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Speaker B: Hi, I’m Dana Stevens and this is the Slate Culture Gabfest, James Bond’s Sexistential Retreat edition. It’s Wednesday, April 1, 2026, and this week we will be discussing the second season of jury Duty, a prime video series that finds a way to reimagine the premise of the first season in which how do you explain this? A single real person is planted amidst a group of comic actors who use their improvisational skills to pull off the illusion that this plant is in the middle of an evolving real life situation. In the first season, that situation was a bunch of fake people and one real person on jury duty in an increasingly weird trial. This time around, the plant is a new employee at an extremely messed up small business. Next we’ll talk about Bait, another show from Amazon Prime. We are not in the pocket of big bezos, just sort of shook down that way. This week.

Speaker A: Speak for yourself.

Speaker B: And Bates stars Riz Ahmed as a struggling British Pakistani actor whose career finally seems on the verge of taking off when he’s considered for the role of the next James Bond. And finally, the Swedish songstress Robyn is back with her first new album in eight years, Sexistential. She’s 46 years old, she’s a single mother, but she’s still h**** and she’s still packing them onto the dance floor. We will discuss Jennifer. Joining me this week is Slate’s own culture writer, Nadira Goff. Hey, Nadira.

Speaker C: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Always great to have you and joining us for the first time as co host. I think long ago you were on once as a guest for one segment.

Speaker A: I was in short pants. I was playing Hoop and stick outside and you asked me up to the studio.

Speaker B: Pepperidge Farm remembers. It’s Richard Lawson. Richard Lawson is a film critic. He’s the co host of the new, exciting new podcast, Critical Darlings, which is a sort of spinoff of Blank Check, the Blank Check Podcast. And you are also, Richard, the proprietor of the Premier party newsletter.

Speaker A: Yep. Premiereparty.com, reviews, essays, award stuff, all that. All the stuff I used to do at my old job. Now on my own.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: Dancing on my own, writing on my own, newslettering on my own. I’m thrilled to be here.

Speaker B: Very, very nice to have you, Richard. I know we have some Blank Check listeners here and I have been a guest on their show many times and love it. Can you tell us a bit in the context of Blank Check, what is critical Darlings?

Speaker A: So Yeah, we started at the beginning of 2026. We were covering the best picture nominees kind of movie by movie. Essentially, most of those were not things that Blank Check was able to cover on their podcast because they weren’t, you know, the work of a particular filmmaker. So me and my co host, Alison Momore, we had a great time doing that. Also with, we share a producer, Ben Frisch.

Speaker B: Yay, Ben Frisch. Behind the glass right now as we speak.

Speaker A: Yeah. So once awards season wrapped up, we said, okay, well, how can we kind of somewhat morph the show into something else? And now we’re gonna do basically a new release movie a week, much in the style of Blank Check, like kind of deeper dive, but we’ll also have a sort of presiding topic. We have an episode out about project Hail Mary and in that we talk about the sort of four quadrant family blockbuster. We talk about Ryan Gosling’s movie star career. So we’re covering new films the week after they come out so people will have a chance to see them and doing it with a little bit of industry analysis, some eye towards awards, but hopefully just fun.

Speaker B: Mostly Critical Darlings. All right, it’s in my feed now. How often do you come out?

Speaker A: Every Thursday on our own feed, Critical Darlings. We’d love it if you would subscribe.

Speaker B: All right, let’s get started with Jury Duty, which, as you saw in my intro, was sort of a hard show to describe. The actual title of the second season, which is confusing in itself, is Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat. So what Jury Duty is trying to do is take its very tricky concept, and especially tricky when you come to reinventing the concept. Right, since it’s all based on this surprise twist of again placing a real person in a fake situation and sort of letting things unfold in this semi improvisatory, semi scripted way until at the end of the season, there’s a big reveal that the whole thing was just a trick. Now, this premise could easily be a very mean spirited one, but the first season was actually refreshingly humane and I think widely beloved for how well it handled that twist and. And what a great job they did of finding a regular dude in the first season named Ronald who could think he was part of one situation, have the rug pulled out from under him, and yet display all of this grace and humanity the entire time. The show’s second season premiered last month on Prime Video, the same two creators behind it, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stepnitsky. This time, the series centers on a temp worker named Anthony Norman that’s the real guy who finds himself on a ranch outside LA on a morale building corporate retreat with with a small family company that makes a product called Rockin Grandma’s Hot Sauce. As with the first season, the twist, unbeknownst to Anthony for most of the show’s run, is that every employee of this company is an actor using a combination of scripted dialogue and improvisation to pull off the illusion that the retreat is real, even as the events swirling around our puzzled but infinitely patient protagonist grow more and more bizarre. Let’s hear a clip from early in the season. Here you’ll hear Anthony. He’s doing a direct to camera interview that he believes is part of a documentary that’s being filmed about small business retreats. As he’s talking about having just been given the title of Captain Fun because another employee took off, he’s been. He’s been promoted to that position. Anthony is interrupted by another employee who’s walking around with a metal detector. And an odd request.

Speaker D: Last night, Kevin had some family issues that he had to go and deal with, so he. He had to leave. But he designate designated me Captain Fun. And I actually don’t have the hat on right now. I need to run and grab it, but so I got a little bit of a promotion from Lieutenant to Captain.

Speaker A: Is Kevin coming back today?

Speaker D: Honestly, I don’t know if Kevin is.

Speaker C: Do either of these trees look like a.

Speaker A: Kind of like a screaming man to you guys?

Speaker D: I’m not sure what he means by a screaming man.

Speaker C: You’re trying to find the time capsule.

Speaker D: You don’t remember where you put it?

Speaker A: No, I remember being like near a tree that looked kind of like a screaming man. But if you.

Speaker D: Yeah, I say let me finish up this interview and I’ll do a walk around with you and see if we can find it for real. Yeah, I got you, my man.

Speaker B: All right. You hear some of the sweet roll with the punches nature of Anthony in that clip. Nadira, I’ll start with you because you wrote on this show, you also, I believe, wrote on the first season. Or at least you loved the first season of Trinity.

Speaker C: Yeah, I loved the first season. I don’t remember writing on it though, to say these days, I really enjoyed this season. I think my one question, loving question about the show is always, where do they find these magical unicorn men, right. Who are just the nicest men alive, seeming willing to go with every little thing that gets thrown their way. And so it’s just really heartwarming to see that happen again. I think something that is Interesting about this show is it has this sort of comedic premise that we’re all watching, but similar to the first season, this season also not only sort of plays a prank on the main unsuspecting real person, but also they staged the show as sort of a moral experiment. Right. And by the end, there’s usually a. A sort of a test, right? Is this person actually a good person or not? They’re going through trials and tribulations that they don’t know are tests throughout the whole situation. And then by the end, a verdict is almost passed. And so I think that it’s interesting both from a comedic perspective, but also from the sort of social experiment perspective of how much crazy stuff can we throw at this one person and still have them remain a patient good guy. But I do worry about the conceit of the show just getting. I worry about the longevity of it. I worry about how many different iterations they’re going to try and crank out before it’s kind of like this. Again, this doesn’t even make any sense. And even with this season, I felt like there were some things that just couldn’t match season one. Whether it’s because it just wasn’t fresh anymore or because they had to change the setting or change the way the show worked a little bit too much. And so I loved it. But it makes me sort of fearful for the show’s future, if that makes any sense.

Speaker A: There are only so many settings where a documentary crew and all that would make sense. I think that for a third season they could go in a more hidden camera direction. So the person at the center of the sort of hoax isn’t used to being. Doesn’t know they’re on camera in a way. I mean, maybe there’s some weird rights issues there or something. Cause I felt I did not watch the first season Jury Duty because my sort of general philosophy is I don’t like shows where people are tricked. Like real people. Like I couldn’t watch Nathan for your. Like there was a show like this called Joe Schmoe back in the early, like reality days where a bunch of actors like pretended they were on like a sort of Surreal Life type show and only one person wasn’t performing. Kristen Wiig is actually on that show, but pre snl and I just, I always cringe at it. So with Jury Duty, everyone was like, no, it’s sweet, it’s nice. And I was like, I trust you, but I just can’t do it. But I did watch this company retreat to talk to you two about it. And I was, you know, I was impressed by how the casting and all that, but I just felt that Anthony was a little too aware of the cameras. I just got the impression that he was aware that something was happening that maybe wasn’t exactly what had been told to him. And I think that you could maybe mitigate that. Cause everyone’s so used to being on camera now. But if you didn’t have the documentary conceit and you also didn’t do a season that felt so much like the Officer Parks and recognition.

Speaker B: Yeah. I don’t feel like Anthony felt as pure. Nothing to do with his own sort of moral purity. He’s a lovely guy. And I actually think nadir. I was thinking while you were praising the men, that they find that there should be a spinoff that’s a dating show where you get to compete to date the guy.

Speaker A: The casting directors for the show are like, We’ve picked these 10amazing men.

Speaker B: Demonstrated how nice they are.

Speaker A: Cause they’re nice, but they’re not guileless. Like, Anthony has. Like, he’s cool, like, he’s funny. He’s not like a total SAP.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That’s the thing. He’s not a patsy. But I was gonna say it’s nothing against Anthony, but it’s more like. I think, as you were saying, Richard, it’s harder to buy the conceit that he’s absolutely unaware that there’s something going on. I mean, they’re in Los Angeles, the land of reality TV and actors, where everybody’s competing to be in something. Even if he thought he was signing up for this temp gig at a retreat, he has to be noticing. I mean, the fact it’s being filmed is unusual. I think there are a lot of hidden cameras. From what I’ve read about the process. I mean, he agreed to be on camera, but I think he’s been being filmed a lot more than he knows he’s being filmed.

Speaker C: Yes, that’s true.

Speaker B: And it is extremely well engineered and well performed. I mean, the really extraordinary thing, I think, is that they find this cast. Yeah. Who has so much flexibility that from what I understand about the scripting process, they have a script that they try to stick to. But obviously it depends on what Anthony does. He’s not scripted. And so they have almost sort of choices, like, if he says this, we go down this improvisatory route. If he says this, then we do this other thing. And that just seems like it would. There would be so many opportunities to flub it and to make it obvious that you were performing or, you know, just to lose your naturalness. And it doesn’t seem like any of them ever do.

Speaker C: Yeah, I. Oh, gosh. I have so many thoughts on everything. I think one of my biggest criticisms that’s in line with what both of you are saying about Anthony seeming a little bit too aware that something weird is going on even more than Ronald from the previous season is when you have to iterate on a concept, right. Eventually you get to an idea that might be good, but it’s never gonna be as good as the first thing you did. And what was so lovely about the first season is that Ronald had never. He had never done jury duty before. He had never been on a jury. And you are societally, we are, you know, trained to believe that when you are in a courthouse that things are going the way they’re supposed to go. And that’s. You don’t have that same belief with a company retreat. I 100. You know how many stories people have from corporate environments where they go on a company retreat and they’re like, you’re never gonna believe this weird thing that happened or who slept with who or whatever. It’s just a. It’s a breeding ground for like these weird idiosyncrasies of the sort of corporate relationship to happen. And so you don’t have that same shock factor of someone going into a space that is supposed to be very legal and very above board and all of these sort of below board things happening, Right? So I think it’s missing that element, and I feel that very deeply. But I will say one thing that I thought was impressive, like you were saying, Dana, is the shift in acting, right. Because with the first season, everyone was a stranger, which was beautiful to see. See, in their own ways, all these actors just kind of like riffing because they aren’t supposed to know each other. But when you are an actor and you have to pretend to have known your co worker for five years, right? And you have to pretend to have this sort of shared history that’s also really lovely to see them all try and figure that out and be on top of their lies and all of these things. And yeah, I don’t know, it’s weird. Like, I like the show, but I think for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the writing or the talent of the production team, which is incredible, it just doesn’t necessarily hit the mark. And I think it just has everything to do with the conceit of the show.

Speaker B: It occurred to me watching it. And I don’t know if this strikes a chord with either of you, that this is sort of like Latter Day Chris Guest. It’s like the Christopher Guest comedy of our time, you know, with the difference that it’s got this reality show element of the guy planted in the midst of it. But, you know, it’s that sort of apparently casual but actually scripted comedy that just requires a huge amount of talent from the performers. And in a way, it almost feels like this is more important as a resume item for the actors that are in it. You can really prove your chops by having this on your clip reel, but I am not totally sure that it tells the coherent story that the first season did or the coherent story that a great Christopher Guest movie does. Right. I mean, in terms of its structure.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think I also, comparing it to Christopher Guests, I think that I wanted a little more bite, I wanted a little more edge, a little more risk. And I think the problem there is that if I got that, I would be so put off because I’d be like, you’re tricking this guy. And I don’t like that. So I kind of want what I don’t want and don’t want what I do. It’s just kind of a contradiction, I guess. But I think that sort of iffiness that I had about it fed all the way toward the end where the sort of moral question, is he gonna do X? Or whatever? And I just never felt that the stakes were really that high that he wouldn’t like. And did they have a plan if he didn’t do the moral thing or whatever? Maybe there were other options they could have followed. But it felt like the tone is very nice. It’s very Parks and Rec. It’s very Abbott Elementary. There’s some dirtier humor than you would find on those shows. Sure. But, like, for the most part, it’s about amiable, goofy people and then this nice sort of unassuming guy at the center of it. And I just never felt like there was any really risk involved. And that might have made it more exciting for me. Maybe the first season, which I will now go back and watch, feels that way.

Speaker B: But, yeah, I will say that for both seasons, I think if you’re at all interested, it’s worth watching them to the end because the whole point of them really is to accomplish that reveal. And I think the first season pulls it off more impressively. But in both cases, you’re really watching along for that. And it’s also. I appreciate it’s not a huge time investment. It’s like 25 minute long episodes. There’s six of them. So, you know, you can spend a night or two watching Jury Duty and have like, had the full experience. So I would at the very least say don’t trail off halfway through if you’re gonna watch it.

Speaker A: Yeah, the whole point, it’s pointed at this one big conclusion and that, I mean, I like that. That’s the weird thing is I like videos where, you know, kid surprises mom by coming home for Christmas. Like, I like surprise. That’s not the thing I have an issue with. I just worry about how the person at the center is gonna react. But watching Anthony, even from the first episode, you’re like, oh, he’ll be fine.

Speaker C: You like surprise. You just don’t like deceit.

Speaker A: Deceit, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Trickery.

Speaker A: I don’t know.

Speaker B: Or mockery.

Speaker C: I will say that the season to me was very worth watching for the actor, I believe his name is Alex Bonhoeffer, who plays Dougie Jr. Who is this sort of Chet Hanks esque white guy who is the Nepo baby of this small hot sauce company. He is so funny and so wonderfully pathetic in how he is playing this one character. And every time, as, as a Jamarican myself, every time he does his Jamaican accent, I think it is the most hilarious thing in the world.

Speaker B: And so I references his band, the Jive Prophets. Ska band. Yes.

Speaker C: I just think, you know, there are lots of smaller characters that I think this season is well worth watching for in addition to it just being a sort of happy show, even if it’s not hitting all of the marks of season one. So I would still recommend watching it.

Speaker B: All right. Well, the show is. What’s the awkward title again? Jury Duty presents Company Retreat. It’s on Amazon Prime. It goes down easy. If nothing else, I would say give it a look. First. The moment in the show where we talk about business. All we have to tell you about this week is our bonus episode, which will be available to Slate plus subscribers in their feed. This week we’re going to be talking about an article in the New Yorker called How Bad Is Plagiarism Really? It’s by Anthony Lane, formerly the film critic, now just a general culture reporter for the New Yorker. And he takes on a sort of history of plagiarism, kind of an intellectual history of the concept in, in music, in literature, and now, of course, in its technological form with AI. It raises a lot of questions. Not sure it answers them all. We have a lot to say about it and we’ll be talking about it in that bonus episode this week. If you’re a Slate plus subscriber, you’ll hear that as a separate mini episode in your feed. All right, back to the show. Bait is a new six episode comedy series on Prime Video. It stars Riz Ahmed, who also created the show and served as a writer or or co writer on some episodes, in a role that’s more than obliquely autobiographical. Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling British Pakistani actor who finds himself on the threshold of a career breakthrough when he auditions to play the next James Bond. It’s a role he obviously craves very deeply, but he’s also very ambivalent about as we’ll discuss. Let’s listen to a clip from. I think this is the first episode. Ahmed’s character, Shah Latif is on his way home from the latest of a series of callbacks for the Bond role when he stopped by a fan on the street.

Speaker E: Dude. What? I know you, mate.

Speaker A: I’m a huge fan.

Speaker E: Sis. You’re talented. No, no, I’m not. Yes, you are. You’re an exceptional actor and I want you to know that. Thank you, mate. Listen, can I get a little video for my girlfriend Heather? She’s like obsessed with you, dude.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah, babe, check it out. Walking down the street. Guess what I’ve ever been to? Dev Patel. What? Dev Patel just walking down the street. Say something about Slumdog. She love Slumdog.

Speaker A: It was an amazing honor to be part of Slumdog Millionaire. It was a great film that people loved. That I loved. I loved that film. And I mean, my family, my community, I mean internationally. He’s not Dev Patel.

Speaker E: What?

Speaker B: He’s not Dev Patel. Look how short he is, Davis.

Speaker A: Tall, strong, handsome. Our Gujarati hero.

Speaker B: All right, so that’s a South Asian auntie in the street who spots them and steps out to point out the shame of Shahla Teev, who is in fact posing as Dev Patel. All right, I’m gonna go to you, Richard. I wonder maybe in general, give us a little bit of a Riz Ahmed overview.

Speaker A: He’d been working for a long time and then, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago, like Nightcrawler and he was in Rogue One, the Star wars movie. He really started to, to sort of ascend to a new echelon of his career just at the same time as, you know, the OscarsSoWhite stuff was happening and people were really thinking about diversity in Hollywood and beyond in the UK in this case. And then he had a movie right before the pandemic. Right. Sound of Metal that kind of came out of nowhere to be an Oscar player. And he was getting all this awards attention and there was this huge conversation surrounding him about like, okay, he’s the South Asian British guy. He represents a lot of different things at once. How can we make him a movie star? Can we make him a movie star? Does he want to be a movie star? And inevitably, when you have a British actor who is at the center of such conversation, the Bond question comes up. And this was, you know, Daniel Craig was nearing the end of his tenure and people were trying to, you know, Idris Elba was a name that kept coming up. And then Riz Ahmed sort of entered the picture. All the while, I think the cynics or realists or however you want to describe them were saying, I don’t think they’ll. They’re ready, you know, the Broccoli family, for example, is ready to cast a non white Bond. And I think, I don’t know how much Ahmed was part of really at the top of that list, but he was definitely mentioned. And this show feels like a really interesting, you know, sort of comment on that era of his life, but through the lens of someone else’s career, this, you know, Shah has a very different trajectory than does Riz Ahmed.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, for one thing, you have to pretend that Riz Ahmed is kind of this schlumpy, you know, this guy who’s just barely getting by. Right. And given that he’s always given off the vibe is. Although he has a vulnerability to him too.

Speaker A: He has always given off the vibe of like a cool guy being like formally being like a painting.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like not somebody who’s had to struggle, I’m sure, for roles or girls or. But yeah, he’s playing somebody who’s more on the struggling edge. I mean, to me, this show Nadir was such an almost, almost got there kind of thing. Like the Riz Ahmed element makes it very watchable because he is a wonderful actor and he is beautiful eye candy and he has interesting ideas about, about representation in the industry and about sort of the struggle being torn between being a second generation immigrant and, you know, somebody who’s trying to represent their community, as he says, while impersonating Dev Patel. And yet, you know, somebody who wants to take on this utterly mainstream and as his ex girlfriend says, very vanilla kind of role. And I feel like what the show does with it doesn’t quite work, especially because mental illness gets folded in in this way that could potentially have been. Have been really interesting and really sensitive. But I feel like because the particular mental illness that his character is struggling with is not one of the cuddlier mental illnesses. Right. I mean, it’s not like he’s depressed and anxious. Like he becomes somewhat psychotic over the course of the series.

Speaker C: Like specifically psychotic. Yeah.

Speaker B: And then there’s these hallucinations and delusions that at first you think are sort of a typical sitcom style, you know, oh, we’re inside his crazy reality. But then you start to realize, wait, no, he is actually hallucinating and hearing voices and it’s quite disturbing, but also funny. But to me, it doesn’t quite make it over the hump of being both disturbing and funny. Especially because, like Jury Duty that we just talked about, this is very short, the same length, it’s six half hour episodes. And to me, it just wasn’t enough time to pack in the complexity of, you know, his family background, all of those characters, you know, his relationship with his agent, which is just very vaguely sketched in maybe three scenes over the course of the. And most importantly, his relationship with himself and that internal struggle about playing Bond. So to me, it didn’t get there. And there were even scenes that I found to be in really questionable taste where, you know, I just felt like somebody who had actually struggled with this form of mental illness watching the show, might feel really alienated by it. But I don’t know, what did you think?

Speaker C: There were some things I really, really loved about this show. I loved all of the scenes with his family. So the show takes place towards the end of Ramadan and around the Eid holiday. And I love all of the scenes where he’s in these sort of really chaotic environments with his family and his broader community and having to answer to them while also, you know, having these sort of internal struggles. But also they’re just funny, right? Like, they’re really lovely portrayals of his family members and they are hilarious, they’re sharp and I really love those moments. Some of the things. Well, okay, I guess I’ll put it this way. I think the show is dealing with a lot of very, very interesting questions. However, I think it’s maybe too many interesting questions to deal with specifically in the time constraints that you point out, Dana. And I also think that it maybe complicates something that would be so much more effective if it was actually simpler. And I think all of these questions, you know, what is selling out? What is representation, questions about mental health, questions about whether he wants the job? Should he want the job? Can he do the job? These are all, you know, really, I don’t know, really interesting, valiant questions, even. Like, they’re necessary questions and topics to explore.

Speaker B: But there’s just too much going on in this, you know, like, this gumbo has too many things, actually, including a talking pig head voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart.

Speaker C: And I think one of the things that is that sort of adds onto the. The feeling of it being too much is that almost every element of this show is treated as a gotcha. Right. Even the mental health psychosis bit is kind of like you were saying, you don’t really know what’s going on, and all of a sudden you’re like, oh, wow, this isn’t a funny bit. He’s actually hearing voices in his head. And it feels like every single reveal in the show is a big reveal like that. Like, nothing is just straightforward said or displayed. And so, you know, there’s perhaps too many things going on, even if they are good things or interesting things or worthy things, too many. And then also they are laid out in a way that doesn’t ever let you get settled. And so it’s ends up becoming a really complex and confusing experience. But there’s still, I think, sort of pockets of sunshine and really lovely moments in the show. But it is. It’s overwhelming in a way that I think does disservice to the premise.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think that for a show that’s trying to cram in a lot in a very short amount of time, I think they probably could have found some extra minutes if they didn’t keep reminding us what the show is about.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Like, the theme is recited over and over and over again in different ways to the point that I was like, I know Sir Patrick Stewart. It’s about the struggles of representation and, like, the conflict of that. Like, do you play James Bond and thus sort of endorse the colonial project? But if you don’t do that, then are you. You’re not gonna be an emblem for your community, you know? But they just kept making that point over and over and over again at the expense of, I think, some coherence in terms of the plot and especially his mental health, where I think the show, in a kind of fun meadow way succeeds, you know, for its creator and star, is that he gets to do romance, action, drama, family comedy. Like, he gets to show his full range of talent and kind of turn to the camera and to Hollywood and to UK film industry and be like, why haven’t you Cast me in more things. Look at all the stuff I can do, and look at how it’s like, sort of like f***** with my head that I, you know, that I don’t really know where I fit in this industry. They show that Shah has an award from the Toulouse film festival from 10 years prior of, like, the Rising Star Award. So he’s like, I had this promise, and yet maybe I half squandered it, but kind of you guys did, too, because you never really figured out what to put me in, other than playing the translator in season seven of Homeland, you know. So I think there is a real meta commentary about Ahmed’s career that feels, you know, maybe a little bit puffed up about himself, but also, like, he proves why I think he’s really. It’s a really great performance in all its different modes on the show. I just wish the show was confident in that and didn’t feel like it kept having to remind us of why its message was important.

Speaker C: I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering if the show would have been a little bit more coherent if instead of it taking place when he might get the job, if he already is Bond. Right. And so you don’t have to worry about any of that bit. And now he can actually grapple with. With the conflicts of selling out versus not selling out in a way that’s less hypothetical and more that he’s living it. And so I was wondering what this show would look like if they had just positioned it perhaps a little bit in the future. Right. We don’t know if he gets the job, though. I do think, you know, there are things towards the end that I won’t spoil that are pointing to a specific conclusion. But, you know, if the show was set forward maybe a little bit and he had the role and either the movie just came out or he had been filming it, I wonder if it would have been a little bit more streamlined in a way that would be digestible and still maintain all of the integrity that the show has.

Speaker B: I wonder, and I don’t want to spoil either, but I wonder if it’s possibly pointing toward, if it gets renewed for a second season, that that would be the situation he would be in. I mean, to me, everything that we’re saying is adding up to me to the conclusion that it’s great that this was a conception based on Riz Ahmed Ahmed’s life and that he created it. It’s great that he stars in it. I’m not sure that he should have had such a hand in the writing, you know, I feel like it needed more passes on the script so that, for example, as you were saying, Richard, like, the ideas were not signposted so clearly, you know, and that some more minor characters had been explored. Like in the second episode, there’s the wonderful Himesh Patel, who you might Remember from Station 11, who plays sort of his rival in the film industry, sort of like the other brown bloke, as Patrick Stewart calls him, who might possibly get the role, and has been competing with Shah for all these roles. And it’s such a funny rivalry. And the passive aggressiveness of the Himesh Patel character is hilarious. And I was just excited that he had entered the show and that that was gonna be an ongoing relationship. But apparently he was just contracted for one episode. But that’s sort of what you were saying. Nadir is the whole thing is a bit fits and starts in that way.

Speaker A: Each episode could be its own six little six episode series. Like, I really wanted more of that romance. Like, their chemistry was so palpable and the scene and like the kind of rave or whatever, they just. I was like, give me four more episodes of that. Give me four more episodes of the rivalry with Himesh Patel. The family stuff, I thought was fascinating. The stress between the mom and her competitor who gets to host the eid, you know, and the illusions about the mental health of the family and all that. It just, you know, I admire usually the British restraint when it comes to television. We’re gonna be in and out, we’re gonna do three series, we’re gonna do six episodes each, you know, economical. I think this is a case where I was like, let’s put some American excess on this. I want more because I think maybe the sort of. The chunkiness of the writing could be smoothed out over more time.

Speaker B: All right, well, maybe we’re all on the same page. I will say that again. I appreciated the short run of the season. And if they did renew this, even though I didn’t 100% love it, I would return just to see what they do, the character.

Speaker A: And it looks. It’s filmed beautifully. Yeah.

Speaker C: So I would come back, especially that romance episode, which is filmed to look like a one shot. Yeah, it’s very lovely. Still worth checking out for.

Speaker E: Sure.

Speaker B: There’s a lovely chase in that episode where they get into a bicycle rickshaw. Right. For tourists, and they’re chasing a car. And it’s just that there could have been more done with that too, because it’s a really funny premise for a chase.

Speaker A: And it’ll make you want to go to Brick Lane and like eat some good food.

Speaker B: Yeah, it’s true. There’s some really, really nice London neighborhood stuff that isn’t the typical London that you see on film and on tv.

Speaker A: And they make sure to title card it. They, they, they, they tell us what neighborhood, what, what street we’re on. And I, I appreciated that. Yeah, it made me want to get on Lane.

Speaker B: All right, well, it’s bait. It’s on prime video. Check it out and let us know what you think at culturefestlate do. All right. Robyn, the one named Swedish pop star who’s been packing them onto the dance floor since her first album came out over 30 years ago, has just come out with her first record since 2018’s Honey, which we also covered on this show. I love that record. It’s very different from her new one, Sexistential, which is not so much a departure in tone for Robyn the way Honey was as a deepening of the themes that have obsessed the singer throughout her career. Female sexual pleasure. The internal struggle between passionate longing for a partner and finding one’s own stubbornly independent way. As Robyn is now doing in her own life as the 46 year old single mother of a small boy who becomes a recurring character on this record. Robyn is working with her longtime producer Claes Ahlund, as well as other co writers including the pop composing powerhouse Max Martin. And she’s written a nine song ode to embracing the raw emotions and sometimes the raw cringe of middle aged motherhood. Let’s listen to the title track from the album Sexistential, in which you get to hear a little bit of Robin’s, I don’t know mission statement.

Speaker F: I was about to go have a kid on my own and then my doctor said, now Robyn, who would be your dream donor? Well, Adam Driver always did kinda give me a b****. She like, yeah, wasn’t he great? And don’t mess with the zone. I like to go out.

Speaker A: I’m so sick. If you don’t mess with this ohan being referenced in songs, it just happens time after time after time. No, I’m kidding. No, that’s.

Speaker B: I’m such a non pop culture. I thought there was some trend. I didn’t.

Speaker A: I like happily put on this album and I was like, this is the last reference I was expecting.

Speaker C: Well, for me it was Adam Driver.

Speaker A: I was like, you know, when I imagine I don’t smoke, but I imagine chain smoking and saying, I haven’t heard that name in five years, you know, staring out the window.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. I love a funny song. You know, I feel like a lot of artists are not that willing to go that route because it feels less serious, but she is that.

Speaker B: She certainly is on this album. I feel like. I mean, this is Robyn, in a way, displaying her inner self in a way that isn’t afraid of the cringe. And I know the first thing I heard about this album before I had heard any of the songs on it was that her performance on Stephen Colbert, which I still haven’t watched, was apparently some extremely sort of self exposing.

Speaker A: Have either of you seen again, back to the sort of jury duty? I. They cringe. I couldn’t watch it. But then. But Robyn sort of owned it after the fact. She was like, oh, Americans are such proofs, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I will say that in the wonderful profile that Gia Tolentino wrote of her for the New Yorker, she comes across as somebody you love to spend time with. She just really does seem like somebody who spent a lot of time getting to know herself over the course of her career. And that whether or not this album works for all of her fans, it’s something that was really important for her. And I appreciate that what she wanted to do at this moment of, you know, middle age, motherhood, and all these things wasn’t just to expose raw emotions, but to make fun of herself.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are. There have. You know, there are plenty of albums, books, whatever, about, like, I’m a parent now, and here’s my experience with that. And then there are others where I’m liberated and here’s about my sex life, and I’m starting, you know, starting a new sort of romantic era. And there are, you know, it’s the rare thing that combines those two narratives into one cohesive, you know, sort of statement of self. And I think she does that really cheekily, but also kind of poignantly throughout the album.

Speaker C: I agree. I would consider myself a Robin sampler. And by that I mean I only knew the hits, but really loved the hits. And so I was not well versed in the Robin verse at all. And I learned a lot from Gia Tolentino’s profile of her, which I think is perhaps even more impactful if you don’t know much about Robyn, because it is such a treasure trove of her entire career and how she’s felt about her entire career from the perspective of who she is now. And I really loved this album. I love that it was short and sweet. I love how punchy it is. I love how direct she is, which is apparently something that she’s always been. The thing that I had known about her, which is said in the profile, is sort of summarized as sorrow as the content, ecstasy as the form. I knew that to be her artistry, but I didn’t know much beyond that and I didn’t really pay attention much beyond that. And so I really enjoyed experiencing this album. I’ve listened to it multiple times since this. Since it was our task to listen to. And similar to what you guys were saying, I mean, this is my reference for a lot of pop things. But I feel really similarly about Beyonce’s self titled album. I think that was an album that was not only, as we all know, a surprise and change the music industry, et cetera, et cetera, but it was her self titled project, right? And what she was coming out as is a mom, is someone who still has an incredibly high libido at her age. And also positioning herself specifically as a black pop star, which is something that was sort of able to be taken away from her through the industry machine. And I love when artists get that moment right, whatever the moment is where they feel like now is the time where I can reassert myself on my own terms. I think is probably my favorite point in any pop star’s career. And so it was really nice to just sort of lavish in this. I don’t know even if there are some better songs than others.

Speaker B: Can you name a track that particularly resonated with you?

Speaker C: Well, I love Dopamine. The.

Speaker B: I’m glad you shouted that one out because I want to hear a bit of it.

Speaker C: It is so beautiful and fun and also heartbreaking. Right. And so I love that mix and I think she’s just expressly good at that mix.

Speaker B: Yeah, that one is a true bring him out on the dance floor kind of song that I can imagine long outlasting.

Speaker A: This album wisely released as the first single.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker F: Yeah, I just need to know that I’m not alone. I know it’s just dope for me, but it feels so weird to me.

Speaker A: It’s the sad upbeat pop. Like I think hearing Annie Lennox just walk me on broken glass as a kid and being like, wait, she’s singing a sad thing. But the music is up tempo, like really just. It made primed me to be a Robin fan again like a lot of us. I don’t know her deep, deep cuts, but I love the hits. I’ve loved her since Show Me Love, her first big hit in the US in the late 90s. And I have a very funny memory of being at Eastern Block, a now defunct gay club in the East Village of New York City that is now actually Club C******. The Alan C****** sort of cabaret ish bar and dancing on my own had just come out, but wasn’t yet like a thing. It was kind of like if you knew, you knew. And I didn’t know, but other people I knew knew, so they told me to know. And I was at this bar and I asked the dj, I was like, could you play this song by Robin? And he said, you’re the sixth. And then used a particular slur to ask me to play that. I’ll get to it when I get to it. And then I knew she was gonna be a thing. But as much as I love the sad pop and being at a, at a bar like that and hearing that song, I’m not like a dancer, club goer person. And so another element of her music is that it kind of brings me into a world that actually I don’t really know that well, like the late night dancing and all that kind of stuff. And it makes me feel like a sort of, I don’t know, happy tourist in a way to sort of feel that vibe without actually, you know, being there in person because it’s past my bedtime.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, that kind of goes to the title Sexistential, right, Which is kind of cringe but funny and adorable like the whole album. But what it’s really saying, right, the word sexistential is that it’s sort of wrapping up that feeling, you know, the out on the dance floor, you know, whatever the cosmic beat is that you’re supposed to be absorbing with just ordinary bodily existence. And Carl Wilson, for example, in his review of this album for Slate, was asking, you know, is it really possible to make this album as a middle aged parent without making it for nobody but, you know, middle aged parents who are pretending they’re still out on the dance floor. And on reading that from Carl, I was thinking, well, even when I wasn’t middle aged, I wasn’t really out on the dance floor that much at the club. But that feeling of dopamine, right, the question that song asks, like, I know it’s just dopamine, but it feels so real to me. That relates existentially to so many parts of life that have nothing to do with the dance floor.

Speaker C: I love being on the dance floor. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I love being at the club because I like to sleep, but I do if I am at the club which is more often than I’d probably like to be. I’m on the dance floor. That’s where I am. And so I. Yeah, I think this relates to all ages and all feelings. Like, every moment in your life is existential. Right. And you. And you have. And every moment in your life, once you reach a certain age, could be sexistential. And you have that. You know, you have that period over and over and over again. And you’re always, I don’t know, reimagining and assessing where you are in relation to everything around you and everyone around you. And I think especially in cities and urban environments, I think the themes of this album are always popping up, even if you are younger, even if you’re not a parent, or even if, you know, even if you don’t fit in the sort of confines of a sort of demographic or description that Robyn fits in. And I think there’s a lot of this that’s so relatable and yet fun, and we just need more of that. Like, I think popular pop right now, to me, feels like it is either dealing mostly in fun, no cares, no worries, or sad, lots of worries. And it’s not as common as it used to be to blend those things. And so it’s just refreshing to have someone who is maybe one of the best in the game doing that blend. Still doing that blend.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that she does it rarely, and she’s doing it completely on her terms, you know, as the Tolentino article, you know, reminds us that, like, she. She stared into the belly of the beast back in the late bubblegum pop 90s. She was a contemporary of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and all them, and she didn’t like what she saw. She had some success in that, but then really retreated back to Sweden and kind of rebuilt a career. And I think that. So anytime now that she releases a new album, and it takes oftentimes a number of years, it does feel like this, in a humble way, this sort of note from on High of comfort and relief, where she’s like, hello, here’s 30 minutes of lovely, you know, you know, hopeful, and then maybe a little sad music to enjoy. And then I’m gonna go away again. There’s a real Scandinavian sort of, you know, sort of modesty about it and taste. It’s very streamlined.

Speaker B: All right. Our production assistant, Daniel, had his own request for a throw to a track from the Robin album. It’s Talk to Me, which I can only describe as her song about talking dirty.

Speaker F: Yeah, I’m so Close. I’m almost there. Want you to tell me how to do it?

Speaker A: I think that her. Robin’s knowledge of who is listening to her music, who’s engaging with it, and just, you know, ever kind of trying to expand her reach, I’m sure. But really just like serving a niche audience, I think is reflected in where a lot of. Of, like, you know, in our profession, like newsletter writing and all this stuff where people are like, I wonder if maybe the sort of mass monoculture thing is only for a very rarefied few and if my happiness and my artistry would be better served by, like, just tending to my. My flock and. And having a good time with them.

Speaker C: But I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about pop music, is that it is essentially supposed to cater to the lowest common denominator. But what actually makes great pop music is when artists are writing to a specific demographic, and then people just have this realization that the issues that that demographic is dealing with are similar to the issues that all of us are dealing with. Right. And I think that’s when you get these sort of breakout hits or these artists who just really, like, Pierce, you know, into your soul, into your heart. And I love when that. It feels like magic when that happens. And I think all of. Yeah, all of the best pop artists are. Are unique in that specific way is that they know specifically who they’re talking to, and they’re not talking to everyone, but everyone finds themselves in their music.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, dancing on my own, didn’t that become a baseball anthem or something?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Or the Philadelphia Phillies.

Speaker A: Right. And it’s like. And so I saw these videos of years after that song was such a thing. These straight guys like singing that song in stadiums. And I was like, all right, well, Robin, you know, when it works, it works.

Speaker C: We may choke every World Series, but we will come back. Through the strength of Robin shows the coolness of that town and that team, you know, to make Robyn something of I will die for my country, Philadelphia, and apparently my queen, Robin.

Speaker A: Yeah. Honorary Philadelphia.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: All right. Well, it seems like we’re all very pro. Robyn’s existential. It’s only a half hour listen, which is so refreshing. It’s not a giant double album that will take you days to get through. Richard, do you want to send us out on another favorite track?

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I sometimes get accused of liking the more sort of basic stuff of an artist. Like, I like early Fionna Apple more than latter Fionna Apple. Sorry. And so while I appreciate on this new album. Robin’s, you know, like electric guitar and some spoken word, rappy kind of stuff. I like when she goes back to what I view as her sort of basics of like something more melodic and melancholy, as we’ve talked about. So I love the penultimate track on the album, Light Up.

Speaker F: I think it captures exactly the Robynish mood that I’m looking for when I go to one of her new albums, Light up the radio. Your heart.

Speaker B: All right, it’s the new Robin album. It’s called Sexistential. Give it a listen and let us know what you thought. Well, we have zoomed through this recording session and we’re already ready to endorse Richard. I’m going to start with you because you’re a first time fester. What have you got?

Speaker A: Well, it’s not a brand new thing to recommend to endorse, but I wrote something about this on PremiereParty.com, my newsletter, where I had stumbled upon a television show called the Way Home that is a Hallmark Channel show produced in Canada. I don’t know how I found it through some weird Internet thing and it was Andie MacDowell’s in it. And I read that it’s about a magic pond that allows time travel should you jump into said pond. And I was like, that’s a crazy premise for a show. It’s really funny that Annie MacDowell, it’s been running for four seasons. I made a joke about it on Twitter, went to bed, whatever. The next morning I woke up to all these people telling me that actually the Way Home is really good. You should watch it. It’s one of the best shows on tv. So I had some time to kill on a Sunday recently and my partner and I sat down to watch it and let me tell you, we watched the whole first season and we started on the second season before bed. It’s not high art, but it’s a compelling time travel family drama that involves lots of paradoxes about, like, time loops and can you affect the present by going back into the past and all that? It’s engrossing. I see why people defended it on Twitter. I apologize for making fun of it because I am now a convert to the Hallmark Channel original the Way Home.

Speaker B: Ah, it’s a great critic who can admit y’ all were right. Twitter hordes and I was wrong.

Speaker A: I allowed them one a year. This is it. I burned through it in March.

Speaker B: So, Nadir, what have you got?

Speaker C: I’ve got two things. One, so I’m doing Music League, which I’ve talked about and endorsed on this show before. And the theme for last week was great covers and I love covers. But that also sent me on a journey to find some new ones. And other people might know this, but apparently there is a 10 minute cover disco cover of Bridge over troubled water from 1979 by Linda Clifford that is phenomenal. So that’s my first. And then for a newer sort of endorsement, it’s the album by Slater. That’s Slater with three Y’s. She’s an American singer, rapper of sort of dance electronic music. Her music is usually raunchy but unapologetic, very much in the Kim Petras ilk. And her latest album is called Worst Girl in America. Worst the s being a dollar sign and I’m in love with it. I love Slater. I think she’s the future. She’s so fun, so silly and yet so serious. And yeah, I don’t know, it’s just a really fun album. And so, yeah, that would be Slater Worstgrown there.

Speaker B: All right, well, we’ll link to both of those songs on the show page and and also to a link to the show. Richard talked about my endorsement this week is a book I haven’t read yet. I’ve been known to do this before, but I’m sure I’m gonna love this one because it’s in the tradition. It’s the third book by this author who has already done two really interesting books in this genre. It’s the new book by Mason Curry called Making Art and Making a Living. And we’ve had Mason Curry on the show before, I think, to talk about. I think it was maybe his first book, Daily Rituals. So far he has three books, Daily Rituals, a second Daily Rituals that’s called Women at Work. And now this new one, Making Art and Making a Living. And judging by the format of the first two, what Mason does is sort of. It’s almost a commonplace book of literary history where he goes back and looks at in daily rituals. It was sort of what is the writing process of, you know, this or that famous writer. And he would look at how they did their work, you know, when they woke up, how much coffee they drank. And it’s sort of amazing how far back in literary history you can find people that are obsessing about process in the same way we do now. And so Mason kind of draws conclusions about that to sort work of look at what it is to try to live a creative life. And Women at Work does similar things, but you know, focusing especially on women artists. His new book Making Art and Making a Living appears to essentially be about how artists have made money through the ages, which is extremely timely given the state of cultural journalism right now and I’m sure is also just going to be sort of funny and sparky. I also follow Mason’s newsletter, which is sort of similar. It’s sort of a, you know, almost a sort of workshopping group for freelancers where he does this. This great thing that I’ve participated in a few times called, I believe he calls it Worm school, where you can log onto a zoom and essentially be in a co working session with other people who follow the newsletter and sort of decide like, we’re all going to do a writing sprint or we’re all going to do a creative session where you don’t really talk, you just sort of have an accountability partner anyway, if, like me, you’re someone who’s always trying to figure out, how do I write, where do I write, what do I write? How do I make a living writing? Mason Curry is a great person to read. And the new book is Making Art and Making a Living. All right, well, this was fun. It was great having both of you on. Thanks so much.

Speaker C: Nadira, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: And Richard, please come back soon.

Speaker A: I’d love to. Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. Well, as always, you will find links to some of the things we talked about on our show page slate.com and you can email us@culturefestlate.com and let us know what you thought. Our producer is Benjamin Frisch. Our production assistant is Daniel Hirsch. The composer of our theme music is Nicholas Britell. And the executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Mia Lobel. For Nadiragoff and Richard Lawson, I’m Dana Stevens saying thank you so much for being a listener. We’ll talk to you all again next week. Sam.