John Powers

German author Jenny Erpenbeck is one of the most acclaimed writers of the last 25 years. Her new novel "Kairos," just out from New Directions, tells the story of a 19-year-old female student in East Berlin who falls in love with a much older male writer in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Starring an excellent Shaun Evans, Endeavour is an origin story. It charts the pilgrim's progress of brilliant, headstrong Endeavour Morse as he goes from an idealistic young Oxford cop to the boozing, vaguely misanthropic detective made famous by Thaw.

Happy Valley, the BBC crime series that became an instant sensation when it premiered in 2014, is created by Sally Wainwright. It centers on a woman police sergeant in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire, it set the gold standard for crime series anchored by complicated women.

R.M.N. is based on an actual 2020 event in Ditrău, Romania, where 1,800 villagers voted to expel three Sri Lankans who worked at their local bakery.

A new eight-part TV series called "Drops Of God" is about a competition between a French woman and Japanese man to inherit the world's most valuable wine collection. The first two episodes of this multilingual show dropped Friday on Apple TV+. Our critic at large John Powers says that it's an engrossing tale that's as much about inheritance as wine.

A hugely timely new political thriller, and a fictional riff on the eco-sabotage manifesto by Andreas Malm.

In Raine Allen-Miller's high-spirited romcom, two young, Black Londoners spend a day walking and talking together. It's a rare and enjoyable on-screen journey through south-of-the-Thames London.

An FBI agent in a dead-end job suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. This new 10-part series is a cross between a paranoid thriller from the '70s and a twisty TV show like 24.

Birnam Wood is a whooshingly enjoyable new novel by Eleanor Catton, a New Zealander whose previous book, The Luminaries, made her, at 28, still the youngest person ever to win the Booker Prize.

John Powers says the movie starts off like a sentimental fish-out-of-water story about a young woman's search for her roots. But it quickly becomes clear that we're seeing something stranger and stronger.