Long Story Short is a Netflix adult animated comedy-drama created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, his first new animated series since the acclaimed BoJack Horseman. Trading Hollywood satire for something more intimate, the show is a warm, melancholy, and very funny portrait of a single family told across the sweep of its members' entire lives.
The series follows the Schwooper family, jumping freely and non-chronologically through the decades, from childhood and adolescence to marriage, parenthood, and old age, so that a character might be a squabbling kid in one scene and a weary adult in the next. This restless time-hopping structure lets the show explore how families carry their history with them, how old wounds and inside jokes echo across generations, and how small moments accumulate into a life. Its voice cast includes Abbi Jacobson, Ben Feldman, Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, and Nicole Byer.
Rooted in Bob-Waksberg's own Jewish American upbringing, Long Story Short earned strong reviews for balancing sharp comedy with genuine emotional depth, the same alchemy that made his previous work resonate. It is streaming on Netflix.
Intriguingly balancing on the edge of documentary crime-storytelling and emotional movie-styled eye witnessing, Final Witness leaves weird feelings after the first watching. In the first hand we see, professionally gathered facts and witnesses about real life crimes combined in the proper timeline manner: the circumstances which have lead to criminal act, the actual criminal act itself, consequences of this perpetration and effects caused by it on victims entourage. On the other hand, the scenes are assembled in the movie-like way rising emotional essence to the high levels of hysteria; complementing the horrifying scenario by murdered victim's narration from the first person. Although, all the described events really took place in the American cities from New Orleans to San Francisco, there is a kind of strange feeling originated from the series too emotional background, the feeling making unbelievable these rapes, murders and homicide acts are the real life events.
Remember Heroes' mindreader Matt Parkman, played by Greg Grunberg? The Listener's whole plot is passed on the same idea of secret power to read someone minds. Now this superpower belongs to Toby Logan (Craig Olejnik) a twentysomething orphan raised in the foster homes, who kept this secret with him all the time. But, when he shares it with his old councilor Dr. Ray Mercer, he starts his new life of as the part of Integrated Investigative Bureau (a special unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) where he helps Detective Charlie Marks (Lisa Marcos) and E.R. Doctor Olivia Fawcett (Mylene Dinh-Robic) to solve crimes and difficult high-profile cases of murders and rapes. In his paramedical duties Toby is not alone; he works in cooperation with Osman Bey, his telepathic partner, who assists him in solving of most hard crimes IIB encounters. However, Toby's holy gift has the other, darkish side. Immersing in the minds of most inveterate criminals has terrifying side effects: Toby has to deal with heavy emotional and psychological impact of such of telepathic contacts. And here come his friends, helping him to deal with these issues: Dr Olivia Fawcet and other partners trying their best to keep Toby's mind working perfect as the secret weapon of IIB.
The next big thing in ABC family repertoire, a parenting comedy Baby Daddy, from the very first episode looks like Rising Hope and Three men and a Baby, mixed and stirred. If you are 18-34 years old women your chances to find this comedy entertaining are very high. Otherwise, if you are not belong to this target audience, we recommend you to not waste your time. Although the baby-girl (Emma) in Baby Daddy is very cute, this doubtfully compensates the flatness of acting and primitiveness of hijinks, all of them are revolving about unexpected pregnancy and baby's bodily functions. The background of the story is getting us from the very first episode. An aimless dude, Ben with his friend Tucker finds an infant at doorsteps of their small apartment which they share with Tucker's hockey-player brother Danny. The baby comes with the short note form Ben's former one-night-stand girlfriend. Ben decides to take a care of the child, hoping that his friends, Tucker and Danny alongside with his overbearing mother Bonnie (Melissa Peterman) and his school-friend Riley (Chelsea Kane) will help him with parenting functions. The main storyline is shadowed in some funny way by undercover intrigues taking a place between friends: Riley has a crush on Ben since the school-times, and Danny seems to be on the opposite apex of this love triangle.
A reality TV show, Miss Advised, showcases three women, the well known experts in sex and relationships sphere. Despite of their specific expertise, they are struggling to navigate in turbulent sky of dating issues of their own lives. And as it often happens, it's much easier to give advices to somebody then to implement them in own life. It looks like these women who ought to know better what actions are better to take in terms of "searching for man", are absolutely clueless concerning what to do about their own dating issues. The first one, Emily Morse is popular radio MC hosting here own show called "Sex with Emily". As it should be expected she isn't a big fan of monogamy, but it seems, her own versatile sexual life does not make her happy. Another one, Julia Allison, also strive for masteries in show-biz, as a writer and television commentator. She so much willing to find a husband that she moves from Chicago to LA where men are not marrying young, staying available for dating in their middle age. The third and the last one is Amy Laurent, an expert matchmaker whose specialization does not help in her lifetime goal to find the man of her dreams. She is breaking all her rules while trying to reanimate the fading relationships with her boyfriend. Upon the meeting these three heroines, Miss Advised is leaving an ambiguous feeling: in one hand their attempts to organize their personal live are looking funny; but in the other hand you may take a pity on their misadvised clients, readers and listeners of such of "experts."
Long before the advent of The Glass House on TV screens CBS has warned ABC not to air this reality show, which was too similar to Big Brother, in their point of view. Notwithstanding this fact, ABC has released The Glass House on primetime and CBS filed the long-promised lawsuit against them. Fortunately, while the monsters of big TV are fighting, we have a chance to compare these TV shows and make our own mind on whether they are similar or not. At the first glance they are: same cameras-wired houses, same teams of contestants performing very stupid and not so much tasks, sometimes squabbling, wrangling bullying and sparring with each other to the audience sweetest delight. However, when you take a closer look on this so-called Big Brother rip-off you will probably notice some differences. First of all, all the contestants going to be eliminated from the show go to Limbo, where they wait for America's decision whether they will stay or abandon the game. The second difference is more significant and literally determinative: almost all the things contestants do in the show is determines by voting of the audience. To underline this, all means all: audience decides what the participants have to eat and wear today, what they have to do and how they should act to win the viewers' gratitude. The third difference is, there are no players deciding whether to eliminate somebody or no, everything depends of audience decision. It's a weird thing but the absence of need to eliminate your "fiends" does not have any positive impact on contestants' virtues. We see the same "douchbaggery" and painful "obnoxiousty" of the people are blooming, and maybe this is the most principal similarity between The Glass House and Big Brother. Evidently the CBS lawyers could use this fact to file their suit.
One of the funniest talk shows released in 2012, Comedy Bang! Bang! owes its success a long history of weekly comedy audio podcast, which began in 2009 and was originated from Comedy Death-Ray stage talk show performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Hollywood. The person which is standing behind this success is an American writer and comedian Scott Aukerman, who started in 1990s in HBO's sketch comedy Mr. Show with Bob and David. Apperently, te seeds of great headway were laid in the fertile ground in these fabulous times and now we have one of the must-watched comedy shows on IFC which gone far away in success from its pursuer Bunk, which seems to be much less entertaining though has lots similar of similarities with Comedy Bang! Bang! Nevertheless Scott Aukerman continues to amuse the audience with uncommon tricks like strange persons falling out from the blue and talking to host and his guest before going nowhere. Aukerman's guests deserves some special attention: at the first look they are common Hollywood celebrities, like Amy Poehler or Zach Galifianakis but something in the way the host introduces them and is talking to them makes whole performance incredibly ludicrous. That's maybe a secret of a true master comedian.
If you have missed a chance to be hooked up with Gilmore Gilrs, the new ABC's dramedy Bunheads is exactly what you need. The first episode of Bunheads has left such a feeling that if there were a little bit more of GG-like moments in Bunheads, the CW lawyers would inevitably file the suit against ABC. And that is not surprisingly taking into consideration the fact that the TV show was created by the same Amy Sherman-Palladino who created splendid Gilmore Gilrs. It is felt throughout the sharp dialogs, giddy repartees, deeply portrayed personalities and perfectly constructed dance scenes. The astonishing dancing ingredient of the Bunheads, is of course not only the personal merit of Sherman-Palladino, but Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop. Both of them have quite serious dancing background. Another Sutton's and Kelly's merit is drollery atmosphere which these two awesome women create around themselves. Kelly plays Fanny Flowers, a small town dance studio owner, while Sutton portrays Michelle Simms, a cute dancer being caught in the lower point of the career, when series of questionable decisions had led her out of Las Vegas dancing scenes to small rural town Paradise, California where she met Fanny. There are more pry personalities in the series like talented and perfectly shaped Sasha (Julia Goldani Telles) and purposeful Bettina, aka Boo (Kaitlyn Jenkins). All the characters feature inexpressible chemistry between each other, and the spirit of the show is sweet, pleasurable and cuddlesome.
Would you mind speed-dating in the jungle on self-made rafts sailing down the crocodile-infested river? If you like these adrenaline-stuffed romantic adventures you will probably be hooked by Love in the Wild. However, to say the truth, you will have to sufficiently lower the acceptable level of stupidity, ridiculousness and affectedness. Otherwise you will be a little bit surprised by how this TV show was made. The anticipated symbiosis of The Amazing Race and The Bachelor Pad turned out to be just a bunch of meaningless quests on pseudo-romantic substrate. The only thing that saves this show is the fact that producers seem to be not taking the entire stuff too seriously. For instance, who will take seriously somebody whining about person whining about ants? As for series rules there are lots of advantages to form a loyal couple. Even if you are finishing last, there is a good chance to stay in the game in case if some partners in other couple will broke up and will not find any other contestant to partner with. In this situation they will end up in the Single Area from where they, most likely, will be eliminated. Such breaking ups are happening from time to time just because betrayal could be advantageous too: not because you are falling in love with somebody from the other couple, but on case if last-place couple member will accept a switch request in order to secure staying in the game. In opposite to the actions taking in the show, the rules are only intriguing elements in Love in the Wild. But do not forget the surrounding nature -it's beautiful and, furthermore, it's filmed magnificently. And maybe it's only the advantage saving this dating reality TV show for the next seasons.
Those who ever watched Idioracy (2006) are aware of the future of television and the appearance of IFC's Bunk will not be in surprise for them. Rest of the people should know this kind of comedy reality series will be dominating till times when everyone would think it's normal to invent a new family-friendly look of David's genital on Michelangelo's masterpiece. Yes it was one of the idiotic contest of second episode of Bunk where two "professional" "comedians" (it's not a coincidence nor mistype that two of words are quoted) fight for ambiguous prizes like "Super Powers", "Universal Alibi" etc. performing silly tasks like "to shame a baby". The series was produced by Kurt Braunohler, an American comedian which is known to us by his roles in Delocated, The Heart, She Holler, Comedy at the Fringe, Jon Benjamin Has a Van and Comedy Lab.
Alcohol, sex and partying, partying and more partying" this is the main appeal of The Catalina, a CW television reality show about work days and nights of same name Miami party-hotel. Concerning the level of vulgar jokes, demeaning situations, offensive remarks and drunken people talks this show seems to be on the hair's width above the another remarkable sex&alcohol reality series Jersey Shore produced by MTV. From this point of view The Catalina looks like CW marketing answer to MTV's domination in the humanity moronizing niche. Dramatis Personae of The Catalina could be characterized as "one is better than another". Let's start with the pool bartender couple Kris and Nancy. The first one calls himself as "a big ball of horny energy" and the second one, his ex-girlfriend is always jealous about his penis. As we moving further, we see Morgan a Polish restaurant manager. She hates everyone in the mile radius and describes the rest of the staff as ""¦they are all very stupid." She regularly yells at Eyal, her bartender an Israeli bisexual, who seems to be happy with this "relationships." His sobriquet Gayal, was given to him by their boss, Nathan, who represents the top of this Sodom and Gomorrah. His most remarkable singularity lies in the spraying the fountains of champagne over the guests and staff.