What are we watching this weekend? While waiting to discover the final cowboys of the Roy family and to say goodbye, not without a certain emotion, to the exceptional Succession – the very last episode of the saga is broadcast on May 28 on HBO and on May 29 in France on Prime Video –, fortunately, there is something to celebrate with the latest arrivals on the series planet.
We obviously celebrate the great return of “Schwarzie” and we let ourselves be seduced by the very nineties side of Fubar, we rediscover with guilty joy the unbalanced quadras of Yellowjackets and their cannibal memories, and finally we don’t mind getting carried away by a story of rhythmic and frighteningly effective espionage.
The fascinating and spooky Yellowjackets are back! Like season 1 (already stunning), this season 2, which starts on Canal navigates between two temporal strata: 1996, when American high school girls find themselves alone in the middle of the forest after an air crash and come to resort to cannibalism and strange shamanic rituals to survive…, and the present time, where the survivors are in their forties, haunted by their traumas of the time. We rediscover with delight the agonizing atmosphere in the style of Her Majesty of the Flies of a series which owes a lot to its virtuoso actresses – Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress and, newcomer perfectly in tune, Lauren Ambrose, Claire de Six Feet Under. After a somewhat wobbly first episode, season 2 is still ramping up. Because what is at stake here, beyond the virtuosity of the double story with its parallelisms and its visual rhymes, is the uncompromising exploration of a form of specifically feminine savagery of which cannibalism is the powerful symbol. The thorny questions of self-construction, identity, motherhood are at the heart of a series which – like Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1969) – remains permanently on the wire between paranoid fantasy and truth. nightmare. A success signed Bart Nickerson and Ashley Lyle, a damn gifted duo.
Yellowjackets, season 2 – From May 25 every Thursday at 9 p.m. (2 episodes per evening) on ??Canal then on myCanal (season 1 available in its entirety).
In English, the slang acronym Fubar stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Translation: any completely disastrous or screwed up situation. Spielberg had made it the subject of a tasty dialogue in Saving Private Ryan, Netflix uses it to baptize Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big return to the screen since 2019. With a similar title, the series created by Nick Santora (already guilty of the super dumb Scorpion on CBS) had every interest in dumping to escape the sarcasm and… let’s say it all depends on your ability to indulge our good old Terminator and his 75 years on the clock. On a more familiar plot you die, this eight-part spy comedy follows the fates of Luke Brunner (Schwarzie) and his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro), both CIA agents, who discover in the field that everyone was lying to another for years on his real job. We think very strongly of True Lies, a little of Mr and Mrs Smith, but don’t expect the same spectacular and virtuoso action scenes from Fubar. Lazy but entertaining, the series relies above all on the intact capital of sympathy and the glibness of its cigar superstar, as well as on countless verbal battles between Brunner father and daughter who, inevitably, will end up tuning their violins in the face of common peril. The whole thing doesn’t really take itself seriously, the secondary characters of agents camped by Milan Carter and Fortune Feimster give a kilometer of nods to pop culture, the villain of the story is a pure psychopath… And, yes, let’s be indulgent: in small doses, the very nineties aroma of Fubar can be smelled without displeasure (and with a good bucket of popcorn).
Fubar. Available on Netflix from May 25.
The only name of Shawn Ryan in a credits is enough to make any fan of series salivate. And for good reason, he is the creator of the venerated The Shield, which, in the early 2000s, came to revolutionize the genre by immersing us, without precautions, in the American prison universe. Since then, the producer has gone through other more or less successful boxes, including the odorless S.W.A.T., but The Night Agent, his latest creation, has the merit of proving to be formidably effective. Enough in any case for a second season to have already been signed. The Night Agent follows the adventures of agent Peter Sutherland plunged despite himself in a vast conspiracy at the top of the state. And the ten episodes follow his hunt for the traitor, in the charming company of a young woman herself hunted by killers with serial killer profiles. Few downtimes in the program of this series, which while flirting with the (less good seasons) of 24 hours flat, may strangely remind you of The Bodyguard (another huge British hit from Netflix in 2018). Is it the physical resemblance between its two heroes (Gabriel Basso, who debuted as a child in The Big C, and Richard Madden, ex-sacrificial hero of Game of Thrones)? Is it the similarity to the opening scene which takes place in a subway being targeted by a terrorist? Never mind. Let yourself be caught up and rediscover with delight the joys of binge-watching.
The Night Agent. Available on Netflix since March 23.
Only 6 weeks left to watch…
One, Izzy, is an investigator with the Israel Police Force. The other Barak, runs one of the most important police stations in the country. Izzy, whose finicky integrity has earned her much enmity among her colleagues, is about to retire. Barak, a sunny smile and a promising future, is a brigade leader adored by all. They have been friends forever, and have supported each other like brothers through the hardships they have just been through: one is coming out of a terrible relationship crisis, the other has lost his wife to dazzling cancer. Also, when Barak finds himself, suspected of corruption, in the police’s sights, Izzy first does everything possible to defend him, protect him, convinced of his old friend’s innocence. Until doubt sets in. Multi-award-winning, subtle and carried by formidable actors, Manayek is an uncompromising dive into the meanders of the Israeli police, their violence and their little arrangements with the law. A true Greek tragedy that questions friendship, honesty, and tirelessly blurs the tracks until the last episode. Panting.
Manayek, 10 episodes. Available until July 5 on Arte TV.