Chris Vognar has joined the Globe as TV/pop culture critic.
Chris Vognar has joined the Globe as TV/pop culture critic.Sarah Hoffman/Staff Photographer
Some readers have been around long enough to remember when TV was something you watched in the living room with your family. There were three or four channels, then a whole bunch more, thanks to cable. The news came on at 11. College football arrived Saturday, followed by the NFL on Sunday. Mix. Stir. Repeat.
That was another lifetime. Today the television landscape can be described by the title of a recent Oscar-winning movie: everything everywhere all at once. We stream incessantly, on laptops and phones, on Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO Max … it gets confusing, even for someone who gets paid to write about it. News and sports are ubiquitous. A new true crime or cult docuseries arrives seemingly every day.
As your new TV/pop culture critic I hope to help you make sense of it all. If I’m doing my job right, I can point you toward new shows that interest me, and will hopefully interest you as well. But that’s just part of the job. My goal is to see the pop culture forest for the trees — how this or that new series connects to this or that movie, or why everyone seems to be talking about that new song, or which books might touch on where we are as a culture.
That sounds like a lot, and it is. Which brings us to an important caveat. You can’t watch everything, and neither can I. That would be impossible even if I were to prop myself up on a caffeine diet and never leave my screens. And that would make for a most unfulfilling life, especially as I move back to one of my favorite cities, Boston, where I had the pleasure of living from 2008 to 2009 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. (To quote Frank Sinatra, it was a very good year.) I’ll need to get outside every now and then. Walk the Freedom Trail. Hear some jazz in Roxbury. Hit some movies at the Brattle. Hopefully score some Celtics tickets.
But what I do watch, I will watch well — with an eye for detail, and an expansiveness that leans more on “Yes, and” than “No, but.” I seek to convey a passion for finding the common threads. Pop culture can be seen as a series of intersecting points. I want to help you navigate the intersections, and have a lot of fun doing it. And I hope you’ll share your discoveries, too.
Since you’ll be reading me, you deserve to know a little about me. I grew up on the West Coast (Warriors, not Lakers), studied English and film at Berkeley, and then took an unexpected professional detour into Texas — which lasted the better part of 29 years. During that time I’ve written about TV, film, books, theater, music, and other subjects that interest me, which, as it turns out, means just everything.
“Just about everything” also happens to be a pretty good description of TV in the year 2025. Not all of it is worth watching, but a fair amount is. I’m fond of saying that there might not be as much great TV as there was 10 years ago, but there’s more good TV than ever. My recent favorites include “Dept. Q,” “Get Millie Black,” “Adolescence,” and “The Better Sister.” Coming up soon is “Alien: Earth,” which I would actually put in that elusive “great” category. I love strong storytelling and risk-taking. I also believe many series would be better if they were shorter. There’s a whole lot of narrative stretching going on right now.
When I’m not partaking in the above I’m usually reading — OK, so that’s actually part of the above, though I also do it for pleasure — watching basketball (or even playing a little, when my body can withstand it), and traveling. In September I’ll be reporting from the Venice Film Festival, where I’ve been lucky enough to serve on a panel for the last decade or so. The truth is that my life is largely a busman’s holiday. I do what I do because I love it. I’m often asked if I can watch a movie or TV show purely for the enjoyment. The answer is yes, sort of, sometimes. I don’t always take notes. But for me the thinking is a big part of the pleasure. Criticism is merely the instrument I use to express my passions. Though of course I don’t love everything I see. The more you truly care about something, the more you want it to succeed. And when it doesn’t succeed, or when it doesn’t work for me, I want to explain why.
It should go without saying that I also care deeply about journalism, and its role in a functioning democracy. I write opinion and analysis, but neither means anything if I don’t get the facts right. I’m not in the entertainment business. I’m in the journalism business. The day I forget this is the day I hang it up.
I see the critic’s job as leading an intelligent and friendly conversation. So let me hear from you. Now if you’ll excuse me, this TV won’t watch itself.
Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com.