THE ROMANOFFS
Amazon Prime Video, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: Matt Weiner’s first TV series since Mad Men is a daringly different concept for a television series. Different, but not unprecedented – because it aims to revive a TV genre that has gained traction in recent years, but not in this pure a sense. His new show, The Romanoffs, is an anthology series. Not one of the exciting, modern one-season stand-alone stories presented under an umbrella title, like FX’s Fargo or HBO’s True Detective – but, instead, an eight-episode series, with each installment sporting a different cast, story and location. The connecting thread is that each episode focuses on a person who is, or claims to be, a descendant of the ill-fated Russian royal family. Amazon premieres the first two episodes today, and will roll out the others in weekly installments. The first stars Marthe Keller as an elderly woman with a plush Paris apartment and a provincial, a.k.a. racist, way of looking at things. The second episode stars Corey Stall and Kelly Bishé as a married couple going through the motions in a largely dormant marriage, until she embarks alone on a cruise devoted to celebrating his family tree. I’ll hold off a final opinion until I’ve seen the other episodes, as anthology series are particularly uneven, and tricky to judge. But for my first impressions, listen today to NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, or visit the Fresh Air website later this afternoon. And for a full review on TVWW, visit Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes.