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Here’s a roundup of what caught my eye in the summer of 2018:
CLOAK AND DAGGER, Marvel’ Studios’ latest TV series ran its first season of ten episodes from June 7 to August 2 on cable channel Freeform. I tend to think Marvel’s Netflix shows—Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist—run too long at thirteen episodes per season. Ten seems just right. It probably helped that I wasn’t able to binge the whole season in a day, but what I liked most was the show’s inspiring message.
Having saved each other from drowning as children, Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) meet again as teenagers. Con artist Tandy has the power to see a person’s greatest hopes. Earnest Tyrone can see a person’s greatest fears. On the surface, they are as gritty as other Marvel TV characters, but over the course of the season, they bring out the best in each other, and team up to save New Orleans.
Cloak and Dagger will return for a second season next spring.
Pixar’s superhero sequel THE INCREDIBLES 2 premiered in theaters June 15. Though fourteen years have passed in real time, it’s only been six months between movies in story time. Helen Parr/Elasti-Girl (Holly Hunter) is recruited by wealthy Winston Deavor to help restore heroes’ image and legal status in society. Meanwhile hustband Bob (Craig T. Nelson) adjusts to being the stay-at-home parent. It’s a fine movie that doesn’t suffer fatigue from all the superhero movies since 2004. Then again, I would have liked to see it comment on that trend in some way.
June 26 brought news that Netflix had made a deal with director Peter Berg amd actor-producer Mark Wahlberg for a movie adaptation of Ace Atkins’ 2012 Spenser continuation novel, ROBERT B. PARKER’S WONDERLAND, in hopes of launching a movie franchise. Beyond writing the novel, Atkins is not involved with the Netflix movie. Sean O’Keefe’s script reportedly finds Spenser fresh out of prison, stripped of his investigator’s license, departing from Parker’s and Atkins’ books about the principled P.I. Still, this is the highest-profile film interest Spenser has received since the 1980s ABC series SPENSER: FOR HIRE, and I’m glad to see it.
On July 27, a New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow was published online detailing allegations by six women that CBS chairman, president, and CEO Les Moonves engaged in sexual misconduct. The CBS board has hired independent firms to investigate.
On August 31, Amazon Prime Video premiered TOM CLANCY’S JACK RYAN, a TV series starring John Krasinski as the CIA analyst thrown into globe-trotting action. Amazon is impressed enough with the show itself that a second season is already moving forward.
Finally, on Monday, September 24 at 9:00 PM, CBS premiered the reboot of MAGNUM P.I., updating the Tom Selleck character and friends from Vietnam vets to Afghanistan vets. I’m not sure why CBS is remaking a 38-year-old series the key 18-34 viewing bracket scarcely remembers and older viewers probably wish weren’t remade, but developer Peter M. Lenkov has had success remaking HAWAII FIVE-O and MACGYVER.
I guess we’ll see. Until next time, keep cool.
Cloak and Dagger was horrible in our opinion. We gave it five episodes hoping it would get better, but my son and I finally threw in the towel.
We enjoyed Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and were glad to hear awhile back that they are doing another season. Like the Bosch books, this is another case where they have changed the events in the books and moved it all decades forward to fit the realities of today.
We are still watching the Magnum reboot and remain not impressed. For now, it stays on the viewing lineup, but just barely. They tried to go all new here and they should have followed the original and made Magnum and Higgins the children carrying on the parent’s legacy.
Just a sidebar on your sidebar. YES! The Netflix/Marvel series run too long at 13 episodes each (and Iron Fist ran too long at any number).
What could have been tight, right and imminently watchable series became victims of dramatic bloat. Watching them through to the padded, drawn out endings felt more like work than entertainment.
Of course, now that all the Marvel/Netflix series have been sandbagged, I guess the point is moot. Of course, for fans of a different kind of comic-related bloat, there are always the 492 new Marvel movies coming to the big screen this year (which will all have hints about the 492 new Marvel movies coming next year).