A lot of what you’re seeing the first two months of the year is Netflix debuting work from outside the U.S. I’ve talked about this before, so the quick recap is that while services like HBO have shuttered various co-production offices (such as theirs in Eastern Europe), Netflix has doubled down on a blend of co-producing original films and series and licensing pre-existing ones.
Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are the big players in terms of producing or acquiring content from outside the U.S./Britain/Canada, and they each seem to have their areas of focus. Netflix has been building a serious industry relationship over the last several years with the South Korean film industry, licensing series while increasingly producing their own Korean originals. They also have a pretty successful anime arm, and have started bringing on board Japanese broadcast series. Beyond this, they have productive relationships with the Mexican, Polish, Indian, and Turkish film industries, including enabling a lot of feminist and inclusive work that might not otherwise get produced.
Hulu has some productive anime co-licensing and is trying to get more into South Korean series, doubtless after seeing Netflix’s success with it. They’re also pretty good bringing in Western European (French, Spanish) work.
Amazon’s reach means they bring a broad range of international work in, and they’ve produced a good amount of Indian work.
Obviously, other sites with more focused ranges fit this description, too. Crunchyroll is still the powerhouse in anime. Kanopy’s focus on film history means they’ve got work from around the world, accessible with student credentials or many public library cards. MUBI’s rolling film library based on limited licensing has quick turnover on newer work, but often gets some of the most interesting films. FilmDoo is a remarkable resource for many countries not featured elsewhere – I’m fond of its Mongolian section.
Part of why I bring this up is that not every country’s industry regularly funds and supports women filmmakers. The best (or worst) example of this is India, where fights over government censorship have targeted the work of women filmmakers. Netflix and Amazon have engaged in a game of brinksmanship with the Indian government over future production, and there is a lot of work out there that probably wouldn’t get made or would look completely different without these platforms. This doesn’t absolve these platforms or companies of other issues they have, but the branches fighting for artists in India aren’t the ones making top-down decisions either.
Most streaming services are experimenting with “erasing” their original content from access right now. According to Variety, Showtime has removed two 2022 series, “American Gigolo” and “Let the Right One In”, from streaming entirely. This includes episodes that only debuted three or four months prior. Other recent shows, such as “Kidding” and “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” have been removed entirely from the platform. Paramount+ removed several titles including Jordan Peele’s recent “The Twilight Zone”. Hollywood Reporter highlights that HBO has done the same to “Westworld”. This is often due to tax breaks, saving on licensing, and/or avoiding paying out residuals to cast and crew. Some will be shopped to other services (HBO is looking for an ad-based one for “Westworld”), while others will simply remain inaccessible.
I bring this up here because the work that’s most susceptible to being erased is the work that doesn’t get much support starting out – women get less funding and less platforming than men. When HBO killed off their Central and Eastern European production last year, they also cut access to many new shows by women, several of which were featured here. Their argument was that these were lesser searched and seen, as if the failure to platform work by women at the same level as men has nothing to do with this.
It’s not just a case of these shows being cut off, either. The women who produced these series had made licensing deals with HBO, foregoing other potential licensing deals with other services. HBO then cut access to their work as a cost-saving strategy. Not only did these women lose out on another deal that could have continued to show their work, but their revenue through licensing was also then cut off early after that opportunity had passed. That also means the revenue of cast and crew through residuals was cut off.
It’s an ugly and disgusting new strategy that most streaming services are now testing. If the value proposition of these platforms is their original content and ability to license new and interesting work, and they pull the rug out from under these, then what value remains? Which artists do you think will be the first on the chopping block? The work of women, international artists, and artists of color will be the most erased. Those artists will suffer the most financial loss. It’s something that should not be normalized.
Remember, nearly every streaming service has a comment section where you can request a title or lodge a criticism, and most still have a customer service number where a real person picks up pretty quickly. I’ve had reason to test that here and there. Stand up for the work you want to see. If you’re reading this, chances are good you want to see the work of women. So let’s get to it:
New series come from Mexico, South Korea, and the U.S., and new films from Catalonia in Spain.
NEW SERIES
The Consultant (Amazon) mostly directed by women
Christoph Waltz plays an abusive, sociopathic boss who pushes employees to absurd lengths to see how far they’ll go.
Five of the eight episodes are directed by women. Charlotte Brandstrom (“LOTR: The Rings of Power) and Alexis Ostrander (“Cruel Summer”) each direct two episodes. Horror director Karyn Kusama (“Halt and Catch Fire”) directs another.
You can watch “The Consultant” on Amazon Prime. All 8 episodes are out on Friday.
Summer Strike (Netflix) showrun/directed by Lee Yoon Jung
Despite professional success, Lee Yeo Reum is burned out and struggling with misfortune and loss. She quits her job and moves to the seaside, in pursuit of doing nothing. There she meets An Dae Beom, a librarian who was once a math prodigy but turned away from academic life. The pair both need to heal, and connect despite their caution.
“Summer Strike” is a South Korean show written and directed by Lee Yoon Jung. She’s known for similar dramas like “Coffee Prince” and “Heart to Heart”.
You can watch “Summer Strike” on Netflix. All 12 episodes are out immediately.
(Turn on the auto-translate option for subtitles.)
A forensics expert discovers a murder victim is identical to her. This sets her on a path of discovering sisters she never knew about.
The Mexican series is written and showrun by Leticia Lopez Margalli, who also created the popular “Dark Desire”. It’s gotten some “Orphan Black” comparisons, though the premises diverge pretty early.
You can watch “Triptych” on Netflix. All 8 episodes are out.
The Company You Keep (ABC, Hulu) co-showrunner Julia Cohen
Charlie is the son in a storied family of con artists. Emma is an undercover CIA agent. The pair fall in love without either realizing they’re professional enemies.
Julia Cohen showruns with Phil Klemmer. She’s written and produced on “A Million Little Things” and “Riverdale”.
You can watch “The Company You Keep” on ABC or Hulu. One episode is out now, and new episodes premiere Sunday night (Hulu usually gets them the next day).
NEW MOVIES
Alcarras (MUBI) directed by Carla Simon
Peach farmers in Catalonia find their future is upended when the owner of their estate dies and sells the land out from under them.
Carla Simon directs the Catalan and Spanish film. “Alcarras” was nominated for 11 awards at Spain’s Goya Awards (similar to our Oscars). She’s also earned widespread recognition for many of her short films.
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“The Sound of Magic” reminds me what it’s like to watch something as a kid again, to be comforted and feel hope. It lets me forget that this is an unfair, unequal world, which is so strange since it spends most of its time calling out this inequality, showing its layers and intractability, tearing privilege apart, and offering no rosy or idealistic answers. The question its central characters ask, “Do you believe in magic?” might not last outside the world it creates, but for an hour at a time it makes that magic real, and makes us remember why it has to stay real in some part of ourselves.
“The Sound of Magic” is a Korean musical series. Ah-Yi is a high school student with a knack for math, raising her sister on her own since her indebted parents went into hiding to avoid debt collectors, lawsuits, and prison. There’s a rumor that a magician lives in the abandoned theme park atop a local hill. Chasing her money, her only ability to feed her little sister, Ah-Yi stumbles into the park…and the magician, Ri Eul. He takes an interest in her and wants to teach her magic, but who has that kind of time between work, school, and being broke?
Complexities arise in the form of smitten but obsessive classmate Na Il-deung, Ah-Yi’s teacher, her boss, the clout-chasing school gossip, the case of a missing girl and the police investigating it. “The Sound of Magic” keeps you on your toes. There may only be six episodes, but the cliffhangers are superb.
The songs are top-notch and varied. Ji Chang Wook plays the showman of a magician with confidence and bravado that masks a lurking plaintiveness and need underneath. If there’s an award for most charming performance of the year, he should walk away with it. It both disarms and feeds questions about Ri Eul’s past and whether he’s a danger.
Choi Sung Eun plays Ah-Yi with a much more grounded reality. She can open up and sing, but her best performance is a lament in the fourth episode where beautiful singing gives way to a breaking voice and choked whisper. Her performance is often stunning.
What’s around them in “The Sound of Magic” can be a bit sappy and uneven and that’s fine, because it understands the appeal of sentimentality as a comforting element of fantasy we need when things are at their worst. It isn’t just sentimental, it’s often gorgeously so, grasping how an often overlooked or avoided element of storytelling can be powerful and even speak to power. There’s a charm in over-earnestness that can keep us afloat and hopeful, that makes the story that’s delivering it feel like a space that’s safe from harm. Even as questions swirl about Ri Eul and whether he’s a safe person to be around, that sense of shelter perfectly reflects how Ah-Yi views him, how she needs him to be what he seems – a good person trying to help others feel happy.
There are far more serious, more cinematic, critically acclaimed wotsits that can’t hold a candle to conveying this very human and so overlooked aspect of how we endure. Some Western critics complained “The Sound of Magic” wasn’t realistic enough, a complaint that boggles my mind when watching a musical about magic. More importantly, this is a critique rarely leveled at our musicals that fail to engage even a fraction of what this show does: inequality, debt cycling, misogyny, sexual harassment, academic stress, stalking, child abuse, homeless abuse, police profiling. It’s all folded in, which might seem very strange for a series that’s feel-good, but it never shies away from a sense of responsibility or sharp social critique for the subjects it engages. Nothing is tied away with a neat bow.
It has what might be the most galling and complexly real scene of privilege played out this year, including a terrific monologue afterward about its impact and how those who get off without consequence can still envision themselves a victim. It navigates these issues with a deft hand, and it does this in between a cheesy song about flying through the air on horses and a haunting dance number about students desperately competing for approval. It is joyous and damning in turn.
Is it clunky? Here and there. Does it have trouble pacing between its various genres? At times. But I’d rather it has some light hiccups while being exceptional at the storytelling it’s targeting than fine-tuning these other things at the expense of its ambition and ideals. At the end of the day, “The Sound of Magic” has a unique way of developing its sense of connection and consequence, and a show that can help us feel close to those senses has incredible meaning. It’s one of the most human and moving things I’ve seen this year.
The world in which “The Sound of Magic” takes place is our own, overwhelming, crushing, despairing, and yet the story it tells is one of hope as…well, the full and complex thing hope is. A light in the dark. An axe to break down doors. Sometimes a close partner we take through life with us. Sometimes a thing lost and buried in our pasts that takes hard work and digging to unearth again.
Sometimes a new show or movie can be hard to locate. Let me explain: every once in a while, there’s something listed but that doesn’t come available when it should. This usually has to do with international releases – HBO Max is particularly terrible listing the right dates for the right countries. I constantly see their Spanish-language series listed for release in the U.S. on one date, but then land on another, unlisted date. If I were to tell you to go see a series that isn’t there yet, that’s not very useful to you.
This has only gotten worse with Warner Bros. Discovery’s acquisition of HBO. Many international series have been pulled early. HBO Max used to be one of the best places to find European series. With a focus on originals, this included less-frequently platformed work by women. After the acquisition, Warner Bros. Discovery culled HBO’s European content. This included not only stopping original productions east of France, but removing content from Central, Eastern European, and Nordic countries that was already bought and paid for.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the movie “Batgirl” being denied any release. That was so the entire production can be used as a tax write-off. Incomplete shows might also be used this way, but these finished shows aren’t succumbing to the same situation – this has more to do with Warner Bros. Discovery not wanting to pay residuals. Some of this content may end up getting licensed out to other streamers, but much of it will simply disappear and not be seen again. That’s a tragedy for the artists involved, especially since it covers so much work by women in Europe.
New series by women come from India, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S., with new films by women arriving from Belgium, Nunavut, South Korea, and the U.S.
NEW SERIES
Hush Hush (Amazon) showrunner Tanuja Chandra
(Turn Closed Captioning on for subtitles.) This horror series from India follows five women, four of whom are trying to cover up a crime in their apartment block.
Tanuja Chandra has been directing films since the 90s. This is her first series.
You can watch “Hush Hush” on Amazon. All 7 episodes are out.
From Scratch (Netflix) showrunner Attica Locke directed by Nzingha Stewart, Dennie Gordon
Zoe Saldana stars as Amy, who falls in love with a Sicilian man while studying in Italy. The story tracks their relationship through the years across countries.
Attica Locke showruns the series based off Tembi Locke’s memoir. Attica also wrote and produced on “Empire” and “Little Fires Everywhere”. Joining from the latter to direct 5 episodes is Nzingha Stewart, who’s also directed on “Maid” and “Scandal”. “Madam Secretary” director Dennie Gordon also directs 3 episodes.
You can watch “From Scratch” on Netflix. All 8 episodes are out now.
The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself (Netflix) half-directed by women
The son of an infamous witch finds himself trapped between two warring clans. All fear him because of his father’s history of violence, even as his father’s clan tries to kill him.
Debs Paterson and Rachna Suri direct two episodes apiece.
Arknights: Prelude to Dawn (Crunchyroll) directed by Watanabe Yuki
Based on a tower defense puzzle game, “Arknights: Prelude to Dawn” follows a doctor’s team that’s racing to find a cure in a world beset by plague, disasters, and fascist governments. You can tell it’s not a documentary because some characters are part-animal.
Director Watanabe Yuki previously helmed episodes of “Warlords of Sigrdrifa” and “Visual Prison”.
You can watch “Arknights: Prelude to Dawn” on Crunchyroll. The series will be simulcast as episodes premiere in Japan every Friday.
Modern Love Tokyo (Amazon) showrunner Hirayanagi Atsuko mostly directed by women
(No English subtitles available on this one.) This Japanese adaptation of “Modern Love” is an anthology series. Each episode focuses on different characters and depicts a different form of expressing love.
Hirayanagi Atsuko showruns, as well as writing and directing two episodes. Ogigami Naoko and Yamada Naoko each direct another.
You can watch “Modern Love Tokyo” on Amazon. There are 7 episodes, all available immediately.
May I Help You (Amazon) directed by Shim So Yeon
(No English subtitles available on this one.) Funeral director Baek Dong Ju can speak to the dead, who ask her to grant their last wishes. If she doesn’t, her bad luck accumulates. Kim Jib Sa runs odd errands for his uncle, but after a boycott is looking for new work. He might be able to help the funeral director with her odd requests.
Director Shim So Yeon has helmed a number of Korean series, including “Here’s My Plan”.
A 50 year-old caretaker must care for a 10 year-old girl, whose dentures are made of ice and must be changed around the clock.
The English-language, Belgian film is helmed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, who also co-wrote the screenplay. She previously directed and co-wrote “Evolution”.
Run Sweetheart Run (Amazon) directed by Shana Feste
After her blind date turns violent, Cherie is trapped in the city at night. Doing everything she can to get home alive, she discovers she’s not the first woman to be hunted by this man.
Director and co-writer Shana Feste also helmed “Endless Love”.
Maika and her friends use improvised weapons and their extensive horror movie knowledge to fight back against an alien invasion in their Arctic town. Most of the cast is Inuit or First Nations.
Nyla Innuksuk directs and co-writes the Nunavut film. She’s also helped create VR experiences for Tanya Tagaq and A Tribe Called Red.
20th Century Girl (Netflix) directed by Bang Woo-ri
A teen in 1999 South Korea does a favor for her best friend – befriending her crush. Introduce his best friend and various complications ensue before the promise of a new century.
This is the first film from writer-director Bang Woo-ri.
This Blumhouse horror stars Katey Sagal as a country music legend who hosts a young country music duo seeking out her advice. When they discover she may have murdered her singing partner, their stay turns into terror at their idol’s hands.
Brea Grant directs from a screenplay by Rachel Koller Croft. Grant might be best known for recurring roles on “Dexter” and “Heroes”, and her shift into directing includes Angela Bettis horror-comedy “12 Hour Shift”.
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Every once in a while, I choose not to include a film here. I’m cautious about this because as much work as I may have done, I don’t believe anyone really gets rid of every scintilla of ingrained bias. What we’re raised with, we see in the culture that shapes us, and what we continue to see every day combine as powerful forces that mean we never completely solve our potential biases. There’s a reason we divide between explicit and implicit bias. Implicit bias arises in us in ways we might not be able to recognize. If I include every new series and film I can find that’s showrun or directed by women, then bias is minimized at least in the step of selection itself. If I begin to remove certain listings according to my judgment, I introduce the potential for bias.
That’s why I try to include everything. When Ellen Rapoport’s “Minx” came out earlier this year, I still included it despite her previous film “Desperados” being incredibly racist toward Mexicans. I didn’t feel good about that, especially being of Mexican descent. I noted this concern and talked about why I had it, but I still included the series and told people where they could find it. Rapoport’s previous project had been dehumanizing – a dehumanization that I know from experience as a Latino can carry real risk to our safety.
The only things I haven’t included – and this really only comes up once every few months – are films that are blatantly propaganda or blatantly, intentionally, unquestionably harmful. I always try to err on the side of including a film. If this feature is supposed to be informational, I can always include a project and talk about why it’s problematic.
The film I’ve had that conversation about this week is Lena Dunham’s “Catherine Called Birdy”. Based on the novel by Karen Cushman, I struggle with Dunham’s repeated and unapologetic acts of racism, as well as her attempted cover-up of statutory rape by one of the writers on her series “Girls”.
Dunham has been consistently racist in posts and public statements she’s made, in limiting opportunities to whom she’s employed in the writers’ room and in front of the camera, and in her defenses of both actions. She met the statutory rape allegation against one of the writers on “Girls” by declaring the survivor, Aurora Perrineau, was lying. Dunham insisted she had insider information about the incident, but after the media storm passed, she admitted she had none. That Perrineau is Black also calls into question Dunham’s past, repeated dehumanization of Black people. Dunham’s response was already heinous enough before raising this question, but would she have defended the writer if he’d been Black and the survivor had been white?
Certainly, women who are successful are torn down relentlessly. That should give Dunham some benefit of the doubt, but that only goes so far. It doesn’t excuse Dunham’s own actions. It doesn’t serve as carte blanche for her to tear down people of color relentlessly. It doesn’t excuse her tearing down Perrineau. Do I list Dunham’s work? There’s a point where that decision doesn’t center around my potential bias, but rather on whether I should platform someone else’s expressed, evidenced bias.
I suppose the difference is this: I bring up Rapoport because she wrote a horribly racist screenplay, and that furthers views that cause harm. In my knowledge of her work, it does seem isolated to that project. That’s not an excuse, but lack of a pattern allows me to think there’s hope someone who does that may have made a terrible mistake. Maybe she can correct it in the future, or maybe I’m just an idiot who likes to think that’s a possibility. Either way, I feel comfortable giving her the benefit of the doubt and including her next project so long as I raise and talk about my concerns regarding her past work.
Dunham has doubled down on direct harm, not just dehumanizing people of color, but on limiting their opportunities under her employ as well. She’s made countless racist statements. Combined with unsupported accusations she made to delegitimize a statutory rape survivor, the lines she’s crossed are far too many.
There’s a reason author Zinzi Clemmons quit Dunham’s weekly newsletter and wrote, “It’s time for women of color – black women in particular – to divest from Lena Dunham”. Certainly, if it’s time for women of color to do so, then it’s time for men of color to ally with that decision. I would hope that women of color are entrusted to lead enough that white people would ally with this choice as well. With Dunham, there’s an evidenced pattern of behavior, and – perhaps more damning – an evidenced refusal to attempt accountability, change, or treating either as having worth.
Am I still highlighting Dunham’s new film by making my introduction about her? If your takeaway is that you can’t wait to watch her work, then nothing I say is going to make a difference in that. Is it possible I end up reviewing something she’s in later? Sure, but it’s very unlikely to be something she writes or directs. I’ve written in the past that these choices are difficult when movies themselves are created by so many people. Do you refuse to watch “X-Men” because director Bryan Singer was a statutory rapist or do you watch it because Patrick Stewart is a domestic violence survivor and activist, and Ian McKellen was one of the only out gay actors in the 90s to overcome hiring resistance? I don’t know what the right answer to that is, and if you watch a Dunham film because one of the actors is meaningful to you, I’m not going to think you’re a terrible person. I do think when we make these decisions one way or the other, it’s important to talk about them and treat them realistically.
Am I censoring Dunham? If that’s how we’re treating the word ‘censorship’, then to platform her is to censor people of color. In that choice, she’s one person, they’re many. Just as important, she’s the instigator of that censorship, they’re the people surviving it. Not a tough choice.
Too often, people find themselves defending a Depp because we had his posters on our walls growing up, a Gilliam because his reruns from half a century ago make us laugh, or even a Polanski because he suffered trauma and wins Oscars. It’s reasonable to still find meaning in some of their work, sure, but we need to learn to separate that from icon worship. Most people know what it’s like to have some harmful moron we hang onto and defend too long. We identify with people we don’t know, and as we learn more about them, we don’t want to lose that identification. Sometimes it’s easier to defend them than defend ourselves from them.
It’s hard to be complete about this. It’s impossible to learn everything about everybody in isolation, let alone as patterns. We share something or platform someone without realizing it’s a bad idea until it’s too late. Yet sometimes the pattern is obvious, and you know what – that’s still only half of it. For me, this is really just as important, because I do believe people can learn and change: the refusal to change that pattern is also obvious. When someone’s pattern of harm and the refusal to do the work to change it are both that obvious, the refusal to platform that person becomes obvious, too.
What I’m going to do today is decide that I won’t share work that Dunham writes or directs. She’s not the first I’ve made that decision for. When the Soska sisters decided to ally themselves with and spout propaganda for white supremacists, I decided not to platform their work. Each of these situations is different, and it takes a lot for me to make that decision. I hope you understand why I am, and why it’s important to talk about.
New series this week come from Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. New movies come from the Philippines and the U.S.
NEW SERIES
Glitch (Netflix) directed by Roh Deok
A woman hired through nepotism loses her boyfriend amid mysterious flashing lights one night. An unsuccessful livestreamer obsessed with mysteries and the UFO community may have insight. The pair team up to find out the truth. “Vincenzo” lead Jeon Yeo Been joins K-Pop-star-turned-actress Nana (of such groups as Orange Caramel and Dazzling Red).
Roh Deok has directed breakup film “Very Ordinary Couple” and journalism thriller “The Exclusive: Beat the Devil’s Tattoo”.
A Friend of the Family (Peacock) mostly directed by women
A family friend kidnaps their daughter several times over the course of years. It’s based on the real story of Jan Broberg Felt being kidnapped twice by her neighbor in the 1970s.
Rachel Goldberg and Eliza Hittman direct two episodes apiece, with Lauren Wolkstein directing another. Goldberg’s directed on “The Sinner” and “American Gods”. Hittman is the director of “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”. Wolkstein directed on “Queen Sugar”.
You can watch “A Friend of the Family” on Peacock. The first four episodes premiered this week, with another episode arriving every Thursday for a total of 9.
Raven of the Inner Palace (Crunchyroll) directed by Miyawaki Chizuru
A consort with mystical powers consults spirits in order to solve a web of assassinations, murders, and other mysteries inside the palace of a Chinese kingdom. The anime is based on the light novel series.
Director Miyawaki Chizuru was one of the two major directors of the “Gintama” series of shows and movies for years. She started off doing key animation work in the last 90s on shows like “Hunter x Hunter” and “Generator Gawl”.
A convicted man joins a firefighting program that may shorten his prison sentence. He works alongside inmates and professional fire fighters alike to combat wildfires.
Showrunner Tia Napolitano also wrote and produced on “Scandal” and “Cruel Summer”.
You can watch “Fire Country” on CBS. New episodes air on Friday.
Family Law (The CW) showrunner Susin Nielsen
Jewel Staite plays Abigail, a lawyer who loses her job due to alcoholism. Unable to get hired anywhere else, her only refuge is the law firm of her father, played by Victor Garber. He has two other children who work there as lawyers – whom she doesn’t know.
Showrunner Susin Nielsen is a longtime writer and producer of Canadian television. Her career started as an art department assistant on the original “Degrassi High” before she shifted into the writers room.
You can watch “Family Law” on the CW. New episodes arrive every Sunday.
NEW MOVIES
Deadstream (Shudder) co-directed by Vanessa Winter
A disgraced livestreamer needs a big stunt for his comeback: one night streaming from a haunted house. This one’s real, and a vengeful spirit looks to take him offline permanently.
Vanessa Winter writes and directs with Joseph Winter. The pair also directed a segment on this year’s “V/H/S/99”.
You can watch “Deadstream” on Shudder.
Doll House (Netflix) directed by Marla Ancheta
This film from the Philippines finds a man hiding his identity in order to take care of the daughter he left behind years ago.
Marla Ancheta also directed “Ikaw” and “Finding Agnes”.
If you enjoy what you read on this site, subscribe to Gabriel Valdez’s Patreon. It helps with the time and resources to continue writing articles like this one.
There’s a lot this week, but before we dive in, I want to highlight that Celine Sciamma’s “Petite Maman” has arrived on Hulu. If you asked me the best filmmaker working today, the “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and “Girlhood” director is the first name that comes to mind. I try to feature films when they hit VOD and then hit their first subscription platform. A subtle fantasy about a girl helping her parents after the death of her grandmother, “Petite Maman” has already been on MUBI most of the year. I know that is a niche platform to many. It’s worth mentioning now that it’s on Hulu, which a lot more folks have.
Series this week come from South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. Films comes from Nigeria, the Philippines, Sweden, and the U.S.
NEW SERIES
Little Women (Netflix) directed by Kim Hee Won
Loosely based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, three sisters who grew up in poverty find themselves involved in the disappearance of a fortune and embattled with the wealthiest family in South Korea.
Director Kim Hee Won has helmed a growing list of South Korea’s most lauded series, including “Vincenzo”, “The Crowned Clown”, and “Money Flower”.
You can watch “Little Women” on Netflix. Two episodes are out now. A new one arrives every Saturday and Sunday (two a week), for a total of 12.
Wedding Season (Hulu) half-directed by Laura Scrivano
Not to be confused with last month’s Netflix film of the same title, Hulu series “Wedding Season” starts as a breezy wedding-themed romcom, only for the bride to find her husband’s entire family poisoned. The suspects include a cross-section of her romantic life, as well as herself. “Alita: Battle Angel” and “Undone” star Rosa Salazar is the lead.
“The Lazarus Project” director Laura Scrivano directs four of the series episodes.
You’re Nothing Special (Netflix) showrunner Estibaliz Burgaleta
In this Spanish comedy, a girl discovers witch-like powers after moving from the city to her mother’s small town. She may have inherited them from her grandmother.
Estibaliz Burgaleta is a prolific writer on Spanish comedy series.
Two teens design a system to print fake IDs, but things spin out of control as they turn what was a small operation into an empire.
Jasmin Mozaffari and Joyce Wong direct four episodes apiece, while Emmy-nominated Mars Horodyski directs two.
You can watch “Fakes” on Netflix. All 10 episodes are out.
Recipes for Love and Murder (Acorn TV) showrunner Karen Jeynes
In this South African crime comedy, an advice columnist uses her cooking skills to investigate murders when one of her correspondents is killed.
Karen Jeynes showruns and writes the series adapted from Sally Andrew’s novels, as well as directing four episodes.
You can watch “Recipes for Love and Murder” on Acorn TV. Two episodes are out, with another two arriving every Monday for a total of 10.
Tell Me Lies (Hulu) showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer
“Tell Me Lies” tracks the evolution of a toxic relationship that starts in college, impacting not just the two lovers but the lives of everyone around them.
Meaghan Oppenheimer showruns. She’s also written on “Fear the Walking Dead”.
You can watch “Tell Me Lies” on Hulu. The first three episodes are out, with another landing every Wednesday for a total of 10.
NEW MOVIES
Love at First Stream (Netflix) directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina
A streamer and three friends navigate online connections in order to cope with their offline realities.
Director Cathy Garcia-Molina might be the Philippines’ biggest director, having directed the two highest grossing Philippine films ever made.
In this Swedish film, a couple’s romance, marriage, and slow fragmentation are considered from a scientific perspective…of a sort. Can’t find an English trailer I can post here for it, but Netflix has options on the film itself.
Writer-director Tuva Novotny is an actress who made the jump to director on “Lilyhammer”.
A couple detox from all things digital in a remote town, but things quickly devolve into chaos.
This is the first film Debra Neil-Fisher directs, but you’ve almost surely seen her work before. A sought-after comedy editor, she edited the first two “Austin Powers” movies, all three “The Hangover” films, the 2020 “Sonic the Hedgehog”, and “Coming 2 America”.
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April means the spring anime season is upon us, so get ready for idols, isekai, and mecha. The anime industry drops nearly every premiere within a two-week span toward the start of each season. That means they get much more grouped up than Western shows. This week, there are three new anime series by women, a new K-drama, and new films from Norway and the U.S.
NEW SERIES
Heroines Run the Show (Crunchyroll) directed by Noriko Hashimoto
Hiyori Suzumi moves to Tokyo to train as a track athlete. The job she gets stuck with is managing a male idol group. It’s difficult for her to balance school, track, work, and free time, especially when the pair she’s managing is in her class.
This is the first series Noriko Hashimoto is directing.
You can watch “Heroines Run the Show” on Crunchyroll. The first episode is available now and new episodes arrive Thursdays.
The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn as a Typical Nobody (Crunchyroll) directed by Minato Mirai
Varvatos has grown to become too powerful a sorcerer. The only option left is to travel into the future and become an average kid…who boasts tremendous powers.
Minato Mirai has directed extensively in the “Fate/Stay” universe and helmed last year’s “The Dungeon of Black Company”.
Tiger & Bunny 2 (Netflix) directed by Kase Mitsuko
Netflix resurrects a classic anime series where superhumans are sponsored and climb annual rankings for their heroics. Veteran heroes Kotetsu and Barnaby may struggle to stay in the game after all these years.
I normally focus on series premieres and not second seasons, especially because anime universes can grow enough offshoots to make the MCU multiverse look tame, but given that there’ve been no new entries since 2011, this is a bit of a unique case.
Director Kase Mitsuko also helmed “Ristorante Paradiso” and “Saikano”. Her career stretches back to mecha series in the 70s and 80s.
You can watch “Tiger & Bunny 2” on Netflix. The series should be able to stand on its own, but Netflix does have the first season from 2011 if you want to start there. All 13 episodes are available immediately.
Green Mothers Club (Netflix) directed by Ra Ha Na
In this Korean series, five mothers meet through their children’s school. Despite their different outlooks and experiences, they learn to support each other in ways they can’t find elsewhere.
Ra Ha Na directs. She’s also directed “Tinted with You”.
You can watch “Green Mothers Club” on Netflix. The premiere is available now and new episodes arrive every Wednesday for a total of 16.
NEW MOVIES
Freeland (MUBI) co-directed by Kate McLean
An elderly, off-the-grid pot farmer sees her business dwindle when cannabis is made legal. She considers what to do next as she harvests her final crop.
Kate McLean writes and directs with Mario Furloni. McLean has primarily worked in documentary films up till now.
Battle: Freestyle (Netflix) directed by Ingvild Soderlind
Amalie is torn between love, an absent mother, and going with her dance team to the global finals in France. The Norwegian film is based on the novel by Maja Lunde.
This is the second feature film from director Ingvild Soderlind.
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To watch “Pachinko” is to yearn, both in the way it spurs longing and in its expression of profound compassion. It’s like witnessing time pass in a poem, the way our understanding changes from its opening line to its last because it fits like a key into the places we shut and guard, or simply forgot to visit for too long.
“Pachinko” invites you to open up with it, to witness things that will be lost and in so doing appreciate the act of letting go that means they’ll always be found. It is gentle and heartbreaking, celebratory, devastating, peaceful. It is assuredly cinematic, transporting, and yet somehow feels like life, like memory – not yours or mine, but in the way that fiction can evoke – as close as we can get to sharing it.
The series follows four generations of a Korean family, but centers on two stories: Sunja’s life starting from 1915, and her grandson Solomon’s in 1989. Sunja’s story is that of struggle, of growing up in Japanese-occupied Korea during a time of oppression and colonial exploitation, of love, heartbreak, immigration, assimilation, resistance. In 1989, Solomon travels from the U.S. to Japan to close a land deal and visit the elderly Sunja. The time periods are cut together with a sense of reflection and suggestion.
Both stories inform each other. Cutting back and forth is a departure from Min Jin Lee’s novel, I believe, but it’s an exquisite way to highlight the generational trauma that survives and shapes a diaspora. It also serves as a lens for how colonialism and racism evolve and codify themselves into norms and systems.
The subtitles are color-coded – yellow for what’s spoken in Korean, light blue for what’s spoken in Japanese. You get used to it fast, and it’s a forthright way of communicating its characters’ code-switching, and who will understand which portion of a conversation. Moments when one language is chosen over another can shoulder incredible weight by changing the context in which a character speaks a phrase. Solomon is a man struggling with three sets of cultural values – Korean, Japanese, and American – and his choice of language in certain situations can change how we understand him. This code-switching can pierce, using the choice of language for a single word like a dagger; or it can create shelter, a fortress beyond which someone else’s understanding cannot pass.
I don’t have knowledge of Korean and Japanese code-switching and accents, but the writing and filmmaking convey this in subtle and poetic ways: “My children don’t even know the language in which their mother dreams”. It is the most astounding expression of how assimilation and resistance to it take shape not just across a culture or within an immigrant population, but within the individual people who live their lives trying to make sense of that internalized dissonance.
That may not sound like the makings of a sweeping romantic epic, but why shouldn’t it be? People who have endured these things are people just like anyone else, and can convey the feelings of entire lifetimes in ways that already translate across different cultures. In both its romanticism and romance, “Pachinko” is a testament to survival – not just of people, but of culture. In particular, it recognizes the burden women bear to keep it alive, to insist on its importance, to resist colonization even as its sharpest cruelties subside and diffuse into a thousand pinprick norms. It is an ode to remembrance as an act of both care and defiance. Those aren’t just two elements that can co-exist; sometimes they’re the same act entirely.
The visuals of “Pachinko” are filmic, not just in the sense of having beautiful cinematography, but in the sense of telling a story with a patience entrusted to audience, performer, and location alike. It’s difficult to define or quantify because you can’t do either to poetry. It expresses. It feels. It lives. Directors Kogonada, Justin Chon, and showrunner Soo Hugh make fiction breathe. To witness it is to witness something in yourself.
In reflecting on Sunja’s life at the same time as her life’s story is told, it shows how one generation instills the breadth of that life and their memory into all those who follow. This isn’t someone telling her story at its end; this is someone still living it just as she always has. The approach to mortality in “Pachinko” is one of carrying forward everything about a person save their presence.
“Pachinko” is a revelatory examination of different types of love, all valuable and needed, each composing the shape of our lives, and it’s a story about how that love acts as sustenance, survival, and resistance through the ugliest we have to offer. Even when we shear those types of love away from our lives, or they are shorn from us, we still carry them within us as a strength, we still pass them on in how our love for others is shaped.
The performances are some of the best you’ll see. Kim Min-ha and Youn Yuh-jung play Sunja at different points in her life. Not only are they both excellent, they show an evolution of the same mannerisms, share the same ways of holding themselves, of existing in a place. It’s one of the most stunning dual performances of a character you’ll see. Jin Ha, Lee Min-ho, Soji Arai, Kaho Minami, Anna Sawai, Jimmi Simpson, all the performances are as good as you can get.
I watch “Pachinko” with a lump in my throat. It’s not even worth bothering to dry the tears when they don’t really stop. It’s a slow drip of moving beauty, of details lost with generations past, of what survives in spite of being quashed under heel, of what time erodes but memory keeps vital. The storytelling is so clear its subtleties glint sunshine. It’s an invitation to be utterly human, whatever the day asks of us. It’s not just a testament to survival, it’s a space that reminds us that to survive emotionally is the testament itself. “Pachinko” is a dagger, a shelter, a museum of what’s lost and can never be lost. It keeps existing when the episode ends. It keeps feeling when I do other things.
There is art that stores a piece of itself in us, and in which we store a piece of ourselves. We know it’s there in safe times. When we lose ourselves or feel desperate, we know one place where we stored an extra bit of who we are for emergencies. That’s a way that we survive. That’s a way that we resist. That’s a way that we keep our care alive. It’s the way I know best to write about love. It’s a way that we know ourselves better when we sit and quietly think of that art, a way we help others know us better when we share it.
It’s rare when we sense so many artists across a single project have stored themselves in something for us, rare when that’s so visible, when we’re asked to witness that in a way that deepens the reality of what we’re watching. The writing in “Pachinko” is an act of resistance, the performance an expression of survival, the direction an act of care. It feels so safe storing part of who you are in its art because it feels like countless others already have, that what I witness in it is what I’d like to know better in myself, that what I’ve stored in it may be much more than I know how to recognize just yet.
You can watch “Pachinko” on Apple TV. Four of its eight episodes are out, with new ones arriving every Friday.
This week contains one of my most anticipated series of the year, “Pachinko”. The South Korean co-production premieres its first three episodes on Apple TV today, and it looks stunning. If you aren’t watching series from other countries and in other languages, I really urge you to start – whether it’s with this or something else that catches your eye.
When I named my choices for the top 10 shows from 2021, I highlighted series from France, Japan, Turkey, and two from South Korea. If I’d done a top 11, a series from Jordan would have found its way in, too. So much of our boredom with watching the same thing every day arises from the majority of our viewing coming from the same perspectives every day. Switch up those perspectives, and film and TV become a lot more exciting and unexpected.
NEW SERIES
Pachinko (Apple TV) showrunner Soo Hugh
“Pachinko” tracks a Korean family’s course starting from the Japanese occupation of Korea, and their lives in both countries. It stars Yuh-jung Youn, who won an Oscar last year for “Minari”, and is based on the novel by Min Jin Lee.
Showrunner Soo Hugh wrote on “The Killing” and wrote and produced on “Under the Dome”, “The Terror”, and “See”.
You can watch “Pachinko” on Apple TV. The first three episodes are available right now, with a new episode arriving every Friday for a total of eight.
NEW MOVIES
You Are Not My Mother (VOD) directed by Kate Dolan
Char’s mother goes missing near their North Dublin home, so she sets out to investigate what’s happened to her.
Writer-director Kate Nolan started out as a photographer, and later a music video director. This is her first feature film.
Deep Hatred (VOD) directed by Daniela Carvalho, Ale McHaddo
In this Brazilian horror movie, the death of her father calls Cindy home. Her boyfriend and friends join her, but they find that her father’s home holds a secret and a threat.
Ale McHaddo has directed a few Brazilian movies and series. This is the first feature film as director for Daniela Carvalho.
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The most important thing to understand about lists like this is that they’ll always exclude something. No critic can watch everything out there that’s worth watching. The choices a critic makes in what they prioritize can help you understand how a list like this can be useful.
For instance, even though many of my friends have raved about it, I just can’t bring myself to watch “Succession”. Perhaps it belongs on this list. Satire though it may be, I just can’t bring myself to spend that much time invested in which billionaire gets to make more billions while others go home super sad about only possessing the billions they already have. I’m sure it’s good. I’m sure I’d also feel a deep pit in my stomach even touching it.
As viewers, the feelings we have like that are legitimate, and every good critic is ultimately a viewer who has a desire to connect with and share what they love with others. There are times when we push our comfort, for good and bad reasons, and there are times where we realize we can do more or better work in other places.
It was a priority for me to watch series from different countries. It’s great that South Korean series “Squid Game” is breaking through, and it’s on my list. Yet if we were really being inclusive in our viewing choices, South Korea’s television industry is so overbrimming it should be getting best-of entries every year.
When “Squid Game” is a breakthrough rather than part of a norm, it means that critics are following audiences rather than shining a light on what’s next. If “Squid Game” hadn’t set viewing records, would it have made so many critics’ year-end lists? Probably not, because there’s a well of other Korean series of equal quality in this year and years past.
Is “Squid Game” the only entry on a list from somewhere outside the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.? Then you know something about that critic’s scope. Don’t get me wrong – watching more international series means that I’ve sacrificed watching a few U.S. ones. My point isn’t that one is inherently better than the other; my point is that this information gives you a perspective on what different lists can tell you.
What other priorities inform this list? I tend to lean toward series that buck tradition and try something risky or ambitious. If there’s an element of absurdism, abstraction, or magical realism that’s pulled off well, I tend to like it even if it asks me to do that much more work as a viewer. I like empathy, not just on the part of a series, but also in being asked as a viewer to stretch and view perspectives I might not have sought out in the past.
I don’t mind if a series occasionally shortcuts a plot point with the mutual understanding viewers have seen it a thousand times before and can assume the A-to-B of it. I think world-building doesn’t matter that much for the world you’re creating; I need to see how it’s shaped the lives, understandings, and relationships of the characters who live in that world.
I don’t mind a little bit of melodrama. Where the U.S. tends to incorporate theatrical and even melodramatic performances told within a “gritty”, verite-heavy filmmaking approach, a lot of the rest of the world prefers more understated, verite performances told within a melodramatic filmmaking delivery. We all secretly like melodrama; the only difference is where we place it.
Oh, and some of the best series of recent years have been canceled prematurely. If you’re looking at committing to a series, it helps to know if it’s self-contained or will get to continue, rather than simply being canceled. I’ll mention on each whether it’s been renewed. On with the list:
10. What We Do in the Shadows
The series adaptation of the 2014 mockumentary follows a trio of vampires and their familiar living together on Staten Island. In season three, they’ve just been named leaders of their local vampiric council. It seems like a success, but it’s really the beginning of the group fracturing apart.
Past seasons have been funny, skewering horror movies, bureaucracy, and the “Office” style mockumentary format itself. This season turns into something else, though. Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, and Kayvan Novak all feel like they have rangier roles to play, while still allowing room for now-regular Kristen Schaal to hit the ground running. It’s Matt Berry, in all his skill at overblown bluster, who ultimately reveals the deep heart the show’s built upon.
Without losing its humor, “What We Do in the Shadows” turns into a moving consideration of how found family unites and bonds – and also drifts apart. Questions about feeling lost in the world and wanting meaning abound in ways that are simultaneously hilarious and loaded with ennui. It feels like “What We Do in the Shadows” has taken on a much larger mantle than it has before, one that feels more immediate, relevant, and invested in the humanity of its inhuman characters.
Is “What We Do in the Shadows” renewed? Yes. A fourth season will premiere in 2022.
9. Squid Game
“Squid Game” exquisitely describes the world we live in. Gambling addict Gi-hun is roped into a get-rich quick scheme. Go play some children’s games for a few days, and make millions. Effectively estranged from his daughter, he sees it as his only chance at making amends. The others who show up to play are similarly hard up – they owe money to the government, loan sharks, gangs, you name it. Even when it becomes apparent the losers of the games are all killed, the realities of the world outside make it clear that they have about as much chance in the games as they do in the corrupt, abusive world of late-stage capitalism.
There are wrinkles that I won’t divulge. Like any large organization, the place isn’t exactly run terribly well. Players cheat, employees cheat, all to make an extra buck. There’s as much tension in whether the games will continue as in who wins them. At the point where we as an audience are anticipating the next game and hoping it goes on, what does that say about us?
Lee Jung-jae gives an incredible performance as Gi-hun. He creates one of the most complex characters of the year. He’s at once deeply charming and hopeful, someone at his best when helping others, yet he’s also manipulative and constantly seeking enablement. It’s a delicate balance to still make us like and hope for him.
Oh Yeong-su captured every viewer’s heart as the elderly Oh Il-nam. Lost in some of the conversation is Jung Hoyeon, playing a North Korean escapee who wants the money to help her family leave that country. She’s asked once whether the outside is better, as she weighs the value of her own life against someone else’s for money. She doesn’t answer.
Is “Squid Game” renewed? It seems to be, but they’re going to take their time with it. If I had to bet, I’d guess we won’t see a Season 2 until 2023 at the earliest.
8. The Club
This Turkish drama is lavish, intricate, and deeply felt, with a melodramatic flourish that reflects the 1955 nightclub at its center. Matilda is freshly released from prison after serving time for murder. She has a nearly grown daughter, Rasel, but Matilda doesn’t want to see her. She simply plans to leave for Israel. This is derailed when Rasel steals from the club and Matilda agrees to work off a blank debt.
The drama of “The Club” rises from defining Turkish cultural conflicts. The East and West meld and clash. As Matilda is Jewish, the shadow of the Varlik Vergisi weighs heavily on her past. This was a 1942 tax on non-Muslims that resulted in a massive transfer of wealth based on religion and ethnicity, and the forced internment of those who couldn’t pay
Characters in “The Club” don’t serve as metaphors for these events and influences, but they have lived through them. These shape characters’ histories, biases, hopes, and fears. The cast is roundly superb. Gokce Bahadir stands out as Matilda, as does Salih Bademci’s visionary but self-sabotaging singer Selim Songur. Firat Tanis is exceptional as the club’s corrupt, abusive manger Celebi. He has a connection to Matilda’s past she hasn’t figured out.
If you can feel at ease with a few melodramatic fluorishes, such as a swelling music cue here or there, “The Club” has an underlying magic that’s difficult to define. It transports in the way the best period pieces do, and the characters feel a genuine part of that lived-in history. It has that sweeping, yearning sense that comes from depicting a place through both the details of its world, and the conflicting emotional realities of those who live within it.
Is “The Club” renewed? Part 2’s already been filmed and premieres very soon, on January 6, 2022.
7. Only Murders in the Building
Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short star in a comedy mystery. A man’s been murdered in their New York apartment building, and they take it upon themselves to solve what the police have deemed a suicide. They’re bumbling at best, and on top of it all, decide to make a podcast about it. “Only Murders in the Building” speaks to our true crime media addiction, one that seems to prioritize narrative over truth. Luckily, these three veer wildly enough to occasionally dig up some morsel of a clue.
Martin and Short are 80s comedy legends, so it might surprise that it’s Gomez who most solidly anchors the story. Between this, “Spring Breakers”, and “The Dead Don’t Die”, she’s delivered three exceptional performances and should be thought of more seriously. The supporting cast includes Nathan Lane, Tina Fey, Amy Ryan, Aaron Dominguez, Jane Lynch, and Sting, toying relentlessly with the idea that the famous guest star must be guilty.
What “Only Murders in the Building” is really about is loneliness, though. Each of the three leads deals with loneliness, isolation, trauma, and regret in very different ways. Gomez’s Mabel is self-sufficient and deliberate in her actions, Martin’s Charles is locked in an unthinking, melancholic routine, and Short’s Oliver reaches out constantly to those he’s already disappointed or betrayed. That “Only Murders in the Building” works as a caring, empathetic examination of loneliness, and a wildly successful comedy is a uniquely disarming pairing.
Is “Only Murders in the Building” renewed? Yes. The first season leaves a cliffhanger for a Season 2 that was picked up quickly and is currently filming. Expect it sometime in 2022.
6. My Name
You could pick any number of Korean series for this list and have a strong argument. “My Name” was the one that captured me the most. The premise of a woman joining the police to track down a killer within their ranks reflects a number of other undercover gangster projects: particularly “The Departed” and its inspiration “Infernal Affairs”.
“My Name” mixes together a number of familiar elements from John Woo action films to Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy and Michael Mann projects like “Heat” and “Miami Vice”. I’d even say it does so better than its more well-known progenitors. It also avoids creating a false nobility for the gangs the way so many highly regarded U.S. projects have done in the past. What’s here is brief, brutal, and feels far more grounded than flights of golden era Mafia-worshiping.
“My Name” pitches to a fever intensity by the second episode that it refuses to let go until the series’ end. Han So-hee carries nearly every minute of the show. She delivers one of the top performances this year.
The action scenes feature creative fight choreography with a lot of moving pieces. There’s an evocative editing that reflects the single-minded drive of the show’s lead, while also pushing the emotions she can’t allow herself to feel. One interesting decision in the show is to lean heavily on a single song, repeating in different circumstances. It reflects how Ji-woo (undercover as police officer Hye-jin) has honed herself to just be one thing, to have a singular intent no matter the circumstance. In many ways the show is edited and scored to feel what its lead has compartmentalized away. “My Name” is one of the best revenge sagas of recent memory.
Is “My Name” renewed? Like many Korean series, “My Name” is designed as a fully self-contained season. It’s not designed to be renewed, so it’s unlikely.
5. Evil
“Evil” follows a team that assesses mysteries for the Catholic Church. These range from suspected demonic possessions to investigating a potential sainthood. What makes the show work so well is that only one member of the team of three is Catholic – a priest in training named David. The psychologist Kristen and debunker Ben are both Atheist, though from different backgrounds. Kristen is a lapsed Catholic and Ben was raised Muslim.
The discussions they have in trying to figure out the mysteries are extremely well-written, and range from the personal to the philosophical. They add significant weight and meaning to the best horror show on TV right now.
Usually, I don’t go in for Catholic horror. It’s all so inconsistently codified it gets a bit silly to me. “Evil” doesn’t try to hide or explain away those inconsistencies, or avoid criticisms of the Catholic Church. Those inconsistencies and criticisms confuse and divide the characters, too. Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Aasif Mandvi, Michael Emerson, and Christine Lahti make up my favorite ensemble of the year.
“Evil” reflects earlier unexplained investigation shows like “The X-Files” and “Fringe”, but it does a much better job than either of giving you multiple explanations. Some of its mysteries are debunked, others aren’t. When something is explained, is that simply the path something demonic took to achieve it? In some episodes, they don’t even know which religion’s demons are in question. Many situations are solved without being fully fixed, which feels realistic. By sometimes denying us the closure of consequence, “Evil” feels that much more consequential. The writing makes it reasonable that the believer still believes, that the Atheists don’t, and that they can all identify a common trust and productive purpose that pushes them forward as a team.
“Evil” also has a wicked, occasionally fourth-wall breaking sense of humor. Demons troll visions from God with meme gifs. A nearly dialogue-free episode at a silent monastery has way too much fun with subtitled inner thoughts. The pop-up book used to introduce episodes to the audience in the second season becomes real to the characters midway through.
Perhaps the biggest strength of “Evil” is one that it could be a little rough getting down in its first season: it incorporates elements of kitsch, camp, and meme culture in quiet, understated ways that subvert our expectations, unravel our explanations, and unnerve us with the very things that usually feel a refuge.
Is “Evil” renewed? Yes. A third season was announced halfway through season two, reflecting a strong showing. Expect it sometime in 2022.
4. Reservation Dogs
Four indigenous teens try to make sense of reservation life after losing their friend. They steal in order to save enough money to leave, some reconnecting with their families and some drifting further away. The series features all indigenous writers and directors, and a mostly indigenous cast. The amount of talent working here, that other studios and platforms have routinely overlooked, is staggering: Devery Jacobs, Paulina Alexis, D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai, Lane Factor, Sarah Podemski, Dallas Goldtooth, Gary Farmer, Lil Mike and Funny Bone, Elva Guerra, each of them could probably lead their own shows.
It shows in the final result, with even small scenes taking on emotional weight and stellar comic timing. “Reservation Dogs” hearkens back to 90s indie comedy, particularly in its small-scale, sometimes aimless tone. Yet 90s indie comedy could also spark of a lot of privilege; “Reservation Dogs” uses the form to critique and highlight life without it. It has a way of building that the genre never had, of revealing moments that are far more real and relevant.
One thing I really appreciate here is that the comedy isn’t directed at me. It’s created to make indigenous people laugh. As a viewer, there are expectations of me to broaden my understanding of comedy staples and the truths they can evoke. “Reservation Dogs” doesn’t come with every reference explained, but that can help me see what an episode is doing in a way I wouldn’t if the explanation was catered to me.
There are absolute gems of episodes here: “NDN Clinic” turns an aimless, meandering day into a perfect memory, “Come and Get Your Love” connects the importance of legend to who we become, “Hunting” is a stunning, haunting, and funny reflection on loss, and “California Dreamin’” is a chance for Jacobs to demonstrate just how phenomenal an actor she is.
Is “Reservation Dogs” renewed? Yes. A second season has been announced for 2022.
3. Sonny Boy
An entire high school shifts out of reality, into a dimension of nothingness. The adults are nowhere to be found. The students organize, trying to make the best of the situation. As they shift through more dimensions, they realize some students have powers. Imbalances develop. The group splits, looks for people to blame, re-organizes. The dimensions they investigate each have their own rules, often born of metaphor, as if designed.
Magical realism and metaphor can struggle to work together in balance. One or the other usually takes over as a story’s focus, regardless of the medium. That’s fine, but “Sonny Boy” takes a difficult path in balancing the two elegantly. The series is exceptionally abstract: complex, disjointed, full of time skips, dimensions that only half-explain themselves, powers that equip the students with magical tools that look like toys, rulesets within rulesets.
The result is a series that would become too confusing to grasp if it wasn’t so well-guided by meaning. We make sense of the meaning first, and then the logic comes around and fills in some gaps, often hitting in a Kafka-esque way that can hurt. “Sonny Boy” begins to feel like an impressionist landscape of relationships, joys, anxieties, dreams, regrets. Moments can feel like a gut punch, yet never because of something over-emotive. Instead, it’s because we make sense of why a meaning is shaped the way it is. Why is a world designed just so? Why does a character leave something unspoken? What disaffection in the powerful shapes a society? What part of ourselves do we leave behind in order to adapt? What loss means enough to still be guided by the one we lost, or to even repeat that loss?
“Sonny Boy” can feel like an expression of helplessness, or the determination to work against that lack of hope. It manages to be both sides at once, to show the dual natures within us that feel forlorn at trying to change the world, and that will do our best to try anyway. No other show this year captures what it is to grow up, to put our past selves away even as we keep parts of them alive, to pair the joyful with the bittersweet, to choose the difficult because it’s at least a choice, to do the thankless because it’s right. No other show this year is so deeply, relentlessly, and sometimes pitilessly human.
Is “Sonny Boy” renewed? “Sonny Boy” seems expressly designed as a single, self-contained season. It’s original, not based on a manga or other source material, so there’s no outside indication to think it would continue. Its ending is perfect in what it says, so in many ways I hope this season is it.
2. Made for Love
Hazel is trapped with everything she could ever want. She’s married to billionaire Byron Gogol, and lives in a holographic mansion with access to anything and anywhere. She’s desperate to either kill herself, or escape. She does the latter, only to discover he’s implanted a chip in her head that’s designed to fuse their minds together as one.
The high-concept premise works as both an extremely dark comedy, and as a cyberpunk allegory. Both center on our interconnected world, where who we are is whoever we portray, regardless of its reality, and where that portrayal itself becomes our source of fulfillment.
I’ve worked with people who’ve been stalked, and I’ve been stalked myself. Scenes of this in “Made for Love” are as close as I’ve seen to the horror of feeling like someone else controls where you can even feel safe, and what your choices are. Cristin Milioti is getting wildly overlooked for her role as Hazel.
The comedy here can range pretty far afield. Hazel’s refuge and ear for fundamentally feminist issues is her estranged father (Ray Romano), who turns out to now be in a relationship with a sex doll. Investigators on both sides are regularly distracted or incompetent. These things always come back to reflect on the core, though: the horror of who we are being controlled by who someone else wants us to be. When who we are and what we’re fulfilled by is a portrayal we project, and someone else gains control of it, then who the hell are we anymore?
Is “Made for Love” renewed? Yes. Season 2 is likely to drop in 2022.
1. Arcane
An overwhelmed technocrat stands before a warlord. It’s the technocrat’s city, but this doesn’t feel like his space. He is in uniform. She is naked in a bath, getting a massage. Between them in the frame stands the mural of an army. They face him, spears descending row by row until they come to point at him. He is out of his element. She is biding her time.
The rain in Caitlyn’s life always slides down surfaces in fits and starts. You can’t keep track of the lines it traces. It gives an impression of movement as she stays still, grasping to make a decision before others make it for her. She always meets the consequences head on, but she’s never able to track the cause and effect well enough to get ahead of them.
Two men stop each other on a ledge at different points in their lives. One meets the moment with closed eyes, the other open. They both offer support in ways they may not fully realize.
The voices of those lost are scratches on the film. The memories are drawn over like a child scratching out a word. She hides their expectations for her, their criticisms of her. Jinx destroys the reality of the story itself, even as we’ve seen it. She erases what we’ve witnessed so that she can rewrite her story as she pleases.
“Arcane” follows so much – twin cities that are breaking apart through inequality, an abusive police force, generations of characters whose accomplishments and mistakes echo in government, magic, and war for decades to follow. It follows young idealists who concede in order to realize ideals now poisoned. It follows a fight for freedom and self-determination. It follows a woman who’ll stop at nothing to save her abandoned sister, a…terrorist? A freedom fighter? It portrays the best romance of the year, a lesbian relationship that develops in fits and starts because of the overwhelming nature of the life-or-death decisions happening around them.
Crafted by French studio Fortiche, “Arcane” is one of the best pieces of fantasy put to screen. It’s an incredible leap forward in animation, fusing 3D and 2D approaches into something genuinely new. It’s the best piece of western animation since I was five. It’s the best piece of steampunk on film or TV. Its world-building is on par with something like “The Golden Compass”. It released as three acts, three episodes apiece, and if you wanted to call each act a film, then I’d call it the best film trilogy since “Lord of the Rings”. Forget the modifiers; it’s thus far one of the best shows ever made. Even when I write these things, it feels like I’m understating just how emotional, artistic, and impactful “Arcane” really is.
“Arcane” is the show I always dreamed about because I knew it could never be made. I’m not talking about the source material, with which I’m only vaguely familiar. I mean what it becomes as a series. There’s not an episode I didn’t shed tears at – sure, because some parts are so human and empathetic, and sure, because it’s unique and overwhelming in its beauty. Yet there’s something deeper, something more artistically fundamental at play. It’s because when you’re in the rhythm of a phrase, when the poet or the painter needs you to yearn or smile or break, there’s a giving up at play. There’s a loosing of control that’s utterly rare, that requires so high a trust be given over.
Maybe it happens for a moment, when a word pierces our guard, when the twist of an idea is pushed home. That’s the thing – you expect it to happen for a moment before your guard returns. You don’t expect it to be down for hours at a time. You don’t expect to trust that much. What an impossible space that would be. What a relief in a world that batters us so much.
This is what “Arcane” creates so well. It’s a harrowing story, complexly told, beautifully depicted, it’s an advanced course in French art history, but above all it manages that impossible thing – it delivers that magic of becoming a place so beautifully, it feels safe to relinquish your burdens while you’re there. You’re in a storyteller’s hands, and what they’ve made is crafted with such exceptional, seemingly unprecedented care, you can feel the whole thing without guard.
Is “Arcane” renewed? Yes. The first season took six years to make, and while a second season certainly wouldn’t take that long, it’s unlikely to premiere before 2023.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 