What I Watched Over the Holiday Break
My favorite time of year for discovering, catching up, and binge-watching.
I like to watch TV. I especially like to binge-watch shows that I love and that I miss when they are over. It is what it is, and I have accepted that yes, there are probably other things I can do with my time, but at this stage of the game, and the fact that the week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite week of the year to just catch up on stuff and chill, I am making no apologies. In no particular order, and without meaning to deepdive on any of them, here’s my Goodbye, 2024. Hello, 2025 list:
The Boys Season 5 (Amazon Prime)
The Boys is a "turned-on-its-head vigilantes vs. superheroes show" that I at the same time like and am completely horrified by, but maybe that’s the point. I am never really watching this in real time, and am always playing catch-up, so I am prone to bingeing one season at a time. The satire is sharp, the characters are great, the violence is over-the-top, and sometimes it feels like it’s hitting a little too close to home. Season 5 didn’t disappoint, and I had to watch it in chunks because at times it felt too close to the third rail of our current society. I was trying to chill, after all…
Girls Full Rewatch Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (HBO/MAX)
Over the break, HBO was running back to back episodes of this comedy-drama that ran from 2012-2017. I had watched this show when it was in first run, had liked it very much, and had essentially forgot about it. So, I sat and watched a couple of S2 episodes and then decided to go back and start from the beginning. This show gets heat for its shock effect nudity and sex scenes and for its creator’s may-or-not-be-cancelled standing in real life. Not sure where she stands now, but taking a look back at this show, made me feel nostalgic and immensely impressed with the writing, the characters, the acting, and the story arcs.
I’m not sure this show would be made now, and for the age of its creator when it was written, it’s a deep exploration of women’s friendships, relationships, just-out-of-college angst, and how hard it can be to find yourself living in a big city. Relentlessly (and maybe or maybe not deservedly) compared to Sex and the City, my rewatch of Girls hit me surprising in the feels and I finished out the series wondering where Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, Shosh, Elijah, Adam, Ray, Loreen, Tad, and even Desi, Charlie, Fran were now. And how can I leave out a S1 appearance by Mike Birbiglia?
Shrinking Season 2 (Apple TV)
For some reason, I love movies and shows about, or ones that focus on people in therapy. In Treatment, Couples Therapy, The Sopranos, The Shrink Next Door, Intervention, Tell Me You Love Me, Web Therapy, there are many. There is something about seeing how people’s problems are viewed, dissected, and then “treated” that really holds my attention. Maybe a bit of projection on my part.
This show is a great ensemble comedy focused on a group of therapists where one of them is in crisis and deep mourning. Sometimes the group hijinks outweigh the actual therapeutic work that goes on, but the overarching message is one of hope, friendship, forgiveness, and love.
Bad Sisters Season 2 (Apple TV)
This show I had to start twice. The first time I started it, I could not bear how awful one of the main characters was, which I guess was the point, because the whole show revolves around his murder and its murky circumstances. A black comedy created by Irish actress and writer, Sharon Horgan, the show follows five sisters as they find themselves in the middle of the inheritance investigation. Set in Dublin, and part whodunit, part family dramedy, it’s a fun ride that may or may not be wrapped up after Season 2.
I started watching this because I really like Sharon Horgan’s other shows that she has been involved in as a creator/writer including Catastrophe, Divorce, and one she stars in This Way Up, which never came back for a Season 3 and was annoyingly left on a cliffhanger. She’s done a lot and is on my list to dig into her other work for when I need a new show.
Clarkson’s Farm Season 3 (Amazon Prime)
This show is a favorite watch despite the creator and star perhaps being a bit problematic in real life. I try to do my best to separate the art from the artist, and this is one of those times. The show follows popular British TV host and presenter Jeremy Clarkson as he whinges and whines his way through buying and maintaining Diddly Squat Farm, a thousand acre farm in Oxfordshire, England. Part documentary, part comedy, the show follows him, his girlfriend Lisa, his farm manager, Kaleb, Gerald, a farm professional and “Cheerful Charlie”, his financial manager as they plant, tend, and reap all they sow.
Although Clarkson is a bit of a curmudgeon, the show is full of hilarity and heart. I never thought a show about a farm could be so fun.
The Morning Show Full Rewatch Seasons 1, 2, and then 3 (Amazon Prime)
I believe this show was one of Apple TV’s first big endeavors into the world of original programming, and they packed it full of high-power stars and old-school nighttime soap opera drama. Focusing on the lives of the stars and behind the scenes power brokers of a top-rated NYC-based morning show, in three seasons has managed to bring soapy goodness to another newsroom.
While a bit over-the-top at times, it’s solidly entertaining and in touch with current topics and trends in news and “news”. Season two covers the fallout from the Covid pandemic and watching it again with a couple of years distance (S2 originally aired in September of 2021), brought back memories of that bizarre and sometimes scary time in our lives.
Expats Season 1, maybe a one and done (Amazon Prime)
After I finished Girls and The Morning Show, which took me the longest of all my watches, I started flipping around for something that might be a little shorter or more compact of a watch. I stumbled upon Expats, a Nicole Kidman led miniseries based in Hong Kong. The description of “the vibrant lives of a close-knit expat community” sounded interesting, so I queued it up. With only six episodes, I figured this could be a quick watch (and I was running out of chill-time as the holiday break was coming to an end. I gave up after two. I just couldn’t get into it. It was beautifully shot, I like her in many other shows, but the real premise of the show surrounds the death of a child and the mysterious circumstances, and it just didn’t click. I will give it another shot because I hate not finishing shows, and sometimes it takes me more than one try to really engage (I had to start Game of Thrones five times and now it’s in my all-time top 5).
A Man on the Inside S1 (Netflix)
I had heard good things about this show from a podcast I listen to (also how I found Clarkson’s Farm), so after the heaviness of Expats, I wanted something light. I was also still running out of holiday TV time, so was looking for something short. A brand new entry to the streaming wars, it premiered in November 2024 and stars Ted Danson as a retiree turned undercover amateur private detective searching for a thief in a retirement home. Ted’s Charles is charming, a widower, and perhaps a bit lonely, so his daughter encourages him to find a hobby. He answers an old school newspaper want ad looking to hire an elderly mole to move into the home and find the thief. You can probably imagine the rest of it from there. The residents are cliquey, the staff is quirky, the cops are impatient, and he gets deeper and deeper into the lifestyle and the personal lives of his co-residents. It was cute. Not earth-shattering, but cute.
MotherFatherSon S1 (one and done?) (Amazon Prime)
What can I say about this one. I am really not sure. Although I hate the title, I loved the first episode. I love Richard Gere. It had a lot of potential. I almost bailed but kept coming back to it. Uncle Benjen and Mance Rayder are in it. These are all relatively positive phrases that are related to my experience watching this, but don’t somehow connect. That is how I feel about this show.
The first episode felt like a mix of Industry and Succession. It had me. A media mogul’s son runs one of the most influential media networks in England yet has obvious and serious professional and personal problems that cause a catastrophic event that sets the plot forward. There’re family secrets, undercover dealings, reporters on the trail to find answers, redemption arcs, and relationships on the brink. All stuff that I love. It got so close. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about this show that was missing. Maybe character development, maybe backstory, maybe both. I finished it but had to really push myself. I was waiting for a satisfying payoff, and I just didn’t get it.
American Fiction (Amazon Prime)
By Sunday I was just about TV’d out. I was going to tally up the number of hours I had watched from December 20 through January 5, but I decided not to. It is the one time of year that I let myself do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and what I like to do I had done a ton of. I didn’t want to get caught up in a new series, and quite frankly, I didn’t feel like deciding on something new. So I went into my list of movies that I hadn’t seen but wanted to and decided on American Fiction. This movies has been on my list because of Cord Jefferson and the work he did on Watchmen (the HBO show, not the movie, although I love the movie, too), and because it stars Jeffrey Wright, a favorite actor, especially for his portrayal of Bernard in Westworld (also HBO).
The movie centers around Wright’s character, Monk, a novelist and professor who in a fit of grief and frustration writes a scathing satire of stereotypical portrayals of Black people in society which is then mistaken for what he intends it to be. Sales skyrocket, Hollywood and literary awards come knocking, and Monk must then contend with what he has created while mired in family crises. I really liked it. Some might find the ending ambiguous, but I think that was the point.
The Six Triple Eight (Netflix)
My final holiday watch was a movie that a friend had recommended that she told me nothing about except that she loved it. I loved it, too, although I wished this would have been a series instead of a movie. It told the true-life story about the 688th Central Postal Battalion, an all-Black and all-woman troop during WWII who were both underestimated and underutilized until they were sent on a mission to Europe to find a way to manage and deliver millions of pieces of mail that went undelivered during the war. A logistical nightmare, the women were given this assignment with the assumption that they would fail. Did they prevail? You’ll have to watch, but I think you can guess.
I reason I wished this had been a series is because the cast is great, the characters are interesting, and a movie was too short of a time to spend with them. I would have loved more backstory on each of them.
That’s it for this year’s holiday watch list. Time to start a new one.
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