The Week of August 23rd in Streaming: Reality Is Becoming Increasingly Optional

This week has everything television apparently believes we need at the end of August: vampires, retired detectives running a murder motel, cruise-ship homicide, alternate universes, Tyler Perry, and Robert De Niro hunting a serial killer called the Whisper Man.

At no point does anyone simply have a normal week.

Here is what is arriving August 23-29, sorted by how quickly each premise would make a reasonable person leave town.

Sunday, August 23rd brings Talamasca: The Secret Order (Netflix, season one streaming premiere) into the increasingly crowded Anne Rice universe. The series follows Guy Anatole, a young lawyer recruited by the Talamasca, a secret organization responsible for keeping tabs on witches, vampires, and whatever else has spent several centuries making human problems look embarrassingly manageable. Naturally, Guy also discovers that the organization knows considerably more about his own family than anyone bothered to mention during recruitment.

This is generally considered a red flag at normal workplaces. At a supernatural intelligence agency, apparently it is onboarding.

Vibe: LinkedIn recruiter reaches out. Position turns out to involve monitoring immortal beings. Benefits unclear.

Monday, August 24th checks us into Blue Murder Hotel (Acorn TV, series premiere), where retired detectives Linda and Mark Duffy have made the sensible decision to leave police work behind and run a seaside motel. Unfortunately, murders begin happening around them, because television has established beyond reasonable doubt that former detectives are physically incapable of retiring anywhere with a low homicide rate. They wanted ocean views and continental breakfast. They got another crime scene.

Vibe: The White Lotus, if instead of rich people behaving terribly the owners kept finding bodies near the breakfast buffet.

Tuesday, August 25th sets sail with The Good Ship Murder (BritBox, season three premiere), which continues the adventures of cruise ship singer Jack Grayling and First Officer Kate Woods as they encounter an astonishing number of murders while traveling through beautiful destinations. At some point, you would think TripAdvisor would begin reflecting this.

“Wonderful staff. Excellent views. Third passenger murdered before Marseille. Four stars.” And yet the ship continues operating.

Vibe: The Love Boat, except the activities director has quietly added “identify the killer” between trivia and dinner.

Wednesday, August 26th hands us The Last Sunrise (Prime Video, movie premiere), starring Maia Reficco as Ry, a college student with a chronic illness who travels to Mallorca with her mother and falls for local Julián, played by Fernando Lindez. Eva Longoria co-stars, Mallorca looks exactly as unfairly beautiful as Mallorca tends to look on camera, and absolutely nobody appears interested in allowing this to remain the uncomplicated European summer romance Ry presumably deserves. Family secrets emerge. Her condition worsens. Feelings become involved. The Mediterranean continues looking fantastic throughout.

Vibe: Someone booked Mamma Mia! summer and accidentally received emotional devastation with complimentary ocean views.

Thursday, August 27th returns to the Bellarie empire with Beauty in Black (Netflix, season three premiere). Kimmie has spent two seasons surviving a cosmetics dynasty whose internal operations make the Roy family look like they communicate through a healthy group chat, and Season 3 pushes her further into the power structure she once stood outside of.

Vibe: Corporate succession planning, except every meeting should probably have both an attorney and a police officer present.

Friday, August 28th gives us two extremely reasonable options and therefore forces a terrible decision. Dark Matter (Apple TV, season two premiere) returns Joel Edgerton’s Jason Dessen to the multiverse after Season 1 demonstrated that one version of yourself is already more than enough. The Dessens have finally reached something resembling safety, which is television language for “enjoy these next eleven minutes.”

Meanwhile, Netflix releases The Whisper Man, starring Adam Scott as a widowed father whose young son disappears, Robert De Niro as his estranged father and retired detective, and Michelle Monaghan as part of an investigation connected to a serial killer De Niro’s character put away years ago. Nothing improves a strained father-son relationship like discovering that the horrifying case one of you thought was finished has apparently started taking requests.

Vibe: Friday has generously provided existential multiverse panic and serial-killer panic. Choose the anxiety best suited to your household.

Saturday, August 29th closes the week with Copycat Killer (Lifetime, movie premiere), a thriller that proves imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it becomes considerably less charming once Lifetime gets involved. The network has built an entire ecosystem around realizing that the person you trusted most has been behaving suspiciously for the last ninety minutes, so a movie called Copycat Killer feels less like a programming choice than a statement of purpose.

Vibe: The person you trusted most was apparently the killer all along, which is Lifetime’s way of saying “you should have listened to your gut an hour ago.”

Also this week:

The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live (AMC+, Sunday, August 23, concert special)
Three Housewives and a Body (Lifetime, Sunday, August 23, movie premiere)
M3GAN (Netflix, Monday, August 24, streaming arrival)
Revival (Netflix, Monday, August 24, season one streaming arrival)
Bobby’s Triple Threat (Food Network, Tuesday, August 25, season five premiere)
Jeopardy! Masters (ABC, Tuesday, August 25, season four premiere)
Stamptown (Netflix, Tuesday, August 25, comedy special)
Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young (Netflix, Tuesday, August 25, documentary premiere)
The Simpsons: Yellow Mirror (Disney+, Wednesday, August 26, standalone episode)
That ’90s House (HGTV, Wednesday, August 26, series premiere)
Miss Teen USA (The CW, Wednesday, August 26, special)
Leanne (Netflix, Thursday, August 27, season two premiere)
The Undeclared War (Peacock, Thursday, August 27, season two premiere)
Adults (Hulu/FXX, Thursday, August 27, season two premiere)
Miss USA 75th Diamond Celebration (The CW, Thursday, August 27, special)
The Wrong Housemaid (Lifetime Movie Network, Friday, August 28, movie premiere)

This Week’s Hostage: Dark Matter

There is an argument for The Whisper Man. Robert De Niro is a retired detective. Adam Scott is his estranged son. A child has disappeared. There is a serial killer. His name is the Whisper Man. Netflix could have stopped writing the pitch there and I would understand.

But Dark Matter has returned after spending an entire season asking one of the most dangerous questions imaginable:

What if there were more of you?

Season one gave Jason Dessen access to infinite realities and immediately demonstrated why human beings should never, under any circumstances, be given access to infinite realities. Season two begins after he has finally made it home, reunited with his family, and achieved something approaching stability.

Obviously this cannot be permitted. The Box is still there. Jason is still obsessed with it. Daniela is increasingly worried. Amanda and Ryan are somewhere in the multiverse trying to get home. And if Season 1 taught us anything, it is that somewhere behind one of those doors is another Jason Dessen absolutely convinced that he is the reasonable one.

There are vampires this week. There are murder hotels. There is a serial killer called the Whisper Man.

None of them frighten me as much as a physicist saying, “I just want to try something.”

You are watching.

I am watching.

Under no circumstances are we getting in the Box.