What I'm Watching: Challengers, Hacks, Dead Boy Detectives, and More

Plus: new Doctor Who, Luca Guadagnino's back catalogue, ranking every season of The Wire, and more.

Here’s a quick rundown on everything I’ve watched, read, and wrote about lately:

The shows:

• God, I adore Hacks. The HBO show about a stubborn elder stand-up comic (Jean Smart) working with a messy, progressive young comedy writer has felt like lightning in a bottle for three seasons and counting. It’s a deceptively clever series that’s grown far beyond its basic premise by this point, but every episode (I’ve seen four from the new season so far) remains a delight. Hacks manages to mature with each season while still delivering clever, satisfying plot curveballs, and it does it all while keeping its focus on the hilarious, dysfunctional odd couple relationship at its center.
• I said this a few months ago, but it’s worth reiterating since I’ve seen the two episodes that are set to drop this week: I’m really digging the new era of Doctor Who. In the past, I’ve admittedly had a hard time emotionally latching onto the series, but I think Ncuti Gatwa’s beautifully complex and warm portrayal of The Doctor – not to mention returning showrunner Russell T. Davies’ playful tendency to break and remake the show’s world at every opportunity – have finally made a proper Who fan of me after all this time. Casually transgressive, goofily over-the-top, and emotionally grounded, this is an era worth keeping an eye on.
• You may have already guessed this based on my pre-release IGN explainer, but I quite like Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives. I think the Sandman spinoff show takes a while to find its footing (and makes some truly insufferable writing and editing choices while it does), but by the end of its first season, it’s got a nice thing going. And by “thing” I mean some creepy-cool worldbuilding, a surprisingly existential queer coming-of-age plot, and ghostly case-of-the-week shenanigans that call to mind early seasons of Supernatural (the show was made by a Supernatural writer-producer). You can read my full review of the show in my first-ever piece for Inverse!

The movies:

• To borrow a phrase from myself three paragraphs ago: God, I love Challengers. Luca Guadagnino’s new erotic tennis drama (new genre just dropped!) has so much of what I feel has been missing from my moviegoing experience in recent years: a flair for drama, style, and visual extravagance, a wicked sense of humor and irony, and a complex character dynamic that’s driven by finely-tuned performances and a stunning script. The film about a messy love triangle between three talented but destructive athletes quite literally had me on the edge of my seat, and I had to resist the urge to go right back in for a second showing after the credits rolled. Everyone involved here is operating at the peak of their abilities, from Zendaya and her co-stars to Guadagnino to soundtrack composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
• I also can’t stop thinking about Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Eleanor Coppola’s darkly funny, continuously mind-boggling documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam-set masterpiece is one of a few movies that brings out the cliched film bro in me, as I think it’s about as incredible a work of on-screen art as the world has ever seen. His wife’s inside look at the making of the film is one of the most revelatory behind-the-scenes docs out there, too – full of clips of drug-addled actors, bloody, improvised scenes, and moments in which tortured genius type Coppola basically debates killing himself rather than continuing on with the over-budget behemoth of a project. To say “they don’t make them like this anymore” wouldn’t technically be accurate since the filmmaker is still making movies that threaten to fall off the rails today, but this doc is about as pure a slice of New Hollywood brilliance-madness as we may ever get.
• This newsletter is late this week, in large part because I recently took on the daunting task of watching every Luca Guadagnino movie I hadn’t seen for a ranking that’s yet to be published. I won’t dive too deep into individual titles (besides Challengers) here lest I plagiarize myself, but it’s worth noting that A Bigger Splash and I Am Love are rightfully cited as two of the director’s most underrated works. Though they couldn’t be more different, they’re both intriguing Tilda Swinton-led dramas about rich people in Italy being driven to distraction by impulsiveness, lust, and longing (together with Call Me By Your Name, they make up the filmmaker’s “desire trilogy”). Everything Guadagnino made before I Am Love – including the clumsily artsy true crime metafiction movie The Protagonists and the heartfelt but sickening teen sex drama Melissa P. – is not particularly worth the time it takes to find a copy to watch. Also, his 2020 documentary on Salvatore Ferragamo, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, is uncharacteristically boring. If you loved Challengers and want to check out more of Guadagnino’s work, your best bet by far is to stick with the fiction movies (and show) he’s made from 2009 onward.

Odds and ends:

• I went down an inexplicable Grizzly Man research hole this past week despite having seen the movie years ago. I really like this Backpacker article in which a bear biologist lays some common points of discussion about Timothy Treadwell to rest, provides an informed last word on others, and most of all, makes me very thankful for every day I’m not getting eaten by a bear. This old Paste piece about Werner Herzog’s treatment of the audio of Treadwell’s death is also a great read that ultimately draws some moving conclusions about the documentarian’s work.
• I’m so excited for Billie Eilish’s new album. I can’t tell if her new Rolling Stone cover piece would be particularly interesting to non-fans or not, but I'll share it here anyway, because I know I had a great time reading it.
• Over at Slashfilm, I ranked every season of The Wire, a groundbreaking and beloved show that I’ve always been cooler towards than most of my industry peers. I will say, I think breaking David Simon's sprawling, dense series down season-by-season here and revisiting some key moments made me admire it more than I ever have before.
• I love when I get to pull out the reference texts for research pieces about classic TV, like I did to tell this weirdly convoluted story about how Gilligan’s Island got canceled so that Gunsmoke could be un-cancelled.

Thanks for your patience with this newsletter, y’all. I think I owe you all an additional post at this point: is there any new or upcoming TV show y’all are itching to see me review? Reply or shoot me a message and let me know, maybe I can make it happen.