329: (Baby-)Sitting With Becoming You
It might not be Olivia Colman's highest-profile streaming series this week, but Apple TV+'s Becoming You, which explores how the first 2000 days of our lives shape our futures, is perfectly on-brand: expensive, gorgeously shot, and not quiiiiite essential. Omar returns to the guest chair to talk about the series' limited concept of diversity; whether the show made him miss his kids' first years...
1hr 39m Nov 18, 2020
1hr 39m
328: Celebrating Christmastime In The City With Dash & Lily
Perhaps you feel the 2020 holiday season should start a little earlier than may be strictly traditional? So does Netflix, as it brings us all Dash & Lily, in which a pair of adorable teens who've never met use a red notebook to challenge each other to dares all over New York City. Internet Boyfriend taxonomist Esther Zuckerman jumps over from Thrillist to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us...
1hr 16m Nov 11, 2020
1hr 16m
327: The Extra Hot Great American Pop Culture Quiz Show
EHG's Dave and Game Time veteran Dan Cassino along with host Taylor Cole welcome Tara, Sarah and Mark Blankenship for a special crossover episode with The Great American Pop Culture Quiz Show! Tara, Sarah and Mark battle it out in TV trivia modelled after a typical Extra Hot Great episode! We'll open with a new release for the week, go Around the Dial with a game about shows that change network...
1hr 8m Nov 04, 2020
1hr 8m
326: Unpacking The Undoing or Too Many Butterflies
What if Big Little Lies, but in New York City and with no point? That's kind of how Emily and the regulars all felt about The Undoing, the latest Nicole Kidman-David E. Kelley collaboration for HBO; we admired the workmanship, while not really understanding what sets it apart from BLL (besides the quality of the wigs), or buying Kidman and Hugh Grant's chemistry. Will any of us be successfully ...
1hr 57m Oct 28, 2020
1hr 57m
325: Are We Living For Someone Has To Die?
Netflix's new import is a miniseries set in Franco-era Spain and revolving around a just-returned college grad and his Mexican ballerino friend. How does Lázaro's arrival tear the community apart (with lust)? Will Ellis joins us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through Social Distance, The Conners, Selling Sunset, Australia's Next Top Model, and HBO's A West Wing Special. Will present...
1hr 28m Oct 21, 2020
1hr 28m
324: The Right Stuff May Not Have...Well, You Know
Disney+ and NatGeo decided to remake beloved '80s Mercury-astronauts epic (and earlier Tom Wolfe book) The Right Stuff as a series...and Adam Moussa decided to talk about it with us, a choice he may regret, because the four of us struggled to care. We struggled even to tell various astronauts apart, even, when we weren't wondering why this needed to be made, whether we should recommend For All ...
1hr 32m Oct 14, 2020
1hr 32m
323: Doing A Tight Five On The Comedy Store
Showtime's latest docuseries is a deep (maybe too deep) dive on L.A. comedy club The Comedy Store, and first-time guest Brandi Brown -- herself a comic -- is joining us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through Emily In Paris, Polar Bear's Café, and Paramount's doc I Am Richard Pryor. CoreyAH challenges us to cast the Hallmark Christmas movies of tomorrow, today! Then, after her succes...
1hr 28m Oct 07, 2020
1hr 28m
322: Should You Search For Utopia?
We're thrilled Devindra could step over from Engadget and Slashfilm to talk to us about Utopia, Gillian Flynn's reimagining of a belovedly culty UK original. Sarah was less thrilled by the show itself, which she's probably bailing on after only two episodes, but the rest of the panel had good things to say about the story, the acting (especially John Cusack), and how fundamentally weird it is t...
1hr 58m Sep 30, 2020
1hr 58m
321: Coming Clean On Filthy Rich
Fox's newest soap opera places Kim Cattrall at the head of a televangelist family that -- and you're never going to believe this -- are not as polished and pious as they appear on TV. First-time guest Meredith Haggerty joins us to discuss whether this is a good use of La Cattrall's many talents! Around The Dial takes us through Sing On!, Just Shoot Me!, and Netflix's videogame docs-series High ...
1hr 16m Sep 23, 2020
1hr 16m
320: Zooming In On Home-Shot Reality TV
Reality-TV vet Andy Dehnart has seen a LOT of unscripted crap in his decades in the field, so we're glad he brought his expertise to our discussion of this unprecedented time in the genre's history: the home-shot, socially-distanced versions/spin-offs of some of our old "favorites," plus some new DIY unscripted stuff tailored to pandemic "set" safety. We talked about the challenges facing reali...
2hr 15m Sep 16, 2020
2hr 15m
319: Should Away Be Tossed Away?
Netflix's latest space drama takes a mother, played by Hilary Swank, to Mars, to try to balance work and family; Inkoo Kang of THR joins us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through The Boys, 90 Day Fiancé, and For All Mankind. We ponder whether The X-Files's "Humbug" should burrow into The Canon; then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, it's on to a Game Time that reads us all f...
1hr 33m Sep 09, 2020
1hr 33m
318: Premium Filler
We're off this week but we've glued together three listener-suggested topics from our Patreon supporter bonus podcast Extra Extra Hot Great. EEHG 055: Series Starter Kits Nicole tasked us: Each of you pick a show and then give your 5 most essential or favorite episodes from that show and discuss why they are in your top five. EEHG 059: The Can'tnon Seth White figured since this feed...
54m Sep 02, 2020
54m
317: Appraising Lifetime's Ruthless Realtor
Podcaster and Lifetime-movie-ologist Brandon is going deep on not just Ruthless Realtor (we would give you a plot summary, but it's...that, with a dash of Bad Ronald) but the evolution of Lifetime movies and the cultural anxieties they reflect; whether we'd ghost a weirdo who brought us a brisket; and why nobody seems to get a second take, or any direction. Then we staged an Around The Dial wit...
1hr 45m Aug 26, 2020
1hr 45m
316: Booking A Trip To Lovecraft Country
TV Guide senior editor Malcolm Venable is here to talk about Lovecraft Country, HBO's series imagining of Matt Ruff's novel -- and why everything from the show's look and feel to the acting to Jonathan Majors's believable charisma drew us in. Then we drove our woody wagon Around The Dial with stops at Ted Lasso, Little Voice, and The Great Heist before Rebecca's Extra Credit tasked us with cast...
1hr 23m Aug 19, 2020
1hr 23m
315: Taking Aim At Hitmen
Before they were the original co-hosts of The Great British Bake Off, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins were comedy partners, and their new project Hitmen, imported from Sky to Peacock, returns them to their roots. Did it slay us? We'll talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through An American Pickle, Hard Knocks, and Star Trek: Lower Decks. For his Extra Credit, Taylor Cole -- inspired by The Gre...
1hr 9m Aug 12, 2020
1hr 9m
314: Unraveling Frayed
The latest British Commonwealth addition to HBOMax's library is the BAFTA-nominated Frayed, and Christina Tucker joins us to discuss whether its riches-to-rags protagonist is as compelling as the world its star-creator, Sarah Kendall, has built around her. Around The Dial takes us through Immigration Nation, Coroner, Desert Hearts (now streaming on Showtime!), the Happy Endings Zoom reunion, an...
1hr 49m Aug 05, 2020
1hr 49m
313: Finding Ourselves At Lost Resort
Apparently TBS is not just for "very funny" shows anymore, as we learned from the premiere of Lost Resort, a new series with the bones of a reality show and the shredded guts of untreated trauma. The Verge's TV and film critic Joshua Rivera joins us to discuss what entertainment value its producers think the show has, and whether they are right. Around The Dial takes us through Married At First...
1hr 38m Jul 29, 2020
1hr 38m
312: A Care Package From Killer Camp
The But Why Tho? podcast's Kate Sánchez is here to help the panel figure out why Killer Camp -- the CW's horror-trope competitive-reality show -- and others like it don't quite work. Is it because horror-movie tropes and American-summer-camp tropes clash (especially as embodied by a bunch of British nationals)? Is it that an organic timeline for solving the mystery isn't possible on a network s...
1hr 44m Jul 22, 2020
1hr 44m
311: Having A Dry Discussion About Palm Springs
When is a movie fair game as a topic on a TV topic? When it premieres on a streaming service, of course! First-time guest Alanna Bennett takes a break from writing Roswell, New Mexico to join us to talk about the latest Lonely Island Classic. Around The Dial takes us through Little Voice, the original 1985 CBC miniseries adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables, Cheers, Close Enough, and the HAHA Awa...
1hr 49m Jul 15, 2020
1hr 49m
310: The Real Upstart Crowives Of The Outer Banks
Esteemed recent guests Stephanie Green, Dan Cassino, and Richard Lawson each picked out an episode for your three panelists to watch for Episode 310's Forcening. First into the breach was David T. Cole, ordered by Stephanie to watch a fourth-season Real Housewives Of Potomac episode involving purse-smacking, (alleged) sausage-sucking, and how long after the stated start time one should arrive a...
45m Jul 08, 2020
45m
309: Holding Up Our Lighters for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga
Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell play enthusiastic but perhaps slightly self-deluded aspiring Icelandic pop stars in Netflix's new film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, so who better than Eurovision devotee Mark Blankenship to join us to talk about it? Around The Dial takes us to Search Party, Hot Mess House, Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels, Unsolved Mysteries, and Outcry. Dave Lo...
1hr 56m Jul 01, 2020
1hr 56m
308: On The Case With Perry Mason
Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson returns to the pod for the first time since Mark 1 to talk about an equally old-timey take on a beloved character: HBO's dark take on Perry Mason before he became the gold standard of TV defense attorneys. Is this imagining of his life before Raymond Burr canonical? Did we need to see that level of post-violence gore? And does EVERY cell of this show's being hate th...
1hr 42m Jun 24, 2020
1hr 42m
307: Is Don't A Don't-Miss?
Production Note: Dave did a bad copy-paste in his notes and credited the wrong Dave in Game Time. Dave is a bad Dave. Dave LARSON is not a bad Dave, he is a good Dave and the author of Viva Lost Wages! Apparently unsatisfied by dominating the world of scripted film, Ryan Reynolds has branched out into alternative TV programming by creating a new ABC game show called Don't, hosted by Adam Sco...
1hr 43m Jun 17, 2020
1hr 43m
306: Should You Hide From Trackers?
Stephanie Early Green returns to talk about Trackers, the 2019 South African "thriller" that Cinemax has imported. Unfortunately, the only place it led the EHG panel was Dullsville, despite big game, gun battles, and the apparent love child of Christian Bale and Randall Batinkoff...but we did talk about the "COVID programming trough" that's rapidly approaching for all TV fans. Later, we went Ar...
1hr 36m Jun 10, 2020
1hr 36m
305: Enlisting In The Space Force
The announcement that Donald Trump was creating a new branch of the military called the Space Force was swiftly followed by the announcement that Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, the creator and star of The Office, would re-team on Space Force, a sitcom about said branch. Should that have occurred? Now that the first season has dropped on Netflix, John Ramos has returned to discuss the matter. Ar...
1hr 34m Jun 03, 2020
1hr 34m
304: Solving The Mystery Of Homecoming's Second Season
We're welcoming Vanity Fair TV critic Sonia Soraiya to the guest chair to talk about the shorter, neater, Julia-Roberts-less-but-still-better second season of Amazon's Homecoming -- from sensible episode lengths to overacting extras to how TV has conditioned us to react to mystery shows. We went Around The Dial with Mrs. America, Run, Nadiya's Time To Eat, and a rare successful Zoom episode fro...
1hr 44m May 27, 2020
1hr 44m
303: Should You Chase Down Ultimate Tag?
Fox is welcoming summer with a very silly American Gladiators take on tag -- yes, the playground game -- so who better than Daniel MacEachern, veteran of our Holey Moley episode last year, to join us to discuss it? Around The Dial clicks through Snowpiercer, Katy Keene, Call The Midwife (CW: there are clips and you will cry), The Last Dance, Killing Eve, and a preview of Holey Moley's Season 2 ...
1hr 38m May 20, 2020
1hr 38m
302: I Know This Much Is True Is Misery Porn
We hope Bobby Krut agrees to come BACK to Extra Hot Great after putting him through the unrelenting barrage of anguish that is HBO's latest limited series, I Know This Much Is True. Sure, the acting is good; yeah, it's impressive that Mark Ruffalo plays twins; not one of us is planning to keep watching, because there's never a break or a moment of levity, and even Dave's ice-cream-fixins-bar me...
1hr 39m May 13, 2020
1hr 39m
301: Taking A Dream Trip To Hollywood
Hollywood, the latest product of Ryan Murphy's Netflix deal, has hit the streaming service. What did we think about his ahistorical take on marginalized voices in the film industry? Kevin O'Keeffe joins us to discuss! Around The Dial clicks through Betty, Never Have I Ever, The Circle Brasil, and Masterpiece's new procedural Baptiste. Erica uses her Extra Credit to get us to pitch new Big Mouth...
1hr 44m May 06, 2020
1hr 44m
300: Defending Jacob Isn't Easy
Captain America and Lady Mary did their best, but Allison and the rest of the panel still found legal procedural Defending Jacob guilty of crappy pacing in the second degree; aggravated TV tropes; and felony possession of moody blue gels with intent to distribute. Were the regulars able to get Al into a diversion program before she felt obliged to finish the season? We also went Around The Dial...
1hr 24m Apr 29, 2020
1hr 24m
299: The ABCs Of TV
In an absence of series premieres any of us could manage to get excited about, Dave came up with a new format: the ABCs of TV! With our beloved Joe Reid, we go around the horn, each naming an important TV person, show, feature, or just THING about TV that matches up with each letter of the alphabet. Then, it's on to a Game Time made for cuffing season. Did any of our letter picks line up with y...
2hr 29m Apr 22, 2020
2hr 29m
298: Run: Hot And Cold
Dan Rogge bought a ticket for our latest episode on HBO's Run, a "comedy thriller" about college sweethearts trying to reunite. Does the pleasure of watching Merritt Wever and Archie Punjabi at work outweigh the credibility issues? Do phones in the Run-verse never need charging? And is Rich Sommer TV's worst husband? We super-sized Around The Dial with stops at The Baker And The Beauty, Bosch, ...
1hr 50m Apr 15, 2020
1hr 50m
297: Making A Whole Meal Out Of Quibi
Just a few short weeks after we tested our knowledge of Quibi titles in Game Time, Quibi is taking center stage: the platform has launched, and we have selected a total of eight of its 24 launch titles to discuss with returning guest Adam Sternbergh! For his Extra Credit topic, John C. challenges us to reimagine single-camera comedies as multi-cams. Adam makes the case for our inducting Cheer's...
1hr 45m Apr 08, 2020
1hr 45m
296: Will Heidi And Tim's New Fashion Show Be Making The Cut?
One half of the GFY brain trust, Heather Cocks, came back to discuss Amazon's Project Runway with a big-budget twist: Making The Cut. As much as we love Naomi Campbell's sugar-free approach to, well, life, the panel agreed that Making The Cut has some structural problems (too long; dumb Tim 'n' Heidi "friend dates"), and too tight a focus on NOT being a sewing competition. Will any of us keep w...
1hr 31m Apr 01, 2020
1hr 31m
295: First-Time Shows At The Canon Ball
Some shows -- your 30 Rocks, your Simpsonses -- get pitched to the Canon all the time. So for this special all-Canon episode, we reached into our mailbag and chose user submissions for shows that had never been pitched before. Dan Cassino challenged us to battle with Foyle's War; Caroline opened the door for The Haunting Of Hill House; and Jeff put all his eggs in a Baskets. Then, befitting an ...
1hr 20m Mar 25, 2020
1hr 20m
294: Warming Up To Little Fires Everywhere
Appointment Television's Margaret H. Willison put a marshmallow on a stick to talk about Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere, and whether THIS is the real "vanity-free performance" on Reese Witherspoon's recent résumé, plus Kerry Washington's interesting choices as Mia; the production's unwavering commitment to 1997-ness; and whether the male Dawson's Creek lead we'd have bought in the Bill role is ...
1hr 41m Mar 18, 2020
1hr 41m
293: Politely Sitting Through Amazing Stories
Apple TV+ has brought Amazing Stories, the less-nihilistic take on The Twilight Zone, back for all the '80s kids, though confusingly premiered this anthology series with only one episode. Mark Lisanti joins us to talk about the fishiness of this rollout strategy, and whether "The Cellar" was a compelling enough episode to get anyone back to watch more. Around The Dial takes us through For Life;...
1hr 28m Mar 11, 2020
1hr 28m
292: Playing Games With Dispatches From Elsewhere
AMC already had a perfectly good Charlie Kaufman-esque property, but the network went with Dispatches From Elsewhere over Lodge 49 -- and while it's kind of Sarah's dream to fall into an alternate-reality scavenger hunt, first-time guest Dave Chen felt like the show would be more fun to "play" than to watch. Is it too twee? Too slow? Too divorced from the reality of non-celebrities? Or do the e...
2hr 4m Mar 04, 2020
2hr 4m
291: Breaking Confidentiality To Talk About Better Call Saul
As Better Call Saul returns for its fifth and almost final season, superfan Will Leitch joins us to check in on Jimmy, Kim, Nacho, Mike, and of course, good old black-and-white Gene. Dave explains why he is not a crackpot to feel infuriated by the current Chili's TV ad campaign. We ponder David Ellis Dickerson's Extra Credit question about which TV shows should go to an all-nude format. Will pr...
1hr 20m Feb 26, 2020
1hr 20m
290: February Forcenings
To keep you in content while Dave and Tara go on vacation, we're forcening each other to watch TV episodes! Dave forcens Tara to watch what happens when a zombie virus ravages the Smurf village. Tara forcens Sarah to journey to Satellite Beach, FL as its high school re-mounts Annie Get Your Gun on Encore!. And Sarah forcens Dave to tag along with Josh in the series premiere of Netflix's Daybrea...
37m Feb 19, 2020
37m
289: Building Something Real With Lego Masters
Will Arnett has followed his ex-wife Amy Poehler into the field of highly meta reality show hosting with his gig on Fox's Lego Masters, and American dad (and therefore Lego Master) Jim Durr has returned to discuss the season kickoff! Around The Dial takes us through The CW's Katy Keene; Free Solo on Disney+; a roundup of titles on CBS All Access: Picard, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and Inte...
1hr 14m Feb 11, 2020
1hr 14m
288: Should You Gamble On McMillions?
Even though Eve and Sarah D. spend most weekdays thinking about the true crime that's worth your time for their newsletter, they still didn't know much about the Mobbed-up McDonald's Monopoly-game fraud case that's at the center of HBO's McMillions. Will this docuseries join the scam-umentary pantheon alongside The Dropout and The Imposter? Is Doug Mathews the write-in presidential candidate we...
1hr 34m Feb 05, 2020
1hr 34m
287: Raising A Nice Glass Of Bordeaux To Picard
CBS All Access has chased Star Trek: Discovery with Picard, picking up with everyone's favourite retired Starfleet admiral as he...well, to be honest, he's probably not going to be spending much time tending to his French vineyard. What is he getting up to? Maureen Ryan joins us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through The Goop Lab, Shrill, The Expanse, Veronica Mars, and Flack. We di...
1hr 42m Jan 29, 2020
1hr 42m
286: Visiting Little America
Apple TV+'s Little America premiered last week, and Rolling Stone's chief TV critic Alan Sepinwall returned to talk about the heartwarming, but not treacly, anthology series about "the lives of immigrants in the United States." We talked about the casting, our favorite episodes, and why it reminded Sarah of High Maintenance before going Around The Dial with Avenue 5, 9-1-1: Lone Star, Sex Educa...
1hr 26m Jan 22, 2020
1hr 26m
285: Making Reservations For Party Of Five
When we decided to cover Freeform's remake of Fox's iconic teen soap Party Of Five, there was one obvious choice of guest: Meredith Smith, recent submitter of a Canon presentation on the original series. After discussing Freeform's devastating take on five new lovable orphans, Around The Dial takes us through Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Grand Designs, and Cheer. Meredith goes back into the C...
1hr 20m Jan 15, 2020
1hr 20m
284: Sinking Our Teeth Into Dracula
The BBC rolled out Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's Dracula on New Year's Day; we Yanks endured it over the weekend, and Nick and the panel agree that this grimly joyless take on a careworn narrative needs SOMETHING. A modern-day setting, maybe? Mini bottle eps on every famous personage the Count has eaten? But it just seems like the creators didn't really want to be there...and as a result, we ...
1hr 31m Jan 08, 2020
1hr 31m
283: Buffy The Timekeeper
Happy New Year! We're off for the holidays so we've released two of our Patreon episodes from Extra Extra Hot Great! See you next week for a new episode. EEHG 023: The Post-Buffy The Vampire Slayer Power Rankings In the years since BtVS seemed to dominate the cultural conversation -- and our TWoP forums -- some of the main cast have gone on to bigger and better things; others have gone on...
58m Jan 01, 2020
58m
282: The Way We Were
Merry Christmas! We're off for the holidays so we've released two of our Patreon episodes from Extra Extra Hot Great! EEHG 014: Podcast Like It’s 1999 We're hopping in our time machines to imagine what an EHG main episode might look like…in 1999. It's all sequels and prequels in scripted content these days and hey, we're no different, so: What's the main topic on the podcast in a 1999 epi...
38m Dec 25, 2019
38m
281: Celebrating The Holidays Amid The Mistletoe & Menorahs
It's the most wonderful time of the year...if your very favourite thing is oppressively jolly holiday programming! We asked you, our listeners, to help us choose which piece of brand-new 2019 holiday content we would cover this year, and you delivered unto us the Lifetime original movie Mistletoe & Menorahs. Joining us to discuss it in a wild departure from their usual gig discussing the films ...
1hr 46m Dec 18, 2019
1hr 46m
280: Conscientious Objectors In V Wars
How did Netflix think it would get away with a stinker like V Wars in the age of peak TV? We ponder that question with returning guest Monty, and we investigate the ingredients in a C-minus Syfy show (which this basically is) and wonder whether the show has, well, enough vampires (spoiler: nope). We go Around The Dial with Servant, Mad About You 2019, Making It, Ex On The Beach, and Toast Of Lo...
1hr 50m Dec 11, 2019
1hr 50m