John Powers

When Lena Dunham's Girls appeared seven years ago, it cleared the path for a parade of smart, provocative television shows about smart, provocative young heroines.

The best of the bunch may well be Fleabag, the hilarious, raunchy and unexpectedly touching Amazon series by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the British writer and actress who created the terrific TV adaptation of Killing Eve and was recently asked to punch up the script of the new James Bond movie.

Everyone is either a fool, a knave or a monster in HBO's hilariously scabrous political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. After seven seasons, Veep ends its run with its sharp teeth fully intact.

Over the years, the HBO series has risen from being a nifty potboiler to a timely expression of a zeitgeist that contests everything from gender roles to climate change to immigration.

In the new TV series Mrs. Wilson, the British actress Ruth wilson stars in the true story of her own grandmother who discovered that her marriage wasn't what she thought it was.

Based on the true story of a crime gone wrong, Wanda is considered a cinematic landmark. The 1970 film, which is now out in a restored version, was written and directed by its star, Barbara Loden.

Critic-at-large John Powers reviews 'Manhunt' a 3-part series on the popular British streaming service Acorn TV. Based on the true story of a serial kill working in and around Twickenham in south-west London, the show became a smast hit when it aired in the UK.

Critic at large John Powers reviews a debut spy novel about an African American female FBI agent during the Cold War.

Asghar Farhadi, the gifted Iranian filmmaker who in recent years has won foreign film Oscars for both A Separation and The Salesman, told The New York Times in January, "The taste of love and the taste of hate are everywhere the same." That belief in universality gets put to the test in Farhadi's latest film, Everybody Knows, a tale of love and crime that finds him working for the first time in Spain with a cast of Spanish-speaking stars.

John Powers reviews 'Black Earth Rising' a new Netflix series about a Rwandan exile and an American human rights lawyer who investigate war crimes committed during and after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Critic at large John Powers reviews the new HBO movie 'Brexit' which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the top strategist for Britian's "Leave" campaign.