Too Much TV: This Is What You Should Be Watching This Weekend

From a South Korean crime series you won't forget to the movie you need to watch this Memorial Day weekend, I have some viewing tips.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, May 23rd 2025:

PRODUCTION NOTES
Since about one third of my newsletter readership is based outside of the United States, I always debate about whether or not to take off for a holiday that is US-centric. But I have decided to take off Monday because news from America is extremely slow going into the holiday weekend. And I don't anticipate there will be much to say on Memorial Day. If something breaks, I'll send out a special edition. But otherwise, I'll be back on Tuesday.

Also, I've picked up another large round of subscribers over the past two weeks. So as a reminder, Friday's newsletter tends to focus on viewing recommendations going into the weekend.

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND
Here is a rundown of some of what is worth watching this weekend. And there a lot of great programs to choose from. So many that I found myself doing triage in order to keep the newsletter under 2,000 words.

Nine Puzzles (Hulu)
Procedural crime dramas have been around since the earliest days of scripted television. But I have rarely seen a show so successfully play with the genre's tropes and audience expectations as this series from director Yoon Jong-bin. It is stylistically unique, as the show's visual language veers from darkly foreboding to modern-day Twin Peaks. Moments can go by that don't seem to add anything to the progression of the show, and then you come to the realization that every moment - no matter how quiet or seemingly inconsequential - is important to the overall tapestry of the story.

The series begins when when Jo I-na (Kim Da-mi) finds her uncle’s body with an awl driven into his neck and a random puzzle piece on the floor near his body. Her uncle was a local police superintendent and when the rookie detective in charge, Kim Han-sae (Son Suk-ku), is assigned the case, he quickly suspects I-na had at least a role in the murder. However, with no real evidence, the case eventually grows cold. But Han-sae never forgets the case, and neither does I-na, who finds herself seen as someone who might have gotten away with murder.

A decade later, several similar murders take place in Seoul and Kim Han-sae is put in charge of the investigation. But he's forced to work together with I-na, who is now a crime profiler. While this dynamic sounds painfully familiar, I doubt you have ever seen characters as distinctly drawn as these two people. I-na is genuinely off-putting in a chilling way that isn't evil, exactly. It's more that her trauma has forged her into this unknowable tool. And trauma is the over-arching theme of the series. Every character seems defined by their trauma and their inability to trust anyone or believe anything. Nine Puzzles is a crime series. But it's also a show about the fine line between obsession and madness. It focuses less on the question of "who committed the crime" and more about dealing with the near-extinction level impact on everyone touched in some way by the crimes. In Nine Puzzles, murder shatters everything around it, splintering the truth and shredding the souls of even the innocent.

The season runs eleven episodes and Hulu dropped the first six on Wednesday, with further episodes premiering weekly. The streamer both the original South Korean version available with English subtitles, as well as an English audio-dubbed version.

Pee-Wee As Himself (HBO)
It's an old showbiz axiom that behind the face of every clown is someone who is hurting. My experience from being around comedians during my stand-up career is that it's more accurate to say that behind the face of most clowns is a self-centered misogynist, but maybe that's just me.

What is true is that watching this documentary will not only give you a deeper appreciation for the talent of Paul Reubens (know as Pee-Wee Herman). You will find yourself hurting along with Reubens as recounts his life, from the homophobic witch-hunt he experienced in the ‘90s to the utter cruelty of being a man who spent his life trying to improve children's lives....only to face baseless rumors that he was a pedophile.

While most celebrity documentaries tend to be carefully-controlled exercises in brand management, Pee-Wee As Himself is a unsparing look at a complicated man and while Reubens reluctantly cooperated with director Matt Wolf, he suddenly cut off ties with the project after recording 40 hours of interviews. But watching the film, I can't help believing that Reubens (who died in 2022) would have been happy with the final results. The documentary is a reminder of Reubens' talent and the personal pain he suffered as a result.

The Best Years Of Our Lives (Hoopla/Kanopy/Peacock/Pluto/Prime Video/Plex)
You will read a lot of suggestions about movies you should watch this Memorial Day weekend. But I doubt you'll watch a finer film than this 1946 movie about three United States servicemen struggling to re-adjust to civilian life after coming home from World War II. Looking back, it's amazing that Hollywood released a film which didn't glorify the war experience not much more than a year after the end of the fighting. But the story was universal to what America was going through as hundreds of thousands of soldiers returned home at a time when "PTSD" wasn't yet a well-known problem.

The movie was the #1 box office hit of the year and won seven Academy Awards. And despite being nearly 80 years old, the movie still resonates a lot more than it should after all of our country's subsequent experiences with returning veterans.

Frederic March played U.S. Army sergeant Al Stephenson, who before the war was married with two teenage children and was a successful executive at a bank. Dana Andrews played Captain Fred Derry, who before the war was a drug store soda jerk who still lived with his parents. He married a woman right before he shipped out in large part because she believed he was more successful than he was in reality. And Harold Russell played Petty Officer 2nd Class Homer Parrish, who was a star high school athlete before he enlisted and he had planned to marry his next-door sweetheart when he came back. But he returned home injured with two mechanical hands.

The story of these three men is incredibly nuanced, as they struggle with not just their reactions to their service, but the jarring disconnect between the responsibilities they had during the war versus what their lives looked like back home. But in a film filled with stars, the breakaway performance was from Russell, who in real life had two mechanical hands due to his service in WWII.

Russell was presented with a special Academy Award for "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures." A prize which was created because the Academy didn't believe Russell would win an acting award, since he was a non-actor cast by director William Wyler after being spotted in an Army film about rehabilitating war veterans. As it turned out, Williams also won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. And on a side note, Williams ended up selling his Best Supporting Oscar in 1992 to an individual in order to pay for his wife's medical treatment. After his death, it was revealed the buyer was Lew Wasserman, who then donated the Oscar to the Academy.

I know there are things about this film that will feel dated. But the way these veterans are treated and the deft way the stories are told more than makes up for some sometimes clunky 80-year-old presentation. It is just a spectacular film that deserves to be remembered.

The Librarians: The Next Chapter (Sunday, TNT)
An under-appreciated genre of television can best be described as "breezy." Fun, action-filled hours that don't pretend to have some darker, deeper meaning. They are just entertaining, well-constructed shows that serve as the television equivalent of a really great beach novel.

I was an unabashed fan of the original Librarian made-for-TV movies and the subsequent TV series, which featured Noah Wylie as Flynn Carson, the librarian of an organization that protects the world from a secret magic and danger-filled reality that most people don't see. When the series moved from two-hour films to the TV series, the cast was expanded into multiple librarians, recruited to confront a new reality of expanded dangers. The series had a murderer's row of great ensemble actors, including Bob Newhart, Christian Kane (Leverage), Rebecca Romijn and John Larroquette.

The original series lasted four seasons from 2014-2018, and I enjoyed the original series enough that I was nervous about it returning. But I found The Librarians: The Next Chapter to be a breezy delight of a show that seems genetically built to distract us from the current state of the world.

It's called The Next Chapter, because unlike the current Leverage reboot, this show shares very little DNA with the original series. Aside from the return of Christian Kane's Jacob Stone, it's new characters, different locations and a surprisingly distinctive worldview. The episodes are mostly self-contained and while it contains that focus on the sometimes obscure yet pivotal moments of the past that made The Librarians so much fun, it doesn't get bogged down in fan service of the original edition. You don't really have to be familiar with The Librarians to enjoy The Librarians: The Next Chapter and that's a compliment. In fact, it might be easier to appreciate this series without having the memories of the original to be a distraction.

ODDS AND SODS
* Is there a Messianic Jew on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Funhouse? In a recent holiday episode, the gang was introduced to Hilda, a hippopotamus who wore a necklace with a Messianic seal, a logo most often used by Messianic Jews, many of whom believe Jesus is the Messiah.

* The competitive series House of Streams will feature eight popular streamers and content creators living together in a villa for two weeks as they compete for a Bitcoin grand prize, currently worth $108,800. Netflix says the series will feature "eight contestants who have a combined social media following of more than 4 million across platforms."

* The stand-up special Atsuko Okatsuka: Father premieres Friday, June 13th on HBO.

* Prime Video has pulled the plug on The Wheel Of Time after three seasons. From what I can tell, the show is liked by streamer executives and season three did reasonably well in the U.S., UK and several European territories. But it didn't have the global engagement numbers needed to justify another season without budget cuts. And Sony TV wasn't able to make that work in a way they felt made creative sense.

* Not every team deserves a Netflix sports documentary. Customers love them, but streamers are getting choosier in what they say yes to.

* Prime Video has set Wednesday, July 9th for the premiere of Bosch spinoff Ballard, starring Maggie Q.

* The documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster will examine the doomed June 2023 tourist expedition to visit the Titanic wreckage, specifically focusing on the years leading up to charismatic inventor Stockton Rush's quest "to become the next world-renowned change-maker and culminating in the doomed underwater endeavor." It is set to premiere Wednesday, June 11th on Netflix.

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND THIS WEEKEND

FRIDAY, MAY 23RD:
Air Force Elites: Thunderbirds (Netflix)
Big Mouth Season Eight Premiere (Netflix)
Clarkson's Farm Season Premiere (Prime Video)
Fear Street: Prom Queen (Netflix)
Forget You Not Series Premiere (Netflix)
Fountain Of Youth (Apple TV+)
Love After Lockup Season Six Finale (We TV)
Missing Presumed Dead Series Premiere (NatGeo)
Off Track 2 (Netflix)
Pee-Wee As Himself (HBO)
The Surrender (Shudder)
Worth The Wait (Tubi)

SATURDAY, MAY 24TH, 2025:
A Killer Smile (Lifetime)
Jerrod Carmichael: Don't Be Gay (HBO)
Our Unwritten Seoul (Netflix)

SUNDAY, MAY 25TH, 2025:
A Best Selling Kind Of Love (Up TV)
Couples Therapy Season 4B Premiere (Showtime)
Rick & Morty (Adult Swim)
The Librarians: The Next Chapter Series Premiere (TNT)

MONDAY, MAY 26TH, 2025:
Boglands [aka Crá] Series Premiere (Netflix)
Brokenwood Mysteries Season Eleven Finale (Acorn TV)
CoComelon Season Premiere (Netflix)
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders (Netflix)
51st American Music Awards (CBS)
Global Soul Kitchen Season Premiere (fyi)
Hunt For Love: Between The Sheets Series Premiere (TLC)
Kevin Costner's The West (History)
Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life (Netflix)
90 Days: Hunt For Love Series Premiere (TLC)
Rachael Ray's Meals In Minutes Season Premiere (fyi)
Sherri Papini: Caught In The Lie (Investigation Discovery)
The 6000 lb Diaries With Dr. Now (TLC)

TUESDAY, MAY 27TH, 2025:
America's Got Talent Season Premiere (NBC)
Destination X Series Premiere (NBC)
Down Home Fab Season Premiere (HGTV)
Sitting Bull (History)
The Handmaid's Tale Series Finale (Hulu)
The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy Season Premiere (Prime Video)

SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!