Glen Weldon

Netflix's new fantasy series contains many familiar elements, but a twisty, fast-moving plot and smart storytelling decisions make it a satisfying, eminently bingeable meal.

A surfeit of characters, ideas, themes — and familiar writerly tics — obscures the storytelling in the opening episodes of HBO's new series about Victorian women granted special powers.

We asked PCHH listeners to vote for the best Muppet. Nearly 20,000 votes later, here's your top 25, with accompanying commentary by Linda, Stephen, Aisha and Glen.

A stellar voice cast helps ground this fantastical tale of a fledgling superhero's first forays into a job where the stakes — and the violence — are all too real.

A nuanced, flawed hero lends the latest Disney animated feature surprising depth, even if its grab-bag depiction of a world drawn from Southeast Asian cultures feels shallow.

Netflix's new animated series takes the cheesiness out of Guillermo del Toro's giant-robots-vs.-giant-monsters franchise; more's the pity.

A gay couple (Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci) take a trip through Great Britain's Lake District as they deal with the knowledge that one of them is dying.

The great Alan Tudyk gets a role he can sink his sharp pointy alien teeth into on a darkly funny series boasting an ensemble cast of characters with surprisingly nuanced interpersonal histories.

Watching musician/actor John Lurie paint and grumbly pontificate in an unnamed tropical locale is sometimes puzzling, often intriguing and always soothing.

The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been downsized to fit the television screen — and pay loving, sharply observed homage to TV sitcoms of different eras in the process.

The sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman is bright, entertaining, frequently funny — and overstuffed with villain backstories that crowd out the action.

If you could watch it at home in 2020, it's here — four NPR critics give their picks for the best in streaming or broadcast TV in a year when current events turned the industry upside down.

The story is simple, the themes surprisingly complex, and the hand-drawn animation is stunning in this stylish tale of a young girl yearning for freedom.

Riz Ahmed gives a quiet, intense and profoundly unsentimental performance as a rock drummer who suddenly loses his hearing and stubbornly refuses to accept it.

Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour talk about their favorite 2020 holiday TV specials.

A great cast and good intentions can't overcome Alan Ball's rushed, thin story about a closeted gay man returning to his South Carolina hometown in 1974.

The new LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special gently satirizes the franchise, but the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special nearly killed it.

The Showtime comedy series about three NASA astronauts-in-training at a mock moonbase in the desert vibrates on its own singular wavelength, but never generates laughs.

Nothing's as it seems in this Amazon series, which (sort of) re-teams Nick Frost and Simon Pegg for a gently funny and sometimes scary tale about a team of paranormal investigators.

Netflix's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's swooning gothic novel strips it of subtext — and sex — and tacks on a ending that misunderstands the "romance" at its center.