Skinny was taped earlier this year in Boston at the Wilbur Theater. The special is Jim Gaffigan’s 11th stand-up special.
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Fire up some Hot Pockets…we got fresh Jim Gaffigan. Then: Bill Burr, Roy Wood Jr. and Sebastian Maniscalco follow Jim Gaffigan. The Skinny kicks off Hulu’s stand-up push: Hulu’s Laughing Now. The streamer’s plan is to have 12 specials across the year with one launching each month. Happy News! (Of course: Additional comics and launch dates for their specials, will be announced at a future date.) For now, enjoy some Jim Gaffigan. Solid way to ease into the comedy pool.
Saturday, November 23
Spellbound (Anytime / Netflix)
Saturday Morning Cartoons: When a powerful and mysterious spell turns her parents into giant monsters, a teenage princess, Ellian (the tenacious young daughter of the rulers of Lumbria), must journey into the wild to reverse the curse and to save her family and kingdom.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: ALIEN: ROMULUS (ANYTIME / HULU & DISNEY+ CANADA)
Space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life-form in the universe while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station.
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Nerd Prayers Up. Please don’t suck. Truthfully? I don’t have any hope in this new Alien movie. Alien 4 floundered; Prometheus was a disaster: inferior filmmaking. I dunno about Alien: Romulus. I’m not at all invested in these new characters; they’re Alien’s Finn and Rey. And worse: this movie asks me to sit around and watch em perish all while rooting for the Xenomorph. (I’ve been enjoying Marvel’s Alien comic books: always fun to hang out with the Xenomorph. Well, from a safe distance.) Few years back at Hot Docs I invited director Alexandre Philippe who visited My Summer Lair to discuss his fascinating documentary Memory: The Origins of Alien. Enjoy that conversation. Classic…how did we get here?
Sunday, November 24
Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy (Anytime / Netflix)
The lies you’ve been sold will cost you. This unpredictable and revelatory documentary special pulls back the curtain on the secretive world of the most influential brands, as insiders and whistleblowers expose the covert manipulation tricks to keep you buying, no matter the cost.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: A MAN ON THE INSIDE: SEASON 1 (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)
A widowed professor gets a surprising new lease on life when a private detective hires him to go undercover inside a San Francisco retirement home.
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Series Premiere: The Netflix algorithm has fully cashed in on Hulu’s successful Only Murders in the Building. Ted Danson is not in The Good Place as he struggles to find his way. Looks fun. Suitable Kominsky Method replacement. “The eight-episode series follows a retired professor (Ted Danson) who decides to move into the Pacific View Retirement Home in San Francisco in order to help a private investigator, Julie, find a missing heirloom. He also reconnects with his estranged daughter, Emily.” So, just like Only Murders in the Building the best way to stay young is to launch an investigation. This looks charming.
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
