You’re invited to The Great Pottery Throw Down, plus an exclusive clip from Raised By Wolves
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, September 17. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
The Great Pottery Throw Down (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m., complete first season): If the creators of The Great British Bake Off decided to take that warm, supportive, occasionally tense, genuinely inspiring vibe and wrap it like a layer of puff pastry around a new specific skill, it would look just like The Great Pottery Throw Down, mostly because that’s exactly what happened.
Has any show ever been more right on fuckin’ time? Normally we’d add more detail here but really, we think that “This is Bake Off but for pottery” is all anyone should need to know at this exact moment in time. It’s Bake Off but for pottery, you’re welcome, enjoy.
Raised By Wolves (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m., episodes 6 and 7): On the other hand, Raised By Wolves has only two things in common with The Great British Bake Off:
- Accents.
- Our excitement about its continued existence.
Number two is particularly relevant at the moment, thanks to this exclusive clip from “Lost Paradise,” the Sergio Mimica-Gezzan-directed sixth episode of first season. Tally’s ghost continues to loom large, and Mother (Amanda Collin) wrestles with grief and suspicion, leading to the confrontation with Father (Abubakar Salim) you’ll see below.
A quick reminder that HBO Max has accelerated its schedule for this series, so two new episodes arrive today. Look for Arielle Bernstein’s recap of episode six this morning; her recap of episode seven will post tomorrow. And if it all feels too heavy afterward, you can always just switch to The Great Pottery Throw Down.
Regular coverage
Wild cards
Dragon’s Dogma (Netflix, 3:01 a.m, complete first season): “Dragon’s Dogma, [Netflix’s] latest video game adaptation, isn’t quite as intermittently enjoyable as Castlevania, but it does suggest that the idea of turning a video game into something else isn’t always a terrible idea. This is somewhat surprising for Dragon’s Dogma, since—unlike Castlevania, which has decades of lore to pull from—its most memorable qualities as a video game were decidedly video game-y… [T]he core appeals of the game were making your own medieval fantasy hero, creating a sidekick character called a Pawn that you could share with your friends online to help them in their adventures, and then killing fantasy monsters by climbing on them and stabbing their weak points. A TV show can’t do a lot of that, and it’s not really fair to judge it for forcing a protagonist on you that you didn’t create, so it’s a good thing that Dragon’s Dogma actually has a fairly interesting story to tell (and a fair amount of climbing).” Keep an eye out for the rest of Sam Barsanti’s pre-air review, which will arrive on the site this morning.
Departure (Peacock, 3:01 a.m., complete first season, U.S. premiere): Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) and Christopher Plummer (Knives Out, all of the other zillion things Christopher Plummer has done in his long and storied career) star in this British/Canadian drama about a vanished commercial airliner flight full of character actors interesting people.