Sophie Gilbert
Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, she was the arts editor at Washingtonian, where she won three Society of Professional Journalists awards for arts reporting and criticism. She has previously written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is the author of On Womanhood: Bodies, Literature, Choice.
How to Tell the Story of a Cult
Two docuseries about NXIVM present a question: Are the people who have escaped a controlling organization the most reliable sources on what happened to them?
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Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: … The Story That’s Holding Taylor Swift Back
The artist is an extraordinarily powerful woman who still, somehow, feels like she has no real power at all.
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Ludo Studio Is This the End for Bluey?
The third-season episode “The Sign” seems to point to an ending of sorts for the hugely popular Disney show.
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Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Netflix / … Prestige TV’s New Wave of Difficult Men
The small screen is offering up heroes who are resolutely alienated, driven to acts of violence that they don’t want to inflict and can’t enjoy.
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Apple TV+ The Subversive Worldview of Slow Horses
Jackson Lamb’s island of misfit spies is the best place on television.
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Dusty Deen for The Atlantic The 15 Best TV Shows of 2023
The year’s most essential series
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Matt Huynh Four More Years of Unchecked Misogyny
In a second Trump term, women would once again be targets.
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Apple TV+ Let’s Never Do This to Edith Wharton Again
The writer’s deeply emotional architecture is made dully explicit in a new adaptation of The Buccaneers.
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Alexandra Arnold The Director Tackling the Dark Side of Millennial Desire
With Promising Young Woman and now Saltburn, Emerald Fennell is turning recent history into gleaming poisoned fantasies.
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Netflix Only Wes Anderson Could Have Adapted Roald Dahl This Way
The director’s renditions of the famed author’s short stories ask us to think actively—even skeptically—about what we’re seeing.
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Ken Regan / Camera 5 / Contour RA … What Madonna Knows
The artist is always one step ahead—and has a unique power to scandalize each generation anew.
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Apple TV+ The Bittersweet Lessons of the Most Beautiful Women in the World
A new four-part documentary on Apple TV+ celebrates the era of the supermodel without interrogating what it meant for the rest of us.
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Jemal Countess / Getty Russell Brand Wasn’t an Anomaly
The former TV host and actor was a mascot, at best, for a media culture that routinely dehumanized and hypersexualized young women.
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Apple The Morning Show Has a Star Problem
The series should capture the wild ambition and tense charms of the TV business. Its leads don’t telegraph any of that.
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Craig Blankenhorn / Max An Absurdly Unrelatable Show Has a Relatable Moment
Despite its ludicrous storylines, And Just Like That manages to get something right about modern parenting.
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Sophia Spring / Guardian / eyevine / Redux The Actor Who Documented His Grief—And Shared It With the World
After his wife died two years ago, Richard E. Grant began to film himself talking about his bereavement, creating a remarkable record of life after loss.
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Starz Porn Set Women Up From the Start
The Starz comedy Minx and the recent podcast Stiffed illustrate the difficulty of commodifying what women want.
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Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: … 11 Undersung TV Shows to Watch This Summer
A guide to the best under-the-radar series from this year, available on a streaming service near you
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Craig Blankenhorn / HBO Max The Ghost of a Once Era-Defining Show
In its second season, And Just Like That seems constrained by its fear of being conventional.
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HBO / Apple Will We Remember Succession or Ted Lasso More?
What to make of two strikingly different series finales—and worldviews
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Matt Squire / … The Most Compelling Female Character on Television
Happy Valley’s Catherine Cawood is that rarest of TV unicorns: an ordinary woman written with such care that she becomes extraordinary.
