After five episodes – all stellar, smart, and well-constructed – I think it’s become clear just what makes The Last of Us work as well as it does. Sure, there’s a pre-ordained narrative for the writers to follow (even if they take some liberties from the source material at times, it, thus far, only serves […]
Author: Jean Henegan
The Last of Us – Please Hold My Hand Review
After last week’s emotional tour de force, The Last of Us made the right move in taking a beat before fully diving into the next confrontation for Joel and Ellie. Now, I’m sure there will be some people who want the series to be more of a go, go, go narrative arc, but this is […]
Dear Edward Season One Review
It will only take you about two episodes to figure out if Dear Edward, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, will be your type of show. For me, it definitely wasn’t. But I suspect it’s a series that will find an audience – largely because shows with a similar look, feel, and […]
The Last of Us – Long Long Time Review
This show, man. I’m absolutely stunned that, in only its third episode, The Last of Us could manage to craft such a gorgeous, haunting, human, and heartbreaking story over the course of an hour – one that never felt cloying, silly, or overdone – and present us with two characters who we had only just […]
Extraordinary Season One Review
Extraordinary, the new British superhero comedy series coming to Hulu this week, has an apt title. After watching the entire first series, I found myself – on more than one occasion – calling the series extraordinary when mentioning it to friends and family. It’s absolutely better than anyone would think it would be. After all, […]
Shrinking Season One Review
As we continue to wait for the third (and reportedly final) season of AppleTV+’s hit comedy series Ted Lasso, the streaming service has provided us with something to tide us over: Shrinking, a new comedy series from the team behind Ted Lasso (that would be Bill “Scrubs” Lawrence and Brett “Roy Kent” Goldstein), along with […]
The Last of Us – Infected Review
Well shit. I didn’t expect that. Perhaps it’s years of conditioning from The Walking Dead and/or Game of Thrones, to expect that a named actor (in this case, the great Anna Torv) wouldn’t be dispatched with this quickly in a show. Sure, I knew that ultimately, The Last of Us was a buddy story about […]
The Best Show You Aren’t Watching: The Traitors
I’m not one for reality TV shows – unless it’s a competition cooking show, and then I’m all in – but I had heard some rumblings about the new Peacock series The Traitors, so I took some time over the holiday weekend to give it a look. And, a mere 36 hours later, I had […]
The Last of Us – When You’re Lost in the Darkness
Before I get into the review of the premiere of The Last of Us, some housekeeping notes. If you listened to our recent Pop Culture Maniacs podcast on video game adaptations, you might know that I am not a gamer. I don’t play video games (outside of the occasional Mario Kart race) and I don’t […]
Kaleidoscope Review
On New Year’s Day, Netflix released the heist drama Kaleidoscope, a series with some solid names in the cast (Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, and Jai Courtney the most famous of the lot) but a show that was designed to catch the zeitgeist thanks to a twist: You could watch the eight-episode season in any order […]