TV highlights: A miserable marriage, a criminal cult and great gamers

If you’re looking for a movie you can watch with your tween, try Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One on Hot Cinema 1 at 10 p.m. on August 27, and starting August 30 on CinemaTime.

By HANNAH BROWN
Jamie Bell and Daniel Macdonald in 'Skin' (photo credit: COURTESY OF YES)
Jamie Bell and Daniel Macdonald in 'Skin'
(photo credit: COURTESY OF YES)
The unifying theme of Netflix’s Dirty John true-crime series, which just released its second season, is truly horrible marriages. The first season of the series looked at a naive woman who met a man online and married him very quickly, only to discover he was a con artist. The second season is about Betty Broderick, a jilted wife who killed her ex-husband and his new wife.
Betty is played by Amanda Peet, a beautiful actress who has never really gotten the leading roles she deserves. It’s hard not to root for her in her divorce battle against Dan Broderick (Christian Slater), a doctor and lawyer who is a formidable opponent. The series moves around in time among the divorce proceedings in which Dan wields all the power, their early married life, in which she raised their four children and coped with her difficult pregnancies as he built his career, and her murder trials.
The meticulous production design features costumes, sets and hairstyles of that era and makes the styles look ugly and artificial, to emphasize Betty’s growing desperation. Peet gives the performance of her career as a woman raised only to be a wife and mother who loses it when her husband abandons her. And while Dan Broderick, at least as he is portrayed here, was a narcissistic rat, it’s hard not to get frustrated with Betty, whose actions constantly compound her victimization.
The show is like a 10-episode train wreck, and you’ll have to decide if it’s one you can’t look away from. One virtue of a series like this is that no matter how bad your divorce/marriage/relationship might be or might have been, you’ve never felt as miserable as this couple does.
HBO’s documentary The Vow, another series featuring miserable people seeking happier lives, focuses on NXIVM, a cult in upstate New York whose leaders went to prison on various charges in 2019. It will be available on Cellcom TV, Yes VOD and Sting TV starting on August 24 and on Yes Docu on August 31 at 11 p.m.
It’s a bizarre story. The Hebrew title is The New York Sex Cult, and it involves women allowing themselves to be sex trafficked and branded like cattle. The cult drew quite a few high-profile followers, among them Seagram heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman, and Smallville actress Allison Mack.
In the early episodes, as former members describe what drew them to the cult, it doesn’t sound too different from many other such groups. While the description of the cult may make this series sound titillating, it’s actually very sad to hear the stories of vulnerable people who were manipulated. You may find it hard to stick with all six episodes.
Israeli director Guy Nattiv went to the US to make Skin, a drama about a young skinhead who rebels and leaves the White Supremacist community (Nattiv also directed an Oscar-winning short film, co-written by Sharon Maymon, with the same name). Skin, which stars a heavily tattooed Jamie Bell, will be shown on Yes 4 at 10 p.m. on August 22 (and is already running on Yes VOD and Sting TV) and will be on Hot CinemaTime starting on August 23. It gives insight into a racist, antisemitic subculture.
Cellcom TV is running a series of classics, and these include Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot starting on August 26, which stars Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in a cross-dressing rom-com. On August 27, it will feature Mystic Pizza, the movie that launched Julia Roberts’ career. It’s a sweet, soapy slice-of-life drama about working-class girls from Portuguese families in a Connecticut town. 
If you’re looking for a movie you can watch with your tween, try Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One on Hot Cinema 1 at 10 p.m. on August 27, and starting August 30 on CinemaTime. It’s not one of Spielberg’s most memorable films, but it tells a suspenseful story of a heroic teen in a dystopian world where people spend their time in a virtual reality network. It’s based on an inventive novel that is a cult favorite among video gamers.


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