Welcome back to another edition of What Did I Watch Yesterday?, which is also known as the Small Screen Diaries. I guess. For now. Hulu has decided to order Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files to series, so once they actually make some episodes, you should see The X-Files back on your screens at some point in 2027. Also promising, NBC’s new drama Line of Fire was just given a five-script order, which is usually the next step in determining whether or not to order additional episodes or a full season. So things are looking good for the Line of Fire crew.

Up at the top of my rankings is Carrie, season one, episode four, which is on Amazon with audio description. I really appreciate what Mike Flanagan is doing with this show. I think what he’s done with this version of Carrie, Margaret, Chris, and Sue is bring them into a 2026 perspective, essentially suggesting that Stephen King’s story is timeless. What happened to Carrie wasn’t an experience unique to the period in which King originally wrote the novel, but something that teenagers experience across generations, decades, and high schools everywhere. In every generation, there is always a Chris. Episode four more directly ties Chris to Carrie in a way that finally provides some justification for her bullying, although I still don’t fully understand what Flanagan is trying to do with her parents. I feel like he’s slowly feeding us information, and maybe by the time I’ve seen all the episodes, I’ll appreciate what he’s done. But if I had one criticism, it’s that Chris seems to develop only when the plot needs her to, rather than in the way people actually develop and react to the situations around them. At this point, she’s a little more of a plot device than a fully rounded character, although all the elements are there for her to become one. The audio description continues to be excellent, especially during that scene at the dinner table. I loved how that was described.

Next up, I would put Below, which is on Netflix with audio description. Season one, episode two deepens the mystery as it becomes increasingly clear that whatever is in the water is highly motivated and extremely dangerous. We still haven’t seen this thing in all its glory, just bits and pieces, with tentacles swooping out of the water and such. But Josh Hartnett’s reaction toward the end of the episode suggests that something much bigger is on the horizon. The series also reportedly set a new record for a Canadian Netflix import in terms of how rapidly its viewership climbed, pulling in almost 18 million views in its first few days on Netflix. Clearly, people are interested in finding out what the hell is lurking beneath the surface.

Coming in third would be MobLand, which is on Paramount+ with audio description. The family is still reeling from that explosion at the end of the last episode, scrambling to put things back together and figure out what comes next. MobLand is better than I initially gave it credit for, and the audio description has been really solid thus far. I’m still not caught up to season two, so this is technically a rewatch of season one, but I’m appreciating the series more this time around.

Down in fourth place is an interesting but slow international import on Disney+ called City of Blood, which has synthetic audio description produced by Deluxe. If you’re looking for random horror television shows to watch this time of year, you could certainly do worse. But man, these episodes feel like they’re two hours long. I don’t know what it is about some international shows and their seemingly endless runtimes, but City of Blood feels like its episodes go on much longer than they need to. They also lack a certain cinematic quality, where you get a beginning, middle, and end that makes an episode feel like a complete experience. Instead, it’s like watching one progressively long episode, knowing that when it finally ends, there’s still more to watch. As for the audio description, I believe it’s the same synthetic voice that was used for X-Men ’97, for anybody keeping track.

Coming down in fifth place is The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System on Crunchyroll, which I watched the first episode of because it had audio description. I have absolutely no idea what this show is about. I watched an entire episode, and I could not tell you what happened, which doesn’t bode well for the show, the characters, or the audio description. If somebody put a gun to my head and demanded that I explain what I just watched, I’d probably say something about a woman, some action, and some other stuff that happened. I genuinely have no idea. I felt like I had jumped into the middle of a series, even though I was watching the very first episode. So I’m not particularly excited about watching more, but I almost feel obligated to continue just to figure out what the hell this thing is supposed to be. The audio description is still produced by Global 3, but it’s not written by my favorite writer, and they’ve swapped out the synthetic male voice they frequently use for a female voice that somehow sounds even more synthetic. The whole experience was just a giant wash.

Purely ranking these shows on their audio description, with two synthetic tracks in play, I have to put The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System at the bottom. At least I could functionally understand what was happening in City of Blood, which is more than I can say for the Crunchyroll series. Up at the top, I think Below actually edges out Carrie today. It had some pretty crazy stuff to describe, including mysterious marks on people’s backs, somebody drinking a gallon of water, found footage, and a missing leg. There was certainly plenty for the audio description to work with, and it delivered. Looking forward to VisionQuest tomorrow, or I guess today, by the time I’m actually posting this.