Stop Calling Misery “Prestige”: Four Things That Are Actually Fun

Entertainment has entered its “please admire my suffering” era. Every drama arrives wearing a gray sweater, carrying unresolved trauma, and daring you to call it profound. I am tired. Give me jokes, bad decisions, strange little freaks, and stories that understand a human being can be devastated and still want fries.

Benny’s Picks

Hacks — Max. Jean Smart remains one of our great national resources, like public libraries or emergency chocolate. The show is sharp without being smug, sentimental without making you feel trapped in a greeting card, and its central relationship between an aging comedian and her younger writer has more voltage than most “important” dramas manage in ten hours. It’s about ambition, but it also remembers that ambition is funnier when everyone involved is being a little ridiculous.

Somebody Somewhere — Max. This is the rare series where people talk like actual people instead of auditioning for a therapy podcast. Bridget Everett gives a beautifully unvarnished performance as a woman rebuilding a life that didn’t turn out as planned, surrounded by friends who are funny, needy, annoying, generous, and gloriously alive. It may not grab you by the collar in the first five minutes. That’s because it is not a hostage situation.

Challengers — Prime Video, Apple TV, or rental platforms. Luca Guadagnino made a tennis movie that is also a sexy workplace dispute, a friendship tragedy, and a two-hour perfume commercial for bad judgment. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist spend the entire film looking at one another like someone just deleted a shared Google Doc. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross turns every serve into a nightclub emergency. It is absurd, stylish, and much smarter than its sweaty marketing suggested.

The Rehearsal — Max. Nathan Fielder’s brain is a locked room, and unfortunately he has given us the key. Season one remains the masterpiece: a man constructs elaborate simulations to help strangers prepare for difficult conversations, then slowly reveals that the person least prepared for reality is him. It is hilarious until it isn’t, then hilarious again in a way that makes you question your moral character. Perfect television for anyone who has ever overplanned a text message.

Skip It

The Idol. Popular? Yes. Worth defending? Absolutely not. It mistakes glossy emptiness for danger, confuses provocation with personality, and makes a music-industry nightmare feel like a perfume ad that got lost on the way to the trash. The Weeknd can sing. Lily-Rose Depp can act. Neither deserves to be trapped inside this damp, expensive mood board.

Sleeper Pick

Jury Duty — Freevee. The premise sounds like a prank show, but the result is a surprisingly warm comedy about one genuinely decent man surrounded by actors pretending to be terrible jurors. Ronald Gladden has the openhearted energy of someone who still returns shopping carts, and the entire cast builds a small civic universe around him. It is silly, sweet, and proof that kindness does not have to be boring.