Show Snob’s Premiere Review: Watch, Pass, Wait and See (November 20, 2023)

Before jumping into this week’s Show Snob’s Premiere Review, let’s look at last week’s recommendations to see if they still hold true. Typically, if a show is good (or bad) for the first couple of weeks, it will stay that way for the season:

• Vigilante (Hulu): Was a Watch and is now downgraded to Wait and See. The show is OK, but started to get a little cheesy.
• The Buccaneers (Apple TV+): Continue to Not Watch.
• For All Mankind (Apple TV+): Continue to Watch.
• Colin From Accounts (Paramount+): Continue to Watch.
• The Curse (Paramount+): Continue to Not Watch.
• Beacon 23 (MGM+): Continue to Watch.

On to this week’s premieres:

A Murder at the End of the World: Hulu

From the creators of The OA (which was great), the show stars Clive Owen (Sin City), Brit Marling (The OA), and Emma Corrin (The Crown). Clive Owen is a billionaire who assembles an eclectic group of artists, technologists, and deep thinkers to solve the climate change issue.

Unfortunately, someone is murdered during the retreat in Iceland. Fortunately, Corrin is a high-tech detective that solves murders.

Hulu released two episodes to kick off the series. A Murder at the End of the World is a top-notch, high-tech thriller with dark secrets around every corner.

A Murder at the End of the World – Watch. 

Julia: Max

Season 2 kicked off for Julia, the series is devoted to the launch and management of Julia Child’s French Chef cooking show on PBS. Also starring David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) and Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers), you can watch season 2 without watching season 1, but season 1 was really good.

It is hard to believe there can be more than one series about powerful women creating cooking shows while instilling confidence and power in women across the country. But Julia and Lessons in Chemistry does just that.

At its core, Julia is a funny story about a middle-aged woman becoming the face of PBS, by utilizing her husband and her friends to create an entirely new genre for TV. On its outskirts, the show addresses racial and gender bias and even dips its toe into sexual orientation.

Julia – Watch    

The Crown: Netflix

Season 6, its final season, debuted last week. If you watched the first 5 seasons, you have to watch the last season.

You can jump in with season 6, but you’ll probably not understand some of the relationships and backstory. Season 6 takes place about a year after Diana’s divorce from Charles and takes you through the series of events that leads to her death.

The Crown is well acted, well written, and, for those that aren’t really familiar with the story, may provide details that you haven’t heard about Diana’s death and other controversies of the royal family.

The Crown – Watch

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: Netflix

This anime brought back the entire cast from the original movie to do the voices including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Brandon Routh, Ellen Wong, Brie Larson, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick and probably more. The cartoon doesn’t follow the exact same plot of the movie.

In this series, Scott Pilgrim doesn’t win his first fight against Ramona Flower’s evil exes. But the show does preserve the video gamesque vibe and special effects.

Scott Pilgrim is not for everyone. The show is funny, outlandish, and violent in a cyberpunk type of fashion.

 Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – Wait and See 

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Apple TV+

Monarch is half a sequel and half a prequel to the recent Godzilla and King Kong movies. Apple released two episodes this week, Kurt Russell (Fast and Furious) shows up in the second episode.

The show bounces between two timelines. One timeline takes place in the Philippines in the 1950’s, where a younger Kurt Russell (played by his son Wyatt Russell), a scientist Dr. Keiko Mura (Mari Yamamoto), and a zoologist Dr. Bill Randa (Anders Holm) are hunting down strange radiation readings as well as frighteningly large monsters.

In 2015, Dr. Mura’s grandkids are being hunted by an organization called Monarch. Monarch is trying to retrieve sensitive files that Dr. Mura’s son (who has mysteriously disappeared and presumed dead) had in storage in Tokyo.

At least on the outset, Monarch is exciting, intense, and has enough mysteries both on the monster side and the conspiracy side to make things very interesting.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – Watch.

Which of the following shows that we mentioned have you watched? Let us know in the comments below!