The week in TV: The Crown weighs heavy, and The Curse comes to life
A collection of The A.V. Club's top TV news, reviews, and features from November 13-18
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off review: Much, much weirder than a mere nostalgia trip
[Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers of the first episode of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.]
When Netflix announced that it was making an anime version of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim graphic novels—and, more specifically, Edgar Wright’s cult classic film version of O’Malley’s books, complete with every major cast member from the movie returning to voice their characters for the show—it felt a bit like a victory lap. Although Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World remains a financial black mark on Wright’s career—it lost more money, in a budget-vs.-box office sense, than the director’s Last Night In Soho, which was released into the tail end of the COVID-19 lockdowns—its critical reception has only gotten rosier, as whole new generations of fans have cottoned on to Wright’s energetic, hilarious attempts to channel O’Malley’s strangely affecting blend of video games, Canadian rock music, and young romance for the screen. Getting the (now enormously more famous) cast back together for a cartoon version that would directly translate the books’ anime-inspired art for streaming TV felt like a natural, nostalgic fit. Read More
The Crown season 6, part 1 review: The show puts all its eggs in Diana’s basket
Well, here we are, at the beginning of the end. When we all started watching Peter Morgan’s The Crown in 2016, wasn’t the anticipation of this moment in the back of our minds? The tragic death of Princess Diana? If you’re a viewer over 30, Diana is likely the royal who has loomed largest in your conscious, in life and in death. Read More
The Curse recap: This is unlike anything else on television right now
There is something so revealing about Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone) casually deleting Instagram comments that accuse her of, quite rightly, aping the design of her reflective home from artist Doug Aitken only for her to then complain that such attacks bear no weight given that she’s trying to reflect community while Aiken only reflected nature. She at once understands the critique and yet regurgitates it in a way that’s self-deprecating and self-deflecting. She’s no artist, she insists. But she’s also not not an artist. She may be inspired by Aiken but she’s totally doing something wholly different. If maybe kind of the same. That this all happens during a dinner with an up and coming Native artist (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin’s Cara Durand), who she intends to hire as a cultural consultant for Flipanthopy to better launder her reputation as they deal with checkerboard land that’ll require her to deal with the local Native tribes, is…well, just perfect. Read More
Peacock’s Ted takes shots at both Peacock and itself in first teaser
To quote The A.V. Club’s Sam Barsanti, “Who was the first person to walk into a movie studio executive’s office and say ‘it’s like a movie for kids, but it has a hard-R rating,’ and does that person now have more money than God?” Whether or not that evil genius was actually Seth MacFarlane or not, he’s certainly the one receiving the windfall. Ted and Ted 2—his raunchy, 2010s-era films about a Teddy bear with a Boston accent who loves to rip bongs and say “fuck”—brought in a collective $700 million at the box office. Now, whether anyone asked for it or not (they probably didn’t), he’s doing it again. Read More