Discussed: Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, The Curse, cringe comedy, reality TV, The Office, shows you try to get your friends to watch

This month, we talk about the work of Nathan Fielder and how it relates to reality TV. Through the shows Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, and The Curse, Fielder has moved from parodying the genre to exploring its ethics. The shows are uncomfortable and odd at times, but are also consistently funny. We discuss what’s real, what’s fake, and whether the shows are “cringe comedy” or something else altogether.

Related:

Discussed: Foe, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, literary adaptations, interiority in fiction, the filmmaking process

We’re thrilled to share our conversation with novelist Iain Reid, whose bestselling novels I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Foe have both been adapted to film. We discussed the choices that writers make when translating for different mediums and audiences, as well as the specific challenges that come with translating introspective texts. And we discussed his experience co-writing the screenplay of Foe, which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.

We’re trying something new on Together, Alone. In the past, we’ve had a monthly conversation about a show, movie, or YouTube video, written out like a chat in a messaging app. This month, we invited a guest and we thought it would be a great occasion to post audio of our conversation. We’ll do this each month, sometimes with a guest, sometimes the two of us. If you have guests you’d love to hear us talk to, or shows/movies you’d like us to watch and discuss, please let us know.

Our guest this month is Matt Singer, a film critic and author of the new book Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever. We watched a 1989 episode of Siskel & Ebert where they talked about the movies that inspired them to be critics, and had a wide-ranging discussion about the show, criticism, and Matt’s book.