We’re aiming all our most penetrating intellectual implements at a seemingly light-hearted topic this week: just what is the economic ideology endorsed by cherished 90s romcom ‘You’ve Got Mail’ , and the classic comedy on which it is based? From the economic anxiety of the Depression to the boom-based economic complacency of the 1990s, from sinister manipulation to a jarring cover of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, this episode doesn’t shy away from thinking seriously about the silly.

In this episode, we do a deep dive into Netflix shows like Sex Education, Sabrina, Umbrella Academy and Stranger Things and their disturbing tendency towards uncritical nostalgia. Where does this nostalgia come from? Why is it so prevalent, especially on a platform like Netflix which has a tendency towards algorithmically designed TV? And why does modern TV not want to historicise itself? We then move on to discuss how this trend may be exemplified in modern depictions of the Cold War, specifically the uneasy allure of time's ultimate destruction in Tenet (2020) and The House With a Clock in its Walls (2018). 

We compare Minnelli's classic MGM musical Gigi and Verhoeven's derided melodrama Showgirls. Despite their seemingly disparate traditions, a decadent fin-de-siecle set-piece and a satire of the 90s zeitgeist share a dirty dressing room in their taste for the hammy, the spectacular and the uneasily exploitative. But when does absurdity veer into skilful pastiche? What does Colette's novella Gigi tell us about the film's [mis]reading? And can these films' portrayal of commodified sexuality give us any insight into the performance of sex in the internet’s phantasmagorical arena?

This episode, we delve into Don DeLillo's spiky satire of information capitalism and David Cronenberg's much-misunderstood adaptation. Has the future become a dully knowable property, endlessly foreseen on the passive screens of our spectacular society? Or can tomorrow still turn round to kick us in the teeth? Taking in twenty years of New York, from 9/11, to Occupy Wall Street, to popularism and pandemics, this episode asks the question: what does it mean to be ‘contemporary’?

We dissect the politics of cult classic, Buffy, and its spin-off, Angel. Is Buffy individualist or collectivist? Libertarian or authoritarian? And what does its spectacularly camp aesthetic suggest about its ideological alignment? In a double-length bumper episode, we hope to bring you some of the magic of one of the most formally radical TV shows of all time, with a nod and wink to some potential political radicalism along the way.

In this episode, we discuss two women protagonists, both of whom undergo sexual assault and take revenge - creating two very different films. Are these exploitation movies? Is the stylised more truthful than the realist? And can women's stories, told by male directors, ever move beyond misogynistic ventriloquism?

This episode contains sustained discussion of depictions of sexual assault.

We discuss the films of Hollywood exile and Pinter collaborator Joseph Losey (focusing on The Servant, Accident, and Mr. Klein).

We discuss the films of Spike Lee, focusing on Do The Right Thing, as an interesting lens through which to see the contemporary American protests. 

This week, we discuss the potential for political agency in a seemingly over-determined world, in the context of new SF TV show Devs. Materially circumscribed and confined to our houses during lockdown, is there a way of escaping the tracks laid out for us?

We discuss the political co-ordinates of the home invasion movie in the context of the quarantined home and look at how two recent films have subverted the conventions of the genre from a left-wing political perspective