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☆ ‘Happy Valley’ Review: The End of the Hero’s Journey
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Mike Hale | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

She’s a contemporary knight errant, upholding a code of decency against the terrors of modern life. “Happy Valley,” whose final season premieres on Monday (streaming on Acorn TV and AMC+, broadcast on BBC America), is a pocket-size, prosaic saga — a hero’s tale contained in three six-episode seasons and embedded in a family drama. Like all mythical heroes, Cawood has an antagonist, the psychopathic rapist and killer Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), who is the father of her grandson. In its structure, “Happy Valley” is very much a traditional British crime series, with seemingly unconnected plot strands and investigations that wind themselves together against a backdrop of cop-shop politics. In the new season’s major subplot, a less-than-sympathetic female character is caught between two seemingly more capable men whose weaknesses run deeper than hers.

☆ British Spies, Japanese Teens and a German Cop’s Wild Ride
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Mike Hale | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It has been a quiet season for international television on American screens — nothing has grabbed attention on a “Squid Game” or “Downton Abbey” scale. But barely a day goes by, in the streaming age, without an interesting series washing up from some foreign shore. Here are four recent shows worth tracking down, from an elegant British thriller to a Chinese dramedy about a demon god and an immortal warrior who meet cute on the mortal plane. ‘A Spy Among Friends’Alexander Cary, a writer and executive producer on “Homeland,” wrote this six-episode spy thriller as a leisurely, literate, three- or four-dimensional game of chess. Tightly controlled yet somehow relaxed, Lewis gives a performance in which the coldblooded manipulator and the sentimentally loyal bro coexist at every moment.

☆ ‘Fatal Attraction’ Review: Here’s Why She Did It
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Mike Hale | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

So Alexandra Cunningham (“Dirty John,” “Desperate Housewives”) and Kevin J. Hynes (“Perry Mason”), working with the film’s writer, James Dearden, have reimagined “Fatal Attraction” in myriad ways, none of which are erotic and few of which are thrilling. Dan is up for parole because in this new universe, he has served 15 years for the murder of his stalker, Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan). The temporal shifts also serve to educate both Dan and the audience about the noxious privilege and entitlement that precipitated his downfall. But apparently converting “Fatal Attraction” into a reasonably diverting crime drama wasn’t enough to remove the stain of the original. Ellen’s research leads her to reassess the behavior of her father’s murdered nemesis, and the greatest labor this “Fatal Attraction” takes on is its effort to turn Alex into an understandable, even sympathetic, character.

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