Pop Culture Calendar

Genre

Medical drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Fox/Hulu

A doctor forgets the last eight years of her life after suffering a brain injury and learns that in that time she’s become estranged from almost everyone she loves. The soapiness would be enough for me -- amnesia! love triangles! the giant bandage she wears for several episodes that you would normally only see on cartoon characters when they have a toothache! — but I do actually find the central concept touching. A miserable workaholic who’s alienated all of her friends and family gets a second chance. It’s like the “you there! what day is it today?” ending of A Christmas Carol stretched out over ten episodes.

A sweeping epic about lovers across decades and continents, this book stretches from 1940s China to 2000s US.

What if Fox News turns people into ACTUAL zombies? Horror.

A political reporter’s gay brother runs for Congress as a conservative. Seems like a lighthearted, relationship-focused debut.

Nonfic: essays on early 2000s culture.

Genre

Medical drama

Status

NEW

Watch

HBO

The best show on TV but I save it for a weekend afternoon because it can be harrowing. Fifteen episodes, each representing an hour in a single emergency room shift. Phenomenal cast, a master class in pacing, the platonic ideal of a TV show. Plus for the original ER fans, Noah Wyle coming full circle as the weathered but kindhearted head of it all makes me sentimental. I find him hotter now, somehow? Weigh in.

queer scifi heist with lots of inspiration from Hawaii. Great if you feel like ripping off a billionaire.

A meta scifi memoir with a book within a book that is almost certainly going to win a ton of awards next year.

Book about queer love and soulmates over decades

An oral history of a tragic love story set in the world of figure skating. I've heard so much about this one but when I started it, I realized somehow no one had mentioned that it’s a Wuthering Heights retelling!

Genre

Comedy

Status

S5

Watch

HBO

You really don’t need to know a single thing about Batman to enjoy Harley Quinn but if you live on this planet in this time period, you probably DO know some stuff about Batman, in which case I can promise you this is one of the very best adaptations I’ve seen. Either way, you're going to have a good time. The show follows Harley from the moment she dumps the Joker for good and starts living her own life as a villain/superhero/something-in-between. It’s a consistent hit of joy and has been from the margarita mix gag in the very first episode. This season has Harley and Poison Ivy making a fresh start in Metropolis, where they stand out like sore thumbs amid all the alien perfection. If it’s the last one, I will be grateful we got what we got, but I hope for many more.

A woman tries to make a blob into her ideal boyfriend. Weird Science but with a blob found by a dumpster?

From the author of Black Cake, this is a multigenerational epic about how a tragedy affects a family.

I liked the author's previous book, the offbeat Everyone in this Room will Someday Be Dead.

Nonfic: an oral history of women in '90s rock

Genre

Comedy

Status

S4

Watch

Apple TV

Mythic Quest is back to form after a somewhat lackluster season 3. Weirdly one of the most feminist shows on TV and certainly the only one I can think of where women’s hair is allowed to go gray. (Once you notice this, it will be impossible to un-notice.)

I love every character in this comedy set at a video game company, from the psychotic conservative assistant to the beleaguered head of the art department to evil Danny Pudi, but I am an Ian and Poppy evangelist. Imagine if Mac from Always Sunny was still Mac but rich and successful and in a codependent partnership with a genius with fewer social skills than Charlie Kelly, and you kiiind of get it. I hate to compare Poppy to another character, though, when Charlotte Nicdao is doing such great original work that consistently makes me laugh. With a fantastic ensemble cast and a writing staff drawn from Always Sunny and Community, this show is underrated and underseen; if you’re not convinced, go watch S1E3 and see if it’s your thing. (But then go back and watch the whole season because the episode shot during COVID is the best lockdown episode of TV ever produced and it won’t hit the same otherwise.)

Genre

Legal procedural

Status

NEW

Watch

CBS/Paramount Plus

Someone was like “let’s remake Matlock with Kathy Bates” and then someone else was like “but wait don’t we also need a giant, stupid twist that will make the audience decide not to watch past the first episode?” I still watch though! Somehow I've fallen under the spell of folksy, secret shark of a lawyer Maddy Matlock.

A creepy governess horror. "Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House."

Historical fiction about the lavender marriage behind a soapmaking empire in early 1900s New York. Completely unironically, I have never read a fiction book about soapmaking or perfumes that I didn't like (Lavender House by Lev Rosen, Lisa Kleypas' Wallflowers series, Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher).

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Prime Video

Laverne Cox comedy about a trans woman coming back to her small southern hometown after decades away. This seems heartwarming and beamed here from Earth 2.

A dystopia set in near-future Texas where women rise up to overthrow the government and save literature.

sexy evil spider! f/f monster fucking! "The Shape of Water meets Mexican Gothic"! (crowd cheers)

A reality star who married into economic and literal royalty is in lockdown at the ancestral estate when the heiress to the fortune is murdered. "Succession meets Saltburn"

I can't tell if this thriller has any supernatural elements, but it does have exclusive secret societies, sinister boarding schools, and people who will do anything for fame.

Four of our most famous female crime writers (including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh) were once known as the Queens of Crime. In Benedict’s fictional novel inspired by a real life event, these authors come together to try to solve an actual murder.

Lipman is one of my top authors of relationships fiction (some people call this women’s fiction). Her newest is set at an estate liquidation business.

This is scifi but the description, which asks questions about a woman's right to bodily autonomy when she's pregnant, barely reads like it these days.

Genre

Really
fucked up drama

Status

S3

Watch

Paramount Plus

I fell off on my teen cannibals after season one but am always thinking of catching up.

Genre

Rich people drama

Status

S3

Watch

HBO

I'm actually not the biggest White Lotus fan but I respect what is left of appointment television.

A woman in love with her best friend becomes obsessed with finding the truth when he’s accused of the murder of his newest girlfriend.

A retelling of the lesbian vampire classic Carmilla.

Genre

Historical drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Hulu

A show about underground boxing and crime families set in 1800s London starring Erin Doherty who played the title role in one of my favorite TV shows of recent years Chloe. Chloe was a British show (available in the US on Prime) about a woman who uses knowledge gleaned from her estranged friend's public social media profile to infiltrate her friend group and find out what happened after the friend dies under mysterious circumstances. Finally a show that respects the unharnessed investigative powers of a woman with an instagram account!! It makes me so mad that no one in the US ever knows what I'm talking about when I talk about it, go watch it.

A Black playwright and white lawyer hatch a plan to swap names to get a play staged and expose the racism of the theater world. Things go wrong.

a "genre-defying" novel by a Pulitzer winner that's about a professor and detective teaming up to solve a series of murders where the victims are castrated and poetry left nearby. Translated from Spanish.

A funny book about an academic studying ISIS brides. That is a WILD premise. I'm looking forward to it.

Why is it that lately when I can't figure out the plot of a book from its description it's because it has an open marriage?

I was already going to read this book about two people who fall in love in the music scene of the early 2000s but I just saw it's becoming a movie with Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler! so!

Film/culture journalist Daniel D'Addario with a debut about five actresses competing for the Oscar.

Holmes' newest romance is set in the world of podcasting.

The description of this has a LOT going on but it seems like a mixed romance and mystery by Ruthie Knox who is an autobuy author for me.

Genre

Comedy

Status

S4

Watch

ABC/Hulu

You must know this one!

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

Mindy Kaling does a sports comedy starring Kate Hudson and, more importantly, Drew Tarver from The Other Two. (Also Chet Hanks??? who was actually not bad on that one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm as the veteran who got upset because Larry didn't thank him for his service.)

Man who wakes up from a coma finds that life as he knew it has moved on so he goes home for a second chance with the family he left behind. Seems heartwarming.

From the author of Assembly, the blurb says this is about the power of words but also that it's about a guy "bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar" at a rave.

Mozart investigates the possible murders of Bach and Handel. I looked up the plot of this novel to see if it's based in reality because it's so wild and -- kind of? Not murdered but died after being treated by the same incompetent doctor. This is by an acclaimed author.

I came across the author's previous novel Tender is the Flesh in the Tournament of Books and was too much of a wimp to get into what seemed like a (literary!) cannibalism tale but am going to try this nun horror. This is an Argentinian author in translation.

The description of the new Laila Lalami reads at a glance like Minority Report but on further investigation it also sounds like it's getting deep into the issues around ICE and deportation and detention.

a most anticipated! About a high school teacher in South Dakota who is on the verge of coming out as trans and looks to the only other trans person she knows - one of her senior English students.

Cara Bastone's last romance Ready or Not took two of my least favorite romance tropes (surprise baby and best friend's sibling) and made them compelling, so I'm in for her new one.

wait, let me just quote the description: "They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one."

Nonfic: the first of two books on how private equity is ruining America. This seems like a slightly more academic take.

Genre

Medical drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Fox/Hulu

It’s not JUST that there’s a broken penis fifteen minutes into the first episode of this cruise ship doctor show and it’s not JUST that this makes Dr. Pacey reveal that he too once broke his penis. It’s that later in the episode they circle back so he can say with a little wink that you can only break LARGE penises. Including this show, Ryan Murphy has, I think, TWELVE TV shows currently airing, and you can see that work ethic reflected in the characters, because there are only three people on the medical staff for this entire ship and they are SO BUSY. Along with treating passengers who are constantly getting eaten by sharks or needing surgery performed while the ship is in a hurricane or getting poisoned by basically everything under the sun, they have to make time for all the hooking up in its many permutations. Two of them while one is jealous, a different two with a different one jealous, eh fuck it, let’s just have a threesome! Occasionally, we’ll cut away to poor wholesome Don Johnson so he can expound on the Beauty of the Sea and the Code of the Ship and then it’s right back to a drag queen’s hair getting lit on fire while performing HOT TO GO! and the main trio making eyes at each other while someone’s nose falls off. Must-see TV.

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Hulu

Comedy about two brothers who inherit their father's deli and also his secret life of crime. This is also the plot of The Gentlemen, which I enjoy!

Every phrase thrown around appeals to me - “a biting examination of millennial adulthood;” “a darkly funny, vertiginous novel about the dilemmas of procreation, pregnancy, and parenting;” “a twist-filled psychological thriller and a feminist satire” - and it’s by the author of Gold Diggers, one of my favorite books of 2021.

A Muslim professor studying Eastern and Western views of marriage takes her friend's suggestion to marry rich and goes on 100 dates before heading to Iran for "a family reckoning." This promises to be funny, and the blurb name-checks Elif Batuman's incomparable The Idiot.

Estranged siblings in a future unified Korea come together to investigate a murder and unpack their childhood trauma. With robots!

Karen Russell's newest, set during the Dust Bowl.

A broke D-lister party girl has to pull it together when her ten year old is implicated in the disappearance of one of his classmates. This sounds so fun.

The second in Raybourn's series about retired female spies and assassins getting pulled back into their old line of work. Killers of a Certain Age was so cinematic that I'm shocked they haven't turned it into a movie yet.

Genre

Talk show

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

Netflix renewed Mulaney's live talk show experiment for twelve episodes.

Genre

Police drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Peacock

Another entry in the sad female detective show genre. Based on the book by Liz Moore with Amanda Seyfried starring, the opioid crisis gets personal for a female detective. Things are always getting personal for female detectives, no?

Genre

Police drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

A devastating British show about the fallout when a teen boy murders his female classmate. Each of the four episodes is filmed in one continuous shot.

"Inspired by Chinese and First Nation mythology" and with a sapphic romance, demons, gods, and tentacled things.

I read Rebecca for the first time this year so I'm especially interested in this retelling that transfers the historical gothic to contemporary upper-class Black communities in Martha's Vineyard and outside of DC.

A Native paranormal investigator takes on a more personal case when she learns that the hotel room in which her sister died produces a dead woman every five years like clockwork, no matter which room they checked into. The paranormal investigation aspect is so creepy, with major The Conjuring vibes, but the book also explores the Sand Creek Massacre and the legacy of trauma.

Stephen Graham Jones' newest is an “American Indian revenge story" that has a Lutheran pastor in the early 1900s transcribing the life of a vampire “who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice."

I like Olivia Waite's historical f/f romances and I like spaceship mysteries so I assume I will like this!

the Hunger Games prequel that centers on Haymitch's first games.

Genre

Comedy/drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

A screwball mystery at the White House. Produced by Shonda Rhimes

Genre

True crime drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Paramount Plus

Based on a true crime podcast about a woman whose father is a serial killer.

this sounds like Room meets Station Eleven. A woman who's nine months pregnant is out shopping when the Big One hits. The book follows her attempt to get home.

There is a certain type of person who will hear "this book is about the underwater cables that the internet runs on" and immediately put said book on their TBR. If you're NOT that type of person, weird! But let me add that it's by Colum McCann and takes place on a ship traveling off the coast of Africa.

A college student and her friends fall into the world of true crime and try to solve a murder.

Sometimes you do judge a book by its cover! And my judgment is that that's a great fucking cover!

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Apple TV

Seth Rogen comedy about the movie business. He stars along with Catherine O'Hara and Kathryn Hahn among others.

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Hulu

Basically Golden Girls but with gay men instead of older women. Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer star.

a scifi Succession from the author of The Atlas Six! that is also supposed to be funny!!

A playwright's debut is a funny, observational novel about a family.

I've been waiting for this one since 2023! Set in the world of ‘90s internet and video games, this book by a trans author "queers our notions of nostalgia, friendship, and even the possibilities of fiction itself."

The newest (final?) installment in a series I love about gods and magic and con women. Start with Little Thieves, where you will meet the goddaughter of Death and Fortune as she impersonates a princess, then continue to Painted Devils where she accidentally starts a cult, and then meet me here.

Genre

Comedy / Drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Hulu

A comedy drama about a woman diagnosed with terminal cancer who leaves her marriage to explore her sexuality and herself. From Liz Meriwether, creator of New Girl, this stars Michelle Williams and is produced by Leslye Headland. If it's not great, it'll be shocking.

A mystery about a high-end matchmaker whose clients' weddings keep ending in disaster.

The political gets personal in this book about a power struggle in the government of the Passage Rouge Nation and its consequences for the main character's relationships.

Estranged siblings reunite after a call from their famous sister. "An ode to forgiveness that takes readers across all fifty states," this sounds like a good summer read.

Jennifer Weiner's latest is about estranged sisters who were pop stars in the early 2000s.

I LOVE a weird book about a weird woman in love with a weird thing. The protagonist of Sky Daddy is into planes and wants to marry one by dying in a plane crash but is also trying to live a normal life in a book called "unexpectedly heartwarming."

Nonfic: Vara's essay in The Believer on using AI to write about her sister's death led to this book on how technology is shaping language.

Genre

Comedy

Status

S4

Watch

HBO

I was a bit lukewarm on the first season of Hacks but I've loved every season since. Season 4 is set at Deborah's new late night show.

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

a Canadian comedy about an Inuk mother in the Arctic.

Genre

Rich people drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Apple TV

Jon Hamm’s career is such a puzzle. How can someone so good at TV struggle so much in movies? The only one that seemed to know what to do with him was the excellent Confess, Fletch, which bombed. He seems to be recommitting to TV lately with his supporting turns in Fargo (great) and The Morning Show (hated that I liked it so much) and now a lead spot in this show about a hedge fund manager who turns to crime to fund his lavish lifestyle.

The Henna Artist was very good. Joshi's newest focuses again on women's stories and follows a nurse under suspicion for the death of one of her patients who goes on an investigation across 1930s Europe to clear her name.

A new mom struggling to do it all takes an experimental drug that eliminates female guilt.

Two Asian-American girls from different backgrounds meet at a privileged, majority white high school in the early 2000s.

A Black gay man on the eve of his wedding finds out his estranged father has been in a car accident and must deal with their relationship and what happened between them. Sounds like a tearjerker.

A grieving woman is pulled out of her self-imposed isolation when she defends a neighborhood kid from bullies. As their relationship grows, she meets his (married) foster mother who is none other than her high school crush. Despite the heavy topics, it's pitched as more of a beach read.

"A cranky former actress teams up with her Gen Z sobriety sponsor to solve the murder that threatens to send her back to prison.”

An epic fantasy set during a fight for the throne where the protagonist is not one of the competitors but a scholar charged with finding out who is interfering in the competition. Intriguing! Also intriguing: the description is written in first person plural. Corvids have a great genre track record for me - Raven Boys, Six of Crows, Omens, Anne Bishop's The Others - but I don't know if there are actual ravens in this. (I'm kidding but also kind of not.)

Nonfic: Malcolm Harris writes on climate change and paths forward.

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Apple TV

David Oyelowo in a comedy drama about a guy just out of prison.

Genre

Comedy

Status

S2

Watch

HBO

Not a Nathan Fielder lifer but I was very into most of season one of The Rehearsal and I'm interested to see where it goes next.

the power of speculative fiction! sooo into a book about eating the rich, even more so that it's LITERALLY about eating the rich. A Haitian-American teenager uses her secret zombie abilities to get revenge on her mom's rich employers.

Told in a single paragraph, the novella follows an Eritrean refugee in London where "her sexual encounters become an unapologetic expression of self -- a defiant cry against the endless bureaucracy of immigration."

Epic, multi-generational tale of a Black family spanning from 1865 Mississippi to 2019 Harlem.

a most anticipated! A lesbian horror riff on Little Shop of Horrors that one reviewer describes as also being a love letter to malls.

an emotional, maybe even devastating, family drama set in Texas.

This is a retelling of the life of a pretender to the English throne in the 1400s. This topic is not that compelling for me but it’s got good reviews and I liked Harkin's debut.

Sequel to a great fantasy book about a teen necromancer with a magic allergy who's struggling to deal with her dysfunctional family.

Nonfic: Pember's own mother went to a Native American boarding school and now she's written a history of them and their legacy.

Genre

Drama/Scifi

Status

S2

Watch

Disney Plus

I hear this is the best Star Wars adaptation?

Genre

Comedy / Drama

Status

NEW

Watch

Prime Video

With each new show, Amy Sherman-Palladino goes further into the world of ballet. This seems more Bunheads than Gilmore Girls, which is great for me since I don’t like Gilmore Girls and did like Bunheads.

A twin whose glamorous influencer sister dies takes over her life to find it's not all it seemed.

A crime scene cleaner whose sister dies in a devastating anti-Asian hate crime starts to see hungry ghosts. A "wildly original, darkly humorous, and subversive" horror.

Queer historical where a man falls in love with a merman held captive by a sideshow on Coney Island.

A woman tries to investigate when her First Nations neighbor goes missing to the disinterest of the local police.

A take on the Polybius urban legend (which I admit I didn't know about! Had to look it up!). Evil video games run by the government in the 1980s cause zombies.

A woman's father dies and leaves her a large inheritance on the condition she attend therapy. Neither the woman or the therapist know that they're actually half sisters. So many estranged sister books this year.

Meryl Wilsner's newest romance. When a woman calls off her wedding at the last minute, she asks her best friend to go on her honeymoon trip with her. With sexy results!

From the author of We Are Watching Eliza Bright, a coven of trans witches battle an evil AI.

Genre

Comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

Remake of the Alan Alda movie about three couples who vacation together. Tina Fey writes and stars along with Steve Carell, Colman Dolmingo, and other big names (including Kerri Kenney-Silver of The State, a big name TO ME).