CABLE | Anya Taylor-Joy Runs Out of 'Lucky' on Apple TV

"I don't have time for your cowboy haikus right now."

Apple Studios / Hello Sunshine

The talented and wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy stars capably in the entertaining crime thriller miniseries Lucky, based on bestselling author Marissa Stapley's novel of the same name. Created by screenwriter Jonathan Tropper and showrun by Cassie Pappas, audiences are dropped into the eponymous con woman's exciting identity-swapping dealings on the run when she wakes up alone in Las Vegas with no memory of what was supposed to be a getaway after one last big score.

CABLE | Javier Bardem and Amy Adams Strike 'Cape Fear' x Fantasia 2026

"I see something eating at you."

Universal Content Productions / Amblin Television

Cape Fear, the revenge miniseries adaptation of the 1957 potboiler novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald and both its classic 1962 and 1991 film adaptations, stretches the Southern gothic psychological thriller material across ten episodes. Created and showrun by screenwriter/producer Nick Antosca and executive produced by the duo of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the eventual and originally attached director of the film remake, this contemporary television interpretation still maintains its strong Hitchcockian overtones.

CABLE | Matthew Rhys Welcomes You to 'Widow's Bay' on Apple TV

"The only way out is through."

Apple Studios

Widow's Bay, comedy screenwriter Katie Dippold's superb new original series, stars the wonderful Welsh actor Matthew Rhys as the exasperated, initially skeptical mayor of the seemingly cursed, titular New England island town desperate for tourism. As a welcoming but weird folk horror-comedy mashup clearly inspired by the many works of Stephen King, its supernaturally mythic small-town elements only heighten its dryly deadpan humour.

CABLE | Nicolas Cage Investigates 'Spider-Noir' on Prime Video

"Maybe we can be alone together."

Sony Pictures Television / Amazon MGM Studios

Spider-Noir, the live-action television adaptation of Spider-Man Noir, the 2009 alternate-universe Marvel Comics spin-off webslinger character most widely seen in the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and famously voiced by Nicolas Cage, who reprises his role in the flesh this time, is an amusing throwback to the hard-boiled detective film genre. Showrun by screenwriters Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the television series overtly but lovingly leans heavily into its classic film noir influences.

CABLE | 'Margo's Got Money Troubles' Makes Fans x SXSW 2026

"You ruined my life so pretty."

A24 / Lewellen Pictures

Margo's Got Money Troubles, prolific television writer/producer David E. Kelley's new family dramedy series based on author Rufi Thorpe's bestselling 2024 novel of the same name, stars Elle Fanning (also an executive producer) as the titular college dropout who turns to online sex work after getting pregnant due to an illicit affair with a married literature professor (Michael Angarano) and desperately needing funds to raise her newborn baby on her own.

CABLE | Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan Age Their 'Beef' – Netflix Season 2

"She has appalling taste in interior design."

A24 Television

Back for another melodramatic spin at tormented domestic rivalries, season two of Beef's anthology series, created by Korean-American writer/producer Lee Sung Jin, takes a turn towards the affluent country club crowd in a personal feud between members of its staff, management, and new ownership.

CABLE | Betraying 'Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord' in Animation

"Empires can be shattered."

Lucasfilm Animation

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, created by Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni, brings the iconic but tragic former Sith apprentice from The Phantom Menace, who was famously halved yet managed to survive nonetheless, back in the form of an exciting, all-new animated series. Actor Sam Witwer reprises his title voice role from The Clone Wars and Rebels to further flesh out the memorable villain's complex legacy, focused on betrayal, set shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith during the reign of the Galactic Empire.

SCREEN | 'Spring After Spring' Parades Around Chinatown x VAFF 2025

"She wanted to see us thrive."

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

Chinese-Peruvian-Canadian local filmmaker Jon Chiang, making his feature debut, directs Spring After Spring, a Vancouver Chinatown-based documentary following three remarkable dancer sisters, Anabel, Val, and Lisa Ho. They reunite to lead the annual Lunar New Year Parade after the death of their mother, dedicated community leader and dance teacher Madame Maria Mimie Ho.

CABLE | 'Wonder Man' Casts Yahya Abdul-Mateen II As the Hero

"Let your misery drive the bus."

Marvel Television

Wonder Man, Marvel's self-referential comedy series adaptation of the Hollywood-themed superhero, created for television by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and television writer Andrew Guest, stars the imposing but affable Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a struggling, fame-seeking actor hoping to reboot the eponymous role—think The Studio set in the MCU—while coincidentally being imbued with pure "ionic" superhuman strength and energy powers in a fresh, meta take on the genre.

CABLE | Wong Kar-wai Colours 'Blossoms Shanghai'

"Neon signs glowed like a sea of flowers."

Jet Tone Films / Tencent Pictures

Blossoms Shanghai, Chinese auteur Wong Kar-wai's first television drama series, broadly romanticizes 1990s Shanghai in the lushly complementary vein of what his cinematic masterpiece, In the Mood for Love, did for 1960s Hong Kong, but only on the small screen. Created and directed by Wong, scripted by Qin Wen, and based on author Jin Yucheng's award-winning 2013 novel, Blossoms, it tells a vaguely historical yarn of late twentieth-century Eastern capitalism wrapped in melodramatic intrigue.

CABLE | Philly 'Heat' – Mark Ruffalo Takes HBO to 'Task'

"When things go terribly wrong, people want to know why God let it happen."

Low Dweller Productions / Public Record

HBO and Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby are back together for another compelling procedural crime series, once again set in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Here we follow a Heat-style cat-and-mouse chase between a birdwatching but haggard FBI field agent (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a string of targeted robberies of biker gang-controlled stash houses spearheaded by an otherwise mild-mannered garbage collector (Tom Pelphrey) and his Philly crew. That's the straightforwardly titled Task's initial setup as we witness a tense back-and-forth pursuit of deliberate escalation.

CABLE | 'Alien: Earth' Arrives in the Future Past on FX

"It’s like a zoo, but the animals got out."

FX Productions / Scott Free Productions

FX and Fargo show creator Noah Hawley reteam for their engrossing new science-fiction horror prequel television series, Alien: Earth. Set two years before the classic 1979 Ridley Scott (also an executive producer) directed original Alien film, the dense show takes its colonial deep space mythology to new depths, but this time on our home planet (a first for the franchise), as you might have guessed from its subtitle.

SCREEN | VHS Nostaglia – Renting Something from 'Videoheaven'

"Video provides the means to invent a past in order to live in the present."

Cinema Conservancy / Stranger Things

Productive independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry examines the cultural impact of 1980-90s video rental shops in his extended film essay, Videoheaven, narrated by actress Maya Hawke, who notably portrayed a video clerk herself in season four of the popular '80s-set television series Stranger Things. By assembling video rental depictions in movies throughout cinematic history, Perry recounts the past's media infrastructure and modes of distribution through the medium of film itself, as inspired by film professor Daniel Herbert's non-fiction book, Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store.

SCREEN | Catching the Real 'Predators' x DOXA 2025

"I see To Catch a Predator as trying to make a public service entertaining."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Director David Osit, a survivor of child sexual abuse by an adult himself, investigates the lasting impact of the hit 2004-07 Dateline NBC news magazine program To Catch a Predator, famously hosted by journalist Chris Hansen. His documentary, aptly named Predators, revisits the television phenomenon that turned true-crime into popular entertainment as it lured otherwise mild-mannered potential sex offenders with no previous criminal records into a trap where they were confronted and arrested on camera.

GATHER | Baiting Ziwe x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I rarely get asked to do [racism] p*rn."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(March 13, 2025) Talented mononymous Nigerian-American late night comedian/interviewer and Black Friend author Ziwe (Fumudoh) brought her stylishly hilarious insights to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's accidentally hyper topical ongoing speaker series on the politics of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

CABLE | Netflix Throws Back to 'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney'

"Like the measels, he's back in a big way!"

Sunset Gower Studios

Clipboard-carrying stand-up comedian John Mulaney's highly chaotic but wildly entertaining late night show is back. Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, his follow-up to the bizarrely amusing Everybody's in L.A. streaming experiment, originally a tie-in to the 2024 Netflix is a Joke Festival, started its twelve-week run live on Wednesday nights. Mulaney promised more of the same discomforting type of offbeat fun and, so far, has delivered.

GATHER | Ramy Youssef x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I wasn't gonna mention the whole fifty-first state thing."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(February 27, 2025) Award-winning Egyptian-American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, and director Ramy Youssef casually captivated a full audience inside the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's second-year speaker series, discussing the topic of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

CABLE | 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man' Spins A Tangled Web

"I truly believe that I have these powers to help people, to protect them."

Marvel Animation

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is Marvel Animation's latest all-ages alternate reality spin on the web-slinging superhero with a strong retro artistic style inspired by Jack Kirby's classic two-dimensional hand-drawn visual designs updated through modern 3D computer technology for a cool "moving comic" look and aesthetic.

CABLE | 'Skeleton Crew' Escapes A 'Star Wars' Adventure for Kids

"You have a lot to learn about pirates."

Lucasfilm

Skeleton Crew, the latest cutthroat Star Wars spin-off miniseries, clearly channels Amblin's iconic 1980-90s era of children's adventure films in the mould of The Goonies meets Treasure Island—displaced to "a galaxy far, far away." There's plenty of well-needed coming-of-age discovery and wonder, but some inconsistent elements and a slightly adrift tone never totally feel cohesive inside its greater shared universe.

CABLE | 'Interior Chinatown' Typecasts A Police Procedural

"Koreans are the most fun Asians."

20th Television

Award-winning Taiwanese-American author Charles Yu adapts his own bestselling second novel, 2020's metatextual Interior Chinatown, for television. Exploring the life of a generic background Asian character in a Law & Order-type '90s police procedural, the hilarious titled Black & White: Impossible Crimes Unit, stars stand-up comedian Jimmy O. Yang as a Chinese restaurant worker who longs for a lead role in his own life.