Seafood scandals; high praise for ‘Mozart’
Is there something fishy about the low price of seafood? “Oceans of Crime” (8 p.m. today, CNBC) explores the frighteningly unregulated world of the international fishing industry, reporting that 90 percent of the seafood that Americans consume is imported and that nearly a quarter of that bounty is fished illegally. These pirate procurers are not only overfishing and putting whole species in danger, but they are also engaging in labor practices that amount to modern-day slavery.
“Crime” follows the work of activists who track criminal Chinese fishing vessels in the South Indian Ocean; a concerned individual in West Virginia who uses satellites to track ocean-going vessels in real time; an aid worker who rescues Thai fishing boat slaves; and retailers and restaurateurs who have gone out of their way to sell only fish bought from scrupulous sources.
MELLIFLUOUS ‘MOZART’
Amazon Prime has just begun streaming a fourth season of “Mozart in the Jungle.”
I cannot praise this witty comedy highly enough.
For the uninitiated, it follows members of a fictional New York-based orchestra, including Rodrigo De Souza (Gael Garcia Bernal), a passionate conductor whose eccentricities include his hallucinated conversations with dead composers. Striving oboist Hailey Rutledge (Lola Kirke) has become Rodrigo’s lover, and that situation is the central subject of a new season that takes the orchestra and its colorful members from Queens to Tokyo.
“Mozart” indulges in magical realism, but never becomes cute. It’s set in a world of high culture, but accentuates the human over the elitist. Its characters are clearly adults, but the series is much more about love than sex. At its core, “Mozart” offers a show about smart, highly disciplined people who follow their dreams. It never condescends to its young protagonists and celebrates the fact that characters can follow their passions well into their seventh and eighth decades.
Look for Bernadette Peters as the frequently flustered orchestra president; Malcolm McDowell as a conductor emeritus not quite ready to hang up his baton; Saffron Burrows as a voluptuous cellist, and Hannah Dunne as Hailey’s best friend and spunky confidante.
“Mozart” never sinks into procedural cliche and eschews violence for, well, violins. Nobody gets shot. The only explosions come from the horn section.
What’s not to love? If you haven’t started streaming it yet, I’m a little jealous because you get to discover it for the very first time.
MCHALE’S NEW GIG
Sometimes your career takes you back to your beginnings, because maybe that’s where you’ve always belonged. On Sunday, Netflix begins streaming “The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale” (TV-MA). It will offer tongue-in-cheek takes on the past week’s news and popular culture and include interviews with guests including Kevin Hart and appearances by Alison Brie, Mike Colter, Paul Reiser, Jodie Sweetin and Jim Rash.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s not all that different than what McHale did during his stint as host on “The Soup” from 2004 to 2015. He also starred in “Community,” an NBC sitcom that had some ardent fans but never a big audience. His second network comedy, CBS’s “The Great Indoors,” failed to catch fire.
OLIVER’S BACK
Another news roundup, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” (11 p.m. Sunday, HBO) returns for a fifth season. The Emmy Award-winning series includes commentary on one or a few topics per show as well as prerecorded segments. Oliver tapes his commentary on late Sunday afternoons to make it as up-to-the-minute as possible — or as up-to-the-minute as your average late Sunday night talk show.
Oliver’s “Last Week” joins the Stephen Colbert-produced comedy “Our Cartoon President” (8 p.m., Showtime, TV-14) as two Sunday night political satires created by former “Daily Show” talent.
Just this week, Netflix announced a deal to produce a weekly talk show starring “Daily Show” writer and talent Michelle Wolf. Her comedy special “Nice Lady” was recently seen on HBO.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
› Coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics (7 p.m., NBC) includes alpine skiing, short track, skeleton and ski jumping.
› After learning that her husband is about to leave prison, a woman escapes to her hometown with her teenage daughter in the 2017 shocker “Stalked by My Ex” (8 p.m., Lifetime, TV-14).