Unfamiliar, Netflix
Spy thriller Unfamiliar holds together to its final moments.SUPPLIED
This German spy thriller series starts off like a cross between The Americans, one of the classics of the genre, and The Bear. Meret (Susanne Wolff) and Simon (Felix Kramer) are former intelligence agents who still do freelance spooky things − and run a trendy Berlin restaurant. Teenage daughter Nina (Maja Bons) is starting to clue in. Then the past arrives – in the form of a vengeful Russian (Samuel Finzi, one of Germany’s great stage actors) – to fully blow up their happy double lives
Violent scenes from a marriage ensue, including the occasional European-style cramped-quarters car chase. Wolff’s performance stands out for its overall complexity, while Kramer is, in the German style, not afraid to be simply unlikeable (true anti-heroes, both). While a couple instalments feel padded, this is a deserved word-of-mouth hit that holds together to its final moments.
The Bravest Knight, CBC Gem
Canadian animated show The Bravest Knight has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.CBC GEM/SUPPLIED
I had heard that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Crave) was lighter in tone than the rest of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones universe, and offhandedly mentioned its existence to my knight-obsessed children. Then I actually watched the show – which wraps up its franchise-reinvigorating first season on Sunday – and realized what a mistake I’d made as soon as the first C-word dropped.
So I had to find a more suitable knight show and came across this sweet animated adventure series. While training his daughter, Nia, to be a knight, Sir Cedric (voiced by T.R. Knight) tells her about his boyhood quests travelling around a fairy-tale kingdom with a troll named Grunt (Bobby Moynihan).
It was only after half a dozen episodes in that I realized a) the wholesome show is Canadian, despite all the American voices and b) Nia has two dads – the subject of much consternation in the U.S. The Bravest Knight is nominated for a GLAAD Media Award, alongside adult Cancon such as Heated Rivalry and Wayward. I’m just glad my boys (6, 3) liked it.
Detectorists, AcornTV
Detectorists is a gentle, humanist half-hour comedy starring Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones.SUPPLIED
Small Prophets, a new BBC Two show from Mackenzie Crook, is getting rapturous reviews over the pond – but sadly is not yet available in Canada. As we wait, catch up on (or rewatch) this earlier gentle, humanist half-hour comedy created by and starring Crook (Gareth on the original British version of The Office).
Set in Essex, the pilot sees Crook’s Andy – a would-be archeologist working as a cleaner – and his divorced pal Lance (Toby Jones) sitting under a tree discussing their metal-detector finds and repeating old stories, like a modern-day Vladimir and Estragon. The series follows their countryside search for a Saxon hoard of gold (not Godot), and surrounds them with loveable small-town eccentrics. Reviewing its third and final season in 2020, the Globe and Mail’s John Doyle called it a “hidden gem.”
Judge Tyco Special: Touched by a Prince, Crave
Judge Tyco is a side character in Crave’s ‘The Office Movers’.CRAVE/SUPPLIED
Season two of Crave’s The Office Movers transformed me from casual admirer to proper fan of this workplace comedy created by and starring brothers-from-Brampton Jermaine and Trevaunn Richards.
I found the secondary characters a particular delight: Ritchie (Lucas Lopez), a Cuban whose can-do attitude is constantly undercut by low-grade panic; Hassan (Hassan Phills), a Muslim slacker who always goes to pray whenever something heavy has to be lifted; Michael (Solomon Kehinde), an undocumented Nigerian always on the phone trying to keep his Canadian fiancée from leaving him.
As we wait for a third season, the Richards brothers and showrunner Clare Altimas are providing one-off specials – and the latest (out Feb. 20) focuses on yet another side character. Judge Tyco – a goon and, somehow, small-claims judge whose Toronto patois pronouncements are translated in often Shakespearean subtitles – actually predates the Crave show as star of an earlier web series (still on YouTube). In between smoke breaks and cross-cultural curry mix-ups in the staff lunchroom, he resolves beefs between bozos. The fandom will chow down.
Bugonia, Prime Video
Emma Stone stars as Michelle in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia.ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/FOCUS FEATURES/SUPPLIED
Every two or three years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominates a film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos for best picture and I have to give the Greek director another chance in order to, at least, be up to date with my dislike of his work.
Bugonia, on Amazon’s Prime Video Feb. 20, is a remake of Save the Green Planet!, a cult 2003 South Korean comedy. A pair of men abduct a pharmaceutical CEO believing that she is an alien who wants to destroy the planet. The cast is top tier: Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, the primary kidnapper, and Emma Stone is the kidnappee, Michelle.
The Globe and Mail film critic Barry Hertz was not won over. “Teddy drags Michelle to his basement, shaves her head (to avoid the aliens from follically tracking her location), and demands that she call off the intergalactic invasion,” he wrote in his review. “What follows is nearly two hours of humiliation and contempt, for both the characters and Lanthimos’s audience.”