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There is no greater comfort than consuming a meal made with love. But the next best thing, perhaps, is watching a meal be made—especially if the food is shot by a master filmmaker under beautiful lighting with a food stylist hovering just offscreen.

Food movies are great, but cooking movies are divine, and this list focuses on the latter category. That may sound oddly specific, but this list would be endless if we included all movies about food. Entire pieces can—and have—been written on the suggestive use of food in Luca Guadagnino’s films alone. Montages have been cut of Brad Pitt snacking in nearly every movie he’s ever made. The steak scene in The Matrix, the chocolate cake scene in Matilda, the orange peel scene in The Godfather—all iconic, but more focused on the indulgent act of consumption rather than the gift of nourishing another person.

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The act of cooking, specifically, holds a special place in cinema. Preparing a meal for a loved one is an act of service, for some the ultimate expression of love. The process involves care, precision, and creativity. A complex relationship between the feeder and the fed can be deftly communicated by the camera without a whisper of dialogue.

Some of the movies on this list center on restaurants: Ratatouille, Big Night, and Chef feature professional cooks as their heroes. Others have one cooking scene so memorable that the film simply had to make the list: Annie baking a single cupcake in Bridesmaids, Paulie slicing garlic with a razor blade in Goodfellas, that final sequence in Phantom Thread.

Here is a list of the best cooking movies, in no particular order. Just make sure that you already have a delectable meal in front of you before you start watching or you’ll be famished by the time the credits role.

Ratatouille (2007)

Yes, one of the greatest movies about fine dining happens to be animated. But with famed chef Thomas Keller as a consultant on the beloved Pixar film, it’s no surprise that Ratatouille gets every tiny detail of cooking in a French restaurant right, from the copper pots to the way the chefs roll up their sleeves. Director Brad Bird’s story centers on a rat with immaculate taste named Remy. He dreams of becoming a chef but elicits screams any time he enters the kitchen. The message—anyone can cook, even a rat—will melt your heart. But it is the film’s famous climax, involving a particular diner experiencing a Proustian madeleine moment while dipping into one of Remy the Rat’s dishes, that proves Bird understands the power of food to evoke memory, emotion, and empathy.

Review: Savoring Pixar’s Ratatouille

Big Night (1996)

The star power of Big Night is, well, big: The unbelievable lineup includes Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver, Allison Janney, and even Marc Anthony. But the stakes are seemingly small. Two brothers from Italy have opened a restaurant in the U.S., but the philistine Americans don’t understand their food. They’re running out of money and have one shot hosting a famous dinner guest to save the business. The movie, directed by Tucci, quickly evolves into a larger meditation on the elusiveness of the American dream. The film reaches its apex towards the end as the story slows down to savor each course of this monumental meal—primi, secondi, etc. Tucci and Shalhoub demonstrate an enviable deftness in the kitchen; there’s a reason Tucci went on to become the Internet’s favorite boyfriend-who-cooks. Watching this movie is like joining a chaotic and delightful dinner party.

Read More: Stanley Tucci: How Julia Child Changed My Life

Tampopo (1985)

Juzo Itami’s Tampopo is a raucous Japanese comedy filled with vignettes about different characters eating, cooking, and—in the case of a dapper gangster and his girlfriend—engaging erotically with food. Early in the movie, a ramen-eating expert instructs an acolyte (played by a young Ken Watanabe), “While slurping the noodles, look affectionately at the pork.” The silly scene sets the tone for a movie that at once masterfully satirizes foodies—before the term even existed—and also luxuriates in the specificity of its food-loving characters: A young office worker embarrasses his superiors with his oenophile tendencies; a grocer chases down an old woman who damages all his produce by squishing fruits to test for freshness; an adult offers a child forbidden from eating sugar his first taste of ice cream. The through line is the story of Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), a ramen chef who wants to master the art of broth. A cowboy-hat wearing trucker who happens to be an expert on the cuisine coaches her, demanding she carry a heavy pot full of broth and run laps like Rocky. Totally unexpected in its diversions, yet enduring in its themes of endurance and triumph, Tampopo is simply one of the best food films ever made.

Read More: Top 10 Memorable Eating Scenes

The Taste of Things (2023)

The first 40 minutes of The Taste of Things are exclusively dedicated to a meal being prepared and consumed. The movie is set in France in 1889 so everything takes a bit longer than popping a plate into the microwave. Vegetables are uprooted from the ground, fish filleted, water fetched from a well. Eugénie, played by Juliette Binoche, cooks the exquisite meal for what we discover is her employer and sometimes lover, Dodin (Benoît Magimel). The epicure and his coterie of friends participate in friendly cook-offs at each other’s well-appointed homes. Dodin has spent years trying to convince Eugénie to marry him. (Binoche and Magimel were once married in real life.) But she fears that becoming a wife would undermine her identity as the house’s cook. Director Tran Anh Hung, who won the Best Director prize at Cannes, valued long takes of Binchoe and Magimel working with their hands and did not use doubles. Instead, a professional chef called instructions to the actors off-camera, his voice edited out later. The result are long takes, silent save for the bubbling of a stew or click of a knife on a cutting board. The audience comes away with an appreciation for the effort it took to make just a stew in the days of yore—and likely a craving for the movie’s show-stopping baked Alaska.

Review: The Taste of Things Is a Gorgeous Movie About Food, Love, and Sensory Pleasures

Babette’s Feast (1987)

In this Danish Oscar-winner, Babette, a chef, flees violence in France and comes to work for two saintly sisters leading a flock of believers in 19th century Denmark. The pious townspeople eat food for sustenance, not enjoyment, and for over a decade Babette dutifully prepares a rather drab-looking bread soup for the sisters, per their instructions. When Babette unexpectedly comes into a fortune, she insists on cooking a “real French dinner” for her employers and their friends. Greeted with foie gras, truffles, and a rum sponge cake, the diners indulge in a meal so sinfully pleasurable that they must partake in silent reverence. They learn, in the process, the godly power of a good meal.

Review: Dining Well Is the Best Revenge in Babette’s Feast

Bridesmaids (2011)

Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids is probably best remembered for the scene in which Kristen Wiig gets drunk on the plane, or the one in which Jon Hamm has sex like a clueless horny teenager, or even the one in which Maya Rudolph relieves herself in a wedding dress. But the sequence that sticks with me the most comes midway through the movie. Wiig’s character Annie, who had to close her bakery and is still grieving the business that was so personal to her, goes through the long process of baking and decorating a single ornate cupcake. She proceeds to eat it alone at her counter. The montage gives the audience a glimpse at what Annie lost—and her true potential if she can recover. It also captures the unique pleasure of cooking or baking for oneself and enjoying the spoils while standing in your own kitchen.

Review: Bridesmaids: Kristin Wiig’s Merry Band of Party Poopers

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

The Studio Ghibli films are often filled with delectable anime food. But the most memorable representation of cooking among celebrated director Hayao Miyazaki’s many features comes in Howl’s Moving Castle. Working as a cleaner on the titular wizard’s moving castle, protagonist Sophie bullies the fire demon Calcifer into helping her make breakfast, despite his protestations. (“I don’t cook! I’m a scary and powerful fire demon!” he grumbles.) Howl, an illusive magic-user, takes over the cooking from Sophie, placing bacon in the pan and feeding egg shells to Calcifer, who happily munches away on the detritus. This is Sophie’s first real introduction to Howl. The care the wizard takes in cooking the simple breakfast, even making sure the fire is literally fed, instantly softens Sophie and the audience to the illusive character. Indeed, we begin to fall for him. As an added bonus, I will shout out Miyazaki’s gorgeous short film Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess, which includes a lovely yet disturbing depiction of a witch baking bread that later comes to life. (Sadly, it can currently only be seen at the Ghibli museum in Tokyo.)

Read More: Howl’s Moving Castle and the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

The Lunchbox (2013)

Each day in Mumbai, a group of about 5,000 white-coated men known as dabbawalas deliver hundreds of thousands of lunchboxes from kitchens to office workers across the bustling city. Despite having no labeling or app system, they transport all these meals to the right place (almost) every time—Harvard Business School researchers even studied the process. Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox centers on a rare case of a mis-delivered meal. A lonely housewife named Ila sends out a lunch to her neglectful husband only for it to arrive on the desk of a widowed office drone, Mr. Fernandez. He sends her a note, she replies, and soon an epistolatory romance evolves. Ila’s husband notices no change when her delectable food stops being delivered to his work. In Mr. Fernandez she finds someone who not only appreciates the culinary arts but what characters in the film often refer to as he “magic hands.” Ila often conveys her emotions through her food, adding spice as she tests the waters of this new correspondence, and expressing her ire at a snub in ways I will not spoil. Food becomes a form of communication.

Read More: Meals as Metaphors

Goodfellas (1990)

A review of cooking in film would not be complete without the infamous scene of the gangster Paulie cutting garlic with a razor while cooking an Italian feast in prison in Martin Scorsese’s iconic film Goodfellas. Paulie (played by Paul Cicero) deploys this technique because, he claims, the garlic will melt away in the pan when sliced thin and disappear into the sauce. As a garlic lover, I question why any cook would want garlic to disappear. But the precise slices suggest that Paulie possesses the meticulousness that aided old school mobsters in tasks like buying bodies where nobody could find them or keeping track of drug shipments. It’s a characteristic that the film’s young protagonist, Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, ought to have cultivated. Paulie’s cooking scene stands in sharp contrast to the movie’s denouement during which a high and paranoid Henry’s improvised plans spin out of control.

Review: Hollywood Hooks Up with Gangsters

Julie & Julia (2009)

This Nora Ephron film toggles back and forth between two stories: A home cook and blogger (Amy Adams) works her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking to rekindle her passion, while, in the past, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) finds her own identity at culinary school in France. The two cooks’ successes and failures are great fun to watch, particularly the series of scenes in which Child, having just enrolled in a cooking program, practices cutting hundreds of onions, the slices forming a pile that matches her own impressive height. Ephron was, herself, a famed dinner party hostess, and food played an essential role in all of her films. For her, eating was almost always intertwined with desire. I would have included the iconic “I’ll have what she’s having” sandwich scene from When Harry Met Sally or the postcoital carbonara scene in Heartburn had we actually seen characters make these near-orgasmic foods rather than just consuming them. (Heartburn admittedly includes a brief scene of Streep making pie.) If you are doing some cooking yourself, let me offer an additional recommendation: The audiobook for Heartburn, Ephron’s semi-autobiographical novel about her divorce from Carl Bernstein upon which the movie is based, is narrated by Streep and happens to be the ideal novel to play in the kitchen.

Review: Streep, Ephron, and the Joy of Cooking

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

Before he helmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee directed one of the greatest openings to a film of all time. Eat Drink Man Woman centers on a semi-retired master chef Chu (Sihung Lung) losing his ability to taste, and the movie begins with a rapturous series of shots of this man cooking an entire meal, from butchering a chicken from his own coop to crimping dumplings. Chu is wrangling with his three daughters, each of whom drops a bombshell announcement at some point in the film. Structured around a series of family meals, Eat Drink Man Woman examines tensions between modernity and tradition—both in food and other aspects of life—while simultaneously demonstrating how food can unify a family across generations.

Review: A Chef’s Ballad

Burnt (2015)

Burnt is an inherently ridiculous movie that begins with Bradley Cooper’s all-star chef “sentencing” himself to shucking 1 million oysters for his drug-fueled bad behavior. Having completed his penance, he sets out to earn a third Michelin star (as one does). But Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller look ridiculously good in chef’s jackets, and the cast is rounded out with a terrific group of actors, including Matthew Rhys, Uma Thurman, Emma Thompson, Omar Sy, Daniel Brühl, Alicia Vikander, and Lily James. And to its credit, the movie did tackle the issue of toxic masculinity in the kitchen before we as a society acknowledged that was a pervasive problem in the restaurant world. This is a fable of an angry man who learns that throwing pots at people’s heads doesn’t earn Michelin stars. It’s not revelatory but it is entertaining. And the movie delivers up some incredible food porn along the way.

Read More: Bradley Cooper Was Afraid to Direct. Then He Found Lady Gaga

Phantom Thread (2017)

If food serves as a metaphor for love and care in many of the movies listed above, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread flips that expectation on its head. Anderson explores the kitchen’s more dangerous corners. The movie is one of appetites and control: The famed dressmaker played by Daniel Day-Lewis meets his love interest Alma (Vicky Krieps) when he orders an absurdly large breakfast and demands that she remember the entire order. She playfully calls him by the maternal nickname “the hungry boy.” But Alma struggles to find a way to exert herself against the exacting man who becomes her lover until the end. Spoiler alert for Phantom Thread, but it turns out this movie about power dynamics in a relationship centers on a woman ritually poisoning her lover’s food…and him consensually submitting to the poison. The domineering man becomes so weak that he must accept her care. It’s a shocking twist marked by the most sensual of cooking scenes in which Alma heaps butter into a pan to brown the poisoned mushrooms tucked into an omelette. The movie reminds us that feeding someone is not just a means of nurturing but, sometimes, one of control.

Review: Phantom Thread Works Hard at Being a Masterpiece. But Is It?

Chef (2014)

Jon Favreau has a rather eclectic directing resume, from launching the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man to cementing the live-action animated remake trend with The Lion King to helming the instant Christmas classic Elf. Chef is one of his smaller movies and clearly among the closest to his heart. An avowed foodie, Favreau learned some impressive knife skills for the role. He plays a restaurant chef who falls into a creative rut and, after a bad review, goes on a Twitter rant. Finished with the world of fine dining, he decides to open up a food truck and sling sandwiches. There’s little conflict in this sunny roadtrip movie that will buoy even the most cynical culinary critic. And boy do those Cubanos look good.

Review: Jon Favreau’s Chef Serves Up a Modest Meal

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Thanks to the inherently theatrical nature of a legal trial, cinema has had a tight-knit relationship with the courtroom since its early days, utilizing (and sometimes, delightfully exaggerating) judicial fundamentals like a curious suspect, a sardonic attorney, and shouty assertions of “I object!” for stories that thrill, move, and inspire us.

We were reminded of the many slick pleasures of this subgenre recently through Clint Eastwood’s elegant and widely acclaimed legal thriller Juror #2, with a stylish premise reminiscent of a Sidney Lumet and Otto Preminger picture. And it goes like this: one of the jurors of a murder case (Nicholas Hoult’s devout family man) is the actual killer who unwittingly committed the crime in hand. But will he succeed in swaying the juror room that near-unanimously believes the suspect is guilty, without drawing attention to his own crime? And how will Toni Collette’s convincing prosecutor and Chris Messina’s resilient defense attorney shape the progression of the case?

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A deep skeptic of governmental institutions, Eastwood’s 40th outing as a director brings us a that rare modern-day movie, one that entertains, feels mainstream, but also asks weighty questions about the true nature of justice and fairness amid a flawed system. One of the best legal dramas of this century, Juror #2 will be streaming on Max starting Dec. 20, on the heels of a small and miscalculated theatrical release plan. And it proudly belongs to the great tradition of courtroom movies throughout cinema history.

Here are 20 of the genre’s very best across different eras and continents.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Carl Theodore Dreyer’s silent-era masterpiece features one of the most unforgettably raw performances of all time. With her soul-baring eyes (and just two feature screen credits to her name), Falconetti defines fortitude, endurance, and vulnerability for the ages, as her warrior-saint Joan of Arc—a 15th-century peasant who believed she was God’s chosen one to lead France to victory over England—gets tormented by religious court interrogators in a series of trials that eventually led to her execution. Based on original court transcripts and charged by innovative camera moves that find their hypnotic power in close-ups of Falconetti’s dignified face, this nearly 100-year-old classic is just as stirring today.

A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) (1946)

A brave WWII-era British bomber (David Niven’s Peter) falls to his death after forming an intimate connection with an American ground controller (Kim Hunter’s June) through his cockpit radio. But he survives through a cosmic mistake, falling madly in love with her in reality. A disarmingly optimistic wartime melodrama in both black-and-white and glorious color from the legendary British duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s daringly strange work follows Peter’s otherworldly trial that will ultimately decide whether he lives or dies. With an idiosyncratic sense of humor (Yanks get a coke machine in heaven) and a desperately romantic heart, Powell & Pressburger tenderly suggest Heaven and love are one and the same. Who could argue against that?

Rashomon (1950)

A landmark through which Akira Kurosawa reimagined what cinematic storytelling could be, Rashomon marries form—chiefly, immersive flashbacks executed with unparalleled finesse—with narrative intentions, following four curiously unreliable narrators recounting their own viewpoints and recollections of a rape and murder case in 12th century Japan. The quartet, made up of people from different ranks of society ranging from Woodcutters to Samurais (including one who is already dead and contacted by a medium), fiercely contradict one another, underscoring the subjective nature of perspective and the vulnerability of truth when handled with a side of self-interest. Rashomon is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time, and for good reason.

12 Angry Men (1957)

Recently lending its blueprint to Eastwood’s own contemporary noir, Sidney Lumet’s immersive procedural is set almost entirely inside a New York City jury room, where the temperature outside is unbearably hot, and the mood inside is several degrees more scorching. The case? A murder trial against a young inner-city boy, with Henry Fonda’s Juror #8 as the sole holdout who maintains his “Not Guilty” stance, slowly swaying the room to the suspect’s favor. Lumet’s blistering script both exposes the deeply classist and racist attitudes of the society, and underscores one of the major tenets of our judiciary system with intention. The point isn’t simply “guilty” vs. “not guilty”—to declare the former, you have to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Billy Wilder’s shrewdly unpredictable adaptation of Agatha Christie’s play is among the finest examples of a courtroom whodunit, with intricate plotting and vigilant character building, culminating in a rewardingly twisty ending. The story follows Charles Laughton’s London barrister who takes on a murder case despite being of retirement age and poor health. Played by Tyrone Power in his last film role, the defendant is claimed to have killed a wealthy widow. It all comes down to the testimony of his resolute war bride, played mercurially by the enigmatic Marlene Dietrich—her taking the stand is an iconic cinematic event of its own right. Lies, deceit, infidelity, and the shape-shifting nature of truth, Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution is infinitely rewatchable.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

It’s no coincidence that Justine Triet’s recent Oscar winner winks at one of the best legal dramas of all time. Otto Preminger’s procedural truly has it all: a wisecracking attorney (Jimmy Stewart with his signature alluring irritability), a cheeky judge “easily awakened by a good lawyer with a nice point of law,” Lee Remnick’s enthralling femme fatale, a canine witness, and a murder trial intertwined by a case of sexual violence, the discussion of which is ahead of its time. Even at 160 minutes, the pressure-cooker script is a breeze. And while there’s never any doubt about who committed the crime, Preminger’s masterwork of persistent camera angles and patient editing proudly lives in the gray area of a flawed justice system.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Abby Mann’s piercing Oscar-winning screenplay formulates a fictionalized version of the third Nuremberg trial, following a group of judges and legal officials who were prosecuted for their own roles in enabling Nazi Germany’s crimes against humanity. With its all-star Hollywood cast—including the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, and Spencer Tracy—distinct visual style that navigates an exact replica of the real Nuremberg court through long takes and sharp pans, and heroic examination of political schemes with genocidal ties, Stanley Kramer’s timeless epic urgently unearths how deep the layers of culpability can run in corrupt governmental systems.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Justice inside and outside the court is pursued relentlessly in Robert Mulligan’s graceful adaptation of Harper Lee’s literary masterwork. The story’s about a principled white attorney (Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch) defending a black man (Brock Peters’ Tom Robinson) tried on false and slanderously bigoted sexual assault charges in front of an all-white jury. The whole affair is remembered by the mature Scout Finch, who takes us to her childhood (Mary Badham) in the segregated South of the 30s, when her young eyes witnessed both the worst of humanity through the racism of Tom’s accusers, and the best, through her upstanding dad. It’s a timeless heart tugger at the thorny intersection of morality and fairness.

…And Justice For All (1979)

An incisive satire of the American legal system that’s more dramatic than funny, Norman Jewison’s fiery picture earned Al Pacino his first Oscar nomination as a hotheaded Baltimore lawyer who’d rather punch a judge (and go to jail) than abandon the truth. But what happens when such a fair-minded public servant perennially on the side of innocent underdogs finds himself as the defense attorney of a judge who might be guilty of rape and assault? Well, you get one hell of a sequence with Pacino declaring, “You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order!” Slightly overwrought (and much spoofed) it may be, but this is also the exact kind of rebellion one cheers for in cinematic tales of heroism.

The Verdict (1982)

A sophisticated character study interlaced with a courtroom case, Sidney Lumet and legendary playwright David Mamet give a washed-up Boston attorney—Paul Newman’s pinball-playing alcoholic, recently fallen from professional grace—a chance to bring the medical and religious perpetrators of a healthcare malpractice to justice, as well as clean up his own act in the process. The whole movie is touched by a ’70s residue of studiously brooding rhythms, grimy interiors, and sleazy characters—one, played by a razor-sharp Charlotte Rampling—and elevated by one of Newman’s career-best performances. Arriving on the heels of an intense and desperate pursuit, the victorious verdict resolves into a deeply human downbeat note in Lumet’s hands, one that rings as persistently as Galvin’s phone.

JFK (1991)

JFK is the Oppenheimer of the ‘90s with its paranoid nature, well-calibrated cuts, brainy exposition and the fact that everyone who’s anyone is in it: Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, John Candy, Gary Oldman, and more. The film’s over-40-minute trial scene doesn’t arrive until the end (the whole conspiracy-filled affair runs at a whopping 189 mins), but it’s instantly legendary, with Kevin Costner’s ardent attorney Jim Garrison arguing there was intelligence agency involvement in Kennedy’s assassination. More than 50 years after that devastating day, the sensational JFK is still a sensation. Hearts swell when Costner’s voice cracks while passionately defending the value of truth. And your blood freezes at the sound of “magic bullet,” and that stunning catchphrase: “Back, and to the left.”

A Few Good Men (1992)

Featuring one of the most quotable lines of all courtroom-centric films—“You can’t handle the truth”—the multi-Oscar-nominated A Few Good Men is among the crown jewels of films with crackling Aaron Sorkin dialogue: fast, sizzling, confident. Among the film’s many pleasures is watching Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise face off, with the latter playing a green Navy attorney who reports into Demi Moore’s Lieutenant and pursues a murder case involving two marines tried for killing a fellow soldier. A mazy and talky procedural with mainstream Hollywood sheen, A Few Good Men smartly interrogates the intersection of law, ethics, and personal honor, raising powerful questions about the ways in which they troublingly clash.

My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Courtroom movies aren’t a rare breed, but those that are this hilarious are. Jonathan Lynn’s infinitely quotable Alabama-set flick follows an idiosyncratic and heavily-accented Brooklyn couple—Joe Pesci’s cheeky attorney with no real courtroom experience and a severe dress code problem, and Marissa Tomei’s sassy hairdresser with an encyclopedic knowledge of automobiles—arriving at a Southern small town to help two youts falsely accused of murder. Every witness interrogation scene is a laugh riot of culture clash and colorful personalities. Featuring a clever smoking gun, an unsympathetic judge, the coziness of a classically wood-paneled courtroom and a grits recipe for the ages, My Cousin Vinny earned Tomei a well-deserved Oscar.

Philadelphia (1993)

Winning Tom Hanks the first of his two consecutive Oscars, Philadelphia traces the story of Andrew Beckett, an accomplished attorney who gets wrongfully terminated from his job, and sues his former employers for discriminating against him as a gay man with AIDS. Hardly the first film to confront AIDS-related injustices and biases against the LGBTQ community, but the first major Hollywood production to do so, certain aspects of Jonathan Demme’s absorbing drama might feel too coy and hetero-normative for contemporary times. But it was nevertheless a significant and deeply empathetic mainstream step that helped reshape the broad cultural understanding of HIV at the time. And it still packs a punch.

Primal Fear (1996)

This one’s got one of the most memorable twist endings of the ‘90s, and we’re talking about the era that gave us The Sixth Sense. Gregory Hoblit’s drama trails a murder case involving young Edward Norton’s shy, stuttering altar boy, accused of butchering the respected Archbishop of Chicago’s Catholic Church. The legal team? A sly Richard Gere’s arrogant defense attorney, and Laura Linney’s headstrong, principled prosecutor who happens to be his ex—a formula that is fit for screwballs and legal thrillers in equal measure. The trial scenes are bravura and intensely satisfying. And Norton’s flawless portrayal of a guileless kid who might be suffering from multiple personality disorder is worth the admission price alone.

Amistad (1997)

Trust the most disarmingly sentimental major American filmmaker to make a killer period courtroom drama, featuring one of cinema’s favorite attorneys—Matthew McConaughey, also of The Lincoln Lawyer and A Time to Kill. But the show here doesn’t belong to his Baldwin, defending—but for a while, failing to see the humanity of—a group of African men abducted for slavery. It instead belongs to a formidable Djimon Hounsou, playing one of the kidnapped men who revolted against their captors in 1839, and found themselves on an enraging trial. While Steven Spielberg masterfully orchestrates the zippy courtroom scenes with purposeful reaction shots, the real pay-off is Hounsou unforgettably rising to his feet: “Give us free.” It’s a gut punch.

Mangrove (2020)

While technically a chapter of Steve McQueen’s straight-to-streaming Small Axe, few recent-era courtroom dramas feel as cinematic, getting its name from the titular Notting Hill restaurant in London—a hub for activists in the late 60s. The passionate film follows 1970’s Mangrove Nine case, where Black activists protesting repeated instances of police harassment were tried on the false pretense of inciting a riot. Before he reaches the courtroom almost halfway through the film, McQueen lovingly invests time in the Black community he depicts, leaving us with an enduring portrait of defiance against the racist systems of injustice that rings true today. Vital, angry, and ultimately optimistic, Mangrove quietly soars with its well-earned tears and not-guilty conclusion.

Saint Omer (2022)

Alice Diop’s documentary filmmaking instincts thoroughly inform her stunning narrative feature debut, based on a real-life court case of a Senegalese immigrant, admitting to murdering her 15-month-old daughter on a beach in France without articulating a reason for it. Two lead performances are the anchor of Diop’s meticulous script—Guslagie Malanda, playing the quietly tormented mom tried in the titular French city, and Kayije Kagame, a writer observing the proceedings (and serving as a Diop surrogate). As the story unfolds in thoughtful long-takes, unraveling well-crafted details that the filmmaker pieced together from actual court transcripts, Saint Omer depicts the notions of motherhood, daughterhood, race, and shifty societal norms through moments talky and defiantly silent. A truly one-of-a-kind experience.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Did she push her husband to his death, or did she not? That’s the question at the heart of this recent Oscar winner that puts a troubled French marriage on trial when Sandra’s (a terrific Sandra Hüller) husband fatally falls from the couple’s attic window, through a mysterious incident that could be premeditated, a suicide, or simply a freak accident. Justine Triet is a virtuoso of high-wired courtroom sequences charged by fury and apprehension, made all the more complex through various languages spoken during the investigative process and a truly soul-wrenching flashback scene that lays bare one of the most realistic marital fights seen on the screen. It’s a new classic of the legal thriller subgenre that forever redefined the way we’ll hear Fifty Cent’s “P.I.M.P.”

The Burial (2023)

In this truth-based crowd-pleaser, Maggie Betts injected new life into the entertaining courtroom formula through a textbook David-vs-Goliath story that pits an independent funeral home owner (Tommy Lee Jones) against a massive “death care” corporation set to put him out of his proud business. Playing Jones’ attorney is a perfectly costumed Jamie Foxx in one of the actor’s most vibrant and loose-limbed performances. But don’t be fooled by his lighthearted, wise-cracking mode and Betts’ flawless handle on humor—the comedy here eventually darkens, exposing a broken capitalistic system of deeply rooted racism. Fast on its feet, often laugh-out-loud funny and gradually heartrending, this underseen gem is a perfect thing.

A tribute to some of the noteworthy people who died in 2024.

Crack the spine of your 2025 planner and start filling in some dates, because we’ve rounded up all the biggest new and returning shows of next year.

2024 has seen the death of plenty of TV shows, some by design—like Larry David’s long-running Curb Your Enthusiasm, the vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows, and the most unlikely spin-off hit of all time, Young Sheldon. Then there were those that had the rug pulled out from under them, like the Star Wars series The Acolyte, Netflix’s Greek god epic Kaos, and Taika Waititi’s fan-favorite Our Flag Means Death.

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Still, where some TV doors close, new browser windows open, and next year looks to be packed to the rafters with big-budget swings like a new Game of Thrones prequel and a positively stacked Apple TV+ originals slate, as well as highly anticipated returning faves like The White Lotus, The Bear, and The Traitors.

We’ve narrowed down the shows we think will be on everyone’s lips in 2025. 

Brand new

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth (Peacock)

Jan. 2

Just days before Christmas in 1988, the UK saw its deadliest terror attack in history when a Pan Am flight was blown up over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people. In Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, Colin Firth takes on the role of Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the explosion and became the spokesperson for families who lost loved ones on board. He believes the government is covering up what really happened on the flight, but as 36 years of history reveal, the story is never clear.

American Primeval (Netflix)

Jan. 9

If the title of Netflix’s gritty new drama implies something dangerous and evil, well, that’s the idea. American Primeval chronicles the birth of the American West, with all the perils and violence that came with warring cultures and religions vying for dominance. Taylor Kitsch leads Peter Berg’s series as a traumatized man traversing the terrain, with the always excellent Betty Gilpin as a mother looking for a guide across the country. They hope for freedom, but in the frontier, the best they can ask for may be survival.

The Pitt (Max)

Jan. 9

Noah Wyle as an ER doc? In 2025? It’s more likely than you think. The Pitt sees Wyle return to the fluorescent-lit hospital halls as the chief attendant at a Pittsburgh hospital. More 24 than ER, each episode of the series follows one hour in Wyle’s 15-hour shift and aims to show the relentless conditions for modern-day healthcare workers in America, from crammed waiting rooms to nursing shortages. 

Prime Target (Apple TV+)

Jan. 22

After the sob-fest that was One Day, we’re grateful that Leo Woodall’s follow-up series looks to be more adrenaline-spiking than tear-jerking. Prime Target follows Woodall’s Edward Brooks, a math genius (hence the reference to prime numbers) on the brink of a major breakthrough who senses someone may be trying to thwart his discovery. He and the FBI agent sent to spy on him (Quintessa Swindell) will attempt to unravel the conspiracy at the heart of both of their work.

Watson (CBS)

Jan. 26

If there are three things that the average TV viewer loves, they are medical dramas, police procedurals, and innovative spins on recognizable IP. Enter Watson, the new series about Sherlock Holmes’ doctor sidekick, which bills itself as part medical mystery, part detective show. Morris Chestnut takes the mantle of John Watson (following Lucy Liu’s run in the character’s last primetime procedural outing in Elementary), who, after the death of Sherlock Holmes, sets up his own practice dedicated to strange and unusual medical issues.

Paradise (Hulu)

Jan. 28

Sterling K. Brown is teaming back up with This Is Us creator Dan Fogleman for this series centered around the murder of the President of the United States (played by James Marsden, always a joy to see pop up in things). Brown plays the head of security, who just so happens to have been the last person to see him alive after being let in on something top secret and potentially world-altering. Cue the intrigue, espionage, gripping mysteries, and Brown doing what he does best: expertly playing a character we don’t know whether to root for or against.

SNL 50th Anniversary Special (NBC)

Feb. 16

SNL’s birthday bash has been a full-season affair so far, with legacy hosts and returning cast members galore. The actual big five-oh celebration for Lorne Michaels’ comedy brainchild will be a three-hour live special dedicated to the sketch show’s half-century run. Details so far are thin on the ground, with no word yet on who will take on hosting duties and who from the show’s illustrious run will be back for some nostalgic commemoration. Based on the show’s 40th anniversary special 10 years ago, we can certainly expect a carousel of big names and multiple musical guests. 

Zero Day (Netflix)

Feb. 20

Zero Day, Netflix’s upcoming political thriller, marks Robert De Niro’s first step into the world of prestige TV, an impressive feat to hold off on considering so many of his A-list peers have made the jump over the last few years. He’ll be joined by Jesse Plemons, Dan Stevens, Lizzy Caplan, and Angela Bassett in the series, about a beloved and former United States president (De Niro, naturally) as he leads the investigation into a catastrophic cyberattack.

The Americas (NBC)

Feb. 23

Move over David Attenborough, Tom Hanks is coming for your bag. Hanks takes on narrating duties for this expansive docuseries that shows the beauty of nature spanning the most remote parts of both North and South America. The series was filmed over five years, taking viewers from the top of the world in the Arctic to the bottom in the Antarctic.

Suits LA (NBC)

Feb. 23

If there’s one thing that L.A. has in abundance, it’s lawyers. So it makes sense that the first spin-off of Suits, the wildly popular, Meghan Markle-starring series about NYC attorneys that became a behemoth streaming hit after it ended in 2019, would decamp for the West Coast. The series stars Stephen Amell as a federal prosecutor from New York who moves to Hollywood to represent some of Los Angeles’ most powerful clients. Maggie Grace will also star.

Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+)

March 4

It’s been a long, long road to get us to Daredevil: Born Again’s release. The long-awaited solo return for Charlie Cox’s blind superhero outside of the short-lived Marvel-Netflix partnership was first announced in 2022, but by 2023 it was undertaking a massive creative overhaul with The Punisher’s Dario Scardapane brought in as showrunner. The show, which has been billed as a continuation of the character’s initial three-season Netflix run rather than a reboot, will bring back series originals Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio as villain Kingpin, and Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson and Karen Page to the gritty streets of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.

Dope Thief (Apple TV+)

March 14

Dope Thief is another crime novel adaptation set to hit the small screen next year. Top Gun: Maverick screenwriter Peter Craig’s 2009 story will star Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura as a duo that runs a grift posing as DEA agents to rob an unknown house in the countryside, only to realize they’ve stumbled across the biggest narcotics corridor on the East Coast. Ridley Scott will executive produce.

The Residence (Netflix)

March 20

So far, Netflix’s more than $100-million deal with Shonda Rhimes has given us the bodice-ripping behemoth Bridgerton, its spin-off Queen Charlotte, and the Anna Delvey miniseries Inventing Anna. The newest jewel in the crown is The Residence, a murder mystery set within the walls of the White House. Described as an “upstairs, downstairs, and backstairs” story, the series stars Uzo Aduba as the eccentric detective alongside Giancarlo Esposito and Randall Park.

The Studio (Apple TV+)

March 26

The sign of truly making it in Hollywood isn’t an award or a mansion in the hills, it’s wracking up enough caché to get Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Charlize Theron, Zac Efron, and Kathryn Hahn to berate you on screen. The Studio stars Seth Rogen as a movie studio head on the brink of existential crisis as he tries to toe the line between making art and “movies with a capital M.” The trailer alone is like a rolodex of big-name cameos playing heightened versions of themselves, which, when executed well, can be delightful.

Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple TV+)

April 11

Jon Hamm as a somewhat sociopathic businessman conning his way through New York? We think we’ve seen this one before. In Your Friends & Neighbors, Hamm will lead his first TV series since Mad Men and suit back up as a hedge fund manager who, after losing his job and marriage, starts stealing from the wealthy residents of his suburb. Naturally, the con gets out of hand, and when he steals the wrong thing from the wrong house, his new life of petty crime starts to unravel. The series will also star Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet.

Government Cheese (Apple TV+)

April 16

Another series in Apple TV+’s loaded slate is Government Cheese, starring and executive-produced by David Oyelowo. The surrealist comedy is set in 1969 and revolves around a quirky family in L.A. Oyelowo plays its patriarch who, after being released from prison, tries to curry favor with his wife and kids who resent his absence and have seemingly built a strange life around lofty pursuits and odd hobbies in the time he’s been away. The show is created by Paul Hunter, dubbed one of the most influential hip-hop music video directors of all time. Unsurprisingly, early images of the series look gorgeous.

Alien: Earth (FX)

Summer TBA

The Alien franchise has had a long and storied existence in cinema (the latest installment, Alien: Romulus, came out this year), but Alien: Earth will be its first live-action iteration on TV. They’ve brought in the big guns for the xenomorph’s small-screen debut, roping in Fargo series creator Noah Hawley to helm the (space) ship. The series is a prequel to the original 1979 Ridley Scott film starring Sigourney Weaver and takes place on Earth after a mysterious vessel containing a dangerous entity (three guesses for what it might be!) threatens life as we know it.

Stick (Apple TV+)

TBA

Owen Wilson is pitching on the green in Stick, a comedy about golf. He stars as Pryce Cahill, an ex-pro golfer who, after having his career prematurely cut short, becomes the coach for a troubled but talented 17-year-old. If you’ve seen Eddie the Eagle (2016) or The Karate Kid (1984), you might get a sense of what we’re in for. There’s still a lot of mystery around this series, but we do know that Timothy Olyphant and Judy Greer will also star. 

Smoke (Apple TV+)

TBA

Taron Egerton will team back up with Black Bird creator Dennis Lehane for Smoke, a fictionalized take on the true-crime podcast of the same name about the hunt for an arsonist who seemed to confess their crimes in a novel manuscript. Egerton will star as an enigmatic arson investigator on the hunt for two serial arsonists terrorizing the area. The series will also star Jurnee Smollet, John Leguizamo, and Rafe Spall.

Chief of War (Apple TV+)

TBA

Jason Momoa wears multiple hats in Chief of War, a series he wrote, executive produced and stars in. It tells the story of the bloody and brutal colonization of Hawaii from the indigenous point of view, and Momoa stars as the warrior Ka’iana, known as the “most famous Hawaiian in the world.” 

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO)

TBA

The Game of Thrones universe continues to expand its reach. Along with House of the Dragon, 2025 will see another prequel come our way. The series is set 100 years before House of the Dragon’s Targaryen turf war and is based on the ​​Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas in George R. R. Martin’s original A Song of Ice and Fire series. It revolves around a naive knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his squire known as Egg. Martin will write the series and has said it will have a different tone to its successors but it’s still Westeros so “No one is truly safe.”

Chad Powers (Hulu)

TBA

“Glen Powell Summer” is extending its run into 2025 with Chad Powers, a comedy series Powell co-created with Michael Waldron based on Eli Manning’s character of the same name. Taking inspo from Manning’s ESPN docuseries in which he went undercover during college football tryouts, Powell will play a disgraced college quarterback who tries to get a second shot at his big break by disguising himself on a new college team under a different identity (bad wig and prosthetics included!).

The Four Seasons (Netflix)

TBA

For those pleading for the return of good old-fashioned classic rom-coms, you may be in luck with The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s remake of the 1981 Alan Alda and Carol Burnett comedy, which was a love story about friendship as much as it was a romance. The story follows three couples who vacation with each other each season, but their harmony is thrown off balance when one of them gets divorced and brings a new partner into the fold. Fey will lead the show and reunite with her Date Night co-star Steve Carrell. Elsewhere in the cast, we have Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Erika Henningsen.

IT: Welcome to Derry (HBO)

TBA

The snapshots of the child-murdering sewer clown Pennywise’s history that we got in It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019) inform the story of Welcome to Derry, the prequel series about Maine’s most haunted town. Taking place 27 years before Stephen King’s original novel (because Pennywise only shows up in 27-year intervals), the show will explore the town’s first sightings and experiences with the dancing clown. Set in the 1960s, expect all the hallmarks of King’s penchant for vintage vignettes, including the looming fear of the Cold War as well as whatever monsters live beneath the sewer grates. 

Long Bright River (Peacock)

TBA

Liz Moore’s novel Long Bright River topped multiple year-end critics lists and was named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year when it was released in 2020, so naturally, it is heading to the small screen with an adaptation. Amanda Seyfried will star in the series which follows a beat cop working as the opioid crisis grips the streets of Philadelphia. Her sister, who she’s more or less estranged from, battles on the fringes of addiction and the latest danger that sweeps the city, a killer who targets sex workers.

Running Point (Netflix)

TBA

After Mindy Kaling wrapped up her Netflix high school rom-com Never Have I Ever last year, questions turned to where she’d go next. The answer is not very far. She is back with the streamer for her next creation, Running Point, a Kate Hudson-starring series about a woman who inherits the top seat of her family business—one of the biggest basketball franchises in the country. Sitcom lovers will rejoice at the show’s supporting cast, which includes Drew Tarver, of the sublimely hilarious The Other Two, Brenda Song, whose renaissance the internet is cheering on enthusiastically, and Max Greenfield, who’s not playing Schmidt from New Girl but who will always be Schmidt in our hearts.

Too Much (Netflix)

TBA

If you, like seemingly the rest of the world in 2024, decided to rewatch Girls and now yearn for more of Lena Dunham’s specific lens on the world of friendship and romance, you’re in luck! She’s back with Too Much, a series she’s written with her husband Luis Felber, about a New Yorker who moves to London after a painful breakup and meets a handsome and kind local. Considering Dunham herself moved from the Big Apple to the other side of the pond and married a hot Brit, we sense there could be some autobiographical license. If the premise wasn’t enough, Dunham has roped in Meg Stalter, consistently one of the funniest people on screen (watch Hacks!) and The White Lotus Season 2’s hunky nerd Will Sharpe. We’re so back, baby!

Victoria Beckham docuseries (Netflix)

TBA

Although Netflix’s mononymous David Beckham 2023 docuseries focused on the footballer’s ascent to “Golden Balls” status, it was his wife Victoria, the fashion designer and former Spice Girl, who came out as the real star. The series reminded viewers that behind the pout, Victoria has always had a razor-sharp wit and isn’t precious when it comes to joking about herself (as seen in her previous satirical reality show Victoria Beckham: Coming to America). Unsurprisingly, the streamer has jumped on that goodwill and greenlit another series, this time focused on Victoria and her shift from extravagant pop star to quiet luxury fashion mogul.

Returning

The Traitors Season 3 (Peacock)

Jan. 9

The most gripping reality TV series out there, The Traitors is thankfully returning very early on in 2025. Happy New Year to us! The show where celebrities are pitted against each other in a high-stakes party game of Mafia, in which some are designated secret “traitors” who are vying to get others eliminated to steal the top prize, is heading back to the Scottish Highlands with Alan Cumming as host (we would riot if not!) and the likes of Bob the Drag Queen, Chrishell Stause, Dorinda Medley, and Tom Sandoval competing in the mix.

Severance Season 2 (Apple TV+)

Jan. 17

The wait between Seasons 1 and 2 of Ben Stiller’s high-concept workplace drama felt longer than that stretch between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the office on any given Wednesday, but finally, it’s upon us. Adam Scott is back as Mark, an employee of Lumon, where employees can separate their work memories from their real-life memories. Season 1 gave us plenty of mysteries about what Lumon is actually up to; let’s hope Season 2 gives us some answers before it clocks out for the end of its shift.

The Night Agent Season 2 (Netflix)

Jan. 23

After its first season launched as one of the most watched shows in Netflix’s history, it was only a matter of time (a month, to be exact) before The Night Agent was greenlit for a second (and third) series. Gabriel Basso’s FBI agent Peter Sutherland is back for more explosive twists and turns as he gets further immersed in Night Action, a secret organization full of danger. 

Mo Season 2 (Netflix)

Jan. 30

Mo Amer’s semi-autobiographical comedy series about his life as a Palestinian refugee in Houston is back for a second season. The show, which is co-created by Ramy Youssef, will pick up with Mo’s continued attempts at seeking asylum in the U.S., but in Season 2 he’s stranded across the border in Mexico without a passport.

Yellowjackets Season 3 (Showtime)

Feb 14

What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with a bit of survival-based cannibalism? Season 2 of Yellowjackets, the dual-timeline series about a group of teens who got stranded in the wilderness, created even more tension and questions than its first outing. In Season 3, it looks like the team is getting hunted by someone who knows their secret—but everyone who knows the story is “us or dead.”

The White Lotus Season 3 (HBO)

Feb. 16

The third installment of Mike White’s resort-based murder mystery is one of the most anticipated shows of 2025, especially after the culture-shifting ending of its second season in late 2022. Following from Hawaii and then Italy, this series takes place at the White Lotus branch in Thailand. Naturally, White has cobbled together a killer (literally, perhaps) cast including Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, and Lisa from the K-pop girl group Blackpink.

Andor Season 2 (Disney+)

April 22

Star Wars spin-off shows haven’t had the most success lately, but Andor is a shining jewel among the expansive galaxy’s offerings. The show chronicles the events leading up to 2016’s Rogue One, with intelligence officer Cassian Andor anchoring the series. While Season 1 took place over a single year, Season 2 will span four years. 

The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 (Hulu)

Spring TBA

It will have been almost three years since the last season of The Handmaid’s Tale by the time Season 6, the show’s last, lands in our laps next year, but the creators have promised that the wait will have been worth it. Season 5 left us with an unlikely team-up and an increasingly authoritarian threat in Canada.

The Bear Season 4 (FX)

TBA

The Bear’s popularity has bubbled over like a pot of boiling water since its debut. Its second season swept every award going and while its third season was met with a more mixed bag of reviews, it’s still one of the most talked about shows on TV right now—not least because it’s banging out seasons in a way we haven’t seen in decades. Four seasons in four years? We forgot we could live like this!

Black Mirror Season 7 (Netflix)

TBA

Charlie Brooker’s satirical anthology about technology’s chokehold on us will be back for a seventh season, so be prepared to start looking at your cell phone or air fryer with some suspicion again. The series will include Emma Corrin, Paul Giamatti, Rashida Jones, Cristin Milioti, and Chris O’Dowd.

The Buccaneers Season 2 (Apple TV+)

TBA

Apple TV+’s answer to Bridgerton is The Buccaneers, the story of five ambitious high-society American women navigating the culture clash of 1870s London. Greg Wise and Leighton Meester will be joining the show’s second season.

Euphoria Season 3 (HBO)

TBA

Never has a TBA been more TBA than when it comes to Euphoria, Sam Levinson’s dive into the drug-addled, sex-fueled lives of teenagers. While its cast, including Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Sydney Sweeney, have entered bonafide Hollywood A-list status since its hiatus began in 2022, Levinson has confirmed that the show will be back for a third season that’s due to start filming in January. It’s said there will be a time jump from last season, meaning the characters will have aged out of being teenagers.

The Gilded Age Season 3 (HBO)

TBA

Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age, set in late-1800s New York, proves that great drama can be found anywhere, even in high-society quibbles over who has the superior opera house. Season 3 will see an evolving New York, where the old guard has been usurped and new socialites run the town. 

The Last of Us Season 2

TBA

The Last of Us became one of the most popular and gripping shows with its 2023 debut, putting to bed the idea that video games can’t be successfully adapted to the screen and solidifying Pedro Pascal’s “Internet Daddy” status. Season 2 will be based on the game’s second installment, Part II, meaning we’re time-jumping a few years into the future with Bella Ramsey’s Ellie being 19 rather than 14. 

Poker Face Season 2 (Peacock)

TBA

Rian Johnson has truly cornered the market in whodunits or, as he calls Poker Face, a howcatchem. Natasha Lyonne will return as Charlie Cale, a case-of-the-week Las Vegas detective, pointing fingers at all manner of big-name guest stars. Kumail Nanjiani, Katie Holmes, John Mulaney, Ego Nwodim, and Sam Richardson will all pop by this season.

Stranger Things Season 5 (Netflix)

TBA

It’s been so long since Stranger Things’ last season that we’re almost ready to bring “Running Up That Hill” for its second cultural renaissance just to feel something. Still, the wait will hopefully be worth it as we get ready to say goodbye to Hawkins, the Upside Down, and all the characters who are definitely still supposed to be 15-year-olds despite this show nearing its 10th anniversary. After Hawkins gave way to Vecna’s destruction last season, the gang will have to pool together one last time to save their town from its biggest villain yet. 

Wednesday Season 2 (Netflix)

TBA

Wednesday Season 1 launched to unprecedented levels of popularity in 2023, usurping Stranger Things’ chokehold when it came to streaming numbers. Its second installment has a lot to live up to, but if Jenna Ortega’s sardonic take on the classic pigtail-braided character has taught us anything, it’s that we should never underestimate The Addams Family (and that black really does look good with everything).

You Season 5 (Netflix)

TBA

Will Joe Goldberg finally get what’s coming to him? That’s the question we’ll all be asking as we head into You’s final season. After murdering his way through New York, California, and London with varying degrees of success, Penn Badgley’s stalking serial killer is back on home turf, although this time he’s got a multi-millionaire wife to hide behind.

The women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the largest unit of Black women to serve overseas during World War II, certainly put their stamp on the war effort—processing about 65,000 pieces of mail per shift. The roughly 850 officers and enlisted personnel were in charge of delivering mail from the home front to the soldiers fighting in the European theater from 1945 to 1946.

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Now, an operation that was totally behind the scenes is front-and-center in a major Hollywood production for the first time. The Netflix movie The Six Triple Eight, out Dec. 20 and directed by Tyler Perry, boasts a star-studded cast. Kerry Washington plays the leader of the battalion, Charity Adams, as she strives to prove that Black service members deserve the same respect and opportunities that white service members get. Sam Waterston plays President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while Susan Sarandon plays First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. And Oprah Winfrey plays Mary McLeod Bethune, the first Black woman to run a federal agency, who briefed FDR on the issues that mattered to Black Americans.

The Six Triple Eight follows the story of Lena Derriecott King (Ebony Obsidian), a woman from the Philadelphia area who joins the Army hoping to become a nurse after her boyfriend is killed while serving overseas. King was a real person, as was her suitor, a man from her neighborhood named Abram. In the film, King’s mother, a caterer at a local synagogue, disapproves of the match, worried about the discrimination that her Black daughter could face dating a white Jewish man. After Abram goes overseas, King writes many letters to him that go unanswered—foreshadowing her later work with the 6888—until she finds out that he has died. In the most dramatic scene of the film, King’s colleagues find a letter that Abram wrote to her that never got delivered, and Adams says the discovery made her realize why their work organizing the mail was so important.

Here’s what to know about the real women who inspired the movie and their battalion’s major accomplishments.

What it was like to be in the 6888

The women of the 6888 had to overcome a lot of discrimination, despite boasting many high achievers. Adams, a native of Columbia, S.C., graduated from high school as Valedictorian and was a member of the first officer class of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). 

White women and Black women trained together, but they couldn’t sit next to each other on buses or share living quarters. The movie shows Black women soldiers donning gas masks in rooms filled with tear gas and climbing rope ladders as part of training, and yet, being asked to give up their seats in a theater. Those kinds of indignities were par for the course, according to an article about the 6888 by military history writer Kevin M. Hymel that inspired the film.

When Adams was deployed, she didn’t know she was going to be tasked with organizing mail until a sealed envelope was plopped on her lap mid-flight. In the film, Bethune is telling President Roosevelt that the troops trained by Adams are up for the task. 

The women of the 6888th battalion went straight to work in a dark warehouse in Birmingham, England, that used to be a school. The movie shows the 6888 women hurrying to turn it into an office. Apparently, in real life, the warehouse was overrun by rats, climbing over mail bags, according to Major General Mari K. Eder’s The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II. 

“I know how this looks, ladies,” Adams said, according to Eder’s book, “And I know what you’re probably thinking. But we have a job to do, and we’re going to get it done. Now let’s get organized.” 

They had to deal with letters addressed to soldier’s nicknames, not real names, like “Junior, U.S. Army” or “Buster, U.S. Army.” Care packages often fell apart mid-transit, and the battalion was in charge of putting the contents back inside. 

“They clear the backlog faster than any civilians or military personnel who had been there before,” Lena S. Andrews, author of Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II, told TIME in 2023.

“By making sure all the mail got delivered, she really helped to keep up morale for troops in the European Theater,” Matthew F. Delmont, author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, told TIME in 2022.

Eder says some of the 6888 members found they had more freedom in England than in the U.S., where everything was segregated. They made friends with locals, and some even went on dates with English men.

After the war

After organizing 17 million pieces of mail, the 6888 was sent to France, where they had six months to clear up a two-year backlog of mail. The 6888 did it in three months. Adams was promoted to lieutenant colonel, making her the highest-ranking Black woman in the U.S. Army. 

After the war, the 6888 did some work in Paris organizing civilian mail and then the unit was deactivated in 1946. King stayed abroad for a bit, enrolling in design school in Leicester, England, and later lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for many years.

In 2022, the battalion was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States Congress. On one side of the medal is a portrait of Adams, and on the other is a large stack of letters and packages with the inscription “clearing the backlog.” In 2023, a U.S. Army base named after the Confederate General Robert E. Lee was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams, in honor of the 6888’s Adams and Arthur Gregg, another trailblazing African American in the Army.

The Six Triple Eight director Tyler Perry got to show King the movie shortly before she died. She watched it from a hospital bed. In a video he posted on Instagram, King says, “Thank you for reminding the world of the Black woman’s contribution.” King died Jan. 18, 2024, at the age of 100.

Two decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 6888th battalion showed what Black women were capable of. “What we had was a large group of adult Negro women who had been victimized, in one way or another, by racial bias,” Adams wrote in her memoir. “This was one opportunity for us to stand together for a common cause.”

Hwang Dong-hyuk has his work cut out for him. There are two more seasons of Squid Game coming up—the second premiering Dec. 26, and the third set for a 2025 release. Creating what has become one of South Korea’s most valuable intellectual properties—a 12-year ordeal in itself—has come at a price, and that’s not just counting the at least eight teeth he lost due to the stress of filming the first season. “I had to write, create and shoot seasons two and three, back to back,” he tells TIME. “Just the sheer physical volume of it all was very intense.”

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No one foresaw the runaway success of Squid Game, which was meant to be, like other South Korean dramas, a one-off. But after the 2021 show blew up and caught the attention of audiences worldwide, Netflix and the show’s creator have been working to one-up their initial offering, in hopes of expanding the legacy the series has created.

Creating the cultural phenomenon

To everyone’s surprise, Squid Game ended up as Netflix’s most viewed series to date, going on to win six Emmy awards—including a historic Best Director for Hwang—out of 14 nominations. The show would create almost $900 million in value for the company—more than 40 times the cost of producing the nine-episode dystopian drama. Its success was a testament to Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s message when he won a Golden Globe for that film just one year before Squid Game’s premiere: people can, indeed, overcome the barrier of subtitles for a promising story.

Even greater than the laurels was Squid Game’s indelible impact on pop culture. Squid Game significantly extended the global demand for Korean entertainment beyond K-pop. The trademark green tracksuits, sneakers, masks with the triangle-circle-square trinity, and even dalgona candy the show featured flew off the shelves, and video game versions spawned in the show’s wake. 

But it wasn’t just a passing fad: in the years that followed, the success of Squid Game has inspired an ever-expanding universe of content, fueling the appetite for shows echoing its themes. Culinary Class Wars, a cook-off series released earlier this year with similar ideas related to the social hierarchy, has been perceived by some audiences as “MasterChef meets Squid Game.” MrBeast promised the largest cash prize in TV history for a similar winner-takes-all game show; his company was sued for allegedly poor treatment of the contestants during its production. Squid Game gave way to its own Netflix reality game show, replicating the premise of pooling together individuals to fight to the (figurative) “death” for a $4.56 million cash prize. David Fincher reportedly will be part of an English-language adaptation of the show for Netflix. 

No Korean content from Netflix has come close to Squid Game’s success. The streaming platform is actively searching for its successor, pumping as much as $2.5 billion into K-productions. “While Squid Game has become a global phenomenon, we continue to partner with local creators to tell stories that resonate with local audiences,” Don Kang, Netflix Vice President of Content for Korea, tells TIME. For now, the streaming platform continues to squeeze everything it can out of the IP: selling tracksuits and other Squid Game merchandise, making massive Young-hee dolls appear in cities to generate buzz for the new season, and releasing its own online video game. Brands are continuously attaching themselves to what has now become a bankable franchise: Burger King France will allow customers to order from Squid Game menus, Xbox will have its own Squid Game controller, and Johnnie Walker has designed Squid Game bottles. The capitalist feast is ironic given the franchise’s anti-capitalist critique, and Netflix has received criticism for it. 

A bigger, better sophomore season

But Hwang knows it all comes back to a quality show underpinning everything now in its orbit. The pressure is on him and his team to replicate their earlier success, a tall order considering what a factor the sheer surprise of the phenomenon, impossible to replicate now, played back in 2021.

Hwang does not shy away from the primary reason he created a second—and third—season: “Money.” He says he didn’t make much during the first season—as he was paid according to his contract and not according to how well the show performed. A follow-up could give Hwang the return on his investment, and he’s promised that the show’s sophomore season will be bigger and better. “While I didn’t have any specific plans for a subsequent season, I did leave in a few untied knots in Season 1 for a story to further develop,” says Hwang. Those unanswered questions include how protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) would exact vengeance on the deadly Games’ overseer, the Front Man’s backstory, and what happens to the detective who managed to infiltrate the game—only to be shot in the end. Hwang says those loose ends “will allow for a natural and organic flow of the story,” and that expanding the in-show universe was “not that huge of a challenge.”

Choice—and the consequences of one’s choices as they “create different conflicts and divisions”—is Hwang’s focus this season. The set has been redesigned: a huge X (no) and O (yes) is now the centerpiece of the player dormitories. Now, all that’s needed for players to leave the game is a majority vote at the end of each round, and the accumulated earnings at that point would so far be equally split among the survivors. Hwang says he hopes to convey the importance of a vote to the show’s Korean audience, especially after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol threatened to end democracy in the country with a martial law declaration earlier this month. “It will be yet another opportunity for all of us to reflect on why we should be more involved and more interested in politics, why one vote that we each get to cast is so precious,” he says. 

New games and new faces

With a new installment also comes the debut of new games, as well as a whole new cast coming in after almost everyone was killed off in the last season. Lee Byung-hun, who plays the masked Front Man, says this is reason for excitement. “I think the cast itself empowers Squid Game, and in this season, they have all performed extremely well with very convincing and alive roles,” he says. Season 1’s cast was rewarded for their performances: Lee Jung-jae with an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and former cast members Oh Young-soo, Lee You-mi, and Jung Ho-yeon with various accolades for their first season characters.

And while some are reprising their roles, including Wi Ha-jun as the detective and Gong Yoo as the Recruiter, Squid Game 2 welcomes Korean industry veterans Kang Ae-sim, The Glory’s Park Sung-hoon, and Sweet Home’s Park Gyu-young and Lee Jin-uk. Also joining the cast are pop stars with established followings, including Jo Yu-ri from former girl group Iz*One, and actor-singer Yim Si-wan. “The second season is not only a lot more dynamic, but it’s also a lot greater in scale,” Lee Byung-hun adds.

A new player roster also presents several new personal and grounded storylines: from a mother and son pairing, to a transgender woman who needs money for gender-affirming surgery, to a YouTuber who lost large sums in a cryptocurrency scam. Lee Seo-hwan, who briefly appeared in Season 1 as Gi-hun’s friend at the horse race, takes on a bigger role as he joins the Game just as Gi-hun reenters. “I guess he’s a big risk factor to Gi-hun regarding his big plan,” Seo-hwan tells TIME, given the personal connection between his character and Gi-hun. 

Meanwhile, Lee Byung-hun says his character, whom we knew little about last season, will have his story fleshed out. Lee Jung-jae says his measure of success for his own performance is telegraphing the complex morality of his character, as Gi-hun constantly calculates the correctness of his choices.“He ultimately tries to do the right thing, but along the path to doing the right thing, there are so many temptations to choose little things that are bad,” Byung-hun tells TIME, even if those little things ultimately serve Gi-hun’s greater end goal.

It remains to be seen how the new episodes will stack up against the first set among audiences and critics, though Squid Game 2 got an early boost when it was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best TV Drama before its premiere. For Hwang, awards aside, the show must entertain, first and foremost. “I hope that you can spend the year end watching the show, just have a blast, escape from reality and have a lot of fun,” he says. “As a creator, nothing will be more rewarding than that.”

NEW YORK — MrBeast’s ambitious reality show, which the YouTube megastar hopes will expand his giant online reach and turn the corner on recent controversies, is already raising questions from consumer advocates over a partnership with a fintech company.

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Prime Video’s Thursday premiere of the record-setting Beast Games capped off a tumultuous year for Jimmy Donaldson and his production company. Shortly after reaching never-before-seen YouTube subscriber totals, MrBeast began facing heightened scrutiny over past “inappropriate content,” the channel’s philanthropic efforts, its workplace culture and allegations of dangerous on-set conditions that Donaldson has denied.

As MrBeast’s loyal following tunes in to watch 1,000 contestants compete for $5 million on Beast Games, they are invited to scan a QR code for a shot at winning their own life-changing money. It’s a $4.2 million sweepstakes run by fintech company MoneyLion, an app that sends cash advances— often for a fee to workers living paycheck to paycheck.

The collaboration is billed as a way for MrBeast, who has sought to regain brand trust in recent interviews with alternative media personalities, to give back to his fanbase while presenting them with MoneyLion’s personal finance tools. But consumer advocates warn MoneyLion’s early payments—which are also promoted to giveaway entrants—operate as payday loans that could trap needy users in earnings-depleting borrowing cycles with additional fees.

Watchdogs find that those services are not recommendable for younger audiences, making it an unusual partner for MrBeast to introduce to his persuadable fandom.

“These types of high-cost, fintech payday loans, wrapped up in fancy apps, just put people in a debt trap where they have to borrow this week’s pay to pay last week’s loan and (it) sets them back in their financial goals,” said Lauren Saunders, a director at the National Consumer Law Center who specializes in small dollar lending.

Beast Games marks Donaldson’s crossover into television entertainment. The North Carolina native has already captured online attention spans with his highly-produced, fast-paced YouTube videos that often feature absurd stunts and massive cash sums; “Beat Ronaldo, Win $1,000,000” recently pit professional athletes against amateurs in their respective sports.

He’s now testing the broad appeal of those viral spectacles as the host of a competition series that promises “nail-biting, physical, mental, and social challenges” similar to Netflix’s fictional survival drama Squid Game. The $5 million prize is believed to be the largest in reality television history. Donaldson posted recently that he spent $14 million alone “building a city in a field” for the contestants remaining after an initial series of tests. He gave away $2 million alone in the first episode of the 10-part series, which largely consisted of mental trials as he bribed players to eliminate themselves or their entire teams with cash rewards up to a hundred grand.

The sweepstakes was placed prominently during a supersized game of team cup pong in the second episode. A link also appears in the YouTube description from Thursday’s upload of the preliminary Beast Games round in Las Vegas.

“For a limited time only, one person watching this right now also has a chance to win $250,000 in the MoneyLion Beast Games Giveaway,” Donaldson said as a QR code and URL flashed across the screen.

MoneyLion’s partnership will bring “fans closer to the action than ever before,” according to a company press release. Over 1,000 prizes will be awarded to MoneyLion accountholders across eight drawings over the next year. Additional entries can be earned through daily log-ins on the MoneyLion app, where users are promised exclusive, behind-the-scenes content from the series. Consistent with sweepstakes law, participants must be legal U.S. residents ages 18 or older.

Upon entering the giveaway, a popup asks, “Want more ways to get money?” with an invitation to borrow money through MoneyLion’s loan services. Consumer watchdogs say cash advancements can come with steep costs despite casting themselves as “no interest” loans.

Users must pay a sliding “turbo” fee to get their “Instacash” advancements “within minutes” instead of waiting the 2-5 days that MoneyLion estimates it would otherwise take to hit an external checking account. The company charges $8.99 for the maximum advance of $100.

That makes MoneyLion one of the “more expensive options in this market,” according to Center for Responsible Lending Senior Policy Counsel Andrew Kushner. Considering the products are geared toward cash-strapped people who need money now, Kushner said most users end up paying the fees.

These apps create a “cycle of borrowing” as financially vulnerable users try to keep up with the “extremely high cost of the loan relative to the size,” according to Kushner. The Center for Responsible Lending found that users of these apps experienced a 56% increase in checking account overdrafts. Borrowers who use these “earned wage access” services withdrew 36 times a year, according to a 2021 California Department of Financial Protection report.

A 2022 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawsuit alleges that MoneyLion misled users to believe they could easily end monthly memberships necessary to access some installment loans but then refused to cancel those with outstanding loans.

A representative for MrBeast declined to comment. In an emailed statement, a MoneyLion spokesperson said the company pairs financial tools and products to support “long-term financial health and stability”—all of which will be promoted to Beast Games Giveaway participants. MoneyLion said it will “continue to collaborate with regulatory bodies” including CFPB, according to the spokesperson, and focus on ensuring its products are “accessible, fair, and designed to create the best outcomes for our customers.”

Its “Instacash” fees are “clearly disclosed,” the spokesperson wrote, and the service helps workers “break the traditional payroll cycle” to “meet unexpected financial obligations.”

“The Beast Games Giveaway is designed exclusively for an 18+ audience and represents a groundbreaking way to combine engaging content with accessible financial education,” the spokesperson said. “Through this collaboration, participants gain exposure to MoneyLion’s diverse marketplace of financial products, tools, and content.”

Saunders, the consumer protection lawyer, said some lenders provide financial wellness tools that are really just “sugarcoating” their high-cost loans.

It’s “concerning,” according to Kushner, to advertise such a service toward younger adults who are still developing their sense of financial responsibility and are more susceptible to “the slick marketing of this industry.”

“You can see at 18 (years old) how that could be a really exciting thing to have in front of you,” Kushner said. “But it can really have negative consequences once you go down the pathway of using it.”

BRISBANE, Australia — Australian breaker Rachael “Raygun” Gunn has tried to be a good sport about the jokes and criticism that poured in from around the globe after her controversial performance at the Paris Olympics.

But maybe “Raygun: the Musical” was a bridge too far.

Comedian Stephanie Broadbridge called off the show just hours before it was set to premiere in Sydney, after Gunn’s lawyers contacted its comedy club venue and threatened legal action.

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Broadbridge told her social media followers that the lawyers had trademarked the poster for the musical and told the comedian she could not do Gunn’s notorious kangaroo dance because the Olympian who went viral for her performance in Paris owns it.

Gunn, a 37-year-old Sydney university lecturer, has said the fallout from her gig at the August debut of Olympic breaking left her “devastated” and forced her to retire from competition. Still, she said she appreciated the attention from famous comedians like late-night host Jimmy Fallon. “I don’t think I’m in a place yet to watch it but I will watch it at some point,” she said.

On Thursday, Broadbridge provided an update on Instagram, revealing the musical had been rebranded as “Breaking: The Musical.” The tagline: “A completely legal parody musical.” A new tongue-in-cheek poster features the silhouette of a kangaroo in Raygun’s most memorable pose.

In a statement posted to Instagram on Thursday, Gunn said that her legal team had “resolved everything” after coming to an agreement with Broadbridge.

“She still gets to go ahead with the musical, she’s got a new name, new poster, and she still gets to take that show on the road. So I’m really happy for her and I wish her all the best with the show and with the tour,” Gunn said.

She denied reports that she’d sought a 10,000 Australian dollar ($6,230) payment for the use of her name.

“We have not sought any costs from all this. So there’s a lot of talk around this $10,000 … that was from really early on, like day one, my lawyers were acting on my behalf.”

Earlier media reports said Gunn’s lawyer were asking the musical’s promoter and Darlinghurst’s iD Comedy Club owner Anthony Skinner to pay at least that $10,000 in legal fees.

Skinner, who was planning to send the proceeds from the show to a Sydney women’s shelter, was quoted by Australian media as saying he couldn’t have asked for better publicity for the fledgling production which is now set for Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in the first few months of next year.

Gunn said in her social media video that the decision to demand her name be removed from the musical was not about not “being able to take a joke.”

“I really do strive to support creativity and have loved the ways my performance has sparked so many different artistic interpretations, and there was so many fantastic memes that were clever, and funny and creative,” she said.

I’m listening intently as Rose Matafeo asks our server at London’s Soho Hotel for her recommendations on red wine, discussing which of the options are light and which are more full-bodied. Is Matafeo a wine connoisseur in the making? “God, no. I think you just have to be confident,” she says once she’s made her decision. “It’s an adult move when you start knowing how to order a drink,” she notes, adding that until you get there, you’re “just smiling and nodding, and not knowing what the f-ck everyone else is talking about.”

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Matafeo and I met in November, a few days after she filmed two back-to-back comedy gigs in London, which have been edited into a special titled On And On And On, now streaming on Max. I attended the first of the two, which, she insists, “was, I’m gonna say it, bad. Most of that did not make the edit.” There wasn’t much she could have done about it. “I had laryngitis. I didn’t have a voice [earlier that week] and I was totally ‘roided up. I cried about seven times that day. I cried five minutes before I performed that show. I was panicking,” she confesses, relieved when I tell her that I didn’t pick up on any of that from the audience.

Matafeo, 32—who is best known for Starstruck, the series she co-wrote and starred in between 2021 and 2023—hails from New Zealand but moved to London in her 20s for “love.” (To be with her then-boyfriend, British comedian James Acaster.) Her outlook on relationships and the breakups she’s encountered along the way partly inspired her special. The crux of the show is formed on a “humble note” from the Notes application on her iPhone. Although, as Matafeo admits to the audience, at 16,000 words, it’s less of a note and more of a manifesto. For effect, Matafeo has printed it out and lays it out on the stage. Save for the first line, which reads, “I may have a lot of problems, but at least I have a heart,” she keeps the rest to herself, only paraphrasing that it contains ramblings and realizations brought on by the breakdown of a romantic relationship. She shares her feelings on love, breakups (harder in your 30s, as people are breaking up with the real you), growing older, and general life reflections that her fellow millennials will no doubt relate to.

The audience at her London shows got to see Matafeo self-edit and tweak her show in real time. “We’re keeping that in!” she would say after some jokes, relishing the laughter, while other parts had her saying, “That won’t make the cut.” One bit that ended up on the cutting room floor was related to Taylor Swift. Matafeo was discussing the integral role music can play when you’re getting over a breakup, and how suddenly every song relates to your situation. But despite her friends’ recommendations, she had no desire to listen to Swift. Matafeo explained that she doesn’t want to endanger her own life by speaking her truth (Swifties are known for their passionate defense of the singer), but went on to say, “music of that woman means absolutely nothing to me.”

I could feel the nervous laughter of the audience around me as Matafeo quipped that she didn’t feel safe proceeding with the routine, before continuing her commentary on the “adult Swifties” who attended the Eras Tour, swapping friendship bracelets and “dressing up like pencil cases from Claire’s Accessories.” When I ask whether she really planned to edit it out for fear of the wrath of fans, she says there were other factors at play. “It was too long, and also, I like that it’s something of an Easter egg for people who saw the show live. It was basically me talking sh-t, which is most of stand-up really. I think it’s best left for the live arena, but I’m glad I did it in the live shows.”

Matafeo shared further behind-the-scenes insight into the special before opening up about the art of sharing her life on stage while trying to maintain privacy, the power that comes from embracing big life decisions, and more.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

TIME: Despite the fact you were having a difficult day behind-the-scenes, you seemed confident when you came out on stage. After the set, as you returned to the stage to do extra filming bits and sit with the audience and riff, I noticed a shift. You were no longer as comfortable, and joked about the awkwardness. As a self-professed introvert, do you have to make a conscious shift of turning on the stand-up persona before stepping out to do a set?

Matafeo: That bit afterwards, when I had to come back out, that was the real me. It was so difficult because I’m sh-t at improvising in those moments. I get stage fright, in a way. Weirdly, a wash of relief came over me because I was like, “That’s [the stand-up] done now.” I felt a little bit more myself, and myself is nervous on stage, mumbling and talking about The Phantom of the Opera or something.

When you develop a show over time, you find your rhythm and build up this character. There is a mode you can go into when repeating a show over and over. It was the first time I’d done the show in that place, so looking out at the audience, you’re completely out on a limb. That was part of the terror of the show. There were very nice crowds, thankfully. When you do those shows, you want to lighten the crowd a little bit, but I could see people I knew. I don’t like talking to the crowd, so I just keep them in soft focus.

The kick-starting conversation for your special revolves around a note you wrote on your iPhone Notes app. You only read out the first line. But I wonder, is there anyone on the planet that would get full access to that note in its entirety, or even just your Notes app in general?

That’s such a good question. No, I don’t think there is. Even my closest, closest friends. I wouldn’t want them to see that. It’s like reading a diary. It’s weird, the idea of something so private existing on a device that literally anyone could get into. To be honest, the note is so f-cking long it barely makes sense. Some of it is so cringe-inducing. I stand by what I said in the show—that when you go back through your notes, it’s like a stranger has hacked into your phone and written some of the most bat-sh-t crazy things. You have to know it’s part of you, though. You can’t distance yourself from it, as we all contain multitudes.

You talk through a variety of topics in your special, from how it’s much harder to deal with being dumped in your 30s to how you turned to online relationship coaches at your lowest, or funny realizations about your high school years. Do you ever give the real-life people you talk about a heads-up ahead of time?

I don’t, because I hope I make the scenario abstract enough where it’s recognizable for them or others. I think it’s a good practice to have. The broader you can make it, the more people can connect to a situation. It comes down to protecting my privacy, too.

It’s interesting you mention privacy. We live in a world where people don’t just watch and listen to things anymore, they become online sleuths. The Baby Reindeer experience was a prime example of that. Armchair detectives took over, attempting to uncover the real-life identities of certain characters…

It’s f-cking dire. So much of what is good about stand-up is speaking from personal experience and being real and truthful. But that sucks because of the parasocial nature of fandom now. I grew up in the Internet culture of sleuthing things out, but it’s really strange when it becomes about you. It definitely makes me think harder about how I talk about myself. I did a podcast with my friend Alice [Sneeden] and it was so real, almost like private conversations. But there came a point when I was like, “I don’t know if I want people to know everything about me.” It feels like a bit of a shame but also a sign of maturation.

I found it really refreshing during your special when you spoke about the moment when you realized that rather than asking yourself, “Should I have children?” you should instead ask yourself, “Do I want to have children?” It then brought you to the realization that you don’t. How has it been opening up about that in front of an audience?

I’ve had a couple of people after the shows say they got weirdly emotional after hearing that. I have really loved and benefited from all the women who I’ve seen comfortably talk about that, so it’s nice to hear that people are connecting to [me doing] that. 

I’ve had conversations in my own life about whether or not I want children. Oftentimes, when I say I’m not sure and that I might not, I notice that it’s the other person who feels the most uncomfortable. They feel as though they have to fix it or say, “You might change your mind!” Is that something you’ve encountered?

100%. Both teams are trying to recruit you. I’ve been in the stage where I say, “I don’t think I want kids.” And then it got easier to start saying “I don’t,” because for me, it was a concrete position. Also, anyone has the right to change their minds. It’s not a f-cking contract. The worst thing is that idea that the way in which one person chooses to live their life is a threat to the other person’s life. It’s not a criticism of people who do decide to have children. But I feel like that’s in the air, even politically.

It’s very much in the air politically. There were conversations in the U.S. earlier this year, after comments made by J.D. Vance—in which he expressed that people who have children should have more voting power than those who don’t—resurfaced ahead of the presidential election. The idea being that people have less of an impact on the future and thus should have less of a voice because they’re not procreating.

You kind of take away these layers of what people are outwardly saying and what they’re really saying. It’s essentially someone telling you that you were put on this earth to procreate, and that is what womanhood is. I’m a Pisces. I can’t make decisions, at all, yet this is probably one of the decisions in my life where I’m like, “Yeah, this is something I believe I’m happy with.” The fact it riles up, you know, bastards, is just an added bonus. 

I’m interested in how you approach addressing politics and world issues as a stand-up comedian. We have people in the public eye talking out matters such as women’s rights and the Israel-Hamas war, the very topics that are on people’s minds. Do you think about such things when writing or do you want to make your show an escape from politics?

I obviously have political views, which are explored in many different ways. It’s not so much at the forefront of my shows, because it’s not my style, but I never shy away from what I believe. It’s more subconscious. Also those things are very serious things. I would want what I’m saying about it to be something I can really stand by, because I wouldn’t want to be glib. Stand-up, a lot of the time, is about referencing your take on the world around you, which is going to be topical and political. But you’ve got to find what is funny in that. I hope I do that.

Away from your stand-up, you’re now portraying the Taskmaster on the junior version of the game show, which is a full-circle moment after you were a competitor on the main series in 2019. I was unsure at first when I heard about the junior reiteration, wondering how children would deal with the pressure, but they seem to deal with it better than the adults!

They really do. They are so supportive of each other. They’ve got a great attitude when it comes to competing. It puts the f-cking adults to shame. [Laughs] It was just really fun to watch them. I loved watching Taskmaster and being on it. When I went to the U.S. to do press for the third series of Starstruck, everyone was asking me about Taskmaster. I think Seth Meyers is a fan. When I went on his show, the writers were talking to me about the series.

Speaking of Starstruck, it’s rare to get that level of control on a project—to be able to create a series, co-write it, play the lead character, and even direct some of the episodes. How do you feel looking back on that experience?

It’s ruined me forever. [Laughs] It couldn’t have been more amazing in that sense. A lot of things have to go right to get me to that point. But I feel lucky to have been surrounded by the right people. I’m an easily embarrassed person. I’m very hard on myself. It’s nice to have something to look back on that I’m happy with. That’s so rare for me to say.

You joke in your stand-up special that you’re famously not good at endings. But things were wonderfully wrapped up in the third series of Starstruck when it aired in 2023. We witnessed your character Jessie get some much-needed closure. You’ve previously said that character is the closest you think you’ll ever get to playing yourself, so do you think you’ll return to her some day?

I love how we ended it. And a trilogy is so nice to me. There are some series that I revisit and they don’t feel as though they still hold up, but I think Starstruck does. The amount of life you live between the ages of 26 to 30 is monumental. It’s such a mental shift for your brain. The version of me in the first series compared to me in the third series… it’s just an amazing time capsule which I’m so grateful to have. I’m now nearing the age that my character is in the third series of Starstruck. And some of the things that are happening—friends getting married, having babies—it’s so similar to what happened on the show. It’s f-cking weird! Perhaps [we could do] a special, but I have no current plans for another season. Until I’m offered millions of pounds to bring it back. I’ll have no values then.

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Virgin River season 6

In its sixth season, Virgin River built up to a moment that fans have been waiting for since the series began in 2019: Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack (Martin Henderson) finally tied the knot in the tenth episode. Their storybook wedding went off with very little drama, aside from Mel’s father Everett (John Allen Nelson) missing the ceremony because he was in the hospital. (He did make it to the reception to sing her a special song.)

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But this is Virgin River, a town known for its beautiful vistas, cheery residents, and some of the hottest gossip you’ll ever see on TV. After the happy couple made it official, the bombs started dropping, ending the season on a juicy cliffhanger, with one character’s fate hanging in the balance. Virgin River, which was just renewed for another season—making it Netflix’s longest-running English language drama series—is known for these twists and turns. TIME spoke to Virgin River showrunner, producer, and writer Patrick Sean Smith about the final moments of the season, and what to expect for the beloved characters of this idyllic, but cursed California enclave.

Doc’s medical license 

At the start of the season, Tim Matheson’s Doc was celebrated by his family and friends at the clinic, where they honored his 30 years of working as a doctor in Virgin River. But after a house call lands a patient in the hospital, Doc’s expertise is questioned by another doctor. This leads to an investigation into his medical license, threatening everything he’s ever worked toward. In the finale, his wife Hope (Annette O’Toole), who is also the town’s mayor, reveals that she got a call that a larger hospital network is looking to expand into Virgin River, threatening the future of Doc’s clinic. “It throws everything up in the air professionally for Doc in season seven,” Smith says. “It also gets Hope involved as the mayor who is looking to protect what’s most valuable to her, which are Doc and the integrity of the town.” 

Lark drains Brady’s bank account

For most of the season, Lark (Elise Gatien) was trying to con her boyfriend Brady (Ben Hollingsworth) into giving her all of his money. She was secretly working with the father of her child, Jimmy (Ian Tracey), whose work for local drug lord Calvin landed him in jail. Luckily, Brady’s ex-girlfriend and Jack’s sister Brie (Zibby Allen) happened to be visiting a client at the jail when she saw Jimmy and Lark talking, which led her to telling Brady about what she saw. After learning that his girlfriend was playing him, Brady decided not to give Lark any money, which she had said was for her sick mom. 

But after Brady realizes that he can’t have Brie (more on that later) and Lark realizes that Brady is actually a good guy, the two decide to really commit to each other. “It was real, but complicated,” Smith says. “If Brady lived in a world where Brie didn’t exist, then Lark would seem viable. But that’s not the case, and that’s what makes it messy.” The mess only continues when Brady talks to Brie at Mel and Jack’s wedding and they reveal their feelings for each other. Brady is unaware that Lark is in earshot and overhears their conversation. At the wedding, Brady gives Lark’s daughter his phone to play a game. By the time the night is over, Brady doesn’t realize that Lark and her daughter have taken off. When he looks at his bank account, he sees that all his money is gone. What happens next? Smith says that Brady will start looking for answers—and reconcile how he treated Lark in the past along with what reality there could actually be for him and Brie in the future.

Brie tells Mike she cheated on him 

Speaking of Brie, Jack’s sister is really going through it. She’s torn between two men: Brady and Mike (Marco Grazzini). “With Brady, there’s passion and sex, and with Mike, there’s safety, stability, and comfort,” says Smith. “Both of those are important qualities in a relationship, but Brie is in this unenviable place where she’s getting one from one guy and one from another and she can’t choose which path is best.” This leads her to making some tough decisions. In season 6, she’s perfectly happy with Mike, but ends up sleeping with Brady. 

In the finale, after Mel and Jack get married, Mike proposes to Brie, and she tells him that she cheated on him. He responds by telling her that he knows. Smith reveals that they shot this scene in two ways: one version where Mike says he knows and one where he doesn’t. “I watched it with some of the writers on the show who didn’t realize that we added a line because it wasn’t in the script,” he says. “There were just audible gasps, so that was the one we went with.”

Mel and Jack’s adoption journey 

Throughout the series, Mel has been very candid about her struggles to have a baby, and this season, she and Jack were enthusiastic about adopting, though they were early in the process. The day after their wedding, Mel is approached by one of her patients, Marley (Rachel Drance), who is pregnant. She announces that the couple who was supposed to adopt her baby are getting cold feet, and she wants Mel to adopt the child instead. 

For Smith, this was a complex situation that felt exciting to play with. Before the wedding, Mel had a hard time embracing good things that happened to her because of all the tragedies she’d suffered in her life. “It was interesting to see how her character would react, the next day after her storybook wedding to have this other thing that she’s wanted the entire series just offered up to her,” Smith says. Though she’s desperate to have a baby, Marley’s offer comes with a lot of complicated factors. On an ethical level, Marley is Mel’s patient. And even though Mel knows Marley, Jack doesn’t at all.

Charmaine is MIA 

This season, new mom Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley) is balancing her twin babies as well as a looming and dangerous situation. The babies’ dad Calvin is out of jail—and he’s trying to make Charmaine’s life as miserable as possible, even threatening her safety. Then, on Mel and Jack’s wedding day, she doesn’t show up. She’s supposed to do Mel’s hair and is nowhere to be seen. 

The following day, Jack decides to go to Charmaine’s house to make sure that everything is okay. When he gets there, he opens the door to a room, his eyes go wide, and the episode cuts to black and ends on this cliffhanger. 

Smith won’t reveal what happened to Charmaine, but he knew that he wanted to end the season that way because he’s got a bigger plan in season seven. He’s also thrilled that people are invested in Charmaine, who was once Mel’s biggest antagonist and a thorn in Jack’s side. “Histrocially she was a polarizing character,” he says. “I love people caring about her!” 

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