Underrated, overrated

UNDERRATED

‘The Moone Boy’: Proving that Netflix isn’t the only digital “network” with exclusive programming, this Irish import airing on Hulu may be the strangest yet sweetest sitcom to hit airwaves in years. Centered around a young misfit growing up in late-’80s Ireland with a fully grown imaginary friend (played by series co-creator Chris O’Dowd), “The Moone Boy” carries a goofy yet sharply drawn honesty about childhood that’s as funny as it is heartfelt.

‘The Awakening’ (2011): As chilling as you might expect for a haunted boarding school film, this movie starring Rebecca Hall and “The Wire” vet Dominic West has at least two more twists than it needs by the time it finishes, but there are still plenty of goosebump-raising chills. Set in post-World War I England, the movie follows Hall as a ghost-debunking crusader in over her head and conjures the unsettling mood of the ghost stories of Guillermo Del Toro’s early work.

OVERRATED

‘The Bridge’: Despite a promising premise of a mutilated body dumped on the U.S.-Mexico border, this adaptation of a Danish series of the same name isn’t off to a solid start. The show’s ham-fisted pairing of a by-the-book cop played by Diane Kruger and rumpled Mexican policeman Demián Bichir fails to uncover new ground, and none of its predictable characters are able to develop into any real surprises thus far, other than proving police procedural cliches also transcend borders.

Corporate crowd-funding: Following in the PR-poisoning footsteps of Zach Braff, Universal Music Group announced a new Kickstarter-inspired Vinyl Project to encourage fans to preorder out-of-print records to fund their reissue. It’s hard times for the record industry so you can understand an aversion to risk, but as this phenomenon spreads across media the public are becoming both producers and consumers, and one of those job titles should come with profit-sharing.

— Chris Barton