This weekend on Paramount+ I’ve decided to mix together three totally different genres in the hopes that at least one of them will spark your interest for a good weekend binge.
The streaming service’s catalog is so robust that there’s a ton to choose from, but while narrowing it down is always tricky, it never feels like homework. This weekend’s picks cover a lot of ground, literally and figuratively, with a moody Wyoming crime drama, an offbeat legal police procedural, and a stupid-smart sketch show from 2013 from the makers of Big Mouth.
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Joe Pickett
If you’re a fan of sprawling Taylor Sheridan hits like Yellowstone or Landman, there’s a good chance you’re going to be all over Joe Pickett, a Paramount+ hit based on the bestselling novels by C.J. Box. I actually prefer it over Sheridan’s series, mostly because it’s a more character-driven crime drama, with New Zealand actor Michael Dorman, who I loved in Apple TV’s For All Mankind, in the lead role.
Dorman plays the titular Pickett, a rugged game warden in the small town of Saddlestring, Wyoming, where he’s just moved to settle down with his wife Marybeth (Julianna Guill, Friday the 13th) and their daughters. True to the books, things in Saddlestring start to unravel when the body of a local poacher turns up near Joe’s house, and as he investigates, a plot driven by poachers, corrupt officials, and a wealthy ranching family and a pipeline come to light.
As I said, it’s the characters that make Joe Pickett so appealing, with stellar performances by In Living Color‘s superb David Alan Grier as Joe’s former mentor, NYPD Blue‘s Sharon Lawrence as Marybeth’s overbrearing mother Missy, and Boardwalk Empire‘s brooding Paul Sparks as Joe’s shifty boss, Wacey. There are two seasons of Joe Pickett streaming on Paramount+, and the sereis currently stands at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Elsbeth
My wife and I were fans of both The Good Wife and The Good Fight, where the excellently quirky Elsbeth Tascioni character was born. Played to perfection by Carrie Preston, the intrigue of Elsbeth was always watching her opponents and colleagues mistake her seemingly scatterbrained eccentricities as weakness, then watching the razor-sharp attorney destroy them.
In this popular spinoff, entitled Elsbeth, we find the colorful character relocated from Chicago to New York City, where she’s been brought in to the NYPD on a court-ordered consent decree—she’s essentially there to ensure the police are doing their jobs. There’s actually an ulterior motive, though—Elsbeth is secretly investigating police captain Charles Wallace (The Wire‘s Wendell Pierce), who’s suspected of corruption.
While all that underpins Elsbeth‘s action, the series is a mystery-of-the-week procedural that’s been compared to Murder She Wrote and Colombo, with Elsbeth chasing down criminals in the weird and fun style that’s made her such a hit with fans. Three seasons of Elsbeth are available to binge on Paramount+.
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Kroll Show
Nick Kroll is one of the country’s funniest stand-up comics, who also created the Emmy-winning Netflix animated series Big Mouth, which is one of the raunchiest, most hysterical satires of puberty ever put to film. But back in 2013, the comedian, actor, and writer had his own sketch show on Comedy Central where he and a recurring/rotating cast of comedians and friends—including John Mulaney, Jenny Slate, Chelsea Peretti, Jon Daly, Bill Burr, and others—took aim at reality TV, trashy talk shows, commercials, and more.
Kroll Show ran for three seasons and garnered several iconic Kroll characters and sketches, like PubLIZity, a send-up of a reality TV show where Kroll and Slate play Liz B. (Kroll in drag) and Liz G., reprehensible valley-girl talking PR firm owners obsessed with juice-cleanses and getting plastic surgery for their dogs. The Liz B. character would be a precursor for Big Mouth’s mean-girl Lola Skumpy. Another gem is the Kroll/Mulaney segment Too Much Tuna with elderly Upper West Siders Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, a fake prank show that would later feature in the pair’s Broadway stage show, Oh, Hello. And as a Canadian, I have a special place in my maple-syrup-soaked heart for Wheels Ontario, Kroll’s love-letter/takedown of Degrassi. Mikey (Kroll) goes to a high school where pretty much every student is in a wheelchair, and there are more loonie, bagged-milk, and aboot jokes than you shake a hockey stick at.
Similar to other sketch comedy shows like Key & Peele, Kroll would start each episode with a brief stand-up intro and then launch into the show’s array of new and staple sketches that would meld together to complete Kroll’s vision of the perfectly stupid TV universe. The short episodes are easy to binge, even if some of them are hit-and-miss.
Paramount+ is constantly surprising me with its new series and movies, and its vast back catalog of classic shows that often deliver an excellent insight into where much of what we watch today comes from.
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