Kicking off the Small Screen Diaries for the day, Paramount had some big news, announcing that its new Avatar series has already been renewed through a third season. This certainly suggests that Paramount is committed to continuing to tell stories within the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, even after shifting the upcoming animated film, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, away from a traditional theatrical release and over to streaming. For fans of the new series, which premiered yesterday, congratulations! Apparently, Paramount has enough confidence in the show that it doesn’t even need to wait for the audience to weigh in before committing to more episodes.

Starting off at the top of my rankings, predictably, is Carrie, Season 1, Episode 3, on Amazon Prime Video, with audio description by Media Access Group, narrated by Adrienne Barbeau. The series continues to impress me, although, had there been stronger competition in my viewing lineup, this episode might have slipped into second place. I did think the bathroom Margaret had to clean was cartoonishly disgusting, especially for a big-box store that presumably has someone assigned to restroom duty throughout the day. Most stores are checking their bathrooms at least every hour, if not every 30 minutes, depending on the chain. I have a hard time believing any store would have neglected its facilities long enough for that bathroom to reach the condition Margaret finds it in. I’m also still waiting for Chris to develop a little more bite, not just toward Carrie, but toward the adults in her own life. She seems perfectly content to bottle up her frustrations and channel all that anger toward Carrie and Brooklyn, when the adults responsible for her home situation are the ones who desperately need a reality check. I also have some thoughts about Carrie’s new friend, but I’m trying to avoid spoilers. Let’s just say that something about a particular character in Episode 2 immediately caught my attention, and I had a theory that I’ve since been able to verify. Episode 3 only made it more obvious that I was picking up on something Mike Flanagan probably didn’t intend for audiences to recognize quite so early. Unfortunately for Mike, I watch entirely too many movies and television shows, and his little magic trick didn’t work on me. Sorry, Mike.

Coming in second place is American Hostage, Season 1, Episode 3, on MGM+, which has some genuinely impressive audio description. One thing I’ve noticed about this particular track is how carefully it follows the various events while also making an effort to describe the framing of individual shots. That’s something that often gets overlooked in audio description, so I appreciate the attention to how characters are positioned within a scene and how the camera presents them. The description also makes sure we don’t miss the seemingly endless smoking that was happening in the 1970s. This got me thinking about how many roles Jon Hamm has played that required him to smoke, and I genuinely hope the man doesn’t end up with lung cancer simply because he wanted to be an actor. I know productions often use herbal cigarettes instead of actual tobacco, but you’re still inhaling something, even if it’s supposedly less toxic. From what I understand, some of those herbal cigarettes taste even worse than the real thing. I have no idea why this is where my brain went while watching American Hostage, but apparently that’s the kind of thing I think about when I’m supposed to be concentrating on a hostage situation.

Third place goes to Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Season 1, Episode 16, on Crunchyroll, which features synthetic-voice audio description with a script credited to Global 3. I believe this might be one of the few shows from that provider that doesn’t feature Melvina Babu. What’s interesting about Daemons of the Shadow Realm is that, even 16 episodes into its first season, it continues expanding the boundaries of its world, introducing new elements and suggesting that there’s still an enormous amount of mythology left to explore. Unfortunately, if you asked me to explain what this series is actually about, I don’t think I could give you a particularly coherent answer. There have been so many characters, so many developments, and so many different pieces of mythology introduced along the way that I’m not entirely sure I could remember how everything connects. What I can tell you is that the audio description is surprisingly effective, the fight sequences are excellent, and the show remains entertaining enough that I keep coming back. That’s probably not the most enthusiastic endorsement for something landing in third place, but the competition wasn’t exactly overwhelming yesterday.

Fourth place belongs to The Gentlemen, Season 2, Episode 3, on Netflix, which feels like a bit of a holding-pattern episode. We’re only three episodes into the new season, and already there’s a sense that the series is taking some time to position its characters and establish developments that will presumably become important later. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t make for particularly compelling television in the moment. For example, there’s a character who gets fired despite possessing intimate knowledge of the drug operation, and the episode seems to suggest that he might eventually use that information to his advantage. That’s exactly the sort of development I expect to have a payoff somewhere down the road. So I’m not dismissing the episode as pointless, because I understand that some of these narrative pieces need to be put into place before the season can really get moving. The audio description was perfectly fine, and I didn’t have any major complaints about the episode itself. It just felt like an average installment of a show that is capable of being considerably more entertaining.

Fifth place goes to Celebrity Weakest Link on Fox, hosted by Jane Lynch, and it’s really only this low because of the lack of audio description. This particular episode brought together athletes from several different sports, all competing to win money for their respective charities. And, frankly, they were collectively a lot smarter than some people might give professional athletes credit for. I enjoyed playing along and seeing how well they handled the questions, but I continue to be frustrated by the lack of accessibility when Fox programming makes its way to Hulu the following day. I wish there were a better system for carrying over whatever audio description might have been available during the original broadcast, because this is an ongoing problem with Fox programming on streaming. It’s one of the reasons I don’t watch nearly as much of the network’s content as I otherwise might. Fortunately, Weakest Link is a game show where I can still participate by listening to the questions and trying to come up with the answers myself, but that doesn’t excuse the absence of audio description.

And in dead last, mercifully bringing its four-episode run to an end, is A Tale of Two Cities on MGM+. My God, am I glad this thing is over. I just cannot with this show. It is so dull, so slow, and so relentlessly boring that it has practically convinced me never to read the Charles Dickens novel on which it’s based, despite its reputation as a literary classic. Watching this adaptation actually made me understand why we aren’t getting a new version of A Tale of Two Cities every couple of years, the way we seem to with something like Little Women. At least as presented here, this is not a particularly inviting story, and the bleakness of the finale certainly doesn’t make the journey feel rewarding. I’ll give the audio description some credit, because it does put in considerable effort, particularly when characters are changing outfits or when visual details become important to understanding what’s happening. But I felt like I needed an intravenous caffeine drip just to make it through the series. I don’t even know that I want to write a proper review, because that would require me to sit down and explain what I actually took away from the experience, and I’m not sure I have the energy. What’s especially frustrating is that earlier this year, PBS gave us The Count of Monte Cristo with Sam Claflin, a period adaptation that I found absolutely wonderful from beginning to end. I was invested in the characters, engaged with the storytelling, and genuinely excited to see what would happen next. So it’s entirely possible to take a dense literary classic and turn it into compelling television. A Tale of Two Cities never managed that for me. I kept watching primarily because I was unfamiliar with the source material and figured that finishing the series would at least give me a cursory understanding of the story. I’m not even convinced I accomplished that, because my brain kept wandering off in search of something more interesting. I’m sure the production values are impressive, the costumes are beautiful, and the cinematography is carefully composed, but none of that could save this experience for me. I would never recommend this adaptation to anyone, and I’m genuinely relieved that I never have to sit through another episode.

That brings me to the audio description rankings, where I’m giving the top spot to American Hostage. I was particularly impressed by the choices being made in the description, especially the attention to framing and the way characters are presented within individual shots. Carrie was my winner yesterday, and I briefly considered keeping it on top, especially after the elaborate description of that revolting bathroom Margaret had to clean. However, I’m also finding that the audio description in Carrie is helping validate a theory I have about a particular character, and I’m curious to see how that plays out when the series eventually reveals what I’ve already figured out. At the bottom, I had two obvious candidates: Celebrity Weakest Link, which has no audio description, and Daemons of the Shadow Realm, which uses synthetic narration. Ultimately, I’m putting Celebrity Weakest Link at the bottom because I’m exhausted by the continued absence of accessibility on streaming platforms, particularly when it comes to Fox programming. There should be a better system for ensuring that audio description accompanies these shows when they move to Hulu, and the fact that this remains such a persistent issue is incredibly frustrating. Weakest Link is easier to follow than most programs without audio description because viewers can still participate in the trivia, but that doesn’t mean it should get a free pass.

And perhaps I’m particularly irritated because this happened on the same day that Neon released Fjord into theaters without an audio description track, once again prioritizing an Oscar campaign over accessibility. It’s especially frustrating knowing that a distributor can spend enormous amounts of money promoting a film for awards consideration while apparently being unwilling to spend a fraction of that amount making the film accessible to blind audiences. They could easily spend ten times the cost of even an exceptionally expensive audio description track on their Oscar campaign alone, and probably considerably more than that. Yet somehow, making sure disabled audiences can actually experience the film continues to be treated as optional. It’s exhausting to keep having this conversation, especially when we’re talking about a distributor that wants its films to be taken seriously as artistic achievements. If you’re asking audiences and critics to celebrate your work, perhaps you should make sure all of us have an opportunity to experience it. Between Fox’s continued accessibility problems and Neon’s decision not to provide audio description for Fjord, I’m just tired of being reminded that accessibility is still something the industry feels comfortable leaving behind.