The best of 2016: movies, TV, music, and books

Netflix’s most overlooked series is a real-life Friday Night Lights

Like FNL, Last Chance U is a football show that’s about so much more than that.

Stranger Things, La La Land, and Donald Trump: empty nostalgia dominated 2016

Our popular and political cultures kept returning to the idea that the past was somehow better.

The 21 best movies of 2016

From The Witch and Silence to The Fits and La La Land, it was a great year at the movies.

One of 2016’s best shows and one of its best books both used surrealism to explore the black experience

Both Atlanta and The Underground Railroad aim to make the black American experience visceral.

From Game of Thrones to The Witch, 2016 was packed with hypercompetent teen girl antiheroes

TV and movies were packed full of young women taking charge of their lives — often bloodily.

5 words that explain 2016

2016 in box office winners (Disney!) and losers (Warcraft)

Thanks to international sales, even some of this year’s losers were winners.

How 2016's movies and TV reflected Americans’ changing relationship with religion

From Sausage Party to Silence, it was a banner year for religion onscreen.

The best and brightest performances of 2016

The actors, musicians, and athletes who made this an entertainment year to remember.

The best comic books of 2016

Stop what you’re doing and pick up The Flintstones.

ABC’s Speechless dodged family sitcom clichés to become one of 2016’s best new comedies

The DiMeos are messy, flawed, and very funny.

The 33 best TV episodes of 2016

From Game of Thrones to Atlanta, Black Mirror to Beyoncé, this year had some great TV.

If you liked these 11 popular 2016 albums, here are 11 lesser-known ones you'll love

The 11 best albums you might have missed this year.

The best books we read in 2016

From Hitler’s biography to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth to advice on the craft of writing.

The 21 best TV shows of 2016

Including everything from O.J. to Atlanta to Samantha Bee.

The 7 best new comics of 2016

The Flintstones, Shade, the Changing Girl, Wonder Woman, and more…

15 songs that prove there was still goodness to be found in 2016

Amid the garbage fire that was this year, music thrived.

The 13 best novels of 2016

The Underground Railroad, The Unseen World, and more.

The 39 best TV moments of 2016

From devastating surprises to hilarious lines, and everything in between.

Rectify is one of the most emotionally acute shows in TV history

Sundance’s lovely, little seen drama wrapped its four-season run with beauty and forgiveness.

TV’s 2 best performances in 2016 shared a surprising common trait

Westworld’s Evan Rachel Wood and Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge used artifice to get at deeper truths.

Trevante Rhodes's Moonlight performance is multilayered and heartbreakingly vulnerable

It might be the best of the year.

Syfy flailed after Battlestar Galactica ended. In 2016, the network was TV’s comeback kid.

Turning good books into good TV turns out to be a winning strategy. Who knew?

Why Orange Is the New Black deserves even more respect than it already gets

It's the biggest TV drama trendsetter since The Sopranos.

Online theorizing ruined too many TV shows in 2016

Trying to predict twists on your favorite series used to be a fun guessing game. Now, it’s become an industry.