TV News Grab Bag, an 'Andor' Syllabus, and ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’

Chris and Andy talk about some TV news that cropped up during the week, including Bill Hader making a Jonestown series for HBO (3:28) and the just-released trailer for Jesse Armstrong’s new TV movie, ‘Mountainhead’ (12:36). Then Chris talks about the show ‘Sandbaggers,’ which he discovered while researching ‘Andor’ (28:18), before they discuss ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North,’ an under-the-radar show starring Jacob Elordi that was just released on Prime Video (39:14). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production: Marcelino Ortiz Video Editing: Stefano Sanchez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, yeah, the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the trades, the playoffs are coming up. And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're going to love. So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Let's go.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head, London broil roast beef, American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus, and dips, condiments, and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now. For game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the show-stopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I ain't sports staff to play with, Ron. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:58Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com and joining me in the studio, he just found out what Jacob Elordi looks like, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  It's not wrong.

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know it's not.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  I did see.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I just had a little Australian accent come out.

• 2:17Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 2:17Chris Ryan?

  Nah.

• 2:19Andy Greenwald?

  I saw Priscilla.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  He was in that.

• 2:21Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Andy, today we are talking about a bunch of different stuff. We have some mailbag questions.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  This is what it's like working with CR. I get a text that says potpourri.

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  I think I sent a text that was like, should we cancel the show? I'm a little bit underwater with a couple of other things, you know? Jimmy Butler's pelvic contusion was of great concern to me, um, as is the continuing box office of Sinner. So I've got my hands in a lot of different dots.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  You're across a lot. Plus, you're looking at the markets. You're a little worried.

• 2:48Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm fine. Everybody keeps making jokes about my exposure to this situation.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think that people.

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  It's very limited.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  People know.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Andy Greenwald?

  That you're kind of a live, live fast, die young kind of guy.

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  I will tell you this.

• 3:01Andy Greenwald?

  When it comes to financials.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  The last check I write will bounce.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:04Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? When I die, it's gonna be, that will be the overdraft.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. I don't, I think people think that you're more liquid than you are, is what I mean. You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're across a lot.

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  No, I am liquid. But you're, you're implying that I have everything exposed to the ups and the favors.

• 3:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think you have a lot of exposure.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  Exposure, okay.

• 3:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's my favorite word for you.

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  But I could like, I could buy you out right now.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah? Of this podcast?

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  All sorts of stuff.

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  What is my share of this podcast? Like, by the numbers?

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  You've been diluted like the social network.

• 3:35Andy Greenwald?

  So many times.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Kai and I are actually the major channels.

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  You guys are equity partners and I'm just a.

• 3:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Greenwald, no, there's a bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about today. Um. Sometimes life imitates art and sometimes art imitates art that's sort of imitating life and art.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm, so true.

• 3:53Chris Ryan?

  Story ripped from the screenplay pages of the studio.

• 3:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  It was announced this week that Bill Hader will be making his return.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  We're getting into it. Okay, let's go.

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, did you want to just have?

• 4:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I thought you'd be like, we're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff, Andor's out, but you don't need to do that.

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 4:07Andy Greenwald?

  I'm barely a stakeholder in this podcast at this point, so you run the show.

• 4:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I feel like everybody knows what we're doing here.

• 4:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, let's go.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  And we're here for the rebellion and we're here to protect Jackson and we're doing one thing right.

• 4:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and as the biggest fans of Sega's 1980's driving game outrun, this is our moment, right? It's not just that we're fans, we were like, what happens next? The pink car keeps driving, where's the code?

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about this first?

• 4:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, I want to do Hater.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  I just thought this was so funny, but also so awesome because Bill Hader's coming back to the small screen. I'm sure, I have a feeling Bill Hader will make a movie or something before this show comes out, but it was announced that Hader and Daniel Zellman, who did Damages and Bloodline, worked on those shows, were, they are collaborating on a Jonestown, a Jonestown show, which is obviously what was referred to in the pilot of the studio where Seth Rogen's character, Matt, is trying to get Martin Scorsese to make a Jonestown movie. Or actually, he's making a Jonestown movie, he's trying to make it into a Kool-Aid movie.

• 5:15Andy Greenwald?

  Which is what the mandate of his new boss demands.

• 5:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  He wants a Barbie, but he wants it to be Kool-Aid.

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's just, I'd forgotten that Bill Hader is one of our best TV makers and I'm just excited to have him back in the mix. It's interesting that he's collaborating with Zellman and Zellman's roots in perhaps a little bit more quasi-traditional prestige television.

• 5:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:40Chris Ryan?

  Barry seemed often to be playing with no rulebook, Barry often had... You know, comedy writers working on it, but like, writing in a very dramatic way. There were very funny things that were happening in the most terrifying and violent moments of Barry. I think that this is good material for Hater.

• 5:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so where are you? I think this is really exciting. I think Bill Hader is one of-

• 6:01Chris Ryan?

  Where am I on Jonestown?

• 6:02Andy Greenwald?

  Pro? How thirsty are you? I genuinely think Bill Hader is one of the most exciting, creative people in hashtag this town. And so anytime he wants to do anything, I'm paying attention. And I think this is awesome. It's a very, you know, it's a, it's a big project, but it seems like something that could really suit his sensibilities. It could cause him to potentially stretch a little bit as a director and as an actor, which he's rumored to be doing in this as well. I love it. Can't wait. Do you, as one, as the third chair on The Ringer's number one movie podcast, The Big Picture, do you have any cinematic Lord of Letterboxd, oh, why is he doing this? Instead of making the big movie that he's clearly wanting to make?

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  We can have both as evidence by some of the other stuff we're gonna be talking about today. There's a revolving door between the worlds of cinema and television. And I think people should just go where they think the story will best be told.

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  Is that how you feel about your podcast buffet every week? The story about blogging, that couldn't come here.

• 7:01Chris Ryan?

  You're welcome to spend an episode of The Watch interviewing me.

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  I would love to. I'm afraid one might come out. Everyone should listen to you on The Press Box. That was great.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  Thanks, man. Yeah, I, I am not actually, here's a funny thing about me.

• 7:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay.

• 7:19Chris Ryan?

  Love cult stories, so especially cult horror movies. Very much love the, kinda like, late 90s, early aughts hardcore band, Guyana Punchline. And love the rapper Jim Jones.

• 7:35Andy Greenwald?

  True, yeah.

• 7:36Chris Ryan?

  But it never sat down and gotten to the bottom of the Jonestown story.

• 7:40Andy Greenwald?

  The bottom of it?

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  No, just like, a full documentary. I read a book about it. So this is actually, it'll be like watching Andor without having seen Star Wars, you know? Like, I'm aware, there's, there's a big globe in the sky we gotta worry about.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's incredible. As a kid, were you allowed to have Kool-Aid? Not because of any lingering fear.

• 7:59Chris Ryan?

  No, we were not a big sugar drink family, so. Now, I say that, but I pretty much exclusively drank Ocean Spray cranberry juice for the first 13 years of my life.

• 8:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:09Chris Ryan?

  So I guess in truth.

• 8:11Andy Greenwald?

  We've, two things. One, the, you needed to, as a relatively, I mean, not at all health conscious, but like, health conscious to the spirit of the day household. You had to geolocate the friend that had Kool-Aid and Cookie Crisp cereal and like manufacture sleepovers.

• 8:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Cookie Crisp, I always thought was a bit overrated.

• 8:32Andy Greenwald?

  I was just throwing that out as an example. I was not allowed to have sugar cereal, big boxes of them in the house.

• 8:36Chris Ryan?

  I was. I was allowed to have one for dessert.

• 8:39Andy Greenwald?

  And look at us. Oh, but it wasn't breakfast?

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  No, I was not allowed to start my day with Golden Grahams, but I could, I could have it as like an after-school snack.

• 8:46Andy Greenwald?

  I could have litigated that. It never occurred to me.

• 8:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Andy Greenwald?

  That's a, what a game changer. I, I, um, we've said this before on the podcast.

• 8:53Chris Ryan?

  And I used to kind of almost introduce it as like, this is actually healthy dessert when you think about it.

• 8:57Andy Greenwald?

  Cause it could be worse.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It could be way worse.

• 9:01Andy Greenwald?

  This is the gateway drug.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  Have you guys heard about Jim Jones? It could be so much worse.

• 9:06Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just sitting here at home with you guys.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  Five-year-old Chris being like.

• 9:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yo, watch.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  I watched the doc last night.

• 9:13Andy Greenwald?

  You went down to the Ritz? No, the, the beverages as a kid is so important and so hard to communicate. I've said this before on the podcast, but my children won't leave the house to walk to the car without a water bottle.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Bottles, right?

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  I did not drink water until I was 30.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. It never occurred to me to drink water on the East Coast.

• 9:31Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the rotation as a kid.

• 9:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Andy Greenwald?

  Growing up. Minute Maid orange juice for the morning. Coca-Cola Classic throughout the evening, especially if, as my parents put it, he looks cranky. And then the middle hours, some call them the thirsty hours, were filled with the only other thing in the fridge.

• 9:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Andy Greenwald?

  Which was an ever-present, ever-full jug of Crystal Light iced tea.

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  Whipped up.

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  I will say that it's just, I never consistently monitored my hydration.

• 10:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that wasn't a thing.

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  And I drank with meals or after athletic events.

• 10:10Andy Greenwald?

  What? You do, go on, talk about your athletics.

• 10:12Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just saying, but that could be standing in front of a water fountain and drinking from there for two minutes. And that was it. You know what I mean? It's not like I had my special Gatorade, my special like, you know, electrolytes thing getting me back up into the area that I needed to be. That was all happening in here. This was the nuclear factory, you know?

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  And it was, you know what? It was enough.

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Andy Greenwald?

  It was enough. These kids sloshing around today.

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I stopped growing at 5'7", but.

• 10:40Andy Greenwald?

  But at least he didn't go to Guyana. So, and you were worried about today's podcast.

• 10:45Chris Ryan?

  Um, so there's that.

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  I also wanted to mention to you that a very exciting adaptation is coming to Apple Television. Philip Kerr's Berlin novels, uh, which is really, uh, one of the great, um, like detective stories, which is about this, uh, private eye working. Is it private eye or is it a cop? I can't remember.

• 11:08Andy Greenwald?

  I've never read them. I've seen these books. Have you read these books?

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  Zach B. is a, Zach Baron's a big fan of these. Um, and, uh, I've read one of them a while ago, but is much, very lauded. It's a detective working in post-war Germany, essentially. Um, and.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 11:25Chris Ryan?

  Peter Strong, who did, um, the script for Conclave, so this guy's playing with house money right now. And Tom Hanks' Playtone, I don't know if Tom Hanks will be involved in the production on like a hands-on basis, but they're talking about bringing that to Apple. It sounds like they did a deal for that, but that's just a really cool.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's so smart.

• 11:43Chris Ryan?

  A really cool story to bring to life. It kind of is a good segue to the next thing I wanted to talk about. Go ahead.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  No, just a point of like, this is something, this is a drum we've been banging on for a while, which is the like, there are so many great, um, detectives and detective stories, or in this case, a police investigator or whatever. Historical novels, world novels, world crime novels that just are, it's just an. Ticket to a vibe and a type of specificity that makes for compelling television. And I think that with the right creative partners, that's just a smart lane for Apple to be in.

• 12:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Andy Greenwald?

  Especially with the success of Slow Horses. Just cast it upright and like, because it really is just production values and casting and prestige that separates like some decent to good stuff on Acorn and BritBox from what Apple could and should be doing, right?

• 12:34Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes stuff on Acorn and BritBox is much better.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I know because often the balancing act tips in the wrong direction. When, once you get to something as high profile or as perhaps over financed as Apple TV can be.

• 12:47Chris Ryan?

  So there's a, it's Philip Kerr wrote the books. It's about a detective named Bernie Gunther, who was an ex-cop. That's why I couldn't remember.

• 12:53Andy Greenwald?

  Because he hates Hitler.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  I salute him.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  Not in the bad way, you know, like I salute him in a good way.

• 12:59Andy Greenwald?

  Great, great distinction. This is you waving to him as he leaves the Reichstag. Good luck Bernie. Hope history is on your side, mein Freund.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Weird font day.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  I'm steering into this kid.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  There's three novels, Pale Criminal, German Requiem, and March Violets. And it's, I remember, I think I actually unfortunately read the third one.

• 13:21Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, there's 13 of them.

• 13:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but there's an opening trilogy.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  That's the, that's the good stuff.

• 13:26Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  But yeah, I can't wait. I'm honestly not probably a role for Tom Hanks as this guy is 40 in the books, but maybe they'll adapt something where he's like a little later in life.

• 13:36Andy Greenwald?

  Colin Hanks.

• 13:37Chris Ryan?

  Could, could be. Maybe they could just, he could do the early ones and Tom could do the late ones.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Look, we're just fixing it for you, Hollywood.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, Apple. You can send a check.

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  I wish.

• 13:47Chris Ryan?

  What else? Let's talk about.

• 13:49Andy Greenwald?

  Want to do the Mountain Head trailer? Do you have any thoughts on that?

• 13:51Chris Ryan?

  I just can't wait. This is one of my favorites, even just stories.

• 13:55Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  Hollywood. So Jesse Armstrong, writer, creator of Succession.

• 14:03Chris Ryan?

  Kind of what's he gonna do next? What's he gonna do next? Decides to do a movie for HBO called Mountain Head, starring

• 14:12Chris Ryan?

  Steve Carell.

• 14:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 14:13Chris Ryan?

  Jason Schwartzman, Rami Youssef, and Corey Michael Smith, who I thought was quite awesome as Chevy Chase in Saturday Night.

• 14:19Andy Greenwald?

  He's awesome in that.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  It's about four tech billionaires, titans of industry.

• 14:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  Who are having a weekend ski chalet getaway. While the world falls apart and the markets crash. They shot this. Last month?

• 14:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Chris Ryan?

  And it's coming out next month?

• 14:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 14:39Chris Ryan?

  That rules.

• 14:40Andy Greenwald?

  It really does.

• 14:41Chris Ryan?

  Do more stuff like this. I don't know how, I don't know whether or not Jesse Armstrong was like, I mean, I hope he gets asked him. Jesse Armstrong was like, there's something in the water. We gotta get this project going. I don't know how long he's been working on this. It's a little, it looks a little bit of a stage play, so maybe it's something that was pretty easy, quote unquote, to pull off if you can get the casting rate and...

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  I think so.

• 15:03Chris Ryan?

  You know, it looks like a one set shop, but also has some of that acidic,

• 15:11Chris Ryan?

  like succession comic sensibility, and I cannot wait to see this.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's just in the aesthetics too, though, like the luxury, but mixed with just the banality of the quarter zips that everybody's wearing.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 15:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's so thrilling that he did this, and I think you're right, that the electricity of it, and I, and I, it's unfair to be like, hey, brilliant creators that we love, make a movie in 10 weeks. Like, I don't think, it's like the Ice Bucket Challenge, like, prove you can do it, and he tags people in the credits of this movie?

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  Did Ice Bucket Challenge come back or something like that?

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's back, yeah, yeah.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay, why?

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, did you think we cured it the first time?

• 15:42Chris Ryan?

  No, but I think it's for, isn't it usually like, I'm doing this in...

• 15:45Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was for ALS or something.

• 15:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 15:47Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't know what it is for now.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  But it's been a couple of years, right? So it's not an annual thing.

• 15:50Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the nostalgia windows are shortening because of the internet.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 15:54Andy Greenwald?

  I only know this because I learned it was back from my 17-year-old cousin's, my, my, sorry, my cousin's 17-year-old kid was Ice Bucket challenging.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I was like, cool, is this like having a Tamagotchi? Or is it like, are we doing it for, and it was for charity?

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  Good, alright.

• 16:11Andy Greenwald?

  But anyway, my other takeaway from this, as I texted you, Correll looks great.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  He does.

• 16:17Andy Greenwald?

  He looks really good in Four Seasons 2, Netflix show we're talking about.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  It's Correll season. Correll, interesting post, post, I guess, office career.

• 16:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, has obviously, I mean, office is a while ago now, so maybe I'm, I'm setting an unfair window, but I was just thinking about how... Kind of the similarities between him and Ham in some ways. Associated with this major, major role. Interested in doing the opposite. So for Ham, it's a lot of comedy. It's a lot of maybe supporting pieces in genre movies or shows. And then for Correll, it's the opposite where he's doing dramatic work and he's, you know, doing smaller films, but then has kind of slowly kind of come back into like the mainstream with Morning Show first.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 17:02Chris Ryan?

  That Space Force show, which I still like, honestly, I think I watched a couple of episodes when it first came out.

• 17:08Andy Greenwald?

  We've all agreed to memory hole it.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  It kind of got memory holed. And now he's making this big push with, with Mountain Head and Four Seasons, which is Tina Fey's new show on Netflix, which is coming, I think, next month.

• 17:18Andy Greenwald?

  The vibe I get, and this is not just me losing myself in that lustrous skin tone, great hair and teeth that he's got. He looks just fantastic. He's 60 something.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  That kid did not drink cranberry juice all, all day when he was a kid.

• 17:28Andy Greenwald?

  Well, or he found the antidote to it.

• 17:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 17:31Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 17:32Andy Greenwald?

  Um, there's something we don't know about. Um, what's exciting, I think, about where he is in his career, and obviously he's exceptionally talented, so that helps a lot. But often when you see people, especially comedic actors, want to stretch their wings and do different things, they flip hard and they do things with no humor and no heart or not no heart, but no, that won't allow them to, to, to, to, to play the same cards they played for the first part of their career.

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  That's why I followed, uh, Jack Black on his traveling Samuel Beckett tour.

• 18:00Andy Greenwald?

  Respect to Jack Black for not doing this, but specifically like Jonah Hill, when he does dramatic roles cannot, you know, like, won't be funny. Or Will Ferrell took a couple of movies that were major bummer's or Steve Carell did, um, Foxcatcher, right? And, um, what's

• 18:15Chris Ryan?

  And Beautiful Boy, was that the Chalamet movie about?

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 18:18Chris Ryan?

  Kid on Speed?

• 18:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And what, um,

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  I mean, respectfully.

• 18:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm doing a ice bucket challenge for that issue later. Um, thank you for your sensitivity. Um, he

• 18:30Andy Greenwald?

  Seems to have settled into himself and realized that his abilities are not just comedic or dramatic, but in something like a Jesse Armstrong movie, he can play all sides and it's kind of exciting to see.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have a couple of other things I want to talk to you about. Some stuff is Andor related.

• 18:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 18:50Chris Ryan?

  Another is a new show that just came out that we checked out.

• 18:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Chris Ryan?

  And then we have the Mulaney piece.

• 18:56Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:57Chris Ryan?

  So I'm putting these wares on the shelf free, which one would you like to go with first?

• 19:00Andy Greenwald?

  I think just in terms of an update.

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 19:03Andy Greenwald?

  I did want to say that everybody's live with John Mulaney.

• 19:07Chris Ryan?

  You really are.

• 19:08Andy Greenwald?

  I love.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  You're calling in from Bengals Stadium in 1980 to WIP and saying it's 16-6.

• 19:15Andy Greenwald?

  Call you back.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Omar Syasin is driving.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  Call you back.

• 19:19Chris Ryan?

  This for people who have no idea what that, it's not even a joke, it's real. As Andy and I grew up in the eighties.

• 19:24Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:24Chris Ryan?

  The way you found out about football scores, that you would listen to sports radio all day long and WIP, the sports talk radio in Philadelphia would have people, stringers, calling in from stadiums across the country and saying it's 17-14 here in Cowboy Stadium. Back to you, Brad.

• 19:42Andy Greenwald?

  And you hear that tss tss tss in the background, right?

• 19:45Chris Ryan?

  No, it would be like hanging up on a payphone.

• 19:46Andy Greenwald?

  That was KYW, the chattering of the news wire.

• 19:49Chris Ryan?

  So that, just to bring it all home.

• 19:51Andy Greenwald?

  Because this is just a free flowing exchange of ideas. Do you know what the other thing that people, you know, the theme of this episode is things my children don't actually believe but are true, like that I didn't drink water when I was their age. The other one that just really blows their minds is that when we were kids, there were, on the East Coast, there was something called snow days, which obviously don't exist anywhere anymore, so that's cool.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  That's not true.

• 20:12Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just mean, I don't think it snows that much anymore on the East Coast, but you know, this isn't a political pod.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  Is that true?

• 20:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it doesn't snow very much. Cause the planet's warmer now. Not to make it political.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  I just thought we missed it. It doesn't not snow at all?

• 20:24Andy Greenwald?

  Barely.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  Not even in January? Like, like, I don't know, like, what, it doesn't snow?

• 20:30Andy Greenwald?

  You don't talk to your friends and people back in New York and Philadelphia, they're like, it doesn't snow very much.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:35Andy Greenwald?

  But regardless.

• 20:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, we also probably have better snow removal tech now.

• 20:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you think big tech got us out of that?

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  No, I just think that like, we used to have like, essentially one thing would drive down the street and make it way worse for the cars that were parked, remember?

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. But I thought you were saying that it doesn't snow anymore because the 5G cables disrupt the nimbus clouds?

• 20:56Chris Ryan?

  God, I need the governments to get to the bottom of that. Why isn't it snowing?

• 20:59Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, the way, I don't know if Kaya will believe this, but like the way that we would find out that we didn't have school that day was a particular three-digit number

• 21:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:09Andy Greenwald?

  read on KYW News Radio between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. And so you would just like wake up, you heard that it snowed and you'd wake up earlier than you would for school. And you'd hear a guy be like, uh, "School closures today, uh, 1:21, 1:25. All Philadelphia Catholic and Prodigal Schools, 6:14."

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  You know that guy had like a full benefits package too.

• 21:30Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that guy probably owned a row home.

• 21:32Chris Ryan?

  But did he work for 28 minutes a day? Like, what did he do?

• 21:34Andy Greenwald?

  Reading the numbers?

• 21:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Andy Greenwald?

  I think he probably had a nice life. Probably maybe he was in the Elks Club too. I don't know. What else did we miss from our youth?

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  1-6-1. 1-2-4.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  I think my school was 321.

• 21:49Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes every once in a while, he would get surprised.

• 21:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it'd be like, oh, they never close.

• 21:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, 288.

• 21:54Andy Greenwald?

  The worst was when you were-

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  It's a little soft out there.

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  But if you were 321 and they get to 320 and then they jumped?

• 21:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Andy Greenwald?

  Ah, god damn, I gotta go to school.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't remember. They just didn't do like citywide school closures because a lot of it was road-based. Uh, anyway, what were we talking about?

• 22:09Andy Greenwald?

  Mulaney.

• 22:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, go ahead. This is a Mulaney-esque diversion there.

• 22:13Andy Greenwald?

  I just, so we've been checking in on this because I know at least two-thirds of the major stakeholders of the pod, that's me and Executive Vice President Kaya, love the show, but mostly like, love the project.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it's, you know, we, I feel like I give a lot of lip service to the idea of like, oh, I just love the process of TV. I love seeing people work things out in real time.

• 22:35Chris Ryan?

  Everybody says you do that.

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  But then we get on the mic and I'm like, "That was bad." And then the next week, I'm like, "Funny story, that was good." But the thing about Everybody's Live is watching them figure out how to do this version of the show in real time. While Netflix is watching, hoping something goes viral, hoping something pops. And last night's episode was, as I think, as it should be at this stage in the season. This is episode seven, I think, of a total order of 11. Um, maybe a six, seven. I thought it was just, it was outstanding.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  How guest dependent is this show?

• 23:05Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they're figuring it out. I think that when it was everybody's in LA, which was the first version of the show, it was, the concierge was more focused. It was about LA. And so that each of the episodes was about an LA thing, like earthquakes or coyotes. And so they would have visiting comedians that were either friends with Mulaney or people in town for Netflix's comedy festival. And then they would also have an expert and they would talk about the issue at hand and they'd take calls. It was kind of fun and focused. This season started with a similar, I think, intention, but because now it was no longer LA focused, it, the charm wore off more quickly of discordant guests being half-serious.

• 23:43Andy Greenwald?

  Last night seemed to turn a different page where Conan O'Brien was the first guest. And when I say first guest, he just came out and they did some stuff. It was really funny. It was also a little touching because Mulaney's a big fan. And then they did calls from people who I later Googled and saw were actually like really, really famous paleontologists, but they were like, okay, crank, and like hung up on him. Because it was both a din-

• 24:04Chris Ryan?

  So you would Google these people af- was it about dinosaurs or something?

• 24:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was about like, are we putting dinosaurs together wrong?

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 24:10Andy Greenwald?

  It was basically like a lot of skepticism about dinosaurs. And a guy called in and he was sort of chuckling and he seemed like a very charming guy. And they were like, is this a bit? And then it seemed like it wasn't a bit. And then that guy was like, actually, now we know that dinosaurs had feathers and were colorful and maybe danced and sang. And they were like, okay, pal. And I was like, and also his name was like, his name was like Rick, oh, he had the same name as Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights. His name was Dr. Jack Horner?

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  No, it wasn't.

• 24:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm ready to shoot Jack. No.

• 24:36Andy Greenwald?

  And so I Googled Dr. Jack Horner, be careful. And he's like, it's a Wikipedia page. He's a very famous paleontologist who was probably just on his couch being like, my funny friends are talking about something I care about. And then laughed him off the air. So-

• 24:49Chris Ryan?

  Did we get to the bottom of whether dinosaurs had feathers and danced?

• 24:52Andy Greenwald?

  The dancing was unclear, but they did have feathers because, and this is also why, you know, you want to know something, this is like quid pro quo. You said something about yourself. I don't, I'm out on birds. I don't like birds. This is a point of contention in my house right now because my younger daughter wants birds as pets.

• 25:06Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 25:07Andy Greenwald?

  And is into like bird watching.

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm sorry.

• 25:09Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm like, first of all, it's a big no, blanket no.

• 25:11Chris Ryan?

  You could just say Chris said no.

• 25:12Andy Greenwald?

  But she knows I say no because I'm like, I don't, they are creepy little dinosaurs and I don't want them around.

• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  Beautiful to look at, but a domesticated pet bird is a shitting machine that just wakes you up. And I, I've never owned one, but I can-

• 25:28Andy Greenwald?

  Did you lease? What do you mean?

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  No, but like- I understand everybody gets something different out of a domesticated, domestic pet. And I'm sure that there's value in having a bird. I am, I'm personally blind and deaf to the charms.

• 25:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I also.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  But love looking at birds in the sky.

• 25:46Andy Greenwald?

  From far away.

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. My favorite shot in Sinners involves birds.

• 25:49Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's a nice little spoiler, but when you get close to them, they are creepy AF. I do not like them. So anyway, but, but they are dinosaurs. That has been, that's now been. Anyway, um, then, then in a more traditional talk show format, then John brought out Io Adebry, who was charming and great. And then Rita Moreno had to cancel last minute. And so Tina Fey showed up. And then he brought out reunited Canadian punk band Mets and then also did a bunch of like.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  Did they break up?

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  Apparently they broke up like last year and then break up. They're playing Riot Fest probably two weeks. Everybody breaks up until they get a new. It was cool. The, it's so unpredictable. It's so dynamic. It, it, it really is fun to see them figuring this out. And then for the last few weeks, the comedian Langston Kerman, who is incredibly funny, has a stand-up, great stand-up special. He's on English Teacher. He, he's a writer on the show. He was on the first season. He's responsible for, I think, the two funniest things I've seen in 2025. One was two weeks ago when he was, um, Michael Jackson's Chimp Bubbles, who did a special interview. With, see, Kaya's laughing because she knows how funny this is.

• 26:56Chris Ryan?

  Kaya's not laughed this much during a pod.

• 26:58Andy Greenwald?

  Because she knows this is our last one, clearly.

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  No, this is a bonus episode, man. We bless people with a Tony Gilroy episode on Tuesday.

• 27:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. So this is the you're welcome.

• 27:07Chris Ryan?

  This is After Dark.

• 27:08Andy Greenwald?

  And, and then, uh, and then last night, a thing where it was like purported to be an, an interactive exhibit, uh, at a museum where he was the voice of a talking dinosaur who I, I can't. If I say what he says, it's going to be an Instagram clip and I can't do it to myself or my family. Their sweet bird-loving selves. Just, just find it. And, um, I think it's really exciting to see, to see Mulaney find the line between, you know what? Traditional stuff kinda works. You can't break the format. But you can innovate within it and it's, I hope they keep going.

• 27:43Chris Ryan?

  I have found a segue out of this. First of all, I, I love the Mulaney show and I, I really, I, I love that this is happening on Netflix and that it's live. It's just been the playoffs. So I've missed a couple of, of weeks now.

• 27:55Andy Greenwald?

  Because of sports again, once again.

• 27:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I'm dedicated to finding out who wins the NBA Finals. You know, I've done it for a few seasons. I need to see how the story ends.

• 28:05Andy Greenwald?

  I really respect the way you frame that.

• 28:07Chris Ryan?

  Mulaney chases his obsessions.

• 28:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  And I really appreciate that, like whether it's the aesthetic of the credit sequence with To Live and Die in L.A. Or it's being interested in dinosaurs, or bands that he likes, that he's just like, will you get back together? Great art makes you passionate about other great art. And I had been really inspired by these first few episodes of Andor. Just to get honestly into reading about the French Resistance, but other rebellions across time. So I've been listening to this Revolutions podcast a little bit, which has been really cool. I will say, the pod is called Revolutions. They did a really interesting season where usually it's like a season about like the Russian Revolution, or this, or that, French Revolution. He did one that was a fictional one that he wrote about a revolution on Mars.

• 28:55Andy Greenwald?

  Who's he?

• 28:56Chris Ryan?

  I was just thinking about what that show would be and whether we would have creative alignment.

• 29:00Andy Greenwald?

  Definitely not. It would tear us apart.

• 29:04Chris Ryan?

  It'd be like, oh, this guy comes in and...

• 29:05Andy Greenwald?

  No, you'd be like, okay, so it's a guy who hates Hitler, right? And he becomes a police detective, and he smokes a lot of cigarettes, and he solves a lot of crimes. And I'm like, but does he visit the local outdoor spice markets?

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  Maybe this would be a good show.

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  I mean...

• 29:19Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that actually just the Sam Spade show that Scott Frank did?

• 29:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yep, and lit the world on fire, so... You're welcome. Taste makers are us.

• 29:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so I've been like casting around. Fantasy does these really good syllabuses for big picture. When a major film comes out, he'll put something together, a watch list on Letterboxd. And he's been doing videos for them on the YouTube channel. He just did one on Letterboxd for Sinners, which is great. You should definitely check that out after you see Sinners. I was thinking about doing something similar for Andor, just as I was pulling this stuff together. And you know, I was doing light research, either things that Tony had mentioned, Tony Gilroy had mentioned, he did a wonderful interview with Rolling Stone around the time of the first season that I think I had missed that time, but then the BBC sort of aggregated it, but also did a bunch of additional reporting about Cassie and Andor's similarities to young

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Stalin, when Stalin and Lenin and Trotsky were first like coming up in this, this whole game.

• 30:21Chris Ryan?

  And so I was like, oh my God, like this is so cool. I was grabbing this, grabbing that. In all of like this sort of scanning around that I was doing, I came across a reference on a Reddit page, and I can't remember whether it was something that Tony had mentioned, we'll have to ask him about it when we next talk to him, or that was just like people saying, oh, it's kind of like this. If you like this, you would like, if you like Andor, you would like this. And I came across this show called Sandbaggers, The Sandbaggers. I had never heard of this. It does speak to a blank spot that I have, or a blind spot of especially 80s television, and especially international 80s television.

• 31:00Andy Greenwald?

  And this is 70, I mean, this is 78 to 81.

• 31:02Chris Ryan?

  Late 70s, early 80s, yeah. So this is a show created by a man, Ian McIntosh, not sure what else he's done. It's in 19-

• 31:09Andy Greenwald?

  I could speak to that.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  Can you?

• 31:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but go on.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  In 1978 to 1981, BBC spy show about a special operations unit inside of MI6. It is essentially shot the way they shot Taxi or Cheers, where they've got like three interior sets. And the action of the show is this guy, Neil Burnside, walking into rooms and discussing operations that are happening out in the world. Often, there is an episodic quality to it, so they'll have like a mission that needs to be sort of accomplished by the end of the episode, but there are little threads that are going, his ex-wife, his ex-father-in-law

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  works in the Foreign Office, you know, their relationship to the Prime Minister in Downing Street.

• 31:58Andy Greenwald?

  And to the US.

• 31:59Chris Ryan?

  And to the US.

• 32:00Andy Greenwald?

  And the Sandbaggers themselves, right?

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's like, it's a special-

• 32:03Chris Ryan?

  So basically, it's like, this guy Burnside has started this group within MI6-

• 32:07Andy Greenwald?

  A working group.

• 32:08Chris Ryan?

  Called The Sandbaggers, and there's three of them. There's like history and lore to like where those guys have been sent and what they're doing. I have to admit that this one absolutely like- Blew my mind. It was so fucking good.

• 32:24Andy Greenwald?

  It's so sick. We should say at the beginning, it's streaming on Amazon.

• 32:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it's streaming on Amazon for free.

• 32:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, for what it's worth, it's not just that he's walking into rooms. There is action and location set pieces, but they are filmed the way I believe all UK TV shows were filmed on location, which is like the way Monty Python was filmed.

• 32:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we have some extra footage of Trafalgar Square.

• 32:45Andy Greenwald?

  Get on this bus and we'll put the audio in later.

• 32:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Andy Greenwald?

  Um, unclear whether there was such a thing as permits or location shooting. It's literally just guys in the sickest thick tie fits, just getting in and out of black cabs.

• 32:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and smoking and drinking tea and then negotiating a prisoner handoff in Norway. And at the same time, a missile system sailed to Norway. It is straight out of the pages of Lacaree that like probably fill the books between books. You know, like it's, it's real workaday stuff. I was mesmerized by this and it really got my, my brain spinning out about our kind of relationship as modern viewers to production value.

• 33:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 33:32Chris Ryan?

  And how, and like, oh, that doesn't look good. We're like, this is kind of canned and it, you know, I don't like the, like, there was something about seeing this, I mean, very, very, very well made production design. Everything is very good. And then maybe there's like an degree to which it's like, oh, I just getting off on seeing like the eighties fashions and stuff like that.

• 33:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Chris Ryan?

  I was just so blown away by this. I was, I was so, and all of the plot is communicated through dialogue. Like there's very little action.

• 34:03Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think there's a bunch of reasons why we find this so appealing. One is it is just like picked down to the, the, the, the heart of what it is that we like these, in these stories and these types of spy stories. And just seeing it not only just laid bare and done so expertly, but also being enough is really, really gratifying and exciting. Um, I think it also, uh,

• 34:29Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely is thrilling to see a missing piece of DNA of something.

• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Andy Greenwald?

  The way that Ian McIntosh thought about Spycraft, I think there's a great speech that kind of reminds me of the, sorry, the Lacare speech, famous one at the end of, and it's in the film as well, of the spy who came in from the cold.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Andy Greenwald?

  About how spies are basically grubby little men looking at you. There's a similar speech about how like, actually, if you want James Bond, go to the library.

• 34:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Andy Greenwald?

  If you want to see Spycraft, sit down at a desk and think for a while. That runs through Andor and a lot of, and the agency and the bureau and a lot of the spy stuff that we like. I think the other part about it that is really appealing to us, and I've not checked out as much as you have, but I was instantly smitten, is with our former recovering music critic brains, it is incredibly thrilling to go digging in the crates and find the record that inspired the record that inspired our favorite bands. We sometimes still struggle trying to overlay our later life fandom with television over our defining fandom of music.

• 35:36Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:36Andy Greenwald?

  And that's why sometimes we'll have whole podcasts about like, Indie TV, or can you just DIY this, or whatever. And generally, the answer is no. But because the official family tree of shows, especially in America that we like, is so well established.

• 35:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  So like, the Mount Rushmore is set for decade upon decade. Finding the secret sauce.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I wonder if Sorkin's seen this.

• 36:01Andy Greenwald?

  It's very possible. I mean, it's, to your point, it's, it's very stylish. Like, the opening credits are extremely stylish.

• 36:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Roy Budd, the jazz musician, did the titles.

• 36:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's who I was gonna mention.

• 36:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, there's, there's definitely style to it. And I think, I mean, I have to read more about it. I would love to know what early 80s British audiences thought of the show.

• 36:20Andy Greenwald?

  Can I fill you in a little bit about Ian McIntosh?

• 36:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, please.

• 36:23Andy Greenwald?

  The creator of the show. So he was a Scottish Royal Navy officer who wrote his first thriller, A Slang in September.

• 36:31Chris Ryan?

  A slang?

• 36:32Andy Greenwald?

  A slaying.

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  Slang.

• 36:33Andy Greenwald?

  Slang. Not slaying in the way my daughters say it, I think. Published in 1967. And then he went to work for TV and he created a very popular show called Warship. It was a drama series on the BBC. And then he went on to create Sandbaggers. He, the show never finished because he died at the age of 38, flying a private plane over the Gulf of Alaska.

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  It is very, very, very presumed.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  This is my Jonestown now.

• 37:03Andy Greenwald?

  That he was disappeared because he was a spy. Like, he definitely, like, a lot of my favorite writers, our favorite writers, like Ross Thomas, who wrote Prior Patch, was constantly asked, like,

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  Are you actually also?

• 37:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you were running elections in Africa and also worked for trade unions. Like, you were in the CIA, right? And he'd sort of laugh about it because it was also good for sales. He would never confirm or deny. Similar thing happened to Ian McIntosh. But the show, Sandbagger's, not to spoil it if people are about to jump into it, ends with a cliffhanger because ultimately BBC decided only Ian knew what he was going to do with this and we can't figure it out.

• 37:38Chris Ryan?

  There's 20 episodes across three seasons. It's available on Amazon Prime Video. I can't wait to ask Tony if he'd seen this. I don't know whether this is just some intrepid redditor out there was like, oh, I think he'd probably, this is, this reminds me of Sandbagger's and all of the Luthen, Lonnie.

• 37:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  You know, kind of, and also the Partagaz, like, the Imperial meetings. There's a lot of that vibe of, it's naked, pure power plays and everybody in the building seems to know why they're there and it's like very separate from their personal lives until their personal lives get pulled into it. It's just.

• 38:20Andy Greenwald?

  Hopefully Tony will tell us about it or Susan Gilroy will hear this part of the podcast and go upstairs and ask Tony if he's watched it and they'll let us know one way or another. That would be great. That was cool that you found that.

• 38:32Chris Ryan?

  I'm just very excited. I mean, I think that it's just the best feeling when, when you're like, oh, this, this one thing and/or has kind of spun me out into, into a kind of rabbit hole and a deep dive into a whole field of study. Not that I'm in any way capable of scholarship anymore now that I have Instagram reels, but, you know.

• 38:53Andy Greenwald?

  But you are very much looking forward to a mini-series.

• 38:55Chris Ryan?

  I gotta find French Resistance Instagram reels. That would be the best way to get this information.

• 39:03Andy Greenwald?

  La Meray.

• 39:04Chris Ryan?

  I've found-

• 39:05Andy Greenwald?

  The region of Paris.

• 39:06Chris Ryan?

  I know there's a Shane Gillis bit about this, but I find now that I am being served billions on Instagram reels.

• 39:12Andy Greenwald?

  Billions?

• 39:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, scene by scene.

• 39:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, the show.

• 39:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I'm like, this is a great way to watch billions.

• 39:18Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I just, all I get served now is pub content. On our pub walk from here to here, here's this pub. And then they just move their camera phone around the pub.

• 39:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  And then it's on to a next pub.

• 39:31Chris Ryan?

  I found there's one, I got yesterday of a bar in Tokyo that is in an alley and only plays horror movie soundtracks. I was like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?

• 39:43Andy Greenwald?

  Only I hadn't had that ocean spray. I could be there now.

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• 41:16Speaker 06

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may vary.

• 41:30Chris Ryan?

  Maybe lower than meal pricing. Speaking of production value, so you watch Sandbagger's and you're seeing something that might as well, it has like basically the production value of contemporary shows back then, like um, British shows back then, like Fawlty Towers or Are You Being Served, right?

• 41:47Andy Greenwald?

  Like it- We have better picture quality on our podcast that we're doing on a Thursday morning.

• 41:52Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but about as many sets, though. You know, where it's just like, we're gonna have all the activity taking place in one or two or three places.

• 41:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 41:59Chris Ryan?

  Um, on the complete flip side of that, and with absolutely no other connective tissue, I just wanted to shout out a new show that is also on Amazon Prime Video. Um, and that's called The Narrow Road to the, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It's a mouthful. It also sounds like Sunny Day Real Estate's follow-up to how it feels to be something on.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  Just flows, doesn't it?

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. This is a show from Justin Kurtz, uh, who is a fantastic filmmaker. He did a movie last year called The Order with Nicholas Holt, uh, and Ty Sheridan and Jude Law. That is about the FBI in the early eighties, um, hunting down white power gangs in the West. It's really cool, um, really well-made film, and he's also done, uh, Snowtown Murders and-

• 42:47Andy Greenwald?

  True History of the Kelly Gang.

• 42:48Chris Ryan?

  True History of the Kelly Gang and Michael Fassbender's Macbeth.

• 42:51Andy Greenwald?

  And Michael Fassbender's Assassin's Creed.

• 42:53Chris Ryan?

  Probably one that he did not have final cut on, if I had to guess. Uh, Narrow Road to the Deep North is Jacob Lordy. We are in a little weird, weird Amazon Prime Video moment where I'm like-

• 43:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  We, we're back in the, in the early days now.

• 43:07Andy Greenwald?

  We have to talk about this, like, Amazon, the biggest marketplace in the world, so I guess it makes sense that they have a-

• 43:16Chris Ryan?

  Launcher of women into space?

• 43:18Andy Greenwald?

  Truly.

• 43:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Andy Greenwald?

  So much to be grateful for, but I guess they carry so many products, that's definitionally what they are. I guess it makes sense that their TV offering would also offer the most bizarre buffet of choices of any of the major streamers.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:34Andy Greenwald?

  But we have to come up with a word, um, maybe, maybe the late author Philip Kerr came up with one in German.

• 43:40Chris Ryan?

  He was British, but yeah.

• 43:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, I know, but he wrote about-

• 43:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Andy Greenwald?

  Your guy Bernie, well, your rival Bernie, he left before you did.

• 43:48Andy Greenwald?

  Of what Amazon, like, with, it's such a bizarre, there's such a bizarre sensation to be like, "Oh, let's fire up Amazon Prime. Okay, well, I could watch Gladiator 2 now, and here's another season of Wheel of Time."

• 44:05Chris Ryan?

  Did you see that also today an Amy Sherman Palladino series went up the entire season?

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, just premiered a ballet show. But then also, there will be something like The English, right? Like the show we loved a few years ago. Or, in this case, I mean, this, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is an extremely high-production-value, read expensive-

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  This is what I was gonna say.

• 44:27Andy Greenwald?

  -historical mini-series starring an ascendant star, Jacob Elordi. And I cannot stress enough that I had never heard anything about this.

• 44:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:36Andy Greenwald?

  You mentioned this to me, and I, I, I thought maybe you were disassociating. Like, I had no idea what you were talking about. Because, look-

• 44:44Chris Ryan?

  I had a hard enough time saying the title, so-

• 44:46Andy Greenwald?

  I know. I mean, obviously, I struggle to keep up with watching the shows that we say we are watching-

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  Last of Us.

• 44:52Andy Greenwald?

  On the podcast. So, but I do try to like, know what I'm missing. This was completely out of left field. And I'm glad that these things still happen. And I'm glad that you brought this into my life.

• 45:01Chris Ryan?

  It's gorgeous to look at this. So, this is based on a novel by Richard Flanagan-

• 45:08Andy Greenwald?

  That won the Booker Prize ten years ago.

• 45:09Chris Ryan?

  That won the Booker Prize. And I think it's Elordi's first time where he gets to, or at least on screen, has been acting in his native, native accent. Yeah.

• 45:21Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I still couldn't tell you how many episodes were in The White Lotus, Season 3. So, I cannot confirm or deny that, but at least as far as I know.

• 45:27Chris Ryan?

  It's a story told in across multiple timelines. It starts Elordi as a soldier who's in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. There's also some stuff about Karen Hines, you know, and there's-

• 45:40Andy Greenwald?

  He's playing him-

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 45:41Andy Greenwald?

  In the 80s.

• 45:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 45:42Andy Greenwald?

  So, it's multiple timelines.

• 45:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but I really wanted to talk about it because of Kurtzle. Because I think- There's a kind of ongoing debate discourse about, you know, what kind of medium is television? Is it for writers? Is it for filmmakers? I think that you've actually helped me over the years kind of dissuade myself from pure authorship by a director at any given moment. You know, but just about the collaborative nature of any kind of visual storytelling and any kind of crew that is involved with making a show or a film even for that matter. But I do think that this is an example of great filmmaking and great cinematography. I don't know how much this cost, you know, like,

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  and I, and I wonder whether or not this is an example of someone who's like, I know how to make something look extraordinary. Like the opening scenes in, I believe in Syria, right? In the early 40s, and Alordi and his, and his compatriots are like fighting in the war. Like, they look like the fucking Godfather. Like, they look really, really beautiful. It looks like a Bertolucci film in times and like, I'm going a little bit overboard.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Or Malekki.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  But I'm, yeah, like, and it, and it has, he has a touch and a sensibility that is extraordinary, but I wonder whether or not this was very, very specific. Like, this frame will look beautiful and maybe behind it is a tower block. I don't know, you know what I mean?

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they found a way to maximize it. It's, um, my main takeaway from this was, Jesus, what an impossible medium to get one's arms around. You know, that like our choices every night when we sit on our couch and fire up these streaming services, as well as our choices, literally your choice and my choice to do a podcast about episode three of Hacks or this, it's just mind bending to consider that this is an option. And it's, to say upfront, this show is not going to be your, let's come down after tonight's millennia episode option.

• 47:43Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 47:43Andy Greenwald?

  This is incredibly dense, incredibly rich and a little bit demanding. I would say aesthetically, artistically and conceptually and thematically of your time and attention.

• 47:52Chris Ryan?

  It's a love story, but it's incredibly dark and sad. And it involves obviously being a prisoner of war, uh, which is, you know, I, I think.

• 48:00Andy Greenwald?

  But it, but it is unquestionably beautiful and it is unquestionably, um,

• 48:07Andy Greenwald?

  Craftsmanship of an incredibly high order. So I, but it is also the kind of thing, and I don't know how you feel about this because I only watched one in advance of talking about it.

• 48:15Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 48:16Andy Greenwald?

  I very much, I almost wish I had consumed it. I don't mean like a binge or that it's a five part movie, but that I had sort of sunk into the whole piece and maybe we will do this later. But just so I could sit down and like look into the camera and say, here is the journey and here's why I'm recommending it as opposed to here's another pilot we checked out because this is a complete story and a mini series and clearly a labor of love for, for Justin Kursel and others involved. I think he was first announced as adapting this or hoping to adapt this seven years ago. So it was a journey to get something like this on the screen with multiple like studio partners and production partners. But I, I found it really, really beautiful and really captivating.

• 48:55Andy Greenwald?

  And this might be a left field kind of take, but it kind of gave me some of what I realize in retrospect, I wanted the brutalist to give me in terms of a contemporary filmmaker finding something, chasing a muse and chasing a thematic vein in period.

• 49:14Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  The, the comparisons might end, might end there, but I, I've, you know, we, we solicited some mailbag questions and maybe we'll get some today or next week, but a perpetual question we get is to put my money where my mouth is in terms of saying that like sometimes stories just are put in the wrong bucket. And what are some recent movies that could have been TV shows or TV shows that could have been movies? And the answer for TV shows that could have been movies is Dope Thief, but movies that could have been TV shows is kind of the brutalist for me, just because, not that I wanted it to be longer, but I just felt like that wasn't the right.

• 49:49Chris Ryan?

  I think I disagree with you respectfully about the brutalist.

• 49:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we can have that argument another time.

• 49:53Chris Ryan?

  Because I think that there is a tradition of that kind of epic yop of a statement in cinema.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  I agree. I just didn't think that, well, we're not, let's not relitigate. I didn't think, I didn't think that necessarily it pulled off the yop. And so if we were doing a, let's. Interrogate artistic integrity, moral integrity in period in wartime.

• 50:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I've sat next to you while we watched Lawrence of Arabia in a theater. I know that I know that you can.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  I do love a yop.

• 50:16Chris Ryan?

  You love a yop.

• 50:17Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, that was a digression.

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  I do kind of want to just hit briefly, some people may not really care about the meta conversation of like, how to watch, what to watch, and how many episodes to watch. But you bring up a really good point of like this and like an episode of Hacks. Kind of conceptually living in the same box, which is a television. And time, you know, the idea of like, what do I want to watch when I want to watch it?

• 50:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  Like, what's a nice way, I I've been actually really struggling with this this week just because of,

• 50:49Chris Ryan?

  you know, I think for us, but anybody, like, you can turn the input valve too wide open. And then it's like, when is it, uh, when is it kind of a treat? When is it fun to watch television? When is it fun to watch a movie? If you're constantly bringing in information, plot, character, I've got to keep this straight. I have to admit, like, I I got mesmerized by Sandbaggers over the last week. But that show is so dense and so complicated that like, between that and Andor, I'm like largely forgetting what time it is.

• 51:24Andy Greenwald?

  You can't, you cannot second screen these shows. You look away and suddenly he's talking to the Norwegian ambassador.

• 51:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  So I found like, actually, like, to your point, uh, Narrow Road, I was like, I want to watch this. It needs to be, I need to give it space to watch it. So it's like, I've watched this first one and I'm excited to check out the rest of it. It's, it's also interesting the way you put that. So many things might get better in the second or third episode, and it's just hard to, to get that engine going unless you're like, well, I I have to watch this culturally, it's going to be such a big deal. You know, a lot of shows can be challenging in that way.

• 52:01Andy Greenwald?

  But I would say that ultimately, and I do think I'll finish it, that Narrow Road to the Deep North is just, it's not engaging with TV storytelling, nor necessarily should it.

• 52:10Chris Ryan?

  Long film.

• 52:11Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it is truly, and it could be episodic. But it is not playing by TV rules. You're just sinking into these timelines in this world. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's no question in watching the first episode where I'm like, are they gonna pull off the prison escape in episode three? That's just not the type of show that it is. I'm just guessing.

• 52:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  Or not guessing, I'm just throwing that out there. And one of the ways that I loved how it sort of knocked me off of my standard TV operating procedure viewing was in the opening, there's an opening sequence and then there's sort of the morning after and the sun's coming up and you're with these soldiers. And just the way that Kurtzill filmed it, there's a lot of overlapping dialogue.

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:50Andy Greenwald?

  It is, which tells you like, he's not really worried about us hearing what they're saying in these scenes. It's just life.

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, just sort of sinking into a world where characters are just talking to each other and the content of what they're saying doesn't even matter so much as the familiar way they're talking to each other.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  And the sort of naturalistic way that it's being filmed is really exciting. To your other point, which may be just part of a larger over-story conversation that we keep having, I do think, not just because of us having, having to, I know it's not coal mining, but like, we do have to watch a lot of stuff. And I think a lot of people, certainly people who listen to a podcast like this, watch a lot of stuff by choice.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  Feel compelled to, yeah.

• 53:27Andy Greenwald?

  That I, sometimes I'm hit with the thought that like, we are not doing this work a great service by watching so much of it. And I'll, I'll use a, a mainstream example. Episode two of season two of Last of Us, I think, when it ended, regardless of how I felt, and I felt very affected by the episode and I thought it was, you know, we talked about it at length on Monday, so if people haven't listened.

• 53:51Chris Ryan?

  Took up golf.

• 53:51Andy Greenwald?

  Can go back. Now I see the appeal.

• 53:55Andy Greenwald?

  I was shaken by it, which was the intention. And I certainly did not want to keep watching television afterwards.

• 54:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  Now, that's not a programming note that Casey Bloys or his team at Max wants to hear, but.

• 54:07Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, I think that they wanna own the night.

• 54:10Andy Greenwald?

  They wanna own the night, but Gemstone starts.

• 54:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:13Andy Greenwald?

  You know, in five minutes, which is.

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  But we used to be able to watch Game of Thrones and then watch Veep. You know what I mean?

• 54:17Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I'm not saying we can't do it.

• 54:18Chris Ryan?

  I think psychologically, like, I think the, it's not necessarily what's happening right after Last of Us, you know? It's what's also happening that you know you have like, this pile growing and growing. And also. I think the reason why I've tried in the past, we've done these segments where it's the primetime grid. So it's like essentially like if you were gonna sit down the way you did when you were 13 and watch TV from eight to 11, which even now kinda sounds like a lot when I think about it.

• 54:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think the shows were shorter and there was commercials and there was a lot more getting up and, oh, I missed five minutes, but it doesn't matter because.

• 54:54Andy Greenwald?

  You had to refill your juice glass.

• 54:56Chris Ryan?

  I sure did.

• 54:57Andy Greenwald?

  Get some Golden Groms.

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  It's trying to put some sort of, well, the reason why I like introduced that as an idea is to put order on chaos. Cause it is, it does feel difficult sometimes to wrap your head around the fact that we've got three episodes a week of Andor, an episode of The Last of Us. I, I watched Top Chef and Survivor, uh, Hacks, Righteous Gemstones. I may just dip my toe into a 1978 BBC show from time to time. Plus, Justin Kurtzell made a, a five or six episode mini series about POWs and love across decades and shame and trauma. Gotta hit that, you know?

• 55:34Andy Greenwald?

  Can't wait.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 55:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:36Chris Ryan?

  And then, you know, homies wanna see sinners, you know, like we, we got, we gotta go out there and get these vampires. So that's a lot of stuff on top of anything else you might be interested in in the world, whether it's basketball or.

• 55:48Andy Greenwald?

  Book.

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  Birds.

• 55:49Andy Greenwald?

  Books, birds, yeah, not that, never that.

• 55:53Chris Ryan?

  Alright.

• 55:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm.

• 55:56Chris Ryan?

  It's not, it's not a woe is me thing.

• 55:57Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, but it does feed into the conversation we still haven't had, but we've been teasing, which is the, the like, the food pyramid of TV of like how to balance your TV diet. And, um, you know, is it healthy to have in addition to the like, the things that you have to, you know, your, your quick burning carbs, like, you know, you just wanna keep up. It's like, like White Lotus or Hacks, like it's fun, it's in the culture. But then like have something more dense and fibrous, like on the back burner to watch one episode a week or whatever, you know, for whatever it's worth. God knows what Prime Video's, uh, internal hopes and dreams for the narrow road to the deep north are. But I'd like to think that even they understand that the best case scenario for a

• 56:41Andy Greenwald?

  lovely artistic endeavor like this is that people will come to it and find it and watch it at their own speed. This is not necessarily a binge watch.

• 56:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I hope. The Prime Video UX of like being able to find stuff can be a little bit, it's first of all, it's very algorithmically tailored to whatever you're watching, but like Netflix, it's like, I hope this show gets a foothold so that people will see Jacob Elordi and check it out. And I hope it gets an awards push, which makes me realize that we are in that weird, everything getting fired out for Emmys.

• 57:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, until the end of May.

• 57:14Chris Ryan?

  Right, right?

• 57:14Andy Greenwald?

  Usually that's the cutoff, yeah.

• 57:16Chris Ryan?

  Cool. Um, all right. Well, we're gonna be back on Monday. We're gonna keep these questions, these mailbag questions. Uh, but you know, if you're still listening, you can always email us at thewatchatspotify.com. We'll be doing Last of Us on Monday, and I think we'll probably save the Andor episodes for Thursday.

• 57:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's best. So it gives people time to digest them. I just-

• 57:38Chris Ryan?

  We just wanted to release that Tony episode because, you know, he spoke kinda, he kinda gave the rally cry for the season to start.

• 57:44Andy Greenwald?

  There are so many competing interests and points of view as to what, how to make Andor successful and what success means. As a, like, fan who loves this show personally, gobbling three hours of the dwindling stock Tuesday nights into Wednesday morning is not my preferred way to do it.

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  As a counter.

• 58:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  May I just say?

• 58:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Chris Ryan?

  And the reviews are out, so I'm not, I have, I've watched the next three episodes. Get fucking ready.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean-

• 58:16Chris Ryan?

  Like, you're gonna wanna watch the three of them together.

• 58:18Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, just look at us.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  But you're gonna be like, I need to see these three together.

• 58:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. We going to Gorman?

• 58:25Andy Greenwald?

  Is that, is that our travel plan for next week?

• 58:27Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaia. Uh, we'll be back on Monday.

• 58:56Speaker 07

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