Television with no interest in teaching any lessons
● Alien: Earth
(series premières the first two of eight episodes Tuesday, Aug. 12 on FX/Disney+)
There are (hello, Murderbot!) many meditations on artificial intelligence and robots pining to become human. This TV prequel to the 1979 Alien movie, about drooling metal-toothed monsters on spaceships, ponders the reverse. On Earth in the year 2120, a creepy trying-too-hard young man tells Wendy (Sugar's Sydney Chandler), 'You are going to be the first person to transition from a human body to synthetic.' Because she's 'special.' Wendy, run! But that is only the subtext. The main action of the series starts when Wendy and company crash land on Earth. Co-stars include Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood). Created by Noah Hawley (Fargo). All systems go!
● Butterfly
(series premières all six episodes Wednesday, Aug. 13 on Prime Video)
This is a sweet father-daughter drama set inside a spy thriller. Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-0) plays David Jung, a dad who really tried to do the right thing way back when. But his now grown daughter (Reina Hardesty, The Secret Art of Human Flight) has a couple of beefs with his (lack of) parenting. But nothing unites scrapping family members like a common foe. In this case, it's the international spy network Caddis, headed by a steely boss played by Piper Perabo (Yellowstone). Lock and load for some ultraviolent fun.
● Fixed
(animated movie premières Wednesday, Aug. 13 on Netflix)
NETFLIX
Summer is no time — especially not this summer — to stay serious for very long. Right on cue, here comes an animated movie about a dog named Bull (voiced by Adam Devine). He is hoping to live his best life for one more day. One more day until he goes to the vet for the title procedure. And if you have fooled yourself into thinking neutering is not a devastation for pooches, you better sit down for this very X-rated day with Bull and his very high canine libido. Co-star voices provided by Kathryn Hahn, Idris Elba, Michelle Buteau and a handful of ex-Saturday Night Live talent including Fred Armisen, Bobby Moynihan and Beck Bennett.
● Night Always Comes
(movie premières Friday on Netflix)
ALLYSON RIGGS / NETFLIX
There are many ways to express family love, as therapists across the land will tell you. Screen fiends get two of those archetypes courtesy of actress Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman). As Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the big screen, she plays the mama bear, and her wrath knows no limits. In Night Always Comes, Lynette (Kirby) is so desperate to keep her big brother from ever again being forced into care, she hatches a plan to con some rich guy, steal a car and take on drug lords in Portland all played out on a 12-hour deadline. Lynette knows this is crazy, but family is family, right? And Kirby is pretty impressive, so press play. Based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin.
● Long Story Short
(animated series premières Friday, Aug. 22 on Netflix)
NETFLIX
From left: Lisa Edelstein, Ben Feldman, Max Greenfield, Abbi Jacobson and Paul Reiser provide the voices in Long Story Short.
NETFLIX
Popular wisdom states that there are two kinds of smart people: those who've watched and loved BoJack Horseman (2014-20) and those who have not yet gotten around to the story of an oversexed, washed-up former TV star (voiced, despairingly, by Will Arnett). Netflix subscribers in both camps will want to mark the calendar for this latest from BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, which has already been confirmed for a second season ahead of its première. Confidence!
Long Story Short is an animated time-travel comedy about one family. Think This Is Us, but less crying. Voice stars include Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, Abbi Jacobson and Max Greenfield.
Broadcast dates subject to change. Questions, comments welcome at denise.duguay@winnipegfreepress.com.
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Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
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Nobody 2 opens Friday at Grant Park, McGillivray, Polo Park and St. Vital cinemas. Randall KingReporter In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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Published Aug 12, 2025 • Last updated 4 minutes ago • 5 minute read Sydney Chandler in 'Alien: Earth'. Photo by FX This review contains mild spoilers for 'Alien: Earth,' Season 1. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account – – – FX's new 'Alien' prequel, 'Alien: Earth,' batters viewers expecting Xenomorph horror from an additional, less expected angle: The series is practically drowning in 'Peter Pan' metaphors that don't quite work. That's partly by design; this is a show about infelicitous hybrids. What happens when things combine that once couldn't, and perhaps shouldn't? The Pan references come mostly from a nefarious young trillionaire named Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) who founded Prodigy, one of the five major corporations controlling the globe. He relishes reading J.M. Barrie passages aloud to his 'Lost Boys,' a group of six powerful and virtually immortal synthetic creatures into whom Kavalier's company has transferred the consciousnesses of six dying children. A prodigy himself, Kavalier theorizes that children have greater flexibility and potential. So while the 'synths,' his prototype for this version of human immortality, look like adults, they behave and speak like the kids they once were. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The first of these (and Kavalier's favorite) is a sprightly, charming synth named Wendy (Sydney Chandler), whom we first meet as Marcy (Florence Bensberg), a thoughtful 12-year-old girl losing her battle to cancer. As the 'eldest,' she mentors and leads the other five: Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), Curly (Erana James), Nibs (Lily Newmark) and Tootles (Kit Young). The micro-society these hybrid beings form is as appealing as the grim, merely human society portrayed on-screen is predictable, ugly and impoverished. Ajayi, Gourav and Chandler are particularly good at channeling their characters' childlike worldview, and the setting the synths inhabit is just plain fun. Fans of Hawley's show 'Legion' know how much the writer-director loves a swanky supernatural training camp. The Lost Boys accordingly live on an idyllic Jurassic Park-style island called Neverland that feels aesthetically and tonally distinct from the dim, oppressive dystopias of the Alien franchise. There the six synths are tended, cosseted and monitored by a maternal psychiatrist of sorts named Dame Silvia (an underused Essie Davis), her husband Arthur (David Rysdahl), who handles most of the science, and Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), an older synthetic who manages the mission, the island's security, and – to the extent that he can – Kavalier's impulses and moods. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. You might be wondering how this story could productively intersect with the world we know from the other Alien films. Indeed, clocking in at only eight episodes, 'Alien: Earth' does feel a tad overstuffed. It is also, however, philosophically interested in unnatural hybrids, whether those are cyborgs, synths or newer, more horrifying trans-species combinations. It's fitting, therefore, that the character narratively linking these two plots – Marcy's (now Wendy's) older brother, working off his corporate debt as a lowly soldier-medic – is named Hermit (Alex Lawther). Known for climbing into vessels that are not theirs and operating from within, the hermit crab's modus operandi becomes a central metaphor for the series. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. That isn't new terrain for the franchise; in fact, it maps nicely onto that scene in 'Aliens' where Sigourney Weaver's Ripley dons an armored, body-shaped forklift to fight the alien queen. But it is a slightly different spin on the genre's usual kind of body horror. Hawley's series is less interested in predatory parasitism (or incubation, or rape) than in occupation – specifically, the proposition that consciousness and identity can remain unaffected by whichever body 'you' take on. That said, there's plenty of gore and the aliens certainly don't get short shrift. 'Alien: Earth' is set in 2120, two years before the events of Ridley Scott's 1979 'Alien,' and the series opens much like the original, with a crew unhappily manning a (different) Weyland-Yutani spaceship called the USCSS Maginot. They're on a 65-year mission transporting a set of specimens for the Yutani Corporation (one of Prodigy's four corporate rivals). Production designer Andy Nicholson is eerily faithful to the look and style of the original; even the cryopods look the same. The vibe, too, is similar, with the worn-down crew members acting more like exhausted truck drivers than space officers as they wearily discuss fractions of shares. The pilot only delivers slivers of the story viewers will come to know, and I won't get into the alien plot to avoid spoilers, but there's plenty of Xenomorph carnage. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. There is, in any event, a crash. The Maginot lands on a building belonging to Boy Kavalier, and the plot really gets going when Hermit ends up at the crash site on a search-and-rescue mission. Alerted to the presence of alien species on board, Kavalier decides to try to contain them himself, rather than hand them over to Yutani. That bureaucratic spat between trillionaires is the official pretext for much that transpires on the series. The show isn't perfect. An initially promising rivalry between two of the show's more interesting and powerful characters – Morrow (Babou Ceesay), a cyborg working for Yutani, and Kavalier's deputy Kirsh – ends up feeling more arbitrary than cathartic. Ceesay's exceptional performance benefits from a script that gives him space to break down. Olyphant's character, by contrast, remains a tantalizing cipher for much of the series. But because it isn't clear what a synthetic of his vintage feels or 'wants,' his rare outbursts are more confusing than compelling. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Chandler is the series MVP. As Wendy, her old attachment to her brother Hermit drives much of the action. That's hard to do without coming across as saccharine or cloying. Playing a kid-made-synth, Chandler needed to anchor and humanize a number of thought experiments: Does identity remain unaffected by the body it occupies? What will children do if given adult bodies and superhuman capabilities? How much does giftedness alienate (pun intended) the ordinary, and vice versa? She brings so much energy and charisma and curiosity and upstart authority to the role that she successfully camouflages some uglier features of her character's arc. In fact, if the series has a major flaw, it might be its failure to narratively temper Wendy's magnetism, which sometimes destabilizes and decenters the franchise's usual focus on (and commitment to) corporate dystopias. I keep coming back to a tonally weird moment in the finale in which two minor characters, both workers and victims of the hyper-capitalistic hellscape the series otherwise critiques, die in a predictably terrible way. The moment lands as celebratory. It felt like show itself had at that point been taken over by a perspective that wasn't quite its own. – – – Alien: Earth premieres with two episodes Aug. 12 on Disney+ Columnists World Weird Opinion Toronto & GTA
