BYLINE

Priya Nair

TV & CULTURE EDITOR

Priya came to criticism sideways from theatre. She is patient with slow shows, short with bloated ones, and cheerfully vicious about lazy writing.

BEAT

Prestige TV, limited series, cross-medium essays.

FILED

60 pieces

Lena Ashworth Marcus Vell Priya Nair Jules Okonkwo Casey Winters

Title card for the Netflix limited series Adolescence.

Adolescence and the Cut That Never Comes

Each of the four episodes of Adolescence is a single unbroken take. The constraint is not a stunt. It is the show's whole argument, made in the grammar instead of the dialogue.

Priya Nair·1 Jun·5 min

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket alone on a bright suburban American lawn at midday.

Film

Dream Scenario: Borgli's Cage Vehicle as Media Critique

Kristoffer Borgli's A24 feature used Nicolas Cage as the vehicle for a media satire that landed in late 2023 and has aged, through 2024 and into 2025, into a specifically sharper object than the reviews initially registered.

Priya Nair·8 Apr·6 min

A tennis court at dusk, long shadows stretching across the baseline, empty seats

Film

Challengers and the Year Guadagnino Made Sport Sexy

Two years after Challengers arrived in its pastel pressure-cooker, the film's trick is clearer: it is not really about tennis. It is about what love looks like when three people are too competitive to admit they love anything but competition.

Priya Nair·14 Feb·6 min

A coastal Japanese landscape at dawn, wooden torii gates in silhouette against fog

Shōgun's Emmy Sweep and the Future of the Limited Series

Fifteen months after Shōgun's historic Emmy sweep, and with a second season confirmed, it's worth asking what the show changed about prestige TV, and what it didn't.

Priya Nair·2 Dec·6 min

A hospital window at night, reflecting two women's silhouettes laughing.

Dying for Sex: Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, and the Limited Series as Vessel

Liz Meriwether's eight-episode FX series handed Michelle Williams the role of the decade and Jenny Slate the best supporting performance on television last year.

Priya Nair·18 Nov·7 min

A stainless-steel restaurant kitchen at rest, warm service light spilling in from a pass window

The Bear Season 3: The Season That Slowed Down

Eighteen months after The Bear's third season landed to the worst reviews of its run, the season has quietly become the one I most want to rewatch. An argument for the slow, prickly middle chapter.

Priya Nair·18 Nov·7 min

An ornate nineteenth-century staircase in an official residence, empty, lit from a single side.

The Residence: Uzo Aduba, Shondaland, and the Detective as Structure

Shondaland's White House whodunnit handed Uzo Aduba the role she has been waiting for since Orange is the New Black. The rest of the show is trying to catch up to her.

Priya Nair·25 Oct·7 min

A glass-walled London trading floor at dawn, rows of empty workstations glowing blue

Industry Season 3: Still the Best Show About Money

A year after Industry's third season brought Kit Harington and a green-energy IPO into the show's London trading floor, the season looks like the moment the show became the best finance drama in TV history.

Priya Nair·18 Oct·5 min

A bank of CRT monitors in a dim broadcast control room, each screen glowing with an indistinct image.

Film

September 5 and the Control Room Film

Tim Fehlbaum's procedural about the ABC Sports team covering the 1972 Munich hostage crisis narrows its field of vision to a single control room. The narrowing is the film's argument, and it holds.

Priya Nair·17 Oct·6 min

A small London pub interior at closing time, chairs turned up on tables

Baby Reindeer: What Richard Gadd Actually Wrote

Richard Gadd's seven-episode autobiographical drama was the TV moment of spring 2024 and the legal controversy of summer 2024. A year later, the show itself is still the best argument for why it exists.

Priya Nair·25 Sep·5 min

A green tracksuit folded neatly on a metal bunk, a white numbered square on the chest.

Squid Game Season 2: Hwang Dong-hyuk and the Insurrection Inside the Tournament

Three and a bit years after the first season, Hwang Dong-hyuk's second Squid Game is a structurally different object from the original, and the difference is the thing worth describing.

Priya Nair·22 Sep·7 min

An emergency department trauma bay at shift change, fluorescent light above an empty gurney.

The Pitt: A Real-Time Argument for Procedural Discipline

R. Scott Gemmill's real-time hospital drama on Max ran fifteen episodes across a single shift. It is the best procedural television has produced in a decade.

Priya Nair·14 Sep·6 min

Two chairs on an empty train platform under a grey Polish sky.

Film

A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg's Two-Handed Script

Jesse Eisenberg's second film as director is a tightly written cousins-on-a-trip movie that uses its ninety minutes to say something particular about inheritance, grief, and the specific tolerances of family.

Priya Nair·10 Sep·7 min

A small black cat on a floating raft watched by a capybara and a lemur at dusk.

Film

Flow: Zilbalodis and the Wordless Feature

Gints Zilbalodis made a dialogue-free animated feature in Blender with a team of a dozen, won the Oscar, and put the Latvian film industry on the global animation map. The patient argument is that the form, not the novelty, is the achievement.

Priya Nair·4 Sep·6 min

A suburban American cul-de-sac at twilight with the warm glow of late-summer evenings

Film

Dìdi: Sean Wang's Coming-of-Age Debut

Sean Wang's 2024 debut feature is one of the best American coming-of-age films in years. Specifically about being thirteen, Taiwanese-American, and on MySpace in 2008.

Priya Nair·30 Aug·4 min

A sun-dappled Italian stone staircase leading down to a deserted coastal piazza

Ripley: The Slowness Was Always the Point

Steven Zaillian's eight-episode Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith was the quiet prestige show of April 2024. A year later, its patience has only looked smarter.

Priya Nair·14 Aug·5 min

A sniper rifle broken down across a white hotel bedsheet in hard sidelight.

The Day of the Jackal: Eddie Redmayne and the Ten-Episode Thriller

Sky and Peacock's Jackal adaptation stretched the Forsyth novel across ten episodes and bet the show on Eddie Redmayne's stillness. The bet paid off, mostly.

Priya Nair·8 Aug·6 min

A Las Vegas theatre marquee lit for a late show, empty lobby visible through glass

Hacks Season 3: The Show That Keeps Getting Sharper

A year after Hacks Season 3 landed, the show is quietly one of the best ongoing comedies on television. An argument for the series whose cruelty keeps getting better-calibrated.

Priya Nair·1 Aug·5 min

An empty basketball court at a practice facility, morning light through clerestory windows.

Running Point: Mindy Kaling, Kate Hudson, and the Workplace Comedy Still Works

Mindy Kaling's Netflix NBA comedy is a vehicle for Kate Hudson's return to screen work. The show around her is more conventional than her performance deserves.

Priya Nair·28 Jul·6 min

A spiral staircase descending into darkness, lit by a single emergency lamp.

Silo Season 2: The Patience Economy

Graham Yost's second season of Silo split its story across two bunkers and asked viewers to wait. The waiting is the show's argument, and also its risk.

Priya Nair·12 Jul·6 min

A rain-slicked Gotham alley at night, a single streetlight reflecting in a puddle

The Penguin: Colin Farrell's Prosthetic Triumph

A year after The Penguin finished its run on HBO, the show is a strong argument for what the superhero universe can still do on television when nobody makes it wear tights.

Priya Nair·8 Jul·5 min

A London townhouse at dusk with lamps lit in every window

Disclaimer: Cuarón's Expensive Mistake

Alfonso Cuarón's seven-part thriller on Apple TV was the prestige-TV arrival of October 2024. A year out, the shape of what went wrong is clearer.

Priya Nair·24 Jun·5 min

A sunlit retirement-community atrium with potted palms and a woman reading alone at a table.

A Man on the Inside: Mike Schur, Ted Danson, and the Comedy of Late Life

Mike Schur's Netflix show placed Ted Danson inside a retirement community as an amateur investigator. The premise is a disguise for the comedy Schur has been moving toward for a decade.

Priya Nair·2 Jun·7 min

A remote Alaskan ice road at twilight, a single vehicle's headlights cutting across

True Detective: Night Country and the Anthology Problem

Issa López's anthology season was the most divisive prestige TV of the year. Eighteen months out, the things it got right outweigh the things it did not.

Priya Nair·15 May·5 min

A London rooftop at Christmas, string lights reflecting off a wet balcony railing above an empty street.

Black Doves and the Spy Show That Refuses to Pick a Tone

Joe Barton's six-episode Netflix spy series arrived in the Christmas release slot in December 2024 and did the thing most genre television cannot do: hold a comic register and a grief register in the same frame without either one winning.

Priya Nair·17 Apr·8 min

A taped prizefighter's fist held low against a gas-lit London street at night, shadows long on wet cobblestones.

A Thousand Blows Finds Steven Knight a Frame Large Enough for His Obsessions

Steven Knight's Victorian boxing drama dropped on Disney+ and Hulu in February 2025. Six episodes in, the show's interest in three parallel hustles is what makes the frame hold.

Priya Nair·14 Apr·7 min