- “Unconditional” Brings Moral Questions to a Mother’s Love (May 8, 2026)
Apple’s “Unconditional” follows mother Orna Levy (Liraz Chamami) after her daughter Gali (Ronn Talia Lynne) is arrested in Moscow. Almost immediately, Gali disappears in Russia’s byzantine and corrupt carceral system, leaving Orna on a quest to figure out why her daughter was arrested, where she is, and how to get her back.
Showrunners Adam Bizanski and Dana Idisis build a compelling thriller here with surprising twists that build rather than simply redirect. With a muted palette and nerve-wracking score, “Unconditional” had my heart racing through action sequences and emotional revelations alike.
Now, a mother’s unconditional love for her child is hardly new territory, and “Unconditional” does fall into some of the standard cliches. Why Orna can overcover what a host of Russian oligarchies, Indian police, and Israeli spies cannot, never really adds up. Her ability to become a recognizable TV fixture gets a bit more explanation, but still stretches credibility.
Particularly because Orna appears to be struggling with an incomplete sense of herself. At times, she worries that she’s just letting life carry her along, exerting little influence of her own. In a particularly damning flashback, Gali says the same.
Thankfully, Orna has just the friends you need for this sort of crisis—an expert in PR and an ex in the secret service. And while those relationships are certainly convenient, they feel natural inside the series, unlike her self-doubt.
For the Orna, we see a force taking on government officials, media personalities, her in-laws, spies, and mobsters alike. She has an uncanny ability to spot a lie and act on it. How could this woman have languished for years, seemingly doing nothing? It’s unclear, and it isn’t helped by the fact that the show doesn’t bother to explain whether she had a career in or outside the home… ever.
Presumably, she stops being passive (if she ever was) because her daughter needs her, but even that doesn’t hold up under the show’s internal logic, as Orna recounts times when she failed Gali as a child through inaction. Orna does say she only feels ready to be a mother now that her daughter is 23—and perhaps that’s the answer. Maybe in “Unconditional,” being ready to be a mom means being able to complete extraordinary feats to protect the offspring.
Better not to worry about it. TV and film are filled with these types of stories, of parents beating the odds to protect their families. It’s a genre of its own, and the parents’ ability to move mountains is just one of its tropes. Viewed in that light, “Unconditional’s” flaws fade to the back, and the show begins to shine as more interesting than many of its peers because of how it raises moral questions.
Perhaps the most well-known example of this genre is Liam Neeson’s 2008 film, “Taken.” Maybe you can recite his oft-repeated “particular set of skills” speech. But while that film scratched a particular itch (bringing white-hot, holy revenge on bad guys), it made me furious at its lack of moral probing. Neeson’s character rescues his daughter, but leaves all the other trafficked young women behind to rot—and the film portrays that as the sensical, smart thing to do, ignoring that they too are someone’s daughter.
In this streamer’s most similar title, “The Last Thing He Told Me,” Jennifer Garner must protect her teenage stepdaughter as she tries to understand why her new husband disappeared, leaving both women in danger. Like “Taken,” this Apple series doesn’t ask the audience to think much. Its main takeaway is “Jennifer Garner: Warm. Strong,” and that’s it—a lesson that soothes in its blandness.
But “Unconditional” challenges, rather than placates. Orna initially believes her daughter to be a doe-eyed innocent, but as she learns more, she must investigate who Gali is and what it means to have raised such a person. As the title implies, Orna’s love never wavers, but the shocks and the questions linger long after the credits are done rolling.
Which is to say “Unconditional” is smart, the type of thing you have to give your full attention to (particularly if, like me, you’re reading the Hebrew and Russian subtitles).
Going in, I was particularly interested in how they portrayed the Levys’ Israeli identity. There’s no mention of Gaza or the West Bank, with the show appearing to be set in a sort of non-descript present. But there’s plenty to mine in how the Apple series portrays Israeli compulsory military service, the intelligence community, and violence more broadly. Bizanski and Idisis’s show doesn’t give any group the moral high ground, but instead finds us stuck in the muck of Orna’s impossible situation.
And this ambiguity continues in how “Unconditional” portrays its Russian characters, giving them meaningful backstories that complicate an all-bad reading. In fact, Orna makes some questionable decisions that, without giving away too much, put her moral standing into question. The show doesn’t judge her for it, but doesn’t pretend that all is well either.
And that makes this imperfect show stronger. “Unconditional,” for all the surety in its title and main character’s motivation, is a series of haunting, thought-provoking questions, which is a lot more than most of its peers can boast.
- A True American Original: Ted Turner (1938-2026) (May 7, 2026)
“That’s what entertainment’s supposed to do! It’s supposed to make you forget your miserable life!”—Ted Turner.
To sum up a life lived as loudly and as large as Ted Turner’s is an impossible task. He was a pioneer in so many ways, an entertainer at heart, an ecologist, and the last of the great showmen. When I worked at Turner during the TCM/FilmStruck days, he no longer roamed the halls in his bathrobe, but his presence haunted the Turner campus in Atlanta, his legendary stories passed down from older colleagues like folklore. When I read that he passed away on May 6, 2026, at the age of 87, my thoughts immediately turned to the city of Atlanta, which he called home for much of his storied career.
Turner was never one for shyness, and his often controversial statements earned him the nicknames “The Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous.” He was born Robert Edward Turner III on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, although he spent much of his youth in the South, growing up in Savannah, Georgia, and attending the private boys’ school The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Majoring at first in classics, then economics at Brown University, Turner never graduated, having been kicked out for having a girl in the dorms (the school awarded him an honorary B.A. in 1989). After serving in the United States Coast Guard Reserve to avoid the draft, Turner took over his father’s business at the Macon, Georgia, branch, and soon became president and chief executive of Turner Advertising Company.
Selling off radio stations in the 1960s, Turner bought a UHF television station in Atlanta, Georgia, changing its call sign to WTCG, representing his Turner Communications Group. On the station, Turner programmed old movies, soon adding theatrical cartoons, golden era sitcoms, and more, including “Gilligan’s Island,” “I Love Lucy,” “Star Trek,” and “Looney Tunes.” From this grew the superstation model, and later TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and of course, TCM—Turner Classic Movies.
But before all that, Turner bought the rights to broadcast the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, later purchasing the Braves outright. Due to his broadcast savvy and his infamous theatrics as the owner of the baseball franchise, Turner turned the Braves into a household name. If you do a quick image search, you’re as likely to see photos of Ted sitting in the dugout and in the stands as often as you will in the owner’s suite—or participating in a pre-game ostrich race.
His 24-hour news network CNN launched on June 1, 1980, with Turner vowing that they would not “be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.” The media titan even created a doomsday video to be broadcast should the world actually end (which you can watch on YouTube, despite the world still enduring, somehow). It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact CNN and its sister network, Headline News, had on how the world consumes news.
Along with revolutionizing cable news, Turner also changed the way viewers accessed movie history. In 1985, four years after MGM purchased United Artists, Turner worked a deal to buy the company and used its film library—which also included the RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. films, for broadcast on his TBS superstation, and later controversial colorized versions of black-and-white classics on TNT (According to Henry Jaglom, two weeks before he died Orson Welles said to him, “Don’t let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons.”).
On April 14th, 1994, at 6 p.m. in Times Square, Turner, along with film historian and host Robert Osborne and Hollywood legends Arthur Hiller, Arlene Dahl, Jane Powell, Celeste Holm, and Van Johnson, officially launched Turner Classic Movies with a broadcast of Oscar-winner “Gone With The Wind,” Turner’s favorite movie. The mission of Turner Classic Movies was to air these classic films uncut and commercial-free, adding historical context through Robert Osborne’s introductions, essays on their website, and their erstwhile Now Playing Guide, and preserving the history of classic Hollywood from those who made the films.
Along with screening films from the newly acquired library, Turner Classic Movies undertook an oral history project that remains one of its greatest legacies. Snippets of these interviews with classic stars like Sylvia Sidney and Eva Marie Saint still air in between movies on the channel to this day (and also on YouTube). TCM has aided in the restoration of countless films, including many silent films for which they commissioned new scores. Along with producing documentaries on stars like “The Divine Greta Garbo,” TCM also produced in-depth docuseries like “Moguls and Movie Stars,” exploring the early days of the Hollywood studio system.
The channel’s popular programming blocks, such as Silent Sunday Nights, TCM Underground, TCM Imports, Summer Under The Stars, 31 Days of Oscar, and Noir Alley, introduced generations of film fans to the breadth of film history worldwide. In 2010, the channel held its inaugural TCM Classic Film Festival in the heart of downtown Hollywood, bringing fans and stars together.
I know firsthand that TCM has changed lives, not just for those of us who worked as film historians, but for the viewers who found a home with the channel. Each week, we received countless letters, emails, and social media posts from viewers who had TCM on in hospital rooms or while in prison, finding peace or courage through the classic films we aired. During the recession, I became obsessed with TCM (I think I watched it about sixteen hours a day), and without the many films I watched on that channel as I regrouped and figured out what I wanted to do with my life, I know I wouldn’t be a film historian today.
Many of my colleagues, when I first worked at TCM, had been with the channel since the beginning. They often shared stories with me about Ted Turner’s many antics, from bowling parties in the mansion at the center of campus to racier stories best left unshared in mixed company. But at the heart of these stories was always a reverence for his passion and his love for what he had created when he first launched TCM all those years ago. At the 2019 edition of the TCM Film Festival, Turner addressed the opening night crowd, ending his brief remarks saying, “Let’s keep showing these movies until the end of time.”
While TCM may be Turner’s greatest filmic legacy, it is far from his only one. For movie lovers of a certain generation, both TBS and TNT offered up a slate of modern fare that could be watched over and over again. From broadcasting 24 hours of “A Christmas Story” in December to what my partner Robert Daniels likes to call TNT Classics, aka movies like “Legends of the Fall” that seemed to always be playing on the station. For years, Dinner and a Movie was a weekend tradition for my family, while my mother also always enjoyed whatever action films were broadcast under the Movies For Guys Who Like Movies moniker. After Turner’s passing yesterday, author and historian Caden Mark Gardner shared a Letterboxd list called TBS Superstation Cinema that brought a glimmer of nostalgia to my eye.
As the planet hurls towards destruction, I also can’t help but think about the impact of “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” the environmental-themed animated series Turner co-created with Barbara Pyle, who later headed the Captain Planet Foundation, which is now chaired by Turner’s daughter. Laura Turner Seydel. Narrated by LaVar Burton, “Captain Planet” was a favorite show of mine as a child, one that gave me hope that it wasn’t too late to turn things around for our beautiful, dying planet. I don’t know if I believe that that is true anymore, but I do credit this show for introducing me, and many of my peers, to ideas of sustainability and environmental awareness at a young age that changed how I moved through the world irrevocably.
In her tribute to her ex-husband on Instagram, the great Jane Fonda wrote, “I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped bring back from extinction – the black footed ferrets, the prairie dogs, Big Horned sheep, Mexican Gray Wolf, the Yellowstone wolf pack, bison, the red cockaded woodpecker and so many more, they’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species.”
A true American original, Ted Turner lived his life large and with purpose. He studied the past to fully understand the present and prepare for the future. Along with his five children, he leaves behind a remarkable, complex, and, yes, controversial legacy that will continue to reverberate long after him… at least until the end of the world as we know it.
- “The Terror: Devil in Silver” Fails to Earn a Spot on the Medal Podium (May 7, 2026)
The first two seasons of AMC’s “The Terror” are among the best in the history of horror television, atmospheric period pieces with real tension and philosophical depth. Perhaps the third installment, “Devil in Silver,” based on the novel of the same name by Victor LaValle, suffers from existing in their shadow, but my issues with it would remain without the arguably unfair comparison.
Despite some ever-timely themes about the inequity and systemic failures of the mental health system in this country, “Devil in Silver” feels flat, likely a factor of being too faithful to its source (LaValle himself gets writer credit, which is often a mistake) or a rushed production that never quite found its voice on set. There are some strong performances, but in a prime era for TV horror, this one doesn’t find the right balance of thrills and character, throwing ideas into a demonic mishmash that too often fails to connect with the mind or the gut.
A brief history: Dan Simmons’ excellent 2007 novel, a story of a doomed 19th-century Arctic expedition, gave the series its name as it was the source for the 2018 first season starring Tobias Harris and Tobias Menzies. The 2019 second season, subtitled “Infamy,” was another chilling period piece, set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. After a long break, “The Terror” is back with a visit to a mental hospital in a vaguely undefined time period that doesn’t quite feel like today due to its references to Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Iron Maiden, but also has just enough modern technology to make it a little unclear. A lack of specificity weaves its way through much of “Devil in Silver,” a frustrating characteristic given how much the other two installments thrived on detail.
It’s even more startling to see the flattened approach to storytelling in “Devil in Silver,” given who’s behind the camera in this 6-episode season, including Karyn Kusama (“The Invitation”) and co-showrunner Christopher Cantwell (“Halt and Catch Fire”). They’re part of the team that tells the story of Pepper (Dan Stevens), an ordinary guy who loses his temper and attacks the truly awful biological father of the daughter of Pepper’s girlfriend. The incident draws the attention of cops on the scene (including the great Marin Ireland and Philip Ettinger), but they decide they don’t want to do the paperwork and just drop Pepp off at New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital. All he has to do is take his meds for a few days, and he’ll be released. Of course, it’s never that easy.
When Pepper goes full McMurtry—Kesey’s novel and the Jack Nicholson version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” are literally name-checked right around when their influence reaches its fever pitch—he ends up stuck in New Hyde, basically a prisoner of the head of the facility (Aasif Mandvi) and something far more terrifying than a bad doctor. There’s something prowling the halls of New Hyde, a creature that might actually be the devil himself, and one that keeps the patients terrified and subservient. Judith Light, CCH Pounder, John Benjamin Hickey, Chinaza Uche, and Stephen Root fill out a strong ensemble, but it’s Stevens’ show. The ambitious Stevens growls his way through Pepper’s journey, playing this former musician as someone who knows he might have anger issues and has made a few bad decisions in his life, but he refuses to be medicated into a catatonic state to fix them.
Of course, “Devil in Silver” is about a system of mental health facilities that use human bodies and traumas as items on a ledger sheet. Take your medicine three times a day; don’t speak up; don’t cause a scene. LaValle’s book is obviously an indictment of a failed approach to treating mental health in this country like a burden, taking agency away from those who need help and doing as little as possible to keep them alive. It’s a system that often treats symptoms instead of disease, a timely message, but one that LaValle and his team hammer like a kid with a toy. There’s too little subtlety in “Devil in Silver,” a show that’s constantly spelling out what its characters are doing, why they’re doing it, and what it means in the show’s social commentary.
It works only in the too-few times that it’s allowed to be weird. Hickey (“The Big C”) gets the juiciest role as the Evil Wizard behind the curtain, and he leans into malevolence and actual threat in a way the rest of the show lacks. Most of all, “Devil in Silver” feels too restrained, too content to deliver its themes and hit the character beats instead of trying to build atmosphere or tension. There may be something evil hiding in New Hyde, but we know that because we’re told it over and over again, never because we feel it. The first two installments got under your skin; the third may leave a few scars, but it never goes any further beneath the surface.
Whole season screened for review. Premieres today, May 7, on AMC+.
- Peacock Takes Us Back to Miami for “M.I.A” Vice and Vengeance (May 6, 2026)
The new Peacock series “M.I.A” could be called “Miami Vice: The Reversal.”
This nine-episode revenge saga is equal parts crime drama and nighttime soap about the clash between two families and the ruin that follows. However, it hinges on the duo of Etta Tiger Jonze (Shannon Gisela) and Lovely (Brittany Adebumola), and on the seemingly predestined sisterhood that re-anchors Etta after tragedy upon tragedy.
Created and executive produced by Bill Dubuque (“Ozark”), with Karen Campbell (“Dexter”) as showrunner and executive producer, alongside Alethea Jones (“High Potential”), and executive producer/director, the ongoing series stars Gisela, Cary Elwes, Danay Garcia, Adebumola, Dylan Jackson, Alberto Guerra, Maurice Compte, Gerardo Celasco, and Marta Milans—with Elwes giving his best quirky’ Florida Man’ detective.
“M.I.A” gives us a first season that starts and ends with family. Set in the Florida Keys, we meet the Tiger Jonzes, a big, loving blended brood that looks respectable from the outside, but is covertly running drugs for a cartel. That cartel is another family affair, led by the legendary Edward James Olmos. Of course, it wouldn’t be a crime drama dripping in revenge if the criminals played nice.
M.I.A. — Pictured: Danay Garcia as Leah — (Photo by: Jeff Daly/Peacock)
The series opens with a pair of action set pieces: The first is a splashy, breakneck chase; the second is an intense volley of bullets and fire. It’s in the action where the series does its best work throughout its run. Fight scenes pop, and desperation fuels ingenuity. The early family dynamics are engaging as well. The cast continues to work well together, while shocks and reversals pop up throughout.
Where did the series lose me? “M.I.A” breaks down into two basic plot lines with several tributaries fueling each. We have Etta and her developing underground network of outsiders, and the three Rojas siblings as they vie for control of the legitimate and illegal sides of their business.
Standouts include Gisela, Garcia, and Guerra, with a nod to Jackson and Adebumola—despite the accent. However, the storytelling feels disjointed tonally. I’m a fan of genre mashups, or even genre-defying stories, but Etta’s nightlife escapades in opposition to the ‘big villain energy’ of the Rojas family’s dirty dealings don’t mesh well. It’s as though they exist in different worlds.
M.I.A. — “Familiar Faces” Episode 104 — Pictured: Cary Elwes as Kincaid — (Photo by: Jeff Daly/Peacock)
The writing does a nice job of establishing Etta as special, reckless, and compassionate. It also grounds both sides of the thriller equation in human upsides and foibles. But this particular combination of elements doesn’t add up to much, and it makes you feel very little about these characters and their struggles.
If you’re looking for a darkly violent Florida revenge saga with its vices and its sensationalism right up front, and a cliffhanger to close it out, give it a try. All I’ll say is, no more for me.
Full season screened for review. All episodes will stream on Peacock May 7th.
- BritBox’s Delightful “The Other Bennet Sister” Is a Romance About Learning to Love Yourself (May 6, 2026)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a story of limitless possibility, at least where adaptations are concerned. Beyond straight period-set retellings of the original, its story has inspired everything from a modern-day romance (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”) and a Bollywood musical (“Bride and Prejudice”) to a murder mystery (“Death Comes to Pemberley”) and a horror story (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”).
There are so many updates, homages, and contemporary remixes that it’s fair to wonder if there’s anything new to say about Austen’s most famous novel. Surely, we must have seen it all by now, right? How pleasant it is to be so thoroughly proven wrong. Because BritBox’s “The Other Bennet Sister” not only finds fresh joy and new purpose in the world of Austen’s classic, but puts one of the author’s most frequently forgotten characters firmly at the center of her own story.
Based on Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel, the series follows the story of Mary (Ella Bruccoleri), the frequently overlooked middle Bennet daughter, whose bespectacled, bookish demeanor sets her apart from her four sisters: Beautiful Jane (Maddie Close), witty Elizabeth (Poppy Gilbert), good-humored Kitty (Molly Wright), and spirited Lydia (Grace Hogg-Robinson). The family wallflower who is frequently criticized for her appearance and lack of social graces, she’s fully aware of her own limitations, if only because those she’s closest to won’t stop telling her about them.
Still, Mary finds joy in reading and other intellectual pursuits—one of the few facts about her we know from Austen’s novel—and never lets the constant criticism she receives make her hard or hateful. Indeed, she still believes in and longs for love and acceptance, and it is this consistently open-heartedness that makes her loved ones’ rude treatment sting all the more fiercely.
BBC/Bad Wolf
Over the course of ten briskly paced thirty-minute episodes (truly the dream!), “The Other Bennet Sister” breezes through the events of Pride & Prejudice from Mary’s perspective—the introduction of Mr. Collins (Ryan Sampson) is particularly harrowing—before following her from Hertfordshire to London. There, she quickly blossoms in the company of an aunt (Indira Varma) and uncle (Richard Coyle) who appreciate her for all the traits her immediate family regularly mocks. Given free rein to choose her own dress fabrics and make new friends, Mary begins to build a life for herself that’s all her own.
The series is warm and heartfelt without ever becoming cloying, a love letter to introverts, outsiders, and other weirdos who have never felt they fit in. It is also achingly romantic, as Mary discovers not one but two potential love interests who are drawn to her because of her more offbeat personality quirks rather than in spite of them. Donal Finn, having himself quite the year between this series and his turn as a Gen Z James Moriarty on “Young Sherlock,” is positively dreamy as the (potentially unavailable) barrister Tom Hayward, while Laurie Davidson crafts a gleefully subversive take on a Regency rake by giving his William Ryder a forward-thinking, modern flair. An embarrassment of riches for poor Mary, perhaps, but what a win for those of us watching at home.
Bruccoleri shines throughout in a star-making turn that’s fully unafraid to lean into Mary’s weirdest and most socially awkward tendencies. Even during her character’s most embarrassing moments, her performance never comes off as a caricature, and she maintains a quietly moving dignity in the face of purposeful cruelty from figures ranging from Caroline Bingley (a deliciously waspish Tanya Reynolds) to her own mother (Ruth Jones). Most of all, her Mary is deeply relatable, from her bursts of self-determination and empowerment to her worries about being stuck alone forever. Most of us haven’t been a Jane, or a Lizzie, or even a Lydia. But at some point in our lives, we have all been Mary.
BBC/Bad Wolf
If there is a real weak link here, it is probably the story’s choice to cast Mrs. Bennet as such an overbearing horror, a decision aided (or harmed, depending on your point of view) by Jones’s deliberately outsize performance. While it’s clear that part of Mrs. Bennet’s behavior is driven by fear—her daughters must marry, or they’ll be turfed out of the family home and left with no means to support themselves—there’s far too much overt cruelty in her interactions with her daughter and not nearly enough care. As for Mary’s father, Richard E. Grant is given little to do as Mr. Bennet beyond rolling his eyes at key moments.
It’s also true that Austen purists will balk at the series’ speed-run through the events of Pride & Prejudice, which comprise the bulk of its first two episodes and ignore or alter some of the story’s most famous moments. (The show’s not particularly kind to Lizzie either, rendering her a bit smug and mean in a way that will also likely ruffle some feathers.) But “The Other Bennet Sister” hits its stride at almost the precise moment that Mary leaves Longbourne, blossoming into a period romance that isn’t so much about finding a husband as it is about finding oneself.
If Bridgerton is making the period drama spicier as a genre, “The Other Bennet Sister” is moving in the opposite direction, embracing a more thoughtful interiority that we don’t often see in this space. While we are graced with multiple swoony romantic moments and a dreamy pair of love interests, this isn’t a show about a wallflower finding a partner, but rather a young woman finding herself.
All ten episodes screened for review. Premieres May 6 on BritBox.
