David Bianculli
Appearances
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
I watch more television than anyone I know, and even I can't pretend to have seen enough to compile a comprehensive end-of-year top ten list. What I can do is run through a list of the best things I've seen and why I like them so much, and also to note a trend or two that seem unique to the current year. If you're looking for great TV to binge over the holidays, consider this a quick guide.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
One show that may not make many 2024 top ten lists because of its last-second arrival is The Return of the Squid Game. Season one of this South Korean drama series premiered on Netflix three years ago and was a surprise but well-deserved hit. Season 2 doesn't drop until the day after Christmas, but I've previewed it and it's a worthy successor.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
It expands the focus, the perspectives, even the number of games, and is as brutal yet as beautifully photographed and intensely acted as the original. And speaking of beautifully photographed, let's give a nod to another Netflix series, Ripley, the most stunningly shot TV series I saw in 2024. The best non-fiction shows I saw all year? Beatles 64 on Disney Plus and Leonardo da Vinci on PBS.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
The best talk shows? HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Netflix's John Mulaney Presents Everybody's in L.A. The best scripted drama and comedy shows? Many were returning series with strong outings in 2024. The latest season of FX's Fargo, with Juno Temple and Jon Hamm, was stunning, surprising, and impossible to forget. My favorite series of the year.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Season two of Netflix's The Diplomat, starring Keri Russell as our country's British ambassador, built to a point where it was almost too tense to watch and ended with a cliffhanger guaranteed to make season three even more of a thrill ride. The latest season of Hulu's The Bear, about workers in and around a newly launched high-end Chicago restaurant, disappointed some, but not me.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
I ate it all up, especially the final episode. And on the lighter side, the 2024 season of another Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building, was a comedy triumph, giving Meryl Streep an unexpectedly rich role to play and play with on TV. And the latest season of Max's Hacks gave Jean Smart the same thing. She's wonderful.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
And that show's cliffhanger ending promises another great season to come there, too. Two series ended in 2024 with noteworthy finales. HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, the long-running Larry David comedy, went out with much attention and fanfare. The Paramount Plus series, Evil, went out with very little.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Both were very intelligent, entertaining shows that I watched and looked forward to every week until they ended. So farewell and thanks to Curb and Evil. And hello to a lot of new shows that really made strong first impressions. If you like dramas about intrigue involving politicians or spies, 2024 was a banner year.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Black Doves, on Netflix, had Keira Knightley as a very clandestine spy, and she and it were really good. The Madness, starring Coleman Domingo as a TV pundit accused of murder, and On the Run, a sort of updated version of The Fugitive, also is on Netflix and is even better than Black Doves.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
And best of all is The Agency, a new spy series on Showtime and Paramount+, that stars Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, and Richard Gere. It's rolling out weekly at the moment and is another of the great shows I've seen this year. HBO's The Penguin surprised me very pleasantly with its plot and intensity, and with its impressive leading performances by Colin Farrell and Kristen Milioti.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Netflix's Nobody Wants This, a sort of 21st century Bridget Loves Bernie, was surprising too. Funny and tender and romantic in all the right measures.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Also deserving of mention and definitely worth watching, FX's remake of the miniseries Shogun, Netflix's A Man on the Inside starring Ted Danson in yet another excellent TV series, and Agatha All Along, the imaginative, very musical Disney Plus sequel to WandaVision. Watch enough of these great shows, as I did, and you'll notice some recurring patterns.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Some of the same actors popped up in very different places. Jamie Lee Curtis returned as the unstable mother on The Bear, but she also played a ruthless hitwoman in Prime Video's The Sticky. Jodie Turner-Smith, whom I singled out for her great acting in Bad Monkey as the Dragon Queen, shows up as the female lead in the agency and is amazing again in a completely different type of role.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
And Tracy Ullman, who was so funny as Larry David's unwanted living girlfriend on Curb Your Enthusiasm, also showed up at the end of Black Doves, playing a very serious, potentially lethal adversary to Keira Knightley's undercover spy. and for Allman, a drastically impressively different type of role.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Another trend I noticed was how many shows in 2024 featured actors of a certain age, not just in toss-away or clownish roles, but in meaty parts that these veteran performers elevate even higher. I've mentioned some already, from Richard Gere to Meryl Streep, but I saw more on TV in 2024 than in any year in decades. These include some of the best performances in some of the year's best shows.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
Martin Short and Steve Martin in Only Murders. Helen Hunt and Christopher Lloyd in Hacks. Sally Struthers in A Man on the Inside. Margot Martindale in The Sticky. I'm happy to see them all working and thriving, even in a year when the TV terrain has been tougher to navigate. Not only for those working in the medium, but those of us watching it.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
I'm also happy to have seen so many good and great shows in 2024, even if I know I've missed many more. To sum up, I'll present one final TV clip. It comes near the end of my favorite show of the year, Noah Hawley's Fargo. A mysterious and lethal killer visits a suburban home intending to kill the family within, but is greeted instead with disarming kindness.
Fresh Air
The Looming TikTok Ban
The father hands him a cold bottle of orange soda, then clicks it against his own. The killer replies with a short and simple phrase, but it's a phrase that captures perfectly my overall attitude towards television in the year 2024. A man is grateful.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Bonnie Raitt speaking to Terry Gross in 1996. After a break, we'll continue their conversation and also hear from another of this year's Kennedy Center honorees, Francis Ford Coppola. Also, Justin Chang reviews two new films, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys. Meanwhile, from Bonnie Raitt's latest CD, here's the track Livin' for the Ones. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Let's get back to Terry's 1996 interview with Bonnie Raitt, who is one of this year's Kennedy Center honorees. She grew up listening to Broadway songs. Her father, John Raitt, was a star in the Broadway musicals Carousel, Oklahoma, and The Pajama Game.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Raitt sang with her father on his self-titled album, which was nominated for a Grammy in 1996.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Bonnie Raitt. Coming up, another of this year's Kennedy Center honorees, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. One of this year's Kennedy Center honorees is singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt. She's a ten-time Grammy Award winner, best known for her soulful voice and her hit singles from the late 1980s, Something to Talk About and I Can't Make You Love Me. She's also known for her depth of knowledge of classic blues.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
This is Fresh Air. Francis Ford Coppola also is a Kennedy Center honoree for 2024. We're going to listen to the story he told Terry Gross in 2016 about how Marlon Brando came to be cast in Coppola's masterpiece, The Godfather. At the time she spoke with him, he had published the notes he had written while he made that film.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
The notebook contained his thoughts about each scene, including the pitfalls he wanted to avoid. It also included pages from the novel on which the movie was based, Mario Puzo's The Godfather, with Coppola's notes in the margin. Let's begin with the opening scene, in which the character Bona Sera has come to the godfather, Don Vito Corleone, seeking justice.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Bona Sera's daughter was brutally beaten after she resisted two boys who had tried to take advantage of her. Bona Sera says he went to the police like a good American. The boys were tried in court, but the judge gave them a suspended sentence, and they went free that very day. Bonasera wants revenge against those boys. The Godfather, played by Marlon Brando, offers this response.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
That's a scene from The Godfather, featuring Marlon Brando. Terry asked Francis Ford Coppola if Mario Puzo had first suggested casting Brando.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola speaking to Terry Gross in 2016. He and Bonnie Raitt are two of this year's Kennedy Center honorees. The ceremony, held earlier this month, is scheduled to be televised Sunday on CBS. Other nominees for 2024 include The Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and the iconic Harlem theater The Apollo.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
After a break, Justin Chang reviews two new films that have made many critics' end-of-year top ten lists, Nickel Boys and The Brutalist. This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
This is Fresh Air. Our film critic, Justin Chang, recommends two new movies that have been hailed by critics groups as among the year's best. In The Brutalist, Adrian Brody stars as a Hungarian-Jewish architect who ends up in Pennsylvania after World War II. Nickel Boys is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel set in a juvenile detention facility in the Jim Crow South.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed The Brutalist and Nickel Boys. On Monday's show, some great Christmas music. John Batiste will be at the piano to play, sing, and talk about some of his favorite Christmas songs. It's part two of the session we recorded with him.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
And we'll listen back to Amir Questlove-Thompson playing recordings from the Christmas playlist he put together for us. Hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
We're going to listen to Terry's 1996 interview with Raitt. At the time, she had released a live double CD called Road Tested. That collection featured duets with some of the singer-songwriters and rhythm and blues performers who had shaped her musical style. Raitt was a 20-year-old college student when she got to know and learn from them.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Terry invited Bonnie Raitt to bring and play some of the blues recordings that most influenced her. Before we hear them, let's listen to a song from her first album, which was released in 1971. This is the Robert Johnson song, Walking Blues.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Erivo played Aretha Franklin in the TV miniseries Genius Aretha. She also co-starred in the HBO series The Outsider. And she released an album of songs she co-wrote titled Chapter One, Verse One, and wrote a children's book called Remember to Dream, Ebere. Erivo grew up in South London, where her parents emigrated from Nigeria.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Cynthia Erivo speaking with Terry Gross in 2021. She is currently starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. We'll hear more of their interview after a break. Also, Ken Tucker plays us some great new Christmas music. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Terry Gross spoke with Cynthia Erivo in 2021 and asked her about playing Aretha Franklin. They began with this scene from the miniseries Genius Aretha. This is set during Aretha's first recording session for Atlantic Records in 1967. Erivo, as Aretha, is at the piano, singing I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Singer and actress Cynthia Erivo has just been nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. Here she is singing one of that musical's most iconic songs.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Cynthia Erivo, recorded in 2021. She's currently starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. The first half of the two-part adaptation opened November 22nd and already has earned more than $300 million in American ticket sales. Coming up, I'll review the new Prime video series, The Sticky, which brings the sensibility of the TV series Fargo to Canada's syrup industry.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
I'm TV critic David Bianculli. The Sticky is a new TV series starring Margo Martindale inspired by the biggest crime in Canadian history, the theft of a massive amount of government-stored maple syrup. This new six-part Prime Video miniseries, all of which is streaming now, tells that story, but more whimsically than faithfully. Don't think of The Sticky as a fact-based Canadian crime story.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Think of it more like the movie Fargo, where half the fun is enjoying the snow-covered scenery and the somewhat cartoonish characters. And though the series creators of The Sticky, Brian Donovan and Ed Harrow, don't mind the French-Canadian accents for laughs the way Fargo played with those Minnesota draws, the loose connection with the truth is exactly the same.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
The Fargo movie and TV series stated at the start that they were based on a true story, but they were lying, because why not? The opening disclaimer in the sticky is just as playful, but much more honest. It says, this is absolutely not the true story of the great Canadian maple syrup heist.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
In that real-life robbery, $18 million worth of maple syrup reserves were stolen with the theft discovered in 2012. In this six-part version for TV, the heist is planned by a trio of unlikely co-conspirators. There's Remy, a local security guard, the only security guard, at the place where local syrup is stockpiled. Mike is a low-level mobster visiting from Chicago.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
And Ruth is a local farmer who taps her trees for sap each year, but whose land is about to be sold out from under her. All three of these people have grudges to settle.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
The security guard against the Syrup Federation that treats him poorly, the gangster against the mob family that takes him for granted, and the farmer whose property is being targeted by the head of the Syrup Association, even though her husband is in the hospital in a coma. Remy, the security guard, hatches a plan to steal some syrup.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
He tells the mobster, who tries to enlist Ruth because of her knowledge of the trade. Mike is played by Chris Diamantopoulos. Guillaume Sear plays Remy, and Margo Martindale plays Ruth. You need this. So hear him out. Remy.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Once the three agree to work together, the real fun begins. Outside factors and unexpected antagonists keep gumming up the works. And these three very different characters react differently to almost everything, including one another. Ruth is the brains of the outfit. Remy knows almost nothing.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
And Mike certainly knows nothing about the production methods of maple syrup, which he demonstrates in a conversation with them during a cramped truck ride.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Margot Martindale, who was so enjoyable to watch on both Justified and The Americans, has a blast with this leading role. Her major co-stars, including Gita Miller and Suzanne Clément as a pair of investigators on their trail, are all Canadian actors, and all add to the mix here.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
But the secret ingredient, and the reason to make this a must-watch TV series, is an eventual, substantial guest star appearance by an American, Jamie Lee Curtis. She arrives late, but makes as big an impact as she did in her Emmy-winning guest stint on The Bear, or as the tax auditor in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
It's such a blast to see Curtis and Martindale swing for the fences with their portrayals, and both of them hit it out of the park. The entire company of actors is strong, and the French versions of American pop songs on the soundtrack are a delight.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
The best part of all is that while the sticky is loaded with wonderful characters, performances, music, and surprises, it's not at all overly sentimental, which is good. The last thing you'd want from a TV show about a maple syrup heist is for it to be too sappy.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Each year, the holiday season brings new Christmas music, and rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to it all to select the songs he's enjoyed the most. This year's picks include new holiday albums by Ben Folds and the country group Little Big Town, as well as a duet from a very famous pop star and a very famous football player.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Here's Ben Folds with his new song, The Bell That Couldn't Jingle.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviewed new Christmas music from Ben Folds, Little Big Town, and Jason Kelsey and Stevie Nicks singing a duet on A Philly Special Christmas Party. On Monday's show, actor and comic Ronnie Chang. He was brought to The Daily Show by Trevor Noah and became a field correspondent. Now he's one of the rotating correspondents who anchor the show.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
He co-stars in the new series Interior Chinatown and was in the film Crazy Rich Asians. He has a new Netflix comedy special. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Chirac.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
That's Cynthia Erivo. In 2016, after coming to the U.S. from England, Erivo starred in the Broadway revival of the musical The Color Purple, winning a Tony and Drama Desk Award. For her starring role as Harriet Tubman in the film Harriet, she was nominated for an Oscar and also was nominated for the movie's closing credits song, Stand Up, which she co-wrote and sang.