Recent Streaming Shows

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed!

I thought I would provide some brief comments on shows that have turned up recently on streaming service.

The Good Nurse (Netflix)

This movie tells the story of Charles Edmund Cullen, a nurse who moved from hospital to hospital, murdering as many as four hundred patients, according to Eddie Redmayne, who plays Cullen, in an interview with Stephen Colbert. As is the case of many serial killers, he is a white male who seems harmless on the surface. He gets a job at the hospital where Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) works, who is the actual good nurse of the title, as opposed to the phony admirable nurse, Cullen. Even Amy, who is a single parent with a heart condition that requires a transplant, lets her guard down when Cullen is supportive of her. He keeps secret her condition so she can work long enough to get health insurance coverage for the transplant. He even helps her with taking care of her daughter, Maya (Devyn McDowell).

Redmayne is effective in presenting this complex character who genuinely seems to care about Loughren and Maya. He only reveals his anger once, in a confrontation with Loughren in a diner, which hints at the monster below the seemingly pleasant surface. Chastain is very good at showing the ailing nurse who can be vulnerable emotionally but also morally upstanding when she needs to be.

The film reveals the astonishing way that the medical system enabled Cullen to commit his crimes. Once personnel at his prior workplaces suspected he was doing away with patients, they didn’t want to be exposed as liable for hiring him and not discovering his homicidal tendencies sooner. They, like the Catholic Church concerning pedophiles, simply allowed him to transfer to other sites where he could continue his horrific acts. The medical institutions, too, presented a phony façade and the movie implies they were guilty as accessories, which, however, would be difficult to prove in a court of law without definitive evidence of the knowledge of his crimes.

It is Loughren who is the honest one, who, when she suspects, after talking with other people, that her new friend, Cullen, is culpable, helps the police eventually apprehend him. During her collaboration with the police officers, she puts herself and her child in possible danger if Cullen found out about her aiding the authorities. There is a brief exchange between Loughren and Cullen which illustrates how he was able to get away with the killings. She asks him, “Why?” he did what he did, and he says, “They didn’t stop me.”

 

The Watcher (Netflix)

Ryan Murphy, the creator of this limited series, is not known for his subtlety. Anyone who has endured his shows, such as American Horror Story or Ratched, knows he loves to shock, albeit with some style and dark humor. However, The Watcher may be one of his most restrained projects. The series is loosely based on a true story about a couple who bought a stately home in the suburbs and then started receiving threatening letters from someone who spied upon them.

In the show, the relocating couple are Dean and Nora Brannock (played by Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts, respectively). They have moved to the supposedly safe suburbs to escape the dangers of New York City. The irony is that the pastoral metropolitan outskirts turn out to be pretty scary. The performances of Mia Farrow, Terry Kinney (whose Jasper likes to get inside the Brannock house to ride their dumbwaiter), Margo Martindale, and Richard Kind as the weird neighbors who do not like the invading Brannocks, are weirdly funny. Dean is not a likable character since he is a deceptive person who hides his actions from Nora. The hostile and overbearing way he deals with others is disturbing. Watts does what she can with a character that is not well developed.

The show is suspenseful, and it introduces several characters who could be the watcher. It is another story where what appears on the surface is misleading. If you like a tidy ending that wraps everything up with a conclusive bow, this show is not for you.

 

Bad Sisters (Apple+)

Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) developed this limited series, and stars as one of those bad sisters, Eva Garvey. This dark comedy/drama begins with the death of the husband of one of the sisters. The husband is John Paul (Claes Bang who brilliantly creates the character), who the sisters, except for his wife, call “The Prick.” That is an understatement. He is a vile person, who manipulates everyone and thrives on humiliating all the sisters and in the case of one sister causes her to lose an eye in a car accident. Other atrocities become apparent along the way until the end of the series. Like some politicians, he is always the victim and never accepts any responsibility for his harmful actions.

We know from the outset that the sisters are worried that they may be exposed as being responsible for John Paul’s death (his name seems to suggest the demonic version of a pope). All the sisters have reason to want the man dead. The brothers who run the secretly bankrupt life insurance company that covered John Paul investigate to show that foul play was involved. The story holds our interest, as in The Watcher, since it keeps shifting as to whom is responsible for the murder. The writing is witty, and the acting is superb in carving out the personalities of the various characters. The show implicates the audience, the way Alfred Hitchcock does in his movies, as we identify with the sisters, and become passive co-conspirators, wanting their plans for murder to be successful. As in the very serious film, Gone Baby Gone, the question here arises as to whether doing a criminal act supersedes what the law dictates when the legal system is powerless to deliver justice. The show raises the question as to whether these sisters are really “bad?”

 

The Patient (Hulu)

If there was any doubt that Steve Carell can perform in a dramatic role, this limited series makes that doubt rest in peace. Carell is excellent as psychiatrist Alan Strauss whose patient, Sam Fortner (Domhnall Gleeson in another terrific performance), turns out to be a reluctant serial killer. Fortner’s daddy issues (his father beat him repeatedly as a child) created lethal anger in Fortner toward anyone who appeared to be dismissive of him. His method of death is strangulation, which is appropriate since Fortner is stopping his condescending victim from spouting out any negativity toward him.

Strauss learns that his patient is dangerous when he awakes and realizes that Fortner kidnapped him. His patient has chained one of Strauss’s legs to a bed in the lower level of Fortner’s remote house. Fortner’s mother, Candace (Linda Edmond), lives there and she is guilty of having allowed her husband to abuse her son, and she has compounded that culpability by enabling her boy to inflict his deadly anger on others. Fortner wants to be Strauss’s only patient so the psychiatrist can cure him of his compulsion to kill. Unlike most serial killers who feel no guilt about their actions, Fortner wants to stop his deluded anger from driving him to more murders. But, he sets up a situation that shows no feeling for the threatening position in which he has placed his therapist.

Strauss appears calm and professional in Fortner’s presence, but secretly suffers in fear. He undergoes self-therapy as he has imaginary conversations with his psychiatric mentor. He experiences nightmares that emotionally connect his imprisonment to his Jewish heritage as he envisions inmates in the Nazi concentration camps. The show depicts his regret over his contentious relationship with his Jewish Orthodox son.

Fortner continues to kill until he has a breakthrough when confronting his father. But Strauss, who is at his wits end, concludes he can’t endure the situation any longer. The ending is interesting, but I believe it could have gone in several directions. If you have watched, or will watch this series, maybe ask yourself how you would have concluded this tale.

The next film is Fences.