Thursday Movie Picks #238: TMP Television Edition - 2018 Freshmen Series

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five titles and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is TMP Television Edition - 2018 Freshmen Series

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Hey, so today is the first TV edition of the year. How was your 2018 TV year? Discovered some great new shows? I think 2017 might have been a better year of freshmen series, but 2018 was a decent and here are the standouts for me.

Good Girls  (2018 - )

The Gist: Three suburban mothers in desperate financial circumstances rob a supermarket only to find themselves against the gang that have been laundering their money through that supermarket and now have to pay back the money and more. I didn't have much of an expectation for this, knowing very little about it. Turns out it is a real good crime dramedy, it is often really funny and I really enjoyed it.

The Alienist (2018 - )
The Gist: Set in 19th century NYC, a psychologist, a newspaper illustrator and a secretary with the NYPD investigate a serial killer who is murdering street children. This is dark and the whole psychology and forensics being newly used in an investigation of a crime aspect of it is very interesting. While I do like the series, I didn't love it. Something is lacking...I think the dialogue could have been a little more restrained and subtle.

The Kominsky Method (2018 - )

The Gist: The series follows an aging actor now making a living as an acting coach and his agent best friend. I totally forgot about this when I picked for comedies last year. This is easily the best comedy that I have seen recently. It is just so sweet, funny and heartwarming. I like the cast too, great chemistry.

McMafia (2018 - )

The Gist: An English-raised son of Russian mafia exiles, now living the ordinary life, is drawn into the criminal underworld when his uncle's plan for their family's return to Russia backfires. Based on a non-fiction book about global organised crime, the tv series puts a fictional family in the center through which we see how organised crime works on a global scale. This sort of reminds me a little of Contagion in that there are a lot of interconnected moving pieces; while there is the main family that the story follows here, there are also these smaller pieces taking place in far flung places and we see how these smaller gangs are connected to the bigger ones. I just found this so interesting and eyeopening.

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
The Gist: A broken family confront the haunting memories of their time at Hill House after a tragedy occurs. This is the best series I saw last year and is one of the best ghost stories I've seen ever. This is so so good. So well written, very restrained and really is a slow burn taking its time to tell the story. I liked it from the start, but I loved it from the fifth episode onwards. It's beautiful, tragic, haunting and heart wrenching. A must watch.

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