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In a time when I feel as if I’ll scream if I have to watch one more “prestige” drama recounting the unhappy lives of the wealthy, I want to encourage any series that takes a big creative swing.
And yet, I can’t fully describe just how profoundly weird the new series Stuart Fails To Save The Universe is from the very first moment of the pilot.
In the series, comic shop owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) travels from one nightmarish parallel reality to the next, desperately trying to repair a timeline that was broken by an experiment of Sheldon and Leonard's.
Each episode - many of them shorter than a regular broadcast TV episode - show Stuart and his collection of other Big Bang Theory B-characters traveling randomly from dimension to dimension. The end result is a show that feels a lot like Sliders, except it’s a comedy. And while the jokes do come fast and furious, the overall show just feels disjointed and incomplete.
I love the ambition of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. I just don’t know that I like the show.
What Just Happened To TheNumbers.com Should Worry Us All
In the film industry, the website TheNumbers.com has been the gold standard for movie data for several decades. Its hand-researched data tracks box office grosses, home video and streaming across nearly 80,000 films. At its height, it was receiving more than eight million visitors a year and was seen as the definitive authority on movie data.
One of the things that made it so valuable were the historical charts, the information on people and the ability to build a report from the data.
So when the site went offline for a week in March and then returned with all of the historical data and other archives offline, there was a lot of confusion and outrage in the industry. At the time, I remember reading people arguing that someone should be able to take over the site and run it the way it was intended to be run.
Not surprisingly, the story behind the changes is a lot more nuanced and sadly predictable.
Stephen Follows at the newsletter Decoding The World Through Data has an extended interview with Bruce Nash, founder and CEO of The Numbers, who recounts the battle he and his team waged to stave off massive waves of traffic from AI bots, who swamped the web site with traffic that threatened to push the site’s servers offline:
But what finally forced the elimination of the past box office data and other archival information were the Prediction Markets, which pointed to the web site as a trusted source for determining box office performance and for settling bets. And once that happened, it appears hackers were attempting to access the site’s data, in hopes of manipulating the numbers or obtaining early access to the results:
Polymarket runs weekly markets on opening weekends, and names The Numbers as the ultimate source of truth:
“The ‘Daily Box Office Performance’ figures found on the ‘Box Office’ tab on this movie’s The Numbers page will be used to resolve this market once the values for the 3-day opening weekend are final.”
The sums on any single weekend market are modest by financial-market standards, typically in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, with a couple of million dollars across live box office markets at any given time.
If you could see The Numbers data before everyone else, every single week, you would have a significant edge over all the other traders - learning the answers slightly ahead of publication would allow you to front-run the trades.
In a situation like this, it is hard to know for certain what happened. We know that the logs showed months of automated probing and scraping of the site, but what finally brought the site down, and who did it, remains an open question.
But the theory that someone used AI to develop an advantage in a prediction market is entirely plausible
While this story is frightening, it’s a battle that nearly every web site owner I know is battling: drastically reduced human traffic and ad revenue, along with massive traffic spikes from AI bots, prediction markets and other content scraping platforms.
Before I launched this newsletter, my web site AllYourScreens.com was my primary source of income. I was reaching more than 2.5 million unique visitors a month and it provided a steady revenue stream.
But in recent months, I have begun to consider whether it’s worth continuing and whether I can afford to deal with the changes that are necessary to keep it online.
I have a huge archive of reviews, interviews, news coverage and more - more than 50,000 pages. So I have spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I can keep that stuff online in a way that both protects the data and makes it accessible to actual humans.
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Is There A Place For Robocop In The America Of 2026?
There are times when I wouldn’t mind having a podcast, so I would have someone to bounce ideas off of as well as argue about some pet hot take of mine. And this is one of those times.
Prime Video announced a couple of days ago that they have ordered an eight-episode series built around the hit 1980s movie Robocop. And while I won’t fault the attempt, I can’t help thinking that the premise of a murdered cop turned into a crime-fighting robot by an evil and corrupt corporation hits very differently in 2026 than it did nearly 40 years ago.
Back then, the idea of a robotic cop seemed fanciful, a bit like imagining living in the world of Bladerunner. And while the big corporation Omni Consumer Products is drawn as evil, there is also a sense that it’s not the corporation itself that’s evil, it’s individual greedy and corrupt employees who are the problem.
I’ve been trying to think about how you can reframe the Robocop story in the context of what we know now about political corruption, the seemingly unlimited influence of billionaires and the battles some Americans are willing to wage when they feel their freedom is being impaired.
There is a version of Robocop that would feature a Elon Musk-type figure, living in a world where everyone is under surveillance and AI is forcing itself into every corner of society. What does crimefighting look like in the world? And is it one that Amazon is willing to show, given the likely pushback from critics who will argue the point of view is nothing but woke Socialism?
I’m curious to see what this looks like. But simply based on the premise, this is one of those ideas that can go horribly, horribly wrong.
Odds & Sods
The Hardacres
Both seasons of Nirvanna The Band The Show as well as the 2026 theatrical film Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie will premiere Friday, July 24th on Hulu.
Season sixteen of The Real Housewives Of New York City premieres Tuesday, September 8th on Bravo.
While this isn’t TV or media-related, this Instagram video has more twists and turns in the story than episode of any episode of Law & Order. And stick around for the ending, which has a twist that manages to capture the weird world of social media.
The stand-up special Whitmer Thomas: Terminal Crew Of Dudes premieres Friday, August 14th on HBO.
The South African-produced series Umthetho premieres Friday, August 14th on Netflix. Here is a first look at the trailer and here is a brief official logline: “To keep their youngest brother alive, an idealistic state prosecutor is forced to become a double agent in her imprisoned older brother's gang.”
If I lived in the NYC area, I would definitely apply for this on-air role at Epicurious.
Disney+ is making a version of 20/20 for the UK. Because, I guess, why not? The six-part docuseries titled 20/20 Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations will take another look at notorious cases such as Jane Andrews and Ben Field.
Season two of Badly In Love premieres Tuesday, August 4th on Netflix. Here is a first look at the trailer and here is the official logline: “School is back in session for what promises to be the most hype event of the summer: Season 2 of Badly in Love, the MEGUMI-produced delinquent reality dating show. Yankii (delinquent youths) gather from throughout Japan, carrying their local roots with them. With love, fights, tears and friendships, watch unfettered passions collide during their 14-day stay in Okinawa. 100% genuine, 120% dangerous and 200% unpredictable, these yankii will make their voices heard — whether you like it or not. Respect.”
The stand-up special Rory Scovel: The Show Must Go On premieres Tuesday, August 11th on Netflix.
Season two of The Hardacres premieres Wednesday, August 5th on BritBox. Here is the brief official logline: “Season 2 charts the Hardacres as they settle into Hardacre Hall and turn their attention to reshaping the world around them… with all the ambition, friction, and fallout that entails.”
The three-part true crime docuseries Unmasking A Monster: Aileen Wuornos premieres Wednesday, September 30th on Investigation Discovery. The show will use AI to create a three-dimensional mask that will be layered on top of an actress who will portray Wuornos.
A Maryland judge has determined that “there is a preponderance of the evidence to believe” D.C. chef and TV host Eric Adjepong physically abused his daughter, leading to a protective order that currently prohibits him from contacting the child without supervision. Adjepong cannot be alone with his daughter until he completes parenting classes and reunification therapy with her, according to the order.
The ‘Love Is Blind’ Lawsuit That Exposed A Number Of Show’s Secrets
Andy Dehnart’s Reality Blurred has a deeply reported piece and timeline on a Love Is Blind lawsuit that has more twists and turns than a dozen episodes of Columbo.
This is the same lawsuit that:
production company Kinetic Content responded to by insisting Dang “never informed the producers of any alleged wrongdoing of any kind. Nor did she choose to end her participation in the experiment.”
FYI: The cast’s contract included a $50,000 penalty for leaving the show.
FYI: “it may be near impossible” for people to leave an abusive relationship, never mind that Dang said producers “willfully detained or participated in the detainment” of her on location
inspired another season 5 cast member, Renee Poche, to speak out as she was “livid” and “angry” about executive producer and creator Chris Coelen’s response to the lawsuit. She said that during filming, “I didn’t feel safe, and I addressed that with nothing being done about it.”
Producers responded to Poche’s concerns by demanding she pay them $4 million for violating a nondisclosure agreement. Nothing to see here! Move along!
This is an exceptionally well-reported piece that does a great job of putting a lot of complicated and nuanced legal wranglings into an understandable context for readers.
What’s Coming Tonight And Tomorrow
THURSDAY, JULY 23RD:
Behind Bars: Officer Cam Series Premiere (A&E)
Gone Series Premiere (BritBox)
Impractical Jokers Season Premiere (TBS)
Kaulitz & Kaulitz (Netflix)
Love In Slow Motion (Netflix)
Ransom Canyon Season Premiere (Netflix)
Restaurant Impossible: Last Call Series Premiere (Food)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season Premiere (Paramount+)
Stuart Fails To Save The Universe Series Premiere (HBO Max)
The Debt Collector (Netflix)
The Idaho Murders: A College Town Nightmare (Investigation Discovery)
FRIDAY, JULY 24TH:
Breaking Bear Series Premiere (Tubi)
Heartstopper: Ending On A Hi (Netflix)
Musafir Cafe Series Premiere (Netflix)
My Husband, My Enemy (LMN)
72 Hours (Netflix)
Roast My Rental Series Premiere (HGTV)
The Dink (Apple TV)
The Truthers (Netflix)