Portside

The sitcom aired a powerful episode centered entirely around a family discussion of race and the criminal-justice system—a too-rare event for network TV.

As the rightly acclaimed television series Downton Abbey unspools its final episode some fans have criticized the producers decision to devote so much time to a debate about the future of Downton’s Cottage Hospital. But underneath the repartee lies a serious and persistent issue: what should be the relationship of the community to the emerging age of a high tech, highly capitalized and highly specialized medical system?

For voters who’ve been around for a few decades, this election season has often been an agonizing time-loop back to the nineteen-nineties, to old debates, to long-dormant controversies, especially when it comes to Hillary Clinton. If you’re seeking perspective, I have an offbeat suggestion: go to Hulu, then watch one of the most indelible episodes of “A Different World”: “The Little Mister,” from 1992.

Insider jokes, hedge fund titans, financial jargon – creators have all the ingredients of a compelling financial suspense storyline.

In a not-so-distant future, Norway has elected a radical branch of the Green Party, and its charismatic new prime minister shuts down the country’s supply of oil and gas to continental Europe. Despite an impending climate crisis, the EU is none too pleased with this overnight weaning from petrol, and invites Russia to offer Norway “technical assistance” in restoring its fossil fuel production. Russian gunships descend on Norway’s oil platforms.

“The Civil War truly was a time when women, for the lack of a better word, came into the workplace,” says PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe. “It was also a time when medicine was undergoing huge changes.” Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays a nurse, said that part of what she appreciated about “Mercy Street” was getting a part in a project where women find each other in conflict over power and intellectual traditions, rather than simply for the sake of drama.

During a presentation at the Television Critics Assn. press tour, executive producer Michael J. McDonald said he and Ridley wanted to explore tough issues that they did not get to examine last year, such as class and the education system.

Context is crucial to the politics of a narrative, always. In the context of the #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the increasing public focus on police brutality toward particularly African American communities in the U.S., it is important to ask how the fantasy of Luke Cage – a black man who is “unbreakable” – fits into the current socio-political landscape.

If the first five seasons of Downton Abbey—the British upstairs-downstairs soap opera that will have its sixth and final U.S. season premiere on Jan. 3—were about the structure of class divisions in English society, the last one is about those divisions crumbling.

Most international political thrillers rely on the interplay of fantasy and reality, using real countries and familiar politics in the frame of a fictional narrative. What makes CBS’s Madam Secretary unusual, even within that context, is that its episodes actually borrow from recent international events, relationships, and histories. The show’s universe can often feel like a surreal look into a parallel reality.