TV Needs Fewer Murders and More People Making Terrible Decisions

Television has entered its “everyone is secretly a murderer” phase. Prestige dramas, limited series, glossy thrillers: sooner or later, somebody is digging up a body, hiding a body, or staring meaningfully at a body in a Scandinavian forest. I’m begging for stories about people who are merely bad at their jobs and emotionally incapable of sending a normal text.

Benny’s Picks

The Studio — Apple TV+. Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire is funniest when it stops trying to be a Hollywood satire and becomes a workplace comedy about insecure weirdos with power. The cameos are enormous, but the real joke is the tiny panic attack happening behind every “creative decision.” It understands that show business is mostly adults saying “love that” while privately planning an escape route.

The Pitt — Max. This is a medical drama with the good sense to treat competence as suspense. The doctors are exhausted, the patients are complicated, and nobody has time for a windswept monologue about destiny because there is literally a hallway full of emergencies. It’s intense without being smug, which in the streaming era feels like finding a functioning vending machine in an airport.

Severance — Apple TV+. Yes, you’ve heard about it. Yes, it is still worth watching, especially if you abandoned it after episode two because the office furniture looked too emotionally threatening. The show’s greatest trick is making workplace bureaucracy feel like cosmic horror: one minute you’re in a meeting, the next you’re wondering whether your soul has been filed under “miscellaneous.”

Adolescence — Netflix. This is not easy viewing, and it is not designed to be background noise while you fold laundry. Good. Its formal ambition—the long, unbroken takes—could have been a gimmick, but the performances give the technique a pulse. It watches a family’s life get rearranged in real time, without handing you a comforting villain and a tidy lesson in a little gift bag.

Skip It

The White Lotus — Max. The first season was a sharp social comedy. Now it sometimes feels like wealthy people on vacation being punished by the script for having better luggage than us. The cast is talented, the locations are gorgeous, and I still don’t care who gets murdered. At this point, the most shocking twist would be a guest simply checking out on time.

Sleeper Pick

Colin from Accounts — Paramount+. An Australian romantic comedy about two damaged adults and one extremely memorable dog, it has the rarest quality in modern TV: people who are funny without announcing that they are funny. The romance is messy, the jokes land sideways, and the dog has better comic timing than most award-season hosts.