The first two episodes of Alien: Earth did a great job setting up the premise of the show. Episodes three and four focus on philosophical musings as much as corporations studying alien lifeforms. The Lost Boys have been sent to a Weyland-Yutani ship that has crashed in the middle of New Siam. They are ordered […]
Tag: FX
Alien: Earth – “Neverland” and “Mr. October” Review
Alien is an enduring franchise and gets its first TV spin-off with Alien: Earth, with Noah Hawley, the showrunner of Fargo and Legion, taking on the challenge. In 2120, five corporations control Earth, and there is a race to gain immortality through technology. On an island controlled by the Prodigy Corporation, five terminally ill children […]
The Bear Season Four Review
This review contains spoilers for the entirety of season four of the Hulu series The Bear. If you haven’t finished watching the season, read on at your own risk. You have been warned. I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Bear’s third season. Aside from my continued belief that the series is a drama with […]
Top Ten Television Shows of 2024
Usually when I sit down to write up my annual Top Ten List, I have a host of shows that I struggle to whittle down. This time around, however, while I had a decent sized list of shows to choose from, the culling process felt significantly easier than in years past because there just weren’t […]
The Best Show You Aren’t Watching: English Teacher
Perhaps I’ve become a bit jaded as I’ve gotten older, but as much as I do still enjoy more feel-good comedies like ABC’s still excellent Abbott Elementary (which is crushing it once more this season, if you haven’t taken the time to dive back into it), I’ve been more drawn to some of the darker […]
Say Nothing Review
It’s not possible to tell the entire complex history of The Troubles in a single nine-episode limited series. It’s not even possible to adapt the entirety of Patrick Radden Keefe’s searingly interesting 2018 book, “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” into a nine-episode limited series. But the series Josh […]
The Bear Season Three Review and Post-Mortem
The first portion of this review will contain some general thoughts about season three of The Bear. The second portion will have spoiler-filled, specific thoughts on what worked and what didn’t about this season. But fear not! There will be a clear delineation between the two sections, just in case you haven’t finished your binge […]
The Best Show You Aren’t Watching: Shōgun
I know that subtitles are divisive. Sure, a lot of people automatically subtitle everything they watch on TV now, but when it’s a foreign language series or film that requires English speakers to rely on those same subtitles to understand the dialogue, for some reason, people can get a bit put off by it. And […]
Top Ten TV Shows of 2023
It’s that time of year again. The temperature is dropping, the days are growing shorter, and 2023 is drawing to a close. Which can only mean one thing: It’s time for Pop Culture Maniacs’ annual TV Top Ten list! This year in television was a tumultuous one, as it was for all of Hollywood, with […]
The Best Television Series Set in Each of the 50 States
When my colleague, Kieran Freemantle, tweeted me earlier this week, asking me to name the best television series set in each of the 50 states (sorry Washington D.C.), my first thought was, “Oh my gosh. 50 is a lot of TV shows and that sounds like a lot of research.” But the more I noodled […]









