industry (Season 3)
★★★★
Binge
One of the best things about this cult HBO drama is its unwillingness to change things up after each season. The series centers on a flawed, ambitious generation of twenty-something graduates working their way through the London office of a prestigious American investment bank. industry is willing to tear down its characters and expose them. They come back raw and vulnerable, or charged and vengeful. The series looks for boundaries and finds them here.
The focus of the show – the impenetrable financial jargon and the company’s trading floor – is certainly fractured. Intrepid American Harper Stern (Myha’la) now works at another firm, separating her from her toxic mentor Eric Tao (Ken Leung), although that does give more attention to her former colleagues, particularly wealthy upstart Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) and the increasingly disillusioned Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey). Both are hit hard emotionally as they adjust to Pierpoint & Co’s corporate culture.
Creators Mickey Down and Conrad Kay are always open to candid conversations, and the guest spot of the wealthy client this season is filled by green entrepreneur Henry Muck (Kit Harington). But they also push the narrative structure forward, with both a wildly suspenseful standalone episode and a flashback mystery that slowly takes on menacing forms over the course of the eight episodes. I’m not sure this is a groundbreaking season for industrybut it is definitely a memorable breakdown.
Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers”Credit: Courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES
The remains
Netflix
Sideways Director Alexander Payne went back to basics with this story about a boarding school teacher (Giamatti), a grieving cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a cheeky student (Dominic Sessa) who stay together for the Christmas holidays – that is, biting melancholy, the humorous thawing of contempt and Paul Giamatti delivering a masterful portrayal of a miser. You can see where the story is going, but Payne tells the story with both restraint and real feeling. The little moments, whether of recognition or defiance, are really important, and the cast never overdoes them.
Batman: Caped Crusader shows that the masked crime fighter still has a lot to offer.Credit: Courtesy of Prime
Batman: The Masked Crusader
Amazon Prime
One might wonder if the character of Batman, everyone’s favorite billionaire and caped vigilante, has much more to offer storytellers, but this is proof otherwise. Bruce Timm’s series is animated, set in the 1940s, and leans heavily on detective noir. With its atmospheric imagery and focus on corruption, Batman, aka Bruce Wayne (voice: Hamish Linklater), is a crime fighter who doesn’t understand the world he’s trying to control or the sometimes desperate people who inhabit it. Batman classics like the Penguin remain, but here they’re renewed with a gender swap.
Louis CK in “Sorry/Not Sorry”.Credit: DocPlay
I’m sorry/I’m not sorry
DocPlay
Next time someone denounces cancel culture, point this out to them New York Times Documentary about comedian and television writer Louis CK, who publicly admitted in 2017 that a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him were true, kept a low profile for a few months, and then returned to his lucrative stand-up career. This resurgence is examined through the lens of a trio of the female comedians who were his accusers, who talk about what they’ve been through and what CK has done, and most importantly, hasn’t done, since he was exposed.
The cast of Lost. The series, which ran for six seasons between 2004 and 2010, is now on Netflix.
Lost (seasons 1–6)
Netflix
Twenty years after its debut, the heavyweight champion of puzzle-box storytelling is now streaming on Netflix (and will also remain on Disney+, its longtime home network). Equal parts sci-fi mystery and supernatural conspiracy, Lost was a huge undertaking: six seasons, 121 episodes. An ambitious story of this magnitude – and Lost was extremely ambitious — may now cease to exist, or may not even get a first season. The downside is that the story of a group of plane crash survivors on an apocalyptic island is of a staggering scale. I loved that show, but I couldn’t tell you a tenth of what happened.
Discover the next TV and streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get the Watchlist every Thursday.
