The most watched global television event is back. The 56th edition of the Super Bowl, this one pitting the Los Angeles Rams against Cincinnati Bengals will take place at L.A.’s SoFi Stadium in and will be available to stream on Peacock. But if for some peculiar reason you don’t like to watch grown men grapple with one another… no problem. Peacock is also offering Bel-Air, the dramatic reboot of the 1990’s sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which debuts on the streaming service the same day as Super Bowl LVI. Netflix also has plenty in store next week, including Shonda Rhimes latest Netflix original series, Inventing Anna, the Season 3 premiere of Netflix’s Ridley Jones, and the Kayne West documentary, Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy. Speaking of documentaries: Showtime’s Everything’s Gonna Be All White and HBO Max’s Icahn: The Restless Billionaire will leave you with plenty to think about.
Kimi (HBO Max, Feb. 10)
Zoe Kravitz stars as an agoraphobic Seattle tech worker who discovers audio evidence of a murder. Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh, whose No Sudden Move also streamed on HBO Max, directed the quarantine-era-themed cyber-thriller. "Lean, mean and enlivened by the filmmakers’ love letter to both Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, this HBO Max premiere riffs knowingly on Rear Window and Blow Out in the age of virtual assistants, all-seeing algorithms, invasive surveillance and snaky tech magnates," wrote the Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney.
Inventing Anna (Netflix, Feb. 11)
Anna Delvey was a real-life heiress and con artist, who swindled lots of money from New York’s elite and eventually had her day in court. Watching the downfall of a lying, cheating “influencer”? But that's still not all! The nine-episode limited series was created by hitmaker Shonda Rhimes and stars Ozark’s Ruth, otherwise known as the brilliant Julia Garner. The actress replaces Ruth’s Southern twang with Delvey’s German-Russian accent. The show is based on the New York article "How an Aspiring ‘It’ Girl Tricked New York’s Party People — and its Banks" by Jessica Pressler, who also serves as a producer on the show.
Everything’s Gonna Be All White (Showtime, Feb. 11)
From director/executive producer Sacha Jenkins, this three-part docuseries explores the complicated history of race in America exclusively from the BIPOC perspective. It's informative, infuriating and at times humorous. This quote from comedian Amanda Seales tells you what you're in for: “I think what annoys me most about white people is when they pretend that they’re the victim. What’s also annoying is when they, you know, when they kill us.”
The Sky is Everywhere (Apple TV Plus, Feb. 11)
Based on Jandy Nelson’s 2010 YA novel, The Sky Is Everywhere follows Lennie (Grace Kaufman), a 17-year-old struggling with overwhelming grief following the sudden loss of her older sister. Heartache leads to an unexpected love triangle. Directed by Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline, Shirley) the film featured an all-female production team and an eclectic group of actors like up-and-comers Kaufman and Jacques Colimon, alongside veterans such as Cherry Jones and Jason Segel. Nelson, who wrote the screenplay, received high praise for the 2010 novel. NPR’s The Roundtable wrote, “In this amazing tale of love and loss, Nelson introduces a cast of characters who make the reader laugh and cry and want to know these people in real life. It’s a wonderful book.” The Sky Is Everywhere will play in select theaters and globally on Apple TV Plus.
I Want You Back (Amazon Prime, Feb. 11)
This comedy was written by This Is Us co-showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, stars Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Jenny Slate (Obvious Child) and was directed by Jason Orley (Big Time Adolescence). So right there, just combining the insulin-inducing earnestness of NBC's instant classic This Is Us with the comically nihilistic flippancy of FX's venerable It's Always Sunny... tells you that the chefs have combined a potentially volatile mix of flavors. As for the premise, two thirty-somethings are dumped and seek revenge on their exes. Hmmm, seems like the Always Sunny genes might be the dominant ones? "The film rarely strays from its genre’s conventions, and that’s not a complaint. Sometimes staying in one lane yields the most gratifying results," wrote the Hollywood Reporter's Lovia Gyarkye.
Super Bowl LVI (Peacock, Feb. 13)
For the exception of the occasional Scott Norwood heartbreaker, that Joe Montana ice-cold, two-minute, length-of-the-field drive during which he calmly pointed out John Candy sitting in the stands in the huddle as the clock wound down, or the ol' Tom Brady 25-point comeback, the Super Bowl often lacks the drama of the playoff games that lead into it. And given the tough opening act of a number of NFL postseason games decided in the last 13 seconds or less these previous few weeks, the L.A. Rams and Cincinnati Bangles will need to bring something to the Big Game to keep us from rewatching the commercials on our phones ... that is, bring something besides bad uniforms. Here at Next TV's New York annex, we'll do our level best to cook up some crabby snacks and homemades for the six-hour ordeal. We are Americans, after all. But we're definitely going to keep an eye out for the commercials, which this year feature celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost imaging a dystopian smart home future (Amazon); Mila Kunis and Demi Moore riffing on an unnamed mutual acquaintance (AT&T) ; and Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd belting out Shania Twain (Lay’s). Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar will entertain during the halftime show. Perhaps another wardrobe malfunction will occur, making the show worth watching. And we're not talking about those Bangles helmets.
Bel-Air (Peacock, Feb. 13)
The story behind Bel-Air, the dramatic reboot of the 1990’s sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, is worthy of its own documentary special. In short, a man named Morgan Cooper made a three-minute film that reimagined the NBC hit comedy series as a drama. Cooper posted the video online in 2019 and immediately the short film went viral and caught the attention of the original Fresh Prince himself, Will Smith. In 2020 Peacock gave the show, produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios and Universal Television, a two-season order. Newcomer Jabari Banks plays Will in the serialized, less comedic hourlong take the sitcom’s original premise -- Will’s journey from the streets of West Philadelphia to the gated community of Bel-Air. Cooper directs and serves as co-writer and executive producer on the series. The series’ first three episodes will premiere at launch. New episodes will be released weekly. With the initial reviews surfacing Wednesday, we're on the alert for a production maybe taking itself too seriously. According to Hollywood Reporter critic Daniel Fienberg, any comedy Bel-Air has comes from riffs -- subtle and not so subtle -- its decades-old NBC source material. "Of course, without the Fresh Prince references, Bel-Air is almost entirely humorless, a chilly act of over-compensation. This is what happens when you attempt to call the bluff of a mock trailer that felt like it was intended to show Cooper’s clever vision as a director, but not really as a proof-of-concept anybody wanted to see as an ongoing series."
Icahn: The Restless Billionaire (HBO Max, Feb. 15)
Director Bruce David Klein attempts to unpack and perhaps humanize 85-year-old billionaire investor Carl Icahn in this 100-minute documentary. It’s no small feat given what a polarizing figure the famed financier is. Via Icahn, his family members, journalists, and fellow industry titans, the doc explores the Lone Wolf of Wall Street’s humble beginnings, his legendary business deals, his insatiable drive, and his business acumen.
Ridley Jones – Season 3 (Netflix, Feb. 15)
The first two seasons of the animated preschool series debuted in 2021. Now, six-year-old Ridley (voiced by Iara Nemirovsky), who lives with her mother (Sutton Foster) and grandmother (Blythe Danner) in a treehouse housed in a museum, is back. She and her group of friends continue to protect the treasures at the Museum of Natural History and go on adventures at night when the institution’s exhibits come to life. (It’s basically the animated version of Night at the Museum for toddlers.) The show stems from Disney’s Doc McStuffins creator Chris Nee and features LGBTQ+ characters, as well as nonbinary bison, Fred, the first nonbinary character to appear in a Netflix preschool shows. Nee told the Los Angeles Times in November that the show was personal. “In creating the character of Fred, I was very aware that we were in a moment where the trans and gender-fluid and nonbinary community was in as much direct threat in conversation as I was coming out as gay in 1988.”
Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Netflix, Feb. 16)
Directors Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah spent 22 years chronicling the life and career of rapper Kanye West. Then they took 330 hours of footage and edited it down to three feature-length documentaries, titled Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy. The project, which Netflix acquired in fall 2021, made its world premiere at The Sundance Film Festival last month. While West recently demanded final cut of the project, the directing duo maintain that they have always had creative control over the project. Critics aggregated the doc at 89%. “You may have issues with where Ye had ended up. But watch Jeen-Yuhs, and you can't help but be impressed by how he got there," wrote David Fear in Rolling Stone. Broken up into three acts: Vision, Purpose and Awakening, Netflix will release one 90-minute act per week.
