How To with John Wilson is perfectly timed for this moment

BuzzFeed News

"It’s gotten to the point where pretty much any new media we consume these days feels — excuse the now-exhausted phrase — 'eerily prescient,'" says Shannon Keating. "From The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix to the Strokes’ latest album to this year’s pandemic novels, watching and reading and listening to things made before the world went into lockdown tend to offer us a heartbreaking glimpse at what used to be, or else provide a foreboding hint about what horrors were to come. But nothing I’ve watched so far has felt quite so perfectly timed to this moment — in terms of capturing the best of what we’ve lost as well as giving us reason to laugh and delight and maybe even hope — as How To with John Wilson, a new comedy docuseries on HBO. Executive produced by Nathan Fielder of Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, Wilson’s project (he’s the writer, director, cameraperson, and narrator) carries some of Fielder’s signature cringey style. But How To is really in a universe all its own, blending impressive and often hilarious cultural reporting with quite moving personal introspection; it’s like a kind of poetry. I don’t know what more I’d want from six tight 30-minute episodes than the opportunity to meet a bunch of people — New Yorkers! My people! — who are as bizarre as they are perfectly ordinary, while also laughing a lot and crying a little. OK, maybe more than a little." ALSO: How To offers desert-dry old school wit, finding humor in magical realism.