February Binges: Agatha Christie's Seven Dials, His & Hers, Ponies

There's been a lot of new TV recently and the weather has been freezing. So I stayed on the couch and got through a lot of binges. Join me, why don't you?

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials: I fell in love with Agatha Christie mystery novels when I was a teenager and have watched many TV and movie adaptations of her work. So naturally I was going to binge this three-episode miniseries to my heart's content. Written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, like all great British period dramas, this adaptation boasts an all-star cast and some impeccable costume and production design. 

Our main protagonist is Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a young socialite who has fallen on hard times after the death of her father. She and her mother (played by THE Helena Bonham-Carter) have rented out their house to an odious "new money" couple for a house party one weekend. Of course, that's when tragedy strikes, with the death of a man that Bundle was especially close to. The verdict is suicide, but Bundle knows that cannot be right, leading to a murder investigation that will require the sleuthing skills of Superintendent Battle (played by Martin Freeman). 

I have read the book this series was based on, but I must admit I have no recollection of the plot being quite so convoluted. It does appear there were certain additional twists and turns that make it less than a faithful adaptation, but it's certainly a fun one and an excellent way to kill three hours of a dreary afternoon.

His & Hers: Based on the 2020 novel by Alice Feeney, William Oldroyd has developed this adaptation alongside showrunner Dee Johnson, moving the action from England to Georgia and pulling in heavy hitters like Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal to star. Thompson plays Anna Andrews, a local news anchor who disappeared for a year after some tragedy but has now returned and is determined to get her job back. She's been replaced by Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse) but Anna thinks she can prove her skills by working as a field reporter on a recent murder that took place in the town where she grew up. Who is the detective investigating that homicide? Her estranged husband, Jack (Bernthal). 

Turns out Anna also has a connection to the victim, and things just keep getting twistier from there. This is the type of mystery where absolutely everybody is a suspect, and yet, in the final half hour, you'll discover that you were wrong all along. Is it kind of ridiculous? Yes. But was it also the absolute perfect six-episode binge for my friend Laura and I to indulge in while I was over at her house for a grown-up sleepover? You bet!

Ponies: Created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, this is a weird and wonderful show set in 1977 Moscow. We follow Bea and Twila (Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson), the wives of two US CIA agents, who mysteriously die while on a mission. The two women are desperate for answers, so they petition the CIA to let them become undercover spies, as the KGB will never suspect the Americans are now using women to do their dirty work. These women have absolutely no experience in spycraft, but they are scrappy and intelligent (Bea went to Wellesley, godammit!), and they are determined to figure out who is responsible for the death of their husbands. So what follows is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game as they cultivate Russian assets and learn to become spies, while reconciling with their own grief and feelings of personal inadequacy. 

In only eight episodes, there are so many twists and turns, but the whole thing ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so prepare to feel unsatisfied. These actresses are delivering killer performances, and the story is wildly engaging, but the tone also veers all over the place, sometimes feeling extremely serious and dramatic, but oftentimes featuring a lot of comic shtick that can make you wonder if they really even miss their husbands at all. It's an odd but scrappy little show, much like its central protagonists, and while it may be an acquired taste, I'll certainly be tuning in for Season 2.

February Movies Part 1: It Was Just an Accident & The Secret Agent

I am ahead of schedule and have watched the last two Oscar movies on my list. Both were foreign films: one I loved, the other I found to be overhyped and dull. Aren’t you excited to find out which one’s which?!

It Was Just an Accident: Written and directed by Jafar Panahi, this is a brilliant Iranian movie about a man who thinks he has identified his former tormentor from when he was imprisoned by the regime and decides to kidnap and murder him for vengeance. 

Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) runs a garage and spots Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) when he comes in to get his car serviced. Eghbal has a squeaky prosthetic leg, and when Vahid hears that sound, he is immediately triggered, as that was the sound he always heard while he was blindfolded and being tortured for months in an Iranian prison. He follows Eghbal to his house and later to a street where he manages to kidnap him and drive him away to a remote location, where he plans to bury him alive.

I know that everything I have described so far sounds extremely dark and horrific. So let me be the first to say I was shocked by how funny this movie could get. It is the blackest of comedies, and as it progresses, you will find yourself in awe of this deft screenplay that threads such a delicate needle between comedy and despair. I won’t spoil too much, but let’s just say that Vahid starts to experience some doubts about this whole kidnapping and murder scheme and recruits some of his fellow former prisoners to help him sort out what needs to happen next. Which leads to a lot of confusion and anger on their part.

This movie is beautifully acted and quite extraordinary, a wonderful tale of resistance against an oppressive regime that continues to crack down on its people today. The final moments of this film feature a chilling bit of sound design that I would award a special Oscar to all on its own. Of all the foreign films I watched this year, this is the one I admired and loved the most.

The Secret Agent: Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, this is a fictional movie set in 1977 during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Wagner Moura plays Armando, a widower who has been targeted as a dissident. He needs to flee the country with his young son and has enlisted the help of an undercover resistance network to smuggle him out of the country. While he waits for forged documents and an opportunity, he has assumed a new identity and is hiding out with other dissidents, desperately hoping to go unnoticed. Separately, we also follow some history students in the present day, who are researching audio recordings that the resistance network made with people like Armando, trying to piece together his story.

I cannot say I understand the hype around this movie at all. Why is it the favorite to win Best Foreign Film, with an additional nomination for Best Picture? Moura is a good actor, but this movie is a dud, plodding along a nearly three-hour runtime with occasional bouts of action, but mostly long stretches of dull exposition or fantastical sequences that left me cold. The soundtrack is rather wonderful, but other than that, there was nothing particularly captivating about this film. Sometimes it feels like critics just decide they’ve suddenly discovered the cinema of a particular country and need to award it. But comparing this movie to last year’s I’m Still Here, a Brazilian movie set in the same time period, I can’t help but see the stark difference in quality and emotion. 

Feel free to watch this movie and tell me I’m wrong, like all the other critics who love this movie so. But my mind continues to be boggled at why anyone thinks this film is more deserving of awards than the other great foreign films that came out this year.

January Movies Part 4: Song Sung Blue & Train Dreams

Every year, when the Oscar nominations are announced, I have to do a mad scramble to catch up on all the movies I missed. Thankfully, this year I watched a good number of films, so I can catch up at a more sedate pace. Here are reviews of two movies I watched this week to get fully informed before the awards ceremony!

Song Sung Blue: Written and directed by Craig Brewer, based on the documentary by Greg Kohs, this is a rather charming biopic about Mike and Claire Sardina (played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson), two musicians who met in 1987 in Wisconsin and decided to work together to create a Neil Diamond tribute act. Now, let's be real, apart from Sweet Caroline, I didn't know any Neil Diamond music, but boy did I get a robust education while watching this movie, including discovering a very bizarre bop called Soolaimon that I still mindlessly hum to myself out of nowhere.

This is a pretty traditional story about two Midwesterners who were battling their own personal demons but had great talent and a great love for each other that helped them overcome their struggles. Jackman and Hudson turn in wonderfully charismatic performances, and considering all the drama that happens to Hudson's character over the course of this movie, it's little wonder she has been nominated for an Oscar. I honestly wasn't expecting to like the movie as much as I did, but it was so sweet, so kind, so understanding of human foibles, that I simply couldn't help myself. I'm a sucker for musicals and stories where music brings people together. There's a little side plot where Mike is trying to get a job at a Thai restaurant, and it turns out the immigrant owner is a huge Neil Diamond fan and loves Soolaimon. That's the kind of cross-cultural human bonding that I simply eat up with a spoon.

Watch this movie if you like great acting, good music, and purely wholesome vibes. It's like watching a Bollywood movie, but the actors are doing their own singing. And it's all true, which makes it all the more spectacular.

Train Dreams: Directed by Client Bentley who co-wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar, adapting it from the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, this is a vibey movie that starts out in the 1890s and tells the story of Robert (Joel Edgerton), a young orphan in Idaho. We watch his life as a young man in the American West, working in forests, helping to build railroads alongside Chinese laborers, and eventually falling in love and building a remote cabin by the river to live in with his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their young daughter. He becomes a logger and has to leave them for months at a time during logging season and we get to watch their struggles to build a life together in this harsh but beautiful New World.

This movie is only 100 minutes long, but we get to see the trajectory of this man's entire life, from sawing down trees in the early 1900s to watching the moon landing in 1969. The movie simultaneously feels extremely slow and deliberate, and then extremely rushed. This is the kind of film that is all about the cinematography and vistas and frankly, might have done better with a 3-hour Brutalist treatment. Instead, we get something that feels a little bit unmoored, much like its protagonist. It's a slice of life, conveying the extraordinary changes that one man can experience in one short lifetime, but did I find that moving or fascinating? Not particularly.

January Movies Part 3: Blue Moon & The Rip

This week I've watched one Oscar-nominated film and one movie that will definitely not be nominated for any Oscars. We call that range!

Blue Moon: Written by Robert Kaplow and directed by Richard Linklater, this is one of those delightful films that you already know has Oscar written all over it once you're ten minutes in. Ethan Hawke stars as Lorenz Hart, half of the famous songwriting duo Rodgers & Hart. However, the action picks up in 1943 when Rodgers has paired up with Oscar Hammerstein to write Oklahoma! instead, tired of working with the alcoholic and temperamental Hart. The entire movie takes place in Sardi's restaurant, during the party to celebrate Oklahoma!'s opening night, and it mostly consists of watching Hart talk to various people like the bartender, Eddie (Bobby Canavale), E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) who also happens to be at Sardi's, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), who wants to resume their working relationship but only if Hart can promise to be sober and dependable and stop mocking the Americana naivete of Oklahoma!, and Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old college student that Hart claims to be in love with, despite everyone thinking his tendencies lie elsewhere. And there's the sergeant piano player, Morty (Jonah Lees), constantly in the background, tickling those ivories and treating us to all the incredible standards that Rodgers & Hart brought into our lives.

The most apt comparison I can come up with is the Before Sunrise trilogy, also directed by Linklater and starring Hawke, that all take place in one day and where you learn all about your protagonists from the art of conversation. In this film, Hawke delivers a tour-de-force performance as the funny, sarcastic, bitter, yet hopeful Hart, who is annoyed that Rodgers has moved on to a new partner, but confident they can team up together again for more greatness. And Kaplow's screenplay has so many pithy one-liners that my husband and I kept quoting at each other that it's no wonder he and Hawke are both nominated for Oscars this year. As audience members, we know that Hart is going to die less than a year after this night, but this movie is only concerned with this one night, making it both melancholy and captivating in equal measure. Like one of the songs Hart wrote, as you watch this movie, you may find yourself bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

The Rip: There's a reason this movie is on Netflix. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, this is a police thriller about a team of cops on the Tactical Narcotics Team of the Miami-Dade Police Department and what happens when their captain, Jackie Velez, is shot and killed and no one knows who did it. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star as Dane and JD, members of the team who are determined to figure out who killed Jackie. Right before she died, she texted Dane with the address of a stash house with a huge amount of money. So Dane decides to raid the house, but also use this raid as an opportunity to flush out a potential cop killer. What could possibly go wrong?

Teyana Taylor, Steven Yuen, Catalina Sandino Morena, and Sasha Calle round out the cast, so you can't complain about the acting, but boy is this script weak. If you're the sort of person who likes to yell out what they think is going to happen next, this is precisely the movie for you, because that's what I found myself doing for much of this film. It's very twisty, but very predictable, with one piece of casting that immediately told me who the bad guy would be. The final act also features a lot of unnecessary action that could have done with some judicious editing - if this movie had been a tight 90 minutes, I probably wouldn't have minded as much, but it is slightly too bloated to just be a fun action romp. If you want to laze on the couch and watch Ben and Matt reunite, go for it, but if you're expecting quality filmmaking, you're out of luck.

January Movies Part 2: No Other Choice, Sentimental Value, People We Meet on Vacation

As awards season heats up, I've been trying to catch up on the foreign film contenders. But I'm still keeping up with some light Netflix romance. All work but no play makes Jill a dull girl after all!

No Other Choice: Directed by celebrated Korean filmmaker, Park Chan-wook, who also adapted the screenplay with Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye from a novel by Donald Westlake, this is a glorious movie about the evils of capitalism and the lengths to which one man will go after he loses his job. Lee Byung-hun plays Man-su, a loyal employee of Solar Paper, who worked there for several years and slowly rose up the ranks to management, only to get fired once an American company buys out the firm. After more than a year of unemployment, Man-su is getting desperate, and his wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) has taken on a part-time job, is whittling away at all other non-essentials, and has finally suggested they may need to sell their house and move into an apartment. This is a bridge too far for Man-su - this was his childhood home, and after years of moving around, he bought it in the hopes that he would be able to give his children the stability he never had. Thus, he is forced to come up with a devious plan. He keeps losing jobs because there are other men who have slightly more experience in the paper industry. So the only possible solution? Eliminate the competition.

What follows is a very dark comedy about a man who is going to kill all his rivals and gain a job by any means necessary. As you can imagine, when you're not some cold-blooded trained assassin, that's a pretty difficult thing to do, and hijinks ensue. His wife and children are thoroughly perplexed as to what is going on with him, as he keeps showing up very sweaty from his purported "job interviews," and it's all very chaotic and hysterical.

This is an entertaining film, and it fully captures that sense of dread and loss that accompanies sudden unemployment when you thought your life was going so well. It certainly captures the economic mood of our times and is a wild ride. But would I necessarily give it an Oscar? Like most Korean cinema, it is sumptuously well-shot, the actors are fantastic, and all of the production design is remarkable. But at the end of the day, this is a good story, not a great one.

Sentimental Value: Director Joachim Trier is back with another Norwegian movie that he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt, starring Renate Reinsve. I hated their last movie, The Worst Person in the World, so I suppose it's an improvement to say that I merely didn't like this movie? Reinsve stars as Nora, an actress whose father is a famous director named Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard). Nora also has a sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, turning in a wonderful performance), who works as a historian and chose a "normal" life with a husband and child. Much like Jay Kelly, their father was very absent; their parents divorced when they were quite young, and they didn't see much of Gustav after that. However, now their mother has died, and Gustav shows up to the funeral with a proposal for Nora. He has written a script, he wants her to star in it, and he wants to shoot it in their childhood home.

Much like No Other Choice, there's a lot of work being done by the production designers to imbue the childhood home with a lot of...sentimental value. But when Nora turns down the role, having no desire to work with her father, he turns to an American actress, Rachel (Dakota Fanning, in a charmingly bewildered role), to take over the part instead. What follows is a lot of psychological exploration and generational trauma and daddy issues that all do get resolved in a rather neat way by the end of this film.

My biggest problem with The Worst Person in the World was that Reinsve's character had no female support system. In this film, the relationship between the sisters is a real ode to healthy sibling relationships in the face of chaotic family trauma. But overall, can I say this movie charmed me? No. It still felt a little too navel-gazing and self-serious, and I'm starting to wonder if any people of color exist in Oslo at all. Because watching Trier's movies about the travails of privileged white people is starting to wear a little thin.

People We Meet on Vacation: Speaking of privileged white people, here is a delightful little romance based on Emily Henry's bestselling 2021 novel. Film adaptations of books seem to be making the journey from page to screen in very rapid fashion these days, but given the popularity of this book, it's not surprising, and the film is also unsurprisingly charming and effervescent. 

The story follows Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex (Tom Blyth), two people who met as college students, and then, for reasons, decided to have a tradition where they go on an annual vacation with each other. They are platonic best friends, but when the movie opens, something has torn their relationship apart, and they haven't spoken to each other in a long while. So we slowly start to piece together what happened through their interactions in the present, alongside flashbacks to their past nine years' worth of trips together. It's an intriguing narrative device that worked well in the novel and works just as well on film, and with these two charismatic leads, you cannot help but be swept along for the ride. The supporting cast is also stellar, and you will be treated to many globe-trotting destinations along the way.

Is this movie high art? No. But is it filling the hole in my soul that used to be filled by light, fun romcoms that Hollywood simply doesn't release in theaters anymore? Yes. I love reading romance novels, but I do appreciate that Netflix is now bringing those novels to life on film and helping us discover great new acting talent along the way. I do wish we had more romcoms that were based on  original scripts. But I'll take whatever I can get - in this age of AI slop, needs must.

January Movies Part 1: Marty Supreme, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Mrs.

I'll be honest, I saw two of these movies in December. But hey, it's hard to blog over New Year's. If you're interested in an awards contender, a blockbuster, and a quiet Hindi movie, this blog post will satisfy all your desires.

Marty Supreme: Directed by Josh Safdie, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bronstein, this movie stars Timothee Chalamet as Marty Mauser, loosely based on the real-life Marty Reisman, who was a US table tennis champion. Set in 1952, we follow Marty's utterly chaotic life in New York City, as a man who doesn't have anyone believing in him, but that's OK, because he sure does believe in himself. The man is a hustler, figuring out any angle he can use to scrape up some cash so he can fly around the world to participate in table tennis tournaments and make a name for himself.

I genuinely wanted this to just be a table tennis movie. There are two sequences in this film, one towards the middle, another towards the end, when you get to watch Marty play table tennis against some of the best players in the world, and those sequences brought me so much joy. But the sport is secondary. This is Chalamet's Oscar vehicle, and he is going to do some Acting! This character is frenetic, whiny, always on the move, and always trying to scam someone out of something. He also gets an assist from the great Odessa A'zion who plays his childhood friend and eventual baby mama, Rachel, a woman who seems very sympathetic at the beginning, but then you realize she might be Marty's equal. Gwyneth Paltrow also stars as an actress who has an affair with Marty for her pleasure and his gain. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Of course not. 

I didn't love or hate this film. Chalamet is a powerhouse, but the story felt overwrought and never managed to win me over. It often felt like we were getting a bunch of hyper-intense set pieces that Safdie was struggling to string together into a coherent narrative. Also, 150 minutes tends to breach my tolerance for watching a man who is full of himself. It's a good movie, but in my opinion, certainly not a great one.

Avatar: Fire and Ash: Speaking of men who are full of themselves, writer-director James Cameron is back with yet another installment of the Avatar franchise. Do I remember anything that happened in the previous movies? No. Do I remember anything that happened in this movie despite having seen it just a few weeks ago? Barely.

At 3 hours and 15 minutes, this is yet another bloated extravaganza, that increasingly feels like I'm watching a video game, rather than a movie. This time we are introduced to the Mangkwan, an aggressive Na'vi tribe that live in a volcano and want to partner with humans to dominate the rest of the Na'vi. They are led by Varang (played by Oona Chaplin), and it's just more of the same with the Na'vi tribes having to battle the exploitative humans, environmentalism vs. ruthless capitalism, and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) having to manage his wife and children and save all the Na'vi all over again.

These movies feel like they could just be AI-generated at this point, and obviously I do not care for them. Are they visually spectacular? Of course. But is that enough to sustain that runtime with clunky dialogue and actors who feel like they're just phoning in a performance so they can make bank? Nope.

Mrs.: Every Christmas, I meet a bunch of my relatives on Long Island. And this year, they were all shocked to discover I had never watched the Hindi movie, Mrs. (that is a remake of a 2021 Malayalam film called The Great Indian Kitchen). Naturally I had to go home immediately and watch this film. 

Written by Harman Baweja and Anu Singh Choudhary and directed by Arati Kadav (shoutout to female directors!), the movie stars Sanya Malhotra as Richa, a vivacious woman who enters into an arranged marriage with a seemingly nice and attentive doctor named Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya). As is custom, she moves into his house to live with his parents, and quickly discovers that the daughter-in-law is expected to spend all her time either helping her mother-in-law prepare mountains of food for the men of the house, or cleaning the house and ensuring it is clean enough to meet her father-in-law's exacting standards.

Richa starts out happy and excited about her new married life, but as the daily routine grinds her down, she realizes that her husband expects her to be nothing better than a housemaid and cook. Oh and of course, to have his babies, which turns sex into an increasingly dreaded activity. There's nothing particularly novel about this film, as it comments on the usual patriarchal bullshit that women wade through in traditional Indian households. But what is refreshing is Malhotra's commanding performance as a woman who is slowly driven to despair. You can see the light dimming from her eyes over the course of this movie: but don't worry. She does eventually fight for herself and reclaim her autonomy. It's a sad movie with a happy ending and packs an emotional wallop. Seek it out if you can.

December Binges Part 2: I Love LA, Pluribus, Heated Rivalry

So much TV! We really do love to see (binge) it. Last week, a bunch of shows I have been watching week-to-week had their finales, and every single one was a doozy. So now I can recommend them all to you!

I Love LA: I've been in the tank for Rachel Sennot ever since I first saw her in Shiva Baby, so how could I not love this ridiculous show that she has created and stars in? Sennot plays Maia, an anxious woman who moved from New York to LA to build her career as a manager of social media influencers and is finding it very difficult to figure out exactly how things work in this city. When her best friend Tallulah (Odessa A'zion) also moves to LA, Maia returns to becoming her manager, and the two of them wreak absolute chaos across the town while Maia's hapless, normie boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) has no idea what is going on. True Whitaker and Jordan Firstman round out the cast as Maia's friends Alani and Charlie, who each have their own classic LA journeys as a nepo baby and a stylist.

This show captures the crazy world of influencers (how is this an actual job?), the difficulty of catching a break in this insanely fickle city, and the constant Gen Z hustle for things that don't matter that much but feel extremely important and vital in the moment. It probably shouldn't have been my cup of tea at all, but again, I have this fascination for anything that Sennot does, and A'zion is also a revelation. Frankly, my mouth was just agape every episode when I saw what Tallulah was wearing, so the bizarre costume design is worth the price of admission all on its own. I do not relate to these characters at all, but boy are they fun to watch. Won't you join me?!

Pluribus: Created by Vince Gilligan and starring Rhea Seehorn, we all knew from the jump that this show was going to be excellent, right? Well, the high expectations were perfectly matched. The plot is wonderfully fantastical - all of humanity has been infected by an alien virus resulting in the "Joining." Every human being is now connected as one big hive mind and can access each other's memories and experiences across the globe. They all act as one and are supposedly benevolent and non-violent, unable to even pluck an apple from a tree because they cannot kill any living thing. But for some unknown reason, thirteen human beings were immune to this event and have retained their individuality, one of whom is Carol (Seehorn), a misanthropic romance novelist, who doesn't trust the Others one bit and is desperate to figure out how she could undo the Joining. 

It's twisty, it's complex, it's full of long dialogue-less sequences where you're trying to figure out what Carol is up to until her ultimate plan is finally revealed. It's all very Gilligan-esque and glorious. The first season has a lot of scene-setting and information doled out in constant drips as Carol builds up a picture of what the Others can and cannot do, but in the final episodes, she may have found a partner-in-crime to help her on this supposedly futile quest to save humanity/herself. It's a race against time as the Others are also trying to figure out a way to infect Carol and the remaining immune humans. So who will succeed? And how?! These are the questions that will keep you coming back to this show week to week, or in this case, for one big satisfying binge. I cannot wait for Season 2.

Heated Rivalry: If your social media hasn't been blowing up in the past month with people raving about Heated Rivalry, then congratulations, we are being serviced by very different algorithms. Created by Jacob Tierney, who adapted the show from Rachel Reid's Game Changers book series about a bunch of closeted gay hockey players, this small little Canadian show has become an absolute sensation. I was sick a few weekends ago and decided to get caught up on the first five episodes that were out. I'll confess, I was unimpressed after the first two episodes, as the show just came off as soft gay porn and didn't seem to have much emotion behind it. But my god. Things took a turn in Episode 3, and when I finished Episode 5, I too, like half the nation, was desperately awaiting the finale on Boxing Day. And boy did that finale not disappoint. It was a celebration of queer love, and was so deeply charming and moving and wonderful. Sigh. I couldn't get enough.

The show stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as Shane and Ilya, Canadian and Russian hockey players who start having illicit (and very explicit) encounters during their rookie season and proceed to spend several years quietly hooking up while never telling anyone else what they're doing and not really acknowledging to each other if this is just one very long booty call. The time jumps are disorienting and the lack of any real communication between the two of them is frustrating, but don't worry, because that will all get beautifully resolved at the end. My social media timeline is currently full of charming interviews with these two actors, and they full deserve this sudden stardom when just a few months ago they were waiting tables and struggling with their careers. It's going to be a long wait for the next season, but get caught up on the hype now - you'll thank me later. Happy New Year!