The Good Place (Series 1-4, complete)

(Amazon UK link)

We had never heard of ‘The good place’, but our son and his wife thoroughly enjoyed watching it last year.. So they sent us blu-rays of the complete series for Christmas, and we started watching on 10th January after finishing the similarly titled (but VERY different!) box series of ‘The Good life’.

We watched three episodes of series one the first evening, with no idea what to expect. We first meet Eleanor (Kristen Bell), who is in an office talking to an older, pleasant-looking man called Michael (Ted Danson), who says he is the ‘architect’ of the neighbourhood. He tells her that she died in a supermarket car park accident, and that she’s now in ‘The Good Place’.  Most people, he explains, are in the ‘bad place’. He says all religions are about ten per cent correct in their beliefs in what happens in the afterlife.

Eleanor is taken to a small, quirky house in her new neighbourhood, though she’s a bit miffed to see that others around have enormous mansions. And she’s told that she has a soul mate - Chidi (William Jackson Harper) - who is a likeable, if somewhat wordy academic. There are introductions to the ‘good place’ made by Michael, and Eleanor gets to know her neighbour, a rather condescending and glamorous tall woman called Tahani (Jameela Jamil) with a slightly fake-sounding upper-class British accent.

However, Eleanor does not think she should be in the good place. We get regular flashbacks to her life, where it’s clear that she was extremely selfish and somewhat manipulative. But Chidi hopes to make her nicer, and a tentative friendship begins with Tahani and her rather flaky soulmate Jason (Manny Jacinto), supposedly a buddhist monk with a vow of silence. 

The neighbourhood is enhanced by Janet (D'Arcy Carden), a humanoid computer who knows everything, and appears when anyone asks her to. She is able to advise, and to keep secrets, and when ‘killed’ will reboot to a more advanced version. We were very impressed with the actress who plays Janet. She not only plays herself, in different iterations but other very different Janets from other neighbourhoods. 

We continued watching two or three episodes each week; at first we were slightly bemused by the strange ethos, and the somewhat exaggerated acting. But it became oddly compulsive, and we were more and more intrigued as to what was going to happen. 

Strange things start to happen in the neighbourhood - sometimes very bizarre things at times. While Michael says he’s going to take the blame, Eleanor starts to take responsibility for her own actions. There are discussions about whether she should be sent to the ‘bad place’... and then a surprising twist at the end of series one. 

Series Two includes the same characters, now ‘rebooted’. That means they have forgotten everything that happened in Series One, and are starting over. With a few changes that are obvious to the viewer. And, again, it’s quickly compulsive viewing. We realised what a good actor Michael is, too; he is able to portray, with facial expressions and voice, different sides of his personality, depending on who he is talking to.  

The action is quite rapid, with some humour and conversation that’s surprisingly thought-provoking. Chidi embarks, once again (and again…) on a course in ethics in the hope of making other characters nicer. The script writers were very creative: after the first couple of episodes in this series we wondered if others were going to be similar, but each one has its own focus, with new adventures, discussions and twists.

During the course of the series these six main characters get to know each other better, and bond quite strongly, even after rebooting. They are courageous and increasingly caring, even when forced to be in the ‘Bad Place’, or - surprisingly - back on earth. We kept wondering what else could happen, only to be pleasantly surprised at yet another unexpected episode.

There are plenty of minor characters, some of them appearing in almost half the episodes, but the main six carry it through with their different and yet complementary personalities and actions. We started to become quite fond of them all. 

There’s some humour, some parts that are quite moving. Then, in the final episode of the fourth series, there’s a bittersweet ending which, once again, was unexpected. But it works well. It’s taken us four and a half months to finish watching the series, and I will miss it!

There’s very little actual bad language, although a lot is implied; in the ‘good place’ planned swear words emerge as innocent words, as, for instance, ‘fork’. There’s also no nudity or scenes of intimacy, although much is implied and there are a lot of references to genitalia in later episodes. It’s not a series for children; the rating is 12 for three series, and 15 for the fourth, and I think that’s about right.

The theology isn’t in line with Christian beliefs about the afterlife - or, indeed, those of any other religion - but the philosophy and discussions are both interesting and thought-provoking. 

Recommended, if you would like something light, amusing and yet oddly moving.

There are no extras on our blu-ray series. 

Review copyright 2025 Sue's DVD Reviews

Stuck in Love (Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff)

(Amazon UK link)

This is another DVD which Amazon suggested, based on my previous preferences. It went on my wishlist and I was pleased to be given it for Christmas.

‘Stuck in Love’ is supposedly a romantic comedy, but there’s not much that’s humorous about it. It features a year in the life of an American family, from one Thanksgiving to the next. 

Bill (Greg Kinnear) is the father, a well-known writer who has published several books. He has been unable to write anything new since his wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) left him for another man, a few years before the story starts. Bill has not remained celibate (far from it) but he is still in love with his ex-wife, in a somewhat obsessional way. He still sets a place for her at family mealtimes, and he snoops around her house in the evenings.

Bill and Erika’s son Rusty (Nat Wolff) is at high school and still lives with his father, while their daughter Samantha (Lily Collins) is away at university. She is determined not to fall in love, after seeing the problems in her parents’ marriage, but is highly promiscuous. Rusty, by contrast, would love to find a girlfriend. He is a bit of a geek, and tends to stay in at his computer. Both Rusty and Samantha are writers, funded by their father to keep journals and write - and Samantha is about to have her first book published.

It’s a character-based story, one that flows nicely with smoothly alternating scenes that allow us to get to know each of the family in turn. Samantha, at the start of the year, is still furious with her mother and refuses to speak to her. Bill is persuaded that he needs to move on and start dating again, but can’t forget his wife. Rusty starts going out with a girl he has liked for a while, only to discover that she has a very troubled lifestyle.

It’s a good story, with a positive message and, I thought, an encouraging ending. The actors are very believable, the situations realistic, and it’s quite thought-provoking.

Unfortunately, it’s plagued with bad language including (according to one website) at least fifty incidents of what the censors call ‘strong’ language. Perhaps a couple of times it would have been acceptable, but after the first half hour it grated. It felt as if the word was put in so that the censors would give it a higher rating. In the UK it’s rated 15; in the more cautious US it has an R rating.

While there’s no explicit nudity, and only a couple of incidents of relatively minor violence, there are various intimate scenes where very little is left to the imagination. There are also scenes - albeit brief - of smoking illegal substances. In the context of the story, these scenes are not out of place, but we were very unimpressed with the coarse and annoying bad language, which, we felt, was out of place and unnecessary.

There are no extras at all on the DVD, which was a slight disappointment as we enjoy documentaries about the making of movies.

Review copyright 2015 Sue's DVD Reviews