With the Emmys eligibility deadline looming on the 31st, May tends to be a big month for TV. But 2024 has borne the brunt of 2023’s Hollywood strikes, so the number of prestige projects sliding in before the cutoff has been conspicuously low. Most of May’s best new shows look nothing like Emmy bait. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Times TV critic Judy Berman breaks down
00:08 her top five new TV shows for May, 2024.
00:12 - The FBI has been pursuing Huey Newton for years.
00:18 They saw the programs worked and change was happening.
00:21 - "The Big Cigar" on Apple TV+.
00:25 Huey P. Newton would have been skeptical of "The Big Cigar",
00:29 a mini series that dramatizes his flight
00:31 from the US to Cuba in 1974,
00:34 and the show is the first to admit it.
00:36 In a voiceover that prefaces
00:38 the electrifying six-part series,
00:41 the Black Panther Party co-founder,
00:43 played by actor Andre Holland, says,
00:45 "The story I'm about to tell you is true,
00:48 but it is coming through the lens of Hollywood,
00:50 so let's see how much of my story
00:52 they're really willing to show."
00:54 That Newton's wariness of mass culture
00:56 frames the story from the very beginning
00:59 is a sign that viewers are in for something much smarter,
01:02 bolder, and more challenging
01:04 than the entertainment industry's typical
01:06 sanitized take on radical politics.
01:09 - 48 hours since Edgar Anderson
01:15 was last seen around 8 a.m.,
01:17 I wrote to school.
01:19 We're urging anybody with information, however small,
01:25 please come forward, pick up the phone,
01:28 and help us bring Edgar home.
01:30 - Eric on Netflix.
01:32 The morning after a particularly painful confrontation,
01:36 busy bickering with his long-suffering wife,
01:39 prickly children's television creator Vincent
01:42 instructs his nine-year-old son Edgar
01:44 to walk to school by himself.
01:47 On one hand, it's only a few blocks away.
01:50 On the other, this is 1980s New York
01:52 and danger is everywhere.
01:54 So of course, Cassie panics when she receives word
01:57 that Edgar never made it to class.
01:59 She spends all day trying to reach Vincent
02:02 with the terrifying news.
02:04 It's only that night
02:05 that the weight of his error falls on Vincent,
02:08 who soon becomes obsessed with the idea
02:11 that he can convince his son,
02:12 who's likely to be dead in a ditch,
02:14 to come home by building Eric,
02:17 a big blue monster character that Edgar has been sketching
02:21 and putting him on TV.
02:23 Our hero is also, you see, an alcoholic
02:27 with a history of mental illness.
02:29 What holds it all together is the parallel Morgan draws
02:32 between a world overpopulated with bad dads
02:35 and a patriarchy, one that in the city
02:38 encompasses the police, real estate, and politics
02:42 that is rotting from the inside.
02:44 - Now, you're probably thinking,
02:46 you keep hearing us say LA.
02:48 What do we mean by LA?
02:49 Well, in many ways, we mean Los Angeles.
02:52 Let's take a look at what that means.
02:55 (audience laughing)
02:56 Yeah, dude, this is it.
02:58 - John Mulaney presents "Everybody's in LA" on Netflix.
03:04 Let's get one thing straight.
03:05 John Mulaney is not angling to become the full-time host
03:08 of a late night talk show.
03:10 He confirmed as much in the monologue
03:11 that opened his six-night stint
03:13 at the helm of John Mulaney Presents "Everybody's in LA,"
03:17 the Netflix talk show that ran concurrently
03:20 with the streaming giant's annual LA-based comedy event,
03:23 Netflix is a Joke Fest,
03:25 and is now available to stream on the platform.
03:28 The "Everybody's in LA" concept,
03:29 Chicago native Mulaney and a panel
03:32 of Netflix-affiliated comics
03:34 and thematically appropriate guests
03:36 dissect a different aspect of Los Angeles life each night.
03:39 It's too specific, not to mention too dependent,
03:42 on everybody actually being in LA
03:45 to fuel an indefinite run.
03:47 But the four episodes that I've aired so far
03:49 prove that Mulaney has everything it takes
03:52 to be the best late night personality of his generation
03:55 at a time when the format seems more desperate
03:58 than ever for a savior.
03:59 - One man's trash is Julia Fox's treasure.
04:03 - I just couldn't part with the actual floor itself.
04:06 (laughing)
04:07 You have five items that you must use in-
04:09 - OMG Fashion on E.
04:12 Project Runway is a reality TV classic,
04:14 one whose influence has only been reinforced
04:17 by the emergence of shameless yet watchable rip-offs
04:20 like "Making the Cut" and "Next in Fashion."
04:24 We certainly don't need another runway dupe,
04:26 so it's exciting that E's "OMG Fashion"
04:30 feels like something genuinely fresh
04:32 in the fashion competition category.
04:35 In blissfully brief episodes edited
04:37 at the brisk pace of 90s MTV,
04:40 multi-hyphenate "It Girl" Julia Fox
04:42 challenges trios of designers to make themed ensembles
04:46 suited to her own outre aesthetics.
04:49 Prepare yourself for plastic tampon applicators,
04:51 BDSM gear, and her actual blood.
04:56 Visionary stylist, Laura Roach, co-hosts
04:58 colorfully comparing one garment
05:00 to Oscar de la Renta on fentanyl, meant as a compliment.
05:04 While Fox's incessant repetition
05:06 of the word disruptor can grate,
05:08 the show packs more creativity, wit, and transgression
05:12 into each half hour than runway and its imitators
05:15 have mustered in years.
05:17 - Asa Hayes, Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Otis Redding.
05:21 - "Facts, Soulsville, USA" on HBO.
05:27 When Jim Stewart hit up his sister Estelle Axton
05:30 for funds to start Satellite Records in 1957,
05:33 the white producer and fiddle player
05:35 envisioned a country music label,
05:37 along with a record store that would keep the company
05:40 connected to music fans in its home base of Memphis.
05:43 But by 1961, Satellite had become Stax,
05:46 and the many black musicians who frequented the shop,
05:49 one of few businesses in what was then a segregated city
05:52 that didn't discriminate, were pioneering a sound
05:55 that would come to be known as Southern Soul.
05:58 It's a remarkable story recounted with insight and nuance
06:01 in a four-part docuseries.
06:03 Through interviews with Stewart, who died in 2022,
06:06 Booker T. Jones, the ingenious executive Al Bell,
06:10 and other crucial characters,
06:11 director Jamila Wignott weaves Stax's tumultuous history
06:15 into the fabric of a society
06:17 in the throes of the civil rights movement
06:19 that was just beginning to integrate.
06:21 Otis Redding's breakthrough performance
06:23 for thousands of white hippies at Monterey Pop,
06:26 masterminded by Bell,
06:27 Stax, musicians' eye-opening tours of Europe,
06:30 where they were treated like stars
06:32 rather than second-class citizens,
06:34 and the label's Blaxploitation-era revival
06:36 with Isaac Hayes' "Shaft" soundtrack
06:39 are just a few of this series' fascinating vignettes.
06:42 But Wignott also acknowledges
06:44 that Stax was no post-racial utopia,
06:47 making space for Jones and other alums
06:49 to reflect on their frustrations with white colleagues
06:52 who rarely seem to consider the Black community's plight.
06:55 (upbeat music)
06:57 (upbeat music)
07:00 (upbeat music)