I guess I’ll kick off today’s Small Screen Diaries with a little good news for fans of Tulsa King, as Paramount has renewed the Sylvester Stallone drama for a fifth season, despite the company still being in flux in the middle of a merger. Interestingly, the fifth season will apparently move the action to New York, which isn’t entirely surprising given the direction of the series, but does seem a little strange when your show is literally called Tulsa King. I suppose you can still be the king of Tulsa without actually living in Tulsa. Meanwhile, I don’t believe Lioness has received a fourth season renewal yet, which seems like an odd situation considering how important Taylor Sheridan has become to Paramount. Speaking of shows waiting for renewals, FX has yet to make a decision about The Shards, and apparently Ryan Murphy’s desire to continue the story is testing that relationship a little. Having now finished the first season, I’m not entirely convinced that’s a battle worth fighting. Anyway, as I’ve started ranking these diaries by how much I would recommend the shows rather than simply discussing them in the order I watched them, the first thing I watched isn’t necessarily going to be the best thing I watched. Luckily, today it actually was.

Lanterns, Season 1, Episode 8, HBO Max. Audio description provided by International Digital Center, written by Dakota Green and narrated by Ren Leach. This was easily the best thing I watched today, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call the series perfect, I really appreciated the direction it took and the creative decisions it made along the way. There’s something refreshing about a superhero series that doesn’t feel like it’s constantly trying to imitate everything else in the genre. Lanterns has its own rhythm, its own atmosphere, and a willingness to approach familiar material from a different perspective. It doesn’t feel like creative mimicry of everything James Gunn has already done, which is probably a good thing considering the increasingly crowded superhero landscape. The finale also leaves the door wide open for a second season, which makes sense given that Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart is already expected to appear in Man of Tomorrow. My suspicion is that Gunn has learned something from Marvel’s mistakes and won’t make Pierre’s role in that film so substantial that audiences who haven’t watched Lanterns will feel completely lost. One of the problems with the Marvel Cinematic Universe was that it eventually started operating under the assumption that everyone was watching every movie and every television series, and the audience simply wasn’t keeping up. DC would be wise not to repeat that mistake. I’ll have more to say about Lanterns when I get around to writing my full review, hopefully soonish, but I can already say that this is a series that managed to distinguish itself in a genre that desperately needs some fresh ideas.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO Max. This week’s episode tackled the Secret Service, and I found it particularly interesting because Oliver essentially spent a significant amount of time advocating for an agency that he was also making fun of. That’s one of the things I appreciate about his approach to political comedy. He can recognize the absurdity of a situation without losing sight of the legitimate problems underneath it. In this case, those problems include burnout, excessive workloads, inadequate compensation, overtime issues, and training facilities that don’t necessarily resemble the environments agents are expected to protect. Considering that these are the people responsible for protecting some of the most important government officials in the country, you would think we’d be a little more invested in making sure they have the resources necessary to do their jobs. And that’s before remembering that the Secret Service also maintains its original responsibility of investigating counterfeiting. It’s a surprisingly broad set of responsibilities for an agency that apparently isn’t always receiving the support it needs. Hopefully, the John Oliver effect works in its favor this time, because underneath all the jokes was a fairly compelling argument for taking these concerns seriously. Unfortunately, the episode didn’t have audio description available when I watched it. The series does eventually receive audio description, but apparently I’m too impatient to wait for that to happen.

MobLand, Season 1, Episode 5, Paramount+. I’m still playing catch-up with this series, which does have audio description, and I’m increasingly pleased that I decided to give it another chance. This episode finds the family attending a funeral while also expanding the role of the police investigating the criminal organization, giving us a little more insight into the various people circling this increasingly complicated situation. There’s plenty of wheeling and dealing, as you would expect from a crime drama involving people who seem incapable of making a decision without creating three additional problems for themselves. What continues to fascinate me about MobLand is how much talent it has assembled without necessarily knowing what to do with all of it. Tom Hardy is clearly the center of the series, and he commands that position quite effectively, but when you have Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan standing around, it seems almost criminal not to give them more opportunities to shine. They certainly have their moments, and I’m not suggesting they’re completely wasted, but there’s a difference between having two legendary performers in your cast and actually utilizing everything they bring to the table. Still, the series is growing on me, and I’m enjoying the way the story is developing. My decision to recommit to MobLand is starting to look like a pretty good one.

Tires, Season 3, Episode 3, Netflix. This one has audio description, and while I wouldn’t necessarily describe every episode as a comedic triumph, there’s something about Shane Gillis’s approach that I appreciate. He’s willing to take risks, and even when a joke doesn’t land, I can usually understand what he’s trying to accomplish. Comedy is in a particularly strange place right now, where everyone seems to be arguing about what comedians should and shouldn’t be allowed to say, and I think there’s a meaningful distinction between challenging political correctness and simply being offensive because you think offensiveness itself is funny. That’s where I draw a comparison between Tires and the absolutely dreadful Busboys, starring Theo Von and David Spade. Both projects seem interested in pushing boundaries, but one feels like it’s trying to find humor in uncomfortable situations, while the other seemed perfectly content to belittle people and mistake that for comedy. I’m not suggesting Gillis always gets the balance right, because he certainly doesn’t, but there’s a difference between a comedian taking a swing that doesn’t connect and someone deliberately trying to repel an audience. Comedy should be challenged, and comedians should challenge their audiences, but being offensive isn’t automatically the same thing as being funny. Tires understands that distinction more often than it doesn’t, which is why I’m still watching.

Best Medicine, Netflix. I’m continuing my rewatch of this series specifically because Netflix offers audio description, although I’ve completely lost track of which episode I’m on. I remain somewhat conflicted about the show itself, because there are moments when I find it genuinely charming, followed almost immediately by moments when it becomes so aggressively hokey that I start questioning why I’m watching it. This particular episode opens with the doctor delivering a baby who has an unusually large amount of hair, which apparently can happen in real life, although naturally the situation becomes more complicated when he starts worrying about potential underlying medical conditions. That leads to his attempts to convince people to seek additional medical attention, which is fairly typical of the character and the series as a whole. It’s not necessarily a bad storyline, but Best Medicine sometimes has difficulty finding the right balance between being a quirky medical comedy and becoming a little too precious for its own good. Unfortunately, my biggest problem with this rewatch isn’t even the writing. It’s the audio description. I haven’t independently verified whether the narration is synthetic, but something about the delivery makes me strongly suspect that it is. There’s a mechanical quality to certain passages, and occasionally the narration doesn’t emphasize words or phrases in a way that makes sense within the context of the scene. Even if it turns out to be human narration, I still don’t particularly like the finished product. Considering that the entire reason I’m revisiting this series is to experience it with audio description, that’s a pretty significant problem.

The Shards, Season 1, Episode 9, the season finale, Disney+ with Hulu. Audio description is available, although the provider and narrator remain uncredited. What an absolute hot-ass mess this series has become. I kept hoping that Ryan Murphy would eventually find a way to pull everything together, but instead of using the finale to provide some sense of closure, he seems determined to fracture the narrative into even more pieces. I suppose that’s one way of justifying the title. Rather than constructing a satisfying conclusion that could stand on its own if FX decides not to renew the series, Murphy introduces additional questions, leaves more doors open, and essentially dares the network to cancel something that clearly isn’t finished telling its story. There’s also something fundamentally ridiculous about the possibility of Bret being investigated as the Trawler, considering that Bret Easton Ellis is an actual person who went on to become a successful author, while the Trawler is an entirely fictional serial killer. We’re not dealing with some historical mystery where the audience might genuinely wonder whether the protagonist committed these crimes. The crimes themselves are fictional, and we already know the broad trajectory of Bret’s real life. So watching the series attempt to manufacture suspense around whether he might somehow be responsible feels increasingly absurd. I understand that fictionalized versions of real people can take liberties with history, but that doesn’t automatically make every narrative choice compelling. At this point, I’m not even sure I care who the Trawler is, which is a fairly damning indictment of a mystery that’s supposed to be driving the series. I will give Kaia Gerber credit for delivering an engaging performance in the finale, but one strong performance isn’t enough to make me enthusiastic about another season. If FX decides this is where the story ends, I can’t say I’ll be particularly devastated.

Now that everything has been ranked, it’s time to talk about the audio description, and this is one of those days where the best and worst examples represent two very different directions for the industry. Lanterns is unquestionably my winner, not just because it had a strong track today, but because International Digital Center delivered consistently excellent work throughout the entire season. Dakota Green deserves tremendous credit for the writing, which is thoughtful, descriptive, and understands how to complement the storytelling without competing with it. Ren Leach’s narration is equally effective, and the mixing allows everything to work together beautifully. This is what happens when you invest in talented human beings who understand the art of audio description, rather than treating accessibility as some technical obligation that needs to be checked off a list. At the opposite end, I’m actually putting Best Medicine below Last Week Tonight, despite the latter not having audio description available when I watched it. I know John Oliver’s show will eventually receive a track, and my decision not to wait is entirely on me. Best Medicine, however, has a track that I strongly suspect is synthetic, and regardless of whether that suspicion is correct, the narration simply isn’t working for me. There are awkward deliveries, questionable inflections, and moments when the description feels disconnected from the natural rhythm of the scene. If we’re going to celebrate excellent audio description, we also need to be willing to criticize work that falls short. Lanterns demonstrates exactly what this industry should be aspiring to, while Best Medicine leaves me concerned about where things might be heading. And on that note, those are my thoughts for today.