NBC’s ‘The Endgame’ Depends Upon a Criminal Queen With Almost Too Many Answers to Be Compelling: TV Review

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticAs TV expands beyond its traditional borders and attracts talent that would otherwise typically stick to films, the troubling trend of people describing their shows as “a [x]-hour movie” refuses to die. It’s never quite clear what they mean, but for whatever reason, this inherent snobbery about the medium of television persists from some of the most prominent people making it.

Spoilers for “Fresh” follow. Watch the film on Hulu and then come back for seconds.Where did “Fresh” come from?It came from a few different things. It came from wanting to attempt to write a horror movie.And growing up, watching them, loving them, watching them every weekend with my best friend in elementary and middle school, and then getting too scared to watch them and having nightmares and being like, Okay, now, I can just watch the trailer and read all the spoilers but still loving the ride that a horror movie brings you on, wanting to kind of put a different genre spin, or a tone spin on it, and being inspired by this tone that’s emerged that kind of says, “It’s okay to have everything if it’s grounded and you believe these characters.” In real life, it’s funny, it’s scary.

Fans of the Royal family will probably know by now that The Queen doesn’t eat garlic, likes to keep her breakfast cereal fresh in tupperware containers, and sometimes enjoys a gin and Dubonnet cocktail before she tucks into her lunch. Well, why ever not we say? Especially if you can have a nap.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticThe blunt opening title card of “Shining Vale” feels like a test: “Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression,” it reads, seeming to signal the beginning of a clunky show about Women and Depression — at least until the next sentence appears onscreen. “Women are also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon,” it says, a immediate and deliberate wink of self-awareness at an audience that might’ve already tried to write the show off.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticA few episodes into “Our Flag Means Death,” aristocrat turned pirate ship captain Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) admires his spoils with a frisson of glee. “Why can’t one be a gentleman and a pirate?” he muses aloud to no one in particular, before deciding to embrace that inherent contradiction as his new moniker.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticTwo long years after Netflix first dropped its “Tiger King” docuseries, the first scripted stab at retelling the wild story of warring big cat enthusiasts Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin has landed, as was inevitable. “Joe vs. Carole,” premiering March 3 on Peacock, stars John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon as Joe and Carole as they vow to take the other down.

The Queen has returned to her royal duties nine days after testing positive for Covid-19, Buckingham Palace have confirmed. Her Majesty, 95, felt well enough to speak to foreign diplomates after postponing a number of engagements last week. One Tuesday 1 March, the 95 year old received two audiences from His Excellency Mr Carles Jordana Madero and His Excellency Mr Kedella Younous Hamidi.

Michael Keaton nearly missed out on winning an important honour at Sunday’s 2022 SAG Awards!

Michael Keaton nearly missed out on winning an important honor at Sunday's 2022 SAG Awards!The actor won the award for Outstanding Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series for his role in, the Hulu miniseries about the American opioid epidemic. Presenter Salma Hayek joked that she had «stage fright» as Keaton raced to the stage to accept his award. «Sorry, quick trip to the men's room,» he joked.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticDo you have to have watched the History Channel’s “Vikings” series in order to fully appreciate “Vikings: Valhalla”? For this newcomer, at least, the answer is…well, yes and no.The eight-episode season of “Valhalla,” which dropped on Netflix on Feb. 25, takes place 125 years after the events of the original “Vikings” series, with Christianity taking over Norse traditions and England’s power on the rise.

Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic“The Dropout” knows what it has in Elizabeth Holmes, the real-life enigma who managed to con the biggest power players in Silicon Valley and beyond that she, and she alone, was the future of technology in health care. With her wide-set eyes and impossibly husky voice, Holmes emerged from the pack of bland bros in Patagonia vests as the kind of uniquely, perversely compelling figure that Hollywood has never been able to resist for long.

here.The Concorde G-BOAC is said to have carried the Queen and Princess Diana on numerous journeys as well as being one of only three remaining of its kind in the UK, according to Mixmag.Meanwhile, a separate rave at Manchester’s Victoria Baths is set to take place later this week.The series, dubbed “Red Bull Unlocked” will kick off on February 26.Headlining the night is Afrodeutsche and A Guy Called Gerald. Other local artists also performing include, Mr Scruff, DJ Paulette, Luke Unabomber, Annabel Fraser, Gina Breeze, Ruf Dug and Blasha & Allatt.Victoria Baths was the host of famous rave nights in the city during the 1980s called ‘Wet’, which were created by the same promoters as The Haçienda club.The 1000-capacity venue will use eight different rooms to transform the location into a rave venue.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticKnowing that Netflix’s “Cat Burglar” was created by Charlie Brooker of “Black Mirror,” and that the “Black Mirror” take on a choose-your-own-adventure episode (2018’s “Bandersnatch“) represents one of that show’s biggest horrors, I kept waiting for “Cat Burglar” (out today on Netflix) to take some terrible turn of existential dread. But after playing through several “Cat Burglar” scenarios, the opposite proved true.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticWhen I say it took me a few episodes to get into a show, it usually means that the show itself needed a few episodes to figure its world out before it was able to draw me into it. When I say that about “Severance,” though, it’s because the beginning of the show’s first season is as unnerving as it is bleak.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticBy the time “Space Force” premiered in 2020, it already felt outdated. Even with a starry cast including Steve Carell and John Malkovich, and all the money a Netflix greenlight can afford, its soft jokes about a Trumpian president run amok landed with barely any impact. Carell, who co-created “Space Force” with “The Office” producer Greg Daniels, once played one of the most famous bosses in TV history.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorTransforming Margot Robbie into Harley Quinn for “The Suicide Squad” often took two people, with makeup artist Heba Thorisdottir leading the way by channeling a rock star. Thorisdottir is nominated for a Make-up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Award for best contemporary makeup in a feature-length motion picture.In Warner Bros.’ summer release, Harley Quinn and the prisoners of Belle Reve set out on a mission to destroy Jotunheim, a Nazi-era prison and laboratory in South America.Director James Gunn gave Thorisdottir complete creative control on the looks with one stipulation: “As long as they were dirty and gritty.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticAs has become Olympics tradition, NBC has spent every night of its primetime coverage unveiling the stories of top U.S. athletes like it’s selling a weepy drama about their lives. Figure skater Nathan Chen came to Beijing to banish bad memories of his last botched Olympics, the humiliating clip of which NBC will whip out at a moment’s notice to underline his plight.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticNo matter what it turned out to actually be, “Bel-Air” was always going to raise some eyebrows by its premise alone. As every network and streaming service scrambles to make the best (or at least most) use of their in-house IP, a grim reboot of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” for Peacock sounds like something ripped straight from a “30 Rock” joke about NBC trying to make it 1990 again through science or magic.