Give it up for Ghosts, dive into Will Trent, and more from the week in TV

Constellation review: Brace yourself for a trippy, hypnotic space thriller

Let’s start with a warning: Constellation is not for everybody. Apple TV+’s latest sci-fi thriller, which premieres February 21, only rewards those with plenty of patience. It trots along slowly over eight hour-long episodes, providing a perplexing yet illuminating study of psychological trauma. The show uses an epic scope—the cosmos!—to pin down the nitty-gritty horrors of isolation and grief. At the very least, Constellation deserves merit for its ambitious attempt to balance the contradictory vastness of space with the astronauts’ claustrophobia and inner turmoil. That said, the central suspense is so damn loopy that it can’t fully sustain itself by the end. Read More

TV’s 12 worst love interests

Seeing a love story unfold on screen can be a beautiful, heartwarming, life affirming experience. Seeing the wrong love story unfold is, like, one of the most annoying things that can happen while watching TV. There is no better example of this than the Che Diaz phenomenon. Fans not only hated Miranda’s new And Just Like That… partner, they delighted in hating Che, to extremes that have rarely been seen on television. Read More

Will Trent season 2 review: Broadcast procedural finds its groove

Will Trent is back on the case. After a nine-month hiatus, one of television’s most underrated crime dramas is finally back for its sophomore season on ABC on February 20. And the show, much like its eccentric protagonist, seems to have finally found its groove. Read More

Ghosts season 3 review: So which specters were “sucked off”?

When Ghosts viewers last visited Woodstone B&B, they were faced with a terrifying question: Which of the ghosts had been “sucked off”? (That is the show’s official term for a ghost who makes the transition from an endless purgatory to the afterlife, but we still marvel at how the writers managed to get around broadcast television’s strict standards and practices with this double entendre.) Read More

TV’s 15 most swoonworthy romantic gestures

Any romance is enhanced by a sweet gesture, whether it’s a grand declaration or a subtle, everyday action. Doing something wacky to brighten up your partner’s day? Watching a TV show your significant other is obsessed with? Serenading them beautifully in front of an audience? Finally asking out the girl of your dreams, even if the act is caught on camera? Over the years, TV has concocted some truly great ways for characters to show their feelings. So to mark Valentine’s Day, The A.V. Club has picked its 15 favorite swoonworthy gestures on the small screen. Read More

Curb Your Enthusiasm recap: Larry is beloved? This can’t last.

Uh oh: Larry got some positive attention. This whole violating the Election Integrity Act thing has landed him in jail for a brief spell, and thus made the guy a “liberal darling.” In the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, we got to see how craven and Trumpian old Larry could be, concocting multiple simultaneous schemes to get out of trouble for having his backyard pool unfenced. Now it seems the show’s creators have laid the groundwork for Larry to redeem himself after being such an asshole over the years, if he so chooses. It’s final season kind of stuff, if you think about it—the end to an overall arc, a way to end things in a different place from where they began. It’s comforting to watch him be a shithead, in a way, but is it possible to allow him to evolve while keeping things interesting? We’ll find out. Read More

TV’s most memorable breakups

February 14 means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, especially when trying to choose the perfect watch for the night. You might be in a googly eyed new relationship, jonesing to sit your lover down in front of an iconic Valentine’s Day episode and teach them some new tricks. You might be single and crushing on your coworker, turning to the movies for some inspiration on how to finally capture their heart. (Showing up outside of their house with a boom box is a great start.) Or, you could be over the phenomenon entirely. For anyone who’d rather forego love flirtation for heartbreak and destruction on this most romantic of holidays, read on for The A.V. Club’s list of TV’s most memorable breakups. Read More

The X-Men are finally back in X-Men ‘97 trailer

Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and its stable of superheroes in 2019, but it’s taken the company a while to incorporate those characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, five years later, Marvel is finally getting around to it: this week, we got the trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, a casting announcement for The Fantastic Four, and now, a trailer for X-Men ’97 (premiering March 20). The new animated series isn’t part of the MCU, per se (unless you count it under the multiverse umbrella), but it still marks Disney’s most significant foray into X-Men canon yet. Read More

John Malkovich on The New Look and why he doesn’t “look for moral guidance from artists”

A lot has been said and written about John Malkovich’s distinctive parlance—that languid, deliberate way of speaking that makes you hang on his every last word, either when he’s playing a role or chatting with you through a Zoom window. For the better part of the last half century, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated character actor has brought that distinctive Malkovichian flair to a bevy of memorable roles: Mr. Will in Places In The Heart, Mitch Leary in In The Line Of Fire, Al Rockoff in The Killing Fields, Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons, Biff Loman in Death Of A Salesman, Cyrus Grissom in Con Air, and Osbourne Cox in the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading, just to name a few. And who could forget the surreal experience of watching him play a heightened version of himself in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovitch? Read More

The New Look review: Chanel and Dior anchor a handsome period drama

When Christian Dior unveiled his 1947 collection “Corolle,” he harkened back to the opulent femininity of the late 19th century, to a pre-war world that felt decidedly novel precisely because it was such a strident throwback to elegance and tradition gone by. Dior’s instantly iconic “New Look” gives Apple TV+’s period-drama series, about the designer’s storied journey toward that famed collection, its name. But beyond just chronicling a pivotal moment in 20th century fashion history, The New Look, which premieres February 14, is a sweeping historical drama about what complicity and resilience looked like in Paris during its Nazi occupation and the years that followed. Read More