Netflix Archives - The Wide Screen

August 13, 2023

Lightning Round-up: What I Watched The Week Of August 7th – 13th

Something new from me today, a compilation of bite-sized reviews for films and TV shows I watched in the past week that I probably wouldn’t be able to review otherwise. I can’t assure that I’ll have one of these posts going up every week, but I wanted to test out the format after considering for a long time how I could review a wider variety of titles without feeling the pressure to write a specific amount of words about each one, or get bogged down simply trying to find images. So without further ado, here’s my “Lightning Round-up” for the week of August 7th to 13th, 2023.

* – A title I’ve previously watched

(left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter, all wearing black suits, standing in an alleyway filled with blue mist at night. — (left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter | pueblerino.info

The Uncanny Counter (Netflix). The premise: an unconventional family of grim reapers in the business of rescuing souls from evil spirits and leading them to the afterlife lose a member in battle and recruit a teen boy to help take on their greatest threat – a powerful demon being maneuvered by political forces. The sixteen-episode first season is a perfect blend of heartwrenching drama, endearing humor, compelling intrigue, and low-budget special effects, anchored by emotional performances from all the main cast, Yeom Hye-ran in particular. The second season (airing weekly on Korean television and on Netflix, with five episodes released thus far) is tonally inconsistent with the first, and devotes entirely too much screentime to new characters that range from uninteresting to downright grating, but Kang Ki-young and Kim Hieora are genuinely brilliant additions as the season’s primary antagonists, bringing an effortless ferocity to their action sequences, which are longer and more intricately choreographed this season thanks to a higher budget (at the cost of a few episodes). This is probably some of the most fun I’ve had watching a television series this year.

Lee Si-Young carrying Park Na-rae on her shoulders in Zombieverse as they run through a parking lot at night pursued by zombies. — Lee Si-young and Park Na-rae in Zombieverse | undeadwalking.com

Zombieverse (Netflix). The premise: contestants must work together to survive a zombie apocalypse on the streets of Seoul, South Korea. I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but I could tell you from the trailer alone that this is the kind of show designed and destined to become a viral sensation (EDIT: I wrote this paragraph earlier in the week; checking back in, it seems that Zombieverse has indeed acquired a large and loyal fanbase, though many viewers are casting doubts on its claims of being “unscripted”, so I was partially right). My anxiety spiked when, at the end of the first episode, a stunt double playing a zombie was seemingly run over by a car and “killed”, along with a passenger in the vehicle. I’m assuming there’s safety measures in place to prevent anyone being seriously injured in the gory chaos? I’m rooting for contestant Lee Si-young, who kept her wits about her in a crisis while most of the others panicked and fled.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time, lying together in a wooden bed wearing red nightgowns. Moiraine is sitting up slightly. while Siuan is gazing up at her. They are in a low wooden hut with fishing-nets hanging from the ceiling. — Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time | pt.jugomobile.com

The Wheel Of Time Season 1, Episode 6* (Amazon Prime Video). The premise: Moiraine Damodred fights against time to free herself and her five young traveling companions from the intricate political machinations of the Aes Sedai before her plan to pit the Dragon Reborn against the Dark One is exposed in an episode written and filmed almost exclusively from her perspective. I stand by much of what I wrote regarding this episode in my initial review, though I would add that in retrospect, while it’s still one of my favorite episodes in the first season (purely due to Rosamund Pike and Sophie Okonedo’s phenomenal performances, which should have landed them both Emmy nominations), the writing is inconsistent – and noticeably weakest when it comes to fleshing out antagonist Liandrin Guirale, though if she lacks nuance, at least she’s never boring with Kate Fleetwood in the role, rocking her distinctive crimson get-up. And on that note, costume designer Isis Mussenden finally struck gold with her designs for this episode; Moiraine’s blue satin gown and diadem is iconic as far as I’m concerned.

Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body, wearing a white suit, sitting alongside a similarly-dressed mannequin beneath a red canopy in a darkly-lit room. — Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body | digitalspy.com

Marry My Dead Body (Netflix). The premise: in Taiwan, the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, a fervently homophobic police officer accidentally marries the ghost of a young gay man killed in a hit-and-run, and together they investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his untimely death in this zany, oftentimes heartwarming, LGBTQ+ buddy comedy. “Gayer than I expected, straighter than I would have liked” is probably how I would sum up Marry My Dead Body, which plays a cruel bait-and-switch on its viewers regarding the main character’s sexuality in just the first few minutes. And while it teases the idea of its male leads developing a romantic connection (almost having them kiss at a gay nightclub in a scene played not for laughs, but with surprising earnestness and intensity), this subplot trails off towards the end, leaving the exact nature of their relationship up to interpretation. I mean, I ship it regardless, but it’s a bit of a shame the film doesn’t fully commit to the bit, because Greg Hsu has excellent chemistry with costar Austin Lin that ought to have been utilized to the fullest. Still, Marry My Dead Body is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it immensely, particularly for how unabashedly raunchy it is in comparison to a lot of queer comedies that deliberately “sanitize” their characters and depiction of queerness for the sake of straight audience-members.

(left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown in Risque Business: Japan, standing on a street corner in Tokyo. — (left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown | netflix.com

Risqué Business: Japan (Netflix). The premise: across six episodes, comedian Shin Dong-yup and singer Sung Si-kyung aim to initiate more open and casual conversations amongst their predominantly Korean audiences about sex and sexual expression by exploring the vivid adult entertainment industry in neighboring Japan. I have so far found the series fairly enjoyable and occasionally illuminating, if somewhat limited in its scope and noticeably lacking perspectives from queer people in Japan (approximately 1 in 10 people in Japan identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2019 survey). The second season, set in progressive Taiwan, premiering later this month, will hopefully help to make up for this deficiency and boost Korea’s own LGBTQ+ rights movement, which has made only slow progress in recent years. But the series has also received warranted backlash for talking extensively about the AV (adult video) industry without ever touching on the abuse and exploitation of AV stars, so there’s definitely still a lot of refinement to be done with this concept.

Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch, wearing a white veterinarian's coat and looking down at her hands with a slight smile on her face. — Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch | m.gohitv.com

Behind Your Touch (Netflix). The premise: a veterinarian in a small town is struck by a meteor that gives her the psychic ability to read the memories of animals when she touches them, unintentionally putting her into conflict with a recently demoted detective bored by life in the countryside. With only two episodes on Netflix so far, the new series starring Han Ji-min has already popped into the platform’s Top Ten, and for good reason; it’s fun, fresh, abundantly quirky, and clever, with charming characters. I’m excited to keep up with this one.

Pretty sure that’s everything. Have you watched any of the titles on this list, or do you plan to? Tell me what sounds most intriguing in the comments below!

January 13, 2022

“Shadow And Bone” Reveals Four New Cast Members Joining Season Two

**MINOR SPOILERS FOR SHADOW AND BONE SEASON ONE AND SIX OF CROWS AHEAD!**

The crown jewel in Netflix’s hoard of fantasy franchises is The Witcher, the only original series on the streaming platform growing and expanding at such an exponential rate that it is no longer categorized under the fantasy genre, but indeed in its own separate category (albeit still largely padded out by short behind-the-scenes features). But if any other fantasy series has the wealth of never-before-adapted source material and the increasing number of enthusiastic fans necessary to support a franchise, it has to be Shadow And Bone.

Not for the first time, the name “Wylan” made it to the top five trends on Twitter today as Shadow And Bone‘s official social media outlets broke the long-awaited news that Wylan Van Eck, a beloved character in Leigh Bardugo’s Six Of Crows novels, has finally been cast and will appear in Shadow And Bone‘s second season, currently filming in Hungary. That’s pretty extraordinary. What’s even more extraordinary is that a Six Of Crows spin-off series has not yet been officially announced, although rumors have begun to circulate in recent months that one is being developed.

Until that day comes, the Six Of Crows duology and Grisha trilogy, both authored by Leigh Bardugo and set in her fictional Grishaverse, yet vastly disparate in tone and style, will continue to be compressed into one sprawling Netflix series, which borrows the title Shadow And Bone from the first book in her Grisha trilogy. Season one adapted Shadow And Bone in its entirety, intertwined with original storylines for the Six Of Crows characters Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, and Jesper Fahey.

Season two is expected to take the same approach to the second book in the Grisha trilogy, Siege And Storm, with the Crows’ storylines gradually inching closer to the events of their own duology. And thus, it should come as no surprise to fans of the trilogy that the characters of Nikolai Lantsov, Tolya Yul-Bataar, and Tamar Kir-Bataar have also been cast. These three characters are integral to Siege And Storm and to furthering the story of Alina Starkov’s war with the Darkling. It’s hard to imagine that Wylan will have anything to do with Alina, but his initiation into the Crows gang is the catalyst for the daring heist central to Six Of Crows.

So now that you know the basics, let’s break down these characters and casting announcements, shall we? First and foremost, because he’s the one who trended highest and whose casting seems to have universally satisfied most fans, we have Wylan Van Eck – or should I say, Wylan Hendriks. Just as season one ineffectively attempted to conceal the Darkling’s true identity behind the code-name of “General Kirigan”, season two appears to be hiding the truth about Wylan Van Eck’s illustrious parentage; a secret that comes out fairly early in Six Of Crows.

In the books, Wylan adopts the surname “Hendriks” – his mother’s maiden-name – while living on the streets of Ketterdam, after leaving home at a young age and discovering much to his surprise that his birth-name is no longer safe to use. Stalked relentlessly by people who want to kill him, Wylan puts his knowledge of chemistry to good use and becomes a demolitions expert, supplying explosives to Ketterdam’s criminals. Kaz Brekker, seeing through his little charade immediately, enlists him on the Ice Court heist as a bargaining-chip in negotiations with Wylan’s father, the businessman Jan Van Eck.

Jack Wolfe, best known for small roles in The Witcher and Father Brown, will portray Wylan Hendriks – and at once, his wide eyes and prim features make him a perfect match for the character, whom the other Crows underestimate at first due to his seemingly fragile physical build, privileged upbringing, and classical education. By an interesting twist of fate, Wolfe is also set to star in a musical adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which aligns with Wylan’s own interest in music, the flute in particular.

Patrick Gibson will take on the challenging but charismatic role of Nikolai Lantsov, the youngest prince in Ravka’s ruling family who aligns himself with Alina Starkov and becomes her love-interest, as well as a chief enemy of the Darkling and of his own despicable parents. Some fans don’t believe that Gibson looks like Nikolai, by which they must mean that he doesn’t physically resemble a seven-letter word printed on a page, because otherwise he fits the descriptors neatly and brings a certain ethereal quality to the character that is very suitable.

More than that, he has plenty of experience. Gibson starred in Netflix’s ambitious sci-fi epic The OA, and has appeared in numerous key roles across films and television, including The White Princess, The Spanish Princess, Before We Die, The Darkest Minds, and Tolkien, the 2019 biopic of the great fantasy author.

After Ben Barnes, however, arguably the biggest name-talent to join Shadow And Bone is Lewis Tan, who will appear in season two as Tolya Yul-Bataar, a Shu Heartrender loyal to Nikolai who becomes one of Alina’s bodyguards and closest companions. Tan has appeared in Iron Fist, Deadpool 2, and Wu Assassins, and last year led the ensemble cast of the Mortal Kombat adaptation that raked in roughly $83 million worldwide and became a massive hit on HBO Max. He’s not an extremely versatile actor, but he’s already got Tolya’s fight-training, good looks, and the crucial smolder.

Between Tolya and his twin sister Tamar Kir-Bataar, I suspect Tamar will do most of the heavy lifting in dramatic scenes. Her character, another Heartrender, is Alina’s close confidante throughout Siege And Storm, and in Shadow And Bone their connection may be even deeper because Alina is explicitly Shu in the adaptation, like the twins. It’s implied in the books that the nation of Shu Han is vaguely inspired by late 19th Century China or Mongolia, and Jessie Mei Li (who plays Alina), Lewis Tan, and Tamar’s actress, podcaster Anna Leong Brophy, are all of Chinese descent.

Incidentally, Tamar and Wylan are both canonically queer characters in the books (and there’s some evidence to suggest that Tolya is aromantic and/or asexual). Seeing as Jesper has already been shown flirting with and seducing men in season one, I have faith that Shadow And Bone won’t leave any of their scenes on the cutting-room floor, as unfortunately happened to several queer characters in The Witcher. Taking Fedyor, Ivan, and Nina Zenik (who is canonically bisexual in the books) into account, Shadow And Bone might just challenge The Wheel Of Time for the honor of TV’s gayest fantasy series.

Speaking of Nina Zenik, both Danielle Galligan and Calahan Skogman (Nina and Matthias, respectively) have been upgraded to series regulars heading into season two. Daisy Head, who plays the conflicted Tailor Genya Safin, has enjoyed the same promotion. Behind the scenes, Shadow And Bone‘s showrunner Eric Heisserer will now be joined by Daegan Fryklind, who was a writer on season one.

With Shadow And Bone season two supposedly aiming for a release date later this year, hopefully it won’t be long before we see Wylan, Nikolai, Tolya and Tamar in action. In the meantime, feel free to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

November 21, 2021

“Arcane” Season 1 Finishes Off With A Bang

**SPOILERS FOR ARCANE: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS SEASON ONE AHEAD!**

After keeping me on the edge of my seat for three weeks, Arcane: League Of Legends season one is finally complete; but the story is only just beginning, and Netflix, Riot Games, and French animation studio Fortiche have barely even scratched the surface of what League Of Legends‘ vast world of stories can offer. Yes, a second season is officially in production, but the end of season one has me in the mood to hop onboard one of Piltover’s famous airships and explore the rest of Runeterra. It all seems wondrous to me as a casual viewer who knows next to nothing about League Of Legends lore.

And in its last batch of three episodes, I think Arcane masterfully capitalizes on that feeling shared by so many viewers new to the franchise by giving us a glimpse into the many League Of Legends stories yet to be told onscreen, any of which could be explored in successive seasons of Arcane or in spin-offs if the show is successful enough to warrant them. The extraordinary new character of Ambessa Medarda (voiced by Ellen Thomas) all but invites our heroes to join her on a journey far beyond Piltover to her own world of subterfuge and political intrigue, which sounds like a very good offer if you ask me.

But at the same time, what I really appreciate about Arcane is that it knows exactly where its center lies, and it always comes back there. If this final batch of episodes is perhaps lighter on epic action and spectacle than some might have hoped (although there’s still enough that it’s not underwhelming in that regard, either), that’s only because the finale is focused on delivering satisfying character moments for the main cast, some of which resolve season-long arcs and some of which only close one chapter of a character’s story to prepare them for the next.

In the end, Arcane comes down to one family and two sisters: the microcosm through which we witness the long-lasting effects of Piltover’s brutality against the undercity of Zaun. Orphaned in one war between the two cities, ripped apart by another, and reunited in a third, Violet (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (voiced by Ella Purnell) have spent every day of their lives fighting to carve out some kind of foothold in a world that would happily purge them from existence if it cared about them at all. Jinx forces the world to notice her through the chaos and colorful graffiti she leaves in her wake, and the world responds by hunting her until she has nowhere left to turn.

In a tragic twist of fate, Jinx’s terror leads her to believe that everyone close to her will betray her – “everyone” in this case being her sister Violet and her father figure Silco (voiced by Jason Spisak). There’s no question that Silco was an abominable man, but I think he genuinely loved Jinx and he wasn’t lying when he said he would never have let her go. He would have given up everything to do what he thought would keep her safe, and in the end – fittingly – he lost his own life to Jinx while trying to kill the one person he saw as a threat to her; Violet.

The whole sequence stung, but in the best way, because it’s never a clear-cut issue of who’s right and who’s wrong. Violet did abandon Jinx as a child, when she needed her the most…but Silco also lied when he told Jinx that Violet never tried to come back for her afterwards. They both want to protect Jinx, but Violet never explains how she plans to do that with the limited resources at her disposal. Sure, she’s got a powerful ally in Caitlyn (voiced by Katie Leung), but ironically Jinx might have blown that alliance to smithereens along with the council-chamber she blew up in the finale, which very likely killed Caitlyn’s mother.

That’s another thing I love about Arcane. The heroes are never automatically right by virtue of being the heroes, and likewise with the villains. Violet and Jinx should have been each other’s solid ground, and perhaps they still could be, but it’s going to take a lot of work and self-improvement from both characters. Jinx has legitimate reasons to distrust Violet, and the show acknowledges that without trying to make excuses for Violet’s actions. Arcane makes you fall in love with a character for their virtues and their flaws, because nobody in this world is comprised wholly of one or the other.

Topside, that holds true of characters like Jayce (voiced by Kevin Alejandro), who finally confronts the reality that his idealism doesn’t necessarily make him a better politician than anyone else on the city council, and that you can’t always win battles by assuming the moral high-ground. Viktor (voiced by Harry Lloyd), his lab partner, uses these last three episodes to reach a similar conclusion about life in general, but whether because of his harsher upbringing or awareness of his own mortality, he doesn’t have the same qualms as Jayce – he’ll do whatever it takes to survive, even if that means replacing his weakening body with Hextech.

Then there’s Mel Medarda (voiced by Toks Olagundoye), the enigmatic councilwoman who’s stayed on the sidelines throughout season one – until the finale, when at long last her plan starts to come into focus. Turns out, this whole time that’s she been pulling the strings behind Jayce’s greatest accomplishments she’s also been engaged in a Game Of Thrones-style grudge match with her mother, who banished her to Piltover because she believed Mel was weak and couldn’t handle the responsibilities of ruling their own realm. So Mel took over Piltover.

Mel’s mother Ambessa erupts onto the screen, effortlessly showing off through her flippant mannerisms, confident gait, and disarming personality why Mel was right to fear and revere her as a child, and why she makes such an fearsome opponent now. There’s simply nothing that rattles her, and that characterization is significant – because when Ambessa reveals to Mel that their family is in real danger from an enemy who’s already killed Mel’s brother, we realize instantly the enormity of that threat if it’s something that scares even Ambessa. And don’t forget, all of this development is packed into just three episodes. It shouldn’t work, yet it does.

Hopefully Ambessa and Mel’s storyline becomes a major subplot in season two, but I’m very interested to see how it connects back to Violet and Jinx. Mel was in the council-chamber that Jinx blew up in the finale…and while I can’t imagine that Arcane would kill her off so early, even an injury might give Ambessa a reason to seek vengeance on Jinx or for Mel to do so herself. Those are the kinds of unexpected connections that these final three episodes sold especially well, as the interactions, particularly between characters from either side of the social divide, felt organic and intriguing.

On that note, I have to talk about Violet and Caitlyn. They’ve been partners in the League Of Legends game for a long time, but Arcane (at least to my knowledge) offers the first canonical hint that they’re more than just friends. I don’t want to call it confirmation of a queer romance just yet because they talk about their relationship in terms that are a little vague for my taste, and they don’t kiss (even though they came pretty darn close last week) but Jinx refers to Caitlyn as Violet’s girlfriend and Violet instantly knows who she’s talking about, so…make of that what you will.

For a series I had virtually no interest in until its release day, Arcane: League Of Legends has surpassed my wildest expectations and quite possibly taken the top spot on my list of favorite TV shows from this year. As one of the few shows telling this kind of complex and mature story through uniquely beautiful and dynamic animation (if there’s any justice in this world, Fortiche’s talented animators should be in high demand from now on), Arcane easily stands out from the competition and raises the bar for the whole medium. Season two can’t come soon enough.

Series Rating: 9.5/10

November 20, 2021

“Cowboy Bebop” Is Gonna Carry The Weight Of Its Wrong Choices

Night before last, I was honored to attend a virtual screening for the first two episodes of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, a live-action reimagining of the beloved 1998 anime that debuted its full first season yesterday. The two episodes I saw were pretty good – a little slow, perhaps, and guilty of retreading ground the anime already covered, but good enough to leave me wanting more when the credits rolled. Sadly, it turns out that Cowboy Bebop is one of those shows that gets progressively worse as it plods along through a ten-episode season that feels like an eternity.

Now, we all love a show that’s so bad it’s good in a roundabout way, and I even think Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop has its fair share of unironically compelling elements, including a couple of scenes toward the end that enrich the world of the anime so significantly that, if (and that’s a big if), if expanded upon in a second season, we could theoretically just forget about all the bad stuff and move merrily along. But this first season’s greatest crime is that it makes Bebop boring – and that’s really hard to do, so this took concentrated effort.

Ironically, it’s Cowboy Bebop‘s inability to free itself from the imagined constraints of a straight-up remake that keeps this series about the dangers of never moving on from the past entangled in a web of its own creation. The glimpses of originality that shine through are much appreciated (though often built on other generic tropes), but every time it looks like the show might finally do something bold and unique it inflicts upon us another halfhearted re-enactment of storylines that were intended to be stand-alone in the anime and are here awkwardly fused with the series’ mostly new overarching narrative to create some lopsided chimera of a first season.

If it was ever implied that there was some reason behind the inclusion of these storylines, apart from the desire to lure in fans of the anime with scenes and characters they already know, that would be one thing, but none ever emerges; and in any case such clarity of purpose would be jarring in a series that ricochets tonally between snarky profanity-laced comedy (which is where, tellingly, it seems most comfortable) and a transparent facsimile of the anime’s melancholy atmosphere.

Uneven writing is largely to blame, but the whole series is gonna carry that weight. And if that pun was obvious, it’s still more subtle than Cowboy Bebop‘s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to adapting a story famous for its multiple delicate layers of meaning. Where the anime slowly peeled back those layers to reveal more depth than one might at first expect from a sci-fi western, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop has nothing to uncover and nothing to say that the anime didn’t already communicate more efficiently and poetically. It’s shallow and thematically muddled.

Cowboy Bebop‘s best attempts to disguise this involve repeatedly hitting you over the head with dialogue that spells out the series’ message in capital letters (incorrectly, but that’s beside the point), but such clumsy writing only draws more attentions to the areas in which Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop not only fails to honor the visionary anime, but very purposefully throws out the source material. I’m hardly a purist, but in this case it’s clear that Cowboy Bebop‘s writers aren’t motivated by some spark of their own genius but by the desire to build another franchise for Netflix.

Specifically, I’d point to what I feel is the most significant change, and that’s the reimagined team dynamic between our three main characters; former hit-man Spike Spiegel (John Cho); ex-cop Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir); and amnesiac bounty hunter Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda). Both the anime and live-action series revolve around the traumatic events in their backstories that defined them and still affect them to this day, but the anime allowed this conflict to impede on their ability to form new relationships or start over with their lives. You felt all of their pain because it was evident in how they remained closed-off from each other, how they kept their secrets sealed behind closed doors.

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop can’t ever go to those lengths, because that would require editing out at least fifteen minutes of friendly banter from each episode. Leave aside the fact that the characters’ backstories are already rendered weightless by being unloaded early in the season before we form an emotional attachment to any of them, the live-action versions of Spike, Jet, and Faye are simply too emotionally available, too familiar with each other, too well-adjusted, for the core conflict to work. They bicker, but they’re already basically a family unit by the end of the season when they face the first real challenge to that dynamic.

Of the three main characters, I do want to point out that Mustafa Shakir is not only an excellent Jet Black, but a vast improvement on the anime’s version of the same character. Jet was my least-favorite of the main trio, partially because his backstory was simply less interesting to me and partially because his character often stayed behind on the Bebop while Spike and Faye would go after a bounty together or individually. Shakir’s Jet is always in on the action, effortlessly taking the lead. He’s also a father in this retelling, which leads to some plot-beats that would have been predictable if not for Shakir’s performance.

I wish I could say the same of Cho or Pineda. Cho is a very good actor, but his Spike is written to be so talkative and funny that it’s only in those rare moments where he’s allowed to speak volumes through silence that he really feels like the character – for instance, when he gets off an elevator wearing headphones and strolls casually into the middle of a casino-heist, or when he’s hanging upside-down from a billboard and lights a cigarette while he waits to be pulled to safety. These are both new scenes, but they express the character’s motto of “Whatever happens, happens” perfectly.

Pineda, sadly, is dealt the worst hand, as her character is only Faye Valentine insofar as that’s her name and she shares roughly the same backstory. The nostalgia for a life she doesn’t remember that kept Faye frantically bouncing from place to place in search of belonging, the vividly realized claustrophobia of being in your own body and still not recognizing whose it is, and the vulnerability that comes with that, leaving Faye susceptible to manipulation – almost none of that is brought over into live-action. Pineda’s Faye is only a step above a comedic-relief character.

Even with an entire episode centered on a gender-bent version of the con-artist Whitney Matsumoto (Christine Dunford), who here poses as Faye’s doting mother, the series squanders its opportunity to explore Faye’s internal conflict. Cowboy Bebop could have played up the psychological horror of waking up with no grip on reality or sense of stability, and then being fed lies by a total stranger who claims to be the only person who remembers you…but instead Faye and the others get roped into a whole bunch of humorous hijinks involving Matsumoto’s husband that culminates in an utterly random plot twist for shock value.

And while we’re on the subject of characters undercut by cheap humor, I can’t not talk about Vicious (Alex Hassell). I’ll be honest, I never liked him in the anime to begin with; he was a despicable, one-dimensional villain. But I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed on his behalf while watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop drag Vicious’ name and reputation through the mud, reducing the menacing warlord to a sniveling parody of Lucius Malfoy, with a stringy platinum-blonde wig so atrocious that if you told me it was found discarded on the set of Jupiter’s Legacy, I’d believe you.

Vicious is constantly surrounded by a whole host of other actors hamming it up as various crime-lords of the Syndicate, which might have been enjoyable in a different show; in Cowboy Bebop, it’s just weird and unnecessary. John Noble is probably the best of the bunch, playing another authoritarian father figure in the same vein as his iconic Denethor, only a little more overtly villainous. Vicious is also accompanied by Julia (Elena Satine), who in the anime remained enigmatic and invisible until the end of the series. Here, she’s a major character, which is a nice change. The final episode sets up a very interesting future for her, which as I said could turn the whole show around in season two.

Apart from some interesting new characters, there’s also the occasional character so exquisitely redesigned – and often modernized – that at best you wish they looked like that in the anime, as I felt was particularly the case with Gren (Mason Alexander Park). Sadly, they’re all stuck in this inferior series.

Even in its best episodes, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop falls far short of the anime on which it’s based. There’s good stuff scattered here and there, and with a lot of work this show could be something interesting down the line – but I don’t know if it will ever feel like a proper adaptation of Bebop. And as disappointing as that is, take comfort in the fact that the original anime is also streaming on Netflix, so you can skip this entirely and go straight to the source. You won’t be missing much.

Series Rating: 5/10