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The 25 must-see TV shows of 2022
Wednesday December 29th, 2021 at 4:37 AM

The Guardian
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(Disney+) Buckle up: this is going to be a wild ride. Lily James and Sebastian Stan undergo serious transformations in the makeup department to play Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. The mini-series tells the story of their infamous sex tape – the first-ever viral video – and how it all began with the pair getting married 96 hours after meeting in 1995. But beyond dining out on a juicy scandal, will it use a post-#MeToo approach? Hollie Richardson

This Is Going to Hurt

(BBC Two) Adapted from Adam Kay’s wildly successful and hilarious book of the same name (which was scribbled down in diary form during breaks), this series follows the travails of a junior doctor in the NHS. It has been in the pipeline for some time and was delayed, ironically, by the pandemic which has, to say the least, sharpened our appreciation for our overworked, undervalued medical professionals. Ben Whishaw stars. Phil Harrison

The Responder

(BBC One) Once again, Martin Freeman gets under the skin of a disappointed (and disappointing) middle-aged man and renders him sympathetic. This time, Freeman is Chris, a police urgent response officer whose bleak, solitary night-shifts in Liverpool are disrupted by the arrival of rookie partner Rachel (Adelayo Adedayo). When Chris makes a rash decision, their previously mundane job becomes distinctly more dangerous. PH

Atlanta

(BBC) Donald Glover’s eccentric and inventive take on the Black American experience has felt like one of the most timely shows of recent years. As we left him, Glover’s normally diffident hip-hop impresario Earn had just done the dirtiest of the dirty on his protege Clark County and earned the respect of Alfred in the process. Even so, the incident will surely hang over their relationship. Expect season three to be a fraught examination of loyalty and betrayal. PH

Derry Girls

(Channel 4) The “wee lesbian” (Nicola Coughlan), the “English fella” (Dylan Llewellyn) and the rest of the motley crew are back for a third and final season. For a comedy that has fans in stitches throughout, there’s also a lot of heart in how it handles being a teenager during the Troubles in Northern Ireland – so it’s sure to be an emotional farewell. Also look out for Skint, a series about poverty from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee on the BBC, later this year. HR

Riches

(ITV) A family drama that has been dubbed “a love letter to Black London” by its creator Abby Ajayi. There are distinct top notes of Succession in the premise: Hugh Quarshie plays super-rich patriarch Stephen Richards who suffers a stroke and, amid slightly cosmetic concern for his wellbeing, his troublesome family’s secrets and rivalries begin to surface as a fortune appears up for grabs. PH

The Undeclared War

(Channel 4) The war in question is, of course, a cyberwar. And this political thriller sounds like the kind of weighty, slightly portentous fare that is director and writer (and seven-time Bafta-winner) Peter Kosminsky’s speciality. He’s assembled a heavyweight cast: Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, Adrian Lester and newcomer Hannah Khalique-Brown star as the 2024 general election looms and GCHQ finds itself under attack. But who are the nation’s virtual assailants? PH

Superhoe

(BBC Three) This drama has been heralded as the next Fleabag, given that it, too, started out as a one-woman stage show with a flair for the funnies and emotional heft. Creator Nicôle Lecky stars as Sasha Clayton – a 25-year-old wannabe singer and rapper whose attempts to fend for herself become ever more desperate after she is evicted by her family. Alexi Duggins

Marriage

(BBC) In Mum and Him and Her, Stefan Golaszewski created two of the most beautifully observed, touchingly comic portraits of relationships to ever grace the small screen. This forthcoming four-parter about a 30-year marriage, with Nicola Walker and Sean Bean in the lead roles, is sure to do more of the same. Expect dialogue that can shift from hilariously banal to heart-rendingly poignant in the space of a sentence. AD

The Last of Us

(HBO/Sky Atlantic) If there were ever a video game crying out for a TV adaptation, it’s the poignant 2013 action-adventure epic about a smuggler trying to guide a teenage girl across postapocalyptic America. HBO has chosen it as its first adaptation of a console franchise, so no doubt it’ll reproduce the game’s narrative forte: tempering the bleakness of a zombie apocalypse with the emotional core of a pseudo parent-child relationship. AD

Queenie

(Channel 4) Candice Carty-Williams’s bestselling 2019 novel tells the story of a 25-year-old Black journalist in London whose life starts to unravel when she takes a break from her long-term boyfriend. What follows is a nuanced, authentic exploration of race, mental health, womanhood and everything in between (including a few laughs). With Carty-Williams working on the adaptation, it’s bound to please fans of the book. HR

Top Boy

(Netflix) The Drake-backed Netflix reincarnation saw this already great drama about London’s drug gangs scale new heights of brilliance, as its longer episode count let narratives breathe and showcased the killer acting chops of MCs including Dave and Little Simz. The prospect of its return is hugely tantalising – not least due to the narrative drawing the rival gangs of Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kano) together with their intensely likable young rival, Jamie (Micheal Ward). AD

House of the Dragon

(Sky Atlantic) Following a final season so disappointing that many fans avoid talking about it, there’s trepidation about HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel. Then again, perhaps the only way is up. It rewinds 200 years to chronicle dragon-loving House Targaryen, with Matt Smith wearing a white wig as Prince Daemon and Emma D’Arcy playing Princess Rhaenyra. Expect the usual low-key stuff: mythical beasts, big budget battle scenes and endless raunch. HR

Peaky Blinders

(BBC One) The BBC’s Brum-based gangster drama has failed to put a foot wrong over five hooky, violent seasons. Here’s hoping this final series brings things to a brilliant close, as Tommy continues to battle Oswald Mosley and the second world war looms. It remains to be seen how the show will cope with the tragic loss of Helen McCrory, but at least it can count Stephen Graham as a new cast addition. AD

Euphoria

(Sky Atlantic) The most hyped teen drama in years (and rightly so) got us talking with its copious nudity and substance abuse – not to mention the musical number that formed its final moments. But it was also capable of real beauty and depth, not least Zendaya’s vulnerable portrayal of Rue, a young woman struggling with addiction. It earned her a best actress Emmy, and we’re excited to see what new heights she scales as she grows into the role. AD

Inside Man

(BBC One and Netflix) From Steven Moffat (Dracula, Sherlock, Doctor Who), here’s a curious thriller following a prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar – and how they cross paths in a most strange way. With Stanley Tucci, Lydia West and David Tennant heading the cast, it seems impossible to disappoint. HR

The Afterparty

(Apple TV+) This new series from the Oscar-winning directors of The Lego Movie is part murder-mystery, part comedy, centring on a death at a high school reunion. As the investigation unfolds, each episode will be told from a different character’s perspective, which should showcase the brilliant comic character acting of Jamie Demetriou, Veep’s Sam Richardson and Parks and Recreation star Ben Schwartz. AD

Frasier

(Paramount+) Hey baby, I hear the blues are calling. Following an almost 20-year hiatus, Kelsey Grammer is back as Seattle’s snooty but beloved radio psychiatrist for tossed salads, scrambled eggs and a reboot fans are torn over. Part of the show’s enduring appeal was the relationship Frasier had with his dad Marty – but actor John Mahoney died in 2018. Can the show be as good without him? It’s not clear whether Niles, Daphne and Roz will come calling again, but we hope they’ll return to provide the show with a shot in the arm. HR

Everything I Know About Love

(BBC One) There’s not one millennial woman in London who has not read – or at least heard of – Dolly Alderton’s bestselling memoir about friendship and romance. In this dramatised adaptation, Maggie and Birdy (played by Emma Appleton and Bel Powley) are two pals in their 20s navigating their first phase of adulthood in a flatshare. But then the unthinkable happens – dependable Birdy gets a steady boyfriend. Just like the book, let’s hope the series is a brave yet vulnerable (and very funny) unpicking of what love means in all its forms. HR

Pistol

(Disney+) Advance photos of this series don’t exactly inspire confidence – the fictional Sex Pistols look more like Ed Sheeran roadies than punk rock tabloid folk devils. But Danny Boyle is at the helm of this dramatisation of Steve Jones’s memoir Lonely Boy and he can normally be relied upon to come up with the goods. The story itself – friendship, music, rivalry, drugs and death – has all the right ingredients. PH

Then Barbara Met Alan

(BBC) The remarkable true story of disability rights activists Barbara Lisicki and Alan Holdsworth is brought to life by Bafta-winning writer Jack Thorne. Lisicki (Ruth Madeley) met Holdsworth (Arthur Hughes) at a cabaret night in 1989 – cue years of righteous mischief-making as the couple became the driving force behind the Direct Action Network, whose protests led to rapid advances. PH

The Crown

(Netflix) A changing of the guard for the fifth season of Peter Morgan’s epic. Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth II will vanish into a royal phone box and emerge as Imelda Staunton. More intriguingly, how will Jonny Lee Miller fare as John Major? And what next for Elizabeth Debicki’s troubled Diana, Princess of Wales? No spoilers, but to be honest, we have a bad feeling about where her story arc might be going. PH

Better Call Saul

(Netflix) After 14 years, the extended world of Breaking Bad finally comes to an end as Saul Goodman’s origin story reaches its conclusion. Over recent series, the prequel has come increasingly close to scaling the heights of the original, as Jimmy has moved ever closer to the dark side, so this last outing will no doubt be something to lap up every moment of. It is, after all, the end of an era. AD

Heartstopper

(Netflix) If there’s one thing TV needs more of, it’s credible adaptations of LGBTQ+ narratives. Hence some of the excitement around this eight-part reworking of Alice Oseman’s Tumblr-born graphic novel of a gay high school romance. The story of Nick and Charlie, two British teens at a boys’ grammar school who fall in love, also looks set to showcase new and exciting talent, including Yasmin Finney, a Black Manchester-based transgender woman – and TikTok star. AD

The Lord of the Rings

(Amazon Prime) It’s a big year for fantasy revivals, as JRR Tolkien’s epic world of hobbits, wizards and elves is brought to the small screen with a whopping budget (apparently $1bn in total). Aside from a confirmed September release date, fans only know that the series will take place in the Second Age thousands of years prior to the Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit. All other details are being kept under wraps, which only makes the wait even more exciting. HR

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ssternberg
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Dance/Cry to a New Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Song by flavorwire
Sunday October 15th, 2017 at 11:14 PM

Flavorwire
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The great soul songstress Sharon Jones’s death last fall of pancreatic cancer was tragic if not shocking – after all, label Daptone Records had been open about her battle with pancreatic cancer, and it was documented earlier that year in Barbara Kopple’s wonderful film Miss Sharon Jones!. In the film, she beats the disease, but it returned as the film hit the festival circuit, and she was gone by November.

But she left us with one last gift. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ final studio album, Soul of a Woman, will be out this fall, with eleven brand-new tracks that combine the band’s brassy, old-school sound with Jones’s electrifying vocals. And the band has released a video for the record’s first single, “Matter of Time,” a warm montage of intimate backstage clips, one more valentine to this singular talent.

Watch:

Soul of a Woman drops November 17; you can pre-order it direct from Daptone here.





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ssternberg
2384 days ago
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Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ final studio album, Soul of a Woman, will be out this fall, w 11 new tracks. + video of new song. Sharon Jones wonderful, much missed.
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Facing rent hike, plain old deli relabels everything as ‘artisanal’ and raises prices by Allison Brown
Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 2:38 PM

Brokelyn
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I don’t know about you, but every time someone brings up Brooklyn, specifically BoCoCa (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carrol Gardens) district, I can’t help but to think: man, this place is in dire need of an Artisanal, Fair Trade, Organic, #Blessed food shoppe. For those of you unable to pick up on the dripping sarcasm , please click here.  I’d like to bring to light a little something going down in BoCoCa regarding neighborhood staple Jesse’s Deli. Formally known as Jesse & Co. Market Place, Jesse’s has called Boerum Hill, at the corner of Bond and Atlantic, home since 1983. “It’s the place where at 8am women in suits and dudes in their robes wait on line for a coffee,” explains neighbor Tommy Noonan. “You buy anything from a BEC to cigarettes to toilet paper there.” In response to a reported hike of 2.5 times the current rent, effective July 1, the deli has decided to inflate all… Read More

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ssternberg
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GovBeat: 12 states now have plans for a minimum wage of $9 or more by Niraj Chokshi
Friday July 4th, 2014 at 9:09 PM

Washington Post
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Rhode Island on Thursday joined 11 other states that plan to raise their minimum wage to at least $9 over the next several years.

At the start of next year, the state minimum wage will rise a buck to $9 an hour, according to a new measure Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D) signed into law on Thursday.

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Food Cowboy app helps charities get passed-over produce onto plates faster by Pamela Constable
Friday July 4th, 2014 at 9:07 PM

Washington Post
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Behind a Mexican produce market in Northeast Washington on Tuesday, three laborers were stacking boxes of slightly bruised tomatoes, bananas and oranges next to a dumpster. A white refrigerated van pulled up, and driver Brett Meyers jumped out. To him, the imperfect produce was a precious find, and he was just in time to sort the items and salvage them.

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Five Ways The Supreme Court Gave The Shaft To Workers by Ian Millhiser
Wednesday July 3rd, 2013 at 8:58 PM

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Lilly Ledbetter (Credit: AP)

Last week, a bare majority of the Supreme Court did something this Court rarely does — it made life markedly better for millions of Americans by striking down the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. This decision, however, should not overshadow the blow the Court’s conservatives dealt to the franchise by striking down a key prong of the Voting Rights Act. Nor should it displace two other decisions handed down last week that delivered big victories to abusive bosses throughout the nation. Indeed, the Court’s five conservatives have become a worker’s worst enemy in Washington. Here are five examples of how the Supreme Court has made life more difficult for workers:

1. Waving Off Workplace Harassment

Federal law provides very robust protection to workers who are sexually or racially harassed by a supervisor, but it is far more difficult to win a lawsuit if you have been harassed by a co-worker. This distinction exists because supervisors are capable of intimidating their victims into keeping silent, and so there needs to be additional protections for workers harassed by their bosses so that these workers feel safe complaining about their supervisor’s actions.

Yet, in Vance v. Ball State University, the five conservative justices virtually wrote these protections for victims of boss-on-employee harassment out of the law. Under Vance, your boss only counts as your “supervisor” if they have the power to make a “significant change in [your] employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Thus, in many modern offices where hiring and firing decisions are made by a distant human resources manager, few bosses will actually qualify as “supervisors.” Vance also ignores the authority often given to senior workers to direct the actions of junior employees — and to potentially abuse this power in the process. In one case described by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissent, a senior truck driver coerced a newly hired woman to have unwanted sex with him because she feared he would fail her on an important exam. Yet this man no longer qualifies as a “supervisor” thanks to Ginsburg’s conservative colleagues.

2. Unwinnable Lawsuits

The second big anti-worker decision last week cut off an important mechanism ensuring that employers are held accountable if they retaliate against workers who file civil rights complaints. In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the five conservatives nixed what are known as “mixed motive” lawsuits in retaliation cases, a decision that effectively forced many workers to develop extra sensory perception if they want their employers to comply with anti-retaliation law.

Under the mixed motive framework, a worker only needs to show that racism, sexism or a similarly improper motive was part of the reason driving an employer’s decision to lash out at a worker. The burden then shifts to the employer to prove that discrimination did not drive their decision. These suits force an employer to reveal what they were actually thinking at the time that they fired an employee, rather than forcing the worker to read their boss’ mind.

Without mixed motive lawsuits, many victims of retaliation will discover that it is impossible to prove their claims in court. Worse, Nassar builds off a similar decision, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, that gutted the ability of many victims of age discrimination to hold their employers accountable.

3. Signing Away Your Rights

The Court’s five conservatives are staunch supporters of forced arbitration, a practice that enables businesses to shift lawsuits against them out of real courts and into a privatized arbitration system where the corporate party is often able to select an arbitrator with a record of siding with corporate interests. Indeed, one notorious arbitration company behaved as such a rubber stamp for corporate parties that it ordered a woman to pay more than $11,000 that she did not owe because she had the same name as another woman who did owe money. (This company is now out of the consumer arbitration business, largely due to a settlement with Minnesota’s attorney general.)

Federal arbitration law explicitly exempts “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” Yet, in Circuit City v. Adams, five conservative justices joined an opinion holding that forced arbitration contracts could be imposed on workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce. The upshot of this opinion is that your employer can force you to sign away your right to sue them in a real court — under penalty of termination if you don’t comply.

4. Dividing and Conquering

Two years ago, the Court shut down a class action lawsuit brought by more than 1 million women against the giant retailer Walmart. Walmart, however, was only the second most important class action case that Supreme Court term. Two months earlier, the five conservative justices held in AT&T v. Concepcion that your employer can force you to sign away your right to bring a class action against them just as easily as they can force you into privatized arbitration. Indeed, the Court based this decision on the same Federal Arbitration Act that forms the basis of their forced arbitration decisions, despite the fact that that act has nothing to say about class actions.

Class actions, which allow multiple parties with common claims to join together under the same lawsuit, are often the only cost effective way to hold a company accountable. Lawyers are expensive, and plaintiffs’ attorneys are often paid a percentage of their client’s winnings rather than an hourly fee. For this reason, it is often impossible to hire a competent plaintiffs’ attorney unless your claim is valuable enough that a lawyer can earn a living representing you. Class actions make it possible for multiple workers whose individual claims may only amount to a few thousand dollars — a lifeline for the workers but rarely enough to entice a good lawyer — to join together in order to hire counsel and share the costs of litigation among themselves. Cases like Concepcion, render many workers with relatively small claims against their employer powerless to fight back.

5. Unequal Pay for Equal Work

Finally, the Court’s five conservatives famously tossed out Lilly Ledbetter’s claim that she, as a woman, is entitled to earn just as much as her male colleagues earned for doing the same job. Ledbetter became a political celebrity after this decision, and her name is now attached to the law President Obama signed overruling the Supreme Court’s rejection of her case.

Ledbetter’s story, however, demonstrates just how difficult it is to fix a Supreme attack on workers’ rights after the justices have decided. Ledbetter became a national figure. President Obama ran ads touting his support for her. And yet the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act barely overcame the Senate’s de facto 60 vote threshold after Obama took office backed by enormous super-majorities in both houses of Congress.

Laws overruling anti-worker decisions are all but certain to die in the House today, even if they somehow overcome a Senate filibuster. And few people know the names of Jack Gross or Naiel Nassar or Vincent and Liza Concepcion, even though their cases likely did far more to harm workers than the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter. Absent a dramatic shift in Congress — or a new justice to replace one of the Court’s conservatives — the Court’s anti-worker march will likely continue with impunity.



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