As difficult as it might be to adjust to TV watching on your laptop, the best new shows I’ve seen unveiled for the fall come on the streaming services.
Amazon Prime particularly will present both the much-anticipated “Transparent” and the solid detective yarn “Bosch.” Both are survivors of last year’s online pilot vote — an unusual method that brings the pilot process to the people by presenting all of the pilots they’ve ordered and letting the audience theoretically decide which of them would be popular enough to go to series. (Now, Amazon doesn’t release numbers for anything so there’s no way to determine whether the integrity of the voting system).
With the above mentioned series yet to premiere, they’ve provided viewers (and not just Amazon Prime members) the opportunity to see and vote on a new batch of pilots that they seem to have spared no expense to make.
The best of them, “The Cosmopolitans” seems almost like a dream: A series version of the kind of talky, stylish movies Whit Stillman made at the beginning of his career in films like “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona.” Here, he’s enamored with another iconic European capitol, Paris, and a group of mostly Americans that mope about their romantic entanglements as if they were in an Eric Rohmer film.
The strong cast is led by Adam Brody and Chloe Sevigny as a fashion writer who is the object of his obsession, with Carrie MacLemore, Jordan Roundtree and Adriano Giannini all jabbering about love and spouting their odd views of the world (Sevigny’s character empathizes with a Alabaman about her Civil War). As in “Girls,” the characters may seem annoying, but they are just belying their funny discourse. I’d love to see how this develops.
Nearly as good, and likely to be much more popular with audiences, is one of those nostalgic, coming of ages series “Red Oak” about a deadpan young man (Craig Roberts) who takes a summer job as an assistant tennis pro in a suburban New Jersey country club filled with characters, from his Lothario of a tennis pro boss to the country club president played by Paul Reiser, who, with his current role in “Married” is becoming the Alan Arkin of TV comedies. Richard Kind and Jennifer Grey play the parents.
“Really,” a third sitcom, is more conventional, and in the “Married” sense, obsessed with the sexual peccadilloes and everyday life of young couples, particularly Jay Chandrasekhar (who wrote, directs and stars) and his wife, played by Sarah Chalke. It’s good to see her back in a show, amid a cast that also includes Selma Blair and Rob Delaney. While not in the league of the other two Amazon comedies in the competition, it’s still better than most other TV comedies.
The two Amazon Prime drama candidates are more problematic. “Hand of God” is a kind of fearless, no holds barred tale about a judge on the brink, played by Ron Perlman, who turns to questionable men of god to help him find the rapist of his daughter in law. It’s another solid cast, with Dana Delany as his wife, Garret Dillahunt as one of the religious soldiers he relies on, and Andre Royo (Bubbles on “The Wire”) playing mayor. It’s a little crazy and reckless, but also kind of intriguiging.
The other, “Hysteria,” is so forgettable I put it on a second time forgetting I had seen it once. It’s about a group of girls in Austin stricken with a mysterious hysteria. In a summer with “The Strain” on TV, it’s not a standout, but even as it makes the simple jump of equating viral videos with an actual virus. Amid the cast is an older Laura San Giacomo as police chief, R.R. Knight from “Grey’s Anatomy,” and in the central role, a very sad looking Mena Suvari as the investigating neurologist. It may represent the most audacious move of any of the pilots, though: a streaming show bringing down viral video.
See the shows at Amazon Prime and cast your own vote!