Winter TV Roundup, Week 6


The new year has started pretty quickly with new shows, but we hit a little lull. This week only a couple new streaming series premiered. Still, it was just the calm before the storm as a group of new shows premiers this week. But in the meantime, let's look at what we got last week. In these weekly posts I look at the pilot and second episode of new scripted series this winter. Don't see a new show listed below? Check previous weeks.

Streaming Series:
PEN15, Now Streaming on Hulu (debuted February 8)
About: Hulu's latest comedy, a 10-episode comedy, takes the action to 2000 and sets it in middle school. So what's the catch you might ask? Well stars and co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle are playing themselves in seventh grade though at this point they're quite a bit older. And therein lies the humor. Or so the show would have you believe. These girls are playing it pretty straight in terms of sinking into their teenage selves, and the rest of the classmates in the show are in deed middle schoolers. But how you feel about the show will depend on how much you buy into the idea. I watched the first two and simply couldn't get into the idea. It's a clever premise in terms of trying to capture a certain voice, but it just didn't work for me. I've read reviews from others who watched all the episodes and felt like it got more palatable, but there wasn't enough of a hook in the characters or world for me to care to keep going. This is a big, broad, weird swing, but it just didn't quite work for me.
Pilot Grade: C-
Second Episode: C-

White Dragon, Now Streaming on Amazon Prime (Premiered February 8)
About: The latest Amazon series is a British show brought over to America via the streaming service. it premiered in September in the UK, and all eight episodes are now available on Amazon. The show centers on a professor (John Simm) who learns his wife was killed on one of her many business trips to Hong Kong. When he flies there to learn more, he discovers that she was married in Hong Kong, many years earlier, and has been leading a double life. He must then team with her other husband (Anthony Chau-Sang Wong) and daughter (Katie Leung) to figure out what happened. This is an interesting set up for a series and there's some potential here. But I couldn't get into the story or the moving pieces in the two episodes I sampled. For those who are fans of these kind of slow moving dramas, this might work better. But with many options out, this one didn't have enough of a hook for me.
Pilot Grade: C
Second Episode: C

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