Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When you create a series with a large enough name attached to it, you run the potential of limiting your audience to only people who were interested in the original brand. That’s the challenge Amazon Prime Video’s new series, The New Yorker Presents, was faced with, and that’s the challenge it beautifully overcomes. Rather than creating a series tailor-made for diehard fans of The New Yorker, The New Yorker Presents is a heartfelt and refreshingly innovative reflection into what it means to be human that can and should be enjoyed by everyone.
If The New Yorker Presents sound familiar to you, you probably recognize the series as one of Amazon Studios’ fourth round pilots. The series blends documentaries, short films, essays, comedy, poetry, and the magazine’s recognizable cartoons into an episode-by-episode look into the lives of interesting people. Each 30-minute episode contains five to six segments loosely tied to a theme, and each episode contains a short (10 to 13 minute) anchoring documentary. A lot of care has been taken to make the series feel as magazine-like as possible.
Each episode begins with a table of contents that tells you the title and time code of each piece in case you’d prefer to skip around rather than watch each episode all the way through. Also, versions of those iconic New Yorker cartoons serve as dividing pieces between segments. Just like how the series itself drifts between being distinctly from The New Yorker and its own show, each episode follows enough general rules to feel cohesive while containing enough in-episode flexibility that you never know what you’re going to be watching next. You can transition from a letter chronicling the rise and fall of Atlantic City (based on the article by Nick Paumgarten) to a heartfelt essay on the pain associated with black bodies in motion (based on an article by Edwidge Danticat). It’s a mix as varied and unexpected as life itself.
Almost every piece in The New Yorker Presents is based on an article or essay that was originally published by The New Yorker. However, instead of feeling constrained to the world of New Yorker stories, the series feels endlessly expansive, which largely has to do with this adaptation to film. This is where The New Yorker Presents shines. Each filmed segment is crafted in a way to add dimension to its already-published piece, and it’s clear that a lot of thought went into how each individual segment is portrayed.
For example, the previously mentioned “Black Bodies in Motion & in Pain” (Episode Two) slowly and powerfully cuts to images of Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration” series at the Museum of Modern Art, forcing the audience to focus on the words of the author. As a result, the segment feels morose, thoughtful, and important. Conversely, filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s (The Silence of the Lambs) documentary piece “What’s Motivating Hayes” (Episode Three) is much more visually focused, relying largely on footage from the film’s subject, Tyrone Hayes, as his story from the Bronx to controversial biologist is told.
That’s what I appreciate most about this series. From what I’ve seen so far, pieces never feel as if they’re being forced into a mold The New Yorker Presents has created. Instead, each segment’s film adaptation feels like an authentic incarnation of that story. This can most likely be credited to the big names behind the camera who know exactly what they’re doing. Showrunner Kahane Cooperman was a longtime producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the series is executive produced by Alex Gibney, who directed the HBO documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Disbelief, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Netflix’s upcoming Cooked, and many other award-winning documentaries. Gibney also directs one anchoring documentary in the series, which details how the FBI could have prevented 9/11 (Episode One).
Going into The New Yorker Presents, I was not a New Yorker reader. If anything, I would say I was ambivalent about the brand. However, I love a good story, and I’m a sucker for a compelling documentary. The New Yorker Presents smartly captures amazing people and amazing moments in its own authentic tone, making it a must watch. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
The New Yorker Presents is on Prime Video and will release two new episode every Tuesday through the month of March.
