‘The Serpent’ Fails to Illuminate a Dark Crime Story: TV Review

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticFrom its title, “Sasquatch” sounds like the story of Bigfoot — and at the start, it looks that way too. The three-part documentary series begins with journalist David Holthouse recounting the time he visited a cannabis farm and overheard the tale of three workers who had been devoured by the legendary beast.“Sasquatch” shares with its most prominent on-screen voice, Holthouse, an abiding interest in looking beneath the surface of the seemingly ordinary.

Danielle Turchiano Senior Features Editor, TVA few years ago, before director-producer Joe Berlinger embarked upon making a docu series and narrative feature about Ted Bundy, he asked his daughters what they knew about the serial killer.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Big Shot” doesn’t seem to fit among the most-heralded new series on Disney Plus. Unlike “The Mandalorian” or “WandaVision” or even another family-oriented sports series like “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” it is not attached to any existing intellectual property.But calling it original might be a stretch.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Cruel Summer” has set up an intriguing challenge for itself. Each episode of the new Freeform drama series depicts a single day over the course of three years — 1993, 1994 and 1995 — in order to convey the long-tail effects of a kidnapping.

Joseph Siravo, best known for his roles as Tony Soprano’s father in The Sopranos, Fred Goldman in American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson and stage musical Jersey Boys, has died aged 64, according to family.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe fissures racism has carved into American life, and American lives, are so surreally deep that to convey them, artists must use the tools of exaggeration that genre provides.

“Doing something great is overrated,” a cynical and embittered Mare Sheehan says at a crucial moment in HBO’s “Mare Of Easttown,” an outstanding and deeply human drama and crime procedural.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticErin Brockovich’s personal story is elementally compelling: That’s why the movie about her works so well. As played by Julia Roberts in 2000’s “Erin Brockovich,” she is a crusader in the legal arena, an advocate who’s less self-taught than simply intuitive.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticRaoul Peck is a director who feels deep and evident comfort bringing together different manners of storytelling. His 2016 documentary about James Baldwin, “I Am Not Your Negro,” was notable not merely for the brilliance and insight of Baldwin but for its blending of the late author’s recollections with narration and explication of the times in which Baldwin lived and the figures who were his contemporaries.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticGreg Berlanti’s domination of the CW continues with “Kung Fu” — and the new drama he executive produces is proof positive that the super-producer is using his powers for good. The show is a revival of a drama starring David Carradine that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1975.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe 1990 robbery of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains a part of that institution’s life to this day, as empty frames hang on the wall marking the spots from which paintings were removed. The case remains unsolved — vexingly so.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn recent years, class has been the great unspoken element of TV family comedies.The genre that gave us the Bundys, the Conners and the Simpsons — all families who were whose neighborhoods lay an unbridgeable distance from great wealth — had moved, in the past decade, onto “Modern Family’s” Pritchetts and “Black-ish’s” Johnsons.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIt begins with the accent.

For the second season of FX's American Crime Story franchise, Tom Rob Smith used a reverse-chronological structure to trace Andrew Cunanan'sTalented Mr. Ripley-style journey from con artist with identity issues to road-tripping murderer.

The Staircase was one of the first true-crime documentaries to break out into mainstream culture when it was released in 2004.

Deadline has confirmed that a new Transformers feature is in the works at Paramount though this new project is said to be separate from its main Transformer franchise, which includes the five installments directed by Michael Bay as well as the Bumblebee spin-off.

Adam B.

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Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticWhat is it about the Sherlock Holmes story that keeps us coming back? Part of it, surely, is the fantasy of all-knowingness — the inherently compelling idea that a single person can contain within his skull the key to cracking all mysteries.