The week of the presidential election, my 12-year-old daughter and I argued over when the next episode of “High Potential,” a crime drama we realized we’d each been avidly watching without the other knowing, would air. Our ignorance stemmed from how we consumed it: She streamed it on the family-friendly Disney, and I on the adult-leaning Hulu, which also meant we caught new episodes after they premiered on ABC. Without a singular broadcast to bring us together, we had different viewing experiences.
After we figured it out (it’s Tuesdays), I began to think about the other implications of our debate. Outside of the Super Bowl, very few events on television or elsewhere constitute a national pastime. Practically, this means that most of the year we have limited opportunities to form similar perspectives or create a standard prism through which we can interpret our culture and, by extension, our fellow citizens.
And while a lot of this year’s best entertainment has explored such divisions, I’ve been drawn to works that delve into the hyperlocal — settings that serve as animating forces or determinants of boundaries — to broaden what we think of as the universal.
‘Cowboy Carter’
According to Spotify, I listened to this album 29 days in a row, a streak that surprised even me. Though she refers to it as a “Beyoncé album” rather than a genre-specific country album, “Cowboy Carter” is one of the most personal of her albums, behind only “Lemonade.” That’s partly because the music, a mix of country, R&B, down-home blues and zydeco, is inherently nostalgic for and pulls from the sounds she heard growing up in Houston, where she attended and later sang at the Houston Rodeo.
It is also a throwback in other ways: Beyoncé used live instruments including the harmonica or Hammond organ, as well as natural sounds such as handclaps, horseshoe steps and even her nails. But, her biggest intervention was taking racist revisions to history head-on and reminding us that country music began as and continues to be Black music. Recognizing pioneers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Linda Martell, and featuring present-day Black country music singers, “Cowboy Carter” made history of its own. It was the first album by a Black woman to top Billboard’s Country Albums chart and is tied with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as the most-nominated Grammy album.
(Read our conversation about “Cowboy Carter”)
‘Nickel Boys’
Filmed in Louisiana and based on a real-life reform school in segregated Florida, “Nickel Boys” is a cinematic experience that I don’t know how to unsee. This is because the director RaMell Ross, as a follow-up to his 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” adapted Colson Whitehead’s novel while also inventing his own visual aesthetic. Ross and the film’s cinematographer, Jomo Fray, developed a “sentient perspective,” which, through the use of camera devices like the Snorricam rig, and techniques like a 4:3 aspect ratio, gave life to daunting dramatic performances. It allows us to experience the tight hold this abusive institution has on Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), two Black adolescent boys who are serving time there, as well as the tender friendship they form to survive.
(Read our profile of the “Nickel Boys” director)
‘Evil Does Not Exist’
I waited several months for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” to arrive in American movie theaters. Unlike “Drive My Car,” his adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story about personal grief and public theater that won the 2022 Oscar for best international film, “Evil Does Not Exist” is an intentionally quiet meditation on family bonds in Mizubiki, a fictional forest town outside Tokyo that’s under corporate attack. Hamaguchi plays with point of view by haunting and humanizing the landscape — at times, our vantage point is the roots of the trees; at others, it is the long stretch of road seen only from the back of a pickup truck. It all leads us to ask, what are the real threats to this community: The developers who want to turn it into a glamping site, the water pollutants that inevitably come with such change, or the father who is so busy resisting that he fails to pay attention to his young daughter in her time of need?
(Read our review of “Evil Does Not Exist”)
Susan Kelechi Watson in ‘Good Bones’ and ‘Blood Quilt’
In two entirely different plays on gentrification, the actress Susan Kelechi Watson (“This Is Us”) returned to her New York theater beginnings this fall. Wielding a perfect blend of comedic timing and pastel-colored suits, Watson shined as the upwardly mobile Aisha in James Ijames’s “Good Bones” at the Public Theater in September. As both a former resident of the city’s public housing and a representative of developers seeking to replace it with a sports stadium, Watson played part-villain and part-victim with charisma and confidence. A few weeks after the show’s closing, I saw her become Cassan, the anxious single mother and accommodating older sister in Katori Hall’s “Blood Quilt” at Lincoln Center. In contrast to Aisha, Cassan is trying to do whatever she can to prevent the sale of her mother’s home, a loss that would irreparably harm her family and the coastal Georgia island community she once called home.
(Read our reviews of “Good Bones” and “Blood Quilt”)
‘Abbott Elementary’
This is the one show my entire family watches together as appointment TV. Maybe because I lived or worked in Philadelphia for 20 years, I adore how Quinta Brunson’s show captures that city’s attitude of grit, chutzpah, heckling and loyalty, traits I’ve tried to pass on to my kids. We all have a favorite character who sports Philly pride: the fastidious first-grade teacher Gregory (Tyler James Williams) for my husband and son; the cheeky principal, Ava (Janelle James), for me; and the iconoclastic custodian Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) for my daughter. Four seasons in, we remain engrossed by the show’s clever humor and constant reinvention. This year, gentrification arrives with the construction of a golf course that threatens to disrupt the harmony of the fictional Willard R. Abbott Elementary School. This show keeps getting better. Watching how the teachers and local activists work together to stave off displacement to save their Southwest Philadelphia community is a serious business that still makes us all smile.
(Read our essay on “Abbott Elementary”)
‘Conclave’
In Vatican City, the smallest sovereign country and one of the most secretive places in the world, Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) leads the clandestine selection process for the next pope. Filled with Catholic Church intrigue, countless red herrings and a coveted ensemble cast, “Conclave” is the best type of political thriller, one that uses the specificity of its location, here the cloistered walls of the Sistine Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, to ground us in an alternate reality. The action is driven by the rules and rituals of a place that most people will never see, with the director Edward Berger using vivid colors and subtle choreography to symbolize their power. But the film’s best moments come when the other cardinals — and Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) — behave in ways that belie their dignified setting to block the professional ambitions of their peers.
(Read our review of “Conclave”)
‘Blink Twice’
Patriarchy is questioned in the surprise ending of “Conclave,” but it is entirely undone by the plot of Zoe Kravitz’s film directorial debut, “Blink Twice.” It’s set on the fictional private island where Slater King (Channing Tatum), a tech billionaire recovering from a professional scandal, invites his wealthy male friends and a group of unsuspecting female guests. Starring Naomi Ackie as Frida and Alia Shawkat as her sidekick, Jess, the movie satirizes white-collar bro culture while exposing the sinister and surreal violence beneath its surface. The island is no paradise, but a prison of sorts where trauma, memory and cover-up collide.
(Read our review of “Blink Twice”)
Ken Leung in ‘Industry’
HBO’s “Industry” had its breakout in Season 3, as its 20-something stars continued to claw through London’s finance sector. But it was Ken Leung’s steady and delicious performance as Eric Tao that held my attention. The son of a Chinese factory worker, Tao makes partner at Pierpoint & Co., the investment firm where has worked for his entire 30-year career. But he has never been a true insider and spends most of his time attracting, mentoring and bruising the next crop of bankers, who, because of their backgrounds, also can never quite overcome the elite culture of banking or the narrow confines of the British class structure. Leung sinks his teeth into this amoral character, seamlessly switching from an inappropriate micromanager to an unscrupulous corporate climber, only to find himself a man in a foreign land without family, friends or the company to which he is faithful.
(Read about “Industry” Season 3)
‘Somebody Somewhere’
Though based in Manhattan, Kan., this series never gets called a “red state show.” Yes, the bucolic “Somebody Somewhere” shows visual reverence for the farmlands and flat plains of the Midwest, but its characters develop in the kinds of small flickers characteristic of prestige dramas. Friends or future lovers do a lot of walking on this show, often down long dirt roads or with their dogs. In such minor moments, we learn about Sam (Bridget Everett), a warm and wandering woman who has returned home from living in New York City after her sister’s death. Through three seasons, she not only discovers herself and learns to love her singing voice, but she does so with the help of her people, including queer churchgoers/cabaret fans. On another show, they might be considered a band of outsiders, but here, they are cast as the center of a community that’s a bit country and a bit cosmopolitan, fittingly nicknamed “the Little Apple.”
(Read our interview with the creators of “Somebody Somewhere”)
‘The Pop Out: Ken & Friends’
Spotify also told me I streamed Kendrick Lamar’s record-breaking dis track against Drake, “Not Like Us,” 100 times in one day. But it was his Juneteenth concert, aired live on Amazon from the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., that I couldn’t get over. Lamar’s three-hour extravaganza showcased fellow Los Angeles rappers and D.J.s, achieving, somehow, neighborhood unity through collective enmity. Closing out the show by performing “Not Like Us” six consecutive times, he still managed a grand finale: He invited guest artists and gang rivals onto the stage for a group photo. As they playfully posed together, he revealed his true intention: “That’s what this was about, to bring all of us together.”
(Read our story on the concert, “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends”)
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