Linda Holmes
Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.
Holmes was a writer and editor at Television Without Pity, where she recapped several hundred hours of programming — including both High School Musical movies, for which she did not receive hazard pay. Her first novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over, was published in the summer of 2019.
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Each week, Pop Culture Happy Hour guests and hosts share what's bringing them joy. This week: The Open Ears Project, R.F Kuang's The Poppy War trilogy and a Dungeons & Dragons show called DesiQuest. -
From war to injustice and religious extremism, the documentary finalists are thematically harrowing stories from around the world. Each is a triumph of storytelling and craft. -
The courtroom drama is a beloved and established film genre. Anatomy of a Fall is a Best Picture nominee that feels familiar at first but immerses audiences in a different kind of legal thriller. -
All dating shows have varying amounts of sex and mess and Couple to Throuple has plenty of both. There is nothing inherently salacious about polyamory, but this show leans into being joyfully trashy. -
Super Bowl viewership isn't faltering in the same way broadcast, cable and awards shows are. But do we really need mass consumption of the same cultural work? Or just smart and connected consumption? -
Each week, Pop Culture Happy Hour guests and hosts share what's bringing them joy. This week: the movie Sniper: G.R.I.T., the book Get the Picture, and the shows The Traitors: UK and Blue Eye Samurai. -
Here we go again: Time loop stories were around long before the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. So a friendly reminder that one person's discovery of something isn't the same as its invention. -
The new Prime Video series goes undercover with a pair of strangers, played by Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, who pretend to be a normal couple but are actually adventurous spies. -
Kiley Reid made a splash with her 2019 novel Such a Fun Age. Her latest book is set at the University of Arkansas, and it's a refreshing look at day-to-day college life outside the Ivy League. -
The TV adaptation of the 2016 novel The Expatriates is set in Hong Kong and tells the stories of several women navigating expat ennui. The show is also a strangely displaced form of prestige TV.
