Kicking off today’s Small Screen Diaries is the best thing I watched on what was otherwise a fairly neutral day. I can’t say I was overly enthusiastic about anything, and the five shows I watched were all pretty close together in terms of quality. However, if push comes to shove, I’m narrowly giving the victory to Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix, primarily because of its excellent audio description. The previous episode showed us what happened to one member of the Borden household, while this episode answers the question of what happened to the other, where he ended up, and how time eventually caught up with him. This is an overly gory episode, almost obtrusively so, including a sequence where Mr. Borden is so drunk while attempting to prepare a body for burial that he accidentally hacks the poor guy in half instead of simply shortening his legs. I understand that this is a horror series aimed at fans of the genre, but sometimes it feels like we’re stretching ourselves a bit in terms of how much gore we can possibly squeeze into an episode. However, all of that violence is exceptionally well described, which is ultimately what pushed Monster into first place. The audio description doesn’t shy away from the grotesque details, and even when the series itself feels like it’s going a little too far, the description is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Coming in second is Sterling Point, season one, episode three, on Amazon with audio description. This is shaping up to be an interesting new young adult series, and I tend to crap on a lot of these things because they all seem determined to be the next The Summer I Turned Pretty. However, Sterling Point is trying to distinguish itself by heading in a different direction, and I think introducing the rather asinine brother at the end of this third episode was the right move. While the two sisters are reconnecting and bonding, their brother has absolutely no desire to live at Sterling Point, which obviously creates a potential obstacle for the remainder of the season. Either his sisters are going to convince him that there’s some wonder and beauty to be found in nature, or he’s going to become something of an antagonist. Either way, it’s a more interesting dynamic than what we were getting in the first two episodes, and I’m glad to see the series actually improving. The audio description is fine, and I appreciated some of the smaller character moments along the way, including the business with the glasses and how one of the characters essentially wears them just to make a girl happy. There’s also some interesting stuff involving the lamp, and these little details are helping to give the show some personality. I’m not completely sold on Sterling Point just yet, but it’s moving in the right direction, which is more than I can say for a lot of young adult dramas that seem content to recycle the same formula.

Third place goes to MobLand, season one, episode seven, which delivered another interesting installment of the Paramount+ crime drama. The final section was particularly tense, with Tom Hardy’s character racing against time to prevent two members of the family he works for from being carved up by a chainsaw, while everyone else watches the horrifying situation unfold over a livestream. It’s the kind of sequence that MobLand does particularly well, combining its ongoing family drama with some genuinely effective thrills. Unfortunately, the audio description from Media Access Group wasn’t quite up to the task this time around. It’s generally pretty good throughout the episode, but when we get to that climactic chainsaw sequence, the description becomes surprisingly vague. I’m not entirely sure what damage was actually inflicted with the chainsaw, because the narration seemed content to provide the most basic information humanly imaginable. Considering how much tension the scene was trying to generate, I would have appreciated a little more specificity. It’s particularly frustrating when the show that finished in first place today was willing to describe every gruesome detail imaginable, while MobLand seemed determined to give me as little information as possible when it mattered most. Still, the episode itself was intriguing, and the series continues to deliver some compelling crime drama.

Fourth place goes to Women in Blue, which returns to Apple TV+ for its second season. I really enjoyed the first season of this Spanish-language drama about four female police officers in Mexico City who were among the first women to integrate into the police force, and the continued struggles they face in a profession that wasn’t particularly interested in welcoming them. There’s a lot of potential in this premise, which is why I’m a little disappointed that we’re apparently starting off with another serial killer. We just spent the previous season investigating one, and I would caution the writers against turning this into a series exclusively about women investigating serial killers. There are plenty of other crimes they could be investigating, and I actually think exploring some of those possibilities would be a far more interesting direction for the show. That’s really the primary reason Women in Blue is sitting in fourth place instead of first, because in terms of production quality, it deserves to be much higher. The audio description is excellent, and the English dub cast is tremendous. If you’re blind like me, you might not even realize you’re listening to a dubbed series, because the performances are frequently so convincing that you’d assume the show was originally produced in English. Every once in a while, a supporting character sounds a little phoned in, but for the most part, this is an exceptionally strong dub. I just wish the writers were a little more adventurous with the storytelling, because these characters deserve more than another variation on the same investigation.

That leaves Black Clover, season one, episode six, on Crunchyroll with audio description, bringing up the rear. Now that our characters have been selected into their respective squads, we get to watch Asta, who doesn’t possess any magic, attempt to prove that he actually belongs among these other magic users. Surprisingly, he manages to hold his own, which is obviously going to be an important part of his journey moving forward. There’s also a rather amusing sequence where we’re introduced to the various members of the Black Bulls, and the character providing these introductions seems determined to finish every single description by reassuring everyone that, despite whatever peculiarities or questionable personality traits they might possess, they’re good people. It’s either “but he’s good people” or “but she’s good people,” depending on the character, and after a while, the repetition becomes part of the joke. It’s a fun little bit of character introduction, and while Black Clover didn’t particularly impress me compared to the other shows I watched, I’m still interested in seeing how this group develops and how Asta continues to find his place among people who possess abilities he simply doesn’t have.

So that’s five shows down, and if you weren’t picking up on what I was putting down throughout these rankings, the award for best audio description obviously goes to Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. It’s the entire reason the series managed to edge its way into first place on an otherwise fairly unremarkable day. Meanwhile, the weakest audio description goes to MobLand, for essentially the exact opposite reason. It’s funny how violence managed to carry one show to the top of my rankings while simultaneously dragging another toward the bottom. One series was almost excessively descriptive when it came to violence and gore, but in doing so, it provided exactly the kind of information that audio description is supposed to deliver. The other series, when it came time to hit the extreme violence button, offered little more than a cursory blip, leaving me wondering what had actually happened. There’s certainly a balance to be found when describing graphic violence, but withholding important visual information isn’t the answer. If the sighted audience is being shown something significant, I should have access to that information as well. Monster understood that assignment. MobLand, at least for this particular sequence, did not.