Players is a new Paramount+ series from the people who did American Vandal. It’s the same fake documentary format, but this time focused on League of Legends eSports. I know absolutely nothing about LoL, so there’s a lot of terminology that I don’t follow and cameos of what I assume are real eSports players and commentators. At least based on the four episodes out so far, it lacks the social commentary that elevated American Vandal from a thing about dick-drawing to something great, but it’s funny enough to keep watching.

Although It’s not on the TV Calendar site, which is the only way I can keep track of release schedules across streaming services, so there’s a non-zero chance that I just forget to keep looking for new episodes.

Slow Horses is Apple TV’s spy series with Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jonathan Pryce, and the “ugly” girl from Ready Player One, about a group of agents banished to an office where MI-5 stashes fuckups. It’s a good twisty story and quite funny in parts. Justified‘s Graham Yost is an executive producer. He doesn’t write anything, but I suspect he was a fan of the book it’s based on, and that sort of gives an idea of the tone of the thing. It takes a bit to get going, but by the middle of the six episode season I was hooked, and I ended up losing sleep because I had to see how the season finished.

I had to keep subtitles on, since the mix of British slang and spy jargon proved too difficult for me to follow without them. I’m still not really sure if “dogs” are any of the grunts of MI-5 or if they’re specifically the ones that do the dirty work.

I was surprised to see it’s already renewed through season four, and season one ends with a teaser for season 2, supposedly coming out later this year, so that’s great news.

No Time to Die is the latest Bond movie that’s finally on Prime. It mostly brings back the same folks from Spectre, adding Rami Malek, MCU’s Maria Rambeau, and a little bit (not enough) of Ana de Armas. It’s decent, but the Daniel Craig movies having actual continuity ends up being more of a burden than an asset. Malek’s villain is underdeveloped in the midst of the Lea Sedoux story that spans two movies, and the movie shines between the credits and the halfway point, but then gets back to that larger story and gets pretty meh. That all makes it one of the least Bond-y Bond movies I can remember, from the unusual opening to the heavy emotional story for Bond to the ending.

All in all it’s fine, and I guess a decent way to send Daniel Craig off, but I hope they try something different when they spin the franchise back up with a new actor.

Ms. Marvel is Disney+’s latest MCU show, this one featuring teen hero Kamala Khan. Her family and friends seem pretty consistent with the comics, but her powers and their origins are different, and I’m not really sure why, unless Kevin Feige is afraid to revisit Inhumans after the failed TV show (but he did bring Anson Mount in to play Black Bolt again, so maybe not?). It’s much more YA-ish, with a lot of cartoon-y visuals and fangirling about Captain Marvel and stuff, so this might be aimed at a younger-than-me audience and probably won’t be my favorite, but it’s still pretty enjoyable.

Ambulance is the Michael Bay movie where Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II take EMT Eiza Gonzalez hostage after a bank robbery. Gyllenhaal’s an asshole, but YAMII’s theoretically a good guy robbing the bank to pay for his wife’s experimental surgery, though I think he failed to anticipate the likely challenges of paying for surgery with a bag of cash. It’s ok, Michael Bay-ish, but both less dumb and less spectacle than some of his other movies, for better and for worse.

It strangely referenced two Michael Bay movies by name (The Rock and Bad Boys) despite itself being a Michael Bay movie.

Pistol is Hulu’s miniseries about The Sex Pistols. I didn’t know a lot about their real story, so it was kind of interesting to learn some things I didn’t (like I had some vague idea that Chrissie Hynde was around the punk scene in London, but I didn’t know she worked at SEX for Malcolm McLaren and tried to start a band with pre-Clash Mick Jones). I can’t imagine it’d be of much interest if you don’t like the music at all, but also I imagine those who know the background well already won’t care too much. But I have a little interest in the band and knew only bits and pieces of their story, so I was in the sweet spot for this, I think. The actress who played Chrissie Hynde (pictured) is quite attractive too, so that was nice. Although weird to learn that she’s Kyle Chandler’s daughter.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is Disney+’s newest Star Wars series with Ewan McGregor reprising his role. From the first two episodes, it’s hard to say too much about it. They feel more like a the first two parts of a long movie than TV episodes, so they’re barely past setting up the premise. But it’s a step up from the prequels at least, since the dialogue isn’t painfully bad, and hopefully will turn out to be the Obi-Wan story Ewan McGregor’s performance deserved.

Penn & Teller Get Killed is a 1989 movie the comedy magic duo did in the late 80s that is… impressively bad. Somehow, it’s directed by Arthur Penn, three times nominated for the best director Oscar in the 60s but this, his last film, is lousy. Penn is a good orator but not a natural actor, and Teller doesn’t talk, so it’s kind of awkward in general. The plot as a whole isn’t bad, but I think you could edit this down to ~45 minutes and it could be decent, but at 89 minutes, it sucks.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the Disney+ movie in which they meta the Disney Afternoon characters into a Roger Rabbit-y world. The result is a movie that I wonder who the intended audience is, because it’s wholesome and G-ish rated and kid-friendly, but probably too meta for kids to really follow the plot and a terrible introduction to the Rescue Rangers characters. It was ok for me as an adult, but I don’t think my nephews would have liked it.

George Carlin’s American Dream is an HBO documentary on the comedian. It was pretty interesting to see more of his earlier work. Beyond the seven dirty words, I didn’t know much of what he did before he was a cantankerous gray-haired guy on HBO now and then. But for four hours to just learn a little about that, and about his marriages and kids that I didn’t care too much about, was a bit much. Plus, they got kinda heavy-handed with his material’s relevance to current events towards the end.