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“If you aren’t reading the Wag, you’ll never get anywhere when it comes to quantum electrodynamics.” —Richard Feynman

Hello, Genius! It's Your Weekly Recs

Our Birthday! Plus: the Mossad, Colin Firth, Nuclear Accidents...and Puzzles

May 6

Dear Wags,

Guess what: It’s our birthday! One year ago, we launched this enterprise. Thanks to you sharpies, it’s grown by leaps and bounds. Now, we span the globe, bringing the best in Culture — high, medium, and deliciously low—to thousands of top drawer types. We’ve got imperial plans for the future, including some special commemorative content, coming soon.

What have we learned these 12 months? So much. Like: having a good idea is the teensiest part of running a business. Like: it’s OK to not know what you are doing exactly, so long as you’re honest. Like: There’s hidden glory in making gobs of mistakes, and asking for help. One of the great American follies is fronting about expertise, which is annoying and dangerous. Aren’t you bored by it? We’d rather be around those who don’t pretend to know it all, because they can join us in the delight of learning something new. Wag is all about seeking to understand, without judgement or shame.

It’s been a most distressing week in America and abroad. Some days, the sense of a gathering storm is heavy enough to feel. How do we pull ourselves back from the brink? We think it begins, humbly enough, by rediscovering the simple joy of having a chat. For all humanity’s flaws, we really are skilled at that. Resolve to ask more questions, and revel in the good things that spring from ingenuity and heart. It won’t fix everything, but it’s a fair start.

Yours Ever,

Glenn Close gives Niv Sultan more reason to be anxious in *Tehran* (Apple TV+).

What a rollercoaster we’re on, learning that stodgy broadcast television, written off, hacked to pieces, stomped on like a doormat, may not be quite over. Streaming is weathering an icky puberty, and suddenly all assumptions are out the window! Good. A mass medium ought to be mass, and we look forward to a day when the shows we recommend are more widely seen. The streaming giants have a tough nut to crack, figuring out how to build larger audiences and make stuff that is actually discovered. While they sort it out, you can pop off to the cinema to see Dr. Strange in the Blah-di-blabbity-blah, which has just cleared $40 million. — Diana Christensen

Spring Thrillers

Tehran (AppleTV+). If we produced Tehran, we might have renamed it Cold Sweat — it’s a thriller so itchy, it makes Homeland feel like the Calm meditation app. Niv Sultan is an Israeli agent trapped in Iran after a mission goes awry. Now she’s going to have to rely on Dame Glenn Close, radiating Sinister Glenn Close Energy, to get her out of this mess. Shaun Toub is brilliant, scary, and sympathetic as an Iranian spy hunter. Oh, and the running-through-the-bazaar theme music, by Mark Eliyahu, is awesome.

Shining Girls (AppleTV+). Wag Suprema Elizabeth Moss is a newspaper archivist who is nearly killed by a mysterious assailant, and that was the easy part. In this mind-bender based on the novel by Lauren Beukes, she keeps waking up to different realities — the only constant being she’s on the trail of a time-defying serial killer (Jamie Bell). It’s a race to stop him before he gets at poor Phillipa Soo.

The Staircase (HBO Max). Baron Colin Firth and Dame Toni Colette play North Carolinians who have it all, until she’s takes a frightful tumble. Mr. Darcy, that louse, insists it was an accident. Watch yourself on the steps, they’re a neck breaker!

Docs

Meltdown: Three Mile Island (Netflix). I heard a really loud noise coming from the plant. Yeah, not what you want from your neighborhood reactor. Director Kief Davidson reveals how close America came to disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979, and why the event continues to influence attitudes toward nuclear power today.

Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known (HBO Max). Group hug, theater kids — you were in a Tony-award winning musical, which changed all your lives. Duncan Sheik, Jonathan Groff, and Lea Michele, among others, reunite to reminisce.

Nerd, Embrace Thyself

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount Plus). Before SciFi was bleak, it looked all shiny and hopeful. The prequel of all Star Trek prequels beams you up with Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and the Enterprise crew, off to explore strange new worlds with Great Society verve. It’s the future we deserved! — Janice Rand

Brain Teaser

When it comes to smarties we adore, Wag is a shameless log roller! So let us roll with giddy abandon, on behalf of The Puzzler, by Sir A.J. Jacobs, which charts our fascination with puzzles of all kinds. A.J. likes to try to crack devilish codes, which leads to misadventure, and some rumination about the meaning of life. It’s all cleverly timed to Wordlemania! Do buy several copies. The author has a glamorous, Algonquin Roundtable lifestyle to keep up.

Suspense

How many times have we gone over this? If you are the perfect couple, hoping to become perfect parents, the last thing you do is take in a lodger. Because that roomie, Kate, is going to be too good to be true. She’s got no boundaries! She’s up in your business! She’s obsessed with the husband, Jake (of course his name is Jake). It’s making the wife, Marisa, homicidal. Elizabeth Day’s Magpie is named after the dreadful, pushy, nest-invading bird. Expect plagued Marisa to shove back.

Star Turn

Grand Poobah John Waters has written a novel. It’s called Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance, and it is weird, funny, and filthy. The women of the Sprinkle family all want to murder one another. Baltimore implicated. And trampolines. What did you expect, In Search of Lost Time? Mercifully it’s nothing like that. —Connie Marble

Back in the 1940s, Mormon idealists founded a settlement in the Mexican desert. It sounded pretty utopian, until Ervil (yeah, Ervil) LeBaron, a son of the founding family, sparked all kinds of mayhem. We’re talking murder, drug trafficking, car theft, and yet more murder! The Indefatigable Jesse Hyde digs into all of it in Deliver Us From Ervil. It makes us wonder if everything would have been different had they only named the poor kid Goodal. —Alby Grant

Too much small talk, well, my darling, that's bad for our health/Turns your talk so small, you'll turn into somebody else. When Aberdeenshire’s Emeli Sandé asks you to go deep, you don’t say no. Oxygen, the singer-songwriter’s single from her album Let’s Say For Instance is a gorgeous lover’s plea, begging you not to go. Who’d run out on that?

Bryan Ferry, eternal rake, is the master of the soft sell. Here he is, crooning the Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune I Just Don’t Know What to do With Myself, skipping theatrics to deliver something tender and seductive. Oh, he knows just what to do with himself, the dirty old dog. — John Robie

The 1980s were halcyon days for American indie film, when serious moviegoers (there were lots of them then) championed scrappy projects, elevating major talent in the process. Wayne Wang’s Chan is Missing (1982) was made on shoestring, and focused on people invisible in Hollywood. Still, it became a surprising success. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the comic mystery follows cab driver (Wood Moy) and his nephew (Marc Hayashi) as they hunt for the mysterious Chan Hung, who has absconded with the cabbie’s money. The pair meet a quirky array of locals who give wildly conflicting information about the shadowy figure. Shot like an old noir picture, the tale reveals as much about a diverse Chinese American community as it does the wanted man. Chan became the first Asian American film to gain major distribution and acclaim. Wang went on to be a celebrated director, and in 1995, his first project was recognized by the National Film Registry for its importance. — Geraldine Tam

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CultureWag celebrates culture—high, medium, and deliciously low. It’s an essential guide to the mediaverse, cutting through a cluttered landscape and serving up smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. If somebody forwarded you this issue, consider it a coveted invitation and RSVP “subscribe.” You’ll be part of the smartest set in Hollywood, Gstaad, Biarritz and the Buffalo Club of Santa Monica, because we like the patio.

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