#laura dave

[silvianap]

✳️ NEW

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau & the rest of the cast at the Apple TV Press Day to promote season 2 of “The Last Thing He Told Me” 📺

📌 Barker Hangar (Santa Monica, California)

📆 February 03, 2026

(-> twitter thread)

[cantsayidont]

More dubious television:

BALLARD (2025): Uninspired spinoff of BOSCH, adapted from the Michael Connelly novels about Renée Ballard (Maggie Q), an LAPD detective who ends up working cold cases in the basement with a collection of volunteers, reservists, retirees, and dropouts at the behest of a city councilman (Noah Bean) keen to find out who killed his sister years ago. Unlike the episodic COLD CASE years ago, the whole season covers Ballard's hunt for a serial killer and her growing suspicion that there's a ring of dirty cops within LAPD. (Who could even tell?) A by-the-numbers policier that overrelies on the fiction of trauma-informed cops who genuinely care about innocent victims (as if!), BALLARD is competent but very ordinary, and if you're used to done-in-one procedurals, the plot feels overstretched at 10 episodes. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Zero. VERDICT: Strictly average.

FUBAR (2023– ): Obnoxious, tiresome espionage action-comedy about retired CIA superspy Luke Brunner (Arnold Schwarzenegger), whose daughter daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) is also an undercover CIA superspy, initially with no idea that her father is one too. Seems to want to be a live-action ARCHER, except that unlike ARCHER, no one involved seems to have any idea how to make any of it funny rather than just labored — it's incredibly busy, but I don't think they managed to land a single solid laugh in 16 episodes. Even the second-season addition of Carrie-Anne Moss as Luke's former East German superspy ex-flame feels crass rather than fun. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Luke's CIA liaison Roo (Fortune Feimster) is allegedly gay, but it's treated as a joke. VERDICT? The only redeeming feature is that it doesn't also star Glenn Powell. Just (re)watch ARCHER instead.

THE HUNTING WIVES (2025– ): Dishy soap opera, based on a May Cobb novel, about twitchy Boston PR exec Sophie O'Neil (Brittany Snow), whose douchey architect husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit, icky) drags her to the small Texas town where he's working on a big project for politically ambitious good ol' boy Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney). Sophie is reluctantly drawn into a clique of right-wing rich-bitch megachurch-going gun-nut wives whose leader, Jed's debauched wife Margo (Malin Åkerman), is determined to get into both Sophie's head and her pants. Sophie isn't exactly adverse to being seduced, but is she being set up as a scapegoat for some of the town's darker secrets? Meanders more than it should at eight episodes, and the murder mystery that frames the story isn't terribly credible, but its entertainment value is pretty high. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Toxic Bisexuals™ represent. VERDICT: Trash, but tasty trash. CWs apply for animal death and references to CSA.

THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME (2023): Glossy but narratively malnourished mystery, based on a Laura Dave novel, about a Northern California woodturner named Hannah Hall (Jennifer Garner) and her teenage stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice), whose father Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) disappears just as the company he works for is being raided by the FBI. An ungainly puzzlebox of a story that relies on dramatic cheats to prop up an unlikely plot: The major beats of Hannah and Bailey's journey are only slightly more plausible than if the characters were getting their information from a Ouija board. Rice (who also plays her character's mother in flashback sequences) is pretty good, but Garner is only okay, and the way Hannah is called to reconcile conflicts in which she has no part is uneasy and unsatisfying. Coster-Waldau is gormless, and Augusto Aguilera, Aisha Tyler, and David Morse are all awful in weak supporting roles. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Grabs your attention at first, but it just doesn't pay off, and by the final episode, I was asking, "Why do we care, again?"

UNTAMED (2025): Glum, tepid six-part mystery about alcoholic National Park Service investigator Kyle Turner (Eric Bana), still reeling from the death of his young son five years earlier, investigating the suspicious death of a young woman in Yosemite with the help of rookie Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), a single mom fleeing from her son's abusive father in L.A. Rosemarie DeWitt costars as Kyle's ex-wfe, with Sam Neill as the friend and superior who's been covering for him for years. Attractive vistas and good acting, with Santiago the standout, but never very involving, and it keeps focusing on the least-interesting parts of the story while falling back on tired cliches any time it needs to move the plot forward. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Self-serious and bland.

WE WERE LIARS (2025): Spectacularly ineffectual, pompous adaptation of the E. Lockhart YA novel about wealthy 17-year-old Cadence (Cady) Sinclair (Emily Alyn Lind), who suffers traumatic amnesia following mysterious events at her family's island estate that she no longer remembers. Like the novel, it's told partly in flashback, but where the book relies heavily on Cady's unreliable narration to set up the twist ending, the show is much too literal to pull that off, and it's so mired in superficial "beautiful blond rich white people have problems too" bullshit that the big reveal doesn't land at all. Once it's finally clear what happened, you'd have to be deranged to accept the sympathy the ending offers Cady. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT? You've heard of burying the lede — this one buries the ending. CW for animal death, which is unexpected and upsetting.

[melodysbookhaven]

“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart - and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”

Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

[oldshrewsburyian]

It feels like a victory that we are moving closer to the truth. But when the truth is taking you somewhere you don't want to go, you also aren't sure. You aren't sure you want that win.

The Last Thing He Told Me, Laura Dave

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (2021)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMar 5, 2025

[vintagewarhol]

[memoryarchaeologist]

This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart—and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.

Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

[thequotefairy]

That was what I feared most: that he just wasn’t excited about us anymore—that something between us had altered irreversibly.

Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America