Two smart, funny comedies debut amid drama surplus
Over the next week there are enough new and returning dramas on TV to make one’s head spin.
Showtime premieres Bostonset crime drama “City on a Hill” (9 p.m. Sunday), HBO takes an uncharacteristic step into teen culture with the ensemble drama “Euphoria” (10 p.m. Sunday), OWN debuts the new soap “Ambitions” (10 p.m. Tuesday) starring Robin Givens, and Kevin Costner’s “Yellowstone” (10 p.m. Wednesday, Paramount Network) returns for its second season.
It’s exhausting just to consider how many hours of TV those four series represent. If you’re overwhelmed by choices and get enough drama in real life, these new comedies — which both happen to be focused on Latino stars — might be an optimal alternative.
‘Los Espookys’
From some of the “Portlandia” and “Documentary Now” producers — Fred Armisen, Lorne Michaels, Alice Mathias — this is another absurd entry featuring oddball characters that is mostly in Spanish (with English subtitles).
It’s funny and occasionally freaky as the pilot introduces the characters who form a team that concocts horror scenes, whether at a quinceanera celebration or a will reading.
The six-episode first season of “Los Espookys” (11 p.m. Friday, HBO), set largely in an unnamed Latin American country, begins as horror fan Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) recruits longtime best friend, blue-haired Andres (Julio Torres), to help a Roman Catholic priest fake an exorcism in an effort to win back the parish spotlight from a “pious, young and hot” new priest.
Andres is obsessed with his adoption story — he was left at an orphanage as an infant — and uninterested in inheriting his adoptive family’s chocolate company fortune, much to the dismay of Andres’ boyfriend, Juan Carlos (Jose Pablo Minor).
They’re joined in their adventures by dental assistant Ursula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) and her sunny, odd job-juggling sister, Tati (Ana Fabrega).
Armisen appears in a largely unconnected, Los Angeles-set storyline as Renaldo’s Uncle Tico, a parking valet legend.
“Los Espookys” generates the most laughs when it focuses on its primary quartet — the Tico stories are generally extraneous and unnecessary — whose disparate personalities lead to odd humor from unexpected angles, like when Andres uses his chocolate company connections to intimidate Ursula’s dentist boss.
Stars Torres and Fabrega (he’s a veteran “Saturday Night Live” writer) wrote most of the episodes, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that their characters make the strongest impression.
‘Alternatino With Arturo Castro’
Sketch comedy shows are often hit or miss, but “Alternatino With Arturo Castro” (10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Comedy Central) succeeds more often than not.
Relative newcomer Arturo Castro — he was on Netflix’s “Narcos” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City” — takes on a swath of different characters, but each episode also features one recurring sketch that features him as a heightened version of himself.
In a recurring sketch in the first episode, he dates a woman who traffics in Latino lover stereotypes, which the brainy, slightly nerdy Castro does not fit. The denouement, featuring a romantic rival for his date’s affections, goes in the opposite direction one would expect, challenging stereotypes while making for a strong, funny conclusion to the thread of linked sketches.
Castro frequently references his own Guatemalan heritage. That specificity makes “Alternatino’s” piquant observations on the current political climate more universal, with a tone that’s more eye-rolling smirk at the absurdity than angry fist shaking.
Episode two features Castro as an ICE agent touting the “cage-free children” held in U.S. border patrol custody. Episode three features a truck full of immigrants headed to the border seeking a better life except one who plots to steal Americans’ jobs while also living off welfare, which as another would-be immigrant notes, makes no logical sense.
A funny, fresh comedy half-hour, “Alternatino” offers some welcome laughs amid the drama-heavy diet of summer TV.
More ‘Manhunt’ casting
More celebrity spotting opportunities arrive courtesy of “Manhunt: Lone Wolf,” which is filming locally through much of the rest of the year, including Judith Light (“Transparent”), who has been cast as the mother of Richard Jewell (Cameron Britton, “Mindhunter”), the hero turned unjustly accused suspect in the Atlanta Olympics bombing.
Gethin Anthony, best known as Renly Baratheon on “Game of Thrones,” will play Jack Brennan, the lead FBI agent on the Jewell case and the manhunt for actual bomber Eric Rudolph (Jack Huston, “Boardwalk Empire”). Jay O. Sanders (“Sneaky Pete”) plays Jewell’s fiercest advocate.
Kept/canceled/revived
Netflix renewed Fox drama “Lucifer” for a fifth and final season.
Netflix renewed “Russian Doll” for season two.
Comedy Central ordered a third and final season of “Corporate.”
CBS canceled the drama “The Red Line” after a single season.
Streaming service DC Universe canceled “Swamp Thing” less than a week after its first-season premiere.
HBO canceled “Vice News Tonight,” effective in September.
NBC’s “The Good Place” will end its run after the upcoming fourth season.
Cult Canadian comedy “Letterkenny” comes to Hulu for a six-episode seventh season Oct. 14.