What I'm Watching: Anora, Blitz, Doctor Odyssey, and More

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve been watching, reading, and writing about lately.

The shows:

• I mainlined all of the most acclaimed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents this fall in order to bring you a ranking of the show’s very best for /Film. If you’ve never watched the 1950s suspense anthology, do yourself a favor and spend an afternoon on it. Hitchcock’s droll, ironic sense of humor (the exact opposite of Rod Serling’s serious sermonizing) during the intros and sign-offs is half the fun, and the best episodes impress with darkly funny twists, raw early performances from future stars, and some phenomenal filmmaking – occasionally from Hitch himself. The series returns to the same narrative wells too often over its lengthy run (there are plenty of killer spouses, bullying cops, unappreciated underlings, and wicked older women), but every now and again, a stone-cold classic breaks through and stops you in your tracks. Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a phenomenally entertaining show that will shatter any illusions you might still have that early television was ruled entirely by good-old-days moral purity.
• I didn’t really expect to like Hysteria!, a new Satanic Panic horror-dramedy from Peacock that starts off with a choppy pilot. The show, which stars Julie Bowen, Bruce Campbell, Anna Camp, and some talented young actors, gains a lot as it goes on, though, and its story about a group of teens who accidentally stoke Satanic cult fears in the ‘80s (thanks to a garage band rebrand gone wrong) is pretty unique. By season’s end, I found myself hoping the show would get renewed so I could spend more time in this world. Here’s my full review for Dread Central.
• If you have not yet heard me preaching the good, dumb news about Doctor Odyssey, take a seat because we’ll be here for a while. This ABC series from Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Baken, and Ryan Murphy (who, yes, I did just say I hate) incepted its way into my life via a stupid-genius ad campaign that kept commercials for a shiny new series -- Grey’s Anatomy by way of The Love Boat – in front of my eyeballs all summer. The series’ big sell is Joshua Jackson, an actor who everyone (myself included) seems to love entering into what others have already described as his Clooney era. The marketing budget paid off: I quickly went from hate-watching to actually watching this show – which, in addition to the two comparisons above, also has shades of House, Baywatch, Nip/Tuck, and 911, though it’s worse than some of those titles. The series about a hot doctor and his two horny nurses saving guest stars from rare diseases and injuries aboard a luxury cruise ship is so tonally strange and surreal that it’s already inspired a bonkers (yet believable!) theory that the ship is actually the afterlife or a COVID fever dream. If you’re not on board yet, I don’t know how else I can sell you on this, so I’ll let this five-star (?!) review from The Guardian do the trick.

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