Enshrouded in Darkness: Lance Oppenheim, Merritt Wever, and Skyler Gisondo on “Primetime” (September 29, 2026)
Blurring–or rather smudging–the lines between hunter and hunted, predator and prey, exploiter and exploited, director Lance Oppenheim’s “Primetime” derives its deliciously devilish thrills through emphasizing contrast. Whether it is imbuing spiritual weight to the earthiness of its story, oversaturating its ordinary compositions with piercing, revealing light, or contrasting a histrionic performance from an unhinged Robert Pattinson–who plays “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen–against an actor in a more understated register, the film exists in that uncanny valley between myth and unreality. Even the very concept of Hansen’s show, wherein he and his team would draw potential child molesters out, where he would then confront them and force them to confess to their twisted desires, feels incredulous that it was ever on air, and also par for the course for a nation that regularly resorts to spectacle and entertainment when it comes to trying to process sin and vice.
Straightforward as it may be in telling its story about the rise of Hansen’s show, the boundaries he pushed in the pursuit of higher ratings (“I’m gonna be bigger than “Lost!” he ambitiously exclaims to his producer, Andie [Merritt Wever]), and the show’s subsequent cancellation after an exposure gone wrong, its simplicity is complicated through how Oppenheim imbues a metaphysical heft into its narrative. “You’re cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” Hansen tells his protégé, Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), an actor hired as a decoy to lure out the potential predators. Indeed, Hansen exists somewhere between a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a false prophet, framing his show as righteous when, in reality, he sees it as a way to gain more notoriety and power.
For Oppenheim, this tension is something he was excited to explore in his first feature film, after a string of successful documentaries. “There’s something so interesting and maybe somewhat tragic about the concept of a person who has essentially embraced the cultural lore around himself,” he shared.
With “Primetime” breaking out at the box office, introducing Hansen to a whole new host of viewers, Oppenheim, Wever, and Gisondo spoke with RogerEbert.com over Zoom before the film’s premiere in New York; this piece combines their interviews into one fluid conversation. They discussed the film’s unique spiritual temperament, chewing gum, child actors, and whether it is ever possible to truly offer help on the other side of a camera.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Merritt, one piece of audio that “Primetime” highlights is your voracious gum chewing. Tell me more about how that action helped you, if at all, understand Andie better?
Merritt Wever: I went through a hundred packs of whatever was sugar-free, but I definitely chewed so much that by the end of the day I was getting nauseous. That had a part of a storyline that I don’t think ended up making it into the film, but it was this idea that Andie was trying to be a better person and quit smoking. The Nicorette gum that she was chewing was to help her keep on the straight and narrow, but in the same way other characters made compromises and strayed, at one point there was an idea that by the end of the movie, she makes a specific choice to not make a change and goes back to being a smoker.
You’re not the first person to bring up gum chewing, though, which is making me wonder if A24 is pushing that as a talking point or if people are honestly responding to the smacking.
(Laughs) I was genuinely curious; I feel like it must have helped you tap into the physicality of Andie in a way.
It was helpful; it was something she could do when she was getting excited about something. She becomes animal- or monster-esque when she’s watching the stings go down. This movie has a lot to do with who’s the monster? Where’s the monster? They’re chasing a supposed monster out there outside of themselves, but these characters reveal themselves to have their own monsters inside them. So I think when we’re talking about the gnashing of the teeth in a movie that also has wolves and those kinds of elements, I wonder if this kind of chewing physicality lies within that world.
I’m thinking about what you shared during the Venice press conference where, before “Primetime,” you were “coming off a string of parts where I was playing people who really cared a lot about the right things, used a certain part of their heart over and over, and that part of my heart had kind of run dry.” What were these characters from past projects demanding of you and what made Andie feel cathartic?
MW: I think leading up to Lance’s film, the characters I played in some of those projects were incredibly compassionate or empathetic. They cared about the right things and loved people. I think using the same part of your heart repeatedly can wear it to the nub, and I found that when other parts came that would ask me to use that part of my heart, I felt like there was nothing left. I needed to regrow and generate that, which ironically meant jumping to a different register.
Andie is not using that part of her heart. If anything, there’s something slightly masochistic about her. She likes swimming in these waters. When the script came my way, it was still in flux, but the shape of the character never changed, which is that she’s a person who does a very specific kind of job with a specific kind of man, and she’s offered the opportunity to change her life and make a different choice, and she decides not to. She decides to double down on this way of life and embraces the material.
Lance and I played at different times with getting very explicit in the script about why she chose to double down, why she made her choice, but I think he wisely decided that the film did not need that. What I hope is that when people see the character, they feel like it makes sense and they can track how she made her decision, regardless of how explicit we ended up being.
I think what strikes me about your character is not that she’s necessarily less of a sociopath than Chris, but that her reach is far more limited.
MW: Yeah, at the end of the day, she has more responsibility, but less power. With her, I tried to play into the reality of cycles of harm. Hurt people hurt people, yes, but she’s not even treated as a person at times. She’s very much like a dog that is kicked at certain times by Chris, and she turns around and kicks the nearest dog around her, whether it is the so-called predators or Xavier Von Erck.
It’s not explicit in the story, but I remember talking to Lance early on and saying, “An interesting element here is that a lot of people who prey on children or who attempt to engage with children in this way are people who had that done to them when they were children.” In the limited amount of real estate I had, I might have been trying to bring this cyclical idea of harm, how violence gets passed down, that when you’re treated a certain way, that’s sometimes all you know and that’s how you choose to treat others.
Well, in one sequence where you get to throw it back to Chris is in that beat towards the end–which has garnered a lot of reactions–where you brutally enunciate the line “I will call the network, motherfucker.”
MW: Interestingly, you talk about the response to that scene because at the time we are chatting, I’ve only seen the film once at Venice, and that’s a very specific audience. It is why I’m excited to see the film tonight because I’ll be watching it with an audience in the US that has a very particular media and culture diet that is different from when I first watched it.
It feels like we shot a lot of different versions of Andie, because that’s Lance’s discovery process. When filming wrapped, I thought, “I’m not going to know who Andie ends up being until I see the final cut.” That is new for me; it felt like I was meeting her for the first time when I saw the film. Hearing people respond or gravitate towards anything I did to embody her is enlightening because I’m still in the process of being introduced to her.
Skyler, also at the Venice Press conference, there was an astute observation made that the coterie is composed of many former child actors, including Alex Winter, Jonathan Lipnicki, and, of course, yourself and Pattinson. Was this something that you clocked yourself or talked with Lance about in regard to what you might bring in from your own experience as a child actor onto this set?
Skyler Gisondo: So much of Dan’s journey as this aspiring young actor was easy to latch onto. There was that kind of quiet desperation of not being able to betray how badly you want this thing, and also the eagerness, a desire to express just how grateful he is for an opportunity, and the quickness to compartmentalize if anything doesn’t feel great, that felt relatable. I also remember the experience of being young and working with an actor you idolize, and that person feels ten feet tall, and you can’t even believe you are breathing the same air as them, let alone doing a scene with them. With Dan’s relationship with Chris, there’s so much of that. He’s just in awe of Chris and everything that he has.
I’m thinking now about the scene where Andie tells Dan, “We’re going to shoot the rehearsal.” Lance and David Bolen loved to keep things alive and discover things in the moment, coming from the doc world. So there were many moments where we did not rehearse. That scene had so many moving pieces. Lance had this vision of me coming in with the wind, as if I was coming in from some kind of storm. Merritt and I knew we had to hit this mark, but there were still a couple of beats of silence because there were moving parts. So I said, “Do we have time for a rehearsal?” and she was so dialed in to character that she said, “We’re going to shoot the rehearsal.” In a lot of these scenes, Dan’s incredulousness mirrored my own in a way that was helpful whenever I was completely surprised or just by a decision. If I ever was aware I was not an actor anymore, I could channel that.
I’ve heard you speak about how in Hollywood, if you break out doing one type of movie, you’re often typecast. It mirrored a lot of the struggle Chris was feeling at the start of the film about his work not being taken seriously, feeling like “To Catch a Predator” was stuck in a kind of limbo.
SG: As an actor, he’s so much out of your control. You just wait a lot; you spend a lot of time waiting for the phone to ring. I never thought about how a lot of the work I did prior to this was comedy; I just saw them as great opportunities to work with great people, and I wanted to leap at those opportunities. I don’t think I quite realized how big of a departure “Primetime” would be for me until I did it. I didn’t think I could do it, but Lance just had this unwavering belief that fueled my own confidence. Rob, being at the level he was at and yet still being willing to take swings and being so incredibly alive- that’s the kind of MO I want for myself going forth.
You’ve spoken about encountering Chris Hansen through memes and recreations. I think there’s a meta element to that when Dan adopts Hansen’s mannerisms. Tell me more about where you see that sequence fitting into this idea of meme-ification of someone like Chris. You’re, in essence, copying Rob’s impersonation of Chris Hansen.
SG: It’s crazy now to think on the page; it was not evident to me that Dan would also be doing the voice. It was clear that he was trying to take control in the way that Chris would, and I think that’s what unites these various “recreations,” this idea of wanting to grasp at control. I remember going to set, and it occurred to me that it could be a fun idea to mimic not necessarily Chris’ voice, but Rob’s impersonation of his voice. Rob was on set, and I flagged him down, and he was so excited by the idea and so generous with his time. I just asked him to read all of the lines in his voice, and so I was able to work with him on getting the sound down.
Merritt, you’ve spoken about this film being a curious period piece, and that the show came out at a time when the show predates a world where we had the internet on our phones. As someone who is in the public sphere, whose images and words can be manipulated and taken out of context, I’m curious about how the film’s ideas land for you when everything is threatened with virality.
MW: I have been very lucky professionally to be someone who’s able, sometimes more than others, to continue working without being particularly public.
That may shift for you in a couple of weeks’ time, though.
MW: I don’t know about the shift, but I do know that I’m trying to participate. I’m trying to be a player and be a good sport. So this is a question for almost two weeks from now (Laughs).
I’m curious what younger generations think of this film. The internet is something different now than it was when the show took place, particularly due to its accessibility. To have not just a camera in your pocket but your phone where you can upload and access those images … it is different to grow up in a world where you have to acknowledge that every time you leave your house, you could record someone or someone could record you.
hIn “Primetime,” people are trying to record other people’s supposedly worst actions and thoughts and desires and deeds. It very much explores what happens when media, the news, and law enforcement collide with human beings. But nowadays, it’s become second nature to turn the camera on ourselves and offer the public our own worst moments. It’s interesting: we don’t just share the best of ourselves with these little handheld cameras. We seem driven to also share the worst.
Lance, I want to ask about the spiritual register of this film. There’s, of course, a reference to the kind of demonic force Hansen encounters in India, which you bring to life. But I also think about how you and David Bolen frame the film’s opening moments, where Tony Revolori’s character falls prostrate before Hansen, as if he’s in a kind of twisted form of confession where Pattinson is playing a priest. Tell me more about the intentionality of that framing.
Lance Oppenheim: When you watch “To Catch a Predator,” especially the raw footage, it feels like everything you’re seeing is beamed from Mars, a different planet. These objects that seem so familiar, whether it is sweet tea, pepperoni pizza, or cookies … these ubiquitous items that could be from anywhere in the US, something feels off about them. As you said, these objects take on a doomed or spiritual significance. They have a lot of weight for people who enter the house, and essentially they leave the house with their lives having ended. You can watch the show and witness a series of little deaths. You see the life leave people’s eyes when they’re discovered on television.
In that regard, I was thinking about Chris Hansen as an archangel, or this spiritual figure who occupies this position of moral superiority. He’s tying himself to something ancient.
I like that he’s almost unaware of it in the movie, but something is happening to him. The more he does this show, the more spiritually something is changing inside of him and is, in some ways, being robbed of him. He’s entered into a Faustian bargain he isn’t even aware that he’s made.
I talked a lot about this with Rob, but the bracelet he wears in that film and then gives to Dan was our version of the ring of power in “The Lord of the Rings.” If you think about Frodo trying to throw the ring into Mount Doom at the end, that’s in part what I was drawing from too: this kind of operatic epic of mythological proportions. To use that as a touchpoint seemed very fitting for a person like Hansen, who has turned himself into a myth, meme, and has occupied for almost thirty years a lot of attention online and culturally.
I know that the “whale” Hansen references in the film is a gambling term, but it did make me think about the story of Jonah: how, in running away from Nineveh, he was swallowed by a big fish, yes, and perhaps looked at differently, was consumed by the enormity of what he was avoiding.
LO: I love that. One of my favorite movies of all time is Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger Than Life,” and that movie is essentially the book of Job. Chris is never dealing with one crisis at a time. That’s why the film includes things like this extramarital affair. Well before the events of the movie start, he’s doomed. He has already made decisions that are somewhat irrelevant to what he’s doing with his show. Yet because he is setting such a high moral standard for everything, he has to also be held to that. As he says in the film, “A man should be held accountable for the decisions he makes.”
I liked this idea of seeing the media culture around him attempting to snipe him and employ the same tricks that he does to other people, whether or not it’s justified. He even says, “This person I’m having this affair with is thirty years old …why are you coming at me with this?” I was fascinated by this idea that we could inhabit a time where I felt like the tabloid culture was nastier.
Skyler, I want to turn the spiritual register question to you because it’s not lost on me that you’re stepping into this role after having played Gideon in “The Righteous Gemstones.” It feels like the fear-mongering, the language of spiritual warfare Hansen adopts, can be attributed in part to the rhetoric of megachurch pastors too.
SG: That’s an interesting point. I think for Dan, in regard to his own spiritual life insofar as it exists in “Primetime,” there is no higher good–and perhaps no higher God–than his desire to be taken seriously as an actor. Rob and Lance have told me a version of the following line: “There used to be a pillory in every town and now there’s a television set in every home, and you’re on it and so am I.” So much of the movie for Dan is his relationship to wanting something so badly that he’s wanted for so long and it’s so close, but he has to reconcile with this idea that he’s doing this uncomfortable thing. This is not acting for him, but something else entirely because whether he’s comfortable about it or not, he is an arbiter and is doling out punishment.
Lance, you’ve said that artistically, you are drawn to people obsessed with fantasies and those who end up becoming entombed by them. That was true most recently for “Ren Faire” and dovetails well with this pair of projects you have coming out in “Primetime” and “You Can See Everything.” Why do you keep coming back to the well of this theme?
LO: I think a part of it is at least the fact that my parents are both real estate attorneys, and during the recession, I remember they were representing people whose homes were being foreclosed on. One of the people they were working with lived in a garage with all of their prized possessions, and they didn’t want to part ways with them. That really stuck with me as a kid, wanting to be buried with your things.
I have ambitions as a filmmaker, and I feel constantly defined by, in some ways, my ambition, and I hate that about myself. I find it in a weird way when I make these movies, especially this one, there’s obviously parts of myself that are in it. When I think of Chris Hansen, and I think about the Cameo that my wife had gotten me from him in 2024, well before I ever received a script. The feeling I had was like, “This is a guy who started as an investigative journalist in the mold of Mike Wallace, and yet now you could pay him $30, and he’ll pretend that you’re a potential predator and he’ll wish you a happy birthday.” While he’s doing that, he’s still doing investigations into this extremely serious subject. There’s something so interesting and maybe somewhat tragic about the concept of a person who has essentially embraced the cultural lore around himself. He’s so hyper-aware of it, and all of the work he does is absorbed into this hyper-performative version of himself. The man has become a meme; the person has become a persona.
He has lost some part of himself potentially in doing this work and spending so much time enshrouded in darkness. He’s spent more time doing that than spending time with his family; that’s the work of an enterprise journalist. You’re constantly on the road, you’re gone all the time … I was drawn to this idea of following the breadcrumbs of that feeling, and trying to depict that in interesting ways.
I like the idea that the world of the show felt closer to family to him. His spending time with Dan, his “fake son,” felt more real than the time he spent with his real children. His home feels even more artificial than the world of the show when he has this elaborate apparatus set up. With “You Can See Everything,” there are similar ideas, and part of what I hope to communicate when people see it is this idea of surprise. Nathan and I made this movie in secrecy, and we wanted people to have this experience where they had no context at all for what they were watching. The same cinematographer shot both films, and the composer worked on it too. There’s a level of immersion we’re striving for, where the people watching it would have the same feelings we had making it, being in the room, observing everything.
Your film has made me wonder about whether it’s possible to be free from the entrapment of a system you still participate in. As a documentary filmmaker, I’m wondering if you find yourself asking the same haunting line that closes the film: “What would have happened if I wasn’t there?”
I think about The Journalist and the Murderer, which is largely about the kind of vampiric relationship that exists in non-fiction storytelling. There was something therapeutic about seeing the kind of media culture of the time. There’s a war that was going on that was really confusing and people didn’t know why we were in it. The perfect receptacle came their way in the midst of that confusion, which was in the form of this television show. We’re in a time now where it feels like we’re in another war that’s really confusing, and that rage is still there; it hasn’t gone away, and Chris Hansen hasn’t gone away either.
He’s still doing the same show in a different context. Millions of people are doing it all the time with their phones. So when I think about that final line … in the context of the movie, I feel like there’s a multifaceted dimension to it. Critically, I didn’t want to end the movie with just that line but with Dan getting his card. It feels like this pyrrhic victory. He has achieved everything he’s ever dreamt of, but at what cost? It felt like a classic ode to some of the movies that I thought so much about when I was making this, whether it’s “Ace in the Hole” or “A Face in the Crowd” or “Demon Lover.”
As a documentary filmmaker, I definitely experience that question on an everyday basis. I remember when I was working on “Some Kind of Heaven,” I remember thinking of Reggie Kincer, who I am still very close with, and how he was doing psychedelics and prioritizing this alternate way of existing inside a very constructed universe there. I kept thinking, “Is the camera’s presence affecting him? Is it motivating him to be on psychedelics?” I remember there were a lot of times where we would put the camera aside and just talk with Anne, his wife, just to be like, “Are we helping or are we hurting? Should we get out of here? Or is there a path to catharsis in some way?” There’s something I selfishly love about the experience of making films, and I love being, especially with documentaries, being in worlds that I’m an alien invader in. I love when I don’t have any reason to be in a space, and yet I have to be hyper-present to get to know people and hopefully capture a truth that is essential, and that can speak to something that is a profound human drama.
“Silent Hill: Townfall” Gets Fogged in by Frustrating Gameplay (September 29, 2026)
Konami’s “Silent Hill: Townfall” opens so promisingly. Sure, a first-person “Silent Hill” game feels very weird at first, but the atmosphere of the game’s setting, along with its early few hours of gameplay, place it atmospherically right in the heart of the series. It’s foggy, creepy, mysterious, and you can lock doors this time! A blend of stealth mechanics and puzzle-solving make the first two chapters of “Townfall” truly engaging. And then the air comes out of the tires.
Not only is the end of the third chapter of this game one of the more numbingly frustrating bits of stealth level construction I’ve come across in decades of gaming, but the game never really recovers narratively, losing much of its personality as the story diffuses across multiple POVs with increasingly unengaging emotional beats. No one is happier than this critic that “Silent Hill” is back as a prominent gaming franchise—three in three years, including last year’s “Silent Hill f“—but that excitement is now haunted a bit by this dip in quality.
“Townfall” takes place in 1996 in a fictional Scottish town called St. Amelia. You first play Simon Ordell (Jovan Adepo of “Babylon”), who wakes up in the water, climbing to a dock and then walking into what looks like a city that’s been abandoned after some sort of supernatural incident—in other words, very Silent Hill. There has been a lot of debate online about whether this is a “true” SH game, and that’s patently silly. It has a confused protagonist in a fictional, fog-shrouded town, evading nightmare fuel creatures and solving puzzles. So, yeah, it definitely is, even with the over-reliance on stealth and first-person POV. In fact, expanding what it means to be a “Silent Hill” game with a title that feels inspired by Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima’s notoriously disappeared “P.T.” is a great idea. The execution is another matter.
As Simon begins his exploration of St. Amelia, we learn a few things about the place and his history. He’s seeking someone named Zoe Ellis, who was a nurse during a time of great crisis. There are signs and recordings about staying indoors and avoiding public spaces, hinting at a pandemic, possible riot-protests, or perhaps something more Lovecraftian. Of course, that’s about when the monsters come out, starting with a being that looks like it has a sideways axe blade in its face, and he likes to headbutt you with it. While you get a plank to use as a melee weapon relatively quickly, the game’s design clearly favors stealth. Not only are these enemies resilient to a plank that breaks after a few uses, but you’re given a handheld CRTV that reveals their location. The developers have said that this device is the main reason the game is in first-person: So you can see the CRTV in your left hand and use it to track enemies to sneak around them.
Simon is contacted by a mysterious man named Richard, who becomes the third point of a triangle with Zoe and our first protagonist. You will end up playing as all three, although the gameplay doesn’t vary much between characters. Zoe is even less stocked with weapons than Simon, and her enemies seem even more able to eradicate you with a single sighting; Richard’s chapter centers speedier bad guys but you get a shotgun to take em out in a way that almost feels like a different game.
For all three, “Townfall” relies on two elements: Stealth and puzzles. You’ll need to be a huge fan of the former to proceed through most missions. One enemy known as The Weight is a particular nightmare, and as he hunts Simon at the end of the third chapter, goodwill towards what “Townfall” did well for its first hours begins to leak. No one minds a well-done stealth mission in a survival horror game, but the first mission that includes The Weight is a soul-sucking drain, punctured by bad level design and inconsistent mechanics. The Weight will alternate from just standing in your way endlessly to wandering to the corner of the map only to spot you down the hall and begin chase. It’s almost impossible to determine when you’re sufficiently hidden. And if the character and level design were stronger, none of this would feel like such a chore. It’s a boring basement level that goes on forever. And then the game basically brings it back in the final chapter.
What will likely keep gamers, especially hardcore “SH” fans, pushing through the faulty mechanics and ultimately repetitive enemies—there’s a shockingly small variety of bad guys—is the storytelling. As it unfolds, the connections between Simon, Zoe, and Richard become clearer as all three seem trapped in this space between reality and H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares. It’s all related to an investment by Richard’s company, Chapman Energy Group, and their cover-up of a fire that killed dozens of their workers, leaving Simon as the only survivor. Zoe was the nurse who treated him, and it gets much darker and weirder from there. Without spoiling, choices made in the real world by Simon, Richard, and Zoe have trapped them in this deadly space.
Within the frustrations, there are admittedly ingenious puzzle designs. Zoe’s major puzzle involves medical procedures on an unknown patient, including finding the right drugs in a medical centre occupied by monsters and even calibrating an X-ray machine. It’s an unexpectedly clever chapter, one of the strongest in the game. And Richard’s journey through CEG Headquarters late in the title includes some clever bits, especially one involving employee records that shows how great this series can be with dark humor.
A foggy town that seems to have emerged from Hell to help a protagonist process grief and guilt? “Townfall” is definitely a “Silent Hill” game and the market is better when its staple franchises like this one are robustly producing new titles—just look at how much attention the resurgence of “Resident Evil” has done for the industry. So while “Townfall” is a disappointment, it’s encouraging to see Konami actively expanding the legacy of their franchise. Sometimes when you swing for the fences, you strike out. But I still can’t wait to see the next at-bat.
The publisher provided a review copy of this title. It is now on PS5 and Windows.
HBO’s “War” Bares Its Teeth, But Lacks a Considerable Bite (September 28, 2026)
Created by George Kay, HBO’s new series “War” follows tech billionaire Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and his movie-star wife, Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), whose marriage is colder than the dreary London weather. When we first meet him, he sleeps with a young woman who is clearly not his wife, but the morning after their tryst, she calls someone to report that her work is done.
We soon find out that Carla set this meeting between the two up, unbeknownst to her husband, as a means to use Morgan’s infidelity as a cataclysmic excuse for divorce. Later, Morgan has a legal aide posing as a fan serve his wife divorce papers on the red carpet at her new film premiere, showing that he too can be calculating, and that this marriage has run its course on both ends.
While Carla gets legal counsel from the famed Taylor & Byrne, Morgan hires the ruthless Cathcarts & Sons, and both firms make it clear they will stop at nothing to secure their clients’ victory. Largely an intriguing premise, the series unfortunately focuses on two incredibly dull characters who feel like they belong in a procedural drama aired on cable television rather than the home of a series like “Succession.”
Despite sharing 10 years in this marriage, Morgan and Carla don’t feel like two people who have ever been in love, or frankly, two people who have ever shared a room. While they’ve clearly fallen out of favor with each other, the life in every scene is sucked out each time West and Miller share the screen, leaving behind a stale, stifling air.
Thankfully, the series quickly introduces Jonathan “Johnny” Warren (Archie Renaux), an ambitious, cocky young lawyer who becomes entwined in the mess Morgan and Carla have created. Masquerading as a double agent, he just might be the most thrilling character to watch in the show’s overwhelmingly dull first few episodes. As Johnny runs to and from various offices and attempts to secure the future of his career, Renaux delivers each line and huff with a tenacity unlike the series’ top-billed cast. He, along with both sets of lawyers from Taylor & Byrne and Cathcarts & Sons, makes this series feel worthwhile, even when the series’ momentum feels like it’s finally fizzling out.
War (HBO)
As the lawyers in the series, married couple Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) and Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle), along with work partners St. John Smallwood (Pip Torrens) and Beatrice “Queen Bea” Ubosi (Nina Sosanya) also steal the show. They play their roles like hound dogs thirsty for blood, sniffing out the lies Morgan and Carla tell and salivating at the thought of being at the center of a legal battle so messy it threatens to upend the lives of the two people at its center.
Slowly, the divorce at hand starts to infiltrate their lives as well, as lawyers and aides begin to use each other’s secrets and lies to gain the upper hand in their cases. With such a fantastic supporting cast, it’s a shame the series doesn’t fully invest in them until halfway through this season’s eight episodes.
That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of greatness in each episode. Oli Julian’s score, in particular, is filled with plucky strings and sharp keys that make even a drive down the road in a fancy car feel stressful, and Eve Doherty’s kinetic editing also amplifies the thrills.
War (HBO)
The show’s craft makes each act of betrayal more complex and engaging than it appears on paper, even when the performances that the outcomes of these deceits hinge on do little to translate those moments. And of course, the sharp dialogue reminiscent of HBO titans like “Industry” often lands with a punch, even when the actors’ facial expressions don’t match the way their teeth gnash after vile words spill from their lips.
Although it gets stronger as the season unfolds, “War” takes too long to get its gears turning. That’s not to say the series doesn’t improve greatly over its eight episodes, because it certainly does. It’s just unfortunate that it takes so long to fully flesh out the identity that will inevitably continue on into the show’s second season, which has already been greenlit.
As the lawyers and aides become a bigger focus, the series shows how their lives are dictated by the cases they take, with the drama their clients bring trapping even the most experienced characters in a web of lies they become ensnared in. By the end of the eighth and final episode of the season, the series thankfully transforms into one that seems to understand what it wants to be, just in the nick of time.
All episodes were screened for review. Premieres October 1st on HBO.
Adult Swim’s “Get Jiro” Serves Up Bloody, Sloppy Culinary Revenge (September 28, 2026)
It’s funny, looking back on 2026, that we’ll have gotten two televisual glimpses into the mind of the late, great chef and food writer Anthony Bourdain. One, Matt Johnson’s wry, tender biopic “Tony,” gives us a glimpse of the man’s larval form, the insecure, manipulative boy before he became the Tony we all knew and loved. The other? Bizarrely enough, an adaptation of a graphic novel he co-wrote in which a beleaguered chef with a checkered past punches, kicks, and decapitates his way (Casey Ryback-style) through a post-apocalyptic dystopia where haute cuisine carries enough cultural weight that people will kill for the right dish.
That’s the logline for “Get Jiro,” a graphic novel Bourdain penned in 2012 alongside Joel Rose, now adapted into a ten-episode Adult Swim series. The premise is so high-concept as to feel derivative, like a gumbo with too many disparate ingredients thrown together: In a resource-scarce future Los Angeles in which the populace entertains themselves with virtual reality, the only true sensory delights lie in food. Ergo, chefs have been elevated to a place of extreme cultural importance, mastering their craft like samurai and living like mob kingpins.
Living and cooking on the “Outer Ring” of this world is Jiro (Brian Tee), a stoic, unassuming sushi chef who, in the first episode, is approached by a sniveling dilettante at his humble locale to recruit him for greater things. But when the man insists on dipping his nigiri in soy sauce, Jiro’s blade gets another use besides slicing salmon, and the man’s head leaves his body. Unfortunately for Jiro, that becomes the first blow in a turf war that eventually sees him pitting two over-the-top rival chef kingpins, “Zatoichi”-style, against each other.
Get Jiro (Adult Swim)
All the components are there for a delightfully zany, bloody take on the yakuza/mob action thriller, with dishes as coveted as territory. But the original comic’s appeal lay in its vivid, grotesque artwork (by Langdon Foss) and the bona fides Bourdain’s name gave to its chef-flavored mayhem more than its story; Adult Swim’s adaptation loses the flavor of that artwork, dousing its well-worn cliches in unpalatable animation that feels more Flash animation than flashy.
Over the course of the first season’s ten episodes, Jiro is drawn further and further into the Inner Ring’s criminal underworld, battled over by Bob (Titus Welliver), a gruff, uncompromising maker of French international cuisine, and Rose (Allison Pill), a crunchy vegan who prides herself on ethical eating and no meat-is-murder dishes…though dispatching humans is a different story. Each wants Jiro’s talents with a blade (in any context) for their own reasons, and he’s more than happy to play them against each other, even as deeper scars from his family past begin to surface.
Granted, the show appeals most when it leans into the food-themed action: sniper-bakers who snuggle their rifle components in a series of baguettes, car chases evading variously themed food-truck bounty hunters, mob bosses drowning failed subordinates through what can only be described as “hollandaise-boarding.” The list goes on. Bourdain’s aim with the comic was clearly to send up the self-seriousness of chefs like himself, mixed with his love of samurai and yakuza movies, by building a fictional world where the tools and terms of chef culture become bloody weapons. Picture any “John Wick”-style action sequence set in a restaurant kitchen, and you get “Get Jiro”‘s whole deal.
Get Jiro (Adult Swim)
But after a few episodes, the novelty of the premise dissipates, and it gets harder to invest in the series’ twists and turns. As a character, Jiro remains pretty thin, his ronin-like stoicism buoyed mostly by the gradual reveal of his checkered past. His supporting cast offers little to offset that bitter taste; his allies consist of the well-meaning cop (Courtney Taylor) with her own relationship to food, and two innocent sisters (Seychelle Gabriel, Tessa Inez) whose proximity to Jiro put them in danger, most of whom don’t get enough to do to offset those formulaic roles.
The big later-show curveball comes in Justin Kirk‘s Alister, a Bourdain-like food critic whose relationship to Jiro’s cooking takes bizarre turns (especially after an episode featuring a violent escape from Butcher’s Block Prison, where all the big scary chefs get locked up). While the show mostly uses food as window dressing to add some seasoning to its been-there-done-that crime thriller action, Alister’s thread lets “Get Jiro” do what it does best: It actually explores our relationship to food and its various class signifiers.
It’s clear that shows like “Invincible” and “Blue Eye Samurai” have paved the way for something like “Get Jiro” to get made, and the animation style tries its level best to bring its over-the-top world to life. It’s clear showrunner Nate Cash (an old hand at “SpongeBob” and the director behind the brilliant “Over the Garden Wall”) had an uphill battle adapting this material for television, and it’s easy to relish the courses that feel pleasant on the tongue. If only the meal itself didn’t feel quite so bland.
All episodes screened for review. Premieres October 3rd on Adult Swim.
