Arts & Culture

Where is Wendy Williams? It’s None of Our Business.

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Wendy Williams is a former daytime talk show host, infamous for being unabashedly controversial. Her show ran for almost 14 years before abruptly ending in June 2022 due to concerns about her health, leaving fans of the show with many questions about Wendy’s wellbeing, whereabouts and the future of her career. In February, Lifetime released a four-part docuseries called Where is Wendy Williams? which attempts to answer some of these questions.

Arts & Culture

TV Shows Returning in 2024

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Now that the SAG-AFTRA strike has finally ended, 2024 is shaping up to be an absolutely amazing year for television fans who have been long awaiting the return of their favorite shows. Though this list spans only a tiny fraction of all the shows returning this year, the ones covered below include many of the biggest names in current television, as well as personal and highly recommended favorites. On this list, there is something for everyone: historical dramas, comedies, action adventures, reality, international stories, romances and so much more. It is time to pull up your Google Calendar and start adding in these dates for a binge-watching session — there is a lot to look forward to in the months ahead. 

Winter

All Creatures Great and Small: January

One of the first shows to return this year, and the only one on this list already released, is the third season of All Creatures Great and Small. All Creatures is a PBS Masterpiece show that returned to American screens on Jan.

Arts & Culture

Is ‘The Golden Bachelor’ Something Old or Something New

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As a former Bachelor franchise addict, I was very intrigued by the concept of The Golden Bachelor. The Bachelor is one of the original, most popular dating shows which is premised around one seemingly perfect man who has 20 seemingly perfect women competing for his love. This year, ABC created The Golden Bachelor, which is this exact premise, except all the contestants are elderly. I started watching out of curiosity, but was pleasantly surprised at how invested I became. 

From a perspective that judges purely based upon entertainment value, I think the show is very good. Every week, I get excited to watch the new episode, though the elderly kissing is a bit uncomfortable.

Arts & Culture

Halloween Horrors: The Haunting of Hill House

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As Halloween creeps closer, so does the itch to watch a blood chilling horror show/movie. And so, this mini column is dedicated to recommending horror media to add a little bit of fright to your October! The Haunting of Hill House is the first part of a horror anthology directed by Mike Flannigan and based off of the book by Shirley Jackson. It follows five siblings through two different timelines, one in the present when they are adults, one in the past as kids, living in Hill House. The show’s “adult” timeline centers around a tragic event that befalls the Crain family and forces them to reconvene after years of physical and emotional disconnect.

Arts & Culture

Dancing with the Stars Premieres 32nd Season

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For the next few months, our television screens are going to be filled with reality shows, as the Writers Guild of America has just announced that they will authorize members to return to work. The premiere of Dancing with the Stars’ 32nd season is just the start of the sea of reality television that will be coming to cable and streaming services this fall.  

The show has a long history, and the many changes that have occurred since the last season make this premiere highly anticipated. Tyra Banks, who has hosted the last three seasons of the show, did not return this season. Audiences were very critical of Banks’ hosting abilities and many were happy to see her gone. She was replaced by Julianne Hough, a long time member of the Dancing with the Stars family.

Arts & Culture

British “Paw Patrol” Review

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On the first or second night of staying with some family in England, a young second cousin twice removed (or something of that sort) asked me to name a movie… one she’d know of. I responded: “Barbie.” After asking me if I’d seen or liked the film (I’d apparently picked one that had been on her mind), she got to her question: “so, when they show… Barbie in your country do they have to have the actors re-record some of the lines?”, alluding to the fact that some of the actors don’t naturally speak English with an American accent. I chuckled a bit and responded, “No. Actually, I think part of the movie takes place where I’m from,” pointing out that some of the non-Barbieland scenes in the film were shot blocks away from my childhood home. It remained funny to me, though, that my accent (or something about me) had been silly enough that my cousin believed I couldn’t possibly be engaged in the same cultural ecosystem as her (even in the case of a movie where numerous British and Australian actors were putting on American accents). 

A week or so later, I relayed the story to my partner.

Arts & Culture

Netflix’s New Crown Jewel: ‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’

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Through expanding the “Bridgerton” universe with the addition of serious topics such as race, grief and mental illness, “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” proves to be an impressive prequel that adeptly employs its predecessor’s characteristic visual milieu of opulent scenery and lush costumes and builds on its foundation of witty banter and steamy romance.

Arts & Culture

Missing the Beat: A Review of the Mini Series Daisy Jones and the Six

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Based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel of the same name, the limited mini series Daisy Jones and the Six premiered on Amazon Prime Video in March. The show and book mostly have the same plot: the rise and fall of a 1970s rock band, loosely based on Fleetwood Mac. Like the book, the TV show is formatted as a documentary — as the characters are interviewed, they reminisce on their time in the band. As with most book-to-screen adaptations, I personally preferred the book over the show. The band first started as “The Dunne Brothers,” created by Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) and his brother Graham (Will Harrison) with a group of friends in high school out of their garage.

Arts & Culture

“Left Behind” Recap: The Last of Us

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Last Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us titled “Left Behind” served mainly to give the viewer insight into Ellie’s mysterious past. The viewer knows Ellie is different, not just because of the antibodies coursing through her blood, but because of her ability to find joy amidst the surrounding shrapnel. “Left Behind” takes us to the quarantine zone, where some normal aspects of life like school take place — albeit more militantly than normal — even with the threat of impending infection. The viewer finds Ellie to be almost as bold in the past as she is in the show’s main timeline. 

Her classmate Bethany learns this when she berates Ellie for her slow running pace and reminds her that her missing best friend Riley (Storm Reid) is no longer around to fight for her. Upon mention of her bestie, Ellie clocks Bethany squarely in the face without much thought.

Arts & Culture

“Emily in Paris” Season 3: Tedious, Repetitive and a Tad Ridiculous

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As a student from France, I am often asked to comment on Emily in Paris. For the first two seasons, I gladly defended the series and its eponymous protagonist, a twenty-something Midwesterner sent to Paris by her PR company to provide an American perspective to its newly acquired French office. 

As I wrote in The Sun last year, I found Emily in Paris to be light-hearted and awfully predictable, but also quite funny and often on the mark when it came to comparing French and American cultures. I dismissed the critics who attacked the show’s depiction of Paris as a city where it never rains, where people never take the métro and where you can live for months without speaking a word of French. Not all television has to be realistic, I would say. Emily in Paris was what you binged when you wanted to escape, to decompress and to watch attractive people adorned in glamorously over-the-top clothing.