Maarva (Fiona Shaw) in Lucasfilm’s Andor, exclusively on Disney+.(Lucasfilm Ltd.)
On a previous podcast, the TV critic Sean T. Collins and I discussed how we were both surprised that Andor, the latest iteration of the Star Wars franchise, was actually a good TV program rather than just fan service.
Now, the first season of Andor is over and there’s room for a larger appraisal. David Klion, writing in The New Republic, makes the bold claim that the show deserves to be seen as great TV, in the same league as shows like The Wire and The Sopranos. David and I share our enthusiasm for Andor on this week’s podcast.
Among other topics, we discuss the way the show draws on the history of revolutions, including the Russian revolution; the extraordinary acting of Stellan Skarsgård, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, and Genevieve O’Reilly; and the shaping role of writer/director Tony Gilroy, the mastermind behind the series.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.