Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Friday, December 6th, 2024

The weirdness of streaming catalog deletions

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, December 6th, 2024:

PRODUCTION NOTES
One of the great things about writing this daily newsletter is that it has allowed me to develop a more direct relationship with my readers. And that includes sharing when I have fallen short of what I am trying to build here.

This has has turned out to be a long, challenging week. I had originally planned to launch the Global TV Awards this week and that required a lot of extra work. Then my trip to L.A. last weekend popped up unexpectedly, as well as a couple of other work-related challenges. And I seem to have caught some bug during my traveling.

As a result, I've been struggling to get things out the door this week. Particularly on the video side. I could provide a more detailed explanation, but in the end, I think it's just a matter of me hitting a bit of a wall trying to get the work of three people done with not enough time and not enough stamina.

Anyway, this is my apology. And I think having a few days off for Christmas/Hanukkah will help a lot. I figured out last year that between the newsletter and the interviews, news items, reviews and commentaries for the web site, I wrote just over a million words in 2023. I suspect I'll exceed that by the time 2024 is over and maybe this week is a hint that's not sustainable? Or at the very least, I need to take a day off here and there.

For paid subscribers, I'll have the contest email going out early tomorrow instead of today. And otherwise, things should return back to normal next week.

THE WEIRDNESS OF STREAMING CATALOG DELETIONS
There have been a number of people talking about the new HBO documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, and I wanted to point readers to the related (and frankly, much better) three-part Paramount+ soft rock documentary Sometimes When We Touch, which premiered in 2023. I reviewed it at the time, and the doc contained some jaw-dropping moments, including this one from The Captain & Tennille's Toni Tennille:

But the most jarring stories come from Toni Tennille, who fronted the massively successful duo The Captain and Tennille with husband Daryl Dragon. While they looked like the perfect couple from the outside, it was far from an idyllic marriage.

In her segment, Tennille admits that he never told her that he loved her. "It was hard," she says. "The first few years I kept hoping. Hoping that there would be a breakthrough or something. I always thought Daryl was a genius. He was an odd duck, boy. But he was a genius. Maybe it was some form of autism. I don't know. I never understood it."

"I couldn't make him fall in love with me," she continued. "I hoped he would. But as the years went by, I realized that he was not capable of that. And then I was kind of stuck. I just went along with it. I know he admired me tremendously. He admired my talent, my voice, my gift for writing. He was just closed up and he couldn't open up to any kind of emotion."

"I was kind of a hot dish in those days," she explained. "But throughout that entire relationship with Daryl, I never, ever cheated on him. I never had an affair. He was the only man that interested me. And even though I couldn't have him the way I wanted him, when I would have dreams, erotic dreams, he was the guy in the dreams.

That loveless marriage inspired one of the duo's biggest hits and it's impossible to hear "The Way I Want To Touch You" the same way after knowing the backstory of the tune.

"I never wanted to love a man/the way that I want to love you."

"It was our second hit and I wanted to express how I felt about Daryl. He was everything to me," she explains. "This was early on, when I still thought I could get through to him. But I was never able to. And I kept thinking. 'Why are you doing this? Why are you still with him?' I kept worrying about all of our fans. So that's why I stuck with him."

Amazingly, the doc is no longer available on Paramount+, which is a strange decision given that it was produced by MTV Entertainment Studios in partnership with Gunpowder & Sky. Given the attention being received by the Yacht Rock documentary, Paramount+'s decision not to have its much superior documentary still available for viewers looking for more seems like a missed opportunity.

WEEKEND VIEWING SELECTIONS
Most Fridays I try to suggest a couple of things worth watching over the weekend and there's a lot to choose from this week:

The Sticky (Prime Video)
This is a wild generalization, but I find that very often Canadian comedies are funny, but not FUNNY. I'm entertained but I'm also left thinking, "Huh. I thought this would have more laughs." That is certainly my reaction to this dramedy, which is very loosely based on the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2011 and 2012. That is when a group of men smuggled 9,500 barrels of maple syrup out of Quebec’s strategic syrup reserve, a crime worth $18 million.

This series uses that event as a jumping off point for a retelling that is worth watching, if for no other reason than to watch Margo Martindale chew up the scenery in a plot that often feels like Fargo, but with maple syrup. It's fun, but it also feels a bit disposable in the end.

Paris Has Fallen (Hulu)
One of my guilty pleasures are fast-paced, lightweight action films. And that's no doubt why I've been a fan of those "X has Fallen" films. Unbelievable plots, over-the-top action and dialogue that barely qualifies as complete sentences. And yet, they are an absolute blast to watch.

I hesitate to use the hacky phrase "prestige drama," but Paris Has Fallen feels as if the producers decided to take the premise of the movies (bad guys terrorize the rich and/or political class) and turn the idea into a prestige drama. And if that was the plan, it mostly works. The action is as fun as anything in the movies, the backdrop of Paris is compelling and the plot is definitely more nuanced than you'll find in the theatrical films. Definitely a must-watch for action fans.

Tomorrow+i (Netflix)
One of the reasons why I launched the global TV awards is because there are so many great international TV shows that manage to fly under the radar in America. I hope that's not the case with this four-episode anthology series, which can best be described as "Thailand's answer to Black Mirror." Each of the episodes tackles some looming consequence of technology, ranging from lifelike sex robots to the story of a young girl who enters a singing contest in hopes of having the money to buy the cure for a deadly illness. While all anthology shows suffer a bit from uneven episodes, these four very distinctive stories just floored me by taking familiar science fiction ideas and filtering them through a very distinctive cultural lens.

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* A lot of casual viewers might be confused by the announcement today by Max that it is expanding its TCM hub. There is a perception the current TCM hub is fairly robust, but Max's hub relies quite a bit on movies licensed from the Criterion Collection and there hasn't always been a lot of overlap between the Max hub and the linear channel. That apparently will change, with the Max TCM hub getting a wider range of films, including monthly curated theme packages.

* The theatrical film Joker: Folie A Deux will make its global streaming debut Friday, December 13th on Max.

* It takes a special kind of person to think “I’ve written one of the most recognizable riffs in classic rock. I wonder what it would sound like if I tried to turn it into a Christmas song?”

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6TH:
A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter (Netflix)
Biggest Heist Ever (Netflix)
Camp Crasher (Netflix)
Clash Of The Cookbooks Series Premiere (The Roku Channel)
Echoes Of The Past Series Premiere (Netflix)
Inside The Enchanted Forests (NatGeo)
Mary (Netflix)
Mysteries Unearthed With Danny Trejo Series Premiere (History)
Paris Has Fallen Series Premiere (Hulu)
Private Princess Christmas (Hallmark)
That Christmas (Netflix)
The Honey Trap: A True Story Of Of Love, Lies & The FBI (Showtime)
The Sticky Series Premiere (Prime Video)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7TH:
A Season To Remember (OWN)
A Very Merry Beauty Salon (Lifetime)
Once Upon A Christmas Wish (Great American Family)
Sugarplummed (Hallmark)

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8TH:
How To Fall In Love By Christmas (Lifetime)
Leah's Perfect Gift (Hallmark)
Let It Snow (Great American Family)
Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle (PBS)
12 Dares Of Christmas (UP tv)

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9TH:
Best Christmas Movies Ever! (The CW)
Pulisic (Paramount+)
Sugarcane (NatGeo)
The Great British Baking Show: Holidays! Season Premiere (Netflix)
The Real Full Monty (Fox)
The Simpsons Funday Football (Disney+)

SEE YOU ON MONDAY!