With the arrival of OTT platforms, cinephiles were filled with hope — hope that they would be spoilt for choice. That no matter what your preferences are, you will always have something or the other to binge-watch. Yes, with so much content being mass-produced every year, truly remarkable shows have become even more difficult to come by. Yet, every now and then, certain shows do manage to surprise you. You play something thinking that it would make for a good ambient viewing experience, yet it captures your imagination so firmly that you are forced to put aside everything else and finish watching as many episodes as you can go through in one sitting. Therefore, this time’s recommendations are a bit of a mixed bag — there’s something for everybody.
SEVERANCE
It is yet another high-concept show from Apple TV+ that absolutely hits it out of the park. What if your job requires you to create a separate personality for yourself? Some of us will already identify with the concept as something we have to do somewhat metaphorically on a regular basis. But what if your job requires you to do so, quite literally? So much so that while the personality who slogs away at work, has no memories or recollections of what his alter ego does once he is out, or even his alter ego’s identity, the “outtie”, has no idea what his job entails, the processes involved or even the people he works with. That is the world of severance.
Directed by Ben Stiller, this show and its world, that can quite easily be identified as a metaphor for our own struggles, is the story of a handful of people in a world where certain jobs that require secrecy only employ candidates who are willing to undergo the severance procedure. The procedure itself is extremely polarising since many view it as a violation of human rights or rather as a form of slavery. At a surface level, it’s an extremely dark comedy. In its deepest pits, that are yet darker, it is deeply disturbing and terrifying, especially when themes of these separate personalities battling each other for control of the same body begin to play out.
Adam Scott, who most will unfortunately only remember for his blink-and-you-miss goofy characters in some Adam Sandler blockbusters, finally gets a character that he can sink his teeth into and to say that he excels would be an understatement. The same holds true for the other cast members — Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Zach Cherry and the ever-dependable and legendary Christopher Walken. The show is also brilliant technically in all departments, but it’s the cinematography, primarily by Jessica Lee Gagne, and Jeremy Hindle’s production design that propels the show into a different league altogether.
Platform:
Apple TV+
REACHER
With the third season of Reacher out now, I thought this would be an excellent time to talk about this show that is steadily gaining cult status. Most of us have watched the Tom Cruise movies based on the same source material — the bestselling novels by Lee Child. However, only novel loyalists would recognise that Alan Ritchson’s portrayal is much more novel-accurate than Cruise’s.
Not just because he is closer to the towering description of Jack Reacher in the novels, but also, because Reacher’s calculative, sharp, calm, courage-under-fire demeanour is portrayed much more accurately by Ritchson. I won’t get into the plot of the third season specifically, because all three seasons have links through some common events that cannot be discussed without giving away spoilers.
If, however, you have seen neither of the two films nor are you aware of the novels, know that this series offers you one of the best action-thriller experiences on OTT in recent times. Reacher is a retired army vet, a decorated MP to be more specific, whom the military entrusted with some of the most perplexing investigations post his time on the field of battle. At present, he is a drifter who moves from city to city with no more than a toothbrush and the clothes on his back. For the most part, he keeps his head low and survives by doing odd jobs. However, trouble always seems to find him.
Platform: Amazon Prime
TULSA KING
I’ve talked about Tulsa King before, however, the second season of the show has taken the viewing experience a notch up. Sylvester Stallone is even more brilliant as the protagonist, serving loyal fans with both his trademark charisma and his ever-so-underrated histrionic capabilities. The addition of Frank Grillo and Neal McDonough to the cast as his unpredictable adversaries has only enhanced the overall story arc. Coming back to Stallone, we see him playing a father as much as a mob boss this season and his controlled performance in the emotional scenes will absolutely break your heart, especially if you are able to identify the small nods to his own real-life tragedies. With the other characters of his outfit also getting much more fulfilling arcs this time, the series has become even more engaging. In hindsight, perhaps the series does test one’s suspension of disbelief a little too strongly at times, however, given the genre and how the series set itself up in the first season, that is to be expected.
Platform: JioHotstar
CALLS
The show features the voice acting talents of Rosario Dawson, Clancy Brown, Nick Jonas, Pedro Pascal and several others, but the entire series is basically a series of phone conversations, while computer-generated imagery and visuals show up on screen — some of which are very trippy by the way. It still makes for an intriguing and chilling watch nevertheless because well before the first episode ends, you realise that the visuals are not random but rather have been carefully designed to pull you into the events that are unfolding through these calls, where a group of strangers experience a strange glitch in their communications systems. As it later turns out, it’s all building up towards a world-ending event. To reveal more would probably spoil your viewing experience. The show has been created and directed by Fede Alvarez, the man behind films like Alien: Romulus and Don’t Breathe.
Platform: Apple TV+