#SetTheVCR: April 29-May 05, 2024

Monday, April 29

Miller’s Girl (Anytime / Netflix)

A creative writing assignment yields complex results between a teacher and his talented student.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE STRANGER (ANYTIME / HULU)

Someone’s about to get a bad rating…
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Remember Qubi? It was a Stranger to all TV viewers. When this aired on Quibi it was chopped into 13 chapters, starting at 7 p.m., Chapter 2 was 8 p.m. etc. “New to Los Angeles, rideshare driver Clare picks up Carl from a home deep in the Hollywood Hills. What begins as a routine ride turns into Clare’s worst nightmare: a twelve-hour fight for survival through the city’s seedy underbelly. Carl is not the passenger Clare thought he was, and Clare is not easy prey.” While many Quibi originals were acquired by The Roku Channel in 2021, they’ve now slowly begun to surface on other streamers. The Stranger is now one full length movie about a ride share from hell. Are you Uber to check out this overlooked Quibi classic?

Tuesday, April 30

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (Anytime / Netflix)

The good news is: Letterman is back! The bad news: his guest is: John Mulaney. Ugh. This dude’s simply not funny. I don’t care about him or his rehab or leaving his wife or any of that TMZ junk. I’ll watch, Letterman makes good TV but man…but this is a bit of a chore.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: FX’S THE VEIL: LIMITED SERIES (ANYTIME / HULU & DISNEY+ CANADA)

The spy thriller explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London.
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Meet Imogen Salter, a seasoned MI6 agent tasked with a perilous mission. Oh, those are the best kinds of missions! “This gripping thriller explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.” Your classic cat and mouse spy games. Programming Note: premieres with the first two episodes of the six-episode limited series, with a new episode each following Tuesday.

Wednesday, May 01

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Series (Anytime / Paramount+ Canada)

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a teenage girl who takes on vampires, demons, and other supernatural forces of evil as the chosen slayer of her generation.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: RATHER (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

For decades, Dan Rather delivered the news with authenticity, integrity and courage. Rather chronicles his rise to prominence, sudden and dramatic public downfall, and redemption and re-emergence as a voice of reason to a new generation.
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Dan Rather is baseball in 2024: America’s pastime. The Rather doc is what you expect and hope for (I saw it last June at Tribeca.). It’s a tribute, recap and visual obit of an Anchorman “in a glass case of emotion!” It’s a memorial for a time when journalists informed never affirmed; like the clowns today who don’t believe in objectivity.

Thursday, May 02

Hacks: Season 3 (Anytime / HBO Max & Crave)

A year after parting, Deborah Vance is riding high off the success of her standup special while Ava pursues new opportunities back in Los Angeles. The nine-episode season debuts with two episodes, followed by two new episodes each week, concluding with the season finale on May 30.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN (ANYTIME / HBO MAX & CRAVE)

A teenager with OCD tries to solve a mystery surrounding a fugitive billionaire.
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Another day, another John Green adaptation. (Dud you see Paper Towns? The Fault In Our Stars?) This is a modern teen movie, closer to what’s trending on TikTok than say John Hughes writing. Turtles “follows the anxiety of its 17-year-old protagonist, Aza Holmes. It’s not easy being Aza, but she’s trying… trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, and a good student, all while navigating an endless barrage of invasive, obsessive thoughts that she cannot control.” That’s the description of the movie via New Line Cinema. However, John Green’s book is officially described as follows: “Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake, and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate.” Now, that sounds engaging, and way less TikToky. Shall we follow Turtles All The Way Down, then?

Friday, May 03

John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA (10 p.m. / Netflix)

Six live installments of a show where John Mulaney explores the city of Los Angeles during a week when every funny person is in it (It’s set during during the Netflix is a Joke Fest.). Mulaney sucks but Chris Rock, David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld do not and that’s the TV hook. Streaming nightly from May 6 – 10 at 10 p.m.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: UNFROSTED (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

In a time when milk and cereal ruled breakfast, a fierce corporate battle began over a revolutionary new pastry.
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In his 2020 special on Netflix 23 Hours To Kill; Jerry Seinfeld had jokes about pop tarts: “But when I was a kid, the biggest food thing that happened to me… When they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew right off. We couldn’t comprehend the Pop-Tart! It was too advanced! We saw it in the supermarket. It was like an alien spaceship. We were just chimps in the dirt, playing with sticks. Just… …grunting, pointing. “Pop-Tart is here.” Think back to when the Pop-Tart came out. It was the ’60s. We had toast! We had orange juice, frozen decades in advance. You had to hack away at it with a knife! It was like a murder to get a couple of drops of liquidity in the morning. We had shredded wheat. It was like wrapping your lips around a woodchipper. You’d have breakfast, you had to take two days off for the scars to heal so you could speak. My mom made Cream of Wheat. She didn’t get the recipe. “Mom, the amount of water in this dish is critical. You’re making it too thick! I can’t even move my little-kid spoon in the bowl! I’m seven. I feel like I’m rowing in the hull of a Greek slave ship. That was breakfast?” And in the midst of that dark and hopeless moment, the Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts suddenly appeared out of Battle Creek, Michigan, which, as you cereal fans know, is the corporate headquarters of Kellogg’s and a town I have always wanted to visit… because it seems like a cereal Silicon Valley… of breakfast super scientists… conceiving of the frosted, fruit-filled, heatable rectangles in the same shape as the box it comes in… and with the same nutrition as the box it comes in, too. That was the hard part. I don’t know how long it took to invent, but they must’ve come out of that lab like Moses with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments. “The Pop-Tart is here! Two in the packet! Two slots in a toaster! Let’s see ya screw this up! Why two? One’s not enough. Three’s too many. And they can’t go stale, ’cause they weren’t ever fresh.” And now those jokes are this movie.

Saturday, May 04

Star Wars: Tales of the Empire (Anytime / Disney+)

Happy Star Wars Day! A vengeful young woman and a former Jedi navigate the ruthless Galactic Empire during different eras, their divergent choices shaping their fates in a rapidly changing galaxy. Enjoy some Saturday Morning Cartoons on this May The Fourth…
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: KATT WILLIAMS: WOKE FOKE (10 P.M. / NETFLIX)

Comedian Katt Williams lets loose in real time as he hits the stage in Los Angeles.
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On March 4, 2023 Netflix’s first-ever live event was broadcast to all their subscribers worldwide. That was the comedy special Chris Rock: Selective Outrage. This year as part of Netflix Is A Joke Fest Katt Williams goes live. (I can’t tell if these live experiments are good for comedy or allowing Netflix to figure out how to stream sports. The NBA rights are up for sale, following the NFL’s massive deal with Prime Video. Does Netflix want to get into the live sports business, really?) Directed by Troy Miller this will be Katt Williams’s third comedy special with Netflix. His previous specials include World War III and Great America. Programming Note: If live Katt Williams is not your jam John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA is streaming live on Netflix over six nights during Netflix Is a Joke Fest starting on May 3rd.

Sunday, May 05

The Roast of Tom Brady (8:00 p.m. / Netflix)

Tom Brady will take the hits when sports and comedy stars team up to roast the greatest NFL quarterback of all time. Hosted by Kevin Hart this is the first ever roast that will be telecast live, unedited. This is the third time in May, Netflix will live broadcast a special. We’re all just watching TV now.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: IDEA OF YOU (ANYTIME / PRIME VIDEO)

Centers on Solène a 40-year-old single mom who begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old Hayes Campbell, the lead singer of August Moon, the hottest boy band on the planet.
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Last Sunday, I recommended Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You on Crave. And Lucy Hale’s Which Brings Me To You is streaming on Paramount+ Canada and Hulu. The final “You” titled rom-com is The Idea of You. The boy is Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway is a single mother…at Coachella. That’s way harder to buy than a 40 year old shagging a 20 something singer. The age gap is a weird hang up in American movies. Whatever. It is what it is. So over to You…which of these 3 You movies are you gonna see? Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You on Crave? Lucy Hale’s Which Brings Me To You? Or do fancy The Idea of You?

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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.