are making a comeback. Studios and theaters have been vying for movie
goers to return given covid hesitancy and increasingly fierce competition
from streaming services. And the big studios and streaming giants.
Battling it out means there's no shortage of content from movie and
TV viewers.
NPR TV critic Eric Deggans joins us now to talk more about what we're
watching and how we're watching it. It's great to have you with us,
Eric and I think you know, I like a lot of people have. What four
or five streaming apps yet can never find anything to watch. So help
us out. Where are you watching? You're the expert
There's a bunch of great shows right now. Better call Saul on and
see is in the final episodes of the series. It's going to go away
in a little bit, and it's the best show on television, so people
should definitely check it out. There's a show called the Bear on
FX that has finished its first season run. But it's a really great
show about a chef.
Who returns to his family's kind of rundown sandwich shop and tries
to run it. Um, there's also a wonderful show called The Old Man on
FX that Jeff Bridges is starring in so a lot of great stuff on television
and a lot of great stuff that you can catch up on pretty easily.
You mentioned the old man, We have a clip of it. Let's take a look.
Apparently we can match the transponders location to the location
of the
Phone moving with it and then reverse engineer the number.
That one surprised me.
I didn't know that was the thing we could do.
I tell you this part that you remind you that you have no idea how
different the game is that the last time you played it.
And partly because you've got about three minutes before they're
on top of you. So it's hard to go wrong with Jeff Bridges and John
Lithgow. What's that show all about?
So Jeff Bridges plays a CIA agent who was living under an assumed
name for a long time and suddenly he gets the sense that someone
from his past is trying to kill him. And he thinks the CIA maybe
trying to help them do it, So he tries to go on the run. He's also
he has a daughter that he's trying to keep hidden as well. We talked
to and he winds up in listing the aid of a woman who's kind of innocent
to it all played by Amy Brenneman. It's a
It really interesting series That's as much about aging and about
dealing with the legacy of all the decisions you've made as an adult.
There are points in this show that can kind of feel like an acting
exercise. There's a little too much, you know, really sort of heart
rending scenes between two people. But when the show really gets
going, it is really wonderful. You mentioned the FX show the bear,
which is streaming right now on Hulu.
That's my favorite show. At the moment, I will say it is stressful
to watch, but it's enthralling. As you mentioned it's about the superstar
chef who returns home to Chicago takes over the family business after
the death by suicide of his brother. I didn't know my brother was
using drugs.
What does that say?
As we got older, I realized I didn't know anything about him.
Really?
He stopped letting me into the restaurant a couple of years ago.
You just cut me off cold and that
That hurt.
You know?
So that's the actor Jeremy Allen White. Why is that show connecting
with you, Eric? What's wonderful to me about this show is that it
depicts a very specific environment, the kitchen in a struggling
sandwich shop in Chicago. I grew up in Gary, Indiana, right next
to Chicago. Chicago has a very specific field. They do it great job
evoking what those kind of sandwich shops are like, and the way people
yell at each other behind behind the counter, even though the paper
Trains are right there can hear them. On top of all of that. You
know, this is a guy who was trained in some of the best kitchens
in New York and that he's trying to bring some of those values in
there, and he has quite a quite a tough time about it.
But you get to learn a little bit about how you know those kitchens
work. It's a great character study to you eventually find out that
a lot of the characters are hiding things from themselves. And all
of that gets peeled away as you start to see them have friction with
each other and try to deal with this situation that there and I really
enjoyed the show. Let's talk about Netflix because they are changing
their business model. So you're either going to pay more for your
subscription or you'll pay less, but there will be
Mercial.
What do you think? Are the glory days of streaming over? I don't
know about that. I think what is happening is that Wall Street is
being forced to have a more realistic view of what streaming can
actually do. Um Netflix offered this promise to investors and Wall
Street that they could continually and constantly increase their
subscriber account. And they found that in the wake of increasing
their prices this year in the wake of problems with inflation and
people
Looking, you know, at their bottom line a little closer.
And in the wake of a flood of competition from other streaming services
like Disney, Plus and Hulu. Their subscriber count has gone down
by about 1.2 million people. So I think we're gonna see less spending
on new projects. I think we're going to see them try to crack down
on the 100 million households who are getting Netflix for free.
Um, but sharing passwords, and I think we're going to see them try
to offer a cheaper tier of subscriber. So if they offer you a much
reduced fee, and you watch a few ads, it might be a win win for everybody.
If you think about it the way we watch changing what we watch Eric