Meanwhile, back at The Ranch it’s all drama
The Ranch
Season 1, Part 2, Available from Friday ASHTON Kutcher and Danny Masterson from That ‘70s Show are reunited as siblings in The Ranch, which appeared to decent reviews earlier this year in the US. It’s an appropriate vehicle for both of them, with veterans Sam Elliott and the incomparable Debra Winger providing the support. Kutcher, fresh from the closing seasons of Two and a Half Men, plays prodigal son Colt Bennett, a former hot-shot, small-town high school football player who’s now a 34-year-old washout. Returning home to his family’s up-against-it Colorado ranch in search of a tryout with a nearby semi-pro team, Colt again gets clotheslined by his cantankerous, conservative father, Beau (Elliott). The old man has no use for either the present day or his youngest son’s layabout wayward ways. So the laugh track roars in Episode 2 when Beau asks his other son, Rooster (Masterson), “What the (bleep) is Netflix?” This show doesn’t quite achieve the mixture of blue collar humour and pathos we saw in, say, Roseanne (to which it also nods) but it has its moments and Debra Winger is always watchable.
Designated Survivor
Season 1, Available now Tom Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) is an upstanding member of the American cabinet. He’s having a bad day: On the morning of the President’s State of Union address, he’s told to step down. His last act of duty will be serving as the “designated survivor,” a member of the Cabinet who remains absent from the State of the Union in case something really, really bad happens. And boy does it. In 2001, Sutherland helped bring in a new era of thrillers that responded to terrorism with 24 and took the measure of the moral cost. Those shows largely focused on the ground level foot soldiers; Designated Survivor relocates this drama upstairs to the White House, which, as we all know, is where the real action is these days. It doesn’t overtly reference the current election but Sutherland is supposed to be everyone’s dream president. Sutherland is incredibly appealing and credible in a change-of-pace role for him.
Extremis
Available now This is a tough but rewarding piece of film about end-of-life care and the dilemmas families and medics face. Director Dan Krauss focuses on one intensive care unit and mostly on two patients — Donna and Selena — who have been brought in and placed on breathing machines. There’s no overarching point or agenda here but the conflicts and issues are very real. There are medics who have to make decisions that have little to do with medical facts. There are patients who have to summon their deepest wisdom while in great distress. One patient’s daughter speaks with great clarity about the dilemma she and her family are facing: That making the decision to stop breathing machines would feel like taking an active role in their mother’s death.
GOSSIP Girl
Season 6, Available now When this series first appeared there were complaints that it wasn’t quite as bad, that is as good, that is as fabulously trashy, as its source material — a series of bestselling young adult novels. but it has to be said Gossip Girl overcame this tepid reception to churn out six much-watched seasons, and make a huge star of Blake Lively. She plays Serena van der Woodsen, a 19-yearold who carries herself with the self-assurance of a 35-year-old with a great alimony settlement. Serena is returning to Manhattan’s Constance Billard School after a year in exile at boarding school. The mean girl whose bitchery will prod the series forward, the adversary brunette is Blair Waldorf. Once Serena’s closest friend, she’s now her best nemesis. As we learn via hazy flashback, after Serena got busy with Blair’s man one Champagne-fueled night, the queen bee declared Serena persona non grata. This is the basic setup for the sixth season that follows, and it’s all soapy good fun, with the greatest product placements this side of Sex And The City.