The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Catch up on summer shows
How is it over already? If you feel like catching up on the best shows released in June, July and August in these final days of summer, here are the seven comedies and dramas you might wanna check out before fall officially begins.
‘Blindspotting’
The combustible chemistry between Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal powered “Blindspotting,” their 2018 film about gentrification and police violence in their native Oakland. For the TV adaptation, showrunner Casal focused on Jasmine Cephas Jones’s character, Ashley, who effectively becomes a single mom when her husband (played by Casal) is sent to prison for drug possession. Jaylen Barron and a fantastic Helen Hunt help Cephas Jones round out this portrayal of the social and familial costs of the criminal justice system borne by women, while interludes of spoken word and interpretive dance explore lives trapped in the prison-industrial complex in novel and affecting ways. (Starz)
‘Dave’
The first season of the rap dramedy “Dave” found an unexpected soulfulness in its title character’s attempts to jump-start a music career as a Jewish novelty act – and thus justify his sometimes off-putting hyperconfidence in both his abilities and discernment. Focused on the writer’s block that befalls Dave (Dave Burd, a.k.a. real-life rapper Lil Dicky) shortly after he signs his first record contract, the follow-up season was a bit rockier, but ultimately developed into a moving depiction of how the musician’s latent megalomania and understandable fear of vulnerability stymie his self-expression. (FXX)
‘Reservation Dogs’
Despite all its firsts – like being the first TV show ever with an all-Indigenous cast and creative team – there’s something invitingly familiar about this Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi-created comedy about a group of Native American teens who are so busy plotting to run away from their rural Oklahoma hometown that they can’t see the community all
around them. Led by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the mostly young cast is a treasure trove of hidden gems, their rambling quartet finding adventure where they can and uncovering local history and culture in the process. FX on Hulu
‘The Other Two’
Powered by the comedy dream team of cast members Drew Tarver, Heléne Yorke and Molly Shannon and creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, the erstwhile Comedy Central series (now on HBO Max) is a razor-sharp satire of the entertainment industry, as well as a zeitgeist-capturing generational portrait of millennial stalledness. Season 1 saw late-twenty-something siblings Cary (Tarver) and Brooke (Yorke) surpassed overnight in fame, success and a sense of purpose by their 13-year-old viral star brother
(Case Walker); in Season 2, there are new generational humiliations – and plenty more barbs flying in every direction. (HBO Max)
‘Tuca and Bertie’
The uncancellation of the punheavy “Tuca and Bertie” – by Cartoon Network, which picked it up from its original home at Netflix was one of the few feel-good entertainment stories of 2020. Creator Lisa Hanawalt proved the adult animated series’ revival was more than worth it: The sophomore season was a worthy successor to its bouncy, witty, emotionally complicated debut year, which also delved into the reverberating traumas of its bird-women protagonists while sending them off on new adventures. For all its whimsies and larks (that’s a pun, too), few shows feel so emotionally grounded – or strangely healing. (Cartoon Network)
‘The White Lotus’
Summer’s buzziest show was a perversely timed thumb in the eye of anyone materially comfortable enough to jet off to paradise after more than a year of quarantine, reminding them that, no matter where they go, they’ll find no vacation from their own personal demons. This Hawaii-set chamber drama – if you can call the Four Seasons in Maui a “chamber” — is about the haves screwing over the have-nots and calling it a holiday. Economically unbalanced honeymooners (Alexandra Daddario and Jake Lacy), a middle-aged woman as lonely as she is loaded ( Jennifer Coolidge) and a seething hotel manager (Murray Bartlett) are just a few of the players in a class-warfare drama set against tropical sunsets that take the characters from golden afternoons to long nights of selfmade hell. (HBO)