John Powers

Based on Sally Rooney's novel, Hulu's 12-part series centers on the unlikely love affair between two alienated high school students. Despite shortcomings, Normal People's romantic pull is addictive.

In 2003, Japanese animator Satoshi Kon presented an upbeat fable about three social outcasts who find an abandoned baby. Recently restored, Toyko Godfathers never sinks into moralizing or treacle.

Actual crimes are scary and disturbing, but critic John Powers finds crime stories comforting. He recommends two shows he's been binge-watching during the pandemic.

The Russian poet Joseph Brodsky once said that prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. Our current lockdown can't be compared to being locked up, but with so much surplus time on our hands, many of us are eager for stories that will help us escape endless thoughts of COVID-19. Here are three that did that for me: Unorthodox, Baghdad Central, and Abigail.

Hulu's new eight-part series uses the fraught encounter between two families — one well-off and white, one bohemian and black — to raise tricky questions about race and social class.

Bacurau is a funny, violent, unexpectedly moving Brazilian movie that won the Jury Prize at Cannes last spring. Written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, Bacurau is a genre-busting entertainment that is at once a portrait of a community, a horror thriller and a timely piece of political filmmaking.

A jaunty new 10-part series plays as an amped-up comic book, blending an old-school revenge saga with a grim history lesson. Hunters exhibits a desire to be inventive that doesn't always pay off.