Every evening we publish our night viewing recommendation here on the “Time Out” website. We aim low: things you can watch at night without burning your brain with an overdose of stupidity – you can do that yourself – even if they are not supertemporal masterpieces. The recommendations are sometimes based on watching individual episodes that show potential, but you are definitely welcome to complain about us in the secret Facebook group “The spoiler: what are you seeing today”. In honor of the weekend and for your convenience, we are grouping all the recommendations in one place for the traditional end-of-the-weekend binge, ranked according to how much we like them.
1. “General rehearsal”
Just before we dive into a series of trashy recommendations even more than usual (in the fun part, don’t worry), here is a wholehearted recommendation for a TV that is not just high quality, and fun – it is also groundbreaking. The new project of Nathan Fielder (the legendary “Nathan For You”, and rightly so) takes his unique humor even further: Fielder and his investigators help people from the settlement who are struggling before a significant step in their lives, by digging into every aspect of their existence and creating an environment for them A well produced artificial one, with actors and everything, where they can practice the situation. After a series of trainings and mentoring, those people try to apply what they learned in a real-life situation that is captured by hidden cameras. According to the first episode, it’s not only laugh-out-loud and awestruck by the depth of the production, it’s also humane and gentle and charming and rouses philosophical thoughts.
The strangeness of “General Return” lies in the hyper-realism of the reconstructions of the situations, but her humanity and the compassion she and Fielder show for her occasional heroes is more reminiscent of “The Guide to Life” by John Wilson, a series Fielder was among its producers. Don’t miss it while it’s happening.
>> “The Rehearsal”, a new episode every Saturday on HOT, yes and Cellcom TV platforms
2. The proger challenge
Remember Proger? You surely remember Proger. If not from the eighties, then at least That masterpiece episode of Seinfeld. And if by chance you don’t remember, then “Frogger: The Game Show” will refresh your memory – the game in which you had to portray a frog crossing a road/great/road and trying to avoid a variety of obstacles with its jumps, translated in a playful way (which appeared on the Peacock streaming network in 2021, but arrived in Israel only now) for a challenge that is not easy at all. And it’s even more goofy fun than it looks, and surprisingly for hobbyist-challengers (that is, not like the Ninja pros), it looks to be one of the more challenging courses.
The colorful and invested routes in a rare section are designed inspired by the original game, the 8-bit animation of the crossings connects reality to the classic game and the atmosphere does not take itself seriously, but is very serious about the part of the challenge. The show is hosted by Damon Wayans Jr. (“We’ll see you as a cop” and from the talented Wayans family) and football anchor Kyle Brandt, and the whole thing feels like taking really good mushrooms in the eighties and watching the ninja challenge. It’s as fun as it sounds. So jump in to see some cheap entertainment from the bottom of the barrel, which is a shame it didn’t come earlier, because a little brain shutdown wouldn’t have hurt us.
“The Proger Challenge”, available on yes VOD. Every Wednesday at 17:30 on yes TV DRAMA
3. Bob’s Burgers – the movie
For 11 years now, crowds of viewers around the world have been following the plots of the Belcher family and their small hamburger restaurant. After 12 seasons, more than two hundred episodes and almost two years of postponements due to Corona, the cute animated series “Bob’s Burgers” also received a movie, which was released last May. This cute animated series was not legally available in Israel until the rise of Disney Plus, and that’s exactly where her new movie was released this weekend. “The Burgers” is considered an animated series for adults, but it is much more relaxed and family in essence than “South Park” or “Family Guy” on the one hand and does not have high pretensions to artistic/conceptual achievements or genre bending like “Rick and Morty”, “Big Mouth” ” or “Bojack Horseman” on the other hand. It’s just a nice and light sitcom, which is aimed at a mature target audience mainly because the main characters in it are a couple of parents who get into trouble with a living and a mortgage – not really material that interests most of the youth.
As usual in sequels of animated series, “Bob’s Burgers: The Movie” is also a longer and more invested episode than usual of the series, which does not challenge its status quo or really advance the plot. You don’t have to be a die-hard fan to understand what’s going on and you can enjoy the movie as just an episode to enter the story with. Of course there are lots of characters and little jokes that are more fun to watch with prior knowledge, but most of the background story the film provides itself, probably as a service for spouses who were dragged with more devout viewers to the cinema (or to an evening in front of Disney Plus, as mentioned).
“Bob’s Burgers – The Movie” is now available on Disney Plus
4. The land of food with Miri Masika and Ruti Rossi
Is it still possible to produce a serious docu-series about food, after more than a decade of “MasterChef” and other cheesy cooking competitions? The brain says “no”, but the heart wants to believe that it is because we have already seen them on Netflix and there is even “We are on the Napkin” with the great chef Barak Yehezkali, and even if they do not make the buzz of the mythological “Food for Thought” or the fun “Gidi and Aharoni” – They must have a place. Well, make room for “The Land of Food with Miri Masika and Ruthie Russo”, because there is an ocean of potential here.
For Mesika, this is her first experience in the field of gastronomy, and at least according to the clips released to the media as teasers, it seems that she brings with her curiosity and a love of snacking, but Ruthie Russo is a legend in the field and has been slowly cooking like a high-quality pot stew for years on the lines of the food programs. She recently got her big chance in the failed reality show “Israel’s next restaurant” and there is no doubt that she was the best thing that happened there (not that it was such a challenge in view of the fiasco). Maybe we won’t get the female version of “Gidi and Aharoni”, but we’ll settle for just a successful food documentary that doesn’t insult the intelligence. we are hungry
“The Land of Food”, HOT
5. The bite disease
“The Bite” takes place in New York, where two neighbors – Rachel and Lily, one a doctor and the other, well, a sado queen – spend the quarantine one floor away from each other, each meeting their clients at Zoom, and both gradually begin to realize that the violent second wave of Covid-19 that hits the city is not exactly like the previous one – and more like a virus of the type that makes zombie apocalypse series about it. In short, a classic case of art imitating reality which for a moment seemed to be imitating art. And all this, for some reason, from the creators of “The Good Wife” and “The Good for the Battle” (and more), Robert and Michelle King.
Wait, did you say the creators of “The Good Wife”? So why are they making a wild horror comedy, with a particularly violent wave of Corona that also turns those infected with it into bloodthirsty zombies? Well, the King’s definitely have a knack for horror shows – not only are they responsible for the supernatural drama “Evil” currently airing on CBS, but they also previously created a small, deranged, funny and very clever series called “Brain Dead” MH”) which came out in 2016, a few months before those dramatic elections in the United States, and dealt with small alien-parasites with malicious programs that begin to take over more and more minds in the White House and the surrounding area. If “The Bite” has at least half the sharp teeth of “Brain Dead” – we’ll be fine.
“The Bite” is now available on Cellcom TV
6. Resident Evil (but only if you know what you’re getting into)
Given the appalling state of Netflix in recent years, it seems that not a day goes by without Netflix releasing a mediocre series or less. But it’s not every day she produces such a hated series. A series that the critics don’t like, and the audience hates even more. A series as bad as “Resident Evil”. The streaming service’s new horror series is who-knows-how many adaptations of the popular PC game series, and according to most reviews and audience response, it seems to be the worst adaptation of them all. For the sake of proportion, on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, the series received a rating of 53% from critics (a low score, but still reasonable. With us, Liron Roddick was even less merciful) and 22% of surfers, which is a disgraceful score by all accounts. On the IMDB website, the series “earned” an audience score of 3.6. Ouch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tb9ENbFWvQ
So why do we still recommend it? Because bad series is the fun of life, especially if you come to them knowing in advance that you are entering such a bad adventure. Come with low expectations, laugh at all the bad catchphrases, and be mad at Netflix for using your subscription money for this shit. That is, in the subscription funds of the ex who pays for the subscription and has not yet changed his password.
“Resident Evil”, season one is now available on Netflix