The Ballad of Duc Phuc: How a Vietnamese Pop Star Accidentally Became the World’s Mood Ring By Dave’s International Desk (still hung-over from last night’s geopolitical karaoke) HANOI—On the face of it, the rise of Nguyễn Đức Phúc—stage name Duc Phuc, a moniker that sounds like a minor Scandinavian deity or an IKEA lamp—should be…
The Bads of Bollywood: A Global Tragedy in Three Acts and a Dance Number By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Mumbai, India — If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a $2.4-billion-a-year dream factory begins to snore loudly in public, look no further than Bollywood. Once the planet’s most reliable export of synchronized pelvic thrusts and family-friendly…
Amazon Video: The Streaming Colonizer Quietly Redrawing the Planet’s Cultural Borders By Our Correspondent Somewhere Between a Co-Working Couch and Existential Despair PARIS—Somewhere on the 17th arrospécial of a Haussmannian walk-up, a Senegalese-French data-scientist is binge-watching “The Boys” instead of finishing the code that might keep Mali’s largest hospital online. In São Paulo’s 3 a.m….
BBC iPlayer: The Last Empire Still Broadcasting in Glorious Standard Definition of British Guilt By the time you read this, iPlayer has already expired on your cousin’s smart fridge in São Paulo. The BBC’s flagship streaming service—once a plucky national catch-up platform—now functions as a sort of 21st-century East India Company, only with more buffering…
The United States has always excelled at exporting two things: weapons-grade optimism and television. USA Network, the plucky cable channel that once promised “Characters Welcome,” is the softer, more insidious sibling of those F-35s—flying under most foreign radars while still reshaping the global skyline. From its birth in 1977 as the Madison Square Garden Sports…
Steve Netflix Is Not a Man—He’s a Metaphor with a Broadband Addiction By our jaded correspondent in the Hotel Bar That Never Closes, Geneva The planet woke up last Monday to discover that “Steve Netflix” was trending in 47 languages, three of which are spoken only by algorithmically generated customer-service avatars. Within hours, #SteveNetflix outranked…
d4vd’s “Update”: A Casual Memo from the End of the World By “International” Dave’s Correspondent, currently hiding in a Lisbon café that still accepts cash Lisbon – If you’ve been doom-scrolling between the COP28 hangover, the slow-motion TikTok ban kabuki in Washington, and whatever fresh horror is trending in the group chat, you may have…
John Ritter, International Man of Collapsible Furniture By “Diplomatic” Dave, Senior Correspondent for Absurdity Abroad BURBANK—Somewhere over the Pacific, a flight attendant is still explaining to a bewildered Japanese tourist that, no, the man who died on the set of “8 Simple Rules” was not, in fact, the inventor of Zen minimalism. Such is the…
Chief of War Season 2: How One Streaming Series Became the UN’s Favorite Punching Bag By a Correspondent Who’s Spent Too Much Time in Airport Lounges Geneva, 3 a.m.—the hour when diplomats realize the buffet has run out of shrimp and their talking points are as stale as the croissants. That’s precisely when the trailer…
Slow Horses Season 5: When British Spooks Become the Planet’s Least-Credible Soft Power By the time the fifth litter of Slow Horses limps onto Apple TV+ this autumn, the world has already endured a year in which every intelligence service on Earth has looked roughly as competent as a toddler assembling IKEA furniture without the…
Black Rabbit, Jason Bateman, and the Worldwide Art of Selling Nothing Very Loudly By Diego M. Salgado, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the Kremlin’s latest cryptic press release and TikTok’s newest dance craze performed on a melting glacier, Netflix dropped the trailer for “Black Rabbit.” The limited series stars Jason Bateman as a middle-aged…
Regal Cinema: The Fall of a Global Colossus, or How the World Learned to Love Watching Alone The curtain finally dropped on Regal Cinema this month, and the planet responded with the same polite applause it reserves for a cancelled flight: a collective shrug, a swipe to the next screen. Once the largest cinema chain…
