Guide To Great Shows On Network TV
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In the age of streaming content and prestige TV, it's easy to forget that old school TV networks are still out here pumping out television shows. I've caught up with a bunch of this season's offerings. The networks have launched new series that adopt familiar formats. Cop shows, lawyer shows, doctor shows, but each has something particular to recommend it. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Glenn Weldon. It's just the two of us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, so let's get right to it.

Linda Holmes, you came to me with a passel of network TV recommendations, but all of them are also made available on streaming platforms. So they're network TV. Yep. Technically, we will walk you through all of that. Your first pick is high potential on ABC and also on Hulu. Caitlin Olsen of Hacks and Always Sunny plays a single mom who works cleaning a police station building.

But her sharp powers of observation and deduction ultimately lead the cops to hire her as a crime-solving consultant on which television shows are based. It's based on a French series, and the showrunner is Drew Goddard, who's got, I think it's safe to say, a very pop culture happy hour friendly pedigree. He wrote for Buffy and Angel and Alias and Lost. He has screenwriting credits for The Martian and Cloverfield. And he directed and co-wrote one of my favorite movies, The Cabin in the Woods. Is that why you picked this show? Why'd you pick this show?

Well, I originally started watching this show because of Caitlin Olsen. I'm not necessarily a big It's Always Sunny person, but I loved her on Hacks, and I've seen her in some other things. And I think she's really wonderful and funny. I'm also always interested in shows where they're taking a concept that has already been done as, in this case, as you mentioned, a French show. And, you know, it's interesting because the pilot for this, he was very close to the pilot for the French show, which, by the way, you can also dig up on Hulu.

You know, I was talking recently about this genre that I have been referring to as gifted eccentric procedurals, the GEPs. Sure. They are not new. They go back at least as far as Sherlock Holmes. But...

It can be those kind of familiar genres that hit the spot in some cases. I think she's really funny. And sometimes you'll see her character kind of take a relative, like it's a detail. It's cool that she noticed, but she will really go nuts drawing conclusions about it. This house is immaculate. The owner is a tidiness freak, except...

All of these curtains are fastened with a tie back except for one for some reason. That's odd, isn't it? You're telling me this woman who meticulously arranges her couch pillows doesn't care about her curtains? I also am not really sure whether there's such a thing as a consultant who does exactly the same work as police officers but is not a police officer. Well, you know, I mean...

This, you called it what, a gifted eccentric procedural, is that what you call it? Yes. Okay. Baked into that, and there's been many, many of them over the years, as you mentioned, is this notion that the cops are incompetent or the cops need help or the cops, you know, and that also goes back to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Right. These procedurals often depend on the appeal of the non-eccentric handler, you could call them, who here is the Daniel Sunjata character. Right.

And I think their relationship is appealing. I do not know for sure whether they plan to romanticize that relationship or leave them as friends.

They have solid chemistry. I like him. I like the fact that they kind of make each other... I don't know. They enjoy each other's company, I think I would say. Without it getting too lethal weapon, this is the crazy one and this is the... They both get to be right sometimes. And I appreciate that. Anyway, I think a lot of this comes down to the appeal of the people. This is your basic network TV gifted eccentric procedural. I don't think you should expect to be stunned by it. And I...

thoroughly believe that everyone should be highly skeptical of propaganda about IQ and how important IQ is. You know, given all those things, it is true that they just make her kind of a gifted noticer of details mostly. And, you know, I appreciate that. But she's also kind of obnoxious because she's cast as someone who is so observant of every little detail that she's impatient with the world. She does not suffer fools. But

But if you're going to have that as a main character, you need somebody like Caitlin Olsen to kind of soften it, to kind of at least make her palatable. I think that's right, because her kid in an early scene is very embarrassed by her because she knows she goes to the store and she goes does all her shopping and she knows exactly what the total should be. And when it's not that she challenges the cashier until she figures out that the kid sneaked something into the cart. And that's why the total is off.

But obviously it becomes a big standoff with the cashier because she's so certain that she knows how much the total should be. And the kid is obviously embarrassed and frustrated by that. And there is a kind of a running story that eventually comes out about a missing person in her life that she wants to kind of locate. And that's why she's willing to work with the police is that in return she wants them to help her find this person.

It is what it is, but I enjoy her enough that the fun of it is appealing to me. So, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So that is High Potential on ABC and also on Hulu. Next up is Matlock on CBS and also Paramount+. Kathy Bates plays Madeline Matlock, a 70-something woman who charms her way into working at a high-powered law firm and quickly starts winning cases by virtue of the fact that she is widely underestimated and even ignored. You can call me Maddie.

First day on the job, thrilled to be part of the team. Oh no, this is going to be a nightmare. Be nice. Nice? Don't tell me to be nice. I need to be trained by senior partners, not senior citizens. But there's something else going on with her. Now this isn't a sequel to the old Andy Griffith procedural. Maddie references that old show as a joke. Talk to me about Matlock. Yeah, the appeal of Matlock to me, one is that it comes from Jenny Snyder-Ehrman on the creative side, who also did Jane the Virgin. Right.

So that is somebody who knows how to kind of play with genre and with things that have a little bit of a meta appeal to them. And as you mentioned, this definitely has that in terms of its references to the original Matlock show from the 80s and 90s. I do think it's quite clever to suggest that a 70-something woman, a

would not be somebody who necessarily would be instantly feared by a conventional legal establishment. And that's not because they'd be right. It's just because I think it acknowledges the discrimination that somebody in her situation would probably encounter and her

You know, as you mentioned, she kind of learns to use that to her advantage because they don't see her coming and that kind of thing. The appeal of this is all in this really lovely Kathy Bates performance, which I think is so – it's really well regulated. It's really well kind of modeled and well formed to what they're trying to do here. And I appreciated it very much on that basis. Okay. I've only seen the pilot, but man –

This is a great pilot. This should be taught in schools, this pilot. It sets up the characters. It sets up their dynamics. It tells a really tight little story and then has a last act rug pull that really keeps you watching. Sure does. And, you know, also the people behind the scenes are doing good work. The casting director's

I like seeing veteran character actor Sam Anderson on my screen playing somebody we can't talk about. But I also like the duo of the first year associates she works with, Billy and Sarah, who are played by David Del Rio and Leah Lewis. Those two could just be the Greek chorus kind of like being in the background. But they actually get enough time and screen time, even in the pilot, to kind of delineate themselves. Yeah.

And, you know, you also have Bo Bridges as the head of the law firm here. And just to have a scene where Bo Bridges and Kathy Bates are on your television screen. Yeah. I mean, you're like, these are two Hollywood actors, but you also get a sense maybe that they're looking at each other like, did you think we'd end up here? But like, they're getting that check. They're getting that paper. Yeah. And this is a show where one of the things I like about it is that not just in the pilot, but as you go through the series, you're

They enjoy kind of showing you something and then later showing it to you again in a way that recontextualizes it. And you start to see what this very, very intelligent woman was doing that maybe at the time you didn't realize she was doing.

because they can kind of go back and give you more detail. And then when you go back and watch it, you say, oh, now I get what she was doing. Oh, now I get why she did it that way. I enjoy that. So I like that little touch too. But I agree with you. I think that the cast top to bottom is really solid here, led by this really extraordinarily wonderful Kathy Bates work, I think. All right. So that is Matlock on CBS and Paramount+. We're going to take a break. After the break, we've got a bunch of doctor shows.

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And we are back. Next up is, boy, we've got to talk about this one, Linda. This is Dr. Odyssey on ABC and also Hulu. Joshua Jackson plays Max, a newly arrived doctor on the cruise ship The Odyssey, which is captained by Don Johnson's Captain Massey. This is a Ryan Murphy joint he co-created with Joe Bacon and John Robert Bates. They all worked together on Odyssey.

John Robin Bates is also the guy behind shows like Brothers and Sisters and The Slap. We all remember The Slap. This is a deeply queer brain trust, the three of them, right there. So talk to me about this show, Linda. So Dr. Odyssey is, I would say, a little bit love boat, a little bit house, a little bit dynasty. And then it's just got this...

Yeah.

And rather than doing what you might expect, which is that he's sort of distant in some way, he just immediately starts having an affair with somebody and he immediately starts like messing around with people. He's completely accessible to everyone, even though he is also someone who is carrying around, of course, sadness, because that's how it must be. The funny thing about this show is that every single week, every episode is a different cruise that they go on. And...

It's like one is wellness week, there's singles week, and plastic surgery week. And so they will then jump off to create a couple of little stories that come from the guests, but then these serialized stories.

you know, stories among the crew. It is very goofy. And I think intentionally so, you know, they treat a fractured penis in the first episode. And I think you don't do that unless you are getting out there and saying, you know, the thing you're wondering whether this is, it's that. And I sort of appreciated it on that basis. Although it's,

This is a watch it and fold the laundry show for me. Boy, I thought I wasn't a cruise person. I'm definitely not a cruise person. This show feels so claustrophobic to me. If I went on a cruise and the pool was that small, that little postage. Now I get it. It's a set. It's not an actual cruise ship. But like everything about that cruise.

The show just feels cramped in. I also didn't understand the rules of this show. So in the pilot, Don Johnson gets this monologue where he's telling Joshua Jackson what life is like on this cruise ship. You cannot judge our passengers. We're tending to their dreams. We have folks on here who've saved for years, sometimes our whole lives, just to pay for this experience at sea.

Now, what he doesn't say in that speech that he really should have is, by the way, there is no HR department of any kind on the high seas. So just go nuts. Yes. Everybody goes nuts with each other and with the guests. Yes. There's got to be a rule there, right? The other thing to mention is that the entire idea of being a ship's doctor is presented on this show in a very strange way. I do kind of like some of the restrictions that it puts on them, like they don't have all the equipment they'd have in a hospital and sometimes having

doctors work around those kinds of limitations, that can be fun. However, there are also times when like there is a moment in this show when someone dies and

It becomes clear on this show nobody really has anything – has any idea what to do when someone dies. And it's like, no, man, there's way too many people on this ship and you're out on this ship all the time. People die. People die sometimes. That's absolutely going to be – and so there's this moment where they're trying to get rid of a body and they wind up putting it on like a linen cart. Yeah.

And wheeling it, like, past the swimming pool and just hoping that nobody notices that they're wheeling a body around. It's like, no, that's not...

That's not, they got a procedure. I guarantee you there's a whole section of the manual for dying on the cruise ship. You know, the same thing happens with like somebody going overboard. They act like it's an absolutely like, this can happen, right? Yeah. Listen, Joshua Jackson, I loved him in The Mighty Ducks when he was little. Then I loved him when he was on Dawson's Creek. This is not my favorite iteration of him, honestly, because he's too confident. And that's not my favorite version of him. Yeah.

Listen, if we're going to have like sexy salt and pepper hair.

You know, Silver Fox, Pacey, that's fine. I like it. I'm here for it. I will put it on in the background and fold the laundry. Go nuts and do that. That is Dr. Odyssey on ABC and also on Hulu. Next up is the similarly named, but very different in tone, Doc, a medical drama on Fox that also streams on Hulu. Molly Parker plays the brilliant but arrogant Dr. Amy Larson, who suffers a brain injury that erases eight years of her life, including patients and loved ones and I don't know.

technique, one would imagine. This show follows her as she attempts to get on with her life. What is it about this show that sets it apart? Why don't you pick this one? So high concept premise, like very, very strange premise. Eight years of your life lost very neatly, right? And of course you come to learn that she is

has blocked out a period of time during which she had a family tragedy and she got divorced and a bunch of other bad things happened. She wakes up thinking her life is one way and actually it's another way because she has forgotten eight years of it. I do think that's kind of intriguing. I like this lead performance. I like the fact that they brought in Scott Wolf, who you may know from Party of Five and other similar things, who is playing a much more morally gray, to say the least, kind of dude. Mm-hmm.

And I think that's an interesting choice for him. I think what I like about this is that they do a reasonably good job. She's also got a bit of the gifted eccentric, right? She's somebody who it's clear that particularly in the last eight years, she became a very harsh person and she didn't make herself a lot of friends. And of course, she wakes up and she doesn't really remember all that stuff.

But she's difficult and she's stubborn, but she's also very, very brilliant in figuring out medical mysteries. So here you're back to some house kind of vibes. And I love a medical mystery. I love it when they figure out, oh, it's not lupus after all. It's something else. That's a great part of a medical show for me. One thing that can happen is that because the premise is so out there, it's like it gives them options to.

to explore things that I haven't exactly seen before because who would think of this? Like what happens if you wake up and you were mean to your husband and so you're not together anymore, but now you're awake and you're a nice person again. Like what happens then and what happens to your colleagues who you were mean to, but you woke up and you don't remember it. I do think in a way, the fact that it's such a goofy idea is,

something that leaves open some dramatic possibilities. And then you get the patients and she solves medical mysteries. I like that. This does it for me. Right. Well, I only saw the pilot, but goofy premise, but the tone of the pilot, at least, I mean, the pilot's kind of a major bummer, as you'd expect. She's confronted with this new reality. There's a

A lot of tears. I really like Molly Parker, though, as this... She's not Carrie Coon. Get that out of your head. She's not Carrie Coon, but... Oh, my gosh. She reminds me so much of Carrie Coon, though. But she's great, and she's asked to do a lot here. I also really like the actor John Ecker, who plays her kind of secret hookup before the accident, before the injury. I like that guy's bone structure. I like that guy's facial symmetry. Yeah. My question is about tone, Linda, because in that pilot, you've got these big...

You're also setting up Scott Wolf, as you mentioned, as this kind of mustache twirly, venal grasping villain character. Yeah.

So those two things together suggest to me that we're going to steer into some kind of melodramatic telenovela vibes. Yes. I also wonder, does the show try to keep it more grounded than that? Where does the show fall? Yeah, they do. I mean, I think ultimately they want this show to be about her effort to kind of find a balance where she's finding herself again. Because obviously there are all these open questions about can she be a doctor again and what would that require? Right.

because you lost eight years of experience and training. And, you know, so there's some of that. So she wants to get back to being a doctor. She's trying to reestablish her relationships with both family and colleagues, people like that. But it does have a, it has a heaviness to it.

that you don't find on something like Dr. Odyssey at all. Ten of these episodes were available to critics, and I watched all ten in one day. So that's always a mark of something. It's like you can't argue with the fact that you kept hitting the button, you know? Yep, that's true. Okay, so that is Doc on Fox. It's streaming on Hulu.

Finally, we've got St. Dennis Medical, which you'd be forgiven for thinking of as the office in a hospital. It's a mockumentary-style comedy in which Allison Tolman plays a nurse named Alex who works very hard in an underfunded Oregon hospital. The great Wendy McClendon Covey plays Joyce, a doctor turned executive director desperate to shake things up and improve the hospital's reputation. What is it that I always say? What's the most infectious thing in a hospital? C. diff?

No. Antibiotic-resistant staph. No. I think it's pneumonia. No, you guys. The most infectious thing in a hospital is a smile. Now, I had already checked this out even before we were going to do this show, just on the basis of it's got so many actors I love. There's Tolman, there's McClendon Covey, David Alan Greer is also in this. It airs on NBC and streams on Peacock. Linda, why'd you recommend this one? I think it's exactly what you said. It's cast, and it's just...

top to bottom, it's people I think are really good at being at doing what they're being asked to do, which is complicated because I think Alison Tolman doesn't necessarily have this problem because her character is a bit more of a grounded person. But both the hospital administrator played by Wendy McClendon Covey and the doctor played by David Alan Greer, they could easily veer off into cartoonishness. They're still very, very funny.

But they don't become not people, right? And I think the fact that there is shared creative DNA between this show and Superstore makes a lot of sense to me. I think Superstore had kind of a similar compassionate workplace approach.

Yeah.

And I think that from a comedy perspective, St. Dennis Medical is trying to do some of those same things. You know, the hospital administrator is constantly trying to figure out how to differentiate herself and differentiate the hospital because they're always, they feel in competition. So she's trying to deal with very limited resources. And there's a great line in the pilot where Alison Tolman's character says, you know, I got this

where I'm a supervising nurse, and it came with a small pay bump and a large responsibility bump. And that's just a really, I think, relatable thing in many workplaces, including and maybe especially nursing. Do you like this show? I do. I do. I mean, as I say, I downed several episodes at once. Didn't feel bad about it afterwards. Didn't get that Dr. Odyssey hangover where you glance at your phone and you're like, ooh, 45 minutes gone. Yeah.

Listen, these are all the same and yet they're all very different, right? They're all network kind of traditional setting, cop, lawyer, doctor kind of settings. But they're all really different. And they're not all of the same quality. They're not all of the same thoughtfulness. But I think that one of the things about network TV is it can bring you different types of satisfaction and different types of entertainment and joy.

I think Matlock has a real, if you're one of those people who was happy to see Suits go around again, because it had cases of the week, but also kind of serialized stories about the attorneys. It's a little bit Suits-y. It hits that spot for me a bit. They're all really different, but I think they're all worth checking out if you're kind of looking for a show that's not going to break you with how depressing it is.

And I'm grateful for that, even though, you know, all of these fit into fairly familiar slots. Okay, that's great. Okay, so that's St. Dennis Medical on NBC, also streaming on Peacock.

Well, we want to know what you're watching and enjoying right now. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for watching all these shows, buddy. Of course. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show on public radio, and you get to listen...

to all of our episodes, sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fatima and edited by Mike Katzeff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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