The ‘Shōgun’ Series Is Like a Beautiful Car with No Engine
James Clavell’s Shōgun is about profound transformation through understanding, but FX’s Shōgun is just a spectacle of surfaces with no meaningful drive.
Television
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about television, covering the latest as well historical topics.
3 Unsettling 2025 TV Shows You Shouldn’t Miss
Sci-fi philosophy, shocking history, and metafictional puzzles dominate these unsettling yet weirdly intriguing TV shows.
Video Killed the Podcasting Star
Everything, it seems, is becoming a video podcast these days, but perhaps not everything was meant to be seen.
Pantheon’s House of High-Tech Mirrors
The post-human speculative sci-fi series Pantheon asks, can humanity recognize itself in its digital reflection?
‘The Lowdown’ Finds Hilarity in the Lowest Places
At turns a twisty whodunit, historical drama, tender family comedy, and farcical urban safari, The Lowdown overwhelms, but never wears you down.
When Celebrity Spouses Go Off-Script
Fan obsession over celebrity spouses mirrors anxieties about our performative selves in the age of influencers.
‘Zero Day’ Disconnects Our Worst Fears
Technological uncertainty and our fears about mishandling the truth run through the disconnected cables of the political cyber-thriller Zero Day.
Reviews/Feature Sub Head/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Film/Film Feature/PopMatters Picks/Television
‘Israel Palestine on Swedish TV’ Is an Urgent History/Not History Lesson
Despite its flaws, Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 is a meticulously detailed study of conflict and hauntingly foreshadows the current moment.
Star Wars: Rebels’ Strategist in the Shadows
Star Wars: Rebels‘ blue-skinned Thrawn is a fictional echo of what America needs in these times: cultural intelligence, emotional control, and long-term thinking.
‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ Boldly Explores the Concept of Mentoring
Star Trek: Enterprise offers a rare dramatization of a process that is often condensed in fictional universes: the messy, contested, exhilarating journey from tutelage to independence.
Sitcoms: Episode 2 – Accidental Pioneers and Intentional Rebels
This is the story of television’s first funny families and how they pioneered America’s most enduring form of entertainment, the sitcom, only to watch it slip through their fingers like sand.
Sitcoms: Episode 1 – The Blueprint for Laughter
The sitcom is a creation of spare parts salvaged from dying vaudeville and thriving radio welded together by performers who understood the power of physical shtick and the intimacy of invisible theatre.