Hey, it's Michael. As I mentioned yesterday, for our last few episodes of 2024, we're bringing you something really special. Today, and for the next three days, my colleague, Melissa Kirsch, is going to talk to times critics, reporters, and editors who have spent the last 12 months making sense of the year in arts and culture. Take a listen. I think you're really going to like it.
From The New York Times, this is The Daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch, Deputy Editor of Culture and Lifestyle.
As we close out 2024, I'll be talking with my colleagues around the newsroom about what they watched and listened to and read this year, about the things they loved, and the things they didn't love. Today, Chief Television Critic James Panowazik is here to talk about why TV might feel a little blah right now. And then our Chief Film Critic Manola Dargis on her favorite movies of 2024, and why you shouldn't let the algorithm tell you what to watch.
It's Thursday, December 26th. Jimpano Wasek, thanks so much for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. Okay, so Jimp, fill in the blank. In the world of television, 2024 was the year of... Mid-TV. Mid-TV. Yeah, it's not great. It's not terrible. It's just mid.
Explain what you mean by that. MidTV is OK TV of the present that kind of reminds you of great TV of the past. It's got a famous cast.
It was shot in fancy locations. It's sleekly produced. It's tasteful, but it's just not especially memorable. It doesn't have the quirks and bumps and idiosyncrasies that mark a show that you are going to remember and will stick with you for a long time. So, give me an example of what you mean. Paul Morell on Apple TV. There are no doors on the back of the Paul Morell.
I never said I used the door. I barely remember this show. Exactly. Who among us does? The cast was absolutely loaded. Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Carol Burnett. It looked fabulous. And if you watched the whole thing, you probably forgot that you'd seen it a week later. I am never in over my head. It would be disrespectful to my hairdresser.
Okay, but it wasn't that long ago that everybody was talking about prestige TV, right? Like these highly polished hour-long dramas that were as good as movies. Walk me through how we got from prestige TV to mid TV.
So I think of the prestige television era as the era beginning around the turn of the 21st century, when you had the emergence of a lot of new cable outlets, ones like HBO.
that, in order to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, started taking big bets on unusual shows that they had freedom to produce, that traditional broadcast TV didn't. And a classic example of this is the Sopranos. What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type.
On NBC, ABC, you couldn't do a show about a kind of sympathetic mobster. On HBO, you can.
We get the wire, we get breaking bad. I am the one who knocks. People like Martin Scorsese start making TV series. Actors like Glenn Close start starring in cable TV series. Hey, big man. You want to get into it? TV was, you could argue, the premier popular art medium of its time. And also, it's now big business.
Netflix, which used to be the company that you got DVDs from in the mail, starts making original TV programming. You look great. I mean, who knew you could rock orange? And then it ultimately is joined by Amazon. We don't need cops like you anymore, Bush. By Apple. Hey, how y'all doing? I'm Ted Lesley. Disney. Guilty of being the god of mystery. Paramount. The issue here is not intellectual. And on and on and on.
And that creates this money gusher directed at starting up a lot of new shows in order to create enough content for these platforms to produce a lot of prestige-y looking thumbnails when you get to the home screen of the app.
And what is serving up those thumbnails to you? It's the algorithm. It's deciding what you are likely to click on and keep watching to generate those viewing hours for them. And that creates a different kind of incentive. That's not the kind of incentive where you're like, oh, I'm going to create a drama about a mobster in New Jersey because people haven't seen that before and it'll be so surprising they'll watch it.
It is, I'm going to generate something that kind of reminds you of that show that you watched about the mobster in New Jersey, so that you'll click on that and watch our streaming platform for a little longer.
You loved Band of Brothers back when it was on HBO. All right, Apple TV is going to give you Masters of the Air, which is more boring, but it's good enough for now. Right. The 100th bomb group was sent to England in the spring of 19. You liked big little lies on HBO? I feel so ashamed for saying this. But being a mother, it's not enough for me.
OK, we'll make Apple's Never Fall, another Lee-Ann Moriarty novel, not as distinctive or original or surprising, but probably good enough for now. Never even a thank you. You just give it all up because that's what having a family demands of a woman. It's this tsunami of familiar, safe content that results in just a deluge of mid-TV.
So you hear so much about how people's attention spans are limited these days and there's so much vying for their attention with social media and TikTok and Instagram. If TV is mid, how can TV hope to retain its audience?
Well, I think it's definitely a danger for the TV industry. I think if you have a lot of same-seeming stuff out there, you run the risk of just oversaturation of the market, which in fact is what we seem to be experiencing now. I mean, I don't think that the artists of television have gotten less creative.
I think that it is more difficult in this environment to pitch off the wall idiosyncratic and personal ideas, something like Fleabag, which was an amazing show that really represents a risk for a programmer that is responsible for answering to boards and all the people who've put up all this money.
I met someone. What? Really? Yeah. Oh my god, that's amazing. What does he do? He's a priest.
I mean, as a viewer, I want off the wall an idiosyncratic and personal. And what you're describing, I'm familiar with this kind of zombie version of prestige TV, and it's not satisfying. It's not the show that I want to binge. I'm wondering what the outlook is. Is mid-TV the future of TV? Is this just the way TV is now?
You know, talent always finds a way out. There are times in the history of any medium when it gets a little more difficult for talent and originality to find its way, but artists want to create, even when all the forces of money and business and the culture and technology are pushing against that and trying to smooth out the bumps. And that's what gives me hope.
OK, so reasons for optimism. So tell me about the shows that really stood out for you this year. One show this year that I absolutely loved and could recommend unreservedly was We Are Lady Parts.
It is this fresh, irreverent, screamingly funny, a British sitcom about a band of female Muslim punk musicians. So maybe instead of Voldemort under my hat scarf, you could do, I love to wear my hat scarf, you know, less more. Hey, I don't know. Yeah.
part of what works so well about where Lady Parts is that it is very much a story that is about trying to make original outspoken art under the constraints of working for a big entertainment corporation.
Another show that I really liked and is so original that I almost have a hard time characterizing it was Fantasmus, which was a comedy on HBO this year, starring the comic, funny person, Julio Torres. Thank you, thank you. But the reason I'm here is because I was tossing and turning all night, thinking about how you need to make a clear crayon. Clear? Like the color clear, yes.
I think a term I used for was sketch fantasy about a young man trying to rent an apartment in New York. It's kind of this surreal stream of consciousness look into his imagination and the workings of his mind. Julio, you need a new apartment. And to get a new apartment, you need proof of existence. No, I can't think of the apartment because I'm sick.
No, Julio, don't go into your thoughts. Come back. It's the opposite of mid-TV. It's not trying to be familiar or safe or, you know, kind of a turn your brain off experience. It's this surprising fun show that makes you pay attention because it's so original. I don't go here. And why are you here? Because I'm waiting for glass to be over so I can yell out a hamster.
Oh, I'm going to check this out. That's one thing I love about television is that it's a medium that ideally is very responsive to changes in the culture and shifts in the currents. And it's a way for different voices that you may not have encountered before to percolate through and kind of shift your perspective. So talent will out.
Talent will out. It may take a little longer sometimes than the others, but talent will out. Well, I am feeling a little more hopeful than I was at the outside of this conversation, so thank you so much for talking with me, Jim. Thank you so much for talking with me. After the break, I'll talk with Chief Film Critic Manola-Dargas about the best movies of 2024. We'll be right back.
Manila Dargas. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. So I'm wondering if you could do something for me, which is I'd like you to read the list of the top grossing movies of 2024. Sure. Easy enough to do. Inside Out 2, which is a charming sequel from Pixar, Deadpool and Wolverine, which I could not stand.
Despicable Bumi IV, which I will never see unless I'm forced by gunpoint. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, which was fine, fine. Dune Part II, Wicked Twisters, Moana II, Godzilla Kong, The New Empire, Kung Fu Panda IV. Okay, now of the movies you just mentioned, nine out of ten of them are sequels, and Wicked is technically a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. What's going on here?
Well, it's very familiar. Sequelitis, this is the current model for the big companies. So very similar to what's going on with TV, where studios aren't looking for necessarily innovative or original work. They're looking for safe bets. If you're in charge of a multi-million dollar outfit, much less, and multi-billion dollar conglomerate, you're not really going to be one to take big chances.
Oh, let's bankroll this tiny little movie from now. And that whole mentality is really, that's been part of the mainstream entertainment business for some time. And when you start introducing things like algorithms, at a certain point, it's just gonna start suggesting things that you've already, you know, that are like what you just saw. It's kind of depressing. And we should say that not all sequels are bad. You liked some sequels. Oh, I like the gladiator sequel very much.
I never forgot it, but a slave could take revenge against an emperor. First of all, sharks versus gladiators, what's not to like. And also, there's a fantastic performance from Denzel Washington. It's one of the great performances of the year. I have a destiny. The gods delivered you to me. You will be my instrument.
He's wildly entertaining, so please people do not tell me that there's nothing to see. There are things to see. Okay, so let's talk about some of those things to see. I've got your list of the best films of the year here. Your number one movie of 2024 is an Indian film called All We Imagine As Light. I have not seen this movie.
I would say that most people have not seen this movie. It's a quite a small movie. It is made by Payao Kapadia, and it is a deeply touching movie that even when I start talking about it, I get a little misty, so forgive me.
It's set in Mumbai and it focuses on one woman but it's mainly three women who all work at a hospital, two nurses and a cook and it is about both their individual lives but also their relationships with one another.
Padia has worked in documentary before and she inserts these documentary scenes of people just milling about celebrating walking in streets and you get the sense from the movie that she could have picked another three people and told their stories and what she's saying is each of us has a story that is there.
It is something I have never seen and that I was delighted to see. It's an independent film and it's glorious.
And now let's talk about a very different kind of movie. Another film you loved this year was Furiosa, a Mad Max saga. This is the latest entry in the Mad Max franchise. It's directed by George Miller and stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. I had Gastown, I had full and farm without a could have crippled the citadel. The rule, the White's Land, the White's Land would have been a far better place for all of us. No!
George Miller, great director from Australia. He makes these incredibly, they're just pure cinema, I think. And I love the stories. This one did move me. It's about a woman's empowerment, you know? And can I say I'm a sucker for a female empowerment? My childhood. My mother.
One of the things I really love about it is George Miller uses practical effects rather than relying on just computer-generated imagery. And so you are really watching people doing these crazy things. And it's beautifully choreographed the way, let's say, a 1930s or 40s Fred Astaire number would be beautifully choreographed. We are talking about, you know, visual pleasure, you know, maximum. It's just so wonderful.
I think a movie people might be surprised to find in your top 10 is Megalopolis. This is the movie that Francis Ford Coppola, who directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, self-financed and wrote and directed. It stars Adam Driver. It was divisive, but you loved it. Listen, man, I'm going down on this ship. I don't care. This is a wildly ambitious
ungainly imperfect movie. But you are going to see things much like with, you know, George Miller movie that you have never seen before. This is a movie that Coppola has been thinking about for, you know, decades. He's been working on it. And it's a very optimistic movie filled with beautiful imagery. And it is
Kinda nuts in a, but in a glorious way. I mean, why, you know, it's not despicable me 234, you know, it's not. It's something different. It is funny. It is strange. It is unexpected and why, you know, why do you go to movies? Do you just want to see the same thing over and over and over again? No, maybe see something that you have never seen before and I guarantee you that you have never seen this before. Oh, hear me time.
For Julia. Just try. Give me time to stop now. Resist the algorithm. Seek out movies. Resist the algorithm. This is going to be my new t-shirt. All right, sister, I think we're ready for a revolution now, right? We're going to go. To the barricades.
Okay, let's take a little break. And when we return, we're going to talk about movies you can see in the theater right now. So here we are in the week between Christmas and New Year's. A lot of people have time off from work. This is a time when a lot of people go to the movies. What do you recommend?
There are some really interesting movies that I highly recommend that people can look at. One of those, I really like September 5.
It's about the 1972 Olympics where the Israeli team was taken hostage and ABC was covering it live. What do I tell the cameras? What do you mean? I mean can we show someone being shot on live television?
You know, it's a very modest movie. It's really short, it's about 90 minutes long, and it just seems like, oh, it's just about the fact that they were covering it. No, I think it's about journalistic ethics, and it's really interesting, and I think it's very germany to the moment. Our job is to tell the story of these individuals whose lives they're at stake. It's not okay for me, at worst.
I also like a movie coming up called The Brutalist, which is a movie by Brady Corbett, and it stars Adrian Brody, who, when we first see him, is actually just stepping off onto Ellis Island. It's post-World War II, and he comes to America, and he kind of runs face-first into the wall of American capitalism. Tell me, why is an accomplished foreign architect shoveling coal here in Philadelphia?
It is a really big, ambitious movie, and it has one of the other great performances of the year from Guy Pierce, who plays an American capitalist. Oh, my God, it is an amazing performance. So, highly recommend that movie. It's a beautiful movie. If you can see it in theaters, please do. It is one of the most beautiful, kind of monumental looking. I mean, he just, it's tremendous looking.
And then, of course, there's the movie that I think is going to be a very, very big Oscar movie. It's a complete unknown starring Timothy Chalamet as the very, very young and cutie-pie Bob Dylan.
The movie opens with him arriving in New York City and it takes us through to when he first, you know, when he goes electric. And it's a movie that I think is going to surprise people in terms of Timothy Chalamet. It's opening a new whole new Chalamet chapter. And it's a movie that is going to be talked a lot about in terms of the Oscars. So you're going to hear a great deal about that for the next couple months.
Well, it sounds like there's a lot of good stuff to see in the theater right now. Manola, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure, Melissa. Today's episode was produced by Alex Barram, with help from Kate Lopresti. It was edited by Wendy Doar, with production support by Franny Carr-Toth, an original music by Diane Wong, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell. It was engineered by Daniel Ramirez.
Special thanks to Sia Michael, Sam Siften, David Malitz, Jason Bailey, Jeremy Eggner, Stephanie Goodman, Lauren Manley, Ben Calhoun, Claire Tennesketter, Alexandra Lee Young, Alicia Beitup, Sarah Curtis, John White, Tina Antilini, Paula Schumann, and Sam Dolnick. That's it for the daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch. I'll see you tomorrow.
