Since we stopped going out in 2020, most of our entertainment happened at home. Here are short reviews of the books, films, and shows I found most compelling in 2020 (though most of them were released prior to 2020).
To read:
—What It Takes
—How to Be a High School Superstar/Deep Work
To watch:
—Dash & Lily
—Counterpart
—Skam
—The Night Manager
—Alex Rider
—Under the Riccione Sun/Summertime
—The Young Pope/The New Pope
—Wake in Fright
To Read
What It Takes (1992)
Not to be confused with Steve Schwarzman’s memoir. If you’re a fan of David Foster Wallace’s profile of the John McCain campaign in “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub”, this is the prototype of that type of journalism. This Brobdingnagian work (Kindle version, 1,738 pages), chronicles the 1988 campaign from the perspective of five candidates: George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, and Gary Hart.
I’ve only finished part one, which covers Vice President Bush and Majority Leader Dole and jumps between their formative years and the 1986 midterm elections. It’s the best inside baseball book on politics I’ve read, literally. The first 46 pages are about Bush throwing the opening pitch at the Astrodome. It’s absolutely riveting.
How to Be a High School Superstar/Deep Work
The impetus of this was a too-good-to-be-true article in The Atlantic about Ivy League sports. It really was too-good-to-be-true as the fabrication of certain details has called the veracity of the entire article into question. Nevertheless, I had read Cal Newport’s books, How to be a High School Superstar and Deep Work before that all came to light.
The main idea behind How to Be a High School Superstar is successful students accomplish things that admissions officers cannot replicate in their minds, e.g., write a book that is a New York Times bestseller. Newport argues that doing such things don’t require a schedule that’s any more onerous than that of your typical high school resume of team captain/yearbook editor/class president. Whereas the latter is borne of collegiate ambition, the former comes from mastery of a deep interest.
Deep Work is in the vein of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows or Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Cognitively demanding tasks are best executed when we are in a state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined as Flow. Deep Work is essentially about how you can create the preconditions to set yourself up to do so.
My favorite anecdote is how Adam Grant at Penn uses an out-of-office reply even though he’s physically in his office because he wants to get deep work done. Particularly amusing in retrospect is the book raising the question, “What about Jack Dorsey?” Twitter’s market cap, compared to Facebook—and even Snapchat—should answer that.
To Watch
Dash & Lily (Netflix)
Based on Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, this epistolary series about two New York teenagers falling in love during Christmastime captures the upper middle class adolescent experience in New York City with far more verisimilitude than Gossip Girl and employs the best New York location scouts since White Collar.
It is, to be sure, still a romanticized take on New York City. The color grading is warm, there’s no trash on the streets, and even the surly New Yorkers are charming (“two for Moon Boots please”). Law & Order: SVU, this is not. But this is the type of film we need in 2020.
New York institutions are co-stars of the show. There was extensive on-location filming done in 2019, e.g., I’ve sat at that specific table at McSorley’s! That cart is actually at 72nd & 2nd! But there’s also a melancholic undertone to the whole affair. When you see places like The Strand and Monkey Bar appear, you know how much they’ve struggled in 2020.
While leads Midori Francis and Austin Abrams lead a strong ensemble all around, viewers familiar with Broadway and New York film & television will particularly appreciate a number of cameos by longtime character actors. Jodi Long in particular steals her few scenes, with a character that’s almost too-good-to-be-true and speaks in bon mots such as, “You don’t want to give up just when the game’s gotten interesting.”
The music is also on point, which is to be expected given the involvement of Nick Jonas. The needle drops are high quality enough to make you wonder how large the licensing budget is. But the cuts are also deep enough to introduce the typical viewer to some underutilized Christmas songs. The “Fairytale of New York” at the end of the second episode was actually what won me over and led to my bingeing of this show in one sitting.
The two lead characters are huge literature nerds; you get the sense that they’re both going to end up with MFAs or DPhils in English. Countless authors from Gabriel García Márquez to Salinger are referenced in the show, though the strongest literary inspiration is E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. If you liked that book growing up, you’ll love Dash & Lily.
Counterpart (Amazon Prime/Starz)
In 1986, an accident duplicated our reality into an Alpha and Prime, with a tunnel in East Berlin connecting the two universes. While they started out practically identical, the realities diverged, with the greatest delta being caused by a pandemic in 1996 that wiped out 7% of the population. With one universe believing the other is at fault, this led to a Cold War between the universes.
An unsuspecting low-level bureaucrat (J.K. Simmons) at the Office of Interchange (the agency responsible for inter-universe relations) is thrust into the action when his counterpart (J.K. Simmons) from the other universe shows up. While J.K. Simmons is the headliner, there’s a deep bench doing double duty, with an ensemble cast that includes Olivia Williams, Harry Lloyd, Nazanin Boniadi, Sara Serraiocco, and Guy Burnet.
What would your life be like if you had made different choices at certain decision points? Turning left instead of right? Saying “yes” instead of “no”? Would you still be the same person? How many of those decisions are driven by circumstance and how many are driven by because of who you are? What if you were slightly nicer? Slightly meaner? What if your luck were slightly different? How would your life turn out?
The show raises these questions in the context of a Cold War-style thriller.
Skam (NRK)
I was reading the production details of Home for Christmas (Norwegian: Hjem til jul) and the creator had noted that instead of the usual Christmas fare, the series was inspired by shows like Skam. Since Skam had been in my queue since 2018, I took this as an opportunity to finally watch it.
The show follows a set of friends from a reasonably affluent school in Norway, with each season from the perspective of a single character. The first season focuses on Eva, who is part of the unpopular crowd. The second season focuses on Noora, an outsider who falls into a Montague & Capulet style relationship with William, leader of the most popular russ bus on campus. The third season revolves around a coming out love story starring Isak. And the fourth season is about Sana, who grapples with how to reconcile her Muslim religion with the expectations of Norwegian culture.
Most comparisons will be to Skins and Gossip Girl. What’s really driven its popularity is it really captures the universal adolescent experience of looking for a way to belong and finding one’s identity. The scenes are also shot in cinema verité, with unknown actors actually around the age of their characters, sans makeup, and with extensive use of handheld camera.
The show is also notable for its distribution model: scenes were posted in “real time” on social media, i.e., if a scene happened on Wednesday at 20:00, it was posted on Wednesday at 20:00. Then scenes were concatenated into an episode released at the end of the week. Characters, but not the actors, all had their own social media accounts.
One can’t help wonder whether ill-fated Quibi was inspired by this model. Skam has nevertheless been far more successful, with seven international adaptations including SKAM France, SKAM Italia, SKAM Austin, and Belgium’s wtFOCK.
The Night Manager (Amazon Prime)
This had been in my queue for some time, but the passing of John Le Carré led to its jump to the top of my queue. This show is utterly brilliant.
Over the course of six hours, Tom Hiddleston’s character develops a legend that is “thicker than your arm” and more along the lines of The Departed than James Bond. Events in the first episode drive him to go into deep cover and ingratiate himself with Hugh Laurie’s character, simultaneously a charming public humanitarian and, privately, a terrifying arms dealer.
Though the most Le Carré-esque character is played by Olivia Colman, who is Hiddleston’s handler in the Foreign Office. She has to protect the operation from compromised officials at “The River House”, the insiders’ moniker for MI6. Though less histrionic than the cat-and-mouse game between Hiddleston and Laurie, her battle with a particularly unctuous minister is a highlight.
Alex Rider (IMDb TV/Amazon Prime)
Long anticipated, this show is based on the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. While not required, having read Stormbreaker and Point Blanc will increase enjoyment of the show.
Alex Rider is normal teenager thrust into the world of espionage. Unbeknownst to him, his uncle had actually been training him for such a life, e.g., “I know Krav Maga.”
Viewers familiar with the novels will be able to instantly recognize certain characters, such as Wolf, whose relationship with Alex I loved in the books and whom I hope to find more of in Season 2. There are also new characters introduced—like Kyra—or expanded upon—like Alex’s friend Tom.
While works portraying young spies like Spy Kids, Agent Cody Banks, Kim Possible, K.C. Undercover, etc. are targeted towards children and pre-teens, Alex Rider is for more mature audiences. The material is played totally straight, though is not entirely humorless. This isn’t Treadstone.
Ultimately, it’s teenage James Bond. Horowitz’s writing style in Alex Rider is Flemingesque and was likely a factor in Fleming’s estate choosing him to pen Trigger Mortis. So expect your standard James Bond flourishes, with fantastical technology, tons of double entendres, and strong action sequences (episode six is a highlight). The tone is more serious than Moore but, being an adolescent property, less gritty than Craig.
Under the Riccione Sun/Summertime (Netflix)
This is the escapist entry for 2020. In the words of one of my friends, it’s about “beautiful people with beautiful problems.” Under the Riccione Sun (a movie) and Summertime (an eight episode series) are both set at resort towns on the Italian Riviera. The cinematic equivalent of a beach read, the gorgeous cinematography and upbeat musical selections capture the feeling of summer more than anything else. If you’re looking for a palate cleanser after watching a prestige-drama-that-feels-like-homework, these are perfect.
The Young Pope/The New Pope (HBO)
My first exposure to Italian cinema was through a copy of Fellini’s La città delle donne from Blockbuster video. No production notes, no DVD commentary. It left me utterly confused. While creator Paolo Sorrentino doesn’t quite reach that level of inscrutability, this show sometimes feels like a meandering fever dream. What a dream it is.
Released at the beginning of the year, The New Pope is a sequel to 2016’s The Young Pope. Jude Law is a British actor playing an American pope while John Malkovich is an American actor playing a British pope. That Jude Law portrays Pius XIII and that John Malkovich stars as John Paul III should tell you all you need to know about the theological dispositions of each character.
But creator Paolo Sorrentino isn’t interested so much in theological minutiæ as much as the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. Sorrentino understands how much the papacy is wrapped up in celebrity, portraying Pius XIII like a rock star, while John Paul III actually was a rock star in a previous life. The show’s soundtrack would not be out of place in a nightclub, with entire sequences playing like music videos.
Aside from the popes, a particular highlight is Napoli fan Cardinal Voiello, the Pope’s Secretary of State, whose statecraft is unparalleled since Cardinal Richelieu. Cardinal Gutiérrez, who is sent to the United States to investigate abuse allegations, also has a memorable performance in The Young Pope. Cardinal Viglietti also has a delightful storyline at the start of The New Pope.
While Evangelical cinema tends to present a reverential portrayal of true believers, Catholic cinema tends to meditate more on the depravity brought on by original sin. While the former tends to demarcate its characters between saint and sinner archetypes, the latter tends to have complex characters who continuously grapple with sin. Though Sorrentino is reportedly a non-believer, the Pope series feels like Catholic cinema in this way. No one is a pure saint and no one is a pure sinner.
Wake in Fright (Amazon Prime)
I discovered this movie because Joseph Noel Walker, host of The Jolly Swagman podcast posted, “Friends, a question: If you were trying to give an American a penetrating glimpse into the Australian culture/psyche, which one or two links, poems, books, articles, songs or sources would you send him?”
The director of Rambo: First Blood made a movie where the centerpiece is a proto-Mad Max style chase that culminates in the protagonist wrestling a kangaroo. Also, the actor who played Blofeld is in it. This is the easily most absurd movie I saw in 2020.