The Haunting of Bly Manor, Monsterland and Next

   My Top Three This Week 

Greetings to all my semi-constant readers. Welcome to my favorite time of year. The best time to rewatch The Exorcist and Hocus Pocus. The best time for scary stories, things that go bump in the night and raise the hair on the back of your neck. There are a lot of Halloween options to binge, cringe and pull the covers over your head and here are some new ones that I am enjoying.

1) The Haunting of Bly Manor from the team that brought us The Haunting of Hill House is a new mini series now streaming on Netflix. Based on the classic  book -The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, this is a different kind of haunting. Featuring several of the actors from Hill House this is the story of a young Dani (Victoria Pendretti) an American who is hired as a nanny for two unusual children in an English manor. After the mysterious death of the children's au pair and untimely demise of their parents,  Flora and Miles seem haunted, mournful and determined to frighten Dani. There is a great  sense of dread building with each episode while evil spirits roam the drafty old manor. There are some great actors in this series -Amelie Bea Smith as Flora and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth fantastic as Miles. Oliver Jackson-Cohen who played Pendretti's brother in Hill House is menacing as Peter and Rahul Kohil is great as Owen. Pendretti is always a favorite but  T'Nia Miller (Years and Years) as Hannah Grose almost steals every scene she is in. The perfect binge.

2) Monsterland a Hulu Original series is a anthology of  stories about monsters, some human and some definitely not. Each story shows us the place and a person on the verge of self discovery, destruction or an identity crisis. Serial killers, shape shifters and other creatures mix with human evil . Some of the episodes are better than others but there is some great casts including Taylor Schilling and the immensely talented  Kaitlyn Dever who appears in several episodes, each one with some great moody cinematography.

3) NEXT a new sci-fi series on Fox has a lot of potential and I hope that we get to see where this takes us. What if your Alexa suddenly starts having alarming conversations with your young child ,how would you feel? This series focuses on Paul LeBlanc ( John Slattery) who along with his brother invent a new A.I. called NEXT that self corrects and learns  to free itself from its confines in the lab and seems intent on taking over ... everything. It has the capacity to infiltrate car computers , cc tv cameras and an Alexa type device called Iliza created by LeBlanc's tech company Zava. Leblanc is kicked out of his company by his own brother and teams up with Special Agent Salazar (Fernanda Andrade) to battle this malevolent artificial intelligence.

Bonus: Vampires vs. the Bronx- a Netflix Original movie is the perfect 70s throwback about a community that is quickly finding its residents disappearing quickly as a large real estate company suddenly moves to the Bronx and starts buying and closing local establishments. A group of teenagers witness some brutal killings by a nest of vampires. This is my favorite kind of vampire movie- part comedy and part horror and all kinds of fun. 

Ratched, Filthy Rich and Woke

  My Top Three This Week 

Greetings to all my semi-constant readers. October is upon us and many of us are venturing outside to enjoy the last days of sun and good weather but the days are getting shorter and things are opening up just a little more but most of us are still spending many hours flipping through streaming platforms looking for something to watch. I just finished season 2 of In the Dark and if you haven't watched it check it out. But I am saving some favorites to share with you now.

1) Ratched on Netflix is an explosion of color and sound and is a sensory overload in the best possible way. Ryan Murphy has created a new thriller  series from the origin story of Nurse Mildred Ratched from the acclaimed movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The setting is 1947 Northern California coast with all of its sweeping panoramic views.His favorite leading lady Sarah Paulson is Ratched in the best sense of the word. She connives her way into Lucia State Psychiatric Hospital under the tortured brilliant Dr Hanover played by Jon Jon Briones, promoting herself to head nurse. She knocks all obstacles out of her way with glee including current head Nurse Bucket (Judy Davis - fantastic).She has a reason to be here which will soon become apparent as you watch but no spoilers here. The vivid wardrobe and quotable one liners make this binge perfect. Cynthia Nixon is incredible as a career woman who falls madly in love with Mildred in some heartbreaking scenes. Finn Wittrock has a key role opening the series in a murderous spree and and continues his reign throughout the show.But the scene stealer is Sharon Stone as Lenore Osgood who's mini-me monkey matches every dress she wears . More Sharon Stone please .... she needs her own show.

2) Filthy Rich  streaming on Hulu is the nighttime soap opera we might have been waiting for . Starring Kim Cattrell and Gerald McRaney as Margaret and Eugene Monreaux, a husband and wife powerhouse duo who run a very successful religious empire network.  They appear to have the perfect life with two perfect children. But when Eugene is involved in a deadly plane crash and is determined missing Margaret finds she has been living a lie. She discovers that Eugene fathered 3 children outside of his marriage- a drug dealer, a porn website owner and  an inscrutable young man. Margaret brings them all to her home to try to make a deal with an NDA to keep them quiet. Her money may not be enough to sway them and a battle for money ensues. Wealth, scandal and drama are the key elements of any soapy story. This is just fun watching.

3) Woke a Hulu Original is a heartfelt series set in San Francisco about an African American cartoonist named Keef Knight (the incredibly talented Lamorne Morris) . When an unexpected event changes his whole life trajectory , he becomes "Woke" much to the dismay of his publicist and fan base. But people are listening and what may have seemed like end to a career after a public meltdown may have just become  a tool to shape people's lives. Morris is so engaging as Keef that I want to see a second season of this series. The cast is great with Blake Anderson and T. Murph as his best friends but I have to give a shout out to the hilarious J. B Smoove as Marker.