Show Snob's Premiere Review: Watch, Pass, Wait and See (January 15, 2024)

The premieres started to pick up last week coming out of the holiday slump. Here is the list of the currently very watchable shows that have been released or are still airing right now.

• Bookie (MAX): All episodes streaming.
• Fargo (Hulu)
• A Murder at the End of the World (Hulu): All episodes streaming.
• Julia (MAX): All episodes streaming (season 3 has been canceled)
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV+): All episodes streaming.
• For All Mankind (Apple TV+): All episodes streaming.
• Invincible (Amazon Prime Video)
• The Culprits (Hulu): All episodes streaming.
• Jack Reacher (Amazon Prime Video)
• Los Farad (Amazon Prime Video) 
• Yu Yu Hakusho (Netflix)
• Berlin (Netflix)
• The Brothers Sun (Netflix)

Ted (Peacock)

Starring Seth MacFarlane (The Orville) as the come-to-life teddy bear and Scott Grimes (American Dad!), this series acts as a prequel to the Ted movies starring Mark Wahlberg (The Family Plan). Max Burkholder (Invincible) plays the young Mark Wahlberg character, a 16-year-old high school kid trying to make it through school with his best friend, Ted, a teddy bear.

They discover drugs, girls, pornography, and other teenage rites of passage together. Burkholder has the Wahlberg cadence completely nailed.

Though the season is not as sexually dirty as the movies, the language and the politically incorrect jokes are very hardcore. Peacock didn't hold the show back at all, as it is raunchy and very funny.

They tried a couple of soft and dramatic scenes but that didn't work. The show is best when it is at its worst.

Ted - Watch

Criminal Record (Apple TV+)

Starring Peter Capaldi (The Devil's Hour), like many of the streaming platforms, Apple tries to fill in their programming with a British show. Criminal Record tells the story of a woman who calls the emergency phone line due to a domestic abuse threat to her life.

During the call, she mentions that someone is in jail erroneously because her boyfriend is the one who actually committed the murder. The detective who made the arrest seems very irritated at the insinuation.

There is obviously a secret that the detective is keeping and the woman who is investigating the accusation is not going to give up. The season will clearly focus on finding out this secret.

Though the premise is mildly interesting, the show doesn't really keep you on the edge of your seat.

Criminal Record - Wait and See

La Brea (NBC)

If my DVR hadn't alerted me to the fact that La Brea season 3 was starting, I probably would have missed it. It would be difficult, though not absolutely impossible, to watch season 3 without seeing the previous seasons.

Starring Natalie Zea (The Detour), La Brea is about sinkholes that appear in Los Angeles. If you fall into the sinkhole, you will wind up in 10,000 BC.

They have dinosaurs and many other deadly things that make life difficult. But it also has the people that created the sinkholes and that could be the trick to finding the way back to their time.

This season seems to be about finding Zea, who disappeared into some timeline at the end of season 2. But there are many different plot lines and time loops that also play into the plot.

In the first episode, one of the main characters is transported into the future, just before the sinkhole arrives in LA. Could he try to stop it?

It is always hard for traditional networks to compete with the creativity, budgets, and adult themes that the streamers can provide. They definitely could not have made Ted.

La Brea is not a bad time travel show but the overacting, convoluted story, and cheesiness really shows.

La Brea - Pass.

Boy Swallows Universe (Netflix)

Starring Bryan Brown (Cocktail) and Travis Fimmel (Vikings), Boy Swallows Universe takes place in 1980s Australia and is about a whole bunch of things. At its core, two brothers, Gus and Eli, live with their mother and her boyfriend.

The mother is an ex-heroin addict, and the boyfriend is a heroin drug dealer. But they are poor and very happy, though Gus does not speak.

Instead, he air-writes with his finger. Many different antics take place based on this scenario.

Eli goes on drug deals, he worries about his mom's drug problem, he has problems at school with the local drug wholesaler's son, and the local hitman might be very angry with this family. This show is extraordinarily interesting, funny at times, and completely entertaining.

Boy Swallows Universe - Watch

Echo (Disney+)

Unlike most Marvel shows, Disney didn't get any big-name stars for Echo, which is a spinoff from Hawkeye. Also, unlike most Marvel shows, Echo is a little grittier, a little darker, and overall, a little less Disney.

It is closer to the old Netflix Daredevil or Punisher shows, than Ahsoka. Echo is being eviscerated on Rotten Tomatoes, but I don't think it exactly deserves that type of criticism.

Based on the Native American character from Hawkeye, Maya (Alaqua Cox) is The Kingpin's muscle. When she finds out that Kingpin killed her father, she tries to take over his enterprise.

Some of the action scenes are really fantastic. The story is a little mundane and sometimes feels like 5 episodes is both too long and other times not long enough.

Maya has some sort of power to connect with her ancestors (from the Choctaw tribe) which makes her very strong and even faster. She might be able to heal or even transfer her power to other people, but that isn't clear.

It would have been nice to see more of the magical powers in the show. Echo is good but not great.

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