Not sure that the backstory of the Big Nurse in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (that won Louise Fletcher an Oscar in 1975) needs to be told. But the new “Ratched” (Netflix, streaming), like the past Ryan Murphy productions for the service, is gussied up in set design, costumes and a big cast of seasoned actors including Sarah Paulson in the title role, Cynthia Nixon, Judy Davis and Sharon Stone.
The there are questions all over the story, whipped up with strange violence, unusual coastal California setting (though the movie took place in Oregon), neo-Herrmann music swelling and basic inconsistencies like a sleek mental hospital that’s unaccountable big and gleaming. Meant to rise to Hitchcock, it more often is a costume drama designed to shock.
One of the best cringe comedies these days is the adolescent recreation of “Pen15” (Hulu, streaming), in which Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play themselves half a lifetime ago, in middle school, among a bunch of actual middle schoolers. As the second season starts, the awkward age has never been so painfully amusing.
What’s really scary us the undercutting of voting rights. The new documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (Amazon Prime, streaming), examines voter suppression, with Stacey Abrams.
After being pulled prematurely from Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore returns for a new weekly topical series in “Wilmore” (Peacock, streaming).
Nice work if you can get it: Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman take their motorcycles through South and Central America and a camera crew follows them for the new series “Long Way Up” (Apple TV+, streaming).
In the new childrens’ series “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” (Netflix, streaming), the dinosaurs chasing the kids are all cartoons.