The Week That Was - May 12, 2025
O Canada, more Toast, Statham doing his thing, and Newfie dog cops?
I’ve had a very loaded week, seeing Sturgill Simpson on Tuesday, coming home to watch Game 1 of the Wolves/Warriors series, and then turning around the next morning to get on the road by 7:30 AM to make our way toward Canada, which I just left, writing this missive while driving alongside the Kennebec River. Though Ottawa conspired against me to make me watch the Wolves’ Game 2 on a janky stream on my laptop, I persevered and managed to catch almost all of that game, and Game 3 was viewed from the comfort of our room in the Hôtel du Vieux-Québec. This meant I didn’t have a much time to watch anything.
TV
Wisting (Seasons 4 and 5) - In what could be the final two seasons of Wisting, we were treated to a pretty underwhelming fourth mystery, and a fifth one that was much more satisfying. With this show, you’re definitely more at the mercy of whether or not a particular case that needs solving feels like it has stakes. When it doesn’t, it can be a slog, as it was in Season 4, but in Season 5 bodies drop left and right over the course of the investigation, so peril is right around every corner. This is not the peak of Scandinavian Noir by any stretch of the imagination, but Season 5 works well. AMC+
Toast of Tinseltown (Season 1) - I’d been wanting to see Matt Berry’s “stateside” misadventures with his creation, Steven Toast, an buffoonish actor of questionable talent for whom nothing goes right. Incorporating a handful of American actors like Fred Armisen, Rashida Jones, Bill Hader, and more, this run of episodes let Matt Berry explore the fickle beast that is Hollywood, lampooning it just as bitingly as he did for the acting scene in London. High marks all around. Strong recommendation for both this and Toast of London. Prime, The Roku Channel
Hudson & Rex (random episodes) - Ok, so this show is not good by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s seeming ubiquity north of the border makes it a fascinating thing to me. There were times in both Sudbury and Ottawa where this random show was on multiple channels at the same time. There’ve been seven seasons so far (I think it’s still filming/airing new eps), which means it’s landed itself in syndication land, a feat that is equal parts baffling and admirable. This show purports itself to be about a cop who doesn’t have patience for partners who talk too much, which means his ideal partner is “a highly trained law enforcement animal” or a German shepherd named Rex.
Now that’s what the show is per the capsules written on Wikipedia, but you really don’t get a sense of that being the crux of what this show actually is from week to week. In the handful of eps that I saw, this is basically an amalgam of NCIS, Psych, and Lassie. Characters not named Hudson routinely go out in the field with Rex to investigate. They go to plays with Rex. Rex gives two barks, and they respond like he’s just said something very insightful. If Rex smells something in the trash, you’ll see that scented thing in a purple-highlighted Rex vision flourish. I’m sure it’s just owing to a sampling of the episodes I saw, but Hudson & Rex also seemed preoccupied with his boss’s delicate sensibilities. I feel like I should note that Rex routinely retrieves evidence through means that as an American strike me as extrajudicial, and the opportunities for him to do things like break-and-enter through a screen window because he’s a dog strain credulity and would put their case at risk when it went to court, but maybe Canada has really lax dog-cop laws as pertain to evidentiary protocols.
It’s also set in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which makes it one of the only things I’ve ever seen that shot there. This is a bizarre show, apparently based on an Italo-Austrian show Kommisar Rex, which ran from 1994 to 2015, which makes you wonder what the hell they’re doing in Austria that this show ran for 21 years? Prime?
Film
Parker (2013) - Based on the Donald Westlake character who also served as the source material inspiring the Lee Marvin vehicle Point Blank and the Mel Gibson flick Payback, this was the first adaptation allowed to call the hero by his original, titular name. Statham Stathams, Taylor Hackford gets to try his hand at what he thought would be his first noir (not sure it really ends up fitting into the genre fully, but whatever), and Jennifer Lopez continued her Aughts voyage through a series of roles that seemed designed to try to rehabilitate her image as a someone relatable to the public after appearing to have become increasingly out-of-touch in the ways that the obscenely famous can. This is a perfectly cromulent action/revenge flick. It’s not GREAT, but it’s an entry in the bottom of the mid-tier of Jason Statham’s filmography, and more importantly, it was a totally viable hotel-room watch. Prime?