Robert and Michelle King created the beloved, clever and very entertaining series, The Good Wife, which followed a political wife who had to remake her life after her husband got caught up in a cheating scandal.
But few remember that they followed up The Good Wife with an extremely strange series called Braindead, a show about a young woman working in Washington who discovers a bizarre plot to take over the world by ants that eat politicians’ brains – causing their heads to explode – and make victims hunger to hear a single song over and over, The Cars’ “You Might Think.”
Braindead only lasted one season, but it had its moments.
Now that the third season of The Good Fight, their Good Wife spinoff, has just started running on YES VOD on Sundays at 10 p.m. on YES Edge (previous seasons are available on HOT VOD), it’s clear that this show is a blend of the carefully plotted sophistication of The Good Wife and the sheer insanity of Braindead.
The Good Wife, which focuses on the character Diane Lockhart, played with glee by Christine Baranski, started out being about her fight to get her life back on track after her savings were stolen by a Bernie Madoff-type. But now the title is unambiguously about her fight against another man she feels has ruined her life – President Donald Trump. In the season opener, she has clandestine meetings with a blond actress who alleges she had an abortion after an affair with Trump.
“This will hurt him with the religious right,” Diane says hopefully. But she has other troubles to take care of, including worries that her husband, conservative ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole), is having an affair – a plot turn that ends up leading directly, if not to the commander-in-chief, then to several of his relatives. Diane is so obsessed with Trump that she carries on conversations with him in her mind.
Even the Trump-free parts of the show carry political overtones. In the first episode, the mostly African-American law firm where Diane now works is hit with a decades-old sexual harassment claim against its late founder.
In the second episode, Michael Sheen turns up, playing an entertainingly unscrupulous lawyer. He will be familiar to TV viewers as the lead actor on Masters of Sex and Liz Lemon’s dullest boyfriend from 30 Rock, and he makes a great addition to this wonderful ensemble cast. While there aren’t any exploding heads on The Good Fight – yet – it’s more full of surprises and fun than just about anything else on television these days.
IF YOU’RE used to tuning in to shows such as True Detective on YES Oh, you may not be overjoyed to learn that this channel has been transformed into the Game of Thrones preview channel until the long-awaited (by some) arrival of the first episode of the show’s final season on April 15. It will be broadcast on both YES and HOT at the same time it airs in the US.
Four of the final episodes will run 80 minutes, something fans can look forward to.
ALEX GIBNEY’S The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which is running on HOT VOD and YES VOD and will be shown on HOT HBO on March 23 at 10 p.m. and on YES Doco on March 25 at 10 p.m., brings to mind that Sir Walter Scott quote, often mis-attributed to Shakespeare, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
It tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the young woman who raised $9 billion for a startup that she claimed had created a machine for home use that could diagnose dozens of serious illnesses through just a few drops of blood.It was a great idea, but it never worked – which didn’t stop such rich and powerful people as Rupert Murdoch, Bill Clinton and Betsy DeVos from fawning over the photogenic blond CEO. I had read all about this and thought I knew most of it, but watching it unfold is fascinating, if a bit infuriating.
It makes you wonder what charismatic entrepreneur is making fools of investors right now.