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Television

‘Flatch’ delivers a ‘welcome’ dose of comfort comedy

A place where people are accepted, no matter their sexual orientation

Published

4 years ago

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Holmes and Sam Straley star in ‘Welcome to Flatch.’ (Photo courtesy of Fox)

Television, a medium less than a century old, has evolved so much since it became a fixture in our households that the pioneers who first produced its content would surely be overwhelmed by what it is today. Where there was once a limited selection of mostly middle-of-the-road (i.e., bland and banal) entertainment choices designed to amuse and distract us during our after-dinner family time, there is now a seemingly infinite array of channels to choose from, loaded with enough complex, provocative, stimulating, and otherwise challenging content to keep even the most intellectual viewers busy for the rest of their lives.

And yet, with all that, sometimes you just want to shut your brain off and laugh – and that’s when we are reminded that television, no matter how respectable it may have become, is still at its most essential when it gives us an outlet to do exactly that.

Take, for example, “Welcome to Flatch,” a new half-hour comedy from Fox that might seem, at first glance, to be about as mindless as they come.

Adapted from a BAFTA-winning BBC series titled “This Country,” “Flatch” has been brought to U.S. television by writer Jenny Bicks (“Sex and the City,” “The Greatest Showman”) and producer/director Paul Feig (“The Office,” “Bridesmaids”), who joined forces to executive produce it. It’s set in a small Midwestern town called, well, Flatch, and its unabashedly flimsy premise revolves around the idea that a documentary crew has been sent to explore small-town American life. That’s more than enough to let you know exactly what to expect going into it.

The first episode introduces us to most of the townsfolk who will become our main characters, starting with a pair of young cousins and best buddies – the Mallets, Kelly and Lloyd (who goes by “Shrub”) – who quickly establish themselves as our unofficial guides; they’re your classic underachievers, two teens in a town where there’s nothing to do except indulge in juvenile pranks and concoct get-rich-quick schemes. Played by out queer newcomer Holmes and former “The Kids are Alright” actor Sam Straley, their effortless chemistry, combined with their endearingly dim-witted blend of false bravado and insecurity, wins us over right from the start.

We next meet Flatch’s local minister, “Father” Joe (Seann William Scott), whose enthusiasm for his role as the “youthful-and-hip” spiritual center of the community doesn’t quite keep him from missing his former girlfriend Cheryl (Aya Cash), now the plucky and determined editor of the town newspaper, for whom he still carries decidedly worldly feelings. There’s also Big Mandy (Krystal Smith), a large-and-in-charge force of nature whose confidence and street smarts make her as respected as she is incongruous in this tiny rural town; Nadine (Taylor Ortega), Kelly’s rival and “frenemy,” a teen socialite and mean girl who runs the Flatch historical society; and Mickey (Justin Linville), an eternally upbeat nerd who relentlessly attempts to become Shrub’s best friend.

There are others, too, that we meet as the show progresses, but you get the idea. It’s a cast of eccentrics – probably the number one ingredient in making a “mockumentary.”

Of course, it’s not enough for them just to be eccentrics. They have to be loveable, too – something that has been the hallmark of every great mockumentary since “This is Spinal Tap” more or less created the genre as we know it today. That film, and the series of comic masterpieces from Christopher Guest (“Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind”) that followed in its wake, all made us laugh with the absurdity of the insular communities they were sending up, but they won our hearts with characters who never let us lose sight of their humanity even in their most wacky and embarrassing moments. It’s a formula that has proven to be comedy gold for TV shows from “The Office” to “Modern Family” to “What We Do in the Shadows” – not to mention “Parks and Recreation,” which along with “Guffman” is closest of these examples in tone and spirit to “Flatch” – and in every case, it only works when the characters are played by a remarkably gifted cast of actors.

In this regard, “Welcome to Flatch” is off to a good start. The performers make a strong showing from the very start, and while it’s hard to say this early in the series whether the character arcs they develop will be worthy of the players’ talent, they earn enough credit within the first seven episodes (all available if you’re a Hulu subscriber, doled out a week at a time if you’re not) to keep us watching longer.

That’s a good thing, because “Flatch” – perhaps unsurprisingly for a comedy about a place where nothing interesting ever happens – has some challenges if it’s going to have any staying power. Early on, the episodes are geared around skewering aspects of modern life by putting them into a small-town context; in one, for instance, Kelly starts her own version of a ride-share app, while in another an elderly resident is “catfished” on a dating site while attending an adult computer education class at the church. Others rely on bemusing us with the eternal tried-but-true tropes about small-town life; there’s a rivalry between Flatch and neighboring Pockton over an obscure historical dispute, and a contingent of outraged conservative women who try to close the town’s combination vape-and-magic shop for Satanism. These familiar scenarios are enough to conjure smiles, maybe even chuckles, for a while – but without some more substantial fodder to drive the show’s development, it won’t be long before they start to wear thin.

Fortunately, the seeds for future storylines are clearly planted within the first handful of shows. Most obvious is the will-they-or-won’t-they interplay between Father Joe and Cheryl, given a twist by their status as an ex-couple with second thoughts on their split, but Kelly’s unrequited need to be accepted by her estranged father (Jason MacDonald) is an early recurring theme, as is Shrub’s infatuation with home-schooled Beth (Erin Bowles). These and other beginnings seem promising as avenues toward opening the characters up and allowing the cast to flesh them out into the kind of people we look forward to spending time with.

Perhaps even more encouraging, the mockumentary format, rather than simply being a convention in which the actors talk to the camera, is taken a bit further in “Flatch.” Though we never see the documentary crew, we are reminded of their existence frequently – characters address them off-camera, and their presence in the room becomes a factor that affects outcomes, though to go into any more detail about that would warrant a spoiler alert.

Finally, though, what makes “Welcome to Flatch” worth jumping on board for might just be its refreshing – and frankly, for the genre, unprecedented – diversity. Though our expectations of a rural Midwest community tend to lean toward a very white and very straight demographic, the series goes out of its way to defy them. Much like “Schitt’s Creek,” “Flatch” is a place where people are accepted, no matter their race, gender, body type, or sexual orientation – just as long as they’re not from Pockton.

“Welcome to Flatch” airs on Fox on Thursday nights.

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Television

Murphy’s ‘Monster’ returns for a flawed but fascinating third round

Hunnam’s Ed Gein inspired ‘Psycho,’ ‘Silence of the Lambs’

Published

1 month ago

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October 11, 2025

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Charlie Hunnam</strong. stars in ‘Monster.’ (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

Just when you thought there were already more than enough real-life monsters on your TV screen, Ryan Murphy has served up another one.

Fortunately, unlike most of the others, this one is no longer a threat – but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped terrifying us. For the third installment of his “Monster” anthology series, Murphy profiles notorious murderer and bodysnatcher Ed Gein, whose crimes in a rural Wisconsin town during 1940s and ‘50s became legendary in the annals of serial killer lore – though, with only two confirmed murder victims, his body count barely qualifies him as one. Nevertheless, his notoriety has spread into popular culture through the inspiration they provided for some of the most iconic fictional serial killers in our popular imagination.

In fact, it’s the reach his heinous acts has extended through the many screen and literary villains that have been based upon him – first and most famously Norman Bates, the deranged cross-dressing killer at the center of both Robert Bloch’s novel and Alfred Hitchcock movie version of “Psycho” – which seems to be most of interest in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” which uses the fictionalized narrative of its titular anti-hero’s life as a springboard to explore the reflection of his crimes through the stories and the characters that would come to be based on him, as well as their impact on some of the people who created them. That’s a perfect angle for a Murphy series – in this case written by Ian Brennan and (mostly) directed by Max Winkler – because it allows plentiful opportunities to indulge the queer entertainment mogul’s penchant for campy re-enactments of true (and not-so-true) Hollywood.

In the first of its eight episodes, we meet Gein (Charlie Hunnam) in the early 1940s, living on the family farm he shares with his mother (Laurie Metcalf) and brother (Hudson Oz). As it plays out its version of the events that would shape his future madness – particularly the tyrannical ravings of his puritanically religious mother, and her efforts to instill her vitriolic hatred of sinful impulses (especially involving sex) into her sons – it also offers “fast-forward” glimpses of what’s to come for Ed, whose quiet and seemingly timid demeanor masks an inner life that includes a fascination with shrunken heads, cannibalism, and the gruesome atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust.

It’s a gripping introduction, invoking the elements of Gein’s story that would become serial killer “tropes” – the abusive upbringing, the dissociation, the gruesome “souvenirs” and skin suits intended to feed a fantasy of transformation – and lays the land ahead with the stylistic choice to blur the lines between reality, delusion, and mythology. At the same time, it quickly establishes a precedent of veering into speculation, depicting certain events – killings to which he never admitted and were never proven, a fabricated romance with a young neighbor (Suzanna Son), and other departures from the territory of “docudrama” into that of “sensationalized fantasy” – in a manner that makes it hard to separate truth from fiction.

That, of course, is the point. Most of Murphy’s crime and horror shows, in some way or another, explore that same nebulous line, whether “based on a true story” or not. The “Monster” series is an ideal vehicle for exploring the boundaries between perception and reality, offering characters and situations so distorted beyond everyday experience that even documented truths feel like part of an absurdist play. In the season’s second episode, the scope expands with the inclusion of another plotline, a few years beyond Gein’s eventual capture and imprisonment, which takes place during the filming of “Psycho,” which frames both director Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) and star Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) into an equally speculative exploration of the way these famous collaborators may have been affected by the artistic process of delving into Gein’s monstrous head.

We won’t go further into the events that follow during the rest of the series, except to say that it goes on to follow Gein’s presence in pop culture through his cinematic reincarnations in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Silence of the Lambs,” and that, as with most Murphy shows, there’s a kind of lurid gloss which envelops the entire thing, a self-consciously elevated style that magnifies half-truths and popular mythology alongside the tragedies that sparked them.

That, historically speaking, has always been the controversy around Murphy’s “Monster” shows, sparking debate about exploiting the memory of victims for the glamorization of their killers. It’s also the same controversy that has surrounded all such stories in popular entertainment culture, whether partially true or entirely fabricated. Indeed, Hitchcock faced similar criticism with “Psycho” all those years ago, yet he also made a fortune and cemented an already-impressive legacy with a movie that redefined not just the horror genre, but the boundaries of popular cinema itself; and though (as the series suggests) he may have come to regret opening a “Pandora’s Box” of previously unseen violence and depravity that would saturate the big screen forever after, he would, no doubt, have appreciated the irony of seeing himself portrayed here as a creature driven perhaps by some of the same twisted desires as Gein – simply because he understood, as a master manipulator of audiences, that the most effective use of filmed storytelling is achieved by showing us the darker corners of our own inner landscapes that we would otherwise prefer to ignore.

In terms of presentation and performance, “The Ed Gein Story” successfully inhabits a gritty noir-ish space that evokes both the pulpy true crime stories of Gein’s day and the “slasher movie” aesthetic of our own; the violence is no-holds-barred, and therefore difficult to watch, which in itself will likely be enough to ensure that it’s not a show for every taste. Though Hunnam is disappointing as Gein (his affected, one-note take on the character is a far cry from Perkins’ endearingly awkward boyishness as the real-life killer’s fictional stand-in in “Psycho”), but many of the other cast members deliver outstanding turns – most notably the gifted Metcalf, who makes Gein’s mother arguably more monstrous than her notorious offspring.

Ultimately, appreciation for Murphy’s newest foray into true crime myth-making will come down to, as with any of the others, a matter of taste. Those who approach it with an eye toward its canny examination of popular media’s obsession with crime, violence, and unspeakable horror might have a better time with it than those hoping for a more objective, centered, and fact-based document of Gein’s notorious history.

In any case, its entertainment appeal is – perhaps ironically – undeniable; after all, serial killers provide an almost ironclad guarantee of public interest, carrying the ever-mysterious key to what makes a person “evil” and the chance to examine our own relationship with the deadly impulses behind their crimes. Whether or not you appreciate the show’s deliberately exploitative tone, or the sometimes over-the-top camp of its lurid presentation, or even the seemingly gratuitous nudity and violence that serves to uncomfortably titillate us throughout, you’re bound to be drawn in.

In other words, you might not like it, but you won’t be able to look away.

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Television

ICYMI: ‘Overcompensating’ a surprisingly sweet queer treat

A sweet, savvy show about breaking free to embrace your true self

Published

4 months ago

on

July 10, 2025

By

Holmes, Benito Skinner and Wally Baram in ‘Overcompensating.’ (Photo courtesy of MGM Amazon)

Pride month 2025 is now behind us, and while it’s safe to say that this year’s celebrations had a darker edge than usual, it’s also true that they came with a particularly rich bounty of new queer movies and shows to entertain us – so many, in fact, that even if we are facing a lull until the fall for another harvest of fresh content, there are still plenty of titles – which, for whatever reason, were off your radar – for you to catch up on in the meantime.

One of the most notable of these –  the bingeworthy series “Overcompensating” (now streaming on Amazon Prime) – will most definitely have been on the radar for the plentiful fans of creator and star Benito Skinner, the actor/comedian who rose to viral fame through his content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok; for anyone else, it might have easily slipped through the cracks.

Created and written by Skinner as a loosely autobiographical collegiate comedy, it aims for the kind of raucous, explicitly sexed-up tone one expects from that genre as it centers on Benny (Skinner), newly arrived as a freshman at prestigious Yates University. A former football jock and “golden boy” at his midwestern high school, he’s the picture of idealized youthful masculinity; he’s also deep in the closet, struggling to keep his sexuality hidden and maintain his macho “bro” image under the intense scrutiny of the college’s social scene – and under the resentful eye of his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone), who has already secured her own place at the top of the pecking order.

In the first episode, Benny’s difficulties are eased when he meets Carmen (Wally Baram), another freshman trying to navigate the politics of college life; a gamer from a home disrupted by tragedy, she’s an outsider who feels like she’s putting on an act, too, and they click – giving him the convenient cover of female companionship while providing them both with much-needed support and encouragement. He’s also befriended by a handsome film major from England (Rish Shah), who has already caught his eye, stirring up other kinds of feelings faster than you can say “no homo.” Meanwhile, he’s being courted by the school’s “exclusive secret society” – headed by his sister’s aggressively “alpha” boyfriend Pete (Adam DiMarco) – and trying to stay interested in his studies, despite a growing realization that a career in business doesn’t actually appeal to him all that much.

That’s a lot to juggle for anybody, even an overachiever like Benny – whose “lucky” life so far has largely been the result of playing a role he is finding increasingly hard to maintain; but as the series goes on through its eight-episode arc, it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who is “keeping up appearances,” and he is just one of many confused and damaged young people in his orbit, all facing the painful (but often hilarious) process of evolution that is required in order to become truly oneself.

Tailored for appeal to a youthful demographic, “Overcompensating” is the kind of show that requires a few episodes worth of invested time to make an impression that feels like substance. Full of the bawdy farcical antics that go hand in hand with stories about hormonally charged college kids, it’s not above leaning into the formulas and tropes that have always driven these kinds of comedies. At first, while its broadly comedic strokes and frequently explicit sexual hijinks might elicit plenty of chuckles, the show might easily feel tiresome for more mature audiences; there’s a nostalgic fun to it, made even more appealing, somehow, by the “political incorrectness” of its frequently sexist and homophobic humor, but for a while things may feel like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent “Animal House” for the Gen Z crowd.

By the time the season reaches its halfway point, however, things have started to get real. The antics of these horny almost-adults take on a more pointed absurdity, informed by the increasingly tangled web of defensive deceit they weave among themselves – and, as things draw toward a cliffhanger climax, the consequences of maintaining it – until it achieves a sense of empathy toward them all. There’s a wisdom that smacks of lived authenticity underlying the whole affair, transforming it from the “sexploitative” teen comedy of its surface into something deeper. Sure, things stay expectedly wacky, and the soap-operatic melodrama of its twists and reversals continue to maintain the show’s “mature YA” appeal; but beneath those trappings, by the end of the season a truer identity has begun to emerge, just as its characters have begun to find their own levels of self-actualization for themselves.

As creator, primary writer, and star, it’s obviously Skinner who deserves much of the credit. While it might be tempting, early on, to dismiss the show as an “ego project,” the internet-spawned sensation proves his talents quickly enough to get past such judgy skepticism, delivering a pitch-perfect blend of sauciness and sensitivity that extends its appeal toward both ends of the taste spectrum; just as crucially, he brings the same aforementioned “lived authenticity” to his winning performance – after all, he’s essentially playing himself in a fictionalized version of his own life – while also making sure that equal time (and compassion) is afforded all the other characters around him, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of their own respective “closets,” too. It’s unavoidable to notice that – like most of his co-stars – he’s plainly a decade too old to be playing a college student; but by the time we reach that crucial halfway turning point, we’ve become too engaged by him to care.

The show is full of excellent performances, in fact. Relative newcomers Baram and Barone offer layers of complex nuance, while the more familiar DiMarco (“White Lotus”) is close to heartbreaking as the toxic BMOC clinging to the illusion of power as his life begins to unravel around him. Other standouts include the mononymic Holmes as Carmen’s “wild girl” roommate, solidly likable turns as Benny’s parents from mature veterans Connie Britten and Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence, along with stylish elements in several key scenes, hints at an homage-ish nod to the late David Lynch), and podcaster Owen Thiele as an openly gay fellow student who has Benny “clocked” from the moment they meet. Finally, Lukas Gage makes a deep and tender impression as a former high school teammate at the heart of Benny’s most haunting memory.

There’s no official word yet on whether “Overcompensating” will be renewed for a second season, despite the multiple loose ends left dangling at the end of its first; it has proven to be popular, and Skinner’s large fanbase makes it likely that the story will continue. Even if it doesn’t, the place of uncertainty in which it has left its characters rings true enough to serve as a satisfying endpoint.

As for us, we hope that won’t happen. For all its sophomoric humor, generic plot twists, and purposefully gratuitous sexual titillation, it’s one of the sweetest, kindest, and most savvy shows we’ve seen about breaking free from conformity to embrace your true self – and that’s a message that applies whether you’re queer, straight, or anywhere in between.

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Television

Emmy nominations honor queer creators and shows

RuPaul among LGBTQ nominees

Published

1 year ago

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July 18, 2024

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(Public domain photo)

The Television Academy has honored dozens of queer creators and queer-themed TV shows in the nominations for the 76th annual Emmy Awards, announced Tuesday in a broadcast hosted by actors Tony Hale and Sheryl Lee Ralph.

Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tony Hale, along with Academy Chair Cris Abrego, announced the nominees for the 76th Emmy Awards on July 17, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Emmys.com)

The winners will be announced at the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 15.

Queer-themed shows like Netflix’s “Ripley” and “Baby Reindeer” and FX’s “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” scored nominations across 13, 12, and 10 categories respectively.

“Ripley,” based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” about a queer con man, scored a nomination for outstanding limited or anthology series, as well as acting nominations for gay actor Andrew Scott in the title role and Dakota Fanning for supporting actress. It also received nominations for writing, directing, cinematography, special visual effects, sound editing and mixing, picture editing, costumes, casting, and production design.

“Baby Reindeer,” a limited series based on bisexual writer-actor Richard Gadd’s autobiographical one-man show about his experiences being stalked, earned Gadd nominations for writing and his lead performance, as well as acting nominations for lesbian actress Jess Gunning and transgender actress Nava Mau for their supporting roles. The show also picked up nominations for outstanding limited or anthology series, directing, casting, costumes, picture editing, and music supervision.

Ryan Murphy’s latest “Feud” anthology, focusing on an episode in the life of gay writer Truman Capote, earned acting nominations for Tom Hollander, Naomi Watts, Treat Williams, and Diane Lane, and a directing nomination for gay director Gus Van Sant. It also earned nominations for casting, costumes, hairstyling, makeup, and main title music.

Once again, RuPaul cleaned up in the reality categories, with MTV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” earning nominations for outstanding reality competition series, production design, casting, choreography, directing, picture editing, and sound mixing. RuPaul also earned a nomination for outstanding reality competition host — if he wins, he’ll extend his record eight consecutive wins in the category.

“RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked” also earned nominations for outstanding unstructured reality program and picture editing. “Untucked” will be up against Netflix’s “Queer Eye” in both categories.

Other queer reality shows earning nominations include HBO’s “We’re Here” and Shudder’s “Boulet Brothers: Dragula,” each with nods in the hairstyling and makeup categories.

Showcase’s epic gay romance “Fellow Travelers” earned acting nominations for out actors Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey and a writing nomination for gay writer Ron Nyswaner.

Lesbian actress Jodie Foster earned her first Emmy nomination for her lead role on HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country,” which picked up a total of 19 nominations.

Queer actress Ayo Edibiri will be defending her win earlier this year for outstanding lead actress in a comedy with a nomination for her work in the second season of FX’s “The Bear,” which broke a record for a comedy with 23 nominations this year.

Lesbian actress Holland Taylor earned a nomination for her supporting role on Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show.” The show also earned Reese Witherspoon her second nomination for playing bisexual reporter Bradley Jackson. Altogether, “The Morning Show” has 16 nominations this year.

Bisexual actress Hannah Einbinder earned her third nomination for her supporting role on HBO’s “Hacks,” which earned a total of 16 nominations this year.

“Saturday Night Live’s” Bowen Yang got his third nomination for supporting actor in a comedy series. Altogether, the long-running sketch show has 17 nominations this year.

Out comedian John Early got a writing nomination for his HBO special, “John Early: Now More Than Ever,” while HBO’s “The Other Two,” which ended its three-season run last June, earned its first Emmy nomination, for writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider.

To be eligible for nomination for the 2024 Emmys, television shows must have been released between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024. The awards show will take place Sept. 15 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles and be broadcast on ABC.

Click here for a complete list of nominees.

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