{"id":105300,"date":"2025-07-30T16:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105300\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:56:10","slug":"poker-face-murderbot-tvs-summer-drought-critics-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105300\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Poker Face’, ‘Murderbot’ & TV’s Summer Drought: Critics’ Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tANGIE HAN <\/strong>Once upon a time, when broadcast ruled the roost, summer was a fallow time for TV. The traditional season would end in the spring, to start up again in the fall; it wasn\u2019t that there were no new shows, but they\u2019d be exceptions in a sea of reruns. Of course, that\u2019s all changed in the past couple of decades, with cable and streaming moving the industry to year-round programming. Now there\u2019s always something fresh to watch, whether it\u2019s sweater or flip-flop weather.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr \u2026 is there?<\/p>\n

\n\tTechnically, yes, we still got hundreds of hours of new TV the past few months: starry launches like Apple TV+\u2019s Murderbot<\/a> and Netflix\u2019s Sirens and Too Much<\/a>; new seasons of recent hits like Netflix\u2019s Squid Game<\/a>, Peacock\u2019s Poker Face<\/a> and FX\/Hulu\u2019s The Bear<\/a>; revivals of older smashes like Showtime\u2019s Dexter<\/a> (in the form of Paramount+\u2019s Dexter: Resurrection) and Fox\u2019s King of the Hill<\/a> (the upcoming 14th season will launch on Hulu). Not to mention long spells when it seemed all anyone wanted to talk about was Peacock\u2019s Love Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet, compared to years past, it\u2019s felt like tumbleweeds. There have been entire weeks that the TV scheduling gods seemed to abandon, while honest-to-god breakouts have been few and far between. Some of it is due to the fact that even now, summer is that weird period after the Emmys eligibility deadline but before the big broadcast launches of autumn. Some of it is that we\u2019re firmly on the other side of Peak TV. But, man, it\u2019s dry out there. <\/p>\n

\n\tDANIEL FIENBERG <\/strong>I never minded those ancient days, as recently as 10 years ago, when summer was about catching up on broadcast shows \u2014 \u201cIf you haven\u2019t seen it before, it\u2019s new to you!\u201d \u2014 or immersing yourself in Big Brother and its live feeds. As you say, it\u2019s only relatively speaking to note that the landscape has been sparse this summer. But it\u2019s been sparse enough that Love Island finally became, in its seventh installment, the sort of sensation stateside that it always was in the U.K. (CBS, which birthed Love Island in its domestic incarnation, would be wondering what took Americans so long if the network weren\u2019t trying so desperately to kowtow to the FCC and Donald Trump to grease the wheels for its megamerger.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAs you note, it isn\u2019t like TV has entirely fallen into some equivalent of the pre\/post-Dec. 31 binary in the film release schedule. But the May 31 Emmy deadline has nevertheless hit the medium hard. You still get odd shows that straddle that deadline, like Murderbot and Poker Face, and shows that confuse the window entirely, like The Bear and Squid Game, which had new seasons arrive just as the previous seasons were being celebrated (The Bear) or snubbed (Squid Game) by the TV Academy. But there have been very few new shows that could be construed as \u201cprestige.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd those shows have been polarizing, sometimes even splitting individual viewers in two. I found the twists in Apple TV+\u2019s Smoke to be ludicrous, but I liked Taron Egerton\u2019s tricky performance and Jurnee Smollett\u2019s fierceness. I thought stretches of Lena Dunham\u2019s Too Much were emotionally complicated and amusingly raw; other times I wished Netflix had encouraged more self-editing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt this point, half the shows we\u2019re getting were delayed by the industry strikes and half were developed in the chilly aftermath of those strikes, and it all just feels unsteady. Of the big releases, what has stood out for you?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAN <\/strong>Mainly the fact that a lot of this summer\u2019s \u201cbig\u201d releases haven\u2019t been, really. Amazon\u2019s We Were Liars seemed well positioned to capture the Venn diagram overlap between Big Little Lies fans and The Summer I Turned Pretty fans, but even an insane final twist couldn\u2019t spark much conversation about such a dull series. I enjoyed Apple TV+\u2019s Owen Wilson golf-com Stick, but it\u2019s so squarely in the Ted Lasso\/Shrinking mold that it can\u2019t help feeling like a knockoff. Even Murderbot was less of a sensation than I expected, not to take anything away from a frequently funny, occasionally moving and always entertaining series.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, I have found delight in unexpected corners \u2014 including Amazon, which gave us the surprisingly wholesome YA grease-monkey drama Motorheads and Benito Skinner\u2019s solid college comedy Overcompensating; Syfy, which yielded the clever zombie murder mystery Revival; Hulu, which provided brisk 19th century American history with Washington Black; and HBO, which offered the glossy, prickly celebrity docuseries Pee-wee as Himself.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd nothing\u2019s felt more \u201cSummer TV\u201d in spirit to me than the one-two punch of Netflix\u2019s ridiculous Sirens followed by the even more hilariously bonkers The Hunting Wives. Both are over-the-top mystery-dramedies about extremely wealthy, irredeemably terrible people with dark secrets, flashy wardrobes and unsettling sexual tension with the (somewhat) less privileged women in their midst. Both are ludicrous and trashy in ways that make it clear they\u2019d wear those descriptors as a badge. And both are thus utterly right for hot, lazy days when it seems even your brain\u2019s ditched you for the pool, and it\u2019s all you can do recline with a cold drink and chortle at the shenanigans of beautiful rich people.<\/p>\n

\n\tFIENBERG <\/strong>Sirens and The Hunting Wives are the latest attempts to funnel TV\u2019s love of affluence porn through a semi-satirical lens, \u00e0 la Desperate Housewives. I don\u2019t think The Hunting Wives has much on its mind that regionally semi-specific Housewives knockoffs like GCB or Grosse Pointe Garden Society didn\u2019t. But I have to give it credit for fully committing to its tawdriness in a way that Sirens, for me, didn\u2019t, however great Meghann Fahy is.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s just so much familiarity to everything this summer. Even Dexter: Resurrection has retreated from the somber finality of Dexter: New Blood, resorting to the often cartoonish excesses that characterized both the best and worst of the original.<\/p>\n

\n\tLots of other stuff has felt like a pale imitation. Amazon had Countdown, a wannabe 24 that squandered Jensen Ackles\u2019 snarky likability (and Ballard, which was Bosch only without Bosch). Netflix had The Waterfront, a wannabe CW\/WB North Carolina-set soap, which at least featured a deliciously weird guest turn from Topher Grace as a sociopathic drug kingpin. MGM+\u2019s The Institute is by-the-numbers Stephen King, while Stick on Apple TV+ and Untamed on Netflix worked despite an overreliance on clich\u00e9s, not because of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo I appreciated how fresh settings \u2014 a sports academy in the Spanish Pyrenees; Tijuana at a moment of political upheaval \u2014 gave a bit of novelty to generally formulaic YA soap Olympo and police procedural The Gringo Hunters, both on Netflix. However powerful the Netflix algorithm often feels, neither show appears to have found much traction.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnly Netflix\u2019s Dept. Q<\/a>, with Matthew Goode leading a quirky team of cold case investigators, truly shined by both effectively embracing and upending conventions. It\u2019s one of my summer favorites, along with The Bear, which continues to give me enough beautifully rendered moments and impossibly long tables to overcome its clear self-indulgence.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the show I\u2019m trying hardest to get people to check out these days is Hulu\u2019s Such Brave Girls, a pitch-black, toxically hilarious comedy that, in its second season, confirms creator-star Kat Sadler as one of TV\u2019s most distinctive voices. As we look to the rest of the summer, do you see television salvation on the horizon?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAN <\/strong>I don\u2019t know about salvation, but I do see a less empty calendar \u2014 though a lot of what\u2019s on it looks familiar, too. I have not yet seen Starz\u2019s Outlander spinoff or Amazon\u2019s The Terminal List spin-off or Peacock\u2019s The Rainmaker remake, but I\u2019ve already seen a bit of Hulu\u2019s King of the Hill revival, and while it\u2019s nice to be reunited with the gang again (at least once all the table-setting of the premiere is out of the way), I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s essential when the original, available on Hulu and Disney+, still holds up so well.<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly, it\u2019s possible to birth a bold stand-alone work out of existing IP \u2014 fingers crossed for Noah Hawley\u2019s upcoming Alien: Earth for FX. But the titles I\u2019m most excited about, sight unseen, are originals from talents I already love, like Netflix\u2019s Long Story Short from Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Bojack Horseman) or FX\u2019s The Lowdown by Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs). And I look forward to being taken completely by surprise by something I never saw coming \u2014 which is likelier when there are, y\u2019know, lots of new shows actually being released.<\/p>\n

\n\tFIENBERG <\/strong>With King of the Hill, I\u2019m not sure \u201cfreshness\u201d is really required. Look at how South Park has come storming back into the cultural conversation, nearly 28 years after its premiere, by doing \u2026 exactly what it always did. Speaking of unkillable animation, there are new seasons of Beavis and Butt-Head and Futurama returning as well. The dream of the \u201990s, as we say, is still alive.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut yes, having new shows from Bob-Waksberg, Hawley and Harjo, plus long-awaited The Office companion series The Paper (Peacock), promising Daniel Dae Kim thriller Butterfly (Amazon) and THREE Welcome to Wrexham-esque shows about celebrities buying down-on-their-luck soccer teams (Eva Longoria in FX\u2019s Necaxa, Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa in ESPN\u2019s Running With the Wolves and Tom Brady in Amazon\u2019s Built in Birmingham) should help keep the tumbleweeds at bay. For now.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appeared in the July 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANGIE HAN Once upon a time, when broadcast ruled the roost, summer was a fallow time for TV.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":105301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[67770,35529,171,29139,45611,40770,67771,17788,16952,67772,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-105300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-dept-q","9":"tag-dexter","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-king-of-the-hill","12":"tag-love-island","13":"tag-murderbot","14":"tag-poker-face","15":"tag-squid-game","16":"tag-the-bear","17":"tag-too-much","18":"tag-tv","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114943242010234665","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}