CODA. This year’s surprise Best Picture winner made history with a predominantly deaf cast. CODA centers around Ruby Rossi, a kindhearted 17-year old girl who is the only hearing member of her family in a fishing community in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Her days are spent waking before dawn to help her struggling father and brother on the water, falling asleep in class, and blasting music at home that only she can hear. But things change when she joins the school choir and becomes the choirmaster’s reluctant prodigy. Simultaneously quiet, tense, and explosive, this incredibly charming story is a wholly new take on the coming of age drama.
Colin Hutton / Courtesy of Apple TV+
Ted Lasso. There’s no way around this: Ted Lasso is corny. But it’s delightfully, unfailingly, endearingly corny. You probably already know that it’s about an American football coach played by Jason Sudeikis who brings his homespun jokes and aw shucks attitude to a losing English soccer team, turning them into a band of brothers who believe in themselves and, more importantly, each other. Maybe because its earnest themes of togetherness and civility were a comfort during the pandemic, Ted Lasso somehow landed in the middle of the zeitgeist. Watching it just feels good—like a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for jaded adults.
Robert Falconer / Courtesy of Apple TV+