No one captures the world quite like John Wilson. For three seasons now, the filmmaker has begun his HBO documentary series “How To With John Wilson” with the greeting “Hey, New Yorkers!” But as the show reaches its natural endpoint with the latest six-episode run, it’s clear that its wide, deep, strange scope goes far beyond the boundaries of the city Wilson calls home. In following the mind map style of observation that has now become Wilson’s signature, the new season features many unexpected detours around America, each more bizarre, surprising, and informative than the last.

Continue reading ‘How To With John Wilson’ Review: HBO’s Unique Comedy Series Wraps Up With A Weird, Mostly Wonderful Final Season at The Playlist.

There has never been a TV character like Devi Vishwakumar. Lang Fisher and Mindy Kaling’s snappy and sweet teen comedy “Never Have I Ever” has long since felt like an example of the power of highly specific points of view in storytelling, and in its fourth and final season, its complex protagonist has only grown more dynamic – and chaotic. Devi is undeniably unique but often painfully relatable.

Continue reading ‘Never Have I Ever’ Season 4 Review: Devi Is Messy, Funny, Emotional And Triumphant In The Final Season Of The Netflix Series at The Playlist.

Brooke Shields was pretty, even as a baby. Everyone knew it at the time, from her mother and manager, Teri Shields, to the grown men who were eager to get her nude in front of a camera from the age of ten to the legions of fans who felt a sense of ownership over her body. In the new two-part Hulu documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” Shields’ beauty frames the story like a sort of creation myth, at once simple and strange; she was born beautiful, and from that beauty sprung an entire world.

Continue reading ‘Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields’ Review: A Wide-Ranging Documentary Gives Its Subject The Gift Of Agency at The Playlist.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Joe Goldberg wants to change. At the outset of the fourth season of Netflix’s show “You,” the stalker and serial killer protagonist, played by Penn Badgley, has once again absconded from his past life, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. His inner monologue, equal parts enjoyably sardonic and disgustingly disturbed, assures viewers that no, for real, this time, he’s going to lie low and stop killing people.

Continue reading ‘You’ Season 4 Review: The Netflix Serial Killer Thriller Continues To Reinvent Itself at The Playlist.

Think about the worst guy you know. What about the second-worst guy? Keep this up for a while longer, then combine them all, and you might start to get a mental picture of the world-class jerk at the center of “Bad Sisters.” The new Apple TV+ series from “Catastrophe” co-creator Sharon Horgan is about a man who’s so off-putting and manipulative that when he meets his maker earlier than expected, the question isn’t who would want him dead, but who wouldn’t?

Continue reading ‘Bad Sisters’ Review: Sharon Horgan’s Latest Is A Frank, Darkly Funny Show About Family And Murder at The Playlist.

“Five Days at Memorial” is about as bleak as television gets. The series is meant to be that way; based on a non-fiction book by Sheri Fink, it’s set in a hospital during the direct aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As a medical thriller, it’s extremely compelling. As a true story, it’s almost overwhelmingly punishing and nearly entirely devoid of hope. Still, its suffocating mood isn’t purposeless: “Five Days at Memorial” forces viewers to bear witness to the realities of what being in New Orleans in 2005 likely felt like in a way few other pieces of media ever have before.

Continue reading ‘Five Days At Memorial’ Review: A Harrowing, Bleak Hurricane Katrina Story at The Playlist.

Anyone who has so much as turned on a television this year can tell you there is too much true crime. The genre has reached a saturation point: the stories are becoming thinner and are being repeated in different forms until they feel threadbare. A category that’s broad enough to include everything from “In Cold Blood” to “My Favorite Murder” also runs the gamut from respectful to exploitative, with more than a few recent series falling on the wrong side of the line.

Continue reading ‘Black Bird’ Review: Dennis Lehane’s New Apple TV+ Series Is True Crime in Rare, Fantastic Form at The Playlist.

The world of “Angelyne” is hot pink. It’s a pink that can’t be described in terms of bubble gum or cotton candy because no one in the world would ever invent something pink enough to make this pink’s namesake. Except, maybe, Angelyne (here played by Emmy Rossum) herself. The enigmatic, endlessly watchable pop figure at the center of Peacock’s new series is the stuff of Los Angeles legend, as the show loves to remind us.

Continue reading ‘Angelyne’ Review: Emmy Rossum Shines In A Hot Pink World Of Celebrity & Proto-Influencer Culture at The Playlist.

Sally Rooney’s stories of deconstructed yearnings and anxious young adulthoods have been the talk of the literary scene since 2017, when the author’s debut, “Conversations With Friends,” was published to acclaim. Her second novel, “Normal People,” was promptly turned into an angsty but well-acted Hulu miniseries led by captivating then-up-and-comers Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Now, “Conversations With Friends” is finally getting the Hulu treatment, with the same “Normal People” writer/director, Oscar-nominee Lenny Abrahamson (“Room“), operating the ship as well, bringing Rooney’s characters’ beautiful longings to life on screen once again.

Continue reading ‘Conversations With Friends’ Review: This ‘Normal People’ Follow-Up Is Muted, Frustrating & Bloodless at The Playlist.

Candy Montgomery (Jessica Biel) packs her colorful circular Tupperware with breaded meats and whipped cream Jell-o monstrosities. She brings a picnic patterned tablecloth to the run-down hotel where she’s meeting her friend’s husband, Alan (Pablo Schrieber), for an affair. When she puts on lipstick, she’s studying herself over a pair of oversized plastic glasses. And when she finds herself covered in the blood of that same friend (Melanie Lynskey), she steadies those same chunky glasses before establishing her alibi.

Continue reading ‘Candy’ Review: Jessica Biel & Melanie Lynskey Shine In An Intriguing True-Crime Tale Of Betrayed Friendship, Murder & Infidelity at The Playlist.

The Byrde family wants out of the money laundering business once and for all. Viewers of Netflix’s “Ozark” have heard this before, as it’s an oft-repeated refrain that’s carried cutthroat married couple Wendy (Laura Linney) and Marty (Jason Bateman) and their two kids through all four seasons of the popular crime series. In the show’s final seven episodes, though, their sometimes-hollow words start to ring true.

Continue reading ‘Ozark’ S4 Review: In Its Endgame, The Final Season Pulls Out All The Stops at The Playlist.

The new women-centric Apple TV+ anthology series “Roar” is extremely literal. Across its eight episodes, a trophy wife lives on a shelf, an ignored woman disappears, and a frustrated wife returns her husband to a big box store. Its short fables are so on the nose that, were the words of this review somehow incorporated into one of the episode’s scripts, viewers would likely see a woman with the show’s title balanced just above her nostrils.

Continue reading ‘Roar’ Review: Apple TV+’s Dark Feminist Fables Anthology Series Offers Very Strange & Mixed Results at The Playlist.

Toni Collette’s back-catalog of memorable mothers continues to grow. She’s played maternal figures who are tender (“The Sixth Sense”), terrifying (“Hereditary”), and complicated (“The United States of Tara”). Now, in Netflix’s new series “Pieces of Her,” Collette is a deeply enigmatic mom whose checkered past makes up the brunt of the twisty thriller’s action.

“Pieces of Her” opens strong.

Continue reading ‘Pieces Of Her’ Review: Toni Collette & Bella Heathcote Star In A Twisty Thriller About Family History at The Playlist.

It’s not as easy to bring a conspiracy to life on screen as it once was. Gone are the days of seedy thrillers and neo-noirs operating on the now-laughable premise that corruption is invisible to the average person’s naked eye. Closer on the horizon, yet still behind us, are conspiratorial thrillers based around big, dangerous emotions: think the aggressive patriotism of “24” or the paranoid individualism of “Mr. Robot.” The past few years have seen the world pushed into an era of high conspiracy, in which talk of plots and cover-ups are both more mainstream and more baffling than ever.

Continue reading ‘Suspicion’ Review: Uma Thurman Is Sidelined In A Conspiracy Series That Doesn’t Convince at The Playlist.