Skip to main content

New top story from Time: The 5 Best New Shows Our TV Critic Watched in April 2021

https://ift.tt/2Rd133U

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: docu-mania is upon us. Faced with COVID-related challenges to producing scripted series, many platforms invested in nonfiction TV, and just over a year into the pandemic those projects are starting to see the light of day. Not every product of this documentary boom has been great. But this month’s roundup of the best new shows is proof of just how many of them are worth watching, from essential examinations of white supremacy and criminal justice reform to surprisingly substantial explorations of clothing and, er, Bigfoot in weed country. For those searching for something more narrative, an immersive crime drama that casts Kate Winslet as a Pennsylvania detective should do nicely. And if you’re in need of additional suggestions, here are my picks from January, February and March.

Exterminate All the Brutes (HBO)

“The very existence of this film is a miracle,” says its creator, Raoul Peck, in the final episode of Exterminate All the Brutes—and that might be an understatement. A four-part experimental documentary that takes on the unwieldy, bitterly contentious subject of white supremacy since the so-called Age of Discovery, Brutes is unorthodox in both content and style. Drawing heavily on the work of leftist academics, the series also incorporates scripted passages and animations that serve as guided meditations on human suffering more than as visual aids. It may well be the most politically radical and intellectually challenging work of nonfiction ever made for television. [Read TIME’s full review.]

Mare of Easttown (HBO)

Mare of Easttown sounds like it’s going to be a YA equestrian novel. In fact, it is a poignant, richly observed, if occasionally over-the-top HBO crime drama starring Kate Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a police detective in rural Pennsylvania. Like a Gen-X Frances McDormand character, Mare is an aggressive, no-nonsense woman with too many responsibilities and too little faith in the people around her. In an early scene, we see her simultaneously driving, choking down a foil-wrapped sandwich and lacing into her ex-husband Frank (Joe Tippett of The Morning Show) on the phone. Then, suddenly, she’s out of the car running after a perp she knows on sight, because he happens to be the drug-addicted brother of a woman Mare played basketball with in high school. This is Easttown: a working-class enclave so claustrophobically close-knit that everyone who isn’t family is a friend or foe, where you find out your ex is getting remarried because he throws a party at his house, next door. It’s a tough place to be a detective struggling to find leads in the year-old disappearance of a young woman, whose cancer-stricken mother is exerting very public pressure on Mare and her superiors. More tragedy is on the horizon. [Read the full review.]

Philly D.A. (PBS)

What might the day-to-day work of dismantling systemic racism, mass incarceration and police power actually look like? Ted Passon and Yoni Brook go a long way toward answering this tough question in the eight-part documentary Philly D.A., airing as part of PBS’s Independent Lens series. The filmmakers spent three years following the longtime criminal defense lawyer Larry Krasner for this essential, remarkably balanced vérité-style account of his unlikely tenure as the city’s district attorney. A crusading progressive who’d made headlines for representing BLM and Occupy activists, he wasn’t exactly a beloved figure among prosecutors by the time he was elected in 2017. In an interview for the series, former DA Lynne Abraham, who held the post for 19 years beginning in 1991, doesn’t mince words: “I don’t like anything about Larry Krasner.” [Read the full review.]

Sasquatch (Hulu)

“I’ve been witness to a lot of crazy stories,” says the journalist David Holthouse in the first episode of this unusual three-part crime docuseries. “But the one about a Sasquatch wasting three dudes in dope country is bar none the craziest.” What sounds like the beginning of a spooky campfire yarn is actually the inexplicable memory of a night in the fall of 1993, when two terrified guys rolled up to the Mendocino County home where a 23-year-old Holthouse was visiting a weed-grower friend, claiming to have three found bodies that had been torn apart by some kind of monster. The crime was never reported. So, decades into a career that had sent him on high-risk investigations of neo-Nazis, meth addicts and, most poignantly, the man who raped him when he was a child, Holthouse decided to find out what (if anything) really happened that night.

There are certainly some oddballs in Sasquatch: paranoid hippie pot farmers, cryptozoology obsessives, two men described as “Sasquatch hunters/life partners” who seem to have an ongoing disagreement over whether Bigfoots can teleport. But this is not Tiger King; its purpose is not to poke fun. Though it’s a shame so much of it unfolds in phone calls with subjects who wouldn’t speak on-camera, Holthouse’s investigation feels genuinely dangerous. And after reeling us in with a supernatural mystery, he and director Joshua Rofé (both executive producers, as part of a team that also includes Mark and Jay Duplass) unearth a true story that touches some of America’s sorest spots, from the War on Drugs to racism and xenophobia. [Read TIME’s guide to weed-adjacent new shows that premiered on 4/20.]

Worn Stories (Netflix)

Some people dismiss fashion as superficial or profligate or overly exclusive. For others, it’s high art sculpted around the human body—an abstract language composed of lines, shapes and textures with the ability to translate our innermost selves into terms the material world can understand. Both camps have a point. But clothing plays a more central role in our lives than either one allows. As universal and essential as food, it’s something that helps define our shared humanity and something most of us have to think about several times a day, if only to make sure we’re properly prepared to face the elements.

It’s through this broad lens that Worn Stories, a docuseries adapted from Emily Spivack’s book of the same name, views clothes, setting aside the art and business of fashion in order to focus on how people live with (which is to say, in) it. Woven together out of short vignettes, the eight themed episodes are sprinkled with famous faces. Simon Doonan pays tribute to the pair of Stephen Sprouse leggings he wore to the aerobics classes that helped him through the early years of the AIDS crisis, while Rep. Frederica Wilson explains her philosophy of bold, head-to-toe dressing. But Spivack, who executive-produced the show with a team including Jenji Kohan and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? director Morgan Neville, is just as interested in the sartorial experiences of everyday people: crossing guards, club kids, teen athletes, museum workers, musicians, even nudists. My favorite segment profiles Carlos, a formerly incarcerated man who helps recently released peers transition back to life on the outside after long prison sentences, a process that involves taking them to buy their first new outfits in years. Although the overall tone is light, Worn Stories takes our relationships with clothes seriously and, in doing so, explores aspects of our sartorial selves that we might never have thought about before. [Read TIME’s interview with Spivack about the show.]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bihar: Stages collapse during Congress rallies in Darbhanga, West Champaran https://ift.tt/37QFnks

The stage on which Congress candidate from Jale assembly seat, Mashkoor Ahmad Usman was addressing a rally broke and collapsed in Bihar's Darbhanga on Thursday. In a similar incident, another stage collapsed and took down party leaders Imran Pratapgarhi and Akhilesh Singh along with several party workers who were on the dias, during a Congress rally at Bagahi Deoraj in Champaran.

New Dashboards Give a Window into Muni Service Changes

New Dashboards Give a Window into Muni Service Changes By Kate McCarthy An inspector manages Muni service. New dashboards that help inform changes to Muni service are now live at SFMTA.com/MuniData Many factors inform our decisions about Muni service adjustments. These include making sure changes to service support the SFMTA’s values, which are economic vitality, environmental stewardship, trust and equity. We also evaluate travel patterns. You can now explore these patterns using the new Muni data dashboards  (SFMTA.com/MuniData). When looking at possible Muni service changes, the first thing we do is turn to the Muni Service Equity Strategy for guidance. Using the Muni Service Equity Strategy, we prioritize providing Muni service along routes that more often serve people of color, members of low-income households, and/or those who are dependent upon transit service, including people with disabilities and seniors. We also use ridership data to analyze where riders are boa...

India reports first 6 cases of new coronavirus strain after UK returnees test positive https://ift.tt/3pA0T2j

India on Tuesday reported the first six cases of the new coronavirus strain after six people who had returned from the United Kingdom were tested positive for the new UK variant genome. According to the details, the new coronavirus strain cases were reported from Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. Samples of 3 UK returnees were tested and found positive for the new UK strain in NIMHANS, Bengaluru. The other two cases were tested at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad; while the last case was tested at the National Institute of Virology, Pune.

FOX NEWS: Ohio amusement park shut down after multiple fights break out Kings Island in Mason, around 20 miles north of Cincinnati, closed down 30 minutes early Saturday night after several fights among teenagers occurred, reports suggest.

Ohio amusement park shut down after multiple fights break out Kings Island in Mason, around 20 miles north of Cincinnati, closed down 30 minutes early Saturday night after several fights among teenagers occurred, reports suggest. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3wsn8uI

PM Modi lauds IFS officers for their work towards serving nation, furthering national interests https://ift.tt/36HoEzw

Greeting Indian Foreign Service officers on IFS day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that their work towards serving the nation and furthering national interests globally are commendable. Their efforts during the Vande Bharat Mission, which was launched to bring Indians home from abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic as international travel came to a halt, and other related help to our citizens and other nations is noteworthy, Modi added.

FOX NEWS: Bride's father asks stepdad to help walk her down the aisle in sweet viral moment A selfless gesture by the father of a bride was shared on social media in a viral moment of him surprising the girl’s stepfather by asking him to help walk her to the altar.

Bride's father asks stepdad to help walk her down the aisle in sweet viral moment A selfless gesture by the father of a bride was shared on social media in a viral moment of him surprising the girl’s stepfather by asking him to help walk her to the altar. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/ZkQ1Rpt

Better Connections from Bayview and Hunters Point to Downtown

Better Connections from Bayview and Hunters Point to Downtown By Enrique Aguilar To better connect southeast San Franciscans with downtown, the SFMTA debuted the 15 Bayview Hunters-Point Express in late January, coinciding with the return of T Third train service. Within weeks, average daily boardings reached 1,000 customers on this new service. The 15 Bayview Hunters Point Express  We added this route based on community feedback from the Southeast Muni Expansion Project in 2018, which prioritized a more direct trip to downtown from the Bayview. With the sudden rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impacts on communities in the Bayview and Hunters Point, fast-tracking the project became critical to our transit planning. Adding service capacity and a direct connection between these neighborhoods and downtown is a crucial step in supporting the City’s economic recovery and increasing job access for essential workers using transit. Using data from the SFMTA Equ...

Plan Your Next Golden Gate Park Trip with Muni

Plan Your Next Golden Gate Park Trip with Muni By Eillie Anzilotti   A map of San Francisco showing Muni lines that offer direct service to Golden Gate Park, including: The 18 46th Avenue, the 29 Sunset, the 5 Fulton and 5R Fulton Rapid, the N Judah, the 44 O’Shaughnessy, the 33 Ashbury/18th Street, the 7 Haight/Noriega, the 43 Masonic and the 28 19th Avenue. Around each bus route shown on the map, a red zone shows the range within 1,000 feet of a stop, orange shows within 2,000 feet of a stop, and yellow shows within 3,000 feet. Here’s a fun fact: 70% of San Franciscans are within a 15-minute walk of a transfer-free Muni ride to the largest public space in our city: Golden Gate Park.   Especially as COVID-19 has heightened the importance of outdoor recreation and park access, SFMTA has made efforts to update Muni service to get people to Golden Gate Park. As of now, ...

New top story from Time: ‘I Should Be Presumed Innocent.’ Hong Kong Media Tycoon Jimmy Lai Criticizes His Arrest

https://ift.tt/342b8VJ Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai said he was arrested on “trumped up” charges, pushing back against landmark national security legislation that has raised questions about press freedoms and the future of the democracy movement. “They’re trumped up. I can’t go further on the details,” Lai said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday morning. “Before any evidence, they just claimed and presumed that I’m guilty. This isn’t the way the law is. I should be presumed innocent. We have never supported the independence of Hong Kong.” He said Hong Kong’s future as Asia’s main financial hub was uncertain if there was no respect for the rule of law under the new security measures. “The future of Hong Kong is the future of any other Chinese city,” he added. “Without the rule of law, the international financial center will be finished.” He added that the law sent a “very negative” message to the business community in Hong Kong and overseas. Lai has ...

अगर मैंने आत्महत्या की तो लोगों को पता होना चाहिए किसकी वजह से की - फूटकर रोते दिखे विकास गुप्ता

सुशांत सिंह राजपूत की आत्महत्या हर किसी को एक गहरा सदमा दे गई है और अब सुशांत के करीबी दोस्त विकास गुप्ता ने एक वीडियो में अपनी आपबीती सुनाई है। विकास इस वीडियो में बेहद टूटे हुए नज़र आ रहे हैं from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/vikas-gupta-reveals-people-want-him-to-commit-suicide-cries-his-heart-out-for-sushant-singh-rajput-090284.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.213.205.12&utm_campaign=client-rss