March Binges: The 'Burbs & How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

A lot of new shows have popped up recently and I've been trying to watch them all. In today's installment, I've got some recommendations if you need some silly comedies with a side of dark murder mystery. Get ready for some chuckles and major tonal shifts!

The 'Burbs: First off, this show stars Keke Palmer, so how could you go wrong? Create by Celeste Hughey and based off the 1989 movie starring Tom Hanks (that I vaguely remember watching but have no memory of), Palmer and Jack Whitehall (again, how could you resist?) play Samira and Rob, a couple that have newly moved into the idyllic suburb of Hinkley Hills. Rob grew up here, and he and Samira have now moved into his childhood home after his parents decided to retire on a cruise ship. They are city folk, but they just had a baby, so obviously, a move to suburbia and a good school district felt inevitable. Initially, Samira is going a little stir crazy at home with the baby, still on maternity leave and missing the intellectual stimulation of being a high-powered attorney. But she starts to befriend the kooky neighbors (a supporting cast that includes the likes of Paula Pell, Mark Proksch, and Julia Duffy) and begins to feel more like a part of the community. Which all comes crashing down when a mysterious man named Gary (Justin Kirk) moves into the creepy Victorian mansion on the corner and seems like he's up to no good.

The first season is only eight episodes so just let it wash over you. There's a mystery about a girl who disappeared from the Victorian mansion many years ago, who happened to be childhood best friends with Rob and his other best friend Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar). They are being awfully sus about the whole thing, so that piques Samira's interest. And of course, there's a lot of discussions of NIMBY'ism and racism with Samira being one of the few people of color in the cul-de-sac. It's all very refreshing and funny, with a genuinely intriguing mystery that you get to follow along until the end of the season. These actors are having a lot of fun, and the show is a great binge, so hop to it!

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast: This show is created by Lisa McGee, who created Derry Girls, so that was the vibe I was expecting. However, turns out this show is much more like Bad Sisters. So be aware of that before you sign up for some Irish crime comedy-drama in your life. We follow Saoirse, Robyn, and Dara (Roisin Gallagher, Sinead Keenan, and Caoilfhionn Dunne), three close friends who were all in school together as children. There was a fourth member of their group, Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe), and the unifying incident that kicks off this series is her...death. The three friends show up to her wake but quickly piece together that the circumstances surrounding this death are extremely odd. Things just snowball from there.

I'm not going to pretend I understood what was going on during this show most of the time. It is quite chaotic and while it's a comedy, it's an extremely dark one, with a lot of murder and mayhem at every turn. But, like Derry Girls, this show has a phenomenal soundtrack that really transported me to my childhood listening to the UK Top 40, and the leading ladies were just wild and entertaining enough to keep me engaged for all eight episodes. I can promise this show won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like to watch women being silly and solving mysteries despite being slightly incompetent, this might be exactly the thing you end up watching on a lazy afternoon.