Faculty & Student Picks for Fall

I am a very big drama show fan, and “One Tree Hill” always kept me on my toes, making me want to keep watching. I love “Greek”—as someone who was in a community service fraternity, which was the non-traditional way of being in Greek life. This show is a fun watch and a great mix of drama. If you are into drama shows that keep you wanting more and have a little bit of everything, these shows are good picks!

I have been watching “Poker Face,” the mystery series on Peacock created by “Knives Out” director Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne. The show follows Charlie Cale, a woman with an uncanny ability to tell when someone is lying. She’s been dubbed “the human lie detector” for constantly calling people out. After getting caught up in some shady business at the casino where she worked, Charlie goes on the run, living out of her car and stumbling into murder mysteries in every town she passes through.

The show is packed with dry, offbeat humor, much like Rian Johnson’s previous work, which I enjoy. Lyonne brings a magnetic presence to the screen, blending sharp wit with a relatable charm that makes her instantly familiar to the audience. It also has a fantastic lineup of guest stars including Cynthia Erivo, John Mulaney and Alia Shawkat.

Unlike most mystery series, which keep the killer hidden until the final moments, “Poker Face” reveals the culprit right from the start of each episode. The thrill is in watching Charlie piece together the puzzle and bring the truth to light. It’s a modern take on the classic “Columbo-style” mystery, and it works incredibly well.

I love supporting Black artists, and Quinta Brunson’s writing is no exception. The way she uses the quirky characters and their dynamics to highlight real-world issues with humor is ingenious! As a South Jersey girl, the daughter of an educator and a Philly native, the show’s jokes and references hit close to home for me every time—which is also why I love it. GO BIRDS!!

This past semester, I have seen many shows on and off Broadway; however, my absolute favorite has been “Oh Mary!” 

It is a comedic retelling of Lincoln’s assassination from the point of view of Mary Todd Lincoln. This production is queer and unbelievably hilarious. I saw this production during Pride Month, which improved the show. Cole Escola, the playwright and the actor who plays Mary Todd Lincoln, is brilliant and had the entire audience laughing to the point of tears!

The ending of this play is not what you expect. Mary Todd is witty and deserves all the praise in this crazy new version of Lincoln’s assassination. “Oh Mary!” was one of the top plays of the year!

Initially written in 1969, “Wine in the Wilderness” ran at Classic Stage Company in New York City in March and April 2025. It’s a gem of a play by the incomparable Black playwright, Alice Childress, whose career remained in the shadows of Lorraine Hansberry for decades. The show starred Olivia Washington, Denzel’s daughter, and was directed by LaChanze, who starred in “Trouble in Mind” and won the Best Actress Tony Award for her role in “The Color Purple.” LaChanze performed at Ramapo’s Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts in 2022.

This production is part of a renaissance of her works, including the 2021 Broadway premiere of her 1955 play “Trouble in Mind.” This was a terrific and powerful production staged on a thrust stage, so the audience was close to the action in the realistic-looking 1964 Harlem apartment during a riot. We could hear the sounds of chaos all around and felt immersed in the chaos, energy and danger of the play’s action, which centers around an artist who thinks he has found his muse, but she is more than he bargained for. Childress’s play explores Black art, ideas of resistance and revolution and the power of Black womanhood.

I have been rewatching “Succession,” which ran for four seasons on HBO from 2018 to 2023. “Succession” is loosely based on the family and legacy of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Rupert’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, accused his brother, James, of feeding stories to the “Succession” writers.

This often-satirical drama, created by many writers and actors who developed their craft making theater, comprises beautiful landscapes and wealthy interiors juxtaposed with intimate scenes between family members at the office or at one of their luxury residences. Like the playwright Anton Chekhov said of realistic art, the series feels “just as complicated and just as simple as things are in real life. People are sitting at a table having dinner, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart.” Like Greek tragedy, the family drama has significant consequences on the real world, making it sometimes humorous but just as often devastating, relevant and poignant to our current world.

I recently binged the last season of “You.” It is huge within pop culture and is an anti-hero story that differs from others. On a surface level, “You” is about a serial hopeless romantic who kills for the ones he loves. However, after a deeper look, this show explores the societal and psychological elements that can cause a person like Joe Goldberg to crumble deeper into their delusion. It truly is an excellent watch for book and psychology lovers! 

“Stranger Things” is a horror-based show, and since I am planning on becoming a screenwriter and love horror flicks, this show will inspire me to come up with new ideas for a horror screenplay. I find it very interesting that it only takes the writers two weeks to write and turn in a final script for an episode, and it takes about 11 days to film an episode. 

I prefer to watch films in theaters as much as possible. Still, sometimes the busy school year makes this challenging, so I’ve been watching and rewatching a lot of 1940s and 50s film noir on the Criterion Channel, both because these films are fun and escapist and classical Hollywood filmmaking at its finest, but also because film noir will be a module in our upcoming Hollywood Studio System course. Otto Preminger’s 1944 film “Laura,” which I should have seen before but somehow had not, has been one of many highlights. Preminger, an Austrian emigre dubbed “the most hated man in Hollywood” because of his temperament and exacting nature, directs a complex, convoluted (in the best sense) and thematically rich film that is also quite stylish and funny. It’s always thrilling to see a filmmaker in absolute control of their craft; I stopped and took notes, excited to show scenes to my students in the future.