Critics at Large | The New Yorker

• The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine

  The first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired in October of 1975, was a loose, scrappy affair. The sketches were experimental, almost absurdist, and the program was peppered with standup from the host, George Carlin, who freely addressed the hot-button issues of the day. “S.N.L.” turns fifty this year, and its anniversary has been marked by a slew of festivities, culminating in a three-hour special that aired this past weekend. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the show’s origins, the recurring bits and cast members who’ve defined it over time, and whether, half a century on, it’s still essential viewing. The anniversary special, which featured a star-studded guest list, celebrated an institution that, despite its countercultural roots, has become a finely tuned, star-making machine that plays to all fifty states. “This is what the show is about: getting famous people or soon-to-be famous people to play together in this sandbox,” Cunningham says. “The self-congratulation didn't play to me as a betrayal of the thing. No, this is a distillation of the thing.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Saturday Night Live” (1975–)Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon’s cover of “Homeward Bound”“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” (2025)“Fifty Weird Years of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)“Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” by Susan Morrison“How ‘Saturday Night Live’ Breaks the Mold,” by Michael J. Arlen (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

  A few years back, novels classed as “romantasy”—a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”—might have seemed destined to attract only niche appeal. But since the pandemic, the genre has proved nothing short of a phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas’s “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series regularly tops best-seller lists, and last month, Rebecca Yarros’s “Onyx Storm” became the fastest-selling adult novel in decades. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by their fellow New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman as they delve into the realm of romantasy themselves. Together, they consider some of the most popular entries in the genre, and discuss how monitoring readers’ reactions on BookTok, a literary corner of TikTok, allows writers to tailor their work to fans’ hyperspecific preferences. Often, these books are conceived and marketed with particular tropes in mind—but the key ingredient in nearly all of them is a sense of wish fulfillment. “The reason that I think they’re so powerful and they provide such solace to us is because they tell us, ‘You’re perfect. You’re always right. You have the hottest mate. You have the sickest powers,’ ” Waldman says. “I totally get it. I fall into those reveries, too. I think we all do.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?,” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker)“The Song of the Lioness,” by Tamora Pierce“A Court of Thorns and Roses,” by Sarah J. Maas“Ella Enchanted,” by Gail Carson Levine“Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros“Onyx Storm,” by Rebecca Yarros“Crave,” by Tracy Wolff“Working Girl” (1988)“Game of Thrones” (2011-19)“The Vampyre,” by John Polidori“Dracula,” by Bram Stoker“Outlander” (2014–)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles

  David Lynch, who died last month at seventy-eight, was a director of images—one whose distinctive sensibility and instinct for combining the grotesque and the mundane have influenced a generation of artists in his wake. Lynch conjured surreal, sometimes hellish dreamscapes populated by strange figures and supernatural forces lurking beneath wholesome American idylls. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz revisit Lynch’s landmark works and reflect on their resonance today. They discuss his 1986 film, “Blue Velvet”; the television series “Twin Peaks,” whose story and setting Lynch returned to throughout his career; and “Mulholland Drive,” his so-called “poisonous valentine to Hollywood.” Lynch’s stories often resist interpretation, and the director himself refused to ascribe any one meaning to his work. In a way, this openness to multiple readings is at the heart of his appeal. “Reality, too, offers many unsolvable puzzles,” Cunningham says. “The artist who says, ‘I trust that if I offer you this, you will come out with something—even if it’s not something that I programmed in advance’—that always gives me hope.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Eraserhead” (1977)“Blue Velvet” (1986)“Twin Peaks” (1990-91)“Mulholland Drive” (2001)“Dune” (1984)“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992)“Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017)“David Lynch Keeps His Head,” by David Foster Wallace (Premiere)David Lynch’s P.S.A. for the New York Department of Sanitation“Severance” (2022—)“David Lynch’s Outsized Influence on Photography,” in ApertureComme des Garçons SS16Prada AW13David Lynch’s Weather ReportsNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• The Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming

  In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his début as the star of a new nature show called “Zoo Quest.” The docuseries, which ran for nearly a decade on the BBC, was a sensation that set Attenborough down the path of his life’s work: exposing viewers to our planet’s most miraculous creatures and landscapes from the comfort of their living rooms. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace Attenborough’s filmography from “Zoo Quest” to his program, “Mammals,” a six-part series on BBC America narrated by the now- ninety-eight-year-old presenter. In the seventy years since “Zoo Quest” first aired, the genre it helped create has had to reckon with the effects of the climate crisis—and to figure out how to address such hot-button issues onscreen. By highlighting conservation efforts that have been successful, the best of these programs affirm our continued agency in the planet’s future. “One thing I got from ‘Mammals’ was not pure doom,” Schwartz says. “There are some options here. We have choices to make.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Mammals” (2024)“Zoo Quest” (1954-63)“Are We Changing Planet Earth?” (2006)“The Snow Leopard,” by Peter Matthiessen“My Octopus Teacher” (2020)“Life on Our Planet” (2023)“I Like to Get High at Night and Think About Whales,” by Samantha IrbyNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.This episode originally aired on July 11, 2024.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• The New Western Gold Rush

  Westward expansion has been mythologized onscreen for more than a century—and its depiction has always been entwined with the politics and anxieties of the era. In the 1939 film “Stagecoach,” John Wayne crystallized our image of the archetypal cowboy; decades later, he played another memorable frontiersman in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” which questions how society is constructed. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the genre from these cinematic classics to its recent resurgence, marked by big-budget entries including “American Primeval,” which depicts nineteenth-century territorial conflicts in brutal, unsparing detail, and by the wild popularity of Taylor Sheridan’s “neo-Westerns,” which bring the time-honored form to the modern day. Sheridan’s series, namely “Yellowstone” and “Landman,” often center on a world-weary patriarch tasked with protecting land and property from outside forces waiting to seize it. Sometimes described as “red-state shows,” these works are deliberately slippery about their politics—but they pull in millions of viewers from across the ideological spectrum. What accounts for this success? “Whether or not we want to be living in a Western,” Schwartz says, “we very much still are.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Yellowstone” (2018–24)“Landman” (2024—)“Horizon: An American Epic” (2024)“American Primeval” (2025—)“Stagecoach” (1939)“Dances with Wolves” (1990)“Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman” (1993–98)Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962)“Shōgun” (2024)“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948)“Oppenheimer” (2023)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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