Dad Shows in Brief: 'Eric,' 'Your Honor,' 'Tires,' Hitler
Checking with some popular Netflix Dad Shows
I was planning to write about Mayor of Kingstown this week, but I’m in a bit of a time crunch with paid work at the moment. I have a lot to say about Kingstown, and it’s a Taylor Sheridan show, so I’m going to hold off until I can treat it with the respect it deserves. Look for that sometime in the coming weeks.
Instead, today I’m going to do brief check-ins with the four Dad-ish shows in the Netflix Top 10 at the moment: Eric, Your Honor, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, and Tires. There are Dad Shows everywhere if you know where to look.
2. Eric
I reviewed Eric for TV Guide last week. I thought it was good. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Vincent, a puppeteer on a Sesame Street-style show in mid-80s New York whose son goes missing to punish Vincent for being a bad father. He’s a selfish alcoholic who’s very hard on people. Half of the show is a psychological drama about Vincent’s mental state as he confronts the wreckage of his life and builds a puppet named Eric to try to get his son to come home, and the other half is a British investigative procedural following the detective on the case.
It’s kind of a Dad Show, because it’s literally about being a dad, but it’s more of a Mom Show. Women love Benedict Cumberbatch, but men are pretty indifferent to him. His posh, prickly, emotionally vulnerable thing is not a male fantasy.
If Eric were a true Dad Show, Vincent would go looking for his son with guns blazing, not spend days moping around and building a puppet to try to convince him to come home. It’s time to be Liam Neeson, not Mister Rogers. Dads would be like “Couldn’t be me. I would never go to a gay club with some guys from work and do cocaine in the bathroom with a puppet while my son was living with the people from Dark Days.”
3. Your Honor
This is a Showtime show from a couple of years ago that Netflix licensed now that Showtime is basically kaput. It’s not new, but it’s new to Netflix. I watched a few episodes of it in Season 1. I liked the specificity of the New Orleans setting, but that was pretty much it. I remember that kid dying after he got hit by a car being unnecessarily brutal.
Your Honor is 100% a Dad Show. Bryan Cranston plays an honest judge who becomes corrupt in order to keep his son out of jail after he accidentally kills the son of a crime boss in a hit-and-run. That’s doing anything to protect your kids. Not putting on a puppet show.
7. Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial
World War II documentaries are a defining Dad Show genre. The History Channel built its brand on them. Tony Soprano used to watch them while eating ice cream. Netflix is getting into the WWII dad-umentary game with this docuseries.
It comes from Joe Berlinger, one of Netflix’s go-to true crime documentary filmmakers. Berlinger is known for his polished, cinematic reenactment footage, and there’s a lot of that here. It’s very cheesy. There aren’t a lot of new angles and information on World War II available to documentary filmmakers, so it’s pretty much the same stuff you’d see in any History Channel documentary, just with a bigger budget. Very standard Netflix fare.
9. Tires
Shane Gillis’ comedy about the goofball employees of a Pennsylvania auto repair shop made me laugh. “Aw fuck, I spilled coffee Coolatta all over my scratch-offs.” Stav eating in every scene like he’s Tony Soprano. I was charmed by its DIY energy.
Tires is a rare Millennial Dad Show. We usually think of Dad Shows as being for a 50+ audience, but younger dads like this one. My friend who has two little kids called me up to talk about it. He thought the bikini car wash episode was funny.
Shane Gillis is very talented. He threads the needle of being really dumb and offensive with being self-aware and perceptive really well. I like that kind of comedy. I only ever listened to one episode of his podcast, but he talked about reading the socialist anti-war writer Chris Hedges in it. He’s a smart, savvy guy, and it will be interesting to see where his career goes. It won’t be long before people are able to write about him without mentioning that he was fired from SNL before he ever appeared.
My House of the Dragon Season 2 review for TV Guide went up today. Allow myself to quote myself:
Two years ago, House of the Dragon proved that Game of Thrones still had gas in the tank (or fire in the dragon's belly, to be accurate). After the backlash to the flagship drama's rushed final season, the prequel series won over skeptical fans by taking a back-to-basics approach. It focused on what people loved about the world of Westeros in the first place — the politicking, the complex characters, the big, attention-grabbing moments. (Remember when that guy got his melon sliced? I'm saying "oh hell yeah" at the memory of it.)
But what happens after you've demonstrated the formula still works? House of the Dragon proved itself in Season 1, but where does it go in Season 2, when going back to basics has diminishing returns? The choice showrunner Ryan Condal makes is to stay the course and just keep making Game of Thrones — which is still good, but not as thrilling as it once was. It's not stale, but it is very familiar.