Clown Panic, on Hulu

It didn't start in 2016. In 2014, a mysterious self-styled performance artist calling himself “Wrinkles the Clown” started releasing creepy clips on YouTube. Inevitably, he inspired copycats, perhaps including one in Greenville, South Carolina. Regardless, the phenomenon spread rapidly from there. Ed Perkins chronicles the resulting fear in the documentary Clown Panic, which premieres today on Hulu.

When people started seeing men dressed in full clown make-up and costumes, lurking in the woods outside their homes, they understandably freaked out. However, the cops found no evidence, so they assumed it would quickly blow over. It didn’t. Soon the volume of clown calls roused them out of their apathy. Before long, the ominous clown sightings spread throughout South Carolina and into bordering states.

Not surprisingly, 2016 was a tough year for professional clowns. Their birthday party business dried up. To make matters worse, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus went into a 7-year dormancy, due to animal rights litigation in 2017, rendering hundreds of clowns unemployed.

Somehow, Perkins tries to tie it all to the 2016 election, blaming the irrational mass hysteria on political polarization and uncertainty. Who does he position as the voice of reason? Naturally, Cenk Uygur, the extremist demagogue, who basically blames the “Zionists” (and we know what he means by that) for all the world’s problems.

Even without Uygur’s record of divisive rhetoric, Clown Panic still has massive credibility problems. Basically, Perkins tries to have things two ways. The film pillories the Greenville Police Department for not taking the early clown reports seriously, because they came from traditionally minority neighborhoods. Yet, then the film dismisses the entire phenomenon as deliberate hoaxes and viral videos. It is one or the other, but both contentions can’t be valid.

In fact, Perkins plays it fast and loose with causality, trying to tie the tragic murder of a young boy wearing a clown mask to the clown panic emanating out of Greenville. Yet, the young man responsible had a long-standing clown phobia, predating the Greenville sightings. It is a heartbreaking case (which really brings down the film’s mood), but at best, it is very tenuously related to the phenomenon starting in 2016.

Tempest, on Hulu

Seo Mun-ju sort of wants to be like Margaret Chase Smith or Mary Bono, but instead of succeeding her late husband Jang Jun-ik in office, she intends to replace him as a presidential candidate. It will be rather tricky, because he represented the hawkish party, while she was appointed UN Ambassador by the incumbent president, the standard bearer of the dovish party. Fortunately, she has the backing of Jang’s powerbroker mother, but the services of her mysterious bodyguard will be even more important in the political K-drama Tempest, written by Jeong Seo-kyeong, which premieres Wednesday on Hulu.

Apparently, Seo and Jang were not like Mary Matalin and James Carver. They could not dismiss their political differences so easily. Frankly, they never really got along so well, but Seo had resigned herself to loyally standing by him during the upcoming campaign. That is why she resigned from her post at the UN—or maybe she just didn’t complain when Pres. Chae Kyung-sin fired her.

Regardless, she is genuinely horrified when Jang is assassinated in a spectacularly public fashion. Coincidentally, it happened just as Jang adopted a more conciliatory tone towards reunification. Even more disconcerting, he seemed to be expecting it. Consequently, he secretly transferred his family’s entire fortune to her. Seo wants to know why Jang was killed and her candidacy obviously shakes up the establishment and foreign powers—judging from all the work it generates for Baek San-ho.

Baek, formerly of the U.S. Special Forces, now works for Valkyrie, which sounds a lot like Caddis in Butterfly. He also has ties to the North Korean underground railroad through the Catholic priest, who was also happened to be Jang’s spiritual advisor. Baek apprehended the assassin, but could not prevent his cover-up-facilitating suicide. Eventually, Seo agrees to hire him as her chief of security, but Baek has another client who wants him to protect the widow-candidate—at least for now.

Based on the first three episodes provided for review, Jeong and company clearly sympathize with the doves rather than the hawks. Yet, perhaps ironically, the series takes North Korea’s imminent collapse as a given. That seems debatable, since Kim Jong-un has become the leading supplier of arms and enslaved soldiers to Putin.

Regardless, in the world of Tempest, the question is whether the DPRK provokes the U.S. into nuking it out of existence or somehow the South manages to peacefully integrate the North. Unfortunately, Baek learns her husband’s source in the White House, Assistant Secretary of State Anderson Miller, has reason to believe the Trump-like President Houser will soon agree to the former (even though a Hawkish posture towards North Korea is embarrassingly un-Trump-ish).

Frankly, the politics are rather confused in these early episodes, perhaps because Jeong is trying to keep the intrigue murky. However, Seo’s relationships with both Jang and Baek are quite engagingly complex. In fact, Gianna Jun Ji-hyun is perfectly cast as the emotionally reserved and somewhat standoffish Seo. Likewise, Gang Dong-won is steely, but in a sensitive brooding kind of way, as Baek.

Jaws @ 50, on Hulu

This Blockbuster hasn’t aged day in the fifty years since it first released. That’s because the shark doesn’t care what kind of smart phone you carry or whether you drive an EV. You’ll still taste the same once you get into the water. It inspired one under-appreciated sequel and two truly terrible bombs, but the original will always be the greatest shark movie of all time. For the golden anniversary, cast, crew, fans, and the Benchley family look back on the film’s production and sensational reception in Laurent Bouzereau’s Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Surely, everyone has seen the film, or at least knows the music (duly discussed by John Williams). Unfortunately, primary cast-members Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Murry Hamilton (the sleazebag mayor) are no longer with us, while Richard Dreyfuss was either unavailable or considered too canceled. However, viewers hear extensively from Steven Spielberg and author Peter Benchley’s surviving family.

Fittingly, Bouzereau starts with the book, which was a hit even before the film released. In fact, the studio adapted the publisher’s jacket art for the movie poster” the iconic giant shark ominously rising beneath an oblivious swimmer paddling above the waterline. Believe me, that never happens for publishing houses.

Frankly, despite the documentary’s suggestions otherwise, Benchley’s novel was not particularly well reviewed at the time and has not critically appreciated over time. Nevertheless, Spielberg offered his services after reading a galley and accepted the job when the first director pulled out. Unfortunately, when the book became such a runaway bestseller in mass market, the studio moved up production, leaving little time for the construction of the notorious mechanical shark. According to the surviving crew, that is why “Bruce” constantly broke down.

Jaws @ 50 is considerably more fun than most behind-the-scenes docs or DVD extras (which Bouzereau is no stranger to), in large part because of the sharks, real and animatronic. It also chronicles an incredibly stressful shoot that Spielberg feared might end his career. Mind-blowingly, Bouzereau documents the set visits from his famous filmmaker friends, like George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and John Milius, who came to offer encouragement.

The reminiscences also take on a family vibe from the Benchleys, who later became active shark conservationists, and Martha’s Vineyard locals, who played many roles on both sides of the camera. In fact, only eight cast-members came from outside the island. One of whom was Susan Backlinie, who sadly passed away last year, but fortunately Bouzereau incorporates footage of her discussing her role of Chrissie Watkins, the shark’s first victim during the memorable prologue.

Suspicious Minds, on Hulu

Wearing a cursed tiara sounds unlucky for a bride, so she ought to be grateful to a pair of thieves trying to steal it. Her gangster father doesn’t see it that way. Emilio Villegas calls himself a businessman, but his chief of security previously worked for the Russian FSB, so you do the math. They deal with thieves outside the law—fatally—so the stakes are high. Unfortunately, trust remains an issue for the former partners-turned-lovers-turned-reluctant partners again in creator-writers Veronica Marza, Pablo Roa, and Fernando Sancristobal’s six-episode Spanish-series Suspicious Minds, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

As she explains in flashbacks, Amber fell for Rui during their last job. That was a big no-no, but it aided their cover, as a couple participating getting hitched during an Elvis and Marilyn-themed group wedding in Vegas. They score down went like clockwork, but the getaway turned ugly. Amber assumed Rui died in a hail of bullets, so she decided to steal the “Tiara of St. Agatha” as a tribute. She invested months serving as the tutor-minder of Villegas’s entitled son Edgar, to befriend his older sister Lucia, who will be wearing the Tiara during her wedding on Esperanza, Villegas’s private South Pacific island.

Yet, just when is about to crack the safe, Rui interrupts. Instead of grabbing the tiara, Amber takes on a new, old partner. She is less than thrilled, because she knows Rui betrayed her, even though he accuses her of the same. Awkwardly, they only barely elude the seriously scary Judith Milenkovic, so she knows someone is out to steal her boss’s tiara. Consequently, they must take on further partners, including Julio, the Villegas family’s majordomo and wedding director, as well as young Edgar, who hopes to teach his inattentive father a lesson.

Suspicious Minds sometimes descends a little too far into goofiness, especially when depicting clueless Lucia and her oddball fiancé, Jaume. However, each instalment features plenty of clever scheming, conning, and daring sleight of hand. Basically, the tone hits similarly to a vintage Remington Steele episode, but slightly sillier.

Regardless, co-leads Alex Gonzalez and Silvio Alonso make it all quite watchable, as eye-candy with decent rom-com chemistry. Alonso’s charismatic screen presence sometimes outshines Gonzalez, but they generally play off each other well.

Predator: Killer of Killers, on Hulu

Vikings were mean and unruly. Samurai were the greatest swordsmen. And nobody could outfly U.S. Naval aviators. Unfortunately, the Predators aliens believe that to be the best, they must hunt the best. That means they will stalk all the aforementioned throughout human history in Dan Trachtenberg’s animated anthology, Predator: Killer of Killers, “co-directed” by Joshua Wassung, which premieres today on Hulu.

As viewers know from Trachtenberg’s Prey, Predators have been coming to Earth for a long time. They have an advantage in each of the Earthbound historical stories, because the Vikings, Samurai, and WWII fighter pilots are busy fighting each other, while the Predators watch and wait.

Arguably, the opening Samurai story is the weakest of the three, but the brutality of Ursa’s combat, both against her Viking enemies and the Predator, are impressive by any standard. Lindsay LaVanchy also sounds appropriately fierce as the Viking clan leader. Nevertheless, this somewhat revisits the themes and beats of Prey.

Visually, the Samurai story might be the most dynamic. Trachtenberg and Wassung also create some incredible animated martial arts and swordplay. The battle between brothers turned sworn-rivals resonates on archetypal level. Yet, the way they combine forces against the Predator holds great importance later. Although Louis Ozawa is credited as both samurai voices, this is a quiet, largely non-verbal segment, which suits its stealthy ninja vibe and elegant Jidaigeki setting.

Control Freak, on Hulu

If a self-help program works, you should only need to buy one book once. If it shows you how to unlock your inner potential, why keep buying a bunch of tapes and workshop tickets? Val Nguyen (which usually sounds like “Win”) is about to learn how little her empowerment babble is worth. Her family demon does not care if she awakened her giant within. As a result, today might not be the first day of the rest of her life. Instead, it might be her last, in director-screenwriter Shal Ngo’s Control Freak, which premieres today on Hulu.

Nguyen is a self-help, motivational speaker-human branding campaign on the verge of superstardom. Her upcoming tour should push her into the promised land, but she has been distracted during the final planning by a nasty itch on the back of her head. Her compulsive scratching even draws blood.

Something is very wrong, which Ngo leads viewers to suspect might in some way involve her long buried family trauma. Her mother died under mysterious circumstances, which Nguyen partially blames on her former junkie father, Sang. Perhaps he does too, since he took vows as a Buddhist monk shortly after her death. Nguyen also discovers a lot of darkly mystical documents when she rummages around his storage locker in search of her birth certificate.

Initially, Ngo mines a vein of body horror, but after the first act, he pivots to the supernatural, but with deep psychological and folk horror overtones. The audience never really thinks it all might be in her head, unless you mean the hole he is boring into it. The film also dramatically displays a deep generational divide between Nguyen’s junky “you’re good enough, you’re strong enough” pablum and her Aunt Thuy’s old school, jaded “karma will get you every time” combination of realism and superstition.

Regardless, Ngo is surprisingly successful balancing competing sources of horror. The body horror will literally give you the itch, while the bogeyman is appropriately sinister. However, it is hard to top Nguyen’s spectacular descent into madness, which, thanks to Kelly Marie Tran’s lead performance, is an absolutely spectacular cratering.

Paris Has Fallen, on Hulu

When you are a Secret Service Agent appearing in a string of action movies, like Gerard Butler in the Has Fallen franchise, chances are good you will have to take a bullet for the President, sooner or later. That is bad news for Vincent Taleb, the former protective services officer for the French president. Technically, he is no longer her bodyguard, but can’t quite break off their secret on-again-off-again love affair. As of episode one, he has been re-assigned to the defense minister, who becomes the first target of a massive terrorist conspiracy in creator Howard Overman’s 8-episode Paris Has Fallen, which premieres today on Hulu.

Minister Bardin is a bit sleazy, but Taleb could not be choosy after requesting a transfer from Pres. Levesque’s detail. Bardin will be lucky to have him when highly disgruntled former French Legionnaire Jacob Pearce takes the British embassy hostage. Bardin is his prime target, but Taleb is unusually resourceful. MI-6 agent Zara Taylor is another wildcard Pearce did not expect. Nevertheless, Paris Has Fallen is the sort of series where just when the good guys think they have won a victory, something goes boom.

Paris is the first of several planned international TV spin-offs from the film franchise, but they are mostly thematically related, rather than sharing characters and specific in-world history. Of course, protecting a head of state will most likely factor prominently in them all.

Frankly, Oveman and company never quite convincingly sell Taleb’s relationship with Levesque, but the French agent has solid personality-clashing chemistry with Taylor, who joins the response team as the official unofficial UK representative. Tewfik Jallab and Ritu Arya play off each other well, delivering banter with a sharp edge. They also both acquit themselves well in the many, many fight scenes.

Sean Harris seethes with conviction as Pearce. This is familiar terrain for him, having played super-villain Solomon Lane in the Mission Impossible franchise. Yet, his portrayal still feels fresh and unflaggingly intense. Jeremie Covillault projects rumpled integrity as Matis, the chief of French intelligence. However, Emmanuelle Bercot is so cold and charmless as Levesque, it is almost impossible to buy into her relationship with Taleb.

Mr. Crocket, on Hulu

A lot of people owe Barney the dinosaur an apology. He is far from the world’s most detestable kiddie TV host. Compared to this sinister child-abductor, it isn’t even a close call. As a bonus, his theme song is an even more insidious earworm. However, one of the few parents he leaves alive comes looking for her son in Brandon Espy’s Mr. Crocket, which premieres Friday on Hulu.

As we see in the prologue, if Mr. Crocket hears one of young fans taking verbal or physical abuse while they play one of his VHS tapes, he comes out of the screen to administer violent retribution, taking the child back with his to his creepy nether-realm. Usually, there are no survivors, but when the mom, Rhonda, escapes his wrath, becoming a broken, crazy street lady out of grief.

Unfortunately, Summer Beverly ignores Rhonda’s crazy-sounding warnings until it is too late. Her son Major has been an eponymous pain, ever since his father tragically passed away. After a few hurtful (but from the audience’s perspective, not unwarranted) words, out comes Mr. Crocket. Of course, the cops dismiss Beverly’s outlandish account. Instead, she must team up with Rhonda and Eddie, a mysterious young man who seems to know a lot about Mr. Crocket from personal traumatic experience, to find the missing children.

The premise of Mr. Crocker, expanded from by Espy and co-screenwriter Carl Reid from Espy’s short film, appealingly pushes a lot of VHS-era nostalgic buttons. However, it feels like the final product was reluctantly dumbed-down somewhat. The obvious comparison film, I Saw the TV Glow, was too much in its own head—and way, way too preoccupied with sexual and gender identity politics. In contrast, Espy and Crocker could have dived more deeply into Crocket’s backstory. Perhaps the best example of a between-film that gets the balance right would be Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Nevertheless, Elvis Nolasco gives a terrific horror villain performance as Mr. Emanuel Crocket. If Crocket goes franchise, he will deserve the lion’s share of the credit. He shows an understanding of what made characters like Robert Englund’s Freddy so popular, while still making Mr. Crocket very much his own thing. Plus, Alex Winkler’s songs, with lyrics written by Espy and Reid, perfectly compliment his unsettlingly chipper attitude (also note, they hold a final tune for an end-of-credits “stinger).

Hold Your Breath, on Hulu

Compared to what Oklahoma experienced in the 1930s, current climate change looks rather mild. It wasn’t called the Dust Bowl for no reason. Even before, living was always a constant struggle for “dirt farmers.” Tragically, one high-strung mother’s two greatest phobias, dust and drifters, will plague her at the same time. They might even be related in Karrie Crouse & William Joines’ Hold Your Breath, which premieres today on Hulu.

Margaret Bellum’s hardscrabble life always emphasized the hard. She and her husband already buried their youngest daughter Ada, which prompted her understandable depression. Bellum’s sleepwalking incidents also required her to sleep separated from her other two daughters, Rose and Ollie, for their protection. Perhaps he should not have left her alone for an out-of-state construction job, but it was hard to turn down work during the Smoot-Hawley Depression.

Initially, Bellum’s sister Esther Smith appears more of a cause for concern, due to her poor housekeeping and erratic behavior. She also assumes Rose simply over-stimulated little Ollie’s imagination with her terrifying tales of the “Grey Man.” However, it turns out someone really is hiding in their barn. That would be Wallace Grady, who claims to be a friend of her husband and a faith healer. Of course, if this were true, Hold Your Breath probably wouldn’t be a horror movie.

Hold Your Breath is definitely a slice of macabre Americana, but its secrets and twists hold little shock or surprise, for even moderately experienced genre viewers. The early scenes are quite impressive, taking visual cues from Andrew Wyeth paintings and Florence Owens Thompson photos. As a result, the audience should readily understand how such a desolate and desiccated environment could drive someone crazy.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also surprisingly chilling playing against type as the Night of the Hunter-ish Grady. Unfortunately, Crouse & Joines ill-advisedly usher him off screen for long stretches of time. As partial compensation, Sarah Paulson reliably freaks out as Bellum. You could almost think of this as American Horror Story: Dust Bowl.

High Intellectual Potential, on Hulu

Forget lawers—happily. Cleaning ladies are the new go-to profession for TV series. This one is working on the right side of the law. Morgane Alvaro is also about the make the step up to lucrative consultant gigging when she helps point a police investigation in the right direction. Getting respect of her reluctant partner will be harder in co-creators Stephane Carrie, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, and Nicolas Jean’s French series High Intellectual Potential, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Alvaro has a high IQ, but her EQ is questionable. That is why she constantly gets fired from dead-end jobs. As the pilot episode, “West Wind,” opens, she is cleaning the Lille police station, where she notices Adam Karadec’s investigation is way off-base. Having a compulsive need for order, she ill-advisedly re-organizes his bulletin board. At first, he and his boss, Celine Hazan, throw her in jail, but of course, she is right.

Jeanne Levasseur was Karadec’s prime suspect, but Alvaro deducts from a quick perusal of the crime scene photos that she is a victim—and presumably in grave peril. Obviously, this makes Karadec look like an idiot, so he resents working with Alvaro when Hazan hires her.

Even after the third (of three episodes provided for review), Karadec and Alvaro still aren’t clicking as a team and she keeps showing him up. For their second case, “Malagasy Customs,” the bickering pair face a locked hotel room mystery, once they eliminate the victim’s lover, the last person seen leaving his room, as a suspect.

Once again, Karadec is woefully unobservant and not so inclined to reflect on his failings. However, the procedural takes sone interesting turns and it showcases Alvaro’s empathy. Far from unfeeling, she just has problems with authority, anger management, and impulse control. So, maybe she would not be super-fun to work with.

The second episode also introduces what will presumably the first season’s continuing story-arc, when Hazan agrees to investigate the disappearance of Alvaro’s first husband. The world assumes he absconded, but she believes he was the victim of foul play. As it happens, Karadec turns up something suspicious that hits close to home for Alvaro in the third episode, “Blind Man’s Bluff.”

The episode’s primary investigation focuses on the abduction of two young girls. The mother’s well-heeled parents initially suspect her ex-husband, but Alvaro quickly clears his name when she discovers his dead body. Lucky him. Regardless, the actually procedural and criminal business in the installment, written by the trio of creators, are probably the most suspenseful of the first three episodes.

Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown, on Hulu

Jim Jones was a lot like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, because he too was a socialist mass murderer. The deaths at Jonestown are now considered mass murder rather than mass suicide, because nobody had a real choice in the matter. Jones was also explicitly a communitarian socialist. In fact, Jonestown was conceived as a collective commune that tragically ended as all socialist utopias do. Viewers can watch the horror unfold in previously unseen video, much of it shot by Jonestown residents for “posterity” in the three-part National Geographic-produced Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown, directed by Marian Mohamed, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

If you do not know the basic facts about the 918 Peoples Temple members forced to commit suicide in their Guyana commune, check out Shan Nicholson’s Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle first, because it much more forthrightly addresses Jim Jones’ ideology. Of course, both programs gloss over the extent to which the late San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk allied themselves with Jones’ Peoples Temple. Moscone even appointed to Jones to the San Francisco Housing Authority and supported his campaign for the chairmanship, while ignoring reports of irregularities at the Peoples Temple.

However, Cult Massacre captures the megalomaniacal extremism of Jones in footage he had produced, supposedly to document the development of Jonestown. (In retrospect, even the name, Jonestown, should have been a warning of the personality cult’s toxicity, much like the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad.) In any event, his voice and vocal cadences sound truly creepy.

Cult Massacre also features interviews with several survivors and notable witnesses, including Jones’s son Stephan. In addition to enduring the abuse and constant exhaustion of life at Jonestown, for years the surviving Jonestown residents had to carry the stigma of being cult members.

We also hear from now-former Rep. Jackie Speiers, who accompanied her late boss Rep. Leo Ryan on his fatal fact-finding mission to Jonestown. Yet, some of the most illuminating commentary comes from Special Ops AF Sgt David Netterville, who was part of the operation retrieving and repatriating the bodies, and Douglas Ellice, a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy. At the time, Guyana was a socialist nation on better terms with the Soviets (that is precisely Jones chose to relocate there), which must have made the aftermath even more difficult to manage.

Blood Free, on Hulu

Considering Greenpeace blocked the cultivation of life-saving Vitamin A-enriched “Golden” rice in the Philippines, how do you think environmentalists would respond to entrepreneur Yoon Ja-yu’s laboratory-cultured meat and vegetables? Judging from the unhinged protestors outside her corporate offices, probably not well. In fact, she receives so many death-threats, she needs a bodyguard of Woo Chae-woon’s butt-kicking caliber. However, the former Korean Naval officer has his own agenda in the ten-episode Blood Free, which is now streaming on Hulu.

Woo showed up just in time, soon after a stockbreeder deliberately took a header off an overpass, onto Yoon’s SUV, in protest of the economic threat her company, Blood Free, represented to his livelihood. Soon thereafter, her lab’s computers are hijacked by a ransomware gang. Not so coincidentally, Woo had an encounter with the same gang during his military career.

His presence is not a coincidence either. The former president, Lee Mun-gyu helped facilitate his recruitment. Several years ago, Yoon was present when a terrorist bombing killed dozens of people and forced the amputation of Lee’s legs (along with his political career). Since then, Woo and Lee have suspected the official story was a little too pat and convenient.

Initially, Woo intends to investigate Yoon, but he gets distracted saving her life repeatedly. Clearly, someone has it in for her. The suspects include a Shining Path-style terrorist group, Park Dae-seong, the chairman of Blood Free’s closest corporate competitors (and awkwardly Lee’s son-in-law), as well as every farmer, rancher, and fisherman in Korea.

Although Yoon talks a green game (her company is called Blood Free, after all), the series does not feel very environmentally focused. In fact, there is sometimes a Fountainhead-Atlas Shrugged vibe, as the government and special interests constantly try to pull down the innovative company Yoon has built with her blood, sweat, and capital. On the other hand, the storyline of terrorist-collaborators hiding in the upper echelons of government and industry is very much in the tradition of paranoid, post-Watergate thrillers (maybe there are some similarities with The Terminal List too).

Regardless, Ju Ji-hoon is as steely and hardnosed as it gets portraying Woo. He is not a superman, because Superman never bleeds, but his many cuts and scrapes just make him look tougher. Han Hyo-jo is also terrific playing the outwardly driven and inwardly sensitive Yoon. Lee Mu-saeng, Jun Suk-ho, Park Ji-yeon, and Kim Sang-ho also add lot of color as Yoon’s suspicious lieutenants. However, nobody can out-sleaze Lee Hee-jun as Seonu Jae, the Prime Minister (and the son of Park and grandson of Lee. It’s small world, isn’t it?).

The Famous Five, on Hulu

Enid Blyton was a veritable one-woman Stratemeyer Syndicate. She single-handedly wrote many long-running British children’s mystery series. Blyton produced multiple volumes in her “Secret Seven,” “Barney Mysteries,” and “Five Find-Outers” franchises, but her “The Famous Five” series was her arguably her most popular. One of the five is a smart dog named Timmy, which surely helps explain their success. They are supposed to be old-fashioned and skew towards a youthful audience, so who better to shepherd their return to television than Nicolas Winding Refn, the director of the Pusher trilogy and Only God Forgives? Parents will be relieved to hear he adapted his style to suit the material rather than vice versa, so the kids can safely watch the six-episode The Famous Five when it premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Supposedly, George [not Georgina] Kirrin is the only person who visits her family’s reputedly haunted Kirrin Island, so she is surprised to find Timmy wagging his tail there, When she returns later with her three visiting cousins, Julian, Anne, and Dick Barnard, they assume his owner was the dead man in the diving suit sprawled on the beach. In a Refn film, Timmy would similarly wind up leaving with the assassin who massacres the four children during the climax, but that won’t happen here. If the cousins get killed, Timmy will stay loyal to them.

Initially, George resents their presence, fancying herself a lone wolf. However, she needs their help investigating the strange happenings afoot on Kirrin Island. Apparently, Thomas Wentworth, the creepy local blue blood, seeks a mythical Templar treasure, but George intends to beat him to it. The trail will take them to London and then back to Kirrin Island again. Of course, Timmy sticks with them every step of the way.

In the UK, The Famous Five aired in three feature-length installments, but Hulu repackaged the first season into six episodes (three two-parters). Presumably, they wanted to encourage impulse streaming, since the Famous Five are not as famous in the U.S. The second two-fer, “Peril on the Night Train,” features pre-WWII German agents as the villains, perhaps to appeal to Indiana Jones fans.

Anne Barnard thinks Kirrin Cottage is haunted, but the mystery figure is in fact a spy out to steal Uncle (or father) Quentin’s newest invention. With war looming, his Enigma Machine-like “Algebra Box” has huge national security applications. Mr. Roland, an undercover British agent, will escort the Kirrin family to a secret military facility in Scotland, even though the overnight train is a perfect setting for the foreign operatives to strike again.

Much to her own surprise, George is sorry her cousins must soon leave in “The Eye of the Sunrise,” but she quickly meets a new friend. Unfortunately, she loses “The Great Supremo” just as quickly. For their last hurrah, the Barnard cousins agree to help rescue the circus hypnotist from the sinister mental hospital holding him prisoner.

The Famous Five is clearly produced for younger viewers, but smarter kids should dig its caperiness. The pre-War intrigue of “Night Train” and “Eye of the Sunrise” should at least moderately engage mature adults as well. However, the bossy George and goody-two-shoes Julian both get to be rather tiresome. Counterintuitively, the two youngest cousins, Dick and Anne, hold up the best over the course of the six (or three) episodes.

Chief Detective 1958, on Hulu

Lee Je-hoon’s unit is like the “Untouchables” of post-Korean War Seoul. Unfortunately, the rest of the Jongnam station is very touchable. Awkwardly, the station captain is probably the most corrupt of the whole crooked Jongnam lot. To fight crime and serve the common good, Lee and his teammates must frequently work around their colleagues and superiors in creator Park Jae-beom’s Chief Detective 1958, which starts streaming today on Hulu.

Eventually, Lee becomes the revered central character in the vintage early 1970s K-drama Chief Inspector, to which Chief Detective 1958 serves as a prequel. However, when the new standalone series opens, Lee is new in town, having just transferred from Hwangchun, where he set the national record for arresting cow thieves. He figures he should keep arresting criminals in Seoul, but the blatantly corrupt Choi Dal-sik keeps releasing them and forcing him to apologize.

Yu Dae-cheon, the honest leader of Investigative Unit #1, counsels patience, but Lee is spoiling for a fight. He finds a natural ally in Kim Sang-sun, the hard-charging Lethal Weapon-like detective nicknamed “Mad Dog” because of his habit of biting suspects. They soon recruit Jo Gyeong-hwan, a burly laborer, who is tired of seeing average folk getting pushed around. They also poach the college-educated Seo Ho-jeong from Unit #2, because Lee understands they can use someone like Charles Martin Smith’s forensic accountant in de Palma’s The Untouchables.

Unit #1 will definitely fight corruption in the Jongnam station over the course of the series, but they also work separate, discrete cases each episode. Out of the first four episodes, their plan to catch a band of armed bank robbers in episode three, “Highwaymen,” is the best written and directed. We have all seen thousands of bank heists on TV, but Park and writer Kim Young-shim come up with some wild new wrinkles.

The case of infants murdered by an evil orphanage in episode four, “Yellow Turtle,” is so grim, it out SVUs Law & Order SVU. To its credit, it also challenges attitudes towards disability. Unfortunately, many of the American servicemen depicted in episode two, “The Headstrong Unit of Jongnam,” are just villainous caricatures. No matter how virulent racist attitudes were in the 1950s, there is no way a white 2^nd Lieutenant would dare strike a Korean American First Lieutenant and expect to get away with it. The American military has had a few issues in the past, but chain of command is absolutely sacrosanct.

Shardlake, on Hulu

In Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell is the protagonist, but he is the bad guy in A Man for All Seasons. Which is more accurate? Matthew Shardlake would admit it is rather complicated, if you asked him privately. Of course, he would publicly proclaim the righteousness of Henry VIII’s powerful strategist, since the lawyer often serves as Cromwell’s unofficial investigator. Ostensibly, his latest assignment is a murder investigation in a not so reformist monastery, but his real job will be convincing the abbot to relinquish St. Donatus’s property to the Crown. Yet, the lawyer’s stubborn desire for genuine justice leads to danger in the four-part Shardlake, which premieres today on Hulu.

Shardlake is constantly underestimated, due to his spinal curvature, but Cromwell’s cocky lieutenant, Jack Barak, slowly learns better while accompanying the lawyer to St. Donatus. Somewhat awkwardly, Shardlake must sleuth out the killer of his predecessor, who was auditing the monastery on Cromwell’s behalf. His head was cleanly decapitated, but the murder weapon is missing.

Naturally, Shardlake and Barak get a frosty reception from Abbot Fabian and his Brothers because they fully understand their true purpose at the monastery. Relations grow even more testy when Shardlake openly rebukes the monks for cruelly bullying Simon Whelplay, a scrawny novice. Understandably, Shardlake identifies with the malnourished monk in training, so the subsequent murder of Whelplay further stokes his outrage.

Shardlake is not at the level of The Name of the Rose, even though it clearly aspires to be. However, it is several cuts above the average episode of Cadfael. Series director Justin Chadwick skillfully mines the gothic setting for atmospheric chills. Stephen Butchard’s adaptation of C.J. Sansom’s novel retains all juicy English Reformational politics, including the execution of Anne Boleyn, which plays a pivotal role in the mystery.

To the producers’ credit, they walked the walk, as well as talked the talk, by casting Arthur Hughes (a thesp with radial dysplasia) as Shardlake. Beyond issues of authenticity, Hughes eloquently expresses the lawyer’s passion for justice and contempt for hypocrisy.

Frankly, Anthony Boyle (in his third major series this quarter, following Manhunt and Masters of the Air) looks and sounds rather miscast as the supposedly swaggering Barak. However, Sean Bean is suitably gruff and imperious as Cromwell. Yes, he lives past the first episode, but he disappears for most of series, while the drama centers on St. Donatus.

Wonderful World, on Hulu

No matter how powerful they might be, your political connections cannot protect you from an enraged Mamma bear. An ambitious politician’s money-man learns that the hard after killing Eun Soo-hyun’s son. He beat the wrap, but he was no match for her car. However, there will be further consequences for everyone in Wonderful World, which premieres today on Hulu.

Congressman Kim Joon’s fundraiser hit Kang Gun-woo with his car, drove around with him hidden in the backseat, and then tried to secretly dump his body while he was still living. It was too late by the time Eun found him, but if he had been taken directly to the hospital, he probably could have been saved. Kim puts in the fix during the trial, but when he still refuses to apologize afterwards, Eun dispenses some poetic justice.

Apparently, Alvin Bragg is also the DA in Seoul, because a murderer like Kwon gets released, whereas the victims are prosecuted to the fullest extent. Of course, the bereft Eun hardly cares, at least initially. However, Jang Hyung-ja, an older inmate, takes Eun under her wing and revives her spirit. She too is a murderess, but her circumstances were much less extenuating. While committing a crime of passion, Jang also accidentally killed Kwon Seon-yool’s parents, for which she has always been deeply sorry. Knowing she will soon die from cancer, the older inmate convinces the soon-to-be released Eun to find Kwon and convey her contrition.

It turns out Kwon is a rather shadowy figure in his own right. In addition to his black bag jobs, Kwon has some game-changing secrets of his own. Yet, Eun starts to develop a strange rapport with him, based on their shared experiences as the victims of violent crime—unless someone is getting played.

Wonderful World has some of the elements of Gillian Flynn/Liane Moriarty thrillers, but they are often subservient to the angst and melodrama that are stereotypically associated with K-drama. Perhaps, it is worth noting the series’ enormous domestic popularity. However, straight thriller fans will find each episode is conspicuously padded-out with overwrought dramatic moments for Eun to shine. Each installment could easily lose fifteen minutes, oftentimes more.

This is indeed a showcase for Kim Nam-ju, who makes the most of Eun’s agony and outrage. Given the circumstances, it is impossible to not sympathize with her, even when she is dealing with her somewhat hypocritical jealousy over Kang Su-ho, her husband, who refused to move on from her, even though she refused to see him throughout her imprisonment. More to the point, Kim taps into some deep and dark emotions, while still staying relatively grounded.

Self Reliance, on Hulu

The dark web must be jumping the shark if it would bother with Thomas Walcott. It is not entirely fair to call him a loser. He just had a few setbacks and has temporarily given up. When they recruit him for their survival show, he figures he has nothing to lose in director-screenwriter-star Jake Johnson’s Self Reliance (no hyphen), which premieres Friday on Hulu.

Walcott lives with him mother, but he hardly sees her or anyone else. He is still reeling from and baffled by his longtime girlfriend’s decision to dump him. Consequently, Walcott figures he has little to lose when a Danish dark web outfit recruits him to be their hunters’ latest prey. They obviously have money, since they hired Andy Samberg (playing his debt-ridden self) to make the initial contact.

Weirdly, he is pretty confident he can exploit the rules long enough to survive his designated thirty days. As long as he with someone, the hunters cannot strike. Yet, his mother and family refuse to indulge what they assume is his delusion. Instead, he hires a homeless man to be his shadow, until another player reaches out. Maddy expresses interest in teaming up and when he meets her, he happily agrees, but the dark web “ninja production assistants” keep warning him not to feel too safe.

Johnson’s script is intermittently amusing, but it overwhelmingly favors comedy over the Most Dangerous Game­-style thriller elements. The ratio would be 90/10 or greater. Fortunately, Johnson and Anna Kendrick bring a lot of energy to the film. They develop an odd but effectively syncopated bantering rhythm that earns most of the films laughs.

Culprits, on Hulu

Are you in the mood for some flashbacks? Joe Petrus is not—not in the least. He thought he had started a whole new life, but apparently his old life is not done with him yet. Somebody is killing the crew that pulled off an incredibly messy heist in London, so it is only a matter of time before they come looking for him and the family he hopes to marry into. Logically, he needs to find them first in creator-co-director J Blakeson’s 8-episode Culprits, which premieres Friday on Hulu.

During the “then” segments, Petrus’s legal name was David Marking, but those involved in the caper were supposed to only know him as “Muscle.” The mastermind, Dianne Harewood, a.k.a. “Brain” gave them all codenames, like in Reservoir Dogs, but they were all descriptive of their respective roles. “Officer” is a con artist who was impersonating a cop. “Driver” drove the getaway vehicle. “Cracker” and his granddaughter “Greaseman” were responsible for opening an incredibly rare and complex old school vault. Even though Muscle was the muscle, when things got sticky, which they did, the borderline psychotic “Specialist” was responsible for shooting their way out.

Even though the survivors got away with a lot of cash, it was a bloodbath in the secret vault. It is therefore not shocking that someone would be very cross with them. However, Muscle learns Brain might have used the crew to pilfer a secret, much more valuable target. Rather awkwardly, she is now presumed dead. To find it, Muscle teams up with his remaining accomplices, while eluding Demon, the stone cold ultra-Nordic assassin pursuing them.

The time shifts can give viewers whiplash, but the way Blakeson employs the flashbacks to reveal secrets and context largely justifies their liberal usage. You just have to accept Culprits is going to be one of those kind of hipster heist thrillers. The capery/revenge stuff also works quite well. Unfortunately, the time-sucking melodrama involving Muscle’s fiancé Jules and his kids is a chore to endure. How many times do we have to listen to Jules whine “I can’t trust you Joe when you keep all these secrets from me?”

The Artful Dodger, on Hulu

In England, their lives were Dickensian, literally. Jack Dawkins is still an ex-convict, but who isn’t, in 19^th Century Australia? Now he is a man of medicine, but Fagin will always be a scheming slimeball. Dawkins knows that, but he opts to keep the cad close in creators James McNamara, David Maher, and David Taylor’s eight-part Oliver Twist sequel series, The Artful Dodger, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Dawkins, a.k.a. “The Artful Dodger,” is now a surgeon, but in the wild and wooly colony of Australia, he still must live by his wits to earn money. Unfortunately, he owes 26 Pounds to a cheating card-sharp gangster, who aims to collect either the money or his hand. Fagin arrives just in time to suggest several dodgy capers, all of which inevitably lead to more trouble.

Nevertheless, Dawkins is a reasonably talented and conscientious medical man, thanks to his late, redeeming master. In fact, the clueless governor’s headstrong eldest daughter, Lady Belle Fox wants him to be her mentor her in surgical medicine. Even in Australia, medicine is not considered a proper pursuit for a lady, but Fox is not very traditional and the reluctant Dawkins does not strike her that way either.

McNamara, Maher, Taylor, and their fellow writers do a nice job inserting Dawkins and Fagin into new picaresque misadventures. They also remain mindful of all their awkward shared history from Oliver Twist. Ironically, Dickens’s sympathetic title orphan is often referred to as a double-crossing villain throughout Artful Dodger. However, Fox’s constant attempts to enlist Dawkins in her crusades for gender equality and medical modernization grow tiresome. Of course, she is totally right and the backwards Colony establishment are invariably fools and knaves. We have heard this sort of bickering so many times before, it just feels shopworn here.

Obituary, on Hulu

The old joke about people dying to get into the cemetery applies to the obituaries as well. Unfortunately, for freelance obituary writer Elvira Clancy, they are not dying quickly enough in her not so quaint Irish village. She starts helping along Kilraven’s the oldest and meanest citizens, but of course, unexpected consequences invariably result in writer-creator Rudy Lawlor’s six-part  Obituary, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Living in Kilraven is generally grim, but it is especially so for ragingly neurotic Clancy. She lives with her alcoholic father Ward, who is drinking to forget something. Her childhood defender, Mallory Markum, remains her only friend. However, they are both seriously attracted to the paper’s new crime reporter, Emerson Stafford, who seems over-qualified for such a low-profile publication. It turns out he was personally recruited/blackmailed to come to Kilraven by his terminally ill predecessor, Clive Cavendish, to solve the decade-old murder of German national Maria Riedle.

The death-obsessed Clancy is happy with the obit beat. She just needs more work, so she soon decides to create some business for herself. However, she has strict rules, like her victims must be over 18-years-old and basically have it coming. Much to Clancy’s surprise, one of her near-misses turns over a new leaf, which spurs her boss, Hughie Burns to also start poking around the Riedle case again. It turns out just about everyone she knows has a hard-to-explain connection to the case, including Clancy herself.

Lawlor’s homicidal obit-writer premise is pretty sly, but his twists and turns take it to a higher level. The way evil karma keeps coming back around, over and over again, is quite clever. This really is some impressively slick television writing.