Will peak TV ever top this moment?
Why the finales of Succession and Barry mark the end of an era that may never be matched. Plus, we revie Jury Duty, and Hannah Gadsby has a new Netflix special.
Kia ora and welcome to Rec Room! TV addicts like us have never had it so good. We have access to more content than ever before. Must-see TV shows land on our streaming services every week. Sure, it’s never been more complicated, but no one’s complaining that there’s nothing to watch. That could be about to change. With Hollywood’s writers on strike, and several major shows about to an end, it does feel like change is a-comin’ – sorry, Bob – whether we like it or not.
-Chris Schulz, senior writer
As Succession and Barry bow out, is this the end of TV as we know it?
Mobs are forming, slogans are written and placards are being waved. (My favourite? “I don’t write funny signs. I’m on strike.”) Right now, chants are ringing out around many of Hollywood’s gleaming TV streaming headquarters as the industry’s 11,000 writers go on strike. They’re campaigning for more pay and better working conditions, claiming that in the streaming era, standards have deteriorated so much they’re struggling to scrape together a living. If you dig into the details, it sounds rough. “This is an existential fight for the future of the business of writing,” one told The New Yorker.
At the same time, something else is happening. Two groundbreaking, pivotal, zeitgeist-grabbing shows – ones that will go on to define this era of peak, prestige TV – are coming to an end. On May 28 (May 29 in Aotearoa), the awesome fourth and final seasons of Succession and Barry bow out, both on a high, having pushed TV to its absolute limits.
The Roys aimed a scythe at the super-rich, resulting in some of the best storylines and incisive dialogue (“Your earlobes are thick and chewy … like barnacle meat”) in recent memory. Barry, meanwhile, has delivered cinematic storytelling of the highest order. No show has made my ageing 55-inch TV look more ancient than the widescreen antics of Bill Hader blurring the lines between hitman and actor.
These things may not seem linked, but they absolutely are. TV shows that we all watch en masse are fading fast. Those water-cooler moments are petering out. As streaming services fight for market share, struggling to survive as we savvy switch away, no one’s really watching the same thing at the same time anymore. We’re all in our own bubbles. Maybe you’re watching Poker Face on TVNZ+. Perhaps you’re bingeing Dead Ringers on Prime Video. You might be halfway through The Diplomat on Netflix, or The North Water on TVNZ+. Wherever you’re at, it doesn’t matter: there’s always more TV coming, a faucet that’s become an out-of-control firehose.
And so, to the strikes. According to those on the front lines, streaming services want writers to become freelance commodities, hired and fired at will, giving them no ownership of their material, or growth in their field. Writers are worried that their craft is being diminished by AI and “mini-rooms” that ask them to smash out entire series and take on producing and showrunning roles, but never get to the set for the show they’re working on. You can’t progress if they don’t let you.
Shows like Succession and Barry don’t get that good by chance. They need to be crafted. The kind of Shakespearean dialogue coming out of the mouths of Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv and Connor has been sweated over in writer’s room for hours, every possible permeation and combination put together and taken apart until they find the perfect moment. How else could this week’s brutal balcony fight scene between Tom and Shiv – “You fobbed me off with that undrinkable wine … and you won’t have my baby” – have landed with such ferocious intensity?
Likewise, Barry’s fourth season, in which the show morphs from Breaking Bad into Better Call Saul in a fraction of the time, has visuals that have been painstakingly put together. Whether that’s the grisly mass murder sandpit scene, or a gunman’s shadow falling across a darkened door, you just know that multiple people have talked this through, argued their point, then come to the best possible resolution for the audience. Holy wow does it show. I’ve been watching each episode twice, and see something new every time.
In three weeks, Succession and Barry will be no more. They’re not the only ones reaching the end of their runs. Stranger Things’ fifth and final season is coming soon. The Crown’s upcoming sixth season will be its last too. Long-running, game-changing shows are becoming harder to find. Severance, on Apple TV+, is the only recent show I can think of that has a chance of recreating that zeitgeisty magic, reaching out beyond its cult fanbase to become something more.
Throw in the writer’s strike – everyone I’ve spoken to about it believes this is going to last much longer than in 2008 – and it seems TV of this calibre could soon be in short supply. Right now, no one’s writing a damn thing, and nor should they. A content shortage is on its way. So, with three weeks left of Barry and Succession, you may want to grab some of Tom’s undrinkable wine and savour them. Enjoy this moment. Relish the next chilling scene between Shiv and Tom, or the dead-eyed stare of Barry, because it’s quite possible TV will never get better than this moment we have right here, right now.
A message from Toby Morris, illustrator and long time collaborator of The Spinoff
If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a Spinoff Member. The truth is, without the support of our members The Spinoff wouldn’t exist. Help bring the important stories of Aotearoa to life by becoming a member today.
Why you should watch Jury Duty
Remember the mid-2000s NZ hit Living the Dream, which saw a hapless farmer competing on a reality show but was actually surrounded by actors gaslighting him the entire time? Nearly two decades later, American series Jury Duty (Prime Video) reworks the concept: one man is called into jury duty but is surrounded by actors and improvisors the entire time, including bonafide movie star James Marsden. It sounds like the most horrible, cringe-inducing show, but what emerges is a deeply funny and unexpectedly kindhearted series, in which a bunch of actors fall in love with Ronald, the decent, sweet and gullible everyman at the centre of it all. /Sam Brooks
Here’s all the new stuff you can watch right now
By her own admission, Hannah Gadsby has “dragged you through a bit of my shit over the years”. So the Aussie comic’s new special, Something Special (Netflix), promises to keep things lighter compared to the calculated emotional bludgeoning viewers received in her previous specials, Nanette and Douglas. It’s not always that cruisy, though, warns Vulture, who said it “seems like a new balance being worked out”.
Elsewhere, critics are calling City on Fire (Apple TV+), the new drama from the creators of The OC and Gossip Girl, a “hot mess”. The second season of Bridget Everett’s acclaimed Somebody Somewhere (Neon) is getting reviews just as good as season one, as is the third season of The Great (also on Neon). The Muppets Mayhem (Disney+) is not getting good reviews: “Dry, dull and disappointing,” quipped the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The seventh season of American makeover show Queer Eye (Netflix) is out and provides reliably fun, enjoyable and sometimes heartfelt reality capers. Duncanville (Neon, and also nothing to do with Spinoff founder Duncan Greive) is an animated comedy-adventure series created by Amy Poehler. And Riptide (TVNZ+) is a British-Australian co-creation involving a surfie murder-mystery but reviews for this “run of the mill” caper have been poor.
If you’re looking for a film, try Crater (Disney+), a family-friendly space journey, or A Michael J Fox Movie (Apple TV+), in which the Back to the Future star faces his Parkinson’s diagnosis by trawling through his own history books. Air (Prime Video) retells the Michael Jordan Nike story. Whatever you do, don’t watch Hypnotic (in theatres), the Ben Affleck film about a hypnotist criminal, which looks all kinds of silly. “A B-movie with a C+ premise and D-minus execution,” said The Daily Beast.
On The Spinoff now:
In the biggest reality television event of the year (apart from the Married at First Sight reunion), King Charles finally took the throne over the weekend and it could not have been weirder experience to recap. The Real Pod is also joined in the studio by a very special guest from television history who recounts his unbelievably shocking experience being apart of a New Zealand reality show in the mid-2000s.
Everything you need to know…
Audio descriptions allow the blind and vision-impaired to watch TV, but how are they made? We visited Able, the Auckland-based captioning service to find out.
Christina Applegate says she’s unlikely to go in front of a camera again after her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis while filming the third and final season of Netflix hit Dead to Me. She talks to Vanity Fair.
Aotearoa has a long, sordid history of milking the cop TV genre for all it’s worth. Sam Brooks writes the definitive list of every cop show we’ve ever made.
Want to catch up on everything that happened at the king’s coronation? Tara Ward has you covered.
MTV News is no more. The Hollywood Reporter has a really great oral history.
No one wants it. No one asked for it. Here it is, the trailer for Meg 2.
No one asked for this one either, but here’s the Gran Turismo trailer starring Orlando Bloom. It actually looks… decent.
Finally, this one actually looks good. Reality is the true story of an American intelligence specialist who leaked details suggesting Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Sydney Sweeney is the star, and dialogue is taken straight from FBI transcripts. Here’s the first trailer.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.
