Great TV We Missed

There’s a lot of TV worth recommending out there. So today we’re spotlighting some television we didn’t have time to talk about earlier this year, including Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Ponies, Blossoms Shanghai, and Deadloch. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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  You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you up to speed on the latest and greatest in movies, TV, music, and more. If you're a pop culture obsessive who's not yet following us, you can fix that right now by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your podcast app of choice. Now onto the show.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  You know how it is, there's lots of TV worth recommending out there and only so many episodes of this podcast, so we're gonna miss some good shows.

• 0:45Aisha Harris?

  But when good stuff falls through the cracks, we like to take a breath, look back, and highlight some shows that, for whatever reason, we haven't gotten around to. I'm Aisha Harris.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  And I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about great TV shows we missed on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:29Speaker 01

  It's just the two of us today, and we're gonna focus on new stuff, shows that we missed earlier this year. And a couple of the shows we're talking about today are streaming on Prime Video. So we should note that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Aisha, kick us off. What's your first pick?

• 2:44Aisha Harris?

  Yes, so my first pick is Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. Glenn, I know that you, like me, were a big fan of Jury Duty, the first season.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:56Aisha Harris?

  So the first season came out a few years ago on Freevee. Do you also remember Freevee? That was a thing.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Barely.

• 3:04Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that came out a few years ago on Freevee. Now it's on Prime Video. And it was an unexpected hit. Basically, it was like Candid Camera, mockumentary-style show where this man, Ronald Gladden, sat on a jury trial, had no idea that the trial wasn't real and that every other person around him was an actor improvising and playing a part. He turned out to be a very lovely person. This show hinges on the person at the center who has no idea what's going on, being like a decent human being, because who wants to watch an awful person? Now, we have Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. And this one, I know you, Glenn, might have been a little bit skeptical, because how can you do this twice? Like, the first one was a hit.

• 3:47Aisha Harris?

  You can't catch lightning in a bottle twice, blah, blah, blah, insert all those other things. This time, I think that they did manage to find, yet again, another person at the center who is decent, affable dude who just rolls with the chaos. His name is Anthony Norman. And he's a temp worker from Nashville who is hired to assist a small business during their company retreat. The small business is like this family owned business called Rockin' Grandma. It's a hot sauce company. So cue all the jokes about hot sauce and whatnot. And it's very fun. I don't want to reveal too many things, but I will just say that some of my favorite aspects of this show are that Bones, the TV show gets a lot of shout out on this in this

• 4:32Aisha Harris?

  series in an interesting way. The basic premise, aside from this being a company retreat, is that the founder is basically planning to retire. So this is like his last hurrah. And his son is being set up to take his dad's place. But the son is basically kind of a failure and he knows it. And so Anthony, as well as other people, try to give him lots of encouragement, ego massaging, tell him like, you can do this, man. There are lots of HR violations. And then like some other things happen later in the season where things shift and whatnot. I think that there's something kind of wholesome about this show. And when we think about reality TV, at this point, everyone knows how reality TV works. If you're on a show,

• 5:14Aisha Harris?

  you are probably angling for some sort of bump in your career, a chance to become a social media influencer, a chance to host your own podcast. Like that is the track now. That is the, the sort of like pipeline. Like I said, Anthony Norman is also very nice, very decent and just like a fun guy. And the fact that he is someone who like was not angling to be famous makes it much more pleasant to watch. Right. Now, will I say the, the final like couple of episodes get into territory where I was like, how is this real? And Anthony, to his credit, keeps saying, this doesn't feel real. Like, things are happening. Sometimes it gets a little bit out of control. And the sort of like climax, you know, when it's ultimately revealed, it feels literally like it could

• 5:59Aisha Harris?

  have been written in a movie. Like you've seen this movie many times. That being said, I still found it really just pleasurable and fun. And I think if you're looking for something low stakes that is silly and features a lot of great improvising and a great like, just like actors getting to be fun and silly and take all these premises and see what it's like and company culture and all these things, you can't do better. Then Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat. That's such a weird long.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  It is weird. And you got my number, Aisha, because like a lot of people, I think I've been holding off on this because again, I didn't think they could recapture that magic. I mean, you can't have a new Ronald, but apparently you can. That's good to hear. But then, you know, when I look back on that first season, I do remember that Ronald was great and James Marsden was great. They made that show so that a lot of the ancillary characters were really good improv actors who did really good work and there were some really good situations. So it wasn't just the Ronald of it all. There's, there's some solid work behind the scenes and around the corners of the scene. So this bodes well. I think I'm gonna check this out.

• 6:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. Anthony, he's great, but also, yes, the improv and the ways in which you learn later, there were moments where they, they almost slipped up. Like, it's, it's like, whoo. You get to understand how just tenuous all of this is and that at any moment, the whole thing could be blown. Like, they spent a lot of time, the creators, like, working to set this up. And they, they pulled it off and you will be pleasantly surprised and entertained throughout. So that is Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat, and you can find that on Prime Video.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm gonna definitely check that out. So my first pick is the Peacock series Ponies, which is a really solid and certainly very stylish spy drama that is set in and around the American Embassy in Moscow in 1977. It stars Amelia Clarke and Haley Lou Richardson. They are a couple of secretaries at this embassy. Their husbands are CIA agents who get killed by the KGB. Do I need to tell you that one is uptight and by the book and the other is a loose cannon? I don't. But so the uptight by the book secretary is Clarke, the loose cannon is Richardson. They managed to convince the CIA that they would make great spies because while the KGB really closely monitors

• 8:10Speaker 01

  every man who comes in and out of that embassy, they routinely completely ignore the secretaries. That's where the title comes in. Persons of no interest, ponies. What a great premise, right? And also, the 1977 is 7 to 7 all over the place. It's a great look. Everything is rounded corners and avocado golds and burnt sienna. And the budget, you know, you know, has a line. And for poly knit blends and it looks great. It does have streaming series problems. There's too many subplots, some of which it feature characters that don't get enough oxygen to breathe and to stand on their own. And you can tell they're doing that because they're just investing in that character. Cause they're going to explore them more in season two, but that doesn't change how it feels in season one. Right. That's always the deal with some of these shows.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And as of this taping, the show has not been canceled, but it also hasn't been picked up for a second season. So it's kind of hovering in that limbo. And personally, this is just a me thing. I think they made the Richardson character a little too volatile for an uptight organization like the CIA in the seventies to want anything to do with her. But I mean, I can't argue she makes for good TV. This is the kind of show where if you hold on to your credulity too hard, it's going to break. So you gotta let some things go. And the great thing about the show is Richardson and Clark, they work well together on screen. And the plot is what you want it to be. There's twists, there's turns, there's shocking reveals. A issue like me, you miss the Americans, right?

• 9:36Aisha Harris?

  I was gonna ask you, is this gonna scratch my itch for the Americans? But it sounds a little more high gloss and it is sort of networky, even it's Peacock, right?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it hits some of the same buttons that the Americans did. Not quite as effortlessly as the Americans did. It works a little harder. It's a little sweatier. But it is fun and that is ponies on Peacock.

• 9:57Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, that is one that I have been meaning to check out, especially once I heard that you were a fan of it. Because you and I, we have fairly similar tastes when it comes to these types of things.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  All right. What's your next pick?

• 10:08Aisha Harris?

  Well, I went from, you know, not that it was the lowest of the low, but it is reality TV. I'm going from slightly lowbrow to none other than Wong Kar Wai, the cinematic master. And his first TV series that he is, you know, fronting and directing. This is Blossom Shanghai and it had its North American premiere for audiences way back late last year on the Criterion Channel. I'm finally catching up with it. It's a lot of episodes. It's more than 25 episodes total. I'm only about eight in, so I haven't watched the whole thing, but I am into it. It is absolutely worth checking out if you haven't yet. So. This is a show that is based on the novel Blossoms by Jin Yu Cheng.

• 10:51Aisha Harris?

  And it's set against the backdrop of Shanghai's reopening of its stock market exchange in 1990. And this is something I have basically no knowledge about. So I was going into this completely cold. And sometimes I do have to like pick up my Wikipedia. But I think the show also does a really good job of explaining. There's narration, there's voiceover narration and historical background. So it's very helpful for those of us who have zero context or very little context to follow along. It stars Huga as Mr. Bell, who's this ambitious and shrewd trader who comes from a mysterious background. And he holds like a ton of sway in the business and financial world. Much of the action is concentrated in the bustling Shanghai District Huanghe Road,

• 11:33Aisha Harris?

  which Wong Kar Wai has basically recreated with his director of photography, the Oscar-winning cinematographer Peter Pao. It's got this like glitzy art deco glamour, the fancy restaurants where like all the high ruling business deals are made. And this very, very colorful assortment of characters who, you know, over time, you get to really know who is who and what's going on. But especially there are three women at its center, in addition to Mr. Bell. And they're all to some extent sort of cast as possible love interest for him. You know, this is Wong Kar Wai, he's a romantic. If you've seen any of his movies, you know, especially in the mood for love, this is what we're going for here. But at least in the first episodes that I've seen, and I think this will continue throughout the rest of the series.

• 12:17Aisha Harris?

  Yes, there's like flirtations, there's like will they or won't they moments between all three of these women with Bell. But also they are working with him, they are business people. And so there's a lot of transactions going on, a lot of like deal making and all that stuff. And Li Li, who's played by Xin Jurei, she is the owner of the new restaurant, The Grand Lisbon, which is on Huanghe Road. And she's determined to get Bell to bring his business dealings to her establishment. She's kind of like this femme fatale, she's crafty. I love the way that they're working her into this story. I love it. Like it took me maybe two or three episodes before I started to understand where it was going. But once you hit that and you're just seeing all these people try to like.

• 12:59Aisha Harris?

  Craft these deals and backstabbing and maneuvering and all these different things. Like, it's really fun. And Mr. Bell, as played by Huga, is just like, he's really kind of mysterious and sexy and also very smart and it's fun to watch. So if you're at all a fan of Wong Kar Wai, definitely give this a shot. It is an investment, but you know, slow burn. You can take as much time as you need and it looks gorgeous. It's so beautiful. Like, the costumes are amazing.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  All right. Well, that's great because, you know, I mean, there are so many questions around this because narrative television is not the same, not the same medium as a film and it's not necessarily given that a filmmaker could make a narrative television series because it stretched out over so many episodes. But the thing about so many episodes, I mean, you know, gather around Grandpappy's knee, folks, we used to do this. Twenty-two episodes a season, this is what we used to do. And I'm glad you said that about the romance because Wong Kar Wai is such, not just a romantic, but a swooning romantic. In The Movie for Love, Happy Together, Chungking Express, I mean, these are films that are all about love. And if it was just about a bunch of business folks being business-y, you know, it would not feel Wong Kar Wai to me.

• 14:10Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, there's even this, a lot of aesthetic touches that we know so well from Wong Kar Wai movies, especially like, sometimes there's like, slow motion, walking and looking and glancing and like, beautiful, beautiful costumes and it feels very romantic. And even though it's the 90s, it feels like it could be the 40s. Like, it's really, really, really beautiful. So, highly recommend it, Blossom Shanghai, it's on Criterion Channel. Go check it out. It's, it's really, really great.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Okay, excellent. I will check that out. Okay, my last pick is Deadlock, Season Two. Now, Aisha, did you watch Deadlock Season One?

• 14:48Aisha Harris?

  Okay, so, I never finished Deadlock Season One. And I don't know why, it's not because I didn't like it, I just, at some point, didn't watch the last like, two episodes. And so- I know, I know, I'm a bad person.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no, we, we, we have a lot to see.

• 15:02Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I'm not going to hold that against you, but I will say that when people ask me, what's perfect TV, I say Deadlock, season one is perfect television, platonic ideal of what a great show can be. When I want to feel good about humanity, which in 2026 is often, I think of all the people who have come up to me since I recommended this show to say they love it as much as I do. That's just heartening because there's a sea of bad things out there. And when a good thing finds its audience, even if it's just one person says, I found this show because of you. If I had even a tiny hand at that, that's why we're critics, right? That's why we do this. But this show isn't just a critical darling. This is also a real world, word of mouth phenomenon, completely apart from critics.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And I'd be out with, you know, non critics, I'd be out with civilians and I'd mention this show and the intense reaction it would get from people is just heartening because it's surprising, right? Because on the surface, if you just talk about the premise of the show, there's nothing new here. Two wildly mismatched police officers in a small town filled with quirky characters, investigating a murder. That is formula, formula, formula. But what makes this show so great is the details, is the dialogue, the characterizations. Just imagine if Broadchurch was less emo, more queer and more goofy, you got this show. And so in this show, the two cops are played by Dulce, played by Kate Box, and Eddie, played by Madeline Sami.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  The town is a small coastal village in Tasmania. Dulce is, here we go again, the by the book queer cop who puts up with a lot of, very stoically, because, you know, she spends every day kind of neck deep in sexism and homophobia, and she just puts up with it. While Eddie is everything Dulce isn't, loud and crude and unapologetic and very quick to judgment, where Dulce is very, you know, careful and deliberative. These two characters play off each other so well and the dialogue is very funny. If the mystery doesn't drive you to the end because you need to know what happened, that's, it's not why you're at the show. The mystery. Isn't really the appeal here. I mean, it does get solved. So watch those last two episodes, Ayesha. But like this, like this is the vibe. But season two recently dropped and it's still deadlock.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  It isn't the perfect jewel that season one was because it couldn't be. And I think that's a result of the decision to shift focus from Dulce to Eddie. And the show from deadlock to this kind of remote backwater in Australia's Northern Territory. This season is big Eddie vibes. It's a lot louder. It's more chaotic, tries to do too many things in too short a time. So when it does tie up the mystery, it feels kind of disjointed. But again, you're not watching the show for the plot. You're not watching for the mystery. You're watching for the vibe, for the dialogue, for the characters. But definitely watch season two. It's still great. But man, if you ever find yourself with a long, gray weekend afternoon to kill, deadlock season one is still the cure for whatever ails you. I've watched it several times.

• 17:57Aisha Harris?

  You know what? This is if I ever needed a kick in the butt to go back and re-watch season one and get to this. This is a good reason.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  So that is deadlock on Prime Video. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here. Great picks.

• 18:11Aisha Harris?

  Thank you. You too. Can't wait to check out Deadlock season one again.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 18:15Aisha Harris?

  So I can go watch season two.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fatama, and Mike Katz. And edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And Hal O'Kam in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And if you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Glenn Wildon, and we'll see you all next time.

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