#CouchWorthy: September 2024 TV Highlights

September Highlights

Slow Horses: Season 4 (Anytime / Apple TV+)

Slow Horses is a darkly humorous espionage drama that follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in an MI5 dumping ground department known unaffectionately as Slough House. Season four opens with a bombing that detonates personal secrets, rocking Slough House’s already unstable foundations.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE OLD MAN SEASON 2 (ANYTIME / HULU)

In Season 2, former CIA agent Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) and former FBI Assistant Director Harold Harper (John Lithgow) set off on their most important mission to date—to recover Emily Chase after she is kidnapped by Faraz Hamzad, a powerful Afghan tribal leader. With all three men claiming her as their daughter, Emily finds herself in an identity crisis that has dire implications.
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Spies don’t retire…well I mean they get retired. “The Old Man centers on Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), who absconded from the CIA decades ago and has been living off the grid since. When an assassin arrives and tries to take Chase out, the old operative learns that to ensure his future he now must reconcile his past.” That’s classic spycraft and a decent Season 1 description. Season 2 immediately follows Season 1, with Dan Chase and Harold Harper on a Grumpy Old Spies mission to retrieve “Emily” after she was kidnapped by the terrorist Faraz Hamzad. That means an all-inclusive trip Afghanistan to retrieve her. As Jeff Bridges said to John Lithgow towards the end of Season 1: how far are you willing to go? The Old Man is lots of action and spies and coverups and reveals and old man knees that pop like a gun with a silencer. That’s always delightful. This is John Wick violence as well: smooth and methodical. Precise shooting. Raw fighting. Programming Note: Premieres with the first two episodes of the eight-episode season. It’s broadcast weekly on FX on Thursdays until October 24, 2024 (though all the episodes will stream the next day on Hulu and Disney+ Canada). That’s some good intelligence in case you want to launch a clandestine operation and watch this TV show.

September Highlights

The Perfect Couple: Limited Series (Anytime / Netflix)

Limited Series Premiere: Nicole Kidman’s latest “this family has deep dark secrets, nothing is exactly as it seems” TV series. If you liked Big Little Lies, Expats, The Undoing…I’ll even toss in Eyes Wide Shut (even though it ain’t TV; same basic story, though) you’ll dig this. Kidman is the new Donald Sutherland: creepy and dark and tall. Indeed; as the Netflix description reads: “As secrets come to light, the stage is set for a real-life investigation that feels plucked from the pages of one of Greer’s novels. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect.” I get so bored so quickly with resentment of rich people. Complaining about wealthy people is like being annoyed an Amazon delivery is delayed. As in: so what? The “everyone is a suspect” bit is appealing, though. The Perfect Couple will adapt Elin Hilderbrand’s best-selling 2018 book of the same name. So…was it Nicole Kidman in the study with the lead pipe? Let’s play Clue with the Perfect Couple!
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: SO LONG, MARIANNE: LIMITED SERIES (ANYTIME / CRAVE)

Set in the 1960s in Greece, Norway, and Canada, this series is an intimate tale of two lonely people falling in love, during a period of their life when they are trying to figure out who they are, and their place in the world, while one is becoming one of the most famous singers of all time.
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Limited Series Premiere: September 28 is my birthday. So this year I was happy to present to you Leonard Cohen. “So Long Marianne is the story of Leonard Cohen’s self-imposed exile, to finish writing a novel, in the idyllic Greek island of Hydra. Here he has a fateful meeting and subsequent love affair with beautiful Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen. A time of passion and music, sun and romance which saw the transformation of Cohen from a fiction writer into the international songwriter, poet, and performer he was born to be.” This eight-part series reveals the legendary love story between Cohen, and Marianne Ihlen that inspired countless Cohen songs. This the spark…the muse of Leonard Cohen. This is when (and how) he became Leonard Cohen. This is the crack that lets all the light in. Celebrate my birthday with a soulful poet and a true Ladies Man.

September Highlights

Tell Me Lies: Season 2 (Anytime / Hulu & Disney+ Canada)

Season 2 picks up as Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco return to college, not speaking after their dramatic breakup at the start of the summer. Yet while very much at odds, they find themselves in a new version of their addictive dynamic – which is as infuriating as it is inescapable. Meanwhile, the story expands deeper into the lives of Lucy and Stephen’s friend group, as the fallout from Season One impacts all of their lives in unexpected ways. It Is What It Is.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE MONEY GAME (ANYTIME / PRIME VIDEO)

Amidst one of the most unpredictable and intense years of college athletics to date, The Money Game provides an exclusive, all-access pass inside LSU Athletics. The docuseries examines a historic turning point in the NCAA upon policy changes on NIL rights – guaranteed to shape the trajectory of college sports forever – highlighted by the surreal experiences of LSU’s top players, coaches, and administrators.
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Is The Money Game the first or one of the first NIL documentaries? I long for a complex NIL documentary brimming with accurate criticisms. I’m not sold on NIL; the benefits are dubious. Is it working for the companies who do it? How does losing affect NIL status? I won’t buy something from a loser…the reason why Jordans are so valuable is because he was a winner. Even when they came out in ’84 and ’85 before he won a championship his playing drove the marketing. Going viral on TikTok for dunks don’t mean you’re good or successful. How you play matters more than going viral. So, far I’ve heard all the arguments for paying college athletes but I’ve rejected em all. What’s next? Let’s see what questions this six-part docuseries answers and which new questions it prompts.

September Highlights

The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal (Anytime / Prime Video)

Back in 2001, Gord Downie released Coke Machine Glow his first solo album. I ended up working on the crew shooting the live special…think it was for CBC? I can’t remember where the special ended up. I was working with the jib operator. My task was spotter…make sure the jib didn’t land on a person or hit anything on the set. Anyways, after the audience left, show is all done, we’re packing up the gear…Gord came back out to hang with the crew…telling us funny Kingston sailing stories. Cool. The Tragically Hip is the most Canadian band name of all time. And this is their story.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: APOLLO 13: SURVIVAL (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

Just nine months after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, NASA faced its greatest crisis — three astronauts stranded halfway to the moon on a spacecraft that had suffered a catastrophic explosion.
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“Houston, we have a problem.” Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. That was the plan, anyways. Apollo 13 was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970. However, if you’ve seen the Tom Hanks movie you know: the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) ruptured two days into the mission. The damage disabled its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the lunar module (LM), instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. Spoiler Alert? The fated mission was commanded by Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), with Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), who was grounded after exposure to rubella. You know and I’ve referenced the classic Ron Howard movie from 1995. That was a biopic and often those are not accurate. This is a documentary…journalism and all that. Shall we attempt to go to the Moon?

September Highlights

Nobody Wants This: Season 1 (Anytime / Netflix)

Series Premiere: A comedy centered on the unlikely relationship between an outspoken, agnostic woman, Joanne (Kristen Bell), and an unconventional rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody). More? An agnostic podcast host and an unconventional rabbi on the rebound walk into a party. When they walk out – together – the unlikely pair, Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody), can tell there is something between them. But also potentially between them, with their differing outlooks on life, all of the modern obstacles to love, and their sometimes well-meaning, sometimes sabotaging families – including her sister Morgan (Justin Lupe) and his brother Sasha. It is What It Is.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: FROM: SEASON 3 (ANYTIME / MGM+ & PARAMOUNT+ CANADA)

Slowly unravels the mystery of a nightmarish town that traps all those who enter. As the unwilling residents fight to keep a sense of normalcy and search for a way out, they must also survive the threats of the surrounding forest – including the terrifying creatures that come out when the sun goes down.
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Welcome back to Middle America…visit a Township that freely radiates eerie Stephen King small town vibes. No, not Derry…though replace a creepy clown with a creepy…milkman? Over two seasons “the series unravels the mystery of a nightmarish town that traps all those who enter. As the unwilling residents fight to keep a sense of normalcy and search for a way out, they must also survive the threats of the surrounding forest – including the terrifying creatures that come out when the sun goes down.” Fresh! I’m a (blood) sucker for these types of trapped sci-fi horror mysteries. If all the books in the library are blank my heart blooms. And now following Season 2’s classic end of season cliffhanger, escape has become a tantalizing (for the first time) possibility. The true nature of the town is coming into focus (and this has me worried. Nerd Prayers up the reveal is dope. Avoid the mistakes TV shows like Lost made.) Plus the townspeople are going on offense against the myriad horrors surrounding them. Add some chaos by the arrival of mysterious newcomers and here we go! From me to you; this is Must See TV.

September Highlights

Agatha All Along: Season 1 (Anytime / Disney+)

Wanda and Vision’s “nosy neighbor” gets a spin-off show. Indeed, the seventh episode of WandaVision reveals that “Agnes” is actually Agatha Harkness, a Marvel comics character who is a witch. Turns out, it was Agatha all along. Well, sort of. Wanda Maximoff is still an unrighteous psycho who used her grief as a legitimate excuse to create her own sitcom-inspired reality and terrorize the uncorrupted people of Westview, New Jersey. I did not enjoy that Marvel TV show. I found it corny, flat, dull and ultimately vapid with no valuable payoff. Like most MCU TV shows it failed to advance the story. However, white people found it to be enchanting and mined it for many memes. (I expect Agatha All Along to be a White People Special. It’ll be MCU-Hamilton for em.)
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE PENGUIN: LIMITED SERIES (ANYTIME / HBO MAX & CRAVE)

Tells the story of the beloved PBS Children’s series Reading Rainbow which used television to inspire reading.
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Limited Series Premiere: Welcome to the Batman Epic Crime Saga. What a dumb name for a dumb movie Universe. This eight-episode DC Studios limited series continues Matt Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga, which began with The Batman in 2022. I don’t trust Matt Reeves…at all. He’s clearly not good at Batman. So…so thankful Emo-Twilight “Batman” has been dumped into Elseworlds. Like yo: who wants to watch a billionaire with a $10 strip mall haircut fight crime? (Played by Robert Pattinson this Emo-Batman’s hobbies include brushing his hair off the side of his face, writing in his journal about how nobody gets him and listening to Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.) Elseworlds automatically means it doesn’t count, it doesn’t have any value. So it doesn’t matter if The Penguin is good. Or bad. Or meh. It’s Elseworlds: it doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. It’s not part of what James Gunn is building with DC Studios. However, Hard R is clearly DC’s best path forward (with the exception of Superman) to beat and defeat the MCU. Other classic Batman characters included in this limited series are Sofia Falcone, Johnny Viti and Salvatore Maroni. And finally, this series will be followed by The Batman – Part II, which will be released in theaters on October 1, 2027.

September Highlights

Nothin’ But A Good Time: The Uncensored Story Of ’80s Hair Metal (Anytime / Paramount+)

And now some hair-raising adventures from the ’80s: “A fresh and candid behind-the-scenes look at one of music’s most iconic eras; each episode showcases the insanity and blazing ambition that has enthralled generations of music lovers and continues to influence culture to this day.” Shout out to all the parents Guns N’ Roses freaked out! Oh and Mötley Crüe. I miss all the bands that toss parents into a tizzy. Decades later, we’re still listening to so much of the music they make. Somehow, despite a wonderfully hedonistic lifestyle they managed to record bangers. And The Work is all that matters. Sure some of em are on Skid Row, some injected Poison but this was a glorious Quiet Riot. What an era: this is the soundtrack of Reaganomics.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: MR. MCMAHON (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

Mr. McMahon is a six-episode documentary series chronicling the rise and fall of the WWE’s controversial founder. From Chris Smith, executive producer of Tiger King and Bill Simmons.
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Upfront: I don’t care about any of the “sexual misconduct allegations:” all that TMZ junk is strictly a legal matter and has absolutely nothing to do with me or my entire life. I’ve no desire to wrestle with tawdry celebrity gossip. Mr. McMahon is a six-episode docuseries: I wanna consume a detailed business breakdown…how wrestling as a business works. Show me that. How did it go mainstream? How does it make money? What about the wrestling business of minting new action stars? Wrestling is Hollywood’s farm team for actors…how did that happen? How have they navigated the generations of wrestlers and how is that different from SNL for example? I’m not a wrestling fan so I don’t know who Vince McMahon is. Is this gonna be nuanced or opt for cheap WrestleMania sensationalism? So I suppose that’s my final question: who is Vince McMahon?

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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.