The Social World

Tag: Streaming

  • The new Stranger Things is loopy and sweet

    The new Stranger Things is loopy and sweet

    So, the new – and supposedly final – season of Stranger Things has arrived in Netflix, just in time for Thanksgiving. Expectations have been through the roof that this installment will not be a turkey, but the good (stranger?) thing about the series so far is that it has maintained a remarkably high level of quality since it began in 2016. This is by no means a given for an Eighties-inflected fantasy show that is so devoted (the cynics might and have said slavishly) to all things that Steven Spielberg produced in that decade that the bearded one might have sued for plagiarism, were it not for the fact that the homage remains an affectionate and heartfelt, rather than cynical, one.

    The new season, which has an apparently exorbitant budget of as much as $60 million per episode, expands the palette to include influences ranging from Stephen King and John Carpenter to mid-Eighties James Cameron (rather than the Avatar incarnation of the king of the world). The latter is made explicit by a totemic cameo by Terminator actress Linda Hamilton, as redolent of the Eighties setting as Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” was in the fourth season. But amid the Sturm und Drang, there are moments of sweetness and levity that remind the viewers why this became such a massive hit in the first place.

    As the inhabitants of Hawkins, Indiana, all bond together in an attempt to defeat Jamie Campbell Bower’s nefarious and terrifyingly all-powerful Vecna, whose appearance on screen was heralded from the last series with as much pomp and circumstance as a show like this merits, those who cannot remember all the twists, turns and developments of previous series – the last of which aired in 2022, a considerable period in streaming chronology – might instead enjoy pondering other issues.

    These include, in no particular order, what, exactly, has happened to Millie Bobby Brown, who seems to have gone from being a wholesome, sweet-faced teenager in the first series to a cynical woman of the world in this. Offscreen, she has attracted a raft of negative publicity for what has been seen in some circles as a life lived rather too quickly and large in the public gaze; at the age of 21, she is already a married woman with an adopted child, as well as a veteran of both this and the Enola Holmes series. Yet she’s as dynamic as the Eleven character in Stranger Things as she always has been, ably mixing mystery with jaw-dropping supernatural abilities to give the show genuine jolts of excitement and spectacle whenever she appears.

    Tabloid connoisseurs, meanwhile, might be amused by the continuing presence of David Harbour as Eleven’s quasi-adoptive father Jim Hopper. Harbour has been dogged both by his ex-wife Lily Allen’s coruscating dismissal of him and his extramarital antics on her latest album, West End Girl, and by Brown’s allegations of on-set bullying, which has led to an unusual degree of interest in their on-screen relationship. Yet truth be told, if the stories had not emerged, it would be hard to discern any especial difference, and the warmth and strength of the bond between the two characters has grounded the show, giving it an emotional heart that at times might be lacking amid the sheer preponderance of special effects, lore and big moments thrown in to get the show’s millions of fans cheering.

    As is semi-obligatory with these big shows, the episodes released only constitute half the series, with the remainder scheduled for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. As audiences eagerly await the grand finale – written and directed by the show’s creators, the excellently named Duffer Brothers – there can be little doubt that Stranger Things, in all its loopy, self-referential excess, is pretty much the exemplar of Eighties-themed fantasy on television. A lot of people are going to be made very happy by this, and it would be churlish not to wish them joy.

  • How chess killed Danya Naroditsky

    How chess killed Danya Naroditsky

    Last month, chess grandmaster Daniel “Danya” Naroditsky started streaming again from his house in North Carolina. He had taken a break from it recently; I was one of at least a thousand viewers to welcome him back that night. But something was off. Danya, normally effusive and energetic, seemed haggard. As the broadcast went on, he began to slur his words. At one point, realizing he’d made a wrong move, he punched himself in the head. It was painful to watch.

    Throughout, Danya talked about a man whose accusations had allegedly subjected him to torment and abuse over the past year. At times, he was close to tears. As the stream went on, Danya became increasingly vacant, whispering in Russian, his mother tongue, as he recalled the pain of seeing sane, well-meaning people undermine his experience, due to allegations that had made his life hell. He began to slouch in his chair, drifting in and out of consciousness.

    When Danya eventually stopped streaming, a man called Vladimir Kramnik, a former chess world champion, posted a string of messages to his 24,000 followers on X, speculating Danya was on drugs. He posted an image with the words, “Don’t do drugs.” Kramnik is the man who had made the allegations that Danya had accused of ruining his life. For the past year, Kramnik had been publicly claiming Danya should be investigated for cheating in online chess. Then, on Sunday October 19, Danya was found dead. He was 29.

    The chess world convulsed. Danya wasn’t just an exceptional player – he won the US blitz championship last year – he was a gifted teacher and could explain complex chess tactics as if he were describing the most beautiful thing in the world. Players and creators released videos of themselves in floods of tears. But the emotion was also a sign of growing unease within the game and its legions of fans; a feeling that the chess’s post-Covid success has morphed into something ugly and out of control.

    Streaming has changed the game beyond recognition. The website chess.com now has more than 200 million members. Before its rise, aided by the pandemic, FIDE – chess’s century-old governing body – controlled almost every aspect of the game. The freely accessible, on-demand nature of chess.com’s broadcasts has created a new empire. Players now earn a fortune by streaming on Twitch, YouTube and through sponsorships – unthinkable just five years ago. But lockdown was the real turning point: boredom, The Queen’s Gambit and a melodramatic cast of social outcasts fused into an ecosystem that brought in millions of new fans.

    Danya had been a central figure in this post-lockdown boom. He was born in San Mateo, California, in 1995, to a Jewish Soviet family. He studied history at Stanford and published his first book, Mastering Positional Chess, at the age of 14. At the time of his death, Danya had 490,000 subscribers.

    Danya was seen as a truly good guy in a world that is increasingly populated by big egos. The game’s cast is operatic. Hikaru Nakamura, world number two and chess’s biggest streamer, is hugely gifted, brash and incredibly self-satisfied. Then there’s Magnus Carlsen, arguably the greatest player of all time, who made headlines this summer for throwing away a lead and punching the table. Hans Niemann is the enfant terrible of modern chess: arrogant, brilliant and permanently aggrieved.

    The reaction to Danya’s death quickly curdled from grief into a row over who or what was to blame. Some seemed to hold Kramnik responsible – although Kramnik himself has strongly denied that he accused Danya of cheating and said Danya’s death was not his fault. Kramnik blamed something called “the chess mafia,” a spurious cabal made up of people at the top of the chess hierarchy. Kramnik implied that Danya might have been assassinated by this cabal. He didn’t give a reason why. 

    But ignore the claims and counterclaims: the fundamental issue at the heart of this tragedy is cheating – or, more accurately, the idea of cheating. It’s easy to cheat at chess. All you need is an internet connection.

    Kramnik, once a titan of the chess world, spent the past year going down a rabbit hole of investigation and accusation. To Kramnik, chess streamers such as Danya should be investigated in case they were cheating in order to raise their rating, gaining prestige and winning money in online tournaments. He began compiling data on players he believed were playing above their natural skill level. Danya was one of Kramnik’s prime suspects. Almost every grandmaster came out in support of Danya, condemning Kramnik’s evidence. But these kinds of allegations, even if they are condemned, take their toll in the chess world.

    Danya started being harassed by anonymous social media accounts. He began to retreat from public view. In the week after his death, his mother shared a statement saying that her son’s reputation as an honest, passionate chess player was the most important thing to him. Kramnik says he never accused Danya of cheating and that there has been an “orchestrated PR campaign” against him since Danya’s death.

    The new celebrity chess players have never really known how to handle fame. The 2023 world champion, Ding Liren, recently admitted that during the most high-pressure moments of his young career he couldn’t sleep for months and descended into “darkness.” Grandmaster David Navara has spoken about having suicidal thoughts after being accused of cheating by Kramnik. Niemann is a provocateur, but when Carlsen accused him of cheating more than he had admitted, he said it nearly ruined his life. The terrible tragedy for so many fans – for all the people whose relationship with the game was so intimately molded by Danya’s utter brilliance – is that it was the intensity of his passion that eventually seemed to kill him.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

    Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

    When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire.

    Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead. He broke out in Arrested Development, in which he played the put-upon Michael Bluth, perpetually beset by the antics of his eccentric-to-insane family. Although the character was nominally the straight man, Bateman’s peerless comic timing saw him translate his television success to a decent film career, with good parts in big films such as Juno and Hancock. Yet he was usually cast as the lovable nice guy, playing the less interesting roles while his more eccentric co-stars walked away with the pictures.

    The first real attempt on his part to escape this typecasting was in the crime drama Ozark, in which he played a financial advisor who finds himself laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel. Not only did Bateman manage to find nuance and interest in the part of Marty Byrde, using his natural charm and charisma to perverted ends, but he also demonstrated an aptitude for directing, helming several episodes and winning an Emmy for his work on “Reparations.” Moving to the darker side clearly agreed with Bateman, because he was a spookily effective villain in the otherwise ephemeral Taron Egerton airport thriller, Carry-On, delivering pep talks to the protagonist even as he makes his life hell.

    It’s unsurprising, then, that in the new Netflix crime series Black Rabbit, Bateman – who directed the opening two episodes – has seized upon the chance to explore his inner nefariousness. He plays Vince Friedken, who initially appears to be nothing more than a small-time scam artist, trying to sell some (presumably stolen) coins to a pair of thieves who swiftly rob him in turn. Vince might look like a hobo, all long hair and straggly beard, but he’s far smarter than he looks: disposing of one of the thieves, he hot-tails it to New York, where he meets up once again with his estranged brother, Jake (Jude Law), the successful owner of a bar-club-restaurant named Black Rabbit.

    Zach Baylin & Kate Susman’s drama might not be wildly original, but it at least offers some novel twists on formula. Much of the tension in the first episode does not revolve around violence and betrayal, but about what the New York Times restaurant critic will make of the food at Black Rabbit. Vince isn’t simply a deadbeat junkie but a talented and once-successful restaurateur who was waylaid by the pharmaceutical stimulants that one too many ambitious and successful men ensure. And Jake, shown in the tense opening scene being confronted with an armed robbery at the restaurant, is clearly hiding his own secrets underneath his suave exterior.

    How this resolves itself over the eight episodes plays out partially as you’d expect and partially in new ways. It’s a novel touch, for instance, to have the crime lord Vince played by the deaf actor Troy Kotsur (an Oscar winner for Coda who has not been seen on screens often enough since) and even if the restaurant business stuff feels post-Bear in its machinations, it is at least engaging. All of which means that all the bad men waving guns and shouting – and foot chases through the seedier parts of New York – do at least have a touch of freshness to them: appropriately enough, given the Black Rabbit’s culinary stock-in-trade.

    But this is, again, Bateman’s show. Now 56, and with a misspent youth (which he once described as being “like Risky Business for ten years”) firmly behind him, he has an interestingly weathered face that makes him stand out from his more Botoxed peers. Law does what he does very well, but it is his co-star who stands out, bringing depth and humanity to what might have been a thin part, and ensuring that Black Rabbit is very much worth catching.

  • The Paper is really, really bad

    The Paper is really, really bad

    Making a spin-off of a spin-off is the trickiest task on television, not least because it assumes that the audience is sufficiently fond of the original and the reinvention alike to be happy to go steady with the third round, too. In all fairness, the new workplace-themed sitcom (although on the evidence of this first season, comedy-drama is probably a more accurate designation) The Paper is only a callback to the US The Office, in that its premise is that the same documentary crew that captured the bewildering banality of life at Dunder Mifflin has headed to Toledo, Ohio, there to follow the travails of a once-proud, now-flailing newspaper, the Toledo Truth-Teller.

    This couldn’t be more timely, as newsprint journalism is an increasingly endangered species, and at first glance The Paper should be every bit as compulsive a watch as the earlier show, not least because they both share a creator in Greg Daniels, this time joined by Michael Koman. It also boasts a great cast, led by the ever-excellent Domhnall Gleeson as Ned Sampson, an idealist who manages to fend off accusations of everything from having been #MeToo’d to masquerading as a “proper” editor in his quest to bring integrity and old-fashioned journalistic standards back to Toledo. Gags, superb acting, timeliness, and a holdover from The Office, in the form of Oscar Nunez, reprising his role as Oscar Martinez, Dunder Mifflin’s accountant: what more could you ask for?

    Unfortunately, The Paper proves not to be worth the material that it has been written on. On the evidence of the first few episodes, this is a hugely disappointing, profoundly unfunny and tonally wildly uncertain show that may yet bed in and find its feet, but few viewers are likely to invest the time and effort that such optimism would require. The usually excellent British actor Tim Key is miscast as Ken, a David Brent stand-in, all conspiratorial looks to camera and self-aggrandizing puffery, as the paper’s “business strategist,” i.e. the person who wants to shut down the loss-making organization as quickly as possible. But his performance is a masterclass in subtlety and nuance compared to Sabrina Impacciatore, so good in the second series of The White Lotus, who is diabolically over the top in the role of the paper’s managing editor Esmerelda Grand. (This is not a subtle show.)

    Whether or not you think that the American version of The Office was a comedic masterpiece (or, for that matter, the British original), it cannot be denied that it hit its targets with real vigor, and, in Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, created a larger-than-life character for the ages, a man-baby who was just about human enough to be pitiable but not quite sympathetic, either. Gleeson, always good value, seems stuck in the kind of role that requires him to Do Anguish a lot, to greater or lesser comic effect, but he comes across better than Chelsea Frei’s Mare, the paper’s compositor, who might as well be wearing a T-shirt saying “potential love interest” on it.

    There are some nice-ish gags about AI’s insipid influence on the journalistic industry and Martinez’s reluctance to once again become the butt of the documentary makers, but this isn’t particularly funny. Instead, it falls into the trap of many contemporary comedies, mistaking the ability to stage minute-long situations that might conceivably work OK as stand-alone clips on TikTok for a genuinely inspired series of jokes. Had Daniels and Korman had the courage of their convictions and brought in Tim Robinson in full I Think You Should Leave mode in the lead, this could yet have been an absurdist classic. Unfortunately, on the present evidence, it’s another “what might have been.” A second series has already been commissioned, but it’s likely that its chances of being embraced by an audience are roughly akin to the Toledo Truth-Teller winning the Pulitzer. This paper, alas, probably should have been canned.