What to watch this weekend: Too Much is a good thing on Netflix – and it’s still funny in Philadelphia | Canada Voices

Too Much, Netflix

Lena Dunham’s new transatlantic romantic comedy sees New York PR gal Jessica (Hacks’s Megan Stalter) cross the pond to London after a bad breakup – and splash right into a too-soon relationship with flat-broke indie musician Felix (The White Lotus’s Will Sharpe). The Girls creator’s latest soars when the series zooms in on Jessica and Felix thanks to inventively intimate, emotionally grounded writing and great chemistry, both sexual and comic, between the leads. Too Much is also psychologically perceptive in how it explores Jessica’s TikTok-enabled obsession with her ex’s fiancée. But the characters that surround the lovebirds in London are less sharply drawn – and, though Dunham co-created the show with her British husband, musician Luis Felber, an American perspective permeates. Still, a convincing comeback for TV’s former enfant terrible – one that will potentially bridge fan bases of both Catastrophe and Emily in Paris.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Disney+

This cartoonish coal-black comedy has returned for a 17th season – a record for a live-action American sitcom – with a pair of new episodes now streaming. The first revisits the Gang’s crossover episode with fellow Philadelphia-set sitcom Abbott Elementary from a different, darker angle – one with more curse words (I can’t believe what they got Quinta Brunson to say as an earnest second-grade teacher) and jokes about 9/11 (or jokes about 9/11 jokes, I suppose). The second is a stand-alone episode that’s a perfect example of the cult series’ surreal, sociopathic anti-charm – with Charlie (Charlie Day), Mac (Rob Mac) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) attending a gala where they hope to find a rich investor to help franchise Paddy’s Pub. Instead, they meet a rich heir – played with perfect puckishness by Alex Wolff (recently Leonard Cohen in So Long, Marianne) – who takes them partying. I’m not sure this show is as morally bankrupt as it pretends to be, though; this episode was a refreshing riposte to increasingly casual depiction of cocaine use in TV comedy.

Dexter: Resurrection, Paramount+

I’m not sure I would personally compare Michael C. Hall’s serial-killer-killing serial killer in any way to Jesus Christ, but he has indeed risen after his apparent death at the end of Dexter: New Blood in 2022. That limited series culminated in Dexter Morgan instructing his son Harrison (Jack Alcott) how to commit patricide in the snow – but somehow he survived that Oedipal self-own and this new sequel series picks up with him in a coma (first two episodes, July 11). As he comes out of it, scenes in which Dexter converses with the spectres of dead victims and perpetrators from the show’s original run (2006 to 2013) will please hard-core fans – though casual ones may have to pause to Google what the deal was, for instance, with Jimmy Smits’s character back in 2008. Thankfully, it’s not long before Dexter’s in New York trying to help his violence-inclined son get out of a jam – and on the hunt for another murder addict who doesn’t follow his same rigorous code of quasi-ethics. Hall’s performance is as weirdly compelling as ever, and Resurrection does interrogate whether its own subject matter is an unhealthy obsession in a plotline featuring Peter Dinklage and Uma Thurman.

Murderbot, Apple TV+

Dexter’s use of internal monologue no doubt had an influence on this sci-fi comedy, the season finale of which lands on Apple TV+ this week (July 11). Alexander Skarsgard plays a robot rent-a-cop who has secretly developed free will and murderous fantasies about the humans he works for – but has decided to put them on hold because a) he doesn’t really want to be melted down and b) he’s too busy binging streaming entertainment with his inner eye to really revolt. Murderbot’s Ontario-shot first season, which should please anyone who grew up on Douglas Adams, comprises short episodes that are best binged. Keep an eye out for the Hearn Generating Station, the Rockwood Conservation Area and Canadian talent including and beyond main cast members Tamara Podemski and Tattiawna Jones.

Universal Language, Crave

This geography-warping absurdist comedy, named the top Canadian feature film of 2024 by the Toronto Film Critics Association, became available to stream on Crave, perhaps wryly, on Independence Day south of the border. “In Matthew Rankin’s audacious, imaginative and wonderfully weird new Canadian fairy tale, wild turkeys brazenly steal the eyeglasses of schoolchildren, Tim Hortons signage is spelled out in Farsi, the musical catalogue of Burton Cummings is recited by reverential Persian poets, and the fate of the entire world can be changed by the discovery of a 500-rial bill frozen under thick inches of ice,” Globe and Mail film critic Barry Hertz wrote in his Critic’s Pick review when the film was released in cinemas in February. “Welcome to the Winnipeg of Universal Language, which feels like the bastard love child between Guy Maddin and Abbas Kiarostami – and just might be one of the best films, Canadian or otherwise, that you are likely to see this year.”