In you haven’t heard, Quibi (short for quick bites) is a new platform that only plays on cell phones and features episodes of 10 minutes or less (obviously, designed for the young cell-addicted crowd). It’s founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, who’ve called on all sorts of stars and directors to fill the roster (Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigen, Kevin Hart, Idris Elba and Spielberg has an upcoming horror series). In attempt to build an audience, a subscription is free for a 90-day trial which includes 5-15-second ads before every viewing.

 

One cool note: every Quibi show can be watched in either horizontal or vertical orientation. I had fun switching on the fly, to see how they framed the same scene in different aspect ratios.

 

Probably the biggest draw is MOST DANGEROUS GAME, an action thriller starring Liam Hemsworth. He plays a desperate man who volunteers to be hunted by people who pay big bucks to catch and kill him. He dashes all over Detroit, enduring multiple encounters with his vicious adversaries (basically one run-in per episode). Even on the tiny screen, it looks like a big budget movie. Sadly, I can’t review the entire show, because it’s still being released in weekly parcels. Still, it’s got as much solid action as many theatrical releases.

 

I watched 1 or 2 episodes of several other shows:

 

DISMANTLED

Tituss Burgess (best known for his outrageous queen on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) makes a paltry host of this silly game show. Two chef contestants are blindfolded and covered in PPE, then blasted with a dish of food. They try to figure out the ingredients and recreate the recipe in 30 minutes, all with 2 judges commenting (Daniel Levy was on the first show). I’m not a big reality cooking show fan and the only reason I watched was for Burgess, who was disappointing.

 

 

LET’S ROLL

Tony Greenhands is billed as the world’s #1 Joint Artist. He meets with one celeb each show and makes an astounding creation full of weed. The 1st week was a deep dish pizza and 2nd was the Titanic. Yes, these are ENORMOUS joints and also pretty cool works of art. Each show is just the right length.

 

 

AQUA DONKEYS

Two deadpan slacker dudes work in pool maintenance, while having interactions with other employees and maybe some customers…I don’t know…I didn’t watch past the first one. From Funny or Die.