Sophie Gilbert
Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, she was the arts editor at Washingtonian, where she won three Society of Professional Journalists awards for arts reporting and criticism. She has previously written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is the author of On Womanhood: Bodies, Literature, Choice.
How to Tell the Story of a Cult
Two docuseries about NXIVM present a question: Are the people who have escaped a controlling organization the most reliable sources on what happened to them?
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Netflix We Still Don’t Know Anna Nicole Smith
A new Netflix documentary offers glimpses of the tabloid star but fails to reckon with the forces that ruined her.
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Macall Polay / HBO The Roys Stumble Into the Real World
In the penultimate episode of Succession, the warring siblings find themselves exposed to the chaos they stoked.
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Illustration By Erik Carter / The Atlantic. Source: … The Defining Emotion of Modern Life
Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow captures grief in all its forms.
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Netflix A Splashy Drama About the Diplomacy of Marriage
On Netflix’s The Diplomat, relationships and geopolitics are similarly hard to wrangle.
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Clémentine Schneidermann The Most Quietly Radical Writer on Television
Alice Birch has brought her scabrously funny writing to shows such as Succession, Normal People, and now Dead Ringers.
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Macall B. Polay / HBO Succession Finally Did It
Notes on a jaw-dropping development
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Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: … TV Has a Cynical Message for Humanity
What happens when stories start to break down in the face of relentless human failure?
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Claudette Barius / HBO The Real Succession Endgame
In the premiere of its fourth and final season, the HBO show offered familiar beats but also a hint of a new direction.
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Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic Nora Ephron’s Revenge
What right do women have to tell their side of the story?
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Benjamin McMahon / Contour by Getty The Movie That Helped Kazuo Ishiguro Make Sense of the World
The Nobel Prize–winning author’s work has long had a symbiotic relationship with cinema. His Oscar-nominated film, Living, is the logical next step.
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Parrish Lewis / Netflix The Death of the Sex Scene
What we lose when intimacy gets added in postproduction.
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Elly Dassas / FOX A Strange, Paranoid New Crime Drama
Accused turns a British series about the powerless into an exploration of anxiety among the privileged.
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Netflix; The Atlantic What Is It About Pamela Anderson?
The model and actor drove men wild. She’s still enduring the consequences.
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Peacock Poker Face Has a Sting in Its Tail
Natasha Lyonne is extremely fun to watch as a crime-solving waitress on the run.
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Eduardo Castaldo / Netflix The Calamitous Lies of Adulthood
Netflix’s new adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2020 novel is a striking, moody show about the contours of deceit.
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The Atlantic; Getty; HBO Max 13 Feel-Good TV Shows to Watch This Winter
The most comforting shows to watch during the coldest season
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Julia Schimautz The 15 Best TV Shows of 2022
The year’s most essential series
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Fabio Lovino / HBO The Erudite, Absurd White Lotus Finale
Even for a show that has seemed dubious about human nature, Season 2 ended on a cynical note.
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Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic; Netflix; The Bismarck … Stubborn, Determined, and Dying
In the Netflix film The Wonder, a “fasting girl” becomes a holy spectacle of self-annihilation.
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HBO; Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic The Multiple Stories of NXIVM
The new season of the HBO docuseries The Vow shows how dangerous the human desire for narrative can be.
