Can the major series of the year coincide with the less massive ones? The end of 2022 exposes a contrasting phenomenon in the world of streaming fiction. This year was one of the highest quality premieres -on various platforms-, but many of the major series, outside of tanks, have not achieved an impact on par. And many jewels are still waiting to be rediscovered.
In addition to the logic of the series market, other factors that weighed on this 2022 could be raised. Netflix continues to gravitate in the midst of the streaming contest. The World Cup dominated the television hours on the air It is in the on request. Of course, there is an oversupply of weight series and the public, faced with the rare to know, usually chooses the more widespread (with some exceptions).
As a vindication, here is an overview of ten great series of 2022 – on different platforms – that no one should stop watching.
The old
Star+ (first season of seven episodes)
In his 70s, Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) wakes up in the middle of the night with urinary problems; he has nightmares about his deceased wife and leaves papers in his lonely house so as not to forget who he is.
Cognitive decline and physical pain seem to progress, until one night someone breaks into his house and Dan throws his two relentless Rottweilers at him and, what’s more, kill him with one shot.
Then he has to escape from there, pursued by the CIA, the FBI, with a bloody memory of the soldier he was, as a young man, in the midst of the war between the Russians and Afghanistan. A fascinating drama with cinematic climates and tones and which, behind its political and strategic plot, unmasks metaphors about fatherhood, old age and loneliness.
Someone somewhere
HBO Max (Season 1 of seven episodes)
Loss, resilience, new friendships at 40, and self-acceptance are at the heart of this sad comedy about “someone somewhere.” Where is it? Manhattan, Kansas, the city where Sam (comedian and singer Bridget Everettright there) after her sister’s death.
Far from regulatory bodies (Sam is obese) and the canons of triumph and success, she, her gay friend Joel (Jeff Hiller, another perfect comedian) and their trans collaborator Fred Rococo (Murray Hill) will question the religious and family visions of the town with humor, affection and music as antidotes against pain.
Bridget Everett takes her own life as a kick to captivate with every face and every little story of this other Manhattan.
The bear
Star+ (first season of eight episodes)
Comedy-drama of the year? The Beef joint in Chicago has the answer in the series Bear.
Muscular, tattooed, short award-winning chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto inherits that edgy Italian restaurant after her brother’s tragic death, and leaves the high kitchen from New York to take on a crew of disorganized but endearing cooks. You’ll want to add professional discipline and learn, at the same time, that the place is an ecosystem in crisis trying to survive.
Frantic rhythms, catchy Chicago soundtrack and Italian codes with the actor Jeremy Allen White leading an outstanding cast. A frantic arc of conflict to the scent of sautéed onions and round steaks, with a grieving family having to pay off their debt to the local mobster.
Mo
Netflix (first season of eight episodes)
How does a Kuwaiti Muslim of Palestinian descent fare in Houston, Texas? The answer, with black moodis in the life of Mo (The famous Mohammed “Mo” Amer, stand-up comedian). The axis of this vivid multicultural series from Netflix.
His conflict is his will to live: Mo has been waiting for his papers for 22 years after fleeing the ’91 Gulf War. In the meantime, he lives with his mother Yusra and his brother Sameer -with Asperger’s syndrome- and has as a girlfriend the Mexican and Christian María, played by the luminous Teresa Ruiz.
These crosses would make easy jokes for different languages and religions, but Mo goes further: he sells anything, dodges bullets and learns to laugh at himself as he finds his own cosmopolitan version of the alleged “American dream”.
Pachino
Apple TV+ (eight-episode first season)
pachinko is a pinball Japanese invented in World War II, whose history reflects, metaphorically, the pain of Japan in its abrupt transition to the Western way of life. And between that country, Korea, and the United States, this choral historical tale of love, war, and reparation based on a 2017 novel by South Korean-American Min Jin Lee is drawn.
Pachino It has two timelines. From 1910 he will tell the painful life of Sunja, a young woman from the Korean minority in Japan, in the midst of the birth of her family saga. Already in 1989 her nephew, an executive resident in the United States, has to return to Japan for business and will rethink her values on the basis of the revelations about his predecessor.
A lesson in history, humanity and the conflict of all migrations.
Abbott Elementary
Star+ (first season of thirteen episodes)
Abbott Elementary is the new popular classic in the United States, but still goes almost unnoticed in Argentina.
What The officeFor its mockumentary rhetoric, and in the tradition of the best fiction that moves and makes you laugh, this comedy about Abbott High School shows the efforts of teachers and a deaf principal who face day-to-day public education from Philadelphia.
Abbott Elementary -created by Quinta Brunson- captured the epic but non-narcissistic tone of education professionals who stood up for students and the system amid the pandemic. But at the same time they knew how to question it so as not to give up. The power of him made her stand out at the last Emmy Awards and is the most nominated at the upcoming Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards.
dismissal
Apple TV+ (first season of nine episodes)
Lumon Industries divides the reality of its employees into two. He implants them with a brain chip that erases their memory every time they walk in and out of the office.. The worst thing is to remember what you experienced in the eight hours without sunlight, or what you will suffer outside?
The macabre corporate act has its legal basis. Workers must sign a legal consent, which they will forget once they have the chip in their skull and will no longer be able to separate their true identities in the company from those outside.
Mixture of thriller, sci-fi, drama and satire, dismissal has a brilliant cast (with Adam Scott, John Turturro and Christopher Walken in front) to exercise a scathing critique of dehumanized capitalism. A stark dystopian portrait of today’s working world.
Garcia!
HBO Max (first season of six episodes)
“I spent 60 years frozen in that crypt. Everything has changed so much… ”, she says in Garcia! superagent García (Francisco Ortiz) and looks towards the Catholic Valley of the Fallen with that huge cross, the Francoist cult and the mass graves that they pierce the memory of the Spanish Civil War.
Fiction is no less believable than reality. This García was created in the 1950s by Franco’s secret servicesbut the super agent has awakened in this century and, together with investigative journalist Antonia (Veki Velilla), will try to stop an attempt to establish a new far-right dictatorship in the service of ultramontane values.
Therefore, chaos and control will once again show their weapons, with different ironies on the parallels between yesterday and the present of Spain. Which side will Garcia take in the end?
playlist
Netflix (6-episode miniseries)
“The Swedish music industry is one of the largest in the world.. It is no coincidence that Spotify was born in Sweden”, teaches researcher and artist Julieta Brizzi in the music courses of the Swedish-Argentine Institute.
In tune, the docudrama playlistunder the direction of the Norwegian Per-Olav Sørensen, fictitiously reconstructs the origin of Spotify and how it has forever transformed the way we listen to and consume music.
The finding of playlist is its nonlinear structure. Work parallel and contrasting stories. It reflects the opposite wishes of those who created Spotify. Reveal who is harmed (because of the low royalties emerging musicians receive), and hypothesizes, with a rigorous logic coined in Sweden, what could be the factors of the algorithm’s decline.
Theme
HBO Max (first season of six episodes)
Nathan Fielder is a rare motivational protagonist. “They say my character can make people uncomfortable,” he assumes. But if all variables are planned, a happy outcome should not be left to chance”. And she repeats it as long as he can be convincing. That’s how she comes across and makes people laugh Themewhose argument is to show how Fielder guides ordinary people to resolve their daily dramas.
Combination of documentary, reality show and psychological experimentation, Theme should be named in the plural (“The Rehearsal”). In each unpredictable episode, the shy Fielder will “help” a different stranger deal with his desires, fears and obsessions. Or is the show a personal essay for Nathan Fielder to use others to dominate his egomania and social anxiety?
WD extension
Source: Clarin
