Run for the Money Brings High-Stakes Tag to Netflix, Peacock Expands A Friend of the Family

Peacock is getting out of the free streaming game. A sign-up page on Peacock's website reveals new customers are no longer able to create a free account, once a key component of the service's branding. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, NBCUniversal launched Peacock in 2020 with the promise that it...

When the story broke in 2019 that a coercive sex cult had been uncovered on the campus of Sarah Lawrence College, you could practically hear the documentary cameras getting set up. There's a fascination with cults on TV — look no further than HBO's The Vow for proof — and, in particular, with how free-thinking, rational people can fall under the sway of a charismatic figure who convinces them to act in ways that both harm them and isolate them from their loved ones. The Sarah Lawrence cult had a grotesque but compelling character at its center in Larry Ray, who moved into his daughter Talia's campus housing and within a couple of years wreaked emotional, physical, and sexual damage on a small group of Talia's friends and classmates.

It didn't take long for HBO to give fans of The Last of Us what they want — the apocalyptic drama is officially getting a second season. This comes as no surprise after HBO announced that The Last of Us is the network's second-largest debut after House of the Dragon, with the first episode drawing more than 22 million views in the U.S. alone. Still, the renewal comes early in the season, just before the third episode airs Sunday, January 29.

It’s been 13 years since King of the Hill aired its final episode, but now the show will find new life with a reboot at Hulu after Fox dropped the project last year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the revival has been in the works since 2017, when creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels reunited with the original cast at Sketchfest in San Francisco to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series premiere. But as certain recent animated reboots have proven, not every beloved cartoon needs a modern update.

Freeform thriller The Watchful Eye may look like a spiritual successor to Cruel Summer, the anthology that became an instant hit when it debuted in 2021, but viewers would be wise to resist comparing the two. While Cruel Summer’s first season examined grooming and the villainization of women by 1990s media culture, The Watchful Eye layers a Hitchcockian premise with the “eat the rich” sentiment that has taken hold of contemporary pop culture. The result is a young adult drama that’s both compulsively watchable and socially aware, a rare combination in the genre.

Mark Laita, the host of the Soft White Underbelly youtube channel, is one of the first to highlight the Whittaker family. Mark first came to know the Whittaker family in 2004 while working on his book ¨Created Equal¨.

This beginning of the year has had some important casualties in the world of acting, entertainment, and sports. One of the most mentioned unexpected deaths was that of Lisa Loring, the actress who played the original Wednesday Addams that the famous television series "The Addams Family" from 1964.

“I’m not like other people,” Paul T. Goldman says in the final episode of the Peacock series of the same name. And he’s absolutely right. In a time where originality is harder and harder to come by, everything about Goldman, from the way he purses his lips to his dogged determination to the supposed life he’s led up until now, is unlike anyone else. That’s part of what makes director Jason Woliner’s experimental hybrid docuseries, Paul T. Goldman, so compelling. It’s also what makes the show impossible to replicate.

If you pay any attention at all to TV reviews and news, you’ve likely heard by now that Poker Face’s creator Rian Johnson and its star Natasha Lyonne intend their Peacock mystery-comedy series to be a throwback to classic ’70s and ’80s detective dramas like Columbo and The Rockford Files. If you’ve watched the show, it’s hard to miss the influences. The opening credits’s font looks charmingly vintage, for one thing.

Communities often form in the aftermath of a tragedy, from neighbors standing outside a burning house to survivors founding an advocacy group, and in 21st-century television, these ad hoc societies are often tinged with terror: Think of the cult on Yellowjackets, the smoke monster that chases the Lost islanders, or the troupe of artists that learns to kill on Station Eleven. Considering the anxiety that’s pervaded this century — and the catastrophes that have stacked up like leaves on the ground — this fraught tone might almost feel necessary. And that’s why Dear Edward is such a heartrending surprise. Though it begins in grief, it refuses to stay there.

It’s all fun and games until somebody uses their superpowers to start a violent revolution. The trailer for Prime Video’s The Power goes hard on the show's high-concept premise, about all the teenage girls in the world simultaneously developing the ability to conduct electricity through their hands. Playing...

Anyone eager for a sophisticated dramatization of the Gwen Shamblin story should wait until HBO Max releases its upcoming series with Sarah Paulson. However, those craving a tawdrier take on the life, death, and weight-obsessed ministry of the accused cult leader can fire up their screens now. Lifetime’s new movie Gwen Shamblin: Starving For Salvation may not be tasteful or even very artful, but it lays out the facts with gossipy zeal, like someone screen-grabbing the juiciest bits of a tabloid story and texting them to a group chat. And to be clear: That’s fine. Sometimes, lurid escapism can be just as satisfying as tony drama, and Shamblin’s story is compelling enough for both.

The next time you’re at a drugstore, pay attention to the music being piped through the aisles. Those pleasant background tunes may not sound menacing, but sometimes, they’ve got histories that would make Ozzy Osbourne blush. That’s one of the fascinating revelations in Sometimes When We Touch, Paramount+’s new docuseries about the rise, fall, and rebirth of soft rock.