Angela Bassett (and some other people)

Did you know Angela Bassett has a new series coming out? Probably not, because it’s on Netflix and they barely advertise anything. But she does, a limited series co-starring Robert De Niro called Zero Day. It’s on Netflix as of today. 

Here’s the trailer:

 

The series also stars a bunch of actors I like, including Jesse Plemons, Connie Britton, Dan Stevens, Lizzy Caplan, Bill Camp, and Joan Allen. Normally, anything starring this group of people would be right up my alley, but I can barely make it through the trailer because 1) ugh, too real, and 2) the lighting is hella ugly. I can hardly see past the horrible lighting. I can’t believe it’s so bad, given that the entire series is directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, whose work usually looks better than this (see also: Justified, The Leftovers, Homeland). 

Zero Day was created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Michael Schmidt. Oppenheim and Newman were out last night in New York with De Niro, his wife Tiffany Chen, Matthew Modine, and Angela Bassett. I only ever want good things for Angela Bassett, but terrible lighting aside, I don’t think I can sit through six episodes of a terrorism show steeped in the current atmosphere of alternative truth and conspiracy theory in America. 

Rather than Zero Day, I’ll just watch Ms. Bassett in the upcoming crossover episode of 9-1-1 and Doctor Odyssey, two extremely silly shows that are destined to reach new, potentially dangerous heights of silliness when they combine. It’s a good old-fashioned network television crossover event, uniting Ryan Murphy’s two dumbest shows in glorious stupidity.

Bassett’s 9-1-1 character, Athena Grant, will take a trip aboard cruise ship Odyssey, where she will cross paths with ship doctor Max Bankman, played by Joshua Jackson. Based on previous 9-1-1 events in which Athena’s honeymoon cruise ship exploded, she should probably just stay off ships altogether. But 9-1-1 is a show hopelessly devoted to chaos—did you see the “beenado” event?—and nobody ever stays inside, least of all Athena Grant. How Angela Bassett doesn’t have a clutch of Emmys for saying her lines with a straight face, I’ll never know.