what are they watching? is an interview series for my newsletter in which I chat with a television creative about television itself. Previous interviews include Toheeb Jimoh, Janicza Bravo, Chelsea Peretti, and Jeff Hiller.

This time around, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christopher Gomez, who has worked in television sound on some of my fav shows like Say Nothing, Only Murders in the Building, and Better Things. Most recently, he was Beef’s supervising sound editor, and I was super curious about not just what that process looks like but how he made anger into a sonic experience for the show.

I like to start off by asking what you’re watching lately that isn’t work-related?

This is always the million dollar question I get from friends! Recently, I’ve been trying to catch up on the last season of Wonder Man. I like to find things that’ll let me decompress at the end of the day. I am a Marvel apologist, I grew up a superhero fan, so it’s fun for me to just watch those and dive back into that break from reality. Also, whatever my wife is watching, I kind of pop in. Lately that has been some of our fallback shows…I think we started rewatching Schitt’s Creek for probably the millionth time.

How did you get into working with sound and dialogue?

I took a long-winded road to get here so I’ll give you the TLDR. I used to work at the railroad for about seven and a half years, my father-in-law worked there. It was a safe failproof job that would always be there for me. After some time I was just kind of like, I don’t know if this is for me, so I decided to go back to school. I really wanted to work in music; sound in movies and television was something I didn’t even know existed. About two years into the program we had post-production sound classes and I was like, What is this? What do you mean I put sounds to picture? I instantly fell in love with it.

We had a course where we had to re-dub an entire scene ourselves, add all the sound effects. I was so mesmerized by the artistic freedom that you get with doing it. There are so many people that work in sound that have these backgrounds in music, I feel like they work very hand in hand, because so much of what we do in sound is very musical, not only in the literal sense that we work with music, but you can treat it almost like musical instruments, everything from the dialogue to the sound effects to the Foley. So it was an easy transition for me, creatively.

When you’re fully immersed in a project, what does a day in the life of a supervising sound editor look like?

Lots of emails and phone calls, which is the unsexy part of it. [Laughs]. Day-to-day operations for me really vary. From the beginning, I’ll get a cut of the project and dive into it with our showrunner, the creatives, picture editors—we go over everything we want to do sonically. Like, what’s the sonic vision? How do we enhance these ideas? Can we make this punch a little bit bigger? Can we make this room feel like there are a lot more people present? Things like that and the overall shape of what we want a project to look like sonically. I take all the information and translate it for a core group of sound editors (dialogue editor, sound effects editor, a Foley team).

What were the conversations around the shape of the sound and the philosophy of Beef’s second season and how did you interpret that in your work?

Being an anthology series, we can’t really go back to the elements that we’ve established. In a continuing show, you’ve established locations and you know what these locations are going to sound like. With Beef, our showrunner Sonny (Lee Sung Jin) pushed us to really think outside the box and not just rely on what we did with season one. The big discussions were around how season two feels a lot more polished in the locations. We’re in the country club, in these really exclusive places, how do we convey that sonically? How do we dial things back, instead of just bombard the audience with just sounds of a bunch of stuff happening? Season two is much more of a slow burn than season one was, how do we do that sonically?

A lot of it was figuring out very methodical placement of sounds to let the audience sink into these performances. It’s just this constant balancing act between what we’re going to build sonically and then letting the music take those moments and back and forth, or letting dialogue take those moments.

Did you run into any sound-related obstacles in Beef’s second season and how did you tackle it?

The drama aspect of Beef is there and easy to grasp onto. I think the hardest part sonically has been to really nail those comedy beats. Sonny has this amazing ability to interject humour into the show. The show can be tense, there’s a lot of anger behind it, but you have to have those moments of relief through it to keep the audience engaged. The bullseye of when to land these comedic moments is so small because you could get it so wrong.

You look at the scene with Carey in the airplane and she has the Shirley Temple and she wipes the toilet seat. It was very easy to take that too far. There were moments during the mix we pushed it a little bit too in the gross, just a little too squishy. It was this great comedic beat of, you’re in this moment with her, and it’s so absurd, you know. But how do we dial back? Carey was phenomenal, she came in and recorded noises and grunts while she was wiping the toilet bowl. So how much of that do we pepper in? Those little moments are always such a unique sonic challenge. How do we land those moments without taking it too far, but also just enough?

That scene was making me gag. Even more than the orange juice for some reason! We all know how nasty those airplane toilets are.

For me it was more visceral. The orange juice is visceral in its own sense but you could feel Ashley is the anchor of it, like her anger was percolating and it just exploded. It’s just the way Lindsay did it, like this is so fucked up that this is what somebody would do, you know.

Are you someone who has pet peeves about sound or ADR in other things you watch?

I’m probably the least critical person of other people’s sound jobs, mainly because I know the behind the scenes of the creative decisions that lead up to that. People might be like, Oh my god, that line of ADR is so obvious. It’s like, yes, but there were a million reasons as to why that ended up that way. I love the process of filmmaking and I love the amount of work that everybody puts into it. And I know that not everything is necessarily a direct person’s fault. It’s a domino effect of this decision led to this decision, and now we ended up here, and now we have to do this. Like, that line of ADR is probably never going to work, and it’s going to be so completely obvious, but we’re going to put it in there and we’ll have to live with it.

You’ve worked on a lot of television, everything from Better Things to Yellowstone to Modern Family and From Scratch. Is there a project that you feel especially attached to when looking back?

It’s so hard! I work so closely with the creators and showrunners, I get to see every project for what they intend. So, you know, it makes me fall in love with it. Orange is the New Black will always sit very fondly in my heart, because it was the final season. I got to know a lot of people on that show and those friendships have continued on to this point in my career. When we see each other it’s always this mini reunion. It was such a family because that show was seven seasons long. Our post-producers that worked on that show we worked with on the first season of Beef, so those relationships continued to this day.

Another one that I would say is Everything Sucks!, I was born in 1985 and the music from that show, I was like…this is my everything, my teenage years of growing up and listening to 90s alternative rock. That show felt like a love letter to people my age, in the same way that there’s so much millennial culture in Beef.

Is there a project that you wish you could have been a part of that comes to mind? You did say you like Marvel…

The comic book nerd side of me would love to be able to play in that sandbox of sounds. I will say, the one show I look back and I’m like, that must have been so much fun to work on, was Broad City. Broad City is one of my favourite comedies of all time. I got into that show because of my wife, she was such a huge fan of it. I would have loved to be in that room with Abbi and Ilana. I would just love to hear the stuff that goes on through their heads when they’re coming up with the ideas for these episodes.

They really did everything and anything on that show, it’s truly a classic. Before I let you go: What’s your favourite TV-watching snack?

Okay, I’m not huge on popcorn. I’ll say that. I like something sweet. So I will either grab a Pop-Tart, maybe some cookies. Or good chocolate candy, that’s prime right there.

📣 Vancouver 📣 I will be moderating a panel discussion following the screening of A Sad and Beautiful World downtown on the evening of Friday May 1, which was Lebanon’s submission to the 2026 Oscars. A portion of ticket sales will go toward mutual aid for those whose lives have been upended by Israel’s invasion and bombardment. I am also told there will be food! Get your tickets here and come hang out with me.

“Do you think Sam Levinson is pissed Margo’s Got Money Troubles is exploring OnlyFans in a more nuanced and interesting way compared to whatever the hell is going on in Euphoria,” a friend DM’d me the other day. I couldn’t stop thinking about the comparison. I do know the wrinkles between my eyebrows have been deepening as I frown aggressively at everything going on related to that in Euphoria while I write my recaps, while Margo’s Got Money Troubles may already be one of the best shows of the year.

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Housekeeping note: There will be no newsletter next week since it’s my birthday on the 16th and I am planning to take it easy and reflect on being 32! So I’ll see you back here on April 24.

I was at dinner the other day, trying a new restaurant in Vancouver, when my friend confronts me: Where the hell are the newsletter roundups?! She and her husband couldn’t decide what to watch the other night and she demanded I revive this series. So let’s make it a quarterly thing! I’ve also been working on creating an Excel database with all of these listed so that you can easily pop in and sort by score/is it gay/etc. I’ll debut that in a few weeks (for paid subscribers only 👀). Let’s get into it.

6. Dreaming Whilst Black, season two (Showtime/Paramount+/BBC)
My score: 64/100

I think it would surprise many people that first of all, this is a dramedy produced by A24, and second, that it streams on Paramount+. I have rarely seen white characters turned into as much of a caricature as they appear here, hilariously playing with a trope typically reserved for people of colour on-screen (at a time when the “best friend of colour in an all-white cast” trope is very much returning in full swing).

Set in London, Kwabena (Adjani Salmon, who created the show) just wants to make his Jamaican immigrant love story movie, but the industry truly has other plans for him. Last season, he left his day job to pursue his art, and this season, he settles for a directing gig on a Bridgerton-esque drama. Although he feels he’s making strides, the industry finds ways to limit his vision: The show can’t have two Black leads, so they have to hire a clickbait Love Island contestant to play a lead, the show pointing out how the attention economy is a predominantly white game.

That said, I feel like Dreaming Whilst Black is missing a key ingredient. Maybe it’s catharsis. Kwabena won’t be vulnerable with his ex-girlfriend on the ways he lied about his real financial situation during their relationship (leading to the break-up), and we never actually see him reaching that level of self-actualization or growth, which is a shame, because I don’t know if the show is coming back for a third season. Regardless, I enjoyed being back in this world.

Is it gay? I cannot believe this show is taking place in the television industry and Kwabena doesn’t have queer people in his life! But alright.

5. The Madison (Paramount+)
My score: 65/100

Don’t get me wrong: Taylor Sheridan gets on my last nerve by how preachy his politics can be. It’s like, we get it, you like the country more than the city! You don’t need to remind us why every two seconds. And don’t get me started on the inevitable pronoun jokes—as someone who has watched a lot of his productions (mostly for work), I can confirm those appear in almost every show.

That being said…I liked The Madison! A lot of Sheridan’s writing can get convoluted between plots that don’t really make sense and he loves the dramaaa so there’s always some kind of murder or conspiracy or whatever. But The Madison felt notably stripped down to just a story about grief and family, really giving Michelle Pfeiffer a chance to rip through this material with a performance that honestly might get her an Emmy nomination. It was directed quite beautifully by Christina Alexandra Voros.

Is it gay? You know, Sheridan does sprinkle lesbians throughout his shows (always as a side character), but nothing queer happening here.

4. Big Mistakes (Netflix)

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Every Monday and Thursday, the first thing I do when I wake up is play Vulture’s Telematrix game. It’s my Wordle, basically. I had the great pleasure of curating my own grid this week, for which I selected six Canadian actors who work quite consistently in the medium. Consider testing your TV knowledge and playing my grid, which is up now until Monday! My score was 2690, try and beat that…

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I don’t make an Instagram grid post for everything I watch. Let me explain my process and why some shows “slip through the cracks.”

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The TV Scholar interview series brings real-life television scholars to my newsletter to discuss their journey to television studies, share nuggets of wisdom from their research, and obviously, chit-chat about television itself.

This time I interviewed Portugal-based psychoanalyst and researcher Lucas Ferraço Nassif, who holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, on his 2025 book Unconscious/Television, and how psychoanalysis can be a helpful lens into understanding television.1

Before we get into it: Which TV shows are you watching and enjoying lately?

The last good stuff that I saw was Industry. 100%, without a doubt the best thing that was on television for a while, because I think we are running in the low tide now. Very bad TV is being broadcasted nowadays and it’s kind of upsetting because it used to be very good like five years ago. I’m also watching animation from Adult Swim like Haha, You Clowns, and a lot of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City because, I mean, it’s the best thing there is? “Fiction” is not doing so well.

What are your foundational TV shows?

From childhood, I would say Japanese animation more than anything else. But the most foundational show would be Six Feet Under. I watched it in the first year of my PhD, so as a scholar. I was already 20-something and it hit hard in a way that I got even like…disturbed mentally in the process of watching it. I could relate to the characters, and I was feeling that too much in a way that didn’t get so well in my system. It’s a great show, I love it.

I haven’t yet lost anyone super close to me but Six Feet Under is one of those shows I know I’ll return to when I want to process grief.

It’s interesting that you mention that…I work here in Lisbon, I’m a psychoanalyst, but I’ve been working inside of academia again after finishing the PhD. I wanted to get away from academia as much as I could after finishing it. But then I started having this connection and relationship with the department of philosophy here at the university, and they have this laboratory on the philosophy of cinema and moving images. One of the researchers there got a grant from the European Union to research film and death. She had this hypothesis that to make philosophy with moving images, so time-based media, we would say it is to learn how to die.

That’s how I came back, through this project. I got a position, but then…I didn’t want to work on the representation of death, I wanted to work on how television in the middle of everyday life can provoke or trigger those feelings or these affections that could somehow be related to something that you cannot represent. So that’s maybe the key figure here—you cannot actually represent death, because we don’t know how to die or what that experience is like. So Six Feet Under touches me a lot, especially with Brenda’s character. Her pathway was so tough. In a way, I couldn’t really metabolize it. It stuck out to me as a Freudian death drive2 or something, but I couldn’t actually understand her. I was kind of addicted to her story in a way that it was so death-driven beyond representation or something. Her character is maybe one of the most important characters that I’ve ever encountered.

Can you tell me a bit about your academic journey: How did you arrive to writing about and researching television?

I wrote my PhD on Chantal Akerman, a very experimental cerebral filmmaker from Belgium. She says something that maybe is the reason I wanted to work with television: We can do experimental cinema, we can be cerebral, but we cannot stay in the conceptual realm the whole time. We have to be grounded by some kind of dramatic interference and narrative, and that’s very important. Her film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) follows a woman doing everyday chores for three and a half hours. But in the end of the film, I’m giving you a spoiler, she kills a man. We don’t really understand why, but there is this pop, overdramatic thing. I was interested in the over-the-top, sometimes melodramatic narratives that you could find in television.

I understood that I wanted to research it was because television was in the middle of everything. Television is a narrative that is in the middle of our lives, that most viewers identify with ideologically or moralistically and sometimes say, Oh, this is not good narrative. It is actually very powerful. I think it’s more transgressive than cinema sometimes because it’s in our daily lives.

On that note, I want to read you a quote I loved from a chapter that is a transcript of a talk you gave, and I’m hoping you might expand on it:

“Twin Peaks is a work of art for television, much more than it is for the cinema, it enters our houses, it is made to be watched in the middle of things. This is very subversive…Television is capable of producing something that is maybe much more disruptive than cinema. Television has a body. The TV. The TV set. The box. You can hold it, use your hands to grab it much more than a projection at a cinema theater.”

I was writing this book about television, and then we interviewed this professor from the University of Chicago, Thomas Lamarre. He’s a very special professor, and he accepted our invitation to come here to Lisbon and give a workshop on Japanese animation and Japanese cinema, but with animation and pop culture. He’s the one that made me really see that we don’t have to go inside of the cinema theater to produce subversion. Politically, television is the art that makes us more open to what we don’t take seriously normally, at least as seriously as the cinema. So I was very interested in how pop culture can be considered a “minor art” but be very transgressive, because it’s very pop, because it’s very capitalistic. So I can talk about Twin Peaks, but I can also talk about anime. People might say, oh anime is for young adults, but there’s a bunch of stuff for young adults that’s actually good.

Did you see I Saw the TV Glow? There’s this scene where the main character opens their body, and there’s all of this electromagnetism inside. People can read this scene as, okay, this body was colonized by capitalism and television. But I actually think it’s totally the opposite. This body learned how to live because it was filled by this libidinal television possibility of life. Television was what kept the character alive in the end, it was because of television that this character could produce another psychotic reality or artistic reality that is alive, a form of expression. I love that they learned how to subvert it. It’s not a colonizing capitalism that’s destroyed this person, it’s actually the opposite. I think David Lynch was very aware of this when he made Twin Peaks. If we look at that scene from I Saw The TV Glow of opening and seeing the television inside, and if we also look at the last scene of the second season of Twin Peaks, when Cooper is hitting his head against the mirror….television is a black mirror that we have everywhere. We can, in a way, confront and defeat and see the body that we have inside of ourselves, and maybe know how to harness those, those energies and forces. I don’t know. [Giggles].

Why do you think psychoanalysis is a useful approach to television?

First of all that’s very important in your work, because you are a TV scholar that is looking for fiction and narrative. We can say that maybe The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City isn’t fiction, but of course, it is fiction. There’s beautiful mise-en-scene and editing work that I think Bravo does amazingly. So I think what we can learn about psychoanalysis with television is how we can do narratives, and how can we practice narrativization and building stories.

Psychoanalysis is pretty much telling stories. Going to your analyst and talking about your life, about your family, your psychoanalyst should understand that it needs something more, or something beyond, something beyond your family drama with your mom. Good television provokes this disruption. For instance, in Sex and the City…they don’t have families. Of course, they talk about it, and there’s Miranda’s mother, but we don’t see them. They have New York and sexual operations they’re investing in there. In a way, psychoanalysis as a practice needs to listen to the family plot, but trace a line the whole time trying to explore further, beyond the traumatic experience of childhood. Good TV does that.

Six Feet Under, for example, is very well structured as a family drama. But there’s something else there. There’s something so bizarre and strange in the way that family relates. Even in the first season, when the mother sees the son giving oral sex to his girlfriend…it’s a family drama that is always twisting how we would see family in television. So it kind of folds the family drama within the family compound (the house). It makes over-the-top complexities beyond the family drama, in a way, it explodes.

I think I get it—family life in particular is so rich to explore, on and off the screen. There is kind of a gap in family dramas nowadays, it doesn’t seem to be a sexy genre to explore on television.

In Industry, we have Harper and Yasmin. We have all the family drama from Yasmin, and we have family drama from Harper, but we rarely see anything beyond her brother. I read somewhere that they wanted to cast Jennifer Jason Leigh as her mother but decided not to. It’s so brilliant that they didn’t do it. Harper is a little bit like the Sex and the City characters, she has to be displaced to build something new. And you see that Yasmin is not capable of doing this, and now she’s becoming Ghislaine Maxwell. She’s so fucked up in this family plot that she cannot get rid of. In a way, Harper…she’s doing it. She’s producing another possibility outside of the US, having this new, very bizarre and difficult life in the UK, but she’s doing it with new alliances.

How did you settle on titling your book Unconscious/Television?

I was about to put only Unconscious as a title. As I was developing the proposal for the publishing house, I said, okay, I need a media interface to think that the unconscious could be this media interface as well. So it is to think that television can be also operating as an unconscious, as this infrastructure of our aesthetic body that is actually outside of the body; that you are relating it as an affection, as a haptic, energetic thing.

Can you tell me about selecting your case studies and why you chose to focus on those specific shows?

I have three case studies: Neon Genesis Evangelion, a very famous anime, Twin Peaks, and Netflix’s Devilman Crybaby. Evangelion is a very canonical work from Japanese animation from the 90s and I love it. There was cable in Brazil in the 90s, or more little small antennas that would receive television from several places. There was this channel only from Latin America called Locomotion, a channel for animation. I watched Evangelion there, I was very young, like 10, but it was very foundational. It’s a very neurotic show, because it is a show about the father, the son, the mother, the mother is the robot. Even though Evangelion is so good, the main character is never able to actually get rid of this father-mother-son triangle. I wrote about Asuka, another character in the show, the woman that is able to, in a way, destroy humanity by making an alliance with the villains. That’s my thesis in the chapter.

After Evangelion I thought I should talk about another anime that is a little less neurotic, more psychotic. Devilman Crybaby is a very important manga that was adapted as OVA (Original Video Animation), which was very popular in Japan in the 80s. What Netflix did many years after was make a very good anime adaptation with this, it’s brilliant. In this anime we could really elaborate on this new conceptualization of the unconscious; I write about how demons make fusions to produce weapons against humanity. I could write a lot about this anime.

For Twin Peaks: The Return, and I especially explore the episode of the atomic bomb (episode 8), not only as a representation of the atomic bomb, but also as how David Lynch builds the strategies of Twin Peaks. He’s depicting the radioactivity of the atomic bomb and how it explodes the way that we conceptualize, for instance, even weapons or the universe. So because we are dealing with atomicity, we are dealing also with the way that Lynch structures his narratives. It’s an episode that comes out of nothing. Instead of exploring a character, he goes somewhere else, but it makes a lot of sense. I love it.

Do you have any favorite or seminal texts within psychoanalysis that are relevant to television that you can recommend?

I would say that you have to read the little text from Lacan about the mirror image, The Image of a Voice: The Mirror Stage. It’s a text from ‘49 that Lacan gave as a lecture, and afterwards it was published. Lacan conceptualizes narcissism after Freud. So it is the child looking at their image in the mirror and also being confirmed by the caretaker that this image makes sense; how the child produces the gestalt of the body. So the body, it’s not fragmented anymore. It is one thing, a thing that makes sense. That’s the neurotic narcissism that Lacan explains.

When thinking about narratives on television, it would be a great text, especially if we think that, for instance, a show that used to be good, Black Mirror. If we’re thinking about this mirror image and how the black mirror is also a mirror of a virtuality of something that is about to happen that we don’t yet know. It’s very interesting when we start exploring this notion of the mirror image that Lacan conceptualized. It can be a difficult text, but it’s so short that you can read it more and more, forever.

What is your favorite television-watching snack?

Guacamole and Doritos!

Dear TV Scholar:

I've just accepted I'm experiencing burnout, and have decided to leave London after a beautiful few years and go back home to Scotland. I feel like I'm starting again and feel pretty clueless about where to go next, how to work out what I want, and how to be proud of myself and be the person my loved ones think I am! I realise it's a pretty cliché quarter-life crisis, but part of me also believes I'm the first person ever to go through something like this lol.

-So Long London

Dear So Long London:

You’re not alone. It was 2020 when I realized I was experiencing burnout. I had just started the second semester of my PhD program in Toronto, and a few weeks of enthusiasm quickly waned when I realized I couldn’t stomach writing another fucking academic paper. I used to start the semester feeling refreshed and excited by new material; I would make a list of all of my assignments and flag the readings that seemed most interesting, make study plans with friends, colour-code my calendar. This time around, I could barely stomach looking at a syllabus. I zoned out in class. I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE, my mind screamed. I was not okay, like at all. I was smoking a lot of weed, I had suicidal thoughts. My therapist could only do so much. But one thing I neglected to consider at the time is the context in which my burnout occurred.

It didn’t make sense in the moment, though: I had spent my entire young adulthood strategically planning for a PhD, for a future in academia. I was decently funded, had research opportunities, a great supportive supervisor, but it didn’t matter. When you’re burnt out, you need space and distance. The word itself tells us all we need to know: Burning is an irreversible chemical reaction. You can’t unburn a slice of toast. I took a leave of absence, and a few weeks later, the pandemic hit. I made the split decision to move in with my parents temporarily back in my hometown on the other side of Canada. In the moment, it felt like failure. I didn’t want my family and friends to see me through that lens. The pandemic was a convenient excuse, but I’m almost certain things would have led there regardless (I had already been dreaming of the lush greenery of British Columbia in my very cement life in Toronto).

I ended up getting totally absorbed into ER in those lockdown weeks. Looking back now, I think I was grappling with a sense of purposelessness. I had all of those big existential questions: Who am I without academia? What function do I serve my community? The medical staff on ER know exactly what their purpose is. If you’re watching The Pitt, it evokes a similar feeling: That they are meant to be there, right at that moment, to save that specific patient. I hungered for that feeling, to matter, for my life to feel aligned again.

I ended up signing up for a class on human physiology as a potential prerequisite for nursing, just to try it out. I got a job doing admin work for the public health system. I began grocery shopping weekly, packing lunches, taking the bus to work every day (I was considered an essential worker), answering calls and processing faxes in a windowless room, getting paid every two weeks. Somehow, even though this job wasn’t at all what I envisioned for myself, I started to feel okay again. The structure helped. By the time I got to the series finale of ER, 331 episodes later, I was feeling like myself again. It’s right around that time when I interviewed my first actor and tvscholar really started to take off. Evidently, I did not become a nurse, but I don’t regret exploring it.

I’m vulnerabilitymaxxing here to say: Many, many quarter-life crises have led to a reinvention and a new era. Satya Doyle Byock wrote a really good book about it, by the way. You are currently in the rebuilding phase. It’s time to honour what you’ve really been feeling instead of turning away from it. For me, that’s where the burnout brewed: That deep down knowing that you are not aligned with who you truly want to be. Fuck what anyone else might be thinking, that’s none of your business. What is your business is doing the internal work needed to get back to yourself. As you rebuild that internal okayness, you’ll start trying new things and pursuing opportunities. I’m not religious, but I do think the universe/life finds a way to guide you. Eventually, you’ll wake up, like I do on most days, and realize you made the right choice—especially, as you mention, with a sense of pride over what you actually accomplished in your life there.

By far the best burnout representation I still think about all the time is Enlightened (HBO). I am always surprised by how many people still haven’t seen this gem, which was a collaboration between Mike White (of The White Lotus fame) and Laura Dern (I don’t need to explain who that legend is). The series opens on Amy Jellicoe’s (Dern) worst day. After a massive and very public breakdown at work (a scene that should have won her an Emmy right then and there), she leaves for a wellness retreat in Hawaii, and returns not too long after in a state of enlightenment. She’s ready to make a change in the world! She gets banished to a basement data processing centre but tries to stay present and optimistic through it all, while also wanting to burn everything to the ground. The show is a stark reminder of how shifting your mindset and reframing things can only do so much. Context is important. You can’t change oppressive structures by being more present (I wish). Sometimes, enough is enough. You already know, So Long London, that you’ve hit your capacity (nonetheless, Enlightened would be cathartic and fun to watch). I think there is value in that realization—considering how many of us try to grind it out at the risk of our sanity and health.

In the spirit of starting over, consider watching Somebody Somewhere (HBO). Sam (Bridget Everett) is experiencing more of a mid-life crisis, but she moves back to her hometown after the death of her sister to rebuild, and ends up finding unexpected grace in building community with a gay friend (Jeff Hiller) from high school. It’s one of the softest, most lovable series I’ve ever watched. If you’ve watched it already, watch it again—I took the first season for granted. You might also find some solace in The Dry (Sundance/Britbox/ITVX), in which Shiv (Roisin Gallagher) moves back home to Dublin from London at 35 after losing her job and feeling she didn’t fit into her life there in sobriety. Finally, justice for Too Much! Lena Dunham’s Netflix show is like the more grounded Emily in Paris. Have you ever heard of the saying, wherever you go, there you are? Jessica’s (Meg Stalter) emotional baggage follows her physical one, and it all comes up when she’s in a new relationship with Felix (Will Sharpe), an indie musician. This might be triggering because it’s all London-based, or could be comforting to know you’re not in that world anymore.

My final recommendation would be to watch something that fills your cup, regardless of its themes. Restart Sex and the City for the fourth time (a rewatch always hits for me). Relax into the comfortable rhythms of a procedural (The Good Wife is a game-changer). Click play on something so ridiculous it’ll make you cackle through any lingering regrets or emotions you might be having about starting over (The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City or Search Party). Trust me, as you pick up the pieces of the life you’ve left behind, you'll be okay. TV’s got your back.

Need some TV advice? Send me a letter.

Huge news: I’m bringing back my advice column! Are you going through something and want to know what to watch to help process it all? Fill out this Google Form.

Extra credit: I interviewed Arden Cho for The Cut ahead of the Oscars (she voices Rumi in KPop Demon Hunters). She is absolutely wonderful and gave me lots of dating advice. I also ranked every single one of Nicole Kidman’s TV roles for Harper’s Bazaar, and I have two new column dispatches up for Yahoo because one is a special Disney/Hulu collaborative round-up! Always working hard at the TV recommendations factory.

So, something happened last week that made me, well first of all, rethink everything, but also, sit all weekend writing a long essay.

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Is anyone having trouble reconciling what feels like the eve of WWIII with their day-to-day life or is it just me? I had dreams of visiting Lebanon in the next year or two, finally seeing where my father’s side of the family is from, consuming any Lebanese food I can get my hands on, going on wine tours in the Bekaa Valley. Instead, I have to watch it get bombarded, invaded, pillaged, in never-ending wars that are serving political and, surely, economic interests. It all just feels sick.

There’s a real dissonance between writing my little television articles and watching constant destruction and death around the globe in the periphery of everything I do. But I’m trying my best to claw my way back to myself, to focus on my community, to draw attention to mutual aid. I’m at a loss at what else I can do. I have to admit: I want to bury my head in the sand, I want to not think about it, but it’s impossible. I don’t even know what else there is to say!

So anyway, with that in mind, I asked for questions from Instagram to help guide this week’s newsletter, so let’s get into it.

What can I watch now that Industry is over?

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Between interviews with actors and scholars, the tvscholar Reflections series interrogates the television on my mind lately, whether it’s something new and buzzy or a series I’m finally getting around to. These reflections will always be behind a paywall, but subscribing helps support my work as a freelance TV critic and allows me to keep doing this! Happy watching.

For extra credit, you can read my recent interview with Julianne Nicholson (aka Sinatra from Paradise and Dance Mom from Hacks), and catch up on my Industry recaps (get readyyyy for the finale on Sunday, it’s quite the episode).

In all honesty, I’m still trying to pin down what makes Love Story so absorbing. It’s not unlike how I felt watching Heated Rivalry, which is perplexing, because no one is having gay sex in Love Story.

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Between interviews with actors and scholars, the tvcholar Reflections series interrogates the television on my mind lately, whether it’s something new and buzzy or a series I’m finally getting around to. These reflections will always be behind a paywall, but subscribing helps support my work as a freelance TV critic and allows me to keep doing this! Happy watching.

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I’m so happy to introduce a new look/logo to my newsletter! I highly recommend hiring Vancouver-based graphic designer Lillian Pham for all your design needs. I’ve been writing this newsletter for a few years now and it was time for a much-needed refresh. When we met over Zoom I was thinking a lot about how the “tvscholar brand” has evolved since I started posting on Instagram in 2019—at a time when I wanted this platform to be academic but accessible, informative and serious, a dissemination of what I was learning in grad school before I dropped out.

When I first had assets designed for this newsletter around then, I was so concerned about projecting myself as someone of expertise. The heavier forest green colour scheme and the straightforward text designs helped establish myself in those early days. Meeting with Lillian a few weeks ago, I just kept thinking of the word whimsy. Don’t get me wrong: You all know I treat television with the utmost seriousness as a medium, but over the years, I’ve embraced humour and playfulness and personal experience as core tenets of my writing and the way I move about this industry. When I posted about watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show for the first time I got the inevitable comment: “You haven’t seen this and you call yourself tvscholar?!” to which I replied: “Well, a scholar by definition is always learning.”

My group chat was concerned about my new logo’s legibility—that “tvscholar” wouldn’t be immediately readable upon first impression. But that is precisely why I adore this logo. It requires close reading. Many of you read and subscribe and some of you actually pay me (thank youuu I love you) for my thoughts on television because I favour the close read. Even my screenshot-taking practice is a kind of abstract close analysis. I love that the way this logo—floating in a deconstructed television set, attached to swirling power cables that are snaking out wildly for connection—prompts you to double-take and comprehend what you’re actually seeing. After all, as tvscholars, that is how we watch television.

Extra credit reading:

• I think many of you will be interested in my thoughts on The Screener, a miniseries premiere I attended at Sundance last month. I hope the show gets picked up soon, I think it has a lot to say about Hollywood and screener culture inside the industry. I also hopped on a call with its creators, Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe. They told me they are not sending out screeners of The Screener (lol).

• I had the pleasure of interviewing Sepideh Moafi, who I’ve loved watching on TV since The Deuce, for The Cut. She’s currently starring on The Pitt as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. Her answer to my last question had me crying with laughter on our call.

• I wrote a bit about Steal (Prime Video), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO), and Drops of God (Apple TV+) for my Yahoo column. Since it’s Valentine’s Day I threw in High Fidelity (Hulu), too. It’s part of my 83-step plan to bring the show back.

Does The Beauty perpetuate the very ideas it seeks to examine?

This question has been bouncing around my head every week as yet another set of abs take up my entire screen on The Beauty, Ryan Murphy’s latest body horror drama based on a comic book series written by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley.

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what are they watching? is an interview series for my newsletter in which I chat with a television creative about television itself. Previous interviews include Georgi Banks-Davies, Janicza Bravo, Chelsea Peretti, and Jeff Hiller.

This time around, I had the pleasure of speaking with Toheeb Jimoh, the Emmy-nominated actor you’ll definitely know as Sam Obisanya on Ted Lasso. Currently, he stars on Industry as Kwabena Bannerman, a trader with SternTao who’s also in a situationship with his boss. Alongside Miriam Petche, he just had a fantastic fifth episode that is set in Ghana (the episode has been released early due to the Super Bowl; light spoilers below).

I like to start things off by asking: What are you watching on television lately and enjoying?

I’ve just started watching The Sopranos. It’s one of those shows where I’m like, How has anybody in my life not glued me to a chair, put a gun to my head and been like, watch this TV show right now. You understand why people say this is the best show ever. I’m obsessed with Tony Soprano. I watched Pluribus as well, which was really interesting.

I think Sopranos paved the way for Industry, in some ways.

Definitely. I’m seeing where so many of these other TV shows that are my favorite kind of got it from. There are so many homages to The Sopranos that I’m now aware of.

Can you tell me a bit about what was on your mind when you got cast in Industry? It’s quite a departure from the more wholesome vibes on Ted Lasso.

It is! I was excited to be joining industry because of it. It felt like a really interesting tone shift for me, especially in the work that I’ve done on screen. I love the world of Industry, it’s really dynamic. The characters are really exciting and depraved. For an actor, it’s exciting to play in the gray in the way that Industry characters get to, so I really welcomed it. I’d seen the show before so I knew what I was signing myself up for. If you’re gonna go for debauchery, what better show than Industry? Give me some drug sex and finance after, like, wholesome sports.

That being said, I actually feel like Kwabena is one of the “better” characters on the show, at least from the episodes I’ve seen so far…even after the events of episode 6, I still felt like I was on his side. Is that how you interpreted the character?

Really? I thought he’d be hitting red flags by then. But you’re right—I think a lot of that stems from the fact that he’s not as obsessed as everybody else is with defining himself by his work life and his work persona. He’s kind of there to like, cash the cheque and vibe. If all the Industry characters are chaotic, he’s more chaotic-good or neutral-good, as much as you can get in the world of Industry.

I feel like no one gets Kwabena’s sense of humour! They’re all so serious and he’s like…I’m just here to have a good time.

[Laughs]. Which is part of the fun of it! It’s nice to play somebody who is just here for a good time and not a long time. It’s a very serious, stress-inducing show. So to have somebody who cuts against that tension is really fun. And like you said, he drives them all a bit crazy, which I love. Especially Sweetpea in episode five. They’re just such opposite people, which is part of the fun of the dynamic of the two of them.

What was it like shooting episode 6, which takes place in Ghana?

Oh it was amazing. It felt like we were doing it for real. A bunch of us got to go to South Africa, a ragtag group going off to shoot this standaloneish episode. We had to shoot all of it in four days. The day we were catching our flight back we were shooting that morning, it was that tight. It was easy to get into the headspace of how Sweetpea and Kwabena were feeling, because it kind of felt like Miriam and I were having to do the same thing. The episode turned out really great, especially for Miriam, I thought she carried so much of that episode. Boy, does she nail it.

Is there anything you did to prepare for this role, did you read up on any finance stuff?

No…it’s so funny because with TV, you get these jobs and it’s happening before you know it. A week later you’re there doing the first read-through. So the idea that I would have become a finance expert overnight...I wish I could tell you I did. My prep was on the job, I was calling Mickey and Conrad, voice noting almost daily, every time I had any bit of finance jargon. I just had to understand it for myself in order to say it and make it make sense. But as soon as I finished saying whatever I needed to say, all of that information flew from my brain, and I’m happier for it. I have nothing to offer anyone financially.

So if I asked you to define a short?

No, no, no, I wouldn’t be able to define it. Absolutely not. I know it’s like, a gamble against the market. You buy something that you feel like the market is overvaluing, and you feel like it’s gonna crash and it’s gonna be found out, and then you stockpile all of that stuff, and when the market realizes that the thing isn’t as valuable as they think it is, then you’re in a position to benefit. I think?

I mean that sounds PRETTY accurate to me. All I’m thinking is that viral tweet that says “a short is when you gag the market.”

[Laughs]. Yes! A short is when you gag the market! That’s great. That sounds like a line one of the boys came up with as well.

We get to see some karaoke in this episode, are you a fan of karaoke? If so, what are your go-to songs?

Not really, no. But I keep getting put in situations like this. I open a script and someone’s like, and Toheeb’s character is doing karaoke in front of everyone. I’m like, why doesn’t anyone consult me about this? I had karaoke to do on Ted Lasso as well! That being said, it was really fun. But it’s one of those things that’s a bit weird to do sober.

What are your go-to karaoke songs?

Oh man, I just don’t really do karaoke. “Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan…banger. I’d do “The Climb,” Miley Cyrus. Another banger. Maybe I’d do “Tequila” as a spoof. You know that song where you just say tequila like five times, yeah. What are yours?

I’m terrible at remembering lyrics so I’d have to do a song I know inside and out…so probably like a Lana Del Rey song, which would bum everyone out. Speaking of karaoke…does the cast of Industry party as hard as the characters do?

Ummm…I don’t think so, not in my experience. But then again, I wouldn’t know, because I don’t party that hard. Even at the premiere, I was gone pretty early, so I wouldn’t know. A couple of the cast members are sober, so they’re definite nos. Then again I don’t think anybody should party that hard. I’m usually gone an hour into the party, I go to sleep. I got gym in the morning. I’m trying to brush my teeth and be asleep at a good hour, so…

So you’re not there to see who the stragglers are!

And there are some stragglers in the cast! I won’t name names. I’ll let them snitch on themselves.

How would you describe the last batch of episodes?

Dark. It gets pretty dark. And I’ll also say it gets pretty hard to still root for some of the characters.

What can you say about Ted Lasso season four, if anything?

Nothing! I don’t know anything about Ted Lasso season four. Everybody that’s in it has been pretty much announced. So yeah, I know nothing. I’m wishing them well, though! A couple of us from the men’s team hung out with some of the new cast who are in the new women’s team, and we played darts and we got cooked, lowkey. I don’t know if that was part of the brief when they were casting, but they’re good at darts.

Okay so no darts and no karaoke, noted. What are your foundational TV shows?

Some of the early sitcoms, I’d say: My Wife and Kids, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, for entertainment value, but those episodes are really hard hitting. I have a group of friends who were kind of raised by Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince. I was also really big into anime, so I was watching Naruto growing up.

When I was going to drama school, Viola Davis on How to Get Away with Murder was really significant and impactful at the time. I just finished reading her book. Viola is such an incredible woman, she’s had such an incredible life. And talk about meeting your moment and finding your purpose.

Reading her book now, and obviously having watched her as Annalise Keating…nobody else could have played that part. The amount of vitriol that was coming her way when she got cast as that role…nobody wanted to believe Viola Davis as a sexy TV lead, and I’m like of course it makes sense. That couldn’t have been anyone else. I was watching and thinking, I want to play a character that’s that complex, that hard to root for, but then also that lovable.

In the final chapter, where she’s talking about the decision to take her wig off…that’s what TV should be about, its ability to inspire people who maybe haven’t felt loved or desired, and now suddenly there you are and that many eyes are on you and you can really impact positive social change with the power of television.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Before I let you go: what’s your favourite TV-watching snack?

I’m not really a snacky one, I’m not like a popcorn guy. Maybe just crisps or something. Pringles or Sensations…yeah, give me a big bag of Sensations, I’ll sit down and finish The Sopranos.

As I finished writing up this newsletter, devastating news broke that legendary actress Catherine O’Hara has passed away. A Canadian national treasure and icon, I was lucky enough to have interviewed her last year. Unsurprisingly, I found her to be the warmest, funniest, most wonderful human. I’m thinking (heartbreakingly) of her on- and off-screen families and all of the lives she’s touched with her work. A deeply upsetting piece of news on the same day as a national general strike in the United States against f*cking ICE. Stay safe and protect your hearts out there.

It’s the Friday night kickoff of the Sundance Film Festival and I somehow find myself standing on a “red carpet” press line in Park City, Utah. I’m wearing a cow print jacket I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on (to my delight), a white tank top (festival screenings are way too warm!), sturdy brown corduroy pants, and my precious Jacques Solovière dress shoes that I kept crossing my fingers no one would step on as they squished past me through the tightly crowded rows in the Eccles Theatre where all the big Sundance premieres happen.

To my left is Rachel Sennott in some kind of indescribable iconic fluffy jacket. Alexander Skarsgård is stomping around in Valentino flip flops a few feet away from me. I’m probably still slightly blushed from speaking with Isaac Powell. I can’t remember what Kate Berlant responded to my questions with but I’m sure it was fab. I have to snap into focus, though, because I’m handing a microphone to Charli fucking XCX minutes from The Moment’s world premiere.

I can hardly really remember the blur of that day, except that I have material evidence it happened. Faced with in a hot Saint Laurent suit, I moved through my moment of disembodiment quickly: I shoved the Is this actually happening? How did I find myself here? thoughts quickly in the recesses of my mind. There’s no point dwelling, and there’s no time to sit in fear or anxiety. There is only do, there is only snap into interviewer mode. I have had the absolute pleasure of interviewing a lot of people thus far in my writing career, actors I never thought I’d speak to, some even for this newsletter. But it never even crossed my mind that I would have a few moments with someone of Charli’s pedigree, an artist I’ve been listening to since high school (and The Moment is so good, by the way—anyone who Gets Brat will really enjoy it).

Just like that moment, Sundance was a feast of the unimaginable, an experience I won’t forget any time soon, nestled in the chilly (but very dry) snow-dusted mountains of Utah. In a moving speech at the press welcome on my first day, Amy Redford (the late Robert Redford’s daughter) told us: “I invite you to look out and up when you can. These mountains have a funny way of adding perspective.” I thought about that a lot during my time at the festival, the contrast between the grand vastness of Utah’s mountains and plains and the small, indie stories on-screen made with low budgets, capturing slice-of-life moments, with hopes and dreams that they will resonate with buyers and audiences.

I waited in many, many lines, went to roughly a dozen screenings, I reunited with Karley Sciortino who I used to write for a decade ago, I met Meredith Marks (iconic…), and as always, approached the festival in the only way I know how: As a telephile, keeping a keen eye out for anything episodic and television-related. Here are my thoughts on what I got to watch. (My interview in the Here & Queer series for CBC from my time at TIFF is up now btw if you want to watch me talk queer TV with the wonderful Peter Knegt).

Sundance’s television premieres

Worried (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - This may actually be the new iteration of Girls I expected when I Love LA first premiered, directed with empathy and heart by Nicole Holofcener and written by Lesley Arfin (a former Girls staff writer) and Alexandra Tanner. We follow Jules (Gideon Adlon), a 20-something writer for a corny astrology app living in New York when her somewhat chaotic sister Poppy (Rachel Kaly) moves in unexpectedly. They have a strained but codependent relationship; Poppy is covered in anxiety hives and carries a lot of prescription medication, Jules can’t find the capacity to deal with her armchair activism.

Humming in the background and brought up often: Gaza, Ukraine, and interestingly, 9/11. Poppy bringing up Gaza and Israel multiple times in this episode caught me by such surprise that my first instinct was to feel it was being trivialized, only to realize I was probably feeling that way because Gaza is very rarely mentioned on television. I kept feeling, generally, that the American films I watched at Sundance were bizarrely apolitical considering how politically-charged our last few years have been. Worried is the first time I felt writers were actually acknowledging the impact of the world’s Horrors on our individual psyches. Leave it up to television to take that challenging charge. I am totally sold on this and hope this gets picked up for a full series order somewhere; I can see it on HBO.

Freelance (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - A friend group of creatives/aspiring content creator roommates run a scrappy production company together, with the protagonist Lance (Spence Moore II) trying to save from odd jobs to fund his movie-making aspirations. They shoot a wedding together which doesn’t go as planned. I love the way this is shot, in a square aspect ratio and a filmic soft focus, and there aren’t many TV comedies out there that specifically follow a friend group of Black men. We don’t get too much interiority on each character and the narration was a bit distracting but would love to see more.

Soft Boil (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Lulu (Camille Wormser) is an aspiring actress who gets a nannying job to keep herself afloat between self-tapes when she catches her live-in boyfriend having kinky sex with another woman. With some encouragement from her friend (The Lake’s Madison Shamoun!) she pursues new avenues after kicking him out by hooking up with a random guy at the bar—which ends up coming full circle by the end of the episode. Soft Boil is funny and goofy—Wormser’s theatre-kid energy wins you over by the end of the episode and I always welcome an off-beat existential zillennial comedy series.

Bait (3 episodes) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, an actor who’s auditioning for James Bond in this comedy that is something like I Hate Suzie meets Ramy. What’s obviously of interest is the deconstruction of how an actor of colour would be considered for the role, but it’s really Ahmed’s interiority that gives the show dimension—digging into what he’s trying to validate by pursuing this role, and the roots he has with his family. Weruche Opia is also great as his agent. Great cameos throughout that maybe I won’t spoil if you want to jump into the series when it premieres on Prime Video on March 25. Ahmed is absolutely fantastic (and also creates/writes the series).

The Story of Documentary Film (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - Another 15-episode docu-series arrives from Mark Cousins and his team behind The Story of Film, this time tackling the history of documentary as a medium. I really appreciated the careful art historical approach to this series, which jumps between a few different perspectives while also zooming in to perform a textual analysis of a single frame and its significance to the medium. The first episode, a broad introduction, is totally worth watching, although I didn’t leave with any urgency to see more. I was craving a punchy ending to the episode, something to pull us into the present with urgency.

The Screener (3 episodes) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Absolutely gagged me. This satirical dramedy kicks off with a heart-thumping first episode that follows a filmmaker whose indie film screener leaks, and the talent agents who may be responsible. The Screener treats the leak like an actual crime—as it should be! Extremely cathartic to watch art’s intellectual property get treated with this level of seriousness. I have a lot more to say about this series created by Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe but I will save it for something I’m writing that should be out next week. I would be shocked if this didn’t get snatched up expeditiously.

Sundance films I watched

• Bedford Park (dir. Stephanie Ahn) ⭐️⭐️1/2

• Tuner (dir. Daniel Roher) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Carousel (dir. Rachel Lambert) ⭐️⭐️

• I Want Your Sex (dir. Gregg Araki) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Moment (dir. Aidan Zamiri) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Invite (dir. Olivia Wilde) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Gallerist (dir. Cathy Yan) ⭐️⭐️

• Wicker (dir. Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (dir. Noah Segan) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Frank & Louis (dir. Petra Volpe) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Still on the docket via Sundance’s online offerings through to Sunday, if I have time: ROCK SPRINGS (dir. Vera Miao; Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong), JOSEPHINE (dir. Beth de Araújo; Gemma Chan, Channing Tatum), HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! (dir. Josef Kubota Wladyka; Rinko Kikuchi), ARIPEO (dir. Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig), PUBLIC ACCESS (dir. David Shadrack Smith)

February television preview

⭐️ = shows I’m keen to check out

Feb 1: Vanished (MGM+, S1) ⭐️
Feb 3: Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History (PBS, S1)
Feb 8: THE ‘BURBS (Peacock, S1) ⭐️
Feb 7: Engineering Europe (Disney+, S1)
Feb 8: Lord of the Flies (BBC, S1) *no North American distribution as of yet
Feb 10: The Artful Dodger (Hulu, S2)
Feb 11: Cross (Prime Video, S2)
Feb 12: Can You Keep a Secret? (Paramount+, S1)
Feb 12: Love Story: John Kennedy (FX, S1)
Feb 12: How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix, S1) *from the creators of Derry Girls ⭐️
Feb 13: Neighbors (HBO Max, S1)
Feb 14: Dark Winds (AMC, S4)
Feb 16: Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model (Netflix, S1) ⭐️
Feb 18: 56 Days (Prime Video, S1) ⭐️
Feb 20: Dreaming Whilst Black (Paramount+, S2) ⭐️
Feb 20: Strip Law (Netflix, S1)
Feb 23: Paradise (Hulu, S2) ⭐️
Feb 23: The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (Paramount+, S1)
Feb 26: Matlock (CBS, S2B) ⭐️
Feb 26: Elsbeth (CBS, S3B)
Feb 26: Ghosts (CBS, S5B) ⭐️

Reporting live from Sundance! I have already seen some things that are under embargo and I have lots on the docket, including episodic premieres like Bait and The Screener. I’ll round-up everything I’ve watched in my newsletter next week.

Some other places I’ve been lately:

• I made an appearance on Vox’s Explain it to Me podcast talking about Heated Rivalry and sex on television.

• I picked The Night Manager for my Appointment Viewing column in The Cut.

• I interviewed Ned Brower aka Nurse Jesse from The Pitt, who is actually a nurse in real life! For Yahoo.

On Thursday night, after two palomas (Dry January is officially over), I walked through some poorly lit roads in Park City, Utah, on my way back to my hotel room after a press welcome party and a Dorian Awards voter meet-up ahead of the official start of the Sundance Film Festival. I got back to my room at a reasonable hour—I’m trying this thing where I actually prioritize my sleep for the next week, instead of whatever I did at TIFF leading up to catching a flu on my last couple of days.

What I really, desperately wanted to do was curl up alone in my comically large hotel bed to watch more of Netflix’s Japanese-language series The Boyfriend, which is probably Netflix’s best reality offering—and maybe one of their best shows overall? And shed a few tears.

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what are they watching? is an interview series for my newsletter in which I chat with a television creative about television itself. Previous interviews include Janicza Bravo, Chelsea Peretti, and Jeff Hiller.

This time around, I had the pleasure of speaking with Georgi Banks-Davies, who directs every episode of The Night Manager’s second season, which is now streaming on Prime Video (with new episodes every Sunday through January). She also directed the first season of I Hate Suzie (ICONIC TO ME), Kaos, and Paper Girls.

Before we jump into my other questions, what are you watching lately?

I have just finished the Claire Danes show The Beast in Me which I thought was so fantastically executed. The tone of that show is the most confident thing I’ve seen in years. It’s just so fun but also so dark. Sometimes you watch something and you just know the actors are having a really good time, and that’s what those two lead actors in that show look like they’re doing. I’m desperately awaiting the next season of The Studio because I’ve never seen anything so accurate about the film business, but in a really heightened way…I kind of want a role on it? The oner episode, I was literally screaming at the television. I heard that Seth Rogen is getting so many requests from directors’ agents now for their clients to star in the show for fake director projects [Laughs]. I get it.

My one critique of The Studio, which I’d love to get your take on, is that it never seemed like the projects those directors were working on were actually accurate to what they make in real life?

Maybe that’s purposeful, because otherwise it’s potentially a little too close to home...or maybe it’s their secret ambitions. Maybe they agree to do the show so that they can basically project back onto Hollywood what they actually want to be directing, as their audition.

Gasp…you’re so right. Anyway, how did you get into television directing?

It was almost by accident, actually. I’d been working for a long time over many years as a commercials director. I was very lucky that as soon as I came out of film school, I got a job directing. I had a traineeship at the BBC as a short form director, and naturally progressed to commercials whilst the whole time working on short films. It’s funny because people say it feels like you have an overnight success, but those are 1000s of overnights because you’ve been working and working and working.

I had one short film that hit in a moment and captivated a feeling that people seem to enjoy called Garfield, which went to Sundance. I describe Sundance as: It’s like the universe just one day spun around and emptied her pocket change on me. After that experience, I got new agents and met lots of film and television producers that I really admired who were looking for new ways to tell stories. They wanted new voices who could challenge the format, but at the same time, confident directors who were experienced enough not to mess it up. Being a commercials director was perfect in that I’d been on set for hours and hours of my life and worked with really large budgets and high expectations. But I also had no idea how you direct television.

I was like a three-year-old when I hit that world, in the sense that producers would say no, we don’t make television like that. And I kept saying, but why? Unbeknownst to me, I was challenging the convention and the role of television making. I was empowered on I Hate Suzie. The creators Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble are brilliant and I was given a lot of creative autonomy and freedom to direct the show and bring a big vision to it. In the UK, we’re not a showrunner type system, so the director tends to have more autonomy. In The Night Manager, I was involved from script development all the way to signing off on the files as they go to the broadcasters. It suits me, I’m a control freak.

Ugh, in my parallel universe we’d have a new season of I Hate Suzie every year. You weren’t involved in the second season, right?

Yeah, I was already working on Kaos. The joy of this business is getting to work with so many great collaborators, but then you have these huge diary clashes because you want to do everything. There was a conversation about just jumping in and jumping out for I Hate Suzie but that doesn’t suit the way that I like to work. It was sad to let it go, but Dawn Shadforth who directed it is brilliant. I look at it and think, could I have done that? I don’t know.

You put all the things into the pot and you slightly hold your breath for a second and just think, is it all gonna work? And sometimes it tastes delicious and sometimes it’s terrible, there is this kind of alchemy that you can’t really articulate, and you just feel it when you’re shooting. You just know. We were really pushing everything to the max and squeezing everything we could out of every resource on I Hate Suzie. I felt that making The Night Manager too. So I was sad, but I love those guys. Billie came on to Kaos and played a small role because she was also busy and still doing Suzie and we’ve done charity campaigns together. We have an amazing relationship, and I really hope that collaboration with both of them will continue. I can’t imagine a world or career where it doesn’t.

Just let them know I need I Hate Suzie Thrice.

It is a show that is entirely told from the heart, Billie gives everything. Lucy gives everything. When I was on that first season, gave everything. It’s very personal and it’s very lived. It’s quite raw and it’s exposing when you’re a creative working on it. So you know, it’s not an easy thing to make every year.

I totally get it. And that’s what makes it so special. Let’s talk The Night Manager, how did you approach the scale of the series?

I know exactly where I was when my agent called me. My memory is not that good but it was one of those calls that feel like once in a lifetime. I love the first season and I’m a massive fan of John le Carré. I always wanted to play in the espionage thriller genre, but I want there to be really core, relatable, brilliant characters at the heart of it. It’s strange, I wasn’t daunted by the scale. I think that’s because, well, firstly, I’m a lunatic and I don’t think anything’s too big, and I did grow up shooting all over the world as a commercials director. I actually find smaller things where I’m at home a bit unusual for me.

Of course, I look at the scripts as a whole. I look at the story, and I look at the character, and I understand where the journeys for both are going. So what you have to do is just concentrate on story and character, location by location, because it becomes so much more manageable in the technical part of your brain. And I’m such a realist, I can’t fake anything. When I made Paper Girls, the ideal way to do it is on the green screen with actors who are over 18 but look younger. I was like, absolutely not. We have to have young girls on bikes in the night riding down streets. In filmmaking, people freak out about that, because then you have two-hour shoot days and child licensing rules and no time if we have stunt problems. Even though that’s a bigger challenge, I always will take that challenge over everything else, because you can’t fake authenticity.

So with The Night Manager, the scale for me was all about the real, and we had the most amazing producers who supported that. So that meant we traveled everywhere you see on screen, everything is on location. We shot no studios, no green screen. There’s no video walls. There’s so much driving in our show—we could do all of this in two days in one studio with big backdrops and actors faking it. And I’m like, absolutely not. So at least once a week we’re rigging a car in a crazy place in the world and the actors are really driving. They’re not being pulled by another car. They’re driving. They’re in helicopters, they’re on motorbikes, on horses, in the mountains, and they’re in the middle of traffic in Cartagena, like, for real, with cameras stuck on the side and it and it’s brutal, actually, because you are moving quite a large unit every single day.

There’s no settling in. When it’s cozy in a studio and you can go wander off and get a coffee and sit down. That edge—what happens is the rhythm of yourself and the rhythm of the team and the rhythm of the show starts to play at a higher level. The heartbeat of the thing starts to raise, because the stakes are so high.

I’m curious about how you tackled the 10-year gap between seasons. So much has happened and so much has been written about this show—there’s been so much feedback, even on things that might not feel current about the first season. Where did you start?

From a story point of view, that work had been done somewhat by David Farr already and the producers. For David, it was really important politically to tell a story that felt relevant right now and isn’t falling into tropes or stereotypes. I would never come onto it if it did do that. I’m not interested in telling stories using cultural representation as a trope for the hero’s journey. It goes back to this authenticity that I’m always looking for. I am interested in when you can use what’s come before to then twist expectation.

10 years later, the world’s a very different place, post-covid. We live in a time where the idea of truth is not really defined. I certainly personally can’t understand what it means anymore. It feels we’re in a post-truth kind of world. Given that the subject matter is always about what’s real—that in itself becomes much more intangible. It becomes much more like living in the shades of grey. We very strongly wanted to tell a story that was about the political landscape that we’re in right now.

What I really wanted to develop in the show is what that does to a person. All of my work is about identity crisis. Jonathan Pine is literally taking on different identities to try and find a truth, but I’m not sure it’s the truth. I think it’s his truth. That’s what I’m interested in.

What I also feel really passionate about is the representation of women. Jed—who Elizabeth Debicki played amazingly and brought to life so elegantly in the first season —is a driver for Pine and his own morals. If you read the book, it’s really complicated, he’s almost angry at how beautiful she is. But she’s still serving a save-me role, ultimately. Even though the calibre of the performance is amazing. The same with Sophie (Aure Atika) who becomes the trigger—he’s the avenging angel because somebody killed a woman that trusted him. But I’m interested in who those women are and why they do the things they do. That was one thing I was keen to change, particularly in our lead role with Camila Morrone.

I’m also intrigued by class and the representation of class. I’m a working class director, there aren’t many of us. Like, I come from social housing. If you look up the makeup of MI6, it’s really diverse in class and in race. What we’ve watched over years and years in British shows about MI6 or MI5 is one type of person working in them. So I was interested in what that looks like when you open that up as well to be more realistic and relatable.

I love that so much thought has gone into all of this, which is exactly what I would expect based on the changes made to the second season. Can we talk a bit about the way Tom Hiddleston is shot…how intentional is the female gaze on him?

Everything’s intentional for character! I like the fact that the character is very vulnerable and exposed. So if some of that means that he gets out of bed with his shirt off and certain parts of the audience will enjoy that, it’s not as intentional as it may appear. The answer is actually probably much more mundane than you think. Because you look at that scene and go, he looks very sexy, and he looks great. It’s actually all for story. He’s buttoning up that shirt and putting the armor away, like putting away the weaponry. He’s really brave, Tom. Just like Billie, the bravest actors I’ve worked with. They really want to go there in the exploration of the character.

I love it. Corky the cat: Does he survive? Are you able to tell me that?

All I’m going to tell you is he appears like a survivalist to me. He knows where to go when things get tough.

That’s good enough for me. What are your foundational shows?

Transparent. When I watched, it felt like an American style of TV that I hadn’t seen before, telling a unique lived experience that made me suddenly understand that you could explore character and family and things in a way that I’d never seen before. As a kid, it’s the escapism of something like Fraggle Rock. It was my go-to, like, how we come together as community to escape the bad. Also Broadchurch, a British TV show where every week I was compelled by the most incredible storytelling and performances by David Tennant and Olivia Colman, the queen, who I just got to work with.

The icon! Anything on your career vision board?

I’d be lying if I wasn’t to say that the one at the top is to be the first woman to direct a Bond movie.

I will manifest that with you. Favourite TV-watching snack?

Red strawberry shoelaces, which I think in America is called Twizzlers.

As I write this, we’re less than two weeks out from my trip to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Don’t worry, I plan to watch pretty much everything episodic in addition to films—they’ve got two TV pilot showcases (six pilots total) and are also hosting the premieres of Bait and The Screener. There’s also a documentary about public access television that I plan to watch. Like I did for TIFF and VIFF, I will of course report back on what I see, learn, and experience, here in this newsletter.

Until then: I’ve been trying to squeeze more hours out of my day to watch more screeners and get ahead before my trip. This has included writing my recaps of Industry’s new season for Elle, and binging through the first nine episodes of The Pitt provided to critics to prepare for an upcoming interview with a cast member. It’s been busy at tvscholar HQ!

Further reading:

• I compiled 46 shows that I’m looking forward to this year for Harper’s Bazaar.

• I reviewed the upcoming season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (I liked it and Holly Hunter is amazing) for TheWrap.

• I was on the provincial news! You can watch me talking about TV on CBC: BC Today here, around the 43-minute mark.

• I’m still writing my biweekly Yahoo column where I round up a bunch of things I’m watching.

Okay so this new season of Industry…

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Introducing: Mailbag. Have any questions for me? You can submit them anonymously here, and I’ll respond in a future newsletter.

Stranger Things was always exactly what it was…

I don’t know about you, but for me, it was a profound relief to leave Stranger Things in 2025, the 155th season of television I watched that year (just short of my 160 goal but…I will allow myself some grace).

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Well, the TV Scholar Awards are behind us and it’s finally time to take a little breather before the end of the year. It’s my favourite time of the year — and not because of Christmas or the holiday spirit, but because everything (hopefully) slows down. There’s time to think, to rest, to eat and drink, to read, to watch shows that have been on your list.

I’ve rounded up all the top 10 lists I could think of (top 10 shows, albums, movies, new objects in my life including skincare, things I wrote) to wrap up this strange year. There will be no newsletter next Friday — see you back here on January 2 for more TV. Happy holidays!

My top 10 shows of 2025

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✨ This week’s newsletter is sponsored by In the Cut! ✨

I haven’t done sponsorships in this newsletter up until this point but I really believe in founder Rae Benjamin’s vision here. She is a self-taught television writer who has worked on The Witcher and has a mission to share her experience, specifically for Black writers and people of colour looking to get their foot in the door of the entertainment industry.

In the Cut’s website has a bunch of helpful writing resources (even networking suggestions) and Rae also hosts the ITC podcast, which brings on creatives to unpack TV shows and share expertise — I particularly liked this episode that breaks down The Bear’s “Forks.” In the Cut’s next class on January 10 explores the basics of being in a writer’s room and it only costs $15 to participate.

Here’s a link to the various resources you can sign up for. And thank you In the Cut for also supporting tvscholar and my mission!

Before we start talking gay sex…

I’ve had one of those magical otherworldly writing weeks where opportunities kept arriving to my inbox and it made me feel like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

I was interviewed for NPR’s It’s Been a Minute podcast, I was commissioned to recap Industry’s fourth season for Elle in January, I am gearing up to attend the Sundance Film Festival in about a month, I heard from my Yahoo editor that Trust Me, I Watch Everything will continue into 2026, I had an amazing interview with Zosia (Karolina Wydra) that will come out closer to the Pluribus finale (I can’t say anything about the last two episodes yet so I’ll just say…watch them), I’m still writing frequently for The Cut and TheWrap, and received other commissions and screeners that just make me feel so…heart-achingly grateful that I quit my day job and took a leap this year.

My greatest enemy right now is just time. There’s so much to watch! There’s so much to write about! I want to do it all! Grateful for all of you for helping me get here.

So…is Heated Rivalry fetishizing gay sex? And other FAQs.

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“So, why television?” is a question I’ve been asked a lot since I pivoted to writing about (mostly) television full-time. My canned response is usually to somehow quickly convey my love of the long-term nature of television and the episodic structure; that years later, I’m still tuning into shows that I began watching when I was a completely different version of myself.

Television makes me reflect on the passage of time, the power of storytelling, the meaning of my own life via performances that have profoundly moved me. It occupies a sacred space in my life, quite literally: There is almost always a show on at home, while I cook or fold my laundry, on my couch and in my bed, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It is the most intimate and long-term relationship I’ve ever had.

The TV Scholar Awards — the fifth consecutive edition — is my way of honouring another year with television at the centre of my life. I have all the usual caveats (I don’t watch everything; I try to nominate underrated performances), but I think these feel very me. Thank you, as always, for tuning in.

Eligibility: December 1, 2024 to December 1, 2025. Any show that has not aired the majority of its season by December 1 is not eligible. Shows not distributed to the US not eligible (will be eligible in the year they are distributed).

TV Scholar Queer Representation Award
Adults
Big Boys
Black Doves
Clean Slate
Hal & Harper
I Love LA
Lost Boys and Fairies
Survival of the Thickest
***Mid-Century Modern*** WINNER
Mr Loverman
Overcompensating
Settle Down
Such Brave Girls
Women Wearing Shoulder Pads

Best Ensemble
Abbott Elementary
Andor
Common Side Effects
The Diplomat
The Pitt
***The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City*** WINNER
Severance
Shrinking

Best Drama
Alien: Earth
***Andor*** WINNER
The Diplomat
Matlock
Pluribus
The Pitt
Severance
The Summer I Turned Pretty

Best Lead Performance in a Drama
Anthony Boyle, House of Guinness
Diego Luna, Andor
Ethan Hawke, The Lowdown
Keri Russell, The Diplomat
Rebecca Ferguson, Silo
Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus
***Skye P. Marshall, Matlock*** WINNER
Zoe Saldaña, Lioness

Best Supporting Performance in a Drama
Ali Ahn, The Diplomat
***Dichen Lachman, Severance*** WINNER
Genevieve O’Reilly, Andor
Natasha Rothwell, The White Lotus
Nicole Beharie, The Morning Show
Steve Zahn, Silo
Supriya Ganesh, The Pitt
Tom Pelphrey, Task

Best Guest Performance in a Drama
Andrea Martin, The Gilded Age
Greta Lee, The Morning Show
James Callis, Slow Horses
Nana Mensah, The Diplomat
*** Peter Dinklage, The Lowdown *** WINNER
Sydney Cole Alexander, Severance
Tanya Moodie, Silo
Tati Gabrielle, You

Best Comedy
Big Boys
Hacks
Mid-Century Modern
Mo
Platonic
***The Rehearsal*** WINNER
Such Brave Girls
Survival of the Thickest

Best Lead Performance in a Comedy
Anna Lambe, North of North
Jean Smart, Hacks
Laverne Cox, Clean Slate
Lizzie Davidson, Such Brave Girls
Michelle Buteau, Survival of the Thickest
***Mohammed Amer, Mo*** WINNER
Nathan Lane, Mid-Century Modern
Rose Byrne, Platonic

Best Supporting Performance in a Comedy
***Hannah Einbinder, Hacks*** WINNER
Holmes, Overcompensating
Lilah Richcreek Estrada, A Man on the Inside
Michael Urie, Shrinking
Omar Elba, Mo
Owen Thiele, Adults
Poorna Jagannathan, Deli Boys
Vanessa Bell Calloway, The Vince Staples Show

Best Guest Performance in a Comedy
Aidy Bryant, Platonic
Alia Shawkat, Poker Face
Anna Konkle, Murderbot
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Only Murders in the Building
Joanna Lumley, Wednesday
Kate Fleetwood, Such Brave Girls
Michaela Watkins, Hacks
***Sarah Polley, The Studio*** WINNER

Best Limited Series
Asura
***Dying for Sex*** WINNER
The Girlfriend
Lost Boys and Fairies
Mr Loverman
Too Much
Sirens
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox

Best Lead Performance in a Limited Series
Brian Tyree Henry, Dope Thief
Claire Danes, The Beast in Me
Grace Van Patten, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox
Kaitlyn Dever, Apple Cider Vinegar
Lili Reinhart, Hal & Harper
***Meg Stalter, Too Much*** WINNER
Siôn Daniel Young, Lost Boys and Fairies
Tamara Lawrance, Get Millie Black

Best Supporting Performance in a Limited Series
Chyna McQueen, Get Millie Black
Daniel Monks, All Her Fault
Elizabeth Berrington, Lost Boys and Fairies
Erin Doherty, Adolescence
Marin Ireland, Dope Thief
***Sharon D. Clarke, Mr Loverman*** WINNER
Toni Collette, Wayward
Jenny Slate, Dying for Sex

Nominations per US network:
Netflix: 27
Hulu (13) + Disney+ (5) + FX (6) + ABC (1): 25
Apple TV: 22
HBO (7) + HBO Max (8) + Adult Swim (2): 17
Britbox: 7
Prime Video: 6
Mubi, Peacock: 2 each
OutTV, Paramount+, Bravo: 1 each