Critical Commentary - Three Streaming Series (All On Netflix)

"Death By Lightning"

This four part series tells the duel stories of James Garfield, our 20th President, and Charles Gaiteau, the assassin who shot and killed him in 1881.   We learn how Garfield, an obscure member of the House of Representatives from Ohio, came out of a deadlocked Republican convention and somehow got himself elected President.  We also learn the story of Gaiteau, a real certifiable loon, who somehow felt that he was destined for great things and that he was owed those things by Garfield.

Michael Shannon, so good in the movie "Nuremberg", played Garfield with a great deal of dignity, and Matthew Macfayden played Gaiteau with the manic intensity that he deserves.  Other historical characters like Roscoe Conkling, James Blaine, and Chester Arthur are also well played by Shea Whigham, Bradley Witford, and Nick Offerman, respectively.  However I especially liked the performance of Betty Gilpin who played Garfield's wife, Crete.  A scene wherein she confronts Gaiteau in his prison cell hours before he is taken to the gallows is really terrific.

However, we should all remember that this is a TV series we are watching, not a documentary.  I sincerely doubt that Mrs. Garfield ever had such a death row confrontation with her husband's killer, but that doesn't take anything from it being a terrific piece of theater. I am sure that similar liberties are taken with many of the other characterizations shown.  Was Chester Arthur really a drunken head-buster on the New York city docks prior to becoming Vice-President? Whatever the actual truth, it all makes for an entertaining and compelling four episodes of television viewing.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Nobody Wants This"

We ended up binging two seasons worth of this RomCom series over the last two weeks.  (Ten episodes per season, each about 25 minutes long.  It was easy to do.)

The story is about Rabbi Noah Roklov, played by Adam Brody, who meets and falls instantly in love with hot shiksa podcaster, Joann, played by Kristen Bell.  Naturally, many, many complications arise from such a relationship.  Bell and Brody are charming in their roles, although I think that Bell tries too hard to be a reinvention of Sarah Jessica Parker's Carri Bradshaw, but it is the peripheral characters that really add to the comedy of the show.  They include Justine Lupe as Joann's sister and podcast partner, Morgan,  Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn as Sasha and Esther, Noah's brother and his wife, and Stephanie Faracy and Tovah Feldshuh as Joann's and Noah's mothers.

We really liked it and look forward to Season Three, whenever it comes.  Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Man On The Inside"

A perusal of the Grandstander Archives tells me that I never wrote about this series when its first season ran earlier this year.  Brief summary:  Ted Danson plays a recent widower who is hired by a private detective to go under cover at a senior living community to see who might be behind a series of jewel robberies in the building.  Yeah, stuff like this can happen only in television, right?  Linda and I found the series to be both funny and touching in the way  it dealt with issues like spousal loss, aging, and the, shall we say, challenges of living in a closed community, challenges like HOA meetings.  Fun casting:  one of the residents of the community was Sally Struthers of  "All In The Family" fame.  

Like I said, we liked it, and had I written about it at the time, it would have rated Four Stars from The Grandstander.  So, go to Netflix right now and watch it.  

I bring this whole thing up now because on Thursday, November 21, Netflix will be dropping Season Two of this series.  I don't know what the "case" will be for the Man on the Inside this time, or if characters from the senior living center will be involved because after all, that case was closed, but I do know that one story line will be a developing romance between Danson's character, Charles, and a character played by Mary Steenbergen, who is Danson's real life wife of thirty years.

Looking forward to watching it and we will no doubt blow through it in a couple of days.