Tv Review
Story Stream
On ‘Severance’ Season Two April 07, 2025
Can human beings ever truly empathize with one another? Or even with ourselves?This is the critical question running throughout Severance, the blockbuster Apple TV+ puzzle-box show that recently wrapped its second season....
In Praise Of ‘The Pitt,’ The Most Normal Show On Television April 04, 2025
On Sept. 19, 1994, a week before Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell declared that there was no legislative path forward in the current Congress for the Clinton administration's healthcare reform agenda, NBC aired "24 Hours," the pilot episode of ...
‘Adolescence’ Does a Disservice to Young Men March 27, 2025
Adolescence is the new hit Netflix series everybody’s talking about, based on several instances of teen boys stabbing their female peers in the UK. The murderous protagonist, 13-year-old Jamie, is a white boy from the north of England—a fact many com...
The Kids Aren’t Alright March 25, 2025
“Nightmarish” and “immersive” can feel like overused words when describing the experience of watching a TV drama. But they are adjectives that do not fully encapsulate what it feels like to follow the Miller family in Netflix’s four-parter Adolescenc...
Young Snipers in Love Across 'The Gorge' February 19, 2025
The Gorge is a wildly silly action-sci-fi-horror-romance, released on Apple TV+ on Valentine’s Day to alert you to the way it stresses the “unusual love story” angle. Maintaining a conventionally brooding atmosphere through gloomy CGI, The Gorge is a...
The Problem With 'The White Lotus' February 18, 2025
The White Lotus is back, and it’s time to check in. Although this is only the third season of Mike White’s HBO anthology, its opening movement is already so familiar it verges on ritual: a violent death is foreshadowed, although both victim and perpe...
A Western About Cowboys, Indians … and Mormons February 13, 2025
Overall, American Primeval, the new Western on Netflix which takes place in the early days of Utah’s settlement, is a good show—in a directional sense. That is, it is enjoyable because it represents a step in the right direction. On the one hand it a...
The Old-School Heroics of “The Pitt” February 10, 2025
On paper, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room—the setting of the new Max drama “The Pitt”—is the kind of place you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The waiting room is full by 7 A.M., and it can take as long as twelve hours to be seen...
'The Pitt' Is a Defiantly Different Hospital Drama January 29, 2025
I did not watch ER in the 1990s because it was too gross. Or, at least, I assumed it would be. I’m a pretty squeamish person so, despite the fact that the show had become a watercooler series even among some of my friends in high school, I took a pas...
'Severance' Season 2 Is the Best Show on TV January 17, 2025
Expectations can destroy a good TV show. For most new series, the first season is all about grabbing attention, introducing a group of characters people actually want to spend time with, and telling a good story. If that debut season succeeds? Well, ...
'Landman' Is a Dumb Waste of a Great Premise January 14, 2025
Shortly into the first episode of Landman, Billy Bob Thornton’s protagonist, Tommy Morris, is talking with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ainsley, at a college football game. He’s just met her quarterback boyfriend, and Tommy asks her if they’re be...
‘Hollywood Squares’ Review January 08, 2025
Rising like a demented phoenix out of the ashes of its own reboots, “Hollywood Squares” is back on CBS with a fabled history and a question: What celebrities are as glib and available as were Rose Marie, Charo and—notably—Paul Lynde in the glory days...
‘Squid Game’ Season 2 December 27, 2024
Created by writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk, the Emmy-winning “Squid Game,” Netflix‘s most-watched series of all time, has returned for a second season. Season 1 of the South Korean survival thriller followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a divorced fa...
The Penguin Has Mommy Issues December 10, 2024
As any fan of Batman knows, the main draw of the franchise are the villains. While Batman himself has an interesting story—a billionaire who trains to become a vigilante detective after witnessing the murder of his parents—his opponents are what defi...
‘Dune: Prophecy’ Doesn’t Pack the Franchise Spice December 04, 2024
A knock-on effect from the rise of streaming services is that established IP is no longer limited to either TV or film: Nowadays, the biggest franchises move between mediums. When Disney+ launched, for instance, small-screen extensions of Star Wars a...
The Penguin as Populist, Not Plutocrat December 02, 2024
"You know, not even a mile from here, there's a bunch of big-time, City Hall f—s sittin’ in some fancy private club," Oswald "the Penguin" Cobb tells a rogues’ gallery of Gotham City crime bosses in HBO’s eponymous series. "They're drinkin’ orange wi...
‘The Penguin’ Succeeds Where ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Failed November 13, 2024
Since 2008’s Iron Man overtook the entertainment world, superhero blockbusters and TV hits have taken over theaters and living rooms alike. But a new trend for these movies and shows has cropped up in 2024, with mixed results: focusing not on superhe...
From Guilty Pleasure to a Quality Series November 12, 2024
At first, watching the American animated series The Legend of Vox Machina was mostly a guilty pleasure. It appealed to dyed-in-the-wool nerds like myself who have a soft spot for anime, video games, fantasy, and the puerile humor of Marvel movies. Ba...
The Glorious Swan Song of 'Somebody Somewhere' October 31, 2024
I’m a sucker for a singer. On TV, there’s nothing I love more than when a character bursts into song. I don’t necessarily want a big, produced musical number with dancers and mood lighting, but I find myself routinely floored by moments of intimate, ...
The Better Angels of 'Bad Monkey' September 30, 2024
I started watching Bad Monkey, the latest Apple TV+ series, one of the funnier things on offer this year, for two reasons. First, I like Vince Vaughn a lot. He was clever in his 2000s persona in comedies with Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson: Old School ...
'English Teacher' Gets Gen Z September 24, 2024
“Woke mind virus” is a pretty funny phrase. It wasn’t meant as a joke when Elon Musk first started using it in 2021. If anything, the utterly dire seriousness with which its wielders intone it makes the phrase even funnier. It sounds ridiculous on th...
Pat McAfee, the Football Bro September 16, 2024
If, on a cool weekend morning in autumn, you happen to be watching “College GameDay,” on ESPN, don’t worry about figuring out which of the broadcasters behind the improbably long desk is Pat McAfee. He’s the one with the roast-pork tan, his hair cut ...
Danzy Senna’s Trick Mirror September 09, 2024
No one has more fun with racial terminology than Danzy Senna. In her 2007 short story “Resemblance,” the N-word—as in the politically correct referent to the racial slur—drives a hilarious Who’s on First?–style gag. “Some white kids called their blac...
'Slow Horses' Is the Spy Drama With Everything September 06, 2024
Apple reinvented personal computing in the 1980s, and then again in the 2000s. It created a vast array of hot little rectangles that we carry everywhere with us, which—depending on who you ask—are either connecting or degrading the social lives of mi...
The Universe Is Not a Fairy Tale September 03, 2024
“Two possibilities exist,” physicist and science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote. “Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Chinese science-fiction author Liu Cixin begs to differ. In his mind-bendin...
