This week, Bowen Yang dropped a blind item, the long arm of a Disney+ trial subscription was tested and we said goodbye to a great leading lady.
Here's what NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.
Bel-Air, streaming on Peacock
Bel-Air, now it its third season, is a gritty, dramatic reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Same setting, same premise, but with an entirely new cast. We follow Will (Jabari Banks) on his journey from Philly to Bel-Air to seek out a better life for himself. I remember going in very skeptical and came out pleasantly surprised. If you're a fan of the original sitcom, this version of the show is how the sitcom characters imagine themselves — refined, swanky, high-living, LA lifestyle. It’s enjoyable to watch and I am excited that it keeps getting renewed. — Ronald Young Jr.
Thank Goodness You’re Here game
Thank Goodness You're Here is an indie game available on a variety of platforms, including Nintendo Switch, Playstation and MacOS. The player is a lemon-headed little British dude in the pleasantly shabby, fictional village of Barnsworth, where the locals are always asking you to perform little jobs for them — fixing the fryer in the fish and chip shop, fetching some butter so that the guy with his arm wedged in the sewer grate can escape, bringing meat to the meat pie shop. It's very bright, very colorful, very cartoony in design -- though not so much in sensibility. It's got a very British sense of humor. Every screen is filled with visual gags. You will finish this game off in a couple of hours, but I guarantee you will spend those hours with a big goofy grin on your face. — Glen Weldon
There’s More to That podcast episode about sweat
I host a Smithsonian Magazine podcast called There's More to That and a recent episode featured Sarah Everts, author of The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. Sarah was motivated to write her book because like me, she had the ostracizing experience of being the drippy-est person in gym class. This episode features some very fun body horror descriptions. Sweating may be a little inconvenient and embarrassing sometimes, but just try living without it: gross and deadly. This was our Olympics themed episode, not to mention a topic of great personal fascination/inconvenience to me. — Chris Klimek
More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter
by Linda Holmes
Three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled recently for security reasons, and a bunch of the city's museums responded by waiving entry fees and welcoming Swifties from around the world. Thousands took them up on it. It's a great reminder of the fact that there is no hard line between pop music people and fine arts people; curiosity is always worth feeding when you get the opportunity.
Normally, we stay mostly in the realm of pop culture, but the best thing I read this week was the story of a stray dog who really wanted to get on the bus to daycare with the other dogs — and eventually, he got his wish and got a home. There's a lot of stress in the world. We all deserve a story now and then about a gorgeous dog who ran alongside the bus until he was impossible to ignore.
We'll be talking about it on the show soon, but Bad Monkey on Apple TV is a 10-episode series adaptation of the Carl Hiassen novel of the same name. Created by Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Scrubs) and starring Vince Vaughn as an oddball detective investigating an arm that was pulled in by a fishing boat off the Florida Keys, it has its ups and downs, but it might hit the spot if you like the kind of sunny, laid-back stuff the USA Network used to do a lot. The first two episodes are streaming now.
An episode of Code Switch this week dives into race and reality dating shows like The Bachelor. Given the recurring nature of this issue, I can think of no team more equipped to dig in.
Beth Novey adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment "What's Making Us Happy" for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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