Spring is here and I am a little behind on my Bindulge post this month as I have been busy with the Nowruz celebrations. But I do have some great shows to recommend this month.

Unprisoned

First up we have “Unprisoned”. A show that made me go watch Scandal again because I realised how much I missed Kerry Washington’s smile-crying.
The show is set in post-George Floyd murder in Minneapolis and revolves around an African-American single mum/therapist (Paige) who unwillingly has her ex-con, newly released from a 17-year sentence, father (Edwin) live with her and her teenage son.

While her father tries to get back on his feet, he realises that the system is set up to make sure the ex-convicts fail again and again, throwing them into never-ending vicious circles of bureaucratic nightmares until they can become even partially independent.

During his stay in his daughter’s home, Edwin forms a bond with his biracial grandson who has started delving into his black heritage in hopes of understanding and fitting in.

The show is clever and funny at times, it is fresh and honest. Delroy Lindo does an incredible job portraying Edwin as he tries to navigate an internet-driven world of apps, social media and “everyone knowing your business”. He is flawed but lovable, infuriating yet redemptive. The character is beautifully written and immaculately played.
The show may not be THE drama show of spring, but it definitely is worth a watch.

Available on Disney Plus.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

And then we have a four-part documentary on the still-missing Malaysian Airlines plane that went missing in 2014 and no sign of the passengers has been found since.

While I clearly remember the incident, I had assumed some sort of closure had been attained. Turns out it’s not the case. Prepare for many conspiracy theories and prepare for them to be debunked.

Apparently, many different countries and organizations have been involved in the search and possibly the disappearance of the plane. Definitely worth a watch.

Available on Netflix.

Better Things

Staying with the theme of “single parent raising kids and has to deal with a difficult parent”, I’m introducing the not-so-new show “Better Things”.

Think Weeds meets Californication but a bit more recent. It’s smart and funny, although there is some repetition that forces you to skip some scenes.

Pamela Aldon plays Samantha, an actress and single mother, raising her children (as well in some ways as her weird and wacky and ageing British mother) in LA. Her kids are assholes to her, and Sam isn’t necessarily the nicest to her own mother. The dynamic between the three generations of women is interesting, to say the least.

As I mentioned, it does have some repetition so it may not be ideal for a binge-watch. However, I do enjoy a quick lunch in front of the TV with a short episode of something funny and light sometimes and this does the trick.

Available on Disney Plus.

Daisy Jones and the Six

I really tried with this one. I tried reading the book when it first came out back in 2019. Having read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo the summer before and absolutely loving it I could not wait for Taylor Jenkins Reid’s newest novel. But I couldn’t get through half of it. I attempted a few times and then going by my motto of “life’s too short and the reading list is too long to finish books that bore us”, I gave up.

Thinking the series might be something I would enjoy, I embarked on a binge the moment it came out. And boy did it disappoint. Even more than the book as I had higher hopes since the book relied heavily on interviews to tell the story.

And quite frankly, the series was as boring as the book. Yet my love for 70s fashion and Sam Claflin’s chiseled jawline and high cheekbones was too great to give up on. I finished the first season, but don’t remember much of the story to be honest.

The actors are divinely beautiful. Claflin is one of the many aesthetically pleasing characters the show has to offer. Leo Dicaprio’s most recent ex-girlfriend and Al Pacino’s stepdaughter (Nepo Baby? Maybe. Absolutely gorgeous? Definitely), Camila Morrone stars as her namesake, Camila Dunne, the ethereal wife of the protagonist and the mother figure to the entire band.
Suki Waterhouse, Will Harrison, and Elvis’ granddaughter Riley Keough, to name a few, grace the screens worldwide with their perfect faces and toned bodies carrying meticulously picked outfits that scream Coachella.

Speaking of 70s fashion, Free People actually did a collaboration with Riley Keough for a capsule collection, non-creatively called “Daisy Jones and the Six”. Although I have migrated from Anthropologie for a while now (I’m well into my thirties now), I do enjoy an occasional Free People splurge and I do have my eye on a few pieces from this collection.

And to wrap up this review, I have to mention the fact that the producers were incredibly committed to making this fake band seem real, so they had them record an album and release it. I heard it actually did quite well on Spotify as well…

Daisy Jones and the Six is available on Amazon Prime Video.

Murder Mystery 2

The sequel to the action comedy set in Como, Italy starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler is out on Netflix and it does what it says on the tin; it entertains. There is nothing intelligent about this film, nor is the humour anything beyond slapstick. But I doubt anyone would expect anything more from a film like this, aka, a Brooklyn police officer and his hairdresser wife start a detective agency where they find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery (hence the title) in Paris.

So next time you have a Movie Night with a handful of people and find it quite impossible to decide on a film everybody’ll like, watch this.

Unstable

And to finish this month’s recommendations, I’ll leave you with Unstable; a show about a multimillionaire scientist and tech company founder (Rob Lowe) who goes slightly, well, mad to be politically incorrect, and mentally unstable to use a more “woke” term, after his wife of three decades passes in a car accident. In order to ground him, his friends and colleagues reach out to his son (played by Lowe’s real son John Owen Lowe) to join the company and help save it from being run down to the ground. In the process the father and son who have never been able to see eye to eye, reconnect, yada yada yada.

I initially upon watching the trailer, thought that Lowe plays both the father and son characters and they had managed to deageify him with CGI. That’s how much his son resembles him, and the father-son chemistry is evident on screen (with all due respect to both Lowe and Lowe Junior, I doubt they are that good of actors to have been able to pull that off were they not playing themselves somehow especially since Lowe Junior’s character is heavily based on him) don’t find it particularly funny or clever as the dialogues are incredibly predictable and the storyline lacks depth and excitement. But it is an easy watch and can be binged in a day, if you’re looking for a way to spend your Easter Monday.

Available on Netflix.

Happy Bingeing!