Once a month, I share the best of what I’ve been reading, watching, and exploring. Enjoy!
Shows
Slip (Peacock). This series came out three years ago, and I’m only discovering it now. A woman feeling stuck in her marriage suddenly finds herself in an alternate version of her life, and each episode drops her into a different one. Zoë Lister-Jones created, wrote, directed, and stars in it, and she’s brilliant. I have no idea why more people aren’t watching this.
Widow’s Bay (Apple TV+). Matthew Rhys plays the mayor of a struggling New England island who’s trying to revive its economy by bringing in tourists. The problem: the locals insist the island is cursed, and increasingly, they appear to have a point. It recently won the Emmy for best comedy series—and I definitely wouldn’t call it a comedy. It’s strange, dark, and hard to categorize, which is part of what makes it so good. Episode 5, “What to Expect on Your Trip,” is one of the best episodes of television I’ve seen in years.
Dark Matter, Season 2 (Apple TV+). This show plays with one of my favorite sci-fi ideas: alternate versions of our lives, shaped by the choices we did and didn’t make. It’s based on one of my favorite sci-fi books, and the first season took the story all the way through the end of the book. Season 2 picks up where the novel left off, which is usually where I start to worry. But Blake Crouch, the author, is one of the writers, and the new season stays true to what made the book so good: it’s mind-bending without losing sight of the people inside it. Between this and Slip, alternate universes are apparently having a moment in our house.
Films
Dìdi (2024). A 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy spends the last summer before high school navigating friends, girls, his immigrant family, and the particular hell of being 13. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story that resists the temptation to tie everything up with a bow. He screws up. People get hurt. Not everything gets repaired. Messy and tender and real.
Scent of a Woman (1992). One of my favorite movies of all time. I recently saw it in a theater, followed by a live Q&A with Al Pacino and director Martin Brest. Pacino told the story behind Frank Slade’s famous “Hoo-ah!” An Army officer was teaching him how to load a weapon without looking, and whenever Pacino got it right, the officer would say, “Hoo-ah.” Pacino liked it so much he stole it for the character—and it became one of the movie’s signatures. Pacino won his first Oscar for the role, and more than 30 years later, he’s still hilarious and magnetic.
Music
Milk & Honey by Tash Sultana. Sexy and hypnotic, built around a rock-reggae groove that pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. Sultana wrote the whole thing in an hour. If you’re new to their music, start here—there’s a lot more waiting on the other side.
Related
Bold
