What I'm Watching: Will & Harper, Under The Bridge, A New Sopranos Documentary, and More

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

The shows:

• If you’re a fan of The Sopranos, you should not miss the new HBO documentary Wise Guy. The two-parter from Alex Gibney starts out with a clear focus on series creator Chase, but soon blurs the lines between himself and the story he chose to tell with The Sopranos in an entertaining, thought-provoking, sometimes heartbreaking way. Though the doc includes plenty of cast interviews, it’s a lot more than a walk down memory lane (you know what Tony says about “Remember when"). Instead, it’s a psychologically rich portrait of the show itself, one that manages to sneak in a few incredible never-before-discussed details. I wrote about one of them – a season 3 scene that Chase says influenced his writing on the show's polarizing series finale – over at Slashfilm.
• I finally caught up with the Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough led true crime drama Under the Bridge this week, and as fantastic as it was, I almost wish I hadn’t. The story of the brutal killing of Canadian teen Reena Virk is something that can’t be forgotten once you’ve heard it, and the series works with such deep levels of despair and hurt that it’s very hard to shake. That being said, it’s smartly crafted for maximum impact, and younger cast members (like Javon Walton, Chloe Guidry, Izzy G, Aiyana Goodfellow, and Vritika Gupta) deliver memorable performances and hold their own against the show’s older stars. Under the Bridge also leans all the way into some of the slipperier elements of true crime stories, juggling complicated ideas about race, justice, culpability, innocence, and the impossible ways the justice system asks us to measure harm. It’s an impressive feat for first-time TV show creator Quinn Shephard, even if it is unshakeably bleak.

The movies:

• This has been a big rewatch month for me, and I’m happy to report that I loved every movie I watched even more the second time around. The driven, bonkers reporting of “professional tickling” crime documentary Tickled is even more enjoyable now that it’s just one piece of David Farrier’s filmography built around pursuing maddening, ill-advised research rabbit holes.
• I’m still not a superfan, but I'm finally old enough to appreciate the elements of Beetlejuice that I thought were “boring” as a kid (sorry Barbara and Adam), as well as its practical effects genius and weird, dark creativity.
• And finally, several years of job experience and global crises after my first watch, I’ve decided that the 1976 coal mining union doc Harlan County, USA is the perfect film. I don’t usually give blanket recommendations like this, but: watch it if you haven’t.
• I also got to check out Will & Harper, the upcoming Netflix documentary about a cross-country road trip comedian Will Ferrell took with his longtime friend (and former “SNL” head writer) Harper Steele after she came out as a trans woman in her 50s. Built around the premise that Ferrell would help Steele revisit places in middle America that may not feel as safe to her anymore (and ask all the questions he’s been dying to ask in the meantime), it’s a marvelous, heartening, surprisingly hilarious watch grounded by discussions about Harper’s life and experiences. I’ve seen a few complaints about the movie feeling scripted, but I think a better word would be structured: the pair build in planned time for events and celebrity hang-outs, and to talk about things they’ve never discussed before in nearly 3 decades of friendship, but everything that flows from there feels organic. I especially loved the way that the film and its subjects dealt frankly with Ferrell’s celebrity, which both helped and harmed Steele along the road.

The reads:

• This piece from Esmé Holden about the economic and tonal dissonance on display at major film festivals – and the way job insecurity for critics often comes when we're simultaneously getting some of the coolest opportunities of our lives – is exceedingly lovely.
• I also really dig this piece from Coleman Spilde over at Slate, on a media literacy topic we don’t often talk about on a granular level: pop culture “news” accounts that just make stuff up.
• If you want to get a handle on the ways transphobia has been growing in the U.K. and one trans man’s response to it, Liam Konemann’s mini-book The Appendix is not bad.
• Dear America Watch 2k24 continues: this week I read Christmas After All, an interesting but ultimately too-precious-for-me Great Depression story from Kathryn Lasky. It's the first of my recent reads I haven't been entirely sold on (partly because it oddly focuses on a fairly rich family's experiences), but I did love elements of the book, like the main characters' Dust Bowl survivor relative and the way emerging pop culture played an impact in the family's life. I'm still in my historical fiction era, even if this one was hit or miss.

Odds and ends:

• I took the assignment to write about the 5 most controversial TV show cancellations for Slashfilm (too?) seriously and did a ton of digging to come up with this fun little list. I had a great time trying to figure out which shows caused the most dramatic fan response (hint: more than one was met with outrage from government officials), and figuring out how to tell the story of TV’s evolution through just a handful of anecdotes. I’m not sure what this says about where I am in life, but I’m increasingly enjoying the opportunity to find my way into assignments I would’ve never thought to pitch myself and to make them mine, rather than pitching my own.
• In other news, I wrote about how Stephen King wants another season of Evil and two of the show’s stars, Katja Herbers and Aasif Mandvi, hyped my article, which is always cool. I also wrote a bit about what showrunners originally had in store for season 5.

I’m keeping things sort of short and sweet this week since I’ll be picking my mom up at the airport in just a few hours. It’s her first time in Scotland (or Europe, for that matter), and I can’t wait to show her all of my favorite places. Enjoy the new week, and as always, let me know what you’re watching.