[Televisionary]

After a sterling first season, expectations were high for the sophomore season of Jenji Kohan’s female prison drama. Fortunately, Season 2 proved to be just as juicy, sweet, and tart as you’d want it to be. (MAJOR SPOILERS ahead.) At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Whole Of Orange Is the New Black Season 2 Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts," in which I review the entirety of the incredible second season of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black . Orange Is the New Black ’s stunning second season manages to be ambitiously large and somehow intimate. It’s the equivalent of a pointillist painting: from up close each dash and dot has its own individual identity and meaning, but when viewed at a distance, they coalesce into something altogether different and dependent on its parts. In its deeply complex and magnificent sophomore year, Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is the New Black offers a scathing indictment of a broken system, using Litchfield Penitentiary as a ...

The second season of the Netflix prison drama is a gripping, beautiful, majestic thing. Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 ahead! At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, " Orange Is the New Black Continues The Dickensian Tradition Of The Wire ," in which I review Season 2 of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black , which returns June 6 on the streaming platform. There are the television shows that you love to watch but that drift from powerful and provocative to comforting background noise, and then there are those that arrive with the momentous force of a revolution, issuing a clarion cry that is impossible to resist. Women’s prison drama Orange Is the New Black , which returns for its second season on June 6, is most definitely the latter, a groundbreaking and deeply layered series that explores crime and punishment, poor circumstance, and bad luck. (At its heart, it is about both the choices we make and those that are made for us.) It constructs a gripping narrativ...

Netflix’s latest is one of the year’s best offerings on any platform. Why Jenji Kohan’s gripping prison drama makes for essential, addictive viewing. At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why You Need To Stop What You’re Doing And Watch Orange Is The New Black ," in which I review Netflix's latest original series, one of the year's finest television offerings. The year’s best television series have so far emerged from some very unlikely places, whether it’s the searing Sundance Channel drama Rectify , BBC America’s upcoming gut-wrenching murder mystery Broadchurch , or Netflix’s superlative prison drama Orange Is the New Black , from Weeds creator, Jenji Kohan. (That two of these shows deal with issues of crime and punishment — and specifically imprisonment — is not surprising, given our societal preoccupations at the moment, though these weighty issues are handled extremely differently within Rectify and Orange .) Orange Is the New Black , released b...

Fans eagerly awaited the return of Arrested Development , brought back from the TV graveyard by Netflix. Jace Lacob on why the show’s fourth season revival falls flat. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Arrested Development : Why Netflix’s Revival Failed," in which I review Season 4 of Netflix's Arrested Development revival, for which all 15 episodes were released yesterday. Unfortunately, despite my obsession with Arrested Development 's first few seasons, I didn't enjoy this at all. If you have an Internet connection, you know Arrested Development returned from the dead on Sunday, with all 15 episodes of the show’s fourth season available on Netflix on the same day. This strategy falls in line with the other original series rollouts that the streaming platform has launched this year, from House of Cards to the abysmal Hemlock Grove, given the belief that Netflix wants to offer the viewer “choice” as to how it consumes content: will yo...

BBC Two’s The Fall , starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, debuts on Netflix on May 28. My take on Anderson and Dornan’s searing performances and why you need to watch. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Dark Lure of Gillian Anderson's The Fall ," in which I review BBC Two's serial killer drama The Fall , which stars Gillian Anderson and which makes its Stateside debut next week on Netflix. It is virtually impossible to talk about The Fall—BBC Two’s addictive and provocative serial killer drama, which begins streaming stateside on Netflix on May 28—without mentioning the ghost in the room: Prime Suspect. The allusion to Prime Suspect, a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic, is well founded. For one, The Fall is the closest that television has come to capturing the taut alchemy of Prime Suspect: part police chase, part psychological portrait of the hunted and the hunter. At the time of its premiere in 1992, Prime Suspect captured...

Netflix will today offer all 13 episodes of its latest original series, Eli Roth’s horror drama Hemlock Grove . My take on how Netflix has stumbled with this poisonous fare. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Hemlock Grove : Netflix’s Latest Original Show Is Scary Bad," in which I review Netflix's newest original series, Hemlock Grove , which is not only nonsensical and almost unwatchable, but also could signal a misstep for the streaming video platform. (A sample quote: "Roman’s mother, Olivia, played by Famke Janssen as though she is channeling Madeleine Stowe’s Victoria Grayson through a hazy, upside-down kaleidoscope, is some sort of supernatural creature as well, her darkness symbolized by her haughty indifference, cut-glass English accent, and penchant for wearing black lingerie.") Netflix has recently had a rather simple mandate: to fund their own original series under the auspices of well-known creative talent and use their stream...

Netflix has finally announced a launch date for Season 4 of Arrested Development , the beloved cult comedy which the streaming platform has brought back to life. Over at The Daily Beast, I've got a brief post up, " Arrested Development Finally Gets a Release Date," about the fact that Netflix has finally announced the launch of Season Four of Arrested Development . (Thank god.) Back up the stair car, there’s no need to be blue: Netflix has finally announced a return date for Arrested Development. Mitch Hurwitz’s oddball comedy, which aired on Fox between 2003 and 2006 and revolved around the Bluth clan of Orange County, was resurrected last year by the streaming video provider, which announced today that it will release the fourth season of Arrested Development to subscribers on Sunday, May 26. (That’s right, you can mark your calendars now: May 26 will be the day that the Internet will break in half.) All 15 episodes of Arrested Development will be available...

Netflix just released all 13 episodes of its first original show. Having binge-watched all 13 episodes this weekend, I ponder whether the strategy behind House of Cards represents a new narrative format for television—and if it could backfire. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " House of Cards : Should You Binge-Watch Netflix’s Political Drama?" in which I discuss binge-viewing and Netflix's strategy regarding House of Cards . Is this television's new narrative form? Bet you can’t eat just one. A lot has been written lately about consumer patterns and television, specifically the rise of what has been coined “binge-watching” or “binge-viewing,” the practice of marathoning an entire season or multiple episodes of a television show in a highly concentrated period of time. It might occur during a single evening or over the course of a weekend, but the notion of consumption is apt. Netflix, the streaming video service that started out as a d...

Netflix is jumping into the original programming arena with a remake of the BBC miniseries ‘House of Cards,’ all 13 episodes of which will be available for streaming on Friday. I talk to David Fincher, Beau Willimon, and Kate Mara about the adaptation, Frank and Zoe’s twisted dynamic, television antiheroes, and more. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " House of Cards : Inside Netflix's First Show, " in which I sit down with David Fincher, Beau Willimon, and Kate Mara (as well as Andrew Davies) to discuss Netflix's upcoming (and paradigm-shifting) original series, House of Cards, which launches Friday with all 13 episodes available same day on the streaming service. The quest for power knows no nationality or political allegiance. In House of Cards , the BBC’s seminal 1990 miniseries , based on the novel by Michael Dobbs, Ian Richardson’s Francis Urquhart is the Machiavellian chief whip of the Conservative Party in the days following Margar...

Ahead of David Fincher’s American remake of House of Cards , which launches on Netflix in February, I revisit the original British potboiler and find that it still thrusts a steely rapier under the viewer’s skin. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Rewind: BBC’s Iconic Political Thriller House of Cards Still Captivates," in which I reflect upon the legacy and vitality of 1990 British miniseries House of Cards , ahead of Netflix's American remake--premiering Feb 1 and starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Mara, and Robin Wright--from David Fincher and Beau Willimon. Netflix, the now-ubiquitous digital streaming service, will enter the original programming arena with its upcoming American remake of House of Cards , from writer Beau Willimon ( Farragut North ) and director/executive producer David Fincher ( The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ). The series, which launches Feb. 1, stars Kevin Spacey, Kate Mara, and Robin Wright in roles that are now as iconic as the ...