The 77th Emmy Awards will be held September 14 and broadcast on CBS and Paramount+. Chances are, you haven’t seen all of the nominated productions, so think of me as your friendly neighborhood guide to 2025 television achievement — or in some cases, underachievement.
On August 14, I began the gradual release of my ranked choices of the nominees, from my least favorite to my most favorite, in four marquee categories: Outstanding Television Movie; Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series; Outstanding Comedy Series; and Outstanding Drama Series.
These choices are not predictions of what will win, nor am I trying to tell you what is the objectively “best” television film or series; just my personal favorites. I hope reading these mini reviews will simply help you be a more informed and discerning viewer.
This week: Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series
5. “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”
It’s hard to imagine a more upfront spoiler than a murder drama that highlights a series of criminal adjudications currently playing out in public, in real time. Similar to the attempts to dramatize the O.J. trial on television, the central tension in “Monsters” actually takes place on our side of the television screen, where each of us enters with our own pre-existing takes on how the justice system should handle entitled and damaged celebrity murderers. Perhaps the greatest inherent flaw of “Monsters” is that the Menendez case is still evolving, way beyond the rolling of the series credits, which means there will always be a postscript out of reach. Just last week, Lyle and Erik Menendez were denied parole.
“Monsters” employs the “Rashomon” technique in which different versions of the “truth” are provided based on a multitude of perspectives. In the end, though, you’re aware that much of the dramatization is simply convenient speculation. If you want to get the investigative skinny on the case or hear from the brothers themselves, you’re better off watching the multiple documentary treatments (including Netflix’s own 2024 “The Menendez Brothers”) and following the news on your own.
Based loosely on the life of Molly Kochan and the podcast presented by Kochan and Nikki Boyer, “Dying for Sex” is a dramatic comedy that follows Molly (Michelle Williams) as she seizes control over her sexual destiny (and takes sexual matters into her own hands, wink wink) after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Upon separating from her self-absorbed, clueless, and sexually inept husband, she embarks on a series of sexual misadventures that feature kink, fetish, and hijinks. Meanwhile, Molly is struggling to confront the trauma of past sexual abuse and the advancement of cancer, while managing all the clumsy relationships in her life, including her mother, best friend, and ex.
In its best moments, “Dying for Sex” stares down the process of dying with a frankness rarely captured on television, and highlights a friendship with Nikki (Jenny Slate) that is inspiringly selfless and literally life-giving. Its comic moments hit their marks, and Williams gives a tender portrayal of emotional courage. However, the sex moments, which are played mostly for laughs, often feel random and unintelligible for those uninitiated in fetish and kink. In the end, the emotional toggle between heartwrenching moments and sex gags is often more admirable than satisfying.
It’s not easy to make a high-quality, prestige television drama from a superhero comic book. How does a screenplay keep a straight face when the characters are running around in tights and leaping tall buildings in a single bound? In “The Penguin,” however, the leotarded one — Batman — never shows up. Like most of the villains in the “Batman” franchise stable, Oswald “Oz” Cobb, aka the Penguin, is a mere mortal, or to be more specific, a schlubbly capo thrashing and scheming his way to the top of the criminal dogpile.
The fact that Oz has no superpower — other than being pathologically diabolical — may explain why “The Penguin” manages to be such a surprisingly thoughtful and effective drama.
Oz, mockingly nicknamed the Penguin by his criminal peers, is an emotionally and physically impaired man who is so deviously murderous, narcissistic, and backstabby that he helps answer the question, What if Donald Trump had been raised poor, disabled, and fatherless?
The series picks up where the 2022 theatrically released DC reboot, “The Batman,” ends, in a Gotham devastated by the destruction of its seawall by the Riddler. The Batman franchise has always been most successful when it leans into its dark, brooding take on humankind. In this iteration, Gotham is a poster child for urban nihilism and Oz is an avatar for Gotham’s soullessness. Criminals are not born here, they’re made. In the words of Oz’s criminal rival, Sofia Falcone (a captivating Cristin Milioti), “I’m not the one who is sick. Neither are you. The world is.”
To say that Colin Farrell gives an outstanding performance and is unrecognizable in the role of the Penguin is an understatement. Farrell’s voice is arguably too derivative of the late James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, but it requires nothing short of genius to take a slime creature like Oz and make him into a complex mama’s boy about a dozen heinous acts short of redeemable. Although any temptation the audience may have to sympathize with Oz is eventually snuffed out, there are early moments when we wonder if we should at least root for Oz to be the first among Gotham psychopaths.
You certainly find yourself rooting for Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), an Afro Latino kid orphaned by the flooding of Gotham, who gets pulled into indentured servitude by Oz. Victor (poetically nicknamed “Vic”) serves to humanize the body count casually racked up by DC and Marvel world-leveling battles. As Falcone observes, “Victims are so quickly forgotten. Our stories are rarely told.”
Delivering six episodes in its seventh season, “Black Mirror” is the gift that keeps on giving. Long recognized as the worthy successor to Rod Serling’s classic “Twilight Zone,” “Black Mirror” has as much frightful insight into human frailty as it does foresight into the ways in which technology will infiltrate and subvert our lives.
The most crowdpleasing episode this season is “U.S.S. Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the “U.S.S. Callister” episode from Season 4. It tells the story of a highly immersive, “Star Trek”-inspired, virtual reality game that gets animated with the illegally acquired DNA of gaming company staffers. Less bleak than most signature “Black Mirror” episodes, it not only features comic bits, but Good actually gets opportunities to triumph over Evil.
Even the best anthology series — and “Black Mirror” certainly ranks among them — has unevenness. The “Plaything” episode doesn’t leave much of an impression and is not particularly insightful. Issa Rae is awkwardly cast in “Hotel Reverie” as a Hollywood star who finds love in an immersive, AI-recreated movie reminiscent of “Casa Blanca.” In “Bête Noir,” which starts thrillingly before turning goofy, a highly competitive executive (Siena Kelly) has her career and personal life upended when a former classmate joins the staff of her company and begins to bend reality to her will. In “Eulogy,” Paul Giamatti takes a sentimental turn as a man who reconstructs the defining romance in his life using advanced, memory-enabled photograph technology.
Perhaps the most unnervingly successful episode of the season is “Common People,” starring Rashida Jones as Amanda, a terminally ill woman who is offered a lifeline through a medical subscription service perpetually upsold by an amoral company representative (Tracee Ellis Ross). The catch is that the price of the service starts to climb as advertising gets introduced and the quality of the service diminishes (not unlike subscription services like Netflix). It is a scathing commentary on what lies ahead for us as capitalism increasingly exploits technology to dictate the quality of our lives and the terms of our mortality.
I challenge you to find a more sublime tour de force of television story, form, and character development than “Adolescence.” From its explosive opening scene to its heart-wrenching finale, “Adolescence” is an unflinching social autopsy of a teenage murder mystery.
A 13-year-old boy is accused of killing a girl from his school. In four one-take episodes, the camera retraces the steps of a toxic teen culture as it wends its way through a working-class family, school, community, and criminal justice system. Owen Cooper plays the accused, Jamie Miller, with a quintessential teen inscrutability and vulnerability that masks seething grievance.
Series co-creator Stephen Graham provides the role and performance of a lifetime as a father who poignantly struggles to process the trauma of his own flesh-and-blood being accused of a morally unfathomable act. Two scenes alone, one featuring a pre-trial psychological evaluation, and the other involving a teddy bear, are themselves worthy of awards for dramatic achievement.
Trigger warning: “Adolescence” is all the more emotionally harrowing because of its realism, its depictions of violence, and the depths of rage and sadness it is willing to plumb. For any parent watching, there but for the grace of God go we.
I never expected to earn $50,000–$75,000 per year while working from home, but here I am! The flexibility has been amazing, and it’s so much easier than I thought. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share the details on how you can get started. Tap on Finance Economy OR Investing.
See more➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤ Cash43.Com