Culture recs: Ken Burns tackles the American Revolution and our legacy of violence
Plus: A haunting documentary about the active shooter industry, a juicy rich-people thriller, a Belfast police drama, and more
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent the last few days poring over the avalanche of Jeffrey Epstein emails released this week, wondering how anyone with such. erratic punctuation and spelling was ever considered a genius, and shaking your head in disgust at his cozy interactions with people like Larry Summers.
For those of you longing to occupy their minds with more thoughtful distractions, there is plenty on offer in the days ahead. Here’s what else I’ve been consuming lately:
The Beast in Me
If there is one thing that streaming services can’t get enough of, it’s well-cast shows about badly behaved rich people with lavish waterfront homes. The latest entry in this highly bingeable subgenre is The Beast in Me, a juicy cat-and-mouse thriller set in tony Oyster Bay, Long Island. Claire Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a bestselling author crippled with grief over the accidental death of her son several years earlier. Adrift and unable to complete her next book—about [deep sigh] the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia—Aggie is forced out of her reclusive bubble when notorious real estate mogul and possible murderer Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) moves into the sprawling mansion next door.
Aggie is initially disgusted by Nile, a Robert Durst-like figure who was suspected in his first wife’s disappearance and—perhaps more disturbingly—is now trying to build a jogging path on protected land. But she is also intrigued: Aggie is still a shrewd journalist who knows a good subject when she sees it (and anything’s got to be better than that Scalia book, right?) In a series that’s about the latent psychopath in all of us, Danes retains her preternatural ability to register roughly 10,000 contradictory emotions via microscopic movements in her chin, while Rhys is equal parts sinister and charming.
Now streaming on Netflix
Blue Lights
I am already on the record as a fan of this crime drama set in Belfast, which explores the perils of policing a city with a long history of sectarian violence. A la The Wire, each season of the show shifts focus to a different corner of the city, from Catholic West Belfast in Season 1 to the Protestant east side in Season 2. The show’s third installment, which arrived this week, looks at the flow of drugs in leafy, upscale South Belfast, where money, not religious or national identity, is the great divider. Blue Lights was created by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, two Northern Irish journalists who met while working on the BBC series Panorama, and they ground their storytelling in social, economic, and political realism. Come for the cop drama, stay for the nuanced depictions of contemporary Belfast.
Now streaming on BritBox.
Thoughts & Prayers
Since Columbine more than a quarter century ago, mass shootings have become a depressingly mundane fixture of American life. This aptly named documentary explores the active shooter preparedness industry, from trade shows where entrepreneurs peddle bulletproof backpacks to grimly realistic simulations in schools across the country. Directors Jessica Dimmock and Zackary Canepari forgo the talking heads you might see in a more conventional gun documentary, instead observing teachers, caregivers, and students as they train to be ready for the unthinkable.
Their immersive, emotionally astute approach captures the dark absurdity of a country where, in lieu of meaningful gun reform, Americans have resorted to doing what we do best: selling stuff. Most haunting of all is the obvious psychological toll on young people who’ve never known a world without lockdown drills. A Long Island high school student named Quinn is so consumed with fear of a mass shooting that she carries a bag of emergency supplies with her. “If it happens, I have the things to maybe help some people,” she reasons. “And if it doesn’t happen, it’s just another pound in my backpack.”
Premieres Tuesday on HBO.
The American Revolution
In a career spanning four decades, Ken Burns has made dozens of films chronicling seemingly every facet of American culture and history, including the Civil War, jazz, the Roosevelts, the American buffalo, Muhammad Ali, and the Dust Bowl. Now he’s panning and zooming in on the country’s founding with the 12-hour series The American Revolution. Though it’s been in the works for a decade, this six-part film could not feel more urgent—or more politically sensitive—than it does now, when democracy is under threat and Trump is actively trying to rewrite American history.
Co-directed by Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, the series thoroughly complicates the tidy narrative of the war we learned in elementary school, showing how slavery and a desire for Native land factored into the conflict as much as anger over taxes on tea. It presents layered, warts-and-all portraits of the much-mythologized Founding Fathers, particularly George Washington, whose brilliant leadership is matched only by his capacity for brutality toward enslaved and indigenous people. Then there’s the war itself, a gritty, brutal slog marred by disease, famine, profiteering, and sexual violence.
Narrated by Burns stalwart Peter Coyote, The American Revolution features a roster of A-list voice actors, including Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew Rhys, and virtually the entire cast of Homeland. But the real stars might be the scholars, like Rick Atkinson, Vincent Brown, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Maya Jasanoff, who delivers what might be the film’s operating thesis: “The United States came out of violence.”
Premiering Sunday on PBS and airing nightly through Friday.
In other news:
Pope Leo XIV has shared a list of his favorite movies, which includes heartwarming fare like The Sound of Music, It’s a Wonderful Life and Life is Beautiful. The sole outlier, perhaps informed by the pontiff’s suburban Chicago roots, is Ordinary People, Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning drama about an upscale couple mourning the loss of their teenage son. Leo revealed his top picks ahead of a “World of Cinema” event this weekend at the Vatican, which will be attended by stars like Cate Blanchett and Adam Scott (maybe Leo’s a Severance fan too?)
Today in “yikes”: Sean Baker, the Academy Award-winning director of Anora, will preside over the jury at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, a government-backed event designed to promote the kingdom’s film industry. Given the uproar over supposedly free speech-loving comedians who took part in the Riyadh Comedy Festival, it’s worth noting that Baker is known for provocative films about sex workers and transgender people. To burnish the kingdom’s image, in the past the festival has doled out hefty paychecks to stars like Will Smith and Gywneth Paltrow.
The New Yorker published a comprehensive, thoroughly delightful profile of David Byrne. Give it a read.
Get your barf bags ready: Former New York writer and recently hired Vanity Fair editor Olivia Nuzzi is promoting her new book, American Canto, about her self-destructive obsession with a politician who isn’t named but doesn’t need to be since we all know it’s RFK Jr.
In news that is utterly unsurprising yet still thoroughly depressing, USC Annenberg this week released a report looking at gender and race in popular podcasts. Spoiler alert: It turns out that white bros really do dominate the podcast space.
Finally, Keira Knightley stars in a holiday rom com/commercial for Waitrose, the bougie British grocery chain, that is as delightful as anything you will find on Hallmark this season—and is only four minutes long. Enjoy!
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian.
I am definitely NOT "poring over the avalanche of Jeffrey Epstein emails". Agree it's high time for a look at the American Revolution.
I am trapped in Vanity Fair's endless subscription non- cancellation- ha-ha-ha death loop because the above-named person's presence there kind of exemplifies why my impulse subscription was deeply misguided (fond memories of better times). That Waitrose ad is *exactly* what I needed this morning, however.