Overrated/Underrated 2018
TV and music writer Chris Barton weighs in on what’s up and what’s down in the week in pop culture.
Read more from me on Twitter: @chrisbarton.
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UNDERRATED TV escapism: The ever-shifting news cycle of 2018 often made tuning out the news or your Twitter feed feel like a dereliction of democratic duty.
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UNDERRATED ‘Leave No Trace’ (2018): Written and directed by the filmmaker behind the grim “Winter’s Bone,” this film set in the Pacific Northwest leaves a deep impression on the strength of its performances and vivid sense of place.
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D’Arcy Carden on ‘The Good Place’: When critics praise this NBC show, what’s often mentioned is its big heart, gentle charm and an egalitarian ensemble made up of funny people who genuinely like one another.
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UNDERRATED ‘1983’: A grim, vaguely paranoid bit of alt-history along the lines of “The Man in the High Castle” that imagines a world where the Iron Curtain never fell and, curiously, Al Gore was elected president.
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UNDERRATED “The Bisexual” on Hulu: Created by and starring Desiree Akhavan (of the Sundance favorite “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”), this U.K. series is notable for examining a form of sexuality not commonly seen on mainstream TV but more importantly for being exceptionally funny and heartfelt while doing it.
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UNDERRATED “Bonus Family” on Netflix: Sure, maybe a subtitled Swedish TV show isn’t the easiest sell if you’re entertaining out-of-town guests over a long Thanksgiving weekend.
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UNDERRATED Adam Sandler’s “100% Fresh” on Netflix: From a critical perspective, Sandler always doesn’t have the best track record at the movies or on Netflix (though “The Meyerowitz Stories” remains well worth your time).
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UNDERRATED FilmStruck: Another casualty of corporate mergers that’s also seen the death of oddball comedy outlet Super Deluxe, this service teamed with the Criterion Collection to provide a valuable resource for film fans who wanted more than whatever archived leftovers lay among Netflix’s content dumps.
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UNDERRATED ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’ on Netflix: Hosted by Samin Nosrat (who wrote the 2017 cookbook of the same name), this four-part series is a refreshing shift in perspective from the usual travel-oriented food program.
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UNDERRATED “Very British Problems”: Consider this chatty, lightly self-loathing Netflix series should you ever notice the sensation of feeling like “the ugly American” based on recent developments in the news.
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UNDERRATED ‘American Fiasco’: Bearing a title that inspires thoughts of international intrigue, this podcast led by Roger Bennett of NBC’s soccer-centric “Men in Blazers” examines a fascinating national disaster: The U.S.
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UNDERRATED Gabriel Byrne: The Dublin-born character actor has been enjoying a welcome resurgence of late, lending his occasionally grave presence to a “Succession”-esque patriarch in Netflix’s twisty new series “Maniac” and a beleaguered husband in recent Halloween essential “Hereditary.”
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UNDERRATED Nicole Holofcener: A longtime master of richly detailed characters and the often small yet poignant moments that can reveal or upend them, this filmmaker has brought a reliably humane touch to such critically lauded movies as “Lovely & Amazing” and “Please Give” as well as episodes she directed of TV’s “Parks and Recreation,” “Enlightened” and “One Mississippi.”
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UNDERRATED “Lodge 49” on AMC: Created by short story writer Jim Gavin, this oddball series heading into its final few episodes is your ideal companion for the never-ending Southern California summer.
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What’s up and what’s down in pop culture this week. St.
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UNDERRATED The return of ‘Big Mouth’: Arriving with a second season on Oct. 5, this animated series has flown under the radar amid Netflix’s usual avalanche of content, but its comic credentials are solid with voices from Nick Kroll, John Mulaney, Jessi Klein and Jordan Peele telling twisted but also reliably smart and funny stories of the horrors of puberty.
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UNDERRATED Iliza Shlesinger’s ‘Elder Millennial’: Shlesinger is one of the busiest comedians working today, with multiple specials under her belt since winning NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” in 2006, and her latest stand-up show is worth finding amid the usual deluge of comedy specials arriving on Netflix.
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Overrated/Underrated: Celebrating jazz in ‘Playing Changes,’ and let’s mock the Oscars one more time
UNDERRATED “Random Acts of Flyness” on HBO: Created by artist and filmmaker Terence Nance (best known for the revered 2012 feature “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty”), this newcomer is billed as a sketch comedy series, but its methods and material stretch well beyond that format’s usual reach.
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Overrated/Underrated: The unstoppable ‘Carpool Karaoke,’ and consider ‘Hey There, Delilah’ a warning
UNDERRATED The Rob Dixon Trio’s ‘Coast to Crossroads’: An Indianapolis-based saxophonist, Dixon assembled a lethal lineup for his latest album.
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UNDERRATED “Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind”: Given Williams’ impact on pop culture, the documentary treatments were sure to come after his untimely death in 2014.
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UNDERRATED Simon Stålenhag: Get to know the name of this Swedish painter, whose surreal and often haunting images of a future, semi-rural dystopia populated by strange, possibly alien invaders and collapsing technology were just picked up to become an Amazon series called “Tales From the Loop.”
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UNDERRATED “The Endless” (2018): Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, this time-twisting indie film requires setting aside our conditioning toward effects-heavy spectacle for an intimate, strangely affecting story.
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UNDERRATED The ensemble pleasures of “Glow”: When the odds-on Emmy contenders include the grueling second season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the viewer-testing puzzlebox that was the last season of “Westworld,” it’s a genuine treat to spend a half hour or so with each new episode of this Netflix series.
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UNDERRATED Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette”: With Netflix’s habit of releasing stand-up comedy shows with the care of an alpine avalanche, you’d be forgiven for losing track of this new special, which may be the most affecting hour of television you’ll watch this year.
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UNDERRATED “Humor Me” (2018): Sometimes — more and more, lately — life requires a straightforward comedy with strong performances and a tidy sense that everything is going to turn out OK, and that’s where this movie comes in.
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UNDERRATED The World Cup: Fox Sports may be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse after winning the rights to this monthlong event but lost some luster after the U.S. team failed to qualify for the first time since the Reagan administration.
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What’s up and what’s down in pop culture this week.
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UNDERRATED “John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City”: He’s achieved acclaim as a writer on “Saturday Night Live” and “Documentary Now!”
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UNDERRATED John Goodman: With the first season of the new “Roseanne” behind us, maybe we now have the distance to look past the many reads on the politics of the show and the Twitter antics of its star to appreciate the show’s steady center in Dan Conner.
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Overrated/Underrated: A welcome comeback for ‘Harvey Birdman,’ and the global sound of Sons of Kemet
UNDERRATED The return of “Harvey Birdman”: This gloriously strange relic reminds us of a time before Adult Swim was established as a fertile source for twisted comedy and rare Flying Lotus tracks.
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UNDERRATED ‘Big Dreams, Small Spaces’ on Netflix: With summer not-so-slowly creeping around the corner in Los Angeles, it’s an ideal time to grow familiar with this import, which is set in the damp green spaces of Britain.
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UNDERRATED Todd Marcus’ ‘On These Streets’: Ask most pop culture fans for their impressions of West Baltimore, and the response will usually be rooted to HBO’s grim document of the war on drugs, “The Wire.”
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Overrated/Underrated, Summer sneaks: ‘Infinity War’ without end, and two reasons to see ‘Deadpool 2’
UNDERRATED The supporting cast of ‘Deadpool 2’: Violent and vulgar, the first “Deadpool” felt a little like watching a stand-up comic who keeps stopping his set to remind you how edgy his material is.
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UNDERRATED Michael Palin in ‘The Death of Stalin’: Given Armando Iannucci’s track record for acidic political comedy with “Veep” and “In the Loop,” there were no steadier hands to find a pitch-black mix of absurdity and horror in this shockingly funny look at the maneuverings after the fall of the Soviet Union’s strongman.
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UNDERRATED “Killing Eve” on BBC America: Marking an unconventional next move for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who gave us the darkly funny “Fleabag,” this new series finds her adapting the novellas of Luke Jennings for the story of Eve, a previously desk-bound MI-5 agent (Sandra Oh) in pursuit of a cold-blooded international assassin, Villanelle (Jodie Comer).
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UNDERRATED Meltdown Comics: Given how the box office typically looks, few might have guessed you can go out of business serving geek culture, and yet that’s what has happened to this shop on Sunset Boulevard.
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UNDERRATED ‘Tabula Rasa’ on Netflix: A tangled combination of haunted house horror and a missing person mystery, this series was a breakout hit in Belgium, and it should be a first stop for those in need of a spookily atmospheric binge.
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UNDERRATED Bill Camp in “The Looming Tower”: As entertainment, there are more relaxing shows than this Hulu drama about the organizational rivalries and breakdowns that failed to avert the 9/11 attacks.
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UNDERRATED “Ugly Delicious” on Netflix: Just when it seemed television had exhausted various ways to build a show around the genius chef, the genre finds new ground in the hands of Momofuku czar David Chang.
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UNDERRATED ‘The Breadwinner’: Destined to be overshadowed in the animated feature category that’s traditionally dominated by Disney/Pixar, this moving film now streaming on Netflix deserves greater notice regardless of Sunday’s outcome.
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UNDERRATED Chris Rock’s “Tamborine” on Netflix: Maybe it’s a result of the streaming service’s habit of flooding the field with stand-up comedy, but more attention should be given to the first special in 10 years by an undisputed master of the form.
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UNDERRATED The Winter Olympics: Arriving with less fanfare than their summer counterparts with their tidily marketed narratives of American dominance, the Winter Olympics deserve equal notice for the opposite reason.
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UNDERRATED “Somebody Feed Phil” on Netflix: In a food and FOMO-obsessed TV landscape that’s given a show to almost every chef with a passport, there’s something refreshing about this series led by comedy writer and “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal.
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UNDERRATED “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” on Netflix: A sort of companion to the 2015 documentary “Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead” (also streaming on Netflix), this biopic of National Lampoon co-creator Doug Kenney directed by “Wet Hot American Summer’s” David Wain builds a bridge between generations of the oddball vanguard of comedy.
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UNDERRATED “Ingrid Goes West” (2017): Starring Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, this edgy comedy about a stalker energized and enabled by her Instagram feed isn’t quite the biting satire of social media and its many hashtag-adorned “#influencers” we need, but it comes close.
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UNDERRATED Joe Frank: If you moved to Los Angeles at a certain time and of a certain temperament, Joe Frank was the voice in your head offering an immersive, vaguely unsettling welcome.
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UNDERRATED Michael Stuhlbarg in ‘Call Me by Your Name’: How is a presumptive Oscar contender underrated?
