It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we consider the final three episodes of The Night Manager, season two. We ask what went wrong with the second season, as some promising beginnings are overwhelmed by an unwise decision to bring back a central character. At an ideological level, we consider whether the season’s themes of patrimony and imperialism manage to break through the somewhat cliché-ridden nature of the dramatization.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we analyze the new movie 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. A parable of humanism and dehumanization centered on two charismatic leaders, the movie hits its marks intellectually and aesthetically. We consider its themes and ideas, and ask whether this movie and its predecessor – last year’s 28 Years Later – will be come to be considered significant works in contemporary popular culture.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first three episodes of The Night Manager, season two. We consider the season as a continuation of Le Carré’s narrative, and consider how far the themes of this new iteration of the series match those of Le Carré’s wider body of work. We look into the ideologies (and views on ideology) that underpin the series, and consider the extent to which the Pine character, cycling endlessly from one identity to the next, is a hero for our post-truth age.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of Pluribus, with our thoughts on episode 8, “Charm Offensive” and episode 9, “La Chico o El Mundo.”

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of Pluribus, with our thoughts on episode 6, “HDP” an episode 7, “The Gap.”

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the fourth and fifth episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the third episode of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. We talk through this episode as a literalization of the problem of being an individual in late-stage capitalism or, if you prefer, the Amazonification of everything.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first two episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. The show posits an extraordinary intervention in worldwide politics and culture producing a utopia (that is of course simultaneously a dystopia) of quiescent bliss. Is the show shaping up to be another hit for the showrunner, previously responsible for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul?

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we consider Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska as personal and political document. With the release of the Nebraska 82 box set, and Deliver Me From Nowhere – about the making of the album – we take up the musical and social importance of Springsteen’s lo-fi lament. One of us has been listening to Nebraska for their whole adult life, the other had never heard of it until a week ago.

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we review Taylor Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl.” We consider the album’s themes: love, nostalgia, how hard it is to be famous, and how the internet is bad. We set the songs in the context of Taylor’s wider career and public persona.

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