“I Love Dick”
Jill Soloway came out of nowhere to take her place as one of television’s premier creators and showrunners: While her overlooked “Afternoon Delight” played with similar themes of identity, sexuality and desire, no one was really prepared for her intersectional blend of these ideas in the beautifully empathetic and funny “Transparent.” While it hasn’t received the same amount of ardor, yet, her new show, “I Love Dick,” is arguably just as rich, centering on Chris (Kathryn Hahn), a disillusioned artist in the throes of an existential crisis. Struggling in her dysfunctional marriage (with Griffin Dunne as the husband), contending with her sense of disorientation and displacement in an unfamiliar new local (Marfa, Texas) and dealing with her burning lust for an artist named Dick (Kevin Bacon), Chris shatters as she grapples with her boundless frustration and her crisis of identity in an artistic, vibrant and queer-friendly town. Teeming with passion, heartache and laughter, “I Love Dick,” is filled with humanist texture, showcases terrific filmmakers expressing Chris’ red-blooded desires (Andrea Arnold among them), creating a livewire show full of electricity and emotion. It’s being slept on at the moment — a casualty of peak TV choices — but make no mistake about it, we love ‘Dick,’ and now’s the time to get in on the ground floor.
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”
It’s easy to take a show like “Brooklyn Nine Nine” for granted. More so even than its obvious recent workplace comedy forerunners like “The Office” and “Parks & Recreation,” it’s quite a traditional network comedy, with more in common with “Cheers” or “Taxi” than “Louie” or “Transparent.” But it’s always been a consistently funny, enjoyable show, and is only improving with age, as its stellar fourth season proved. The show hasn’t exactly reinvented itself, though it has been lightly experimenting, with a series of medium-length arcs running throughout the season, and a startling Norman Lear-ish episode on racism that proved much more effective than you might imagine. But more than anything, it’s benefited from writers and its great cast who, four years in, know these characters like the back of their hand, and know how to wring every kind of laugh from them. We could be in the dying days of the network sitcom like this, but “Brooklyn Nine Nine” will likely stand as one of the last great examples of it.
“The Keepers”
It’s relatively rare for us to include documentary series here but “The Keepers” from director Ryan White (who also made the excellent “The Case Against 8“) is simply the most riveting TV show of the year. That said, the story of how the unsolved murder of a young nun in 1960s spins out into a many-tentacled expose of systemic child sex abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, is also possibly one of the least binge-able shows ever made: episodes 2 and 3, wherein the abuse is bluntly catalogued by the survivors, most now in their 60s, are so enraging that we needed to regularly switch off to go punch a wall. But as much as its portrait of abject evil fills you with anger, and as much as it eschews simple cathartic resolution, “The Keepers” leaves you mostly feeling humbled and grateful, filled with admiration, hope and, if it’s not too sullied a word, faith. It’s just this time it’s faith in these people, these breathtakingly brave, ordinary women righting a colossal series of wrongs, exposing ugly but necessary truths and, when no one else will, simply believing each other. Incredible.
“Master Of None”
The first season of “Master Of None” was a pleasant surprise — Aziz Ansari’s show might have been yet another drama-tinged comedy about a struggling actor in New York, but it had a fresh perspective on the world, a giant heart, and some cinematic flair. The second run built on all of that and then some: a gorgeous, charming rom-com at its best when it was at its most divergent. Ansari had improved as an actor and as a filmmaker (there’s some truly beautiful moments across the show thanks to him and other directors like Eric Wareheim, Alan Yang and Melina Matsoukas), and if the new object of his desires, Francesca (Alessandra Mastronardi) never really developed beyond a fantasy figure, the show still had a pleasing specificity to it, not least when it spreads its wings and tries something stand-alone, as with show highlights “First Date,” “New York, I Love You” and “Thanksgiving.” All of that, and a great performance by Bobby Cannavale.
“National Treasure”
Gaining sad additional relevance over the weekend after the prosecution of Bill Cosby ended, at least at first, in a mistrial, Jack Thorne’s four-part Channel 4/Hulu miniseries “National Treasure” was nevertheless a vital watch even beforehand. The busiest working writer right now took on a daring subject here (inspired by the prosecution of a number of British celebrities under Operation Yewtree), telling the story of a beloved British comedian (Robbie Coltrane), part of a famous double act, who is accused of a rape that allegedly took place twenty years earlier. Focusing as much on his family (Julie Walters superb as ever as his devoutly Catholic wife, Andrea Riseborough as his troubled daughter) as on the courtroom events, it carefully walks the tightrope of its subject’s guilt, thanks in large part to a titanic turn from Coltrane (his first non-Potter role in a long while), and some unconventional direction from “Utopia” helmer Marc Munden.
