Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Crave
Brian Posehn and Kevin Sussman in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.colin remas brown/Supplied
The Big Bang Theory, the CBS sitcom that ran from 2007 to 2019, played a major role in propelling nerd culture into the mainstream – but it was not itself a product of nerd culture.
The new HBO Max sci-fi spinoff Stuart Fails to Save the Universe – episodes out weekly starting July 23 – is more what geek physicists Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper would actually want to watch in their downtime. You might call it: Big Bang Practice.
Comic shop owner Stuart (Kevin Sussman) returns here, now living in a parallel, laugh-track-less Pasadena, full of zombies and giant moths. But he and geologist Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn) quickly discover they have the power to fix a dimensional rift that made their dystopia.
Each episode sees the two sucked from one reality to another with fellow Big Bang characters Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Denise (Lauren Lapkus) along for the ride (and others making cameos). Riffing on a different genre of sci-fi or fantasy each week, the overall narrative spoofs multiverse shows – while also being a demonstration of their shortcomings. It’s hard to get invested in infinite and therefore consequence-free worlds – and, in terms of the comedy, I only really chuckled at Posehn’s deadpan reactions to each strange new one.
The Westies, Paramount+
Titus Welliver and J.K. Simmons in The Westies.Brooke Palmer/Supplied
Speaking of Strange New Worlds, the penultimate season of that Star Trek series launches on Paramount+ on July 23 – but if you haven’t beamed aboard that show yet, you probably never will.
Making a quieter debut on the same streamer in Canada this month is The Westies, acquired from MGM+ in the U.S. to feed the crime-drama geeks. Set in the 1980s and based on a real-life Irish-American gang of that name in New York, it’s a calculated cross between Peaky Blinders and The Sopranos. While it hasn’t immediately risen to the level of the former let alone the latter, it’ll fill the time until the next season of MobLand.
Oscar winner J.K. Simmons dons an Irish cap, but no lilt, to play a minor mob leader in a complicated situationship with the Italian-American Mafia. The main focus is on lower-ranked enforcer Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney, from Grantchester) and his ragtag crew; they’re always getting into the whisky and not following orders, especially Vietnam vet Mickey (an electric Stanley Morgan) who develops Hamlet’s habit of faking madness until he makes it. Other characters in the Toronto-shot show include real-life Mafioso John Gotti – convincingly played by Canadian Hamish Allan-Headley. New episodes come out Mondays.
The Walking Dead: Dead City, AMC+
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan in The Walking Dead: Dead City.Supplied
There were elements of the first seasons of AMC’s original undead drama, The Walking Dead, that were truly poetic: I recall, for instance, the bleak Beckettian image of a zombie chained to a rock at the bottom of a lake, struggling to reach the surface for eternity. But I bailed after Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s villain Negan showed up with his barbed-wired bat and sophomoric speeches to gore Steven Yeun’s Glenn to death.
The 10th anniversary of that 2016 episode that lost the franchise legions of fans is almost upon us. But The Walking Dead’s various spinoffs still stagger on. Dead City – which focuses on a reformed Negan, now more palatably played by Morgan, and Glenn’s widow, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), joining forces in Manhattan – is back for a third season on July 26. Dipping back in with diminished expectations, I found enjoyable elements, including a big baddie who is a mind-controlling ex-theatre critic, played by Ozark’s Lisa Emery.
Masters of the Universe, Prime Video
Camila Mendes and Alison Brie in Masters of the Universe.Giles-Keyte/Supplied
Hollywood’s most recent attempt to resurrect this 1980s cartoon franchise was a box-office bomb – but those who went to see the movie, now on streaming, didn’t hate it.
Nicholas Galitzine plays the former prince of Eternia known better by his no-longer-so-redundant name He-Man in this tongue-in-cheek, sword-and-sorcery flick directed by Travis Knight. “The film is tons of fun, especially for 14-year-old boys,” Brad Wheeler wrote in his Globe and Mail review, praising Jared Leto’s scene-stealing performance as Skeletor. “Despite the locker-room humour, Knight brings a good-versus-evil story from the 1980s kicking, screaming and winking into 2026.”
Agent Kim Reactivated, Netflix
So Ji-sub in Agent Kim Reactivated.Netflix
This Korean revenge drama, which crosses Taken with Taekwondo, has been releasing two episodes at a time on Netflix as it has been airing on the SBS channel in South Korea – and has topped the streamer’s non-English charts globally for five weeks now.
Widower Kim Do-hyeon (So Ji-sub) has a humble life as an accountant, raising his teenager daughter, Min-ji (Seo Su-min), and bowing to bullies and bad bosses. “We’re middle-aged men with glasses who tolerate injustice,” he tells his pals over a single, responsible drink at a restaurant in the slow-burn first episode.
But once Min-ji gets kidnapped by a corrupt construction company chairman in response to a social-media slight to his daughter, the mild-mannered Mr. Kim disappears from sight and Agent 66, a North Korean operative who became a double agent, re-emerges to pummel all comers. It’s the perfect midsummer fantasy for middle-aged men – with the final episodes out this weekend. Content warning: AI was used in certain sequences.