Ani Bundel has been blogging professionally since 2010. This is her second major independent site launch. A DC native and Keyboard Khaleesi, she spends all her non-writing time photographing her cats. Regular bylines also found on MSNOW.
BritBox
When Mr. Loverman debuted on the BBC in October 2024, the critical reviews were laudatory, praising the work of stars Lennie James as Barrington "Barry" Walker, the titular Loverman of the title, Sharon D Clarke as his wife Carmel, and Ariyon Bakare as Morris, Barry's BFF
BBC
This decade has been several flavors of awful for the entertainment industry since the pandemic first hit in March 2020, followed by the double strike of 2023. Five years in, the aftereffects are still everywhere, from the ongoing sale of the 115-year-old Paramount Studios to the multiple rounds of layoffs
Channel 4
British mysteries, no matter when they are set, consistently find an audience in the U.S. The same cannot be said about legal dramas, Rumpole's success in the early 1980s notwithstanding. Period piece legal dramas do ok, especially ones attached to Agatha Christie-style whodunits. But contemporary legal dramas
BBC
Entertainment is a political business. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Every TV series and movie released into the world is a product of not just someone's imagination (and a whole lot of hard work from artists), but is a testament to the social mores and
Netflix
It is quickly becoming a truth universally acknowledged that Netflix has won the streaming wars in the U.S., at least in terms of subscription numbers*. However, the platform is being a spoilsport in victory, unwilling to admit it was wrong about binge-watching. Instead, it's turned to batch
AMC/AMC+
Police procedurals and "cozy crime" series have been a staple of television since its inception. Not just Law & Order type series like Dragnet, but Agatha Christie style mysteries based on novels, where small picturesque places find themselves involved in murder. One reason the genre has such enduring
HBO & HBO Max
As everyone has probably heard by now, the slow pivot by Warner Bros. Discovery back to where everything was before CEO David Zaslav started going full DOGE on it culminated in May 2025 with the announcement that the streaming service that was once called HBO Max before dropping "the
Apple TV
Fans of Apple TV+'s Slow Horses, based on the Mick Herron thrillers The Slough House Series, prepare to ride out in the fall. The series, which has slowly built itself into one of Apple TV+'s most reliable and solid performers over four seasons, has set a
Netflix
Netflix subscribers who didn't pay close attention to the entertainment landscape were probably startled to be bombarded over the final weekend of May 2025 with ads for TUDUM. The horrendously named PR marketing event* primarily serves as a way to circumvent professional critics who cover television, hoping that
BritBox
It is rare for daytime soaps from other countries to find homes in the U.S., unless they are a specific kind of Mexican telenovela shown on U.S. Spanish-speaking networks. That's just one of the reasons the Northern Ireland-set series Hope Street has been such a surprise
Now Stream This
We've reached June, which is a moment of reset for the world of television. Despite awards shows like The Golden Globes and the TV BAFTAs moving to a calendar year eligibility (January to December) in recent years, as the advent of streaming upended the traditional TV season, the
Movies
We've officially reached the 100-day mark until the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the third and, as the title desperately insists, final big-screen installment* of the beloved franchise that began 15 years ago on ITV and PBS. A series that consistently surprised both producers and critics