Aaron Barnhart
Overwhelmed by Peak TV? Aaron Barnhart is your guide to the good, the great, and the skippable. Twice weekly on Primetimer.
-
POSTED June 27, 2019
The High-Rise Cleavage and Low-Down Realities of Hulu's Harlots
This 18th century period piece is spiritual cousins with The Wire and The Handmaids Tale.
-
POSTED June 25, 2019
On Instant Hotel, Contestants Win When Airbnbs Lose
The reality show is for anyone who’s stayed at a less-than-perfect rental and wishes they could tell their host what they really think.
-
POSTED June 20, 2019
On Netflix’s Confession Tapes, the Camera Never Blinks, But Justice Does
The docuseries exposing how prosecutors misuse videotape in the courtroom picks up where When They See Us leaves off.
-
POSTED June 18, 2019
The Unexpectedly Uplifting Funeral-Home Hit from New Zealand
Netflix’s Casketeers captures life and death inside a husband-and-wife-run mortuary in Auckland.
-
POSTED June 13, 2019
Detectorists Dug Deeper Than Most Britcoms
An appreciation of the quirky comedy about men devoted to hobbies and the women who love them anyway.
-
-
POSTED June 11, 2019
In Babylon Berlin, Freedom Runs Wild in 1929, With Nary a Nazi in Sight
This Netflix import from Germany presents the Weimar-era capital in all its glory and grit.
-
POSTED June 6, 2019
12 Reasons Why the Frasier Revival Is Doomed
A dozen episodes from the show’s fourth (and finest) season raise the bar impossibly high.
-
POSTED June 4, 2019
Anne with an E Takes Us to Her Creator’s Dark Places
The spunky orphan girl of L.M. Montgomery's beloved books is darker and sadder in this Netflix adaptation.
-
POSTED May 28, 2019
Mercy Street Was a Backdoor Counter-History of the Civil War
The fact-based PBS drama asserted that race, not union or states’ rights, was the real reason behind America’s bloodiest conflict.
-
POSTED May 23, 2019
In Wormwood, Errol Morris Smelled a Cold War Conspiracy
The filmmaker’s inventive Netflix miniseries reopened a CIA scientist’s sketchy 1953 suicide, but left big questions unanswered.
-
-
POSTED May 21, 2019
King Corn Is the Only Food Film You Need
This classic about the triumph and tragedy of our modern food system is the antidote to overheated docs like What the Health and GMO OMG.
-
POSTED May 16, 2019
In HBO’s Longford, Evil and Redemption in the Age Before Mass Incarceration
From the creator of The Crown, a stellar character drama that asks if any crime is too great to grant forgiveness.
-
POSTED May 14, 2019
Do You Believe John Ramsey? Casting JonBenet Won’t Change Your Mind
That’s the point behind this unsettling Netflix docu-experiment about belief in spite of the facts.
-
POSTED May 9, 2019
'New York Is Ferguson on Steroids’: The Chilling Lesson of Crime + Punishment
A stunning documentary about abusive policing at the NYPD has lessons for every city and town in America.
-
POSTED May 6, 2019
The Americans Had No Idea How Right It Was
The celebrated spy thriller was set in the Reagan years because Russian spies were a thing of the past — not!