Amazing Classic
The new part of Elena Ferrante’s adaptation, the Korean version of “La Casa de papel”, the unbridled chronicle of a Swedish publishing house… We tell you all about these new releases, to watch on TV or on the platforms.
On TV channels
p “The Tourist” (France 2)
It starts as in Duel by Spielberg (1971). By a hellish chase between a big truck and a vintage car in the middle of the desert. Except that here, Australia replaced California, and a beige Mazda 323 the original red Plymouth Valiant… Then boom, it’s the crash. When he wakes up, the driver of the Mazda does not remember anything. All we know about him is that he is handsome to die for. Played by Jamie Dorman (serial killer in The Fall and sado master of 50 Shades of Gray), the mysterious amnesiac captivates Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald, solar), a police officer in training, complexed by her little rolls and betrothed to a caricature of a macho… Read more
s “The Prodigious Friend”, season 3 (Canal+)
Italy, 1970. The two best friends have grown up. Backwards. More rivals than ever… Engaged to the brilliant Pietro, Elena has just published a successful first novel and is evolving in the intellectual circles of Pisa. Once erased, the blonde radiates: everything succeeds. In order to escape the blows of her husband Stefano, Lila now raises her son alone in a miserable neighborhood of Naples. The volcanic brunette seems extinct: as if alienated by her condition as a worker at the local mortadella factory. Elena is “the one who flees” and Lila “the one who stays”… Read more
r “Yellowstone”, season 1 (TMC)
In 1990, Kevin Costner shocked America with his “pro-Indian” western, Dancing with the wolves. Thirty years later, in the service of showrunner Taylor Sheridan, he becomes in Yellowstone the incarnation of a dream on the edge of the precipice, that of a wild West with a pure soul, always contradicted by its intrinsic violence, and now surrounded by capitalist vultures. Face carved out of rock, the 67-year-old actor is John Dutton, the patriarch of a Montana ranch, whose vast lands stoke both the native community’s desire for repair and the urbanizing appetites of big business. … Read more
On the platforms
q “Umbrella Academy”, season 3 (Netflix)
Umbrella Academy turns in circles and does not hide it. Since its launch, this funny superheroic series has taken up the same ultra-classic premonition each season to raise the tension: the end of the world is coming… soon. In its third chapter, released by Netflix on June 22, it is a kind of black hole (a kugelblitz, to be precise) that threatens to suck our planet into nothingness. Only the Umbrella Academy, a band of nickel-plated feet with superpowers, can save the furniture. Or, rather, to repair her blunders because, as often, she is herself at the origin of the disaster… Read more
q “Love & Anarchy”, season 2 (Netflix)
A second season is a plebiscite for Love & Anarchy, this Swedish series that we discovered at the end of 2020 and which, even with its comic-cultural tone à la Ten percent, seemed to have to remain a UFO. Joyfully feminist, the first eight episodes led to a joyful liberation of a bourgeois mother, Sofie, a specialist in the digital revolution, who rediscovered the fantasy of desire with Max, a young computer scientist. The daring challenges that they threw themselves passionately upset their lives and that of the small publishing house that employed them, precisely confronted with the need to change everything… Read more
oh “Money Heist: Korea” (Netflix)
Last December, Netflix was definitely saying adios at Bella ciao and the masks of Dalí, with the clap of the end of The casa de papel. But, aware of the large fan base available to the Spanish series (five seasons on the clock), the platform is now launching its Korean version: Money Heist: Korea. Script, costumes, character names… nothing changes – the interpreter from Denver even goes so far as to resume his dunce laughter from the back of the class – or almost: the plot takes place here in 2025, when the two Koreas attempt a historic rapprochement and set up a common economic zone (ZEC)… Read more
q “Alone with the Bee” (Netflix)
Whether they are big children like Mr. Bean or walking disasters like the spy Johnny English, the characters played by Rowan Atkinson are invariably clumsy, not to say downright silly, with a candor that is both appalling and moving. Twenty-seven years after the disappearance of Bean, the British comedian returns to the series in Alone in front of the bee, a short format put online by Netflix on Friday June 24. He embodies Trevor, again a good guy a bit simpleton, responsible for guarding a luxurious villa during the holidays of its owners, a couple of contemptuous new rich. Here, the smallest vase costs thousands and cents, they warn. Trevor, pushed to the limit by a quarrelsome insect, will obviously destroy everything… Read more
q “Chloe” (Prime Video)
“Chloe,” the title of Alice Seabright’s miniseries, is haunted by other names — Rebecca, Marnie. Hitchcock’s troubled and disturbing heroines, like fairies out of the asylum, looked into the first creation of this young English author-director, who went through the writers’ room of Sex Education. Traumatized, borderline godmothers – persecuted or paranoid? This is precisely the question that we ask ourselves about the protagonist of Chloé, who by the way isn’t called Chloe but Becky, unless it’s Sasha, the nickname she uses to infiltrate, with creepy ease, a group of socialites Bristol, in search of answers on the suicide of one of them, the famous Chloe… Read more
oh “You Don’t Know Me”, miniseries (Netflix)
A drug dealer in the suburbs of London was shot and killed, and everything points to a young man from his neighborhood, so far uneventful. Hero (that’s his name!) Yet decides to prove his innocence to the jury by telling a story: that of his meeting with the mysterious Kyra, an inveterate reader who derailed his life. And here we go for the flashbacks. Vertiginous portrait of an unreliable narrator? Variation on the tales of Scheherazade? A legal thriller set against a background of gang warfare? None of these promises are kept in this endless drama with artificial stakes, which desperately squints towards The Night Of. Too much talk, too much sentimentalism, and the dated myth of the savior and the damsel in distress to top it off… From the series by the meter, without flavor or personality. resume
p “Loot” (Apple TV+)
In twenty years of marriage, Molly Novak has seen her husband, a penniless computer scientist, become a high-tech billionaire. When she realizes he is cheating on her, she divorces and finds herself propelled to third richest woman in the United States. To kill time, Molly decides to get involved in a charitable foundation… We expected better from Alan Yang (Parks and Recreation, Master of None), one of the most inspired young comedy writers of the moment. The formidable Maya Rudolph is surrounded by an endearing cast, but loot (“booty”) begins with a collection of clichés about the disconnection of the ultra-rich, before turning into an office comedy mixed with romance, without ever really choosing sides. PL
