Netflix Archives

Jessica Jones and the Superhuman Power of Female Anger

Jessica Jones is an eloquent portrait of female rage that makes you glad for the anger. The women aren’t merely outraged about the abuse they’ve faced. They’re furious about a whole spectrum of systemic injustice of which sexism is only the tip.

Nolina Minj May 17, 2016

Pop Culture

Tune in to Torture: When Did TV Become So Bleak?

It’s not that every show should be a cosy sitcom populated by well-lit, attractive people. But do they all have to be a gritty rural crime drama, or a chilling biography of a serial killer? For some bizarre reason, logging into my Netflix has become like stepping into a dark and terrible world.

Kahini Iyer May 15, 2016

Pop Culture

Fleabag, Mrs Fletcher, and Succession: When Older Women Owned their Desires On the Small Screen

Usually, pop-culture has an archaic way of portraying older women on screen, depicting them as women who are devoid of desire. That seemed to change this year. In shows like Fleabag, Succession, and the Morning Show, middle-aged women wore their desire like second skin.

Dipti Kharude May 13, 2016

Pop Culture

Can You Watch “The Great Hack” Without Worrying About How Netflix Controls Your Data?

How do you grapple with the irony that Netflix, a streaming platform that has acquired The Great Hack, a chilling documentary that profiles the invasion of privacy carried out during the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Scandal, is itself guilty of controlling massive amounts of data about us?

Sindhuri Nandhakumar May 12, 2016

Pop Culture

The Lifetime of a Performance: The Crowning Glory of Olivia Colman

In Season 3 of The Crown, Olivia Colman delivers a performance that understands that a good drama hinges on great performers yearning to be ordinary humans. She cries like nobody can see but everybody can watch. She cracks like someone who is forced to use death as a device to feel alive. She breaks like someone who discovers that the fourth wall cannot be broken.

Rahul Desai May 12, 2016

Pop Culture

What’s Not to Love about Olivia Colman, the Queen of Everydayness?

The wondrous bit about Oscar-winner Olivia Colman is that she fits in as easily as an everyday person as she does as a royal. She is an unlikely hero, who has, through her performances, turned the non-glamorous parts of humanity, the usual disgruntlement of our existences, into art.

Runa Mukherjee May 8, 2016

Love and Sex

What Makes Relationships Work? My Husband and I Try to Find Answers in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story

In Marriage Story, Nicole and Charlie spend two hours discovering that abandoning your individuality doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. It just leaves you more confused. My husband agreed. This was the ultimate takeaway from the film – I felt we’d struck gold with our experiment.

Maitreyee Upadhyay May 6, 2016

POV

Why Seinfeld Would Have Failed at Indian Stand-Up

Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix special releases tonight. The man has been an inspiration to several budding comics, but would he have been written off as a fluff comic with no spine today?

Jackie Thakkar May 5, 2016

Love and Sex

There’s a Different Kind of Unfaithfulness Plaguing Modern Love. It’s Called TV Infidelity

Sneaking in episodes of shows that you and your partner are supposed to be watching together is the biggest betrayal of trust today. That’s what I call TV infidelity; it is real and it is tempting.

Dushyant Shekhawat May 4, 2016

Pop Culture

Narcos: Mexico Season 2 Refuses to Romanticise the Drug Business

How do corrupt, greedy men who work inured to the law or accountability of any sort, work together? It is a question Narcos: Mexico repeatedly poses, showing us the haywire ways of the drug world that has led to Mexico’s present- day cartel wars.

Manik Sharma May 4, 2016