Weekend Watch — 5/19/23
Weekend Watch — 5/19/23
We love to love you, Donna Summer + what we don't know about Anna Nicole + one of British TV's greatest trilogies gets a fiery farewell ...
TGIF, TueNighters! The weekend's here and you know what that means, right? Time to sit back, take a breath, and catch up with what’s on our watch list — LET’S GO!
Here are this week’s picks:
Happy Valley, Series 3 (AMC+, BBC America): In the multi-BAFTA award-winning‘s epic and unmissable final season, Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) discovers the remains of a gangland murder victim, sparking a chain of events that unwittingly leads her straight back to murderer and rapist Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton).
Catherine’s grandson Ryan (Rhys Connah) is now sixteen and has ideas of his own about what kind of relationship he wants to have with Tommy, the man Catherine still refuses to acknowledge as his father. Still battling the seemingly never-ending problem of drugs in the valley and those who supply them, Catherine is on the cusp of retirement. Will she solve this final case?
Critics Consensus via Rotten Tomatoes: Full of highs and with nary a low, Happy Valley returns at the peak of its hardscrabble powers, with Sarah Lancashire seamlessly slipping back into her quintessential role for one final mystery.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer (HBO): An in-depth look at the iconic artist as her voice and artistry take her from the avant-garde music scene in Germany to the glitter and bright lights of dance clubs in New York.
A deeply personal portrait of Summer on and off stage, the film features a wealth of photographs and never-before-seen home video footage — often shot by Summer herself. Through a rich window into the surprising range of her artistry, from songwriting to painting, Love to Love You, Donna Summer explores the highs and lows of a life lived on the global stage.
Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me (Netflix): An unflinching and humanizing examination of the life, death, and secrets of Vickie Lynn Hogan — better known as model and actress Anna Nicole Smith.
From her first appearance in Playboy in 1992, Anna Nicole’s dizzying ascent was the very essence of the American dream, brought to a tragic halt with her untimely passing in 2007.
With access to never-before-seen footage, home movies, and interviews with key figures who have not spoken out until now, this film reveals new insights into the story of the quintessential blonde bombshell hardly anyone really knew.
Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl (Hulu): The early aughts ushered in a golden era for the New York social set — a generation of rich young women desperate to recreate the success of Paris Hilton and Tinsley Mortimer, keener than ever to show off their fortunes and one-up each other on nightly red carpets. New York City in 2007 was a world of excess never before seen in the public sphere and, suddenly, socialites were celebrities.
On the surface, the series is a fun, nostalgic romp through the mid-2000s pop culture that dominated mainstream media and laid the foundation for current reality tv and the influencers of the social media generation. Interviews with publicists, journalists, and, of course, socialites, that ruled the city in the early aughts, immerse us in the gilded world of heiress-era New York City.