Absurd flourishes abound throughout Barry, occasionally imbuing the narrative with an arbitrary quality.
The outcome of Paul III’s kidnapping is known to history, and Trust struggles to mine the saga for new insights.
The series frames PTSD, mental illness, and survivor’s guilt in relation to superhero tropes.
The series suggests the failure of U.S. intelligence in the years before 9/11 was one of imagination.
Seven Seconds is a thrilling police procedural that never loses sight of its cultural commentary.
Altered Carbon confronts the excesses of capitalism with an obvious but imaginatively visualized commentary.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace consistently and thoughtfully returns to the notion of identity.
The Chi ultimately appears unable to imagine Chicago’s South Side as anything but toxic.
Black Mirror implicates both human ignorance and malevolence as enablers of a technological dystopia.
Gunpowder locates a human drama at the heart of an event codified in history books as a conflict between monoliths.
Jean-Claude Van Johnson takes aim at privileged urban life and the action-star archetype.
The series toggles between the melodrama of a teen soap opera and the irreverent lightness of The Avengers.
In Godless, female empowerment resembles the adoption of a rigid construction of masculinity.
The series suggests that image is the sole source of agency for Victorian women.
Unwitting transformation is on display throughout the season finale of The Deuce.
The pimps are the first to face eradication by the proliferation of porn and brothels.
The episode’s most pivotal scene is a court ruling to drop charges against a group of pornographers.
The latest episode of The Deuce is in many ways the most pessimistic hour of the series so far.
Pasts, presents, and futures are illustrated simultaneously, all balanced on the razor’s edge of Times Square.
There doesn’t seem to be a cogent argument in the series, just a proclivity to evoke current events.