‘Super Pumped’ Tells the Story of Uber, Minus the Horsepower: TV Review

Welcome back to Bingeworthy—a podcast about all things television, streaming, what we watch, and how we watch it. Currently, we’re in a new accelerated, oversaturated age of TV, the second era of streaming, and the epoch of #TooMuchContent.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Minx,” a new comedy on HBO Max, has a plot that’s all about reversing the gaze — looking as pruriently at men as media often looks at women. And the form of the show follows suit.In order to tell the story of Minx, a new magazine launching in this show’s depiction of a swinging 1970s, this series refuses to hold back, diving deep into a curiosity about the male form that’s as gently inquisitive as it is prurient.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticHulu’s new limited series “The Girl From Plainville,” which premiered at the SXSW festival on March 12, faces, and surmounts, an interesting challenge: Its two lead characters have a relationship based almost entirely on text messages. The sight of someone with their face buried in a phone is hardly novel, nor is it compelling — at least not enough to sustain an eight-episode drama.The question of whether “The Girl From Plainville,” based on the real-life manslaughter trial of Michelle Carter after she encouraged her boyfriend over text to kill himself in 2014, really needed all of those episodes to tell its story is a fair one.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn the new documentary series “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” the late pop artist’s re-created voice sounds eerie and uncanny — human but not. It’s aesthetically jarring, and a fitting tribute.Director Andrew Rossi, with the permission of Warhol’s estate, used an artificial-intelligence program to reproduce his speaking voice, so that “Warhol” can read aloud from the diaries he kept.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIt’s hard, at first, to see what drew Renée Zellweger to the lead role of “The Thing About Pam.”Zellweger, in an attempt to resemble the real-life convicted murderer Pam Hupp, forces herself to act through a shroud of body prosthetics. The show’s writers have stripped away subtext, dimming Zellweger’s sparky comic timing.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticJohn C. Reilly first shows up in “Winning Time” post-coitally, musing about the ways in which his favorite activity has pleasures not unlike his second-favorite. “God damn,” he muses to his sleeping mistress, his gaze slightly tangent to the camera’s gaze.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterAll past and future seasons of the Ryan Murphy shows “American Crime Story” and “American Horror Story” and all three seasons of “Pose” will soon be available to stream on Hulu.While all past seasons of “American Horror Story” are currently available on Hulu, both “American Crime Story” and “Pose” had previously only been available on Netflix due to a deal between Netflix and studio 20th Television. All three seasons of both “ACS” and “Pose” will become available on Hulu on March 7, while all future seasons of both “AHS” and “ACS” will then stream exclusively on Hulu.“AHS” has been renewed through Season 13 at FX, with Season 11 due to debut this fall.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticNetflix’s new drama “Pieces of Her” kicks off with an act of violence that predicts much of what will lie ahead: It is startling for its randomness.In this series’ first episode, a mother and daughter (Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote) are caught up in a public mass shooting, the denouement of which reveals Collette’s character Laura to have a surprising, unforeseen boldness. The attention Laura’s heroism receives threatens to upset a delicate balance, one that Heathcote’s Andy hasn’t even realized exists.Soon enough, Andy, whose adult life has been in a state of suspended animation to care for the ailing Laura, is thrust into the world, ordered by Laura to leave their town, where they have kept a purposefully low profile existence, and go into hiding.

When it was announced that Quentin Tarantino would be lending his voice for the narration of the new Showtime series, “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” people were rightfully surprised. Tarantino doesn’t just act or narrate random projects.

Andrew Garfield suits up sharp in a pinstripe ensemble for the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday (February 27) at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif.

Uma Thurman may have “nailed” her role as Arianna Huffington, Uber’s “first woman to sit on the board,” but she certainly doesn’t feel that way.

For fans of Showtime’s drama Billions, the upcoming Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber may familiar in more ways than one – from the story of a striving entrepreneur looking to shake up their industry, to some of the talent that appears throughout the second. During a TCA panel on Wednesday, executive producers Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Beth Schacter said that they also felt the similarities upon depicting the rise of Uber for Showtime.

It may not technically take place in the same television universe, but Bobby Axelrod from “Billions” could totally guest star on Showtime’s “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.” The new show from “Billions” masterminds Brian Koppelman and David Levien, adapted from the book by Mike Isaac, has similar propulsive energy. Once again taking place in the world of big business, it features characters who often thrive in what could politely be called a moral gray area, propelled by sharp, witting writing and captivating performances.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is promoting his new show, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere is surely enough “Law & Order” content in existence to program an entire network, seven nights a week, with reruns. Spinoff “Special Victims Unit” has run continuously since 1999; the flagship series aired from 1990 to 2010.

Super Pumped: A Battle for Uber, an adaption of tech reporter and author Mike Issac's book based on the rise and fall of Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick. Starring as the infamous tech-bro, the impressive cast and crew also features award-winning talent in the likes of , Hank Azaria, Elizabeth Shue, and Quentin Tarantino in a narrator role.This is part of Showtime's new anthology series, Super Pumped, with a season two already in the works that will be focused on the working relationship between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.Read on for all the details on the new series that captures the messy story of the well-known ride-sharing app.What can be best described as a “ripped from the headlines” moment, the series' eight episodes will focus on the true story of the founder, with an emphasis on the powerful business folk who worked alongside the popular ride-sharing app.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe CW’s “All American” has had a successful run — a notably successful one, on a network dominated by superhero programming — taking on stories about high school football. Now, a spinoff shifts the action to college baseball and tennis, but keeps the source material’s focus on Black youth.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe new documentary series “Lincoln’s Dilemma” begins and ends outside of Abraham Lincoln’s era — opening with footage of the siege on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and concluding only weeks later, with the journalist Jelani Cobb’s observation that the military “occupied” Washington to keep Joe Biden safe at his inauguration. But the point this series makes is that, indeed, we’re hardly outside Lincoln’s moment at all — that the tenuousness and the peril of his era persist, as does the fundamentally unresolved question of race in this country.Directed by Jacqueline Olive and Barak Goodman and executive produced by, among others, former HBO chief Richard Plepler, “Lincoln’s Dilemma” uses various techniques to illustrate the life and legacy of the 16th president, and the problems he faced while in office.

Quentin Tarantino is making the jump to TV! Well, not as a filmmaker. And not really as an actor.

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Pulp Fiction) has been set as the narrator for the first season of Showtime’s Super Pumped anthology series chronicling The Battle for Uber. The project reunites the Oscar-winning filmmaker with his Kill Bill star Uma Thurman, who was tapped to play Arianna Huffington.