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Byline: James Poniewozik A new FX sitcom handles the educational culture wars with a light touch. The culture war often doesn't have a physical frontline; it's fought in op-ed columns, [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik It's still TV's best and most beautiful series about work and creation. But the new season is a tease. This article discusses scenes from the beginning through [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The Portal, a video art installation connecting the city with Dublin, is open again, now with safeguards. But does changing the rules change the artwork? At 2:45 [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik HBO's series is not just a good story. It's a sharp piece of film criticism. HBO has long defined itself in contrast to mainstream television - 'It's [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Fifty years ago, the TV landmark showed Gen X kids that no one else has the right to tell you who you are. 'Free to Be ⦠[...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The comedian returned to 'The Daily Show,' claiming the prerogative to tell his audience jokes they don't want to hear. 'Why am I back?' asked Jon Stewart, [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The news network that wants Taylor Swift to stick to singing has had no problem handing conservative celebrities the microphone. Taylor Swift, you may have noticed, is [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Mention 'Happy Days' to TV viewers of a certain age (raises hand) and the first thing they remember might be not an episode or a scene or [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The 'All in the Family' producer made sitcoms into a form of patriotic dissent. In 1942, Norman Lear signed up to fight the fascists. He served as [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie's breathtaking, uncomfortable series takes home-renovation TV into the heart of darkness. 'It's a mishegas,' Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone), a convert to Judaism, [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik One of TV's longest-lived characters gets revived, in an anticlimactic museum reproduction of the original. 'Frasier' always saw itself as something more than a mere plebeian sitcom. [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Why should you care about the strikes in Hollywood? Because they are much more than a revolt of the privileged. In Hollywood, the cool kids have joined [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The lo-fi 'Tucker on Twitter' finds the former prime-time host at the intersection of Fox News and Fox Mulder. Most of the time, it does not qualify [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Too many of TV's numerous adaptations promise 'faithfulness.' What they really need is a little creative infidelity. In a 2021 episode of 'What We Do in the [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik In its stunning first-season finale, 'The Last of Us' became a video game - and, in the process, morally potent TV. If you watch HBO's 'The Last [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Natasha Lyonne turns working-class sleuth in Rian Johnson's breezy throwback to a familiar mystery formula. In retrospect, we should have seen that Natasha Lyonne had a Lt. [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik How the TV of 2022 depicted the weird, warping pressures of work and ambition in a boom-and-bust economy. In the Peacock series 'Killing It,' Brock (Scott MacArthur), [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik It's simplistic to label 'Yellowstone' a 'red-state drama.' But the cowboy soap speaks the language of culture war with a perfect accent. To hear more audio stories [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Netflix's riotous comedy brings its coming-of-age story to a close, along with a chapter in Northern Ireland's history. 'Derry Girls,' the raucous Netflix comedy created by Lisa [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Diversely casting fantasy series like 'The Rings of Power' isn't a betrayal of the story. It's also just one step in opening up the genre. Emilia Clarke [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Amazon's pricey, gorgeous fantasy spectacle delivers what fans expect, but it could thrive by giving them what they don't. What does several hundred million dollars buy? In [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The second season of this Native coming-of-age comedy deepens its emotion and builds on its sense of place. Wanting to escape your hometown is the birthright of [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The docu-comedy chaos agent Nathan Fielder returns, testing the idea that practice makes a perfect life. Life, the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, can be understood only [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Netflix introduces a post-truth game show, for an era when seeming right sometimes trumps being right. There are plenty of things on Netflix's new quiz show that [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Adam Scott returns to the office in an engrossing thriller about separating work and home life, surgically. Two years into a pandemic, you would be forgiven for [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik W. Kamau Bell's documentary series is a model of how to engage honestly with disgraced artists and their art. To hear more audio stories from publications like [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Don't let the pandemic premise chase you off. This is the most uplifting post-apocalyptic show you're likely to see. Things could always be worse, and in 'Station [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik In the new season of the dynastic HBO drama, the very rich are even less like you and me than they used to be. Deep into Season [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Two decades ago, TV's most distinctive stories were defined by a tone of ironic detachment. Today, they're more often sincere and direct. How did we get here? [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Tim Robinson's sketch show returns with more painfully recognizable losers (and more hot dogs). In 2019, Tim Robinson entered the conversation through a door that opened the [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik A long, emotional get-together is best when it gets out of its cast's way. The episode titles in 'Friends' were distinctively generic: 'The One Where Ross and [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Cynthia Erivo is dynamic in a bio-series that is strongest when it makes the case for the Queen of Soul as a creative force. At a recording [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik In this Netflix docu-series, an outer borough children's football program offers a community, and a chance. One of the more obnoxious phrases in public discussion these days [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Revisiting HBO's 'The Plot Against America' and its final, dire warning for election season. The following article contains spoilers for HBO's 'The Plot Against America.' The one [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik This adaptation of Aldous Huxley's classic novel, inaugurating the NBCUniversal streaming service, is generic and tame (despite the orgies). Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel 'Brave New World' famously [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Why lip-sync impressions like Sarah Cooper's turned out to be the best way to satirize this president. Donald Trump has some ideas about fighting the coronavirus. 'We [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Packed with stunning performances, the limited series tells a sweeping story of women's rights revolutionaries - and a formidable counterrevolutionary. 'Mad Men' ended its timeline in late [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The coronavirus briefings have given Donald Trump a regularly scheduled reality show again - or, rather, a create-your-own-reality show. 'I've gotten to like this room,' President Trump [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Face-touching, communal snack plates - watching and streaming pre-coronavirus TV amid a shutdown, there's always something there to remind you. I could always count on Bob Belcher. [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The new series explore the timeliness and timelessness of immigrant experiences. In the opening minutes of Freeform's 'Party of Five,' Javier and Gloria Acosta (Bruno Bichir and [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik The finale, like the whole audacious season, broke a lot of eggs and hatched something astonishing. Spoilers for the full season of HBO's 'Watchmen' follow: 'Now: We [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik In the scintillating third season of the Netflix drama, Olivia Colman becomes Elizabeth. In the third season of Netflix's 'The Crown,' Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) meets [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik HBO's Philip Pullman adaptation loses some of the books' edge, but gains stunning imagery (think armored polar bears). In HBO's spirited fantasy epic 'His Dark Materials,' Lyra [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe) begins narrating his own story, Showtime's 'The Loudest Voice,' as he lies dead on the floor. I mean, why wouldn't he? Ailes, who [...]

Byline: James Poniewozik In 'The Dragon and the Wolf,' the most recent season finale of 'Game of Thrones,' a lot of people have a lot to talk about. The warring [...]

Byline: JAMES PONIEWOZIK In 2011, HBO began a series based on a set of books whose legion of fans had exacting expectations. 'Game of Thrones' required condensing a vast narrative, [...]

Byline: JAMES PONIEWOZIK Sam Esmail's 'Mr. Robot' is one of the most audacious, inventive TV dramas of this decade. It is also, well, a lot. It's narratively and creatively maximalist, [...]

Byline: JAMES PONIEWOZIK When does racial inequality begin? To answer the question, you could go back centuries. Or, as the empathetic, eye-opening documentary series 'America to Me' does, you could [...]

Byline: JAMES PONIEWOZIK Spoilers for the series finale of 'The Americans' follow. FX's 'The Americans' is the kind of show I think of as a 'pause-buttoner.' You watch with one [...]

Byline: JAMES PONIEWOZIK This year's Academy Awards needed to address two things: the last few minutes of the previous Oscarcast and the last -- oh, let's just call it forever [...]