The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
5 shows to watch as the TV pool begins to dry up
The moment of reckoning is here, my couch-bound friends — where the COVID-19 pandemic and social-distancing shutdown collides with what would have been the summer TV schedule. There are blank spots where a full slate of new shows should have been.
Some good projects wrapped before the shutdown, however, so there might be just enough to sustain us until production can resume. I usually pick at least 10 new shows to recommend each season. Now you get five — none of which take place in a Zoom meeting. If I were you, I’d ration them like the last canister of Lysol wipes.
‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’
True-crime connoisseurs know all about California’s elusive Golden State Killer, who is believed to have committed 13 murders and some 50 rapes in the 1970s and ’80s; that notoriety is largely due to the blogging and ad hoc sleuthing of Michelle McNamara. Not long after her death in 2016, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies relaunched the investigation and, using DNA advancements, arrested a suspect in 2018 — two months after McNamara’s book on the subject (also titled “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”) — was posthumously published.
Master documentarian Liz Garbus (“Who Killed Garrett Phillips?”) has made a six-part docuseries that lays out the years spent hunting for the Golden State Killer, and how the case was kept alive by curious citizens like McNamara (who was married to comedian Patton Oswalt), who are inexorably drawn to finding new clues in old evidence. It’s a story about how an obsession with true-crime evolved into a quest for justice. (HBO at 10 tonight)
‘Outcry’
This five-part docuseries looks at the perplexing case of Greg Kelley, a popular senior football player at a suburban high school north of Austin, who was convicted in 2014 of sexually assaulting a child at an in-home daycare center. A quick Google search might spoil the ending (Kelley’s conviction was overturned last year), but “Outcry,” directed by Pat Kondelis, takes its time to slowly analyze a dangerous combination of sloppy police work, contemptuous prosecutors and a frenzied public sentiment clouded by football worship.
The first two episodes acquaint viewers with the basics of the case, as well as the ambivalent reactions to it. After Kelley is sentenced to 25 years, his cause is taken up by an outside observer, who holds rallies proclaiming Kelley’s innocence. “Outcry” also looks at how children can be coaxed into making false claims. An uncertainty about the truth lingers — doesn’t it always in a series like this? (Showtime at 10 p.m., Sunday, July 5)
‘Little Voice’
There’s an optimistic sweetness to this half-hour, 10-episode series created by “Waitress” collaborators Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson, billed as a love letter to the striving and struggling it takes to find success in New York. It may seem at first to be full of the very tropes that highly successful performers like to believe in (i.e., with enough work and talent and Big Apple magic, anyone can make it), but “Little Voice” aims higher than the usual pipe dreams.
Brittany O’Grady (“Star”) plays Bess King, an aspiring and talented musician who jots down scraps of her life and observations and turns them into songs she’s too intimidated to perform in public. “Little Voice” makes Bess’s efforts economically plausible — she spends as much time in her storage unit as in her small, shared apartment; she walks dogs, teaches piano and tends bar to pay the rent. The music, featuring original songs from Bareilles, is the bonus. (Apple TV Plus, Friday, July 10)
‘Brave New World’
The midsummer debut of Comcast’s Peacock streaming service (featuring NBCUniversal’s considerable library of content, including “Parks and Recreation” and, in 2021, “The Office”) brings with it some original dramas and comedies, including this stylish reimagining of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian classic, set a couple centuries from now, where pharmaceuticals, psychological reprogramming and regular dance orgies have built the perfect society. Everyone’s happy here — except when they’re not.
A stratospheric rocket ride away, John the Savage (“Solo’s” Alden Ehrenreich) works as a stagehand at the Savage Lands, a desert amusement park dedicated to re-creating the former world’s blight and corruption. (The House of Want, for example, features Black Friday shopping madness.) John finds himself helping two visitors caught in a violent uprising, which loosely hews to the original story, but if you find this “Brave New World” isn’t completely faithful, just remember: in Huxley’s future, monogamy is a no-no. (Peacock, Wednesday, July 15)
‘Lost Resort’
So much of the reality TV genre equates happiness with finding true love (and an engagement ring), but where does that leave the people who have so much baggage that they can’t even qualify for a dating show?
That’s where “Lost Resort” comes in, which has summertime guilty pleasure written all over it, as nine participants arrive at an isolated Costa Rican retreat for three weeks of work with alternative healers to get at the root of their unhappiness and hang-ups. They have trust issues, intimacy problems, financial failures and personality complexes. An array of therapies await! Expect “vulnerability circles” and “rage rituals.” (TBS at 10 p.m., Thursday, July 23)