Current:Home > MarketsWhat's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing and listening -Mastery Money Tools
What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing and listening
Poinbank Exchange View
Date:2025-04-09 01:19:50
This week, David Letterman paid a visit, Fargo returned, and another comedian returned to the same old material.
Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.
"Farrah Fawcett Hair" by Capital Cities, ft. André 3000
"Farrah Fawcett Hair" by the electronic duo Capital Cities is almost a decade old and I'm just now discovering it. It's actually kind of timely because the song features André 3000 who just announced a new album of instrumental music. The song is just a list of random good stuff – like "how infants with baby breath yawn in your face" – with a killer saxophone break. It's kind of like if "We Didn't Start the Fire" was thematically coherent and actually a good song. This is a good song. You can dance to it. You can rock out to the saxophone break. It'll make your day. — Aisha Harris
Blue Eye Samurai, on Netflix
I really love Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix. It's an anime series made by a married couple, Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. It's set in the Edo period in Japan when the borders were closed to outsiders. It takes on these ideas about what it means to be mixed race, about immigration. All the voice actors are racially correct; all the little things that I've grown more and more passionate about in the last several years — this series honors them. Kenneth Branagh plays maybe the most evil character I have encountered in any medium for several years – he's so good as a voice actor. I just started watching the show and it's beautiful — I didn't expect to love it as much as I do. — Walter Chaw
Ghosts UK on CBS
Last week, as a companion to the delightful sitcom Ghosts, CBS started airing reruns of the U.K. sitcom Ghosts, which the U.S. version is based on. Ghosts is a very charming show in which a couple comes to own a big, spooky haunted mansion. After a near-death experience, the wife finds she can commune with the ghosts who occupy and haunt the property. Part of what is so delightful about these two shows is that while they share a basically identical premise, they are completely different characters. Each one has its own well-rounded set of foibles and powers and goofiness. I love the idea of networks and streaming services dipping into the waters of TV produced in other countries and sharing those shows with U.S. audiences. — Stephen Thompson
More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter
by Linda Holmes
Slate's Joel Anderson, who hosted an entire excellent season of the Slow Burn podcast about the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, wrote this week about the recent lawsuit against Sean Combs and why the allegations didn't surprise him. I strongly recommend the piece, which is thoughtful and, like the podcast season was, great at providing necessary context to a big story.
Mike Birbiglia has a new special on Netflix called The Old Man & The Pool. Like all his work, it's impeccably structured, very funny and very personal.
I've been watching a lot of old episodes of House, starring Hugh Laurie as the Sherlock Holmes-ish doctor who diagnoses different offbeat diseases every week. With the pretty major caveat that the show ran in the early aughts, and the misanthropic House's racism and sexism and other offensive comments would probably not make the cut today, it has certainly been a fascinating opportunity to see what a mystery/procedural show looks like when it's not about the police.
Beth Novey adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment "What's Making Us Happy" for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
veryGood! (5466)
Related
- Senate begins final push to expand Social Security benefits for millions of people
- Tennessee sheriff increases reward to $100,000 as manhunt for suspect in deputy's fatal shooting widens
- Nicaragua’s crackdown on Catholic Church spreads fear among the faithful, there and in exile
- Super Bowl 58 bold predictions: Six strong claims for Chiefs vs. 49ers
- Nearly 400 USAID contract employees laid off in wake of Trump's 'stop work' order
- WWE star Maryse reveals 'rare pre-cancer' diagnosis, planning hysterectomy
- Super Bowl 58 picks: Will 49ers or Chiefs win out on NFL's grand stage in Las Vegas?
- A tiny robot on the space station will simulate remote-controlled surgery up there
- A South Texas lawmaker’s 15
- Usher and Longtime Love Jenn Goicoechea Get Marriage License Ahead of Super Bowl Halftime Show
Ranking
- Small twin
- Winter storm system hits eastern New Mexico, headed next to Texas Panhandle and central Oklahoma
- Super Bowl: Do performers get paid? What to know about halftime performances, show cost
- This teen wears a size 23 shoe. It's stopping him from living a normal life.
- Finally, good retirement news! Southwest pilots' plan is a bright spot, experts say
- Biden’s legal team went to Justice Dept. over what they viewed as unnecessary digs at his memory
- Digital evidence leads to clues in deaths of two friends who were drugged and dumped outside LA hospitals by masked men
- This teen wears a size 23 shoe. It's stopping him from living a normal life.
Recommendation
Travis Hunter, the 2
Sheriff says suspect “is down” after shooting at celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Texas megachurch
Vanderpump Rules Alum Brittany Cartwright Shares Insight Into Weight Loss Transformation
Watch: Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger reunite in State Farm Super Bowl commercial
Why Sean "Diddy" Combs Is Being Given a Laptop in Jail Amid Witness Intimidation Fears
$6.5K reward as Arizona officials investigate the killing of a desert bighorn sheep near Gila Bend
Man convicted of execution-style killing of NYPD officer in 1988 denied parole
Body of famed Tennessee sheriff's wife exhumed 57 years after her cold case murder