Kicking off the Small Screen Diaries for the day is a renewal decision from Netflix for Virgin River, which just got an early pickup for season 9. Season 8 is still scheduled to premiere in 2027, but season 9 has been greenlit. This is already Netflix’s longest-running scripted series and will continue that streak moving forward. Likely, at this point, with them being at season 9, I would be shocked if they didn’t go for ten. I don’t know if they’ll go beyond that, but I would bet on at least a 10th season ahead of them. I had a little bit less time yesterday, and admittedly, I wanted to prioritize making sure to watch Being Human on its day of release. So there are fewer shows today because I had real-life stuff that took up a giant chunk of my day. And the time that I would normally use to fill in with more TV shows, I instead filled in with the movie of the year for the disability community. It’s so weird that Apple did not give me this to screen. Their last original film, Tenzing, I was offered to prescreen that. But I knew if I waited a few days, it would appear with audio description. I wouldn’t have to go through their nonsense back and forth, but I would have appreciated Apple giving me Being Human weeks ago, which would have given me enough time to dialogue with them back and forth about getting me an accessible screener. I’m one of the only disabled film critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a bizarre oversight, especially considering I ended up loving the movie, which I hope to put that review out today. And lastly, I will say that I now know two people who have seen Wildwood in theaters with audio description. One of them had to go quite some way out of their way to see it. And another person went to a theater from a chain that previously said they did not have the audio description at the time of release, which apparently has it now. So if Wildwood is playing near you, I would circle back to your theater and see whether or not they have updated their deliverables to include the audio description. It’s possible that Fathom is just terrible at delivering things day and date, kind of like our streaming services, and that Wildwood ended up hitting major theater chains after the fact.

In my very limited list of shows, kicking off at the top, weirdly so, given the somewhat lack of competition and the shows it’s up against, I didn’t plan it this way, but my #1 show is Daemons of the Shadow Realm on Crunchyroll, episode 19. I don’t know where the season break was. I think we’re technically in the second season of this show, out of 24 total episodes. And this one is starting to bring its characters together. We realize that Asa was somewhere else, so we’re trying to reunite brother and sister. There’s still more impending danger. And I only saw four shows, and two of them I cannot bring myself to put at the top of the list, and my #2 choice also feels like I couldn’t make it the top of the list. So, again, because of a very underwhelming day, Daemons of the Shadow Realm ended up at the top, even though, admittedly, this might be synthetic. Again, I did get to see the movie I wanted to see. I then threw in some half-hour shows. So, such is life.

Second place, I’ll throw it to Celebrity Weakest Link, the most recent episode, which had no audio description on Disney+. I had an option here to put either the show with synthetic audio description on top or the show with no audio description on top. And I chose synthetic over the no-audio-description game show, which honestly had Olympians that I wasn’t even interested in. And as soon as I heard Ryan Lochte’s name, I was like, that dude’s getting voted off first. I didn’t even need to know how many questions he would or would not answer correctly. As soon as I knew he was on the show, I was like, there’s no way. He gets voted off first. I bet these Olympians look at him and they go, nope. And I was right.

In third place, Tires on Netflix, Season 3, with audio description. And I do like the audio description for the series. The problem is that sometimes Shane and his humor lose me. And he has this tendency to know he’s walking a fine line, and I think he likes to dance on the other side of it sometimes. And for me, there’s some stuff going on here with this episode, in his interactions with his potential love interest, that I just thought, given what he said in his SNL monologue fairly recently, I am becoming a little concerned about his views on women and how it’s being translated into Tires. Not that I’m saying every comedy show needs to be clean, but it’s starting to become a pattern. One of those, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Plus, this episode barely had Thomas Haden Church in it, and he’s still the entire reason I’m watching the show. But it’s still not the bottom because…

Coming in at #4 is American Horror Story, Season 13, episode 4, with audio description by Sri Gordon. Listen, the audio description here is fantastic, but the show is god-awful. It’s one of the worst things I’ve seen in 2026. And I think I can say that about at least one more Ryan Murphy show. Not all of them, though. Some of the things he’s produced this year have been good, like Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which I did like. Others have been mixed. I didn’t totally hate The Beauty. Parts of The Shards were okay. I wasn’t a big fan of Love Story, but he does have a tendency to swing in and produce just utter crap every once in a while. And this is one of those times where this season is just not working at all. There’s a scene where they have to sacrifice 13 women, and it’s some satanic cult ritual thing. And they’ve got Eva Braun mixed in with Mamie Eisenhower and Margaret Thatcher. And I’m just like, what the fuck are we trying to say here? What is this? What is the point of any of this? And then at the end, it’s also like Elizabeth Short. So they’re not even trying to have any sort of smart political discourse. No, they’re just shoving random famous bitches into a tunnel for no apparent reason whatsoever. This series is completely inane. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve seen this year. And it is wasting its actors, absolutely, totally wasting some of the best living actresses we have. The fact that Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Sarah Paulson, and some of these wonderfully talented women are in this show and attached to this Ryan Murphy project. Please, ladies, feel free to run from him as fast as possible. There are much better writer-directors out there who would give you a thousand other projects that you could do that are not this. I have to believe that this cannot be where you guys thrive for the remainder of your careers. Separate yourself from Ryan Murphy, please. I don’t even think the show really justified why Mamie Eisenhower was there. It felt so random. Her character says, like, three words and then is pushed into a void.

Anyway, ranking the audio description, this is where things get tough. Because technically, the worst show has the best audio description. I know, crazy, right? So winning the audio description award from the four shows that I watched is American Horror Story, because Sri Gordon’s audio description on this god-awful piece of shit is fantastic. So you can be one of the worst shows or one of the worst movies and still have absolutely fantastic audio description. And American Horror Story is proving that. And with the removal of a lot of shows standing as options that I might have watched had I had more time, it gets to float to the top. So congratulations. As far as the worst audio description, I do have a show with no audio description, so that’s a pretty easy target. And I’m pretty certain Daemons of the Shadow Realm is synthetic. So, in a day that feels like a giant loss for me in terms of what I watched on television, I don’t think there are many things here to tout in terms of wins or good things. So why don’t we just tie both no audio description and synthetic at the bottom and say Celebrity Weakest Link and Daemons of the Shadow Realm are both offenders today. That leaves individual offender Shane Gillis with neither the best or worst show nor the best or worst audio description. Once again, walking that fine line.