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Kevin Winter / Getty When Meanness Was Celebrated
For decades, the media have chronicled a Hollywood mega-producer’s reputation as a bully—and even praised him for it.
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AMC / SKY The Crime Drama That Will Enthrall and Repel You
In the ornately violent AMC series Gangs of London, even the pigeons are on cocaine.
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Craig Sjodin / ABC ‘I Didn’t Realize How Much of a Machine It Is’
For years, The Bachelor has been losing sight of the fantasy that made it so beloved. Now many of its most loyal fans have had enough.
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HBO The New QAnon Docuseries Is a Gamified Mess
HBO’s six-part Q: Into the Storm turns the conspiracy theory into a rollicking adventure.
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Ben Blackall / BBC / HBO The Sad Déjà Vu of It’s a Sin
The beautifully made HBO/Channel 4 miniseries about gay men in 1980s London can’t help but show the way that tragedies become tropes.
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Tyler Varsell American Cynicism Has Reached a Breaking Point
The nation’s politics is in dire need of earnestness. Can its culture meet the moment?
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HBO The Awful Intimacy of Allen v. Farrow
A new docuseries about the molestation allegation against Woody Allen is determinedly focused on making its case, sometimes at the expense of nuance.
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Dave Allocca / DMI / The LIFE Picture … Why Were We So Cruel to Britney Spears?
The more vulnerable she became, the greater the public’s interest was in watching her disintegrate.
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Orion / Everett Collection The Dark Fate of Clarice Starling
Across decades of Silence of the Lambs sequels and spin-offs, Hannibal Lecter has become a pop-cultural juggernaut. Starling, not so much.
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Rosalind O'Connor / NBC SNL Is Breaking With Its Old Patterns
The show may have become less topical lately, but its earnest streak has made room for its cast to shine.
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James Pardon / Dancing Ledge / BBC ONE … The Slow, Creeping Horror of The Salisbury Poisonings
The AMC miniseries sidelines international intrigue to focus on the mundane dread of contamination.
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Emmanuel Guimier / Netflix The Literary Origins of Netflix’s Latest Smash Hit
Lupin, the French-language series about a charismatic thief, embraces its source material—and then transcends it.
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Paul Spella / HBO / Netflix / Getty … TV Captured Trump by Looking Away
The best shows of the 45th presidency captured the essence of an unprecedented leader by seeing past his act.
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LIAM DANIEL / NETFLIX The Grapevine Looks a Little Different Today
What do Bridgerton, DeuxMoi, and Dickinson have in common? They capture the new appeal of anonymous gossip.
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Patrick Semansky / Pool via REUTERS The Surprising Thing About Biden’s Inauguration
The colorful and joyful ceremony didn’t feel like a crisis-era bureaucratic procedure.
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Disney+ The Deep Sadness of Marvel’s WandaVision
So far, the Disney+ show is telling a story not about an epic struggle to save humanity, but about one woman’s efforts to save herself from her grief.
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David Strick / Redux The Emotional Miseducation of Tiger Woods
A new HBO documentary zeroes in on the immense psychological toll it took for the legendary golfer to go from prodigy to phenom.
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Courtesy of Focus Features Promising Young Woman Sets a Ravishing Trap
Emerald Fennell’s debut movie is a revenge thriller explicitly designed to subvert assumptions about femininity and serious works of art.
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Soomin Jung 2020 Changed What TV Is For
Viewers didn’t care about “good” or “bad” television this year. Maybe the distinction never mattered.
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HBO / Everett The Year of Ambitious TV Watching
In 2020, tackling 121 episodes of a single show was no longer as daunting as it once seemed.
