Several times over the last few months, I’ve said something to the effect of “There is a tiny and stupid part of me that thinks it would be nice to spend five days in Covid isolation with medical orders to just watch streaming shows.” I’m in my last day of that isolation now, and as the larger and smarter part of me knew all along, it actually was not nice at all. I did, however, watch a bunch of streaming shows, finishing two series, one of them in real binge-watch fashion.
(NOTE: The brief reviews in the main text are very general, with minimal spoilers. The comments should be regarded as a free-fire zone for spoilers for either show, so tread carefully there.)
Outer Range (Prime):
This is a moody sci-fi show set in Wyoming, starring Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, a rancher who discovers a mysterious void on his land, in an area whose ownership is contested by his more successful (and batshit crazy) neighbor (gleefully played by Will Patton). It covers his struggles to hang onto the ranch while keeping the void secret, and also trying to juggle a bunch of family traumas, a murder investigation by the local sherrif (Tamara Podemski, who does a great job with the part), and a mysterious hiker played by Imogen Poots, who seems to have sinister motives.
This dropped back in April, and I watched the first half of it an episode at a time while riding the exercise bike in the basement. I watched the last four episodes this week, with Covid, a couple of them on my Chromebook while lying in bed, and a couple on the tv in the basement (which is at least as isolated as the bedroom).
The acting here is top-notch— Poots is really going for it, and Noah Reid as the youngest brother of the rival ranching family is also terrific— and the domestic-drama bits are as compelling as the sci-fi plot. At least, up until the last episode or so, when things kind of go off the rails— right when a limited series ought to be tying up most of the loose ends, this show starts madly hacking and fraying all the threads of the story, leaving it with more open questions when the credits roll than there were at the three-quarters mark.
I guess that’s one way to try to strongarm the studio into paying for a second season? If they make more of this, I’ll watch it, because I really enjoyed the performances, and am curious about where the sci-fi part is going. The way the scope of the plot suddenly expands in the final two episodes, though, makes me worry that they’re never going to be able to bring it all to anything resembling a satisfactory conclusion.
The Sandman (Netflix):
This is the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s legendary comic from the 80’s, and was a true binge-watch. I watched six episodes on Friday (when it dropped), and the last four yesterday. This is not my usual mode, but, you know, Covid isolation. Frankly, it was all a bit much, and I think I might’ve been happier had I been able to draw it out over a longer time.
This is an extremely faithful adapatation of the comics, with the exception of the 2020s-obligatory race- and/or gender-flipping of several of the key characters. That’s both good and bad: on the one hand, it’s nice to see the story brought to the screen more or less intact; on the other, the first six episodes cover the issues collected as Preludes and Nocturnes in the graphic-novel collections, which was far and away the most forgettable of the volumes. (The last four do The Doll’s House, which is better.)
Where the showrunners made changes to the story beats, they’re mostly clear improvements. The John Dee plotline in the show is actually pretty compelling, largely thanks to David Thewlis’s performance, whereas the original comic issues with him are, frankly, kind of terrible (I re-read the book last night). The Corinthian gets a lot more screen time, which is mostly a good thing thanks to Boyd Holbrook’s performance. They also did some shifts to the story of Lyta Hall that I think were probably to the good, since I only vaguely remember this stage of her story (she becomes critical later on). The one mis-step is the Gault subplot, which ended up a little too on-the-nose for my tastes, though I don’t recall the book analogue (if there is one).
Tom Sturridge is very good as Morpheus, though he’s mostly just required to be pale and gaunt and speak with a stilted formality. Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s one-episode appearance as Death is good, but this does suffer from a lack of the other Endless. Mason Alexander Park’s Desire is nicely creepy, and there’s an incredibly brief Despair cameo, and that’s it. The rest of the cast is generally excellent, even in very small parts. As Kate noted, the casting of Stephen Fry as Gilbert is just incredibly, crashingly obvious, but it’s absolutely perfect, and they would’ve been fools not to do it.
Anyway, it looks like they spent a shitload of money making this, and spent it well. I hope it’s successful enough for them to make more, because I like basically all of the other volumes of the original story better than these two, and would love to see what the show can make of them.
And that’s what I’ve been watching while achy and coughing and feverish. Happily, those symptoms have largely receded, because I’m now in need of something else to watch, which will likely require some fumbling around to find. If you want to find out where I land, here’s a button:
And if you’d like to talk about either series (SPOILERS allowed), the comments will be open: