Netflix
The Political Scene Podcast
How the Reality-TV Industry Mistreats Its Stars
Lawsuits and the labor movement come to reality TV, by way of the Netflix hit “Love Is Blind.”
Cultural Comment
The Salacious Glossiness of Netflix’s Prince Andrew Drama, “Scoop”
Rufus Sewell and Gillian Anderson star in a re-creation of an infamous BBC interview that feels like a hallucinated episode of “The Crown.”
By Rebecca Mead
Culture Desk
The Heartbreak of an English Football Team
The Netflix series “Sunderland ’Til I Die” serves as a thesis both for fandom and for the inevitability of its disappointments.
By Hanif Abdurraqib
Critics at Large
What Is the Comic For?
Standup comedy has long been an art of public transgression—but, in the age of the culture wars, do audiences want to be challenged, or affirmed?
The Front Row
Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Quartet Abounds in Audacious Artifice and Stinging Political Critique
Four new short films make clear how crucial the author’s work has been in the development of Anderson’s art.
By Richard Brody
The New Yorker Radio Hour
David Grann on Turning Best-Sellers Into Movies
The author of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “The Wager” on his reporting process and adapting his work to the screen. Plus, Richard Brody makes the case for keeping your DVDs.
Cultural Comment
Hollywood’s Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage
Since the streaming era, movies and television feel less special, labor conditions have plummeted, and turbulent mergers and layoffs call into question which legendary institutions will still stand in another ten or twenty years.
By Inkoo Kang
Notes on Hollywood
“Orange Is the New Black” Signalled the Rot Inside the Streaming Economy
The innovative and daring show was a worldwide hit for Netflix, but some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated.
By Michael Schulman
On Television
Comic High Jinks and Repressed Despair in Netflix’s “Beef”
The drama, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, is a study of male loneliness—a familiar theme in prestige TV that finds renewed urgency in an Asian American context.
By Inkoo Kang
On Television
Chris Rock’s Live Experiment in Saving Face
“Everybody fucking knows. . . . I got smacked, like, a year ago,” the comedian finally says at the end of his Netflix special, as if that’s not the reason we’re all here.
By Lauren Michele Jackson
Daily Cartoon
Daily Cartoon: Friday, February 3rd
“Wow—Netflix wasn’t kidding about cracking down on password sharing.”
By Brooke Bourgeois
Cultural Comment
The Frictionless Charms of the Ferrante Cinematic Universe
The film and television adaptations of the Italian author’s novels offer an almost suspicious lack of resistance.
By Katy Waldman
The Front Row
“Represent,” Reviewed: A Witty Attempt to Redefine the French Left
Jean-Pascal Zadi’s episodic follow-up to his breakout feature film embraces a wide-ranging satirical vision of France at large.
By Richard Brody
Shouts & Murmurs
Netflix’s (Less Popular) Shows About Ex-Royals
An eternity of hanging around with the pharaoh and fending off grave robbers got old for this prince and princess.
By Adam Douglas Thompson
Profiles
How Much Netflix Can the World Absorb?
Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyper-aggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.”
By Rachel Syme
Shouts & Murmurs
Emily in Paris’s Year of Rest and Relaxation
I thought that if I slept enough I might kill off the part of Emily who said things like “Hashtag: oh, crêpe,” the Emily whose favorite “hidden gem” in Paris was the Louvre.
By Charlie Dektar
Cultural Comment
Meghan and Harry’s Netflix Fairy Tale
The new documentary presents a guy from London and a girl from L.A. who escape a wicked institution. It’s also a reminder of how good a royal Meghan could have been.
By Rebecca Mead
The New Yorker Interview
James Acaster Doesn’t Need Your Sympathy
The British comedian has turned his breakups and breakdowns into material. But his real subject is the nature of standup itself.
By Sarah Chihaya
On Television
Guillermo del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities,” a Horror Anthology Fit for the Streaming Age
In his new eight-part Netflix production, the director acts as a benevolent landlord of the horror genre, carving out space for others in the crowded pop-culture terrain.
By Adam Nayman
Our Columnists
How Netflix’s “Mo” Evades the Usual Representation Traps
A lesser show might have tried to make the titular character a bit more likable, or, perhaps, implanted within him a desire to explain his culture to the rest of the world.
By Jay Caspian Kang