Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven AM. This week,
Speaker 1: we're bringing you our annual Summer Special. Each day we'll
Speaker 1: speak to a critic with impeccable taste about the best books,
Speaker 1: TV shows, movies, music, podcasts, and games of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Today we are kicking it off with writer Sarah Krasnastein
Speaker 1: and the TV shows she loved this year. Sarah's had
Speaker 1: a massive year, collaborating with Helen Gardner and Chloe Hooper
Speaker 1: on a book about Aaron Patterson's triple murder trial, well
Speaker 1: at the same time writing another book and on the side,
Speaker 1: watching a hell of a lot of TV like the
Speaker 1: rest of us today, author of The Mushroom Tapes, The Believer,
Speaker 1: and The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnastein, I'm the best TV
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: I just take my word for it.
Speaker 1: I believe this list is deadly It's Monday, December twenty two. Sarah,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. We're here to talk about the
Speaker 1: best TV of the year, and you are here to
Speaker 1: lay a few things out first. In terms of your picks,
Speaker 1: tell us about your first one.
Speaker 3: So I chose Adolescence, which was kind of the start
Speaker 3: of the year, and it's something that I keep on
Speaker 3: thinking about.
Speaker 4: I'm going to start off with asking you, do you
Speaker 4: know a girl called Katie Lennard?
Speaker 5: Yeah, describe each other as friends? Then is she dot?
Speaker 4: Then why would you ask her?
Speaker 3: It's a show about what starts off as a seemingly inexplicable,
Speaker 3: horrorfying murder. A thirteen year old boy named Jamie who's
Speaker 3: played by the actor Owen Cooper, stabs his classmate Katie,
Speaker 3: who's played by Amelia Holiday, stabs her to death. And
Speaker 3: each of these four hour long episodes are filmed in
Speaker 3: a single continuous shot, so that in a self is
Speaker 3: noteworthy because it depends on unerring acting and scriptwriting and
Speaker 3: cinematography and production design, but it also functions in the.
Speaker 5: Story in a way where the medium is.
Speaker 3: The message, and it gives us a long view of
Speaker 3: causation and connection where we can see this young boy's
Speaker 3: murderous violence not as inexplicable, but very much any long
Speaker 3: train coming through a social media and social landscape that
Speaker 3: had at every turn done nothing to prevent gender based violence.
Speaker 1: The show is back to a really deep conversation, and
Speaker 1: it's back to one thousands think pieces about the mena
Speaker 1: sphere and online cell culture. How does it grapple with
Speaker 1: those very sort of esoteric but very serious and deep things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, for so many of us, these are
Speaker 3: things that we kind of know, but then when called
Speaker 3: to explain, we lack language.
Speaker 5: And it's a very real generational divide.
Speaker 4: Why do you have an Instagram account? Oh?
Speaker 5: I need one?
Speaker 4: Why to look over people's accounts?
Speaker 5: You can't if I ever got one?
Speaker 4: Right? And you follow lots of women on Instagram models? Yeah,
Speaker 4: you don't need to put photos up though? Why do
Speaker 4: you put photos up of yourself?
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know, and I'm not loud.
Speaker 3: So we understand this thirteen year old boy is going
Speaker 3: through all the familiar awkwardness of that stage, not fitting
Speaker 3: in at school, discontent at home, and receiving everywhere in
Speaker 3: the society longstanding gendered messages about you know, what men
Speaker 3: are and what women are, much of it kind of
Speaker 3: reflected by his perfectly lovely.
Speaker 5: And loving parents.
Speaker 3: And then we see this tendency that he had to
Speaker 3: spend long hours in the night online alone in his bedroom.
Speaker 3: And so that's where we start understanding that manisphere, which
Speaker 3: is in the show, a version of Andrew Tate's commodified
Speaker 3: hyper masculinity, misogyny, alt right disinformation and capitalism and kind
Speaker 3: of this spratuitous oppositional defiance amy.
Speaker 4: If you do not sit fucking don't don't tell me
Speaker 4: why to say? Don't you why look at me?
Speaker 3: Now we see how attractive that messaging of empowerment and
Speaker 3: belonging and community would be to a disempowered, lonely teenage
Speaker 3: boy in his bedroom.
Speaker 5: And so we're seeing that.
Speaker 3: The consequences are diabolical, but that there's so many kind
Speaker 3: of stages before it reaches the end where somebody could
Speaker 3: have stepped in to offer what he was getting online.
Speaker 5: Can you look a bit read? Did she wrote this
Speaker 5: or not? I mean, I'm only thirteen. I don't think
Speaker 5: it look golf.
Speaker 1: Scary, Sarah, what's second on your list?
Speaker 3: So Pluribus, which kind of landed very recently. We're like
Speaker 3: weeks before the end of the year, and I feel
Speaker 3: in many ways this just came out of nowhere and
Speaker 3: has blown a lot of excellent TV shows out of
Speaker 3: the water and kind of off the list.
Speaker 1: To my twelve fellow survivors, Greetings, I'm Carol, Stirka.
Speaker 5: Some of you know me, some of you have yet
Speaker 5: to meet. But if you're still one of us, then
Speaker 5: this message is for you.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the world Pluribus is setting. What's
Speaker 1: it like?
Speaker 5: So it's so strange and so compelling.
Speaker 3: It's a suddenly glad apocalyptic thriller with a surprisingly unsympathetic lead.
Speaker 5: We ourselves have no choice for us. It's a biological imperative,
Speaker 5: like breathing.
Speaker 6: But every time one comes to understand how wonderful.
Speaker 7: It is, how fucking people died during your wonderful fucking
Speaker 7: joining must of course so much.
Speaker 3: When Earth's population is horrifyingly and almost instantaneously assimilated into this.
Speaker 5: Benevolent hive mind.
Speaker 3: Author her name is Carol Stirka, and she's played by
Speaker 3: Ria Seahorn, who just gives an amazing phenomenal performance. Yes,
Speaker 3: she finds herself like seemingly the last woman's standing, and
Speaker 3: her efforts to resist this like glad collective's efforts to
Speaker 3: join them form the basis of the story, and she
Speaker 3: kind of considers herself and in certain ways is very
Speaker 3: much the last bastion of humanity. If we understand that
Speaker 3: as individualized experience.
Speaker 5: There is something else to consider.
Speaker 3: We know what it feels like to be you, to
Speaker 3: be alone, to suffer.
Speaker 5: We've been you, but you've never been us.
Speaker 1: So it's the latest work from heavyweight creative director Vince Gilligan,
Speaker 1: who was most well known for Breaking Bad and Better
Speaker 1: Call Saw, which I personally believe is better than Breaking
Speaker 1: Bad myself. It's just a side point. So does Pluribus
Speaker 1: leave up to that massive legacy.
Speaker 5: I believe it does. It's similar.
Speaker 3: You know, it takes place in that same New Mexico landscape,
Speaker 3: and it kind of has all these Gilligan hallmarks, but
Speaker 3: at the same time, it's its own thing. And you know,
Speaker 3: I love Breaking Bad so much, I love Better Call Saul,
Speaker 3: and Pluribus does kind of earn its place in that
Speaker 3: Gilligan pantheon. We know that he likes these unlikely heroes,
Speaker 3: unlikely villains, unexpected narrative arcs, and he's really a master
Speaker 3: of storytelling.
Speaker 5: And that's what we're seeing with Pluribus.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Two fantastic new comedies. All right, Sarah, what's
Speaker 1: your third pick for twenty twenty five?
Speaker 5: So this was Sterlin Harjo's The Lowdown on Disney.
Speaker 2: This is Lee Raybon, Lee Raybon, he'll write for any
Speaker 2: publications that will humor has conspiracies.
Speaker 4: Can you read my paper?
Speaker 1: It's booty and bad guys.
Speaker 2: He's rough around the hedges Sterlin.
Speaker 1: He made Reservation Dogs, which he picked for a previous
Speaker 1: best of a few years ago. Don't real you remember that? Yes?
Speaker 1: So what's it all about.
Speaker 5: It's a neo noir.
Speaker 3: So it's got all of these tropes of noir, so
Speaker 3: the cynical anti hero and the fem fatale and you know,
Speaker 3: the almost mind boggling complex plot, this overhanging sense of dread.
Speaker 5: But in a nutshell.
Speaker 3: Ethan Hawke plays a guy called Lee Raybon who describes
Speaker 3: himself as a truth Storian.
Speaker 2: Look, you're a journalist too, right, or some kind of writer.
Speaker 1: I'm a true Storian.
Speaker 5: Sorry, sag.
Speaker 4: I am a Tulsa true Storian, a truth story.
Speaker 2: What exactly is I'm glad to ask?
Speaker 1: I reads.
Speaker 3: Basically, he's part like citizen public interest journalist and part
Speaker 3: muckraker and all the time this very chaotic dirt bag.
Speaker 3: But he has these very noble elevated aims of trying
Speaker 3: to uncover dirty politics in the state. So when the
Speaker 3: brother of a local politician from a wealthy family commits suicide.
Speaker 3: Raybond finds a letter that the brother wrote before he died,
Speaker 3: and he goes in search of kind of the real
Speaker 3: story there because things aren't as simple as they seem.
Speaker 5: So that's the that's the basic premise.
Speaker 1: So stars Athan Hawk. He stars alongside Keith David, who
Speaker 1: was very well known for his comedy Chops. Not so
Speaker 1: much with Aithan Hawk. Can he pull off comedy?
Speaker 5: I believe so.
Speaker 3: I mean I wasn't expecting it. I don't think any
Speaker 3: one was really like, no offense Ethan Hawk. I don't
Speaker 3: think anyone was really expecting Ethan Hawk to be a
Speaker 3: male comedic lead here. He did have a cameo in
Speaker 3: res Dog, so obviously, like that's not out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: But he just fully inhabits this role. It is an excellent, compelling,
Speaker 3: mesmerizing performance. And you know, for Coen Brothers fans, it's
Speaker 3: undeniably Lebowski esque.
Speaker 5: But at the end of the day, he is himself only.
Speaker 3: And what he's done with this character I think is
Speaker 3: just brilliant.
Speaker 1: Oh get me to a hospital. I'll come on.
Speaker 5: You said you didn't have time. Jesus, this is the
Speaker 5: farm animals. Animals take medicine too.
Speaker 1: All right, what do you have first? Mixed?
Speaker 3: So this is the rehearsal season two, and I don't
Speaker 3: quite know how to uh where it would fit genre wise,
Speaker 3: but it's different to the previous picks tonally, that's for sure.
Speaker 8: I do have some experience with creating elaborate role playing scenarios,
Speaker 8: and I do have money to put towards this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you aren't a something there.
Speaker 7: Let's work together to save some lives, yes, Sayson.
Speaker 1: One of three heres still introduced us to the field
Speaker 1: of method which underpins the whole show. Can you have
Speaker 1: a swing at describing what that needs? First look?
Speaker 5: I'll try so.
Speaker 3: Basically Fielder, who I think it's fair to describe as
Speaker 3: a comedian, he replicates an exacting, extravagant detail real life settings.
Speaker 5: This is in season one but also season two.
Speaker 3: To help people rehearse or like practice for challenging upcoming
Speaker 3: events and conversations. But from there it kind of spirals
Speaker 3: ever outward and becomes more and more meta.
Speaker 5: And absurd as it goes.
Speaker 3: But at its heart, both season one and season two
Speaker 3: are about the glories and tragedy of communication and performances
Speaker 3: that we all do at some point.
Speaker 1: Listen, Fielder, where does your sense of alcruism come from?
Speaker 5: Where all of a sudden you want to save lives?
Speaker 1: You're known for pranking. What makes it particularly special different
Speaker 1: from the first season.
Speaker 3: In the first season, he was helping people kind of
Speaker 3: deal with these issues, and also it sparkles off into
Speaker 3: how to raise a child, which again is non sequitur
Speaker 3: in the spirit of the series. In season two, he
Speaker 3: becomes a fully fledged transport pilot. But that's part of
Speaker 3: using this Fielder method at the service of improving aviation safety.
Speaker 3: I mean even to say it is difficult to keep
Speaker 3: us straight face, But basically he's using this Fielder method
Speaker 3: in an attempt to improve communication dynamics in the cockpit,
Speaker 3: where the hierarchy between the pilot and the co pilot
Speaker 3: that the junior pilot has often resulted in this lethal
Speaker 3: obedience where the junior feels they can challenge the more
Speaker 3: senior pilot, and that's responsible for so many aviation crashes.
Speaker 3: So he applies this rehearsal, performance based approach to trying
Speaker 3: to remedy those rates of crashes.
Speaker 7: I had a theory that the start of a romantic
Speaker 7: relationship is a great parallel for two pilots meeting before
Speaker 7: a flight.
Speaker 4: What's the longest you could go without coffee?
Speaker 7: I mean, I could probably just go without it for
Speaker 7: a day. But it definitely helps you become intimately involved
Speaker 7: with a stranger where both people are desperately trying to
Speaker 7: read each other. But the pressure to show the best
Speaker 7: version of yourself can prevent you from sharing what you
Speaker 7: actually feel.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think again to even describe this as to
Speaker 3: dare people who've never heard of it to be interested
Speaker 3: enough to actually watch it? But I think the result
Speaker 3: is well, firstly, it's extremely awkward, but it's genuinely hilarious
Speaker 3: and absurd. And I found the most surprising thing about
Speaker 3: this is that it is unexpectedly moving in the way
Speaker 3: that it interrogates kind of these possibilities and the limitations
Speaker 3: of practicing the selves that we would like to be.
Speaker 1: He uses a hall of mirrors really to reflect ourselves
Speaker 1: back at each other in all sorts of weird ways.
Speaker 5: Absolutely coming up.
Speaker 1: Our post apocalypse stories are hopeful. And before we finish up, Sarah,
Speaker 1: You've got one war for us an Argentinian sci fi
Speaker 1: tell me about.
Speaker 3: The annot so It's filmed in the neighborhoods of present
Speaker 3: day Buenos Aires, and it opens with a strange summer
Speaker 3: snow that kills everyone it happens to touch.
Speaker 1: This is so are you you know?
Speaker 2: Come on, yep, I wake up a Magnetico La.
Speaker 3: It's got these beautiful images of the silent, frosted city
Speaker 3: where daily life is just abbreviated.
Speaker 5: And it was noteworthy.
Speaker 3: Because it's based on the science fiction comic strip from
Speaker 3: the late fifties by man god Hector Jerman oster Eld.
Speaker 3: If you look at that, it has these themes that
Speaker 3: called directly forward to the rise of fascism broadly and
Speaker 3: almost directly our current moment, but also what happened in
Speaker 3: Argentina later when Ouster held himself.
Speaker 5: Was murdered in their Dirney Wars in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Compared to the other science fiction on your list, this
Speaker 1: definitely is a bleaker side of the story. So what's
Speaker 1: compelling about this world and why would we want to
Speaker 1: spend time in another blake world?
Speaker 6: Sarah I will always argue that post apocalyptic genre is
Speaker 6: inherently hopeful, optimistic, because it's less about what's been destroyed
Speaker 6: and it's about the possibilities of what can be created,
Speaker 6: and kind.
Speaker 3: Of what the next draft of all this could look
Speaker 3: like with our uses and misuses of AI, these eternal
Speaker 3: questions are very much relevant at the moment, but the
Speaker 3: nature of streaming generally in twenty twenty five specifically has
Speaker 3: been like, we are spoiled for choice, So you know,
Speaker 3: you don't have to listen to me.
Speaker 5: There's so many other things out there as well.
Speaker 1: Sarah, thanks so much for the listener, Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for you Tom, thanks for having me