Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV

We're thrilled Devindra could step over from Engadget and Slashfilm to talk to us about Utopia , Gillian Flynn's reimagining of a belovedly culty UK original. Sarah was less thrilled by the show itself, which she's probably bailing on after only two episodes, but the rest of the panel had good things to say about the story, the acting (especially John Cusack), and how fundamentally weird it is tha...

Fox's newest soap opera places Kim Cattrall at the head of a televangelist family that -- and you're never going to believe this -- are not as polished and pious as they appear on TV. First-time guest Meredith Haggerty joins us to discuss whether this is a good use of La Cattrall's many talents! Around The Dial takes us through Sing On! , Just Shoot Me! , and Netflix's videogame docs-series High S...

Reality-TV vet Andy Dehnart has seen a LOT of unscripted crap in his decades in the field, so we're glad he brought his expertise to our discussion of this unprecedented time in the genre's history: the home-shot, socially-distanced versions/spin-offs of some of our old "favorites," plus some new DIY unscripted stuff tailored to pandemic "set" safety. We talked about the challenges facing reality...

Netflix's latest space drama takes a mother, played by Hilary Swank, to Mars, to try to balance work and family; Inkoo Kang of THR joins us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through The Boys , 90 Day Fiancé , and For All Mankind . We ponder whether The X-Files 's "Humbug" should burrow into The Canon; then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, it's on to a Game Time that reads us all...

We're off this week but we've glued together three listener-suggested topics from our Patreon supporter bonus podcast Extra Extra Hot Great. EEHG 055: Series Starter Kits Nicole tasked us: Each of you pick a show and then give your 5 most essential or favorite episodes from that show and discuss why they are in your top five. EEHG 059: The Can'tnon Seth White figured since this feed is a little lo...

Podcaster and Lifetime-movie-ologist Brandon is going deep on not just Ruthless Realtor (we would give you a plot summary, but it's...that, with a dash of Bad Ronald ) but the evolution of Lifetime movies and the cultural anxieties they reflect; whether we'd ghost a weirdo who brought us a brisket; and why nobody seems to get a second take, or any direction. Then we staged an Around The Dial with...

TV Guide senior editor Malcolm Venable is here to talk about Lovecraft Country , HBO's series imagining of Matt Ruff's novel -- and why everything from the show's look and feel to the acting to Jonathan Majors's believable charisma drew us in. Then we drove our woody wagon Around The Dial with stops at Ted Lasso , Little Voice , and The Great Heist before Rebecca's Extra Credit tasked us with cast...

Before they were the original co-hosts of The Great British Bake Off , Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins were comedy partners, and their new project Hitmen , imported from Sky to Peacock, returns them to their roots. Did it slay us? We'll talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through An American Pickle , Hard Knocks , and Star Trek: Lower Decks . For his Extra Credit, Taylor Cole -- inspired by The G...

The latest British Commonwealth addition to HBOMax's library is the BAFTA-nominated Frayed , and Christina Tucker joins us to discuss whether its riches-to-rags protagonist is as compelling as the world its star-creator, Sarah Kendall, has built around her. Around The Dial takes us through Immigration Nation , Coroner , Desert Hearts (now streaming on Showtime!), the Happy Endings Zoom reunion, an...

Apparently TBS is not just for "very funny" shows anymore, as we learned from the premiere of Lost Resort , a new series with the bones of a reality show and the shredded guts of untreated trauma. The Verge's TV and film critic Joshua Rivera joins us to discuss what entertainment value its producers think the show has, and whether they are right. Around The Dial takes us through Married At First S...

The But Why Tho? podcast's Kate Sánchez is here to help the panel figure out why Killer Camp -- the CW's horror-trope competitive-reality show -- and others like it don't quite work. Is it because horror-movie tropes and American-summer-camp tropes clash (especially as embodied by a bunch of British nationals)? Is it that an organic timeline for solving the mystery isn't possible on a network show...

When is a movie fair game as a topic on a TV topic? When it premieres on a streaming service, of course! First-time guest Alanna Bennett takes a break from writing Roswell, New Mexico to join us to talk about the latest Lonely Island Classic. Around The Dial takes us through Little Voice , the original 1985 CBC miniseries adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables , Cheers , Close Enough , and the HAHA Aw...

Esteemed recent guests Stephanie Green, Dan Cassino, and Richard Lawson each picked out an episode for your three panelists to watch for Episode 310's Forcening. First into the breach was David T. Cole, ordered by Stephanie to watch a fourth-season Real Housewives Of Potomac episode involving purse-smacking, (alleged) sausage-sucking, and how long after the stated start time one should arrive at a...

Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell play enthusiastic but perhaps slightly self-deluded aspiring Icelandic pop stars in Netflix's new film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga , so who better than Eurovision devotee Mark Blankenship to join us to talk about it? Around The Dial takes us to Search Party , Hot Mess House , Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels , Unsolved Mysteries , and Outcry . Dave...

Vanity Fair 's Richard Lawson returns to the pod for the first time since Mark 1 to talk about an equally old-timey take on a beloved character: HBO's dark take on Perry Mason before he became the gold standard of TV defense attorneys. Is this imagining of his life before Raymond Burr canonical? Did we need to see that level of post-violence gore? And does EVERY cell of this show's being hate the...

Production Note: Dave did a bad copy-paste in his notes and credited the wrong Dave in Game Time. Dave is a bad Dave. Dave LARSON is not a bad Dave, he is a good Dave and the author of Viva Lost Wages! Apparently unsatisfied by dominating the world of scripted film, Ryan Reynolds has branched out into alternative TV programming by creating a new ABC game show called Don't , hosted by Adam Scott. W...

Stephanie Early Green returns to talk about Trackers , the 2019 South African "thriller" that Cinemax has imported. Unfortunately, the only place it led the EHG panel was Dullsville, despite big game, gun battles, and the apparent love child of Christian Bale and Randall Batinkoff...but we did talk about the "COVID programming trough" that's rapidly approaching for all TV fans. Later, we went Arou...

The announcement that Donald Trump was creating a new branch of the military called the Space Force was swiftly followed by the announcement that Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, the creator and star of The Office , would re-team on Space Force , a sitcom about said branch. Should that have occurred? Now that the first season has dropped on Netflix, John Ramos has returned to discuss the matter. Aro...

We're welcoming Vanity Fair TV critic Sonia Soraiya to the guest chair to talk about the shorter, neater, Julia-Roberts-less-but-still-better second season of Amazon's Homecoming -- from sensible episode lengths to overacting extras to how TV has conditioned us to react to mystery shows. We went Around The Dial with Mrs. America , Run , Nadiya's Time To Eat , and a rare successful Zoom episode fro...

Fox is welcoming summer with a very silly American Gladiators take on tag -- yes, the playground game -- so who better than Daniel MacEachern, veteran of our Holey Moley episode last year, to join us to discuss it? Around The Dial clicks through Snowpiercer , Katy Keene , Call The Midwife (CW: there are clips and you will cry), The Last Dance , Killing Eve , and a preview of Holey Moley 's Season...

We hope Bobby Krut agrees to come BACK to Extra Hot Great after putting him through the unrelenting barrage of anguish that is HBO's latest limited series, I Know This Much Is True . Sure, the acting is good; yeah, it's impressive that Mark Ruffalo plays twins; not one of us is planning to keep watching, because there's never a break or a moment of levity, and even Dave's ice-cream-fixins-bar meta...

Hollywood , the latest product of Ryan Murphy's Netflix deal, has hit the streaming service. What did we think about his ahistorical take on marginalized voices in the film industry? Kevin O'Keeffe joins us to discuss! Around The Dial clicks through Betty , Never Have I Ever , The Circle Brasil , and Masterpiece 's new procedural Baptiste . Erica uses her Extra Credit to get us to pitch new Big Mo...

Captain America and Lady Mary did their best, but Allison and the rest of the panel still found legal procedural Defending Jacob guilty of crappy pacing in the second degree; aggravated TV tropes; and felony possession of moody blue gels with intent to distribute. Were the regulars able to get Al into a diversion program before she felt obliged to finish the season? We also went Around The Dial wi...

In an absence of series premieres any of us could manage to get excited about, Dave came up with a new format: the ABCs of TV! With our beloved Joe Reid, we go around the horn, each naming an important TV person, show, feature, or just THING about TV that matches up with each letter of the alphabet. Then, it's on to a Game Time made for cuffing season. Did any of our letter picks line up with your...

Dan Rogge bought a ticket for our latest episode on HBO's Run , a "comedy thriller" about college sweethearts trying to reunite. Does the pleasure of watching Merritt Wever and Archie Punjabi at work outweigh the credibility issues? Do phones in the Run -verse never need charging? And is Rich Sommer TV's worst husband? We super-sized Around The Dial with stops at The Baker And The Beauty , Bosch ,...