(December’s “South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid” ran 62 minutes, so longer than a show and not quite a movie.) It’s unclear how long “South Park: The Streaming Wars” is, or anything else about it really. Here comes the latest “South Park” special for Paramount+, which some have described as mini-movies (since their length can vary). (Getting a lot of Tony Stark vibes, no?) Sounds very, very fun. Also, LeVar Burton is the voice of Barclay, his personal A.I. ĭid you know that The CW’s older, spookier “Nancy Drew” is so successful that it warrants a spin-off? Because apparently it is! Tian Richards stars as Tom Swift, a young, eccentric billionaire inventor who “thrust into a world of sci-fi conspiracy and unexplained phenomena” while investigating the disappearance of his father under mysterious circumstances. While some members of the band aren’t too happy with the project (which is based largely on founding guitarist Steve Jones’ 2017 memoir “Lonely Boy”), attempts to shut down or stop the project have failed. Unlike with “Truth,” Boyle directed every episode of “Pistol,” which drop all at once on Hulu.
ĭanny Boyle’s aforementioned new series, based on the British punk band the Sex Pistols. In addition to the stand-up special, this presentation also includes tributes from David Letterman, Adam Sandler and Conan O’Brien that were recently taped during Netflix’s Los Angeles-based comedy festival. Shortly before his death, Norm Macdonald recorded a comedy special in his home. Boyle only directed the first three but his fingerprints are all over the visual and sonic language of the series.
The series is so much richer and more fun, with razor-sharp scripts that came mostly from Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” collaborator Simon Beaufoy and terrific performances. And best of all, Brendan Fraser jubilantly plays the man Getty hired to retrieve his grandson (this is the role Mark Wahlberg was wildly miscast for). “Trust,” about the abduction of John Paul Getty III (played by Harris Dickinson), was also the subject of Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World.” The two projects were competing against each other “Trust” came out first and didn’t have to digitally erase any of its main performers (remember when Christopher Plummer had to do an 11th-hour substitution for Kevin Spacey?) This time, old man Getty is played by Donald Sutherland and his daughter, the mother of the abducted (or “abducted”), is played by Hilary Swank.
But if you haven’t seen his earlier crack at the genre, now is the time to correct that. Later this week, Danny Boyle is unleashing his latest based-on-a-true-story miniseries, “Pistols” (see below). (Rufus Jones plays Roosevelt.) According to the official release, this new doc “provide a rich, panoramic portrait of the first modern President of the United States–Theodore Roosevelt, a champion of social justice, a passionate conservationist and the self-proclaimed ‘bull moose’ who once delivered an 84-minute speech bleeding from the chest after being shot in a failed assassination attempt.” We’re in. Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose biography of Abraham Lincoln led to Steven Spielberg’s beloved “Lincoln,” based on her book “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” the doc features reenactments alongside talking head interviews and other miscellanea. “Theodore Roosevelt,” the latest two-night History Channel documentary event (it concludes the following night), is just the kind of dad-approved Memorial Day programming we can all get behind. Somewhere, right now, your dad is getting super jazzed. If you aren’t on board “The Boys” yet, prepare to be.
This season promises to be the most scandalous yet, incorporating elements from the comic book series that we cannot believe they are bringing to the screen. This is the R-rated version of your normal superhero saga think how “Game of Thrones” felt like a grown-up version of “Lord of the Rings.” It’s very risqué and inappropriate but also incredibly entertaining and hugely successful (there’s been a series of animated shorts already released this year and a spinoff in the works). And it’s up to the Boys to keep them in line. In “The Boys” world, superheroes are deeply complicated, morally compromised people who do very bad things. If you’ve never seen the show before, it’s about a bunch of blokes, led by Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher, who unofficially police superhero activity and occasionally, you know, murder them. Prime Video’s outrageous superhero series, based on the beloved, adults-only comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, returns for Season 3.