How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend?
If you’re looking for something good on TV, our critic recommends a Comedy Central gem, newly arrived to streaming, and a cooking show beaming with positivity.
April 8, 2021
Every Monday and Friday, Margaret offers hyper-specific viewing recommendations in our Watching newsletter. Read her latest picks below, and
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‘South Side’
When to watch: Now, on HBO Max.
This comedy about a repo company on the South Side of Chicago aired on Comedy Central in 2019 and is now finally streaming. Sultan Salahuddin and Kareme Young star as Simon and K, recent junior college grads who work for Rent-T-Own and amass side hustles. “South Side” is fully hatched right from the pilot: Its characters have funny and original individual voices, its world makes sense, and it crams in more jokes per scene than some shows manage in an entire episode. If you want a comedy that moves easily between farce, one liners and silly whimsy, or if you j
Any northerner worth his salt will fiercely defend his social status in any north-south divide discussions.
That can certainly be the case in the gritty world of film-making, and in particular that of award-winning Manchester-based writer and director Chris Green.
Now aged 53, Chris has come a long way since sitting in his bedroom as a teenager and knocking out tales about gangland life on his typewriter.
He has now founded ‘Shout to the Top’ Productions, and aims to direct some of that seemingly endless London bias up to the North of England with the help of some of the plentiful untapped local talent that is bursting to make an impact both nationally and, hopefully, internationally.
ETHOS (NETFLIX)
This eight-episode series by Turkish director and playwright Berkun Oya follows the intertwined lives of multiple people in Istanbul that spiral around the seriesâ emotional center of Meryem (Ãykü Karayel), a devout Muslim housecleaner who has started seeing a therapist Peri (Defne Kayalar) because of fainting spells. The interaction between the two women provides an entry point to the lives of others around them, most notably Meryemâs brother and his mentally ill wife, and their spiritual leader and his struggles, as well as Periâs soap opera actress friend and her parents, plus Periâs therapist and issues within her romantic life and family.
Perhaps his most famous role to date, Ramsay was a sadistic Northerner who tortured both Sansa and Theon before eventually (spoiler alert) being defeated in battle (led by Jon Snow) and fed to his own dogs (as Sansa watched). He has since appeared in Berlin, I Love You and is due to star in American Gods season two.
Ramsay couldn t have been more different from Simon!
Robert Sheehan - Nathan
Since playing motormouth Nathan, Robert has gone onto huge success. Leaving the show after two series, he starred in
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Mortal Engines and most recently, in
There is something soothing about watching television made wholly for a foreign audience. Not a foreign audience+Netflix. Not a foreign audience+PBS. Not a foreign audience+global cult comedy and/or sci-fi fans. Just, television not made with American audiences (or critics, or trending topic hot takes) top of mind. Not only is all the baggage that accompanies watching television made for a native audience absent, the pressure to participate in any hashtag watercooler conversations about it is rendered moot. As much as I love being intellectually, ideologically invested in the art made for my American eyeballs, getting a chance to let that all go and just enjoy a good serial story can be such a relief.