October tv shows.

Television watched in October of the present year. 

TV SHOWS

LIVE ACTION

- Midnight Mass. Mike Flanagan (show runner of  ‘The haunting of Hill house’ and ‘The haunting of Bly Manor’) now gives us an unconfessed adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot’ —oh, sorry: A tale about religion an vampirism in a sleepy small town —oh, sorry, Spoilers! 

Ahem. 

Midnight Mass is an horror tv show in what has now become Flanagan’s signature style, for both good and bad. Good in giving us a slow-paced, ponderous drama with supernatural punctuations, and long reflections on faith and mortality. But bad in that —first, it’s the kind of genre story that seems to think it’s inventing themes that are by now past self-parody, and in that the tone risks becoming pretentious more than once. 

All in all, an uneven but not altogether uninteresting tv show. 

- Explained, season 3. The very entertaining docu-series continues —short informative capsules about a variety of subjects. Like most of their kind, they can even be useful provided they are not taken as a be-all educative tool, but rather as springboards for longer conversations and researches. In that vein, recommended. 

- Everybody hates Chris, season 1. I always find it hard to recap sit-coms, be they cartoonish, or (relatively) gritty, as is the case with this one. I think I can best sum it up as: Very interesting, but it feels stretched as a tv show, might have been much more interesting as a movie. 

ANIMATED

- Golden Kamuy, season 1. Terrific adaptation of Satoru Noda’s manga, being an adventure yarn with plenty of action —and a healthy dose of homoerotism and sensuality. Somewhat toned down compared to the gritty original, still more than worth a look. 

- Housamo: Lil’ Salomon’s Golden Week. Short and sweet snippets detailing the relationships between assorted minor characters. Charming and, for lack of a better word: Fluffy. 

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