In The Mood To Binge? Here Are 4 Shows To Watch Now
From this TV critic's perch, with a few exceptions, 2021 hasn't yet provided a great deluge of outstanding shows. I suspect we're enduring the lingering impact of the industry's pandemic-inspired slow downs and shut downs. But there are signs of change.
As May gets underway, I've identified four shows to watch now (except for the first one, which you can't see until Monday). They are bold, incisive, entertaining and impactful — a great harbinger for a TV industry starting to regain momentum.
Here's the list:
The Crime of the Century (HBO)
This masterful, two-part documentary is a devastating indictment of the ways pharmaceutical companies, politicians, lobbyists and assorted profiteers, and the actions of former chairman and president Richard Sackler. This film makes the case that the company sold doctors on a lie that its powerful opiate OxyContin was not overly addictive to patients, encouraging them to prescribe it heavily. The second part largely details the excesses of other companies that jumped into the opioid market that Purdue Pharma created, offering unlimited bonuses to salespeople while paying doctors through sham "speakers' programs" to over-prescribe the drug.
