Netflix offers ‘G Word’ civics lesson
A “Schoolhouse Rocks” for a cynical age, “The G Word With Adam Conover” debuts on Netflix. The host of “Adam Ruins Everything” offers tongue-in-cheek descriptions of our government at work, highlighting the nuts-and-bolts activities of a trillion-dollar operation employing millions of Americans.
He begins with a visit to a meat processing plant in the Midwest, where government-employed meat inspectors work alongside company employees to see if tainted or diseased product is getting into the food supply. He then goes on to describe how some government programs, like subsidies, have distorted the food supply and flooded the market with cheap and sugary “junk,” making healthy alternatives seem expensive and “elitist” by comparison.
Over the course of the series, Conover will look at weather forecasting, disease control, the money supply and bank protections and government investments in technology that have borne fruit in the internet, GPS, robotics and other areas.
“G Word” features appearances by President Barack Obama, who invites Conover to dig into government activities to his heart’s content.
So, “G Word” is basically a civics lesson with a (former) presidential seal of approval. Some might recoil at Conover’s frequent use of profanity. You don’t have to be a prude to find this odd and off-putting in a series aimed at young people trying to learn about their government, how it works and sometimes doesn’t.
› Peacock streams the five-part miniseries “Angelyne,” produced by and starring Emmy Rossum. The series offers a fanciful meditation on the woman who, beginning in the 1980s, willed herself into a kind of celebrity by purchasing billboards and building murals featuring her curvaceous image.
Decades after Andy Warhol created pop superstars in his art factory and decades before the instant and ephemeral fame of social media, “Angelyne” strives to
find meaning and depth in a subject that existed entirely in the eyes of its beholders.
› Midcentury style looms large in the new adaptation of “The Ipcress File” streaming on AMC+. Joe Cole plays the role of Harry Palmer from Len Deighton’s espionage thriller, the basis of the 1965 film that immortalized Michael Caine, with his glasses, accent and attitude.
The series makes the most of digital effects to seamlessly present the bomb-flattened neighborhoods of East and West
Berlin and Britain in the early 1960s, the darkest days of the Cold War.
This era’s spy movies are so well-known, so imitated and beloved, it’s easy to mistake faithful adaptation for parody. Lucy Boynton stars as the beautiful, posh fashion-plate spy Jean Courtney. It’s hard to watch her and not think of the Lady Penelope puppet from “Thunderbirds Are Go.” Tom Hollander (“The Night Manager”) stars as well.