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This issue is about ‘Dumb Money,’ funny IT problems, ‘Gen V,’ monster facts, real-life Robin Hoods, and much more.

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‘Dumb Money’ Should Be the End of the ‘Irreverent True Story’ Comedy

It was 2017, and I was at the Toronto Film Festival. I ran into colleagues who had just seen I, Tonya, a world premiere about Tonya Harding, the controversial figure skater accused of trying to take out her rival Nancy Kerrigan. The story had been tabloid fodder back in 1994, and I wasn’t sure what the movie would be like. My colleagues were still laughing as they walked out of their screening. “It was really funny,” I remember them telling me. “But it was also really well-done.” This opinion quickly became the consensus around the acclaimed dark comedy/mockumentary, which hit theaters later that year and received Oscar nominations for Margot Robbie as Harding and Allison Janney as Harding’s witheringly disapproving mother LaVona Golden. (Janney won an Academy Award for her role.)

‘Gen V’ Answers the Question, ‘What If ‘The Boys’ Had Even Less Impulse Control?’

Programming a new streaming service must be an extremely frustrating job. You hope — nay, you trust — that your platform is going to be defined by shows like an awards-baiting sitcom about a lady comic making her way through the late 1950s and 1960s, or a globe-trotting spy drama, or either of two fantasy series based on extremely beloved book series. But then the discourse turns on the shows you thought would hit: People are mad that your lady comic is miscast; your globe-trotting spy drama only makes headlines for how expensive it is; and your fantasy series fall far short of the affection their stories inspired readers. One day, you look around and realize the best money you spent was on the rights for a filthy, profane comic book series that satirizes superheroes, so what the hell, might as well order a serialized live-action spin-off,* too. In this case, the profane comic book series is The Boys; the spin-off — arriving Friday with a three-episode premiere — is Gen V, an excellent extension of Prime Video’s most unpredictable franchise.

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