 Game of Thrones is such a straightforward adventure, always focused on characters and plot, that its keener moments of self-awareness slip by without calling attention to themselves. The seventh-season premiere, “Dragonstone,” is filled with them; they confirm that Thrones is as dedicated to self-reflection as its wisest characters.
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 This is an outrage! A shame! A travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
Which nominations, you ask? ALL OF THEM. Just kidding. There’s plenty to be outraged about in this year’s Emmy nominations, plenty to be happy about, and a few things worth being puzzled by. Same as it ever was, in other words. So let’s move through my knee-jerk reactions, category by category. Bear in mind that I have a long track record of wrongly picking things I happen to like as winners, so don’t lay down your money based on my gut, please. Read More  The summer science-fiction “event” Salvation, which starts tonight on CBS, is oddly out-of-step with the rest of scripted television. Rather than back up the assertion that TV can do almost anything that theatrical films once did, it reminds you that there are some things that TV probably shouldn’t attempt, unless the people running the show have (a) oodles of money to throw at the screen, and (b) formidable storytelling chops.
Read More  The Bold Type, a new series set at a Cosmopolitan-like magazine in New York City, is the best surprise of the TV year so far. It’s part journalism drama, part Sex and the City–style female-bonding comedy with sex and romance; it’s equally interested in being both things at once, to the best of its ability, and damned if it doesn’t pull it off more often than you’d think.
Read More  Not much is known about the details of the life of William Shakespeare, and that’s very good news for Will. Although parts of it have the glossed-up blood-and-grime feeling of Braveheart or 1998’s Elizabeth (the latter directed by Shekhar Kapur, who executive produces this series and helmed its pilot), in the end it seems about as interested in faithfully re-creating its time and place as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby were in theirs. Probably not coincidentally, this show is created by Craig Pearce, who wrote the screenplay for Romeo + Juliet with Luhrmann, and shares a lot of that movie’s heedless, postmodern willy-nilly quality. Will’s shocked immersion in London life is scored to the Clash’s “London Calling,” and the rest of the first episode likewise strains to assure us that there’s nothing stuffy or highbrow about Shakespeare, and that his work and his values are as relevant to modern life as anything you could see on that newfangled YouTube thingy.
Read More  Vulture’s fourth annual TV Awards honor the best in television from the past year in three major categories: Actor, Actress, and Show. The shows that were considered had to be ongoing, which disqualifies limited series and series that ended their runs in the past year. They also must have premiered before June 25, 2017.
Twenty-seven years ago, the meteor of Twin Peaks hit television. It didn’t wipe out all the dinosaurs, but it did make them aware that they were dinosaurs, and that itself was remarkable. Conventionally conceived and executed dramas would continue to be made after David Lynch and Mark Frost unveiled their series about the eccentric denizens of a logging town, but with awareness that there were fewer rules than anyone thought. Read More  Ever since the project was announced, I labored under the misperception that FX’s Snowfall, about the rise of crack in the 1980s, was going to be another The People v. O.J. Simpson. The finished product is a plot-driven, retro-pulp thriller that takes more of its cues from gangster movies than from docudramas. The most striking thing about Snowfall, though, is that it never seems less exciting, less special, than when it’s doing the standard Scorsese/Tarantino thing and putting groups of treacherous men (and a few women) at cross purposes, then watching them threaten and bluff each other until the guns come out (or don’t).
Read More  Vulture’s fourth annual TV Awards honor the best in television from the past year in three major categories: Actor, Actress, and Show. The shows that were considered had to be ongoing, which disqualifies limited series and series that ended their runs in the past year. They also must have premiered before June 25, 2017.
There are many reasons to praise Graeme Manson and John Fawcett’s science-fiction thriller Orphan Black, which is barreling through its final season on BBC America, but the first is that it gave its brilliant star Tatiana Maslany the role(s) of a lifetime. This piece will make a case for Maslany as not just the most impressive actress on TV today but also the most fun to watch, so we should start by reiterating something that every fan of the show has said or thought at one point or another: No matter how many hours of Orphan Black you watch, and no matter how aware you are of the behind-the-scenes machinations that allow one performer to interact with multiple versions of herself, there are still stretches when you forget that almost every clone on the show is played by the same actress. Read More  Warning: Spoilers for Twin Peaks: The Return below.
The eighth episode of Twin Peaks: The Return is one of the greatest hours of television I’ve ever seen: horrifying, horrifyingly beautiful, thought-provoking and thought-annihilating; a work that owes as much to expressionistic and surreal painting, musical performance, and installation art as it does to narrative and experimental cinema. Though it initially appears to be uncoupled from the show’s main story line, on second viewing, it plays more like an extended parenthetical or interlude, almost like a live storyteller’s fourth-wall-breaking aside to the audience. Among other things, “Part 8” allows the series to present an elaborate, visually and sonically dazzling origin story, not so much for the demon BOB (represented by stylized images of the face of Frank Silva, the late actor who played him in the original series) but for the postwar United States of America. That’s not all it’s doing — I would not be surprised if entire books were written about this one hour — but it’s what I’m going to touch on here, as a prelude to revisiting the episode again later this week. Read More  This week, Vulture is looking back at the best releases so far in 2017.
In the Peak TV era, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of television available. Even when you winnow the options down to the best of the best, as we did below, the shows don’t fit into any one category. They span genre, tone, and style in remarkable ways, from the romantic ennui of Master of Noneto the family comforts of One Day at a Time to the bizarre horror of Twin Peaks: The Return. With that in mind, here are the ten best shows of 2017 so far, as chosen by Jen Chaney and Matt Zoller Seitz. Read More |
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