What I'm Watching: Immaculate, Irish Wish, 911, and More

Plus: Cunk on Earth, Leave the World Behind, a blasphemous French play, an underrated Twilight Zone episode, and more.

Here’s a quick rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week:

The shows:

• I tried to watch Cunk on Earth while my partner was sleeping and ended up waking him up approximately 20 times while trying to contain my laughter over this stupid, hilarious faux-educational mockumentary from Netflix and the BBC. While some subjects discussed in fictional Philomena Cunk’s (Diane Morgan) expansive history of world civilization are certainly easier to laugh about – and more appropriate to joke about – than others, the series is wildly funny overall. It works thanks to Morgan’s straight-faced delivery of an endless string of absurd lines, and thanks to the real-life experts who try their hardest to generously answer the fictional dummy’s inane questions.
• Speaking of dumb-fun shows, the first responder drama 911, which has spent the past six seasons alternating between camp, tragedy, and Angela Bassett-led copaganda, has just made the move from FOX to ABC. The new network looks good on 911, as the show is a bit funnier, a bit looser, and as ridiculous and unrealistic as ever. Plus, it’s leaning into some writing choices that fans – and (spoilers in the link) castmates – have been wanting to see for several seasons. As a guy named Sean who worked at my local LUSH once put it, “Must a show actually be good to be good?” Too true, Sean.

The movies:

• Netflix original Leave the World Behind is the first movie Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail has made in nearly a decade, and while the tense, oddly-shaped apocalyptic drama doesn’t fully deliver on its build-up, I enjoyed many of the same eccentricities that likely put other viewers off. Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts are great here as a rich white couple who bristle when confronted by the Black owners of their rental house (Mahershala Ali, excellent as ever, and Myha’la Herrold, the most captivating actor of the whole ensemble), who tell them that apocalyptic events are happening outside. Esmail’s knack for dizzying shots and cynical, stylized speeches is on display here in a movie that never once left me bored. It says a lot about Leave the World Behind that I think it would make a great double feature with both The Happening (which sucks) and Knock at the Cabin (which rocks).
• Sydney Sweeney’s nun horror flick Immaculate (which she produced and shaped in addition to starring) has a lot on its mind when it comes to bodily autonomy, religious iconography, and patriarchal structures, but parts of the movie still feel underdeveloped. Basic details about the plot, setting, and characters never fully come into focus, but some striking visuals make it worth hanging in there until the intense final scene, which elevates the whole movie thanks to Sweeney’s committed performance and a bold narrative choice. 
• As someone who usually avoids Hallmark-style romance movies, I don’t have much to compare the new Lindsay Lohan vehicle Irish Wish to, but I still feel confident saying it’s, uh, really bad. Lohan’s charm attempts to shine through a bafflingly crappy script (which at least one outlet has claimed, perhaps half-jokingly, was written by AI), but nearly every element of this movie is an incomprehensible hot mess. Also, there’s so much slapstick. Like, so much. TV personality and famed basketball wife Ayesha Curry is inexplicably the best actor in the movie.

The reads:

• My quest to read more of the classics continues with the works of Molière, the French playwright whose stories caused scandal after scandal among the French ruling class in the 1600s. So far I’ve only read Tartuffe, a brisk and deeply sarcastic play about a cult leader-like stranger taking over a rich family’s life that was at one point banned by the Catholic Church. It’s pretty good, but as with many foundational works from this time, I was mostly struck by how modern some of its characterizations felt. And yet we still pretend strong female characters were invented in the ‘90s!
• I haven’t seen the Hunter Schafer-led movie Cuckoo yet, and based on B.J. Colangelo’s evocative and sharp /Film review, I’m not even sure I want to. This is great writing, though, one of many pieces I’m eager to read coming from New Orleans’ Overlook Film Festival this weekend.
• I was astounded by the depths of knowledge Marya Gates brought to this RogerEbert.com piece surveying the history of silent film references in pop music. More sites should be commissioning thorough, compelling, genre-and-format-crossing essays like this!
• On a more serious note, I came across this piece from The Guardian about how disabled women face sexual assault in higher numbers and felt it was important to share. Take care if you choose to read it!

Odds and ends:

• Apologies: we seem to be past the happier part of the newsletter here, as most of the work I’m proud of last week is objectively pretty dark. First, for /Film, I finally got to cover an underrated episode of The Twilight Zone that I’ve loved for years, about a woman whose repressed memories of trauma come back to her at the opportune moment.
• I’m trying to get into Norman Lear’s All in the Family, a show of tremendous historical and cultural importance that’s nonetheless hard to sit through at times. Also at /Film this week, I wrote about one of the show’s toughest watches, an episode that shattered taboos about sexual violence by turning one of America’s most beloved matriarchs into a survivor. The episode is upsetting, but it also inspired some heartening real-world changes, which I get into in the essay.
• In my quest to interrogate the appeal of true crime and be responsible in my own consumption, I tend to fit the podcasts I come across into two categories. On the one hand, there’s the sensational, gross stuff that serves no constructive purpose but to make everyone feel bad and scared. On the other, there are meaningful investigations that shine lights on the cracks in the justice system and aim to serve disenfranchised communities. The Wavland podcast Three, about a murder case involving 3 teenage best friends in West Virginia, muddles that tidy binary by being both very good and not particularly interested in examining dominant systems or cultural beliefs. Three is an upsetting but compassionately-told story that serves mostly to memorialize its endearing central victim; it’s tough to tear yourself away from.
• If you want to support humanitarian efforts in Gaza while getting your hands on some great collectibles (or coming face-to-face with talented actors and artists), I highly recommend checking out the Cinema for Gaza fundraiser. Make sure to put a bid in on items like a bedtime story from Tilda Swinton or a Game of Thrones DVD signed by Maisie Williams before it ends on Friday.

If you’re into what you read this week, consider signing up for a paid subscription to Hey, What Are You Watching? Next week’s newsletter will be for paid readers only (every third post is), and so far only about one third of folks who paid for the Substack have joined the paid tier on Ghost. Still worth it to ditch the weirdly Nazi-friendly platform, though. 

Whether you’re a paid reader or not, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you’re into lately. Specifically, I’m curious about what books, movies, and TV shows from 2024 have struck everyone’s fancy so far. I’m hoping to spend most of my free time this week catching up on all the best new stuff I’ve missed.