Another month, another American cataclysm as the inciting incident for a conspiracy thriller streaming series.
Following Hulu’s “Paradise,” Netflix debuts limited series “Zero Day,” now streaming all six episodes.
“Zero Day” marks star Robert DeNiro’s first foray into scripted series TV, but one wishes it was in service of something better than … this.
Unlike “Paradise,” which begins turning over its cards at the end of its first episode, “Zero Day” doesn’t reveal its true intent until about episode three. The show is at its best and most dramatic when it gets to its raison d’etre in its sixth and final episode. But everything between the premiere and the finale is often predictable or feels like filler.
Like “Paradise,” “Zero Day” is another TV series that shoulda been a movie. Or maybe a four-hour series, but six hours is too much.
Though too long, “Zero Day” writers/creators Eric Newman (“Griselda,” “The Watcher”) and Noah Oppenheim (“The Thing About Pam”) do have something timely to say and they express it through a stacked cast that includes Angela Bassett, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Matthew Modine, Dan Stevens and Bill Camp.
When all of America’s electrical systems go down for a minute, leading to 3,402 deaths as planes crash and subways collide with one another, U.S. President Mitchell (Davis) appoints former President George Mullen (DeNiro) to head a Zero Day Commission that investigates the cause of the catastrophe.
Much political intrigue follows involving his wife (Allen), his current assistant (Plemons), his former chief of staff (Britton), the U.S. Speaker of the House (Modine), a cable news bloviator (Stevens), the CIA director (Camp), a tech executive (Hoffman) and Mullen’s daughter, Alex (Caplan), a congresswoman who accuses her father’s commission and its power to suspend Constitutional protections as an affront to civil liberties.
The show’s willingness to take on that thorny question is commendable but after it’s raised, it largely gets lost for several episodes while unraveling the show’s mysteries.
George has a lot on his plate, and it doesn’t get easier when he starts hearing the Sex Pistols’ song “Who Shot Bambi” at inopportune moments. Is he hallucinating? Or is he being targeted by the Zero Day conspirators who may or may not be Russians?
“Zero Day” is most compelling in its final hour as DeNiro goes toe-to-toe with the instigator of the attack, who uses a both sides defense for the actions taken (“Half the country is caught up in lies and conspiracies and the other half is shouting about pronouns and ranking their grievances … the delusional that think an election is open to interpretation!”)
Mullen retorts, “Destroying democracy is not the way to save it!”
That dramatically juicy, politically relevant scene might be what got such a stellar cast to sign on, but “Zero Day” takes too meandering a route to get to its salient point.
‘Suits LA’
When reruns of USA Network’s 2011-19 series “Suits” became an unlikely hit on Netflix in summer 2023, it was only a matter of time before there was a spin-off.
“Suits LA” (9 p.m. Sunday, WPXI) relocates the setting from New York and introduces a whole new cast, but series lead Ted Black (Robbie Amell) mentions Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), lead character in the original “Suits,” so down the road Harvey will visit the west coast.
The new series retains the original’s theme song (“Greenback Boogie”), the “Blue Sly” tone and the tendency to focus on legal maneuvering rather than courtroom theatrics.
Black, a former federal prosecutor with daddy issues who relocated to Los Angeles 15 years earlier, faces a decision about whether he and his best friend/legal firm partner Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) should merge their company with another firm. (The exposition explaining all this is sometimes messy and unclear, complicated by flashbacks and present-day scenes in look-alike office buildings.)
Because Black & Associates largely serves entertainment industry clients, early episodes feature actual performers (the late John Amos, Brian Baumgartner from “The Office”) as fictionalized versions of themselves seeking career counsel. This provides a showcase for lighter story elements, particularly young co-worker Leah (Alice Lee), who educates attorney Erica (Lex Scott Davis) on movies and TV shows.
Hard-charging, bull-headed, tightly wound Ted has a short fuse, but the show takes steps to humanize him through flashbacks and by finding parallels between a criminal legal case he takes on and relationships among the show’s primary characters. This gives the show slightly more depth than many broadcast series today, but it’s nowhere near the entertaining, complex psychological machinations on display in “The White Lotus,” which airs on HBO at the same time.
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‘Grosse Point Garden Club’
A “Desperate Housewives” wannabe, NBC’s “Grosse Pointe Garden Society” (10 p.m. Sunday) introduces a phalanx of paper-thin characters enmeshed in scandals and a shared secret about what appears to be a murder, seen in flashforward scenes. This soap, created by Jenna Bans (“Good Girls”) and Bill Krebs (“Franklin Bash”), feels derivative and shallow.
Channel surfing
CBS ordered a “Blue Bloods” spin-off series for the 2025-26 TV season that will see Danny Regan (Donnie Wahlberg) take a job with the Boston PD in “Boston Blue.” … Max canceled “Bookie” after two seasons. … The reformulated “Project Runway” coming to Freeform later this year did not invite Tim Gunn to return (boooo!)as a series regular. … NBC’s “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” drew 14.8 million viewers across NBC and Peacock Sunday night. “SNL” returns March 1 with Shane Gillis as host and Tate McRae as musical guest; Lady Gaga is host and musical guest on March 8. … HBO reversed its previous decision of a four-day delay in putting the main segment of “Last Week Tonight” on YouTube and is back to posting it on YouTube on Mondays.