Sometimes we can behave as if only streaming existed and, before its emergence, we had to spend the nights reading in the dark and only illuminated by the weak flame of an oil lamp. But, for those of us of a certain age, television shaped our cultural imagination, even when sometimes we were not even consumers of some of its proposals.
This is the case of weekend afternoon movies that some channels turned into a container for television movies with clear guidelines: basic filmmaking, interpretations always a point above or below what was dramatically acceptable, and plots with a twisted edge. carried out in the most predictable and sensational way possible.
And, no matter how much television production standards have changed, there are series that know how to capture this decadence and this greatness (because there is something glorious in their audacity).
Liv (Jenna Coleman) and Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) are an idyllic couple. He has a good job at a hotel chain and she, devoted and without a good job, moves with him to New York. When she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful, she agrees to try to reconcile with him during their planned honeymoon. Things get complicated, however, when a co-worker of his shows up at the same hotel where they are staying.
The first episode of Dangerous Paths has absolutely everything: a fabulous apartment, elegantly beautiful protagonists, beautiful landscapes and the drama of good people falling apart. Could the miniseries have four episodes instead of six? Yes. Are you trying too hard to sympathize with Liv? Also. But, with its slow cadence and script twists wrapped in luxurious settings, it offers a certain comfort. As a series it is mediocre, much worse than it could be, but as a television film product it is a ten.
The Catalans are more than aware that the story of Rosa Peral and Albert López, the murderers of Pedro Rodríguez, is real. This does not mean that the story has a telefilm quality. Two lovers united to murder her fiancé, an ex to whom the crime is placed, toxic relationships and a femme fatale at the center that we would think was a fictional invention if it weren’t for the fact that (as much as she tries to control the story) it exists. and she was co-author of a crime for which she is serving 25 years in prison.
What a pity that The Burning Body does not have its own look at the case. He wants to be luxurious, even inventing a beautiful house compared to the most humble home in Peral, but he is left in a no man’s land for Saturday afternoon.
Nicole Kidman in a ridiculous green coat walking through the streets like a zombie while pondering whether her husband, played by Hugh Grant, could be capable of killing a woman (her younger lover, to be exact). Of all the fiction that the Oscar winner for The Hours has produced for television, The Undoing is the worst demonstration of her talent, since in Big Little Lies she was captivating and in Nine Perfect Strangers she was fantastic in a mediocre series.
Not even because of the actors in their worst roles and a direction by Susanne Bier that makes no sense, The Undoing is perfect for hate-watching.
Jeanette in the summer of 1993 was a shy and naive girl. In the summer of 1994 she was the popular girl at school. And in 1995 she is straight up the pariah of her Texas town. The reason? The rumors that surround her and her possible involvement with the disappearance of Kate Wallis, the town’s official cute girl, with an advertising smile, kind to all the neighbors, from a wealthy family and with good grades.
Cruel Summer is an exemplary teenage thriller, which for a matter of theme and budget cannot escape the telefilm aroma although it has a stimulating social and character reading as the plot progresses. It’s smart, with Chiara Aurelia and Olivia Holt as two good leads, and it makes exemplary use of ’90s music to narrate Jeanette’s various life moments.
It has had a second season with a cast renewal and set at the end of the decade. Isabella arrives new to a town in Washington, where Megan takes her in and becomes her friend. But when homemade porn tapes and a dead body turn up, they both become murder suspects. She is not on the same level as the first.
The ideal life is a recurring thread among a few of these productions. Hannah (Jennifer Garner) is a ceramic artist who lives in a designer house literally on the sea and with a gentleman-jawed fiancé (who is played by Nikolaj Koster Waldau from Game of Thrones for a reason). When she disappears without a trace after a raid at the technology company where she works, Hannah is left alone with her teenage stepdaughter who can’t stand her and the need to find answers.
Reese Witherspoon, who has specialized in acquiring the rights to the novels she reads and in which she sees potential, produces this Apple TV thriller that goes from more to less but, at least, has a good protagonist at the forefront of the story . One can always trust Jennifer Garner’s dimples.
The Devil in Ohio (Netflix) featuring a girl who flees a cult to unsettle her adoptive family and usurp the biological daughter’s position in the family; Do you know who she is? (Netflix) in which a daughter discovers that her mother may be a lethal murderer while they are eating so calmly in a restaurant with a murderer; Duality (Netflix) in which two twin sisters continually exchange lives, without their partners or children being aware, and one day one of the two disappears; The Silence (Netflix), a deplorable thriller where the script cannot hold a candle to a kid who is released from prison after serving time for murdering his parents; o Appearances (Apple TV) which includes the typical plot of the amnesiac woman trying to understand what her life was like.
