Chelsey McIntyre

The new HBO drama Lovecraft Country is tough to categorize. It’s set in the racially segregated Jim Crow America of the 1950s. But just when you think the show couldn’t be more historically accurate, it takes a turn to the paranormal. 

I was often disturbed by Lovecraft Country, but not only by its monsters and evil spirits lurking in the dark. I was also filled with dread by the depiction of , segregated buses and separate entrances. The show portrays the lives of those who were denied service because of the color of their skin. They were harassed on a daily basis. By the police. By their white neighbors. 

I’m not Black. I’m not originally from America. Yet this story, which streams Sunday, resonates powerfully with me. It helped me better understand the historical complexities of the country I immigrated to.

() plays Atticus Freeman, a Korean War veteran with a penchant for science fiction novels. He travels to Chicago to find out what happened to his dad, Montrose (), who disappeared a couple of weeks before. Atticus ends Shut Up Sex embarking on a road trip quest across the Midwest and into Massachusetts with his uncle George () and his childhood friend Leti (.)

The trip starts with a driving sequence set to about the unattainability of the American dream for Black people. Baldwin’s voice isn’t the only welcome anachronism in Lovecraft Country. The soundtrack is filled with Etta James and Nina Simone songs from the ’60s, but also Rihanna, Frank Ocean and Marilyn Manson. There’s a sequence of Leti at church that incorporates that champions equality for the LGBTQ community. Audio from different eras helps link the present and past.

You can’t be idle while watching Lovecraft Country. The 10-episode adaptation of  is filled with symbolism and commentary. It includes numerous book references, from by H.P. Lovecraft to Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ . Keep your brain on while you watch.

Nothing seems left to chance. Even Atticus’ last name is purposeful. He’s the great-grandson of a slave, and he’s called Freeman.

Amid this summer’s global protests calling for racial justice, you might think Lovecraft Country is a timely historical drama that comments on race in the US. But it’s that and more. The show is executive produced by (Get Out) and (Lost). (Helix) serves as showrunner and executive producer. There’s a reason this title has so much science fiction and horror cred. 

The opening sequence of Lovecraft Country is Atticus’ nightmare, haunted by ghosts from his past as a soldier in the trenches. But it’s also filled with flying saucers and octopuses with dragonlike wings. That sets the tone for the rest of the show.

Lovecraft Country may be a case of intellectual challenge and racial criticism with a generous serving of gothic and fantasy, but It’s also just a very entertaining drama. And it’s entertaining without feeling like it’s trying to juggle too many pieces. There are vampires and witches, haunted houses and treasure hunts. Atticus reads novels starring Confederate soldiers like John Carter, just because there are no fantasy novels starring Black heroes. He ends up becoming the hero of his own story. 

I liked Atticus, George, Montrose and the rest of the Freemans. They are relentlessly bookish. Their reading habits come in handy on many occasions. They guide the viewer through the complex mythology of this story. It’s much better if you hear from them why this show is called Lovecraft Country.

They’re not the only interesting characters. Leti is independent and the most dexterous driver in times of need. Leti’s sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) is a driven and charismatic singer. Then there’s Christina (Abbey Lee), a witch deeply frustrated by the limitations of her gender. «I don’t know what is more difficult: being colored or being a woman,» Ruby tells Christina.

Don’t judge any of the characters on first impression. After watching the five episodes available for review, I realized I made a lot of mistaken assumptions about Leti, Ruby, Atticus and the others when I met them. 

But you can definitely judge Lovecraft Country by its looks. It is a very sexy show, from the mean production and costume design and cinematography to the incredible chemistry between Atticus and Leti. Between George and his wife, Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis). And between other characters. The sex scenes are stylishly filmed and not limited to the young or heteronormative.

«This is the story of a boy and his dream. But more than that, it is the story of an American boy and a dream that is truly American.» This quote from the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson Story appears at the beginning of Lovecraft Country and introduces the show magnificently. This is an intrinsically American story.

Like a lot of people, I’d originally passed on because I thought it was a romance series, and that’s just not my kind of thing. But once I finally did cave to pressure, it didn’t take me long to discover that isn’t a romance. What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre box.

The show starts off just after the end of World War II. British Army nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) is vacationing with her husband in the Highlands of Scotland, but accidentally gets thrown back into the year 1743 by passing through an ancient circle of stones. Pretty quickly, she runs into a band of Scottish soldiers that include the obscenely handsome Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). 

Yes, more often than not, we see the story — along with many of the show’s steamy sex scenes — through Claire’s eyes. And yes, Jamie, touted as the «king of men,» is the kind of guy who has probably prompted many women around the world to set unrealistic expectations for their own husbands and boyfriends.

Meanwhile, much of the plot is set in 18th century Scotland, so there are corsets and kilts galore. You get the literal «bodice ripping» that romance novels are known for, along with the, um, easy access that comes from men wearing kilts and nothing underneath them.

But I swear it’s not a romance.   

Much of the time, Outlander is pure, escapist fun. You get time , swordplay and well-researched depictions of historical people and events. On top of that, it’s all so beautifully shot, mostly in Scotland, that it’ll make you want to jump on a plane and go hike a munro, or at least wrap yourself in a plaid and crack open a bottle of Heughan’s  while you wait out the COVID travel restrictions.

But at times it does get very, very dark. True to Diana Gabaldon’s popular series of books that the show is based on, there is a lot of sexual assault, and the show often doesn’t spare viewers from an explicit depiction.

That’s not to say this show doesn’t go completely over the top at times — though it never hits the levels of technicolor cheesiness that a show like  does. But key plot events stem from ridiculously bad decisions made by the main characters, and some of the dialogue will make you giggle at inappropriate times.

As a result, Outlander teeters on the brink of prestige TV, but doesn’t quite cross the line into it. Its quality stems from the strong performances of its leads, the depth of the characters, attention to historical detail, top-notch cinematography and the ability of its writers to (usually) whittle Gabaldon’s rather lengthy books down to their most interesting nuggets.

At its heart, Outlander is the story of two people thrown together by fate and how they persist through the years — a chunk of them spent apart — against a historical backdrop that starts off a couple years before the failed Scottish Rising of 1745 and continues through the American Revolution.

And to keep things interesting, particularly when it comes to costumes and music, there are few time hops back to the 20th century along the way.

There are five seasons to keep you busy right now. Production on the sixth was delayed thanks to COVID, resulting in an extra long «droughtlander,» as fans like to call the already sizable gaps between seasons. The show’s creators just announced that season six will premiere on March 6 on Starz. Production on season 7 is also slated to start next year.

And if you can’t wait to find out what happens next, you can always read the books. just landed at bookstores, and Gabaldon has started work on what she says will be the t10th and final book in the series. Fair warning, while the first book is truly excellent, they all clock in at over 1,000 pages, and some of the later ones tend to drag a bit, especially when the plot shifts to secondary characters.

You can find the first four seasons of Outlander on . But for the most recent season, you’ll either have to subscribe to Starz, or buy or rent the episodes from another streaming service like .

Subscribing to Starz might be a lot to ask, given that it doesn’t offer a whole lot else to get excited about, with the exception of , a fun romp of a Scottish travel show created by Heughan and fellow Outlander actor Graham McTavish.

That said, you’ve got four seasons of plaid worn every way possible, stripteases involving never-ending layers of clothing, countless wigs of sometimes dubious quality, an epically depicted Battle of Culloden and endless shots of the heather-covered Highlands to get through before you’ll have to think about that.

And by then you’ll probably be just as sucked into Outlander as I am.

Gather round the fire, travelers, for I must weave a tale of another age: an age of rings and thrones, shadows and bones, witches and witchers. They called it: the age of streaming. And into this age of warring streaming services rode The Wheel of Time. But will it fulfill the prophecy and defeat the hordes of fantasy shows to become a smash hit?

Streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, The Wheel of Time is based on . The first three episodes stream on Friday, followed by a new episode each week. It’s set in a fantasy realm rebuilt after a cataclysm, except the darkness threatens again as a champion called the Dragon returns to the world. The show follows a warrior witch and her samurai sidekick as they recruit a handful of youngsters who each may be the reincarnated Dragon, heading off on a quest across a treacherous land of sword and sorcery.

Having sold over 90 million copies, the Wheel of Time saga must have a unique hook. But from watching the first few episodes of the TV show, I’m Bilbo’d if I can tell you what it is. From the obligatory ominous opening voiceover to the beastly trolls hounding our heroes, the TV adaptation is built from entirely familiar flat-pack fantasy stuff. Everyone wears tunics (or capes if they’re fancy/morally ambiguous) and argue about prophecies in hushed tones as they ride through a forest in Hungary or somewhere. They go on a quest and have a big swordfight each episode. Haughty priestesses declaim their magic. Nobody ever smiles.

It’s kinda impossible to tell if the whole thing is really expensive or really cheap. Every now and again there’s some sudden squelchy nastiness, but nothing too nasty. There’s some CGI magic and monsters, but the scariest thing is, you guessed it, people.

Obviously if you’re a fan of the books you may be delighted to see your favorite characters brought to life, but long-time fans of Jordan’s richly detailed realm surely deserve better than seeing their beloved stories flattened into such formulaic fantasy filler.

The mystery element of the show is intriguing as you ponder which of the main cast might be the reincarnated Dragon, which is at least a diverting twist on the «chosen one» prophecy narrative. And things get spiced up a few episodes in when another contender to the mantle shows up. But the characters themselves just aren’t that interesting. Three or four episodes in, I still couldn’t tell you the names of the main players. And after decades of debating their dream casting, fans end Shut Up Sex with a main cast of blandly handsome drama school types doing their best, while Rosamund Pike wafts around in a cape like a .

The world itself does have some interesting gender politics going on, as the warrior witches of the Aes Sedai are the most powerful faction in the land and specifically target men who dabble in magic. This is just one of several elements in the show that are crying out for more compelling development, or are done with more oomph elsewhere (Motherland: Fort Salem and Y: The Last Man both tackle gender-upended worlds, for example).

The Wheel of Time deserves to be measured on its own merits, and it is inoffensive enough entertainment. But it just invites comparison at every turn. The monsters look cool, for example, yet you can’t help thinking of Lord of the Rings’ snarling orcs and hooded ringwraiths.

It’s been 20 years since the showed how modern visual effects and character-driven storytelling could make fantasy thrillingly emotional. It’s been 10 years since Game of Thrones made fantasy TV unmissable. As every streaming service scrambled to make , The Wheel of Time must have seemed ripe for adaptation. But some things work better on the page, and this bloodless version fails to capture whatever magic the books have.

Game of Thrones had sex and dragons, has Henry Cavill, has sexy con artists. has amazing puppets, and has a whole steamy steampunk thing going on. The fantasy genre more than ever has scope to be wildly imaginative and deliciously unique, but that’s not the case with The Wheel of Time. Still, next year we come full circle with Game of Thrones prequel and  in September. While you’re waiting, spin your wheels with Wheel of Time.

The Diamonds Are Forever begins with a serene view of a Japanese tea room. Then a man crashes through the paper screen and slides across the floor. Bond roughs him up, demanding to know: «Where is Blofeld?»

Next scene: A man in a casino tells the dealer, «Hit me.» Bond spins him around, punches him in the face and taunts: «Where is he? I shan’t ask you politely next time.»

Then, in a beachy locale, 007 strides toward the camera. It’s , rugged, self-assured, purposeful, and giving his immortal introduction. «My name is Bond. James Bond.»

I was 11 years old, sitting in the front row of the Fine Arts theater in downtown Portland, Maine, with a sixth grade classmate whose mom had dropped us off for a matinee. We were on our own and loaded shut up sex with popcorn and soda. It was the first movie I’d ever seen without my parents.

And I was hooked. Starting with just those few vivid scenes, James Bond was launching me toward an adolescence drenched in spy movies and novels. I couldn’t know it then, on that afternoon in December 1971, but I’d be watching well into the next century, all the way up through Daniel Craig’s finale this year — an «epic, explosive and emotional swan song,» as my colleague Richard Trenholm sums it up in .

I also couldn’t know that a decade later I’d be making a foray of my own into the intelligence field. I’d work in Berlin when it was still a divided, occupied city, when the Cold War split the world into opposing sides ever vigilant for signs of bad things to come.

Over his long movie career, saved the world from Very Bad Things many times over. My experience was a little more down to earth.

How could it not be? Bond’s an impeccably tailored man of action who spends quality time at swanky hotels and casinos in , with unlimited resources, sleek cars and clever gadgets at his disposal. There’s no shortage of beautiful women who like the cut of Commander Bond’s, um, jib.

«Good to see you, Mr. Bond,» Q, the armorer, says in 1983’s , Connery’s final turn as Bond after a 12-year hiatus. «Now you’re on this, I hope we’re going to have some gratuitous sex and violence!»

The Bond movies, from Eon Productions and , are also rightly and action sequences. The getaway in the red Mustang Mach 1 in Diamonds Are Forever. The ski jump off the towering cliff in . The underwater battles in . The extreme parkour in and the dangling-from-ropes fight in . The jetpack. The car chases. The boat chases. The tank chase. 

James Bond may sometimes move through the shadows, but mostly he’s larger than life. That’s not how spying really works. But it is how some people get sucked into that world.

Take me, for example.

My time in military intelligence

Fresh out of college and short on compelling job prospects, I made the rounds of military recruiting offices, thinking, OK well, maaaybe. But when the Army recruiter talked up military intelligence and language school and serving overseas, I started selling myself on the idea. The voice inside my head got right to the point: «This could be some James Bond shit.» 

I spent five years in the Army in the 1980s, about half that time in Germany doing real-world intelligence work. It was a time of  in Europe, including the potential for nuclear strikes, a grim notion that provided a semblance of tension in the otherwise immensely frivolous 1983 Bond movie . 

It all started with my 007-primed penchant for spy lit and action flicks, even the cheesy ones.

Let’s be honest here: isn’t top-shelf Bond. It’s heavy on 007 schtick, the pacing is lax, underwhelm — and the 40-ish Connery, with gray business suit, thickening midsection and an air of detachment, radiates been there, done that.

But even a half-assing Connery still delivers. He’s at ease in the role, royalty out for a stroll. He remains indomitable, even when the flamboyantly gymnastic Bambi and Thumper are kicking his butt; even when, more than once, he cheats death and carries on, flippant and unflappable. 

For 11-year-old me, it was close to perfection.

In the mid-1970s, following my baptism by Diamonds, I was all in for anyone playing Bond. The Roger Moore era was getting underway in theaters, and I was playing catch-up with the Connery Bonds as they popped up on TV, along with . There was 1967’s  (a misbegotten spoof) and  (an Italian ripoff starring Connery’s younger brother Neil). I read every spy book I could get my hands on. My commitment was 100%.

There was so much to take in! Starting in 1962, the six Bond movies from Eon Productions leading up to had been box office gems, and Connery’s time in the role had made him a star. Success inspired imitation and variation: Movies and TV shows in the 1960s were gloriously rife with spies, and spy-adjacent adventurers, from Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer and Dean Martin’s Matt Helm to bumbling Maxwell Smart, six-gun-slinging James West and the original Mission: Impossible crew.

Much as the action and spectacle in Bond movies appealed to me, I was also fascinated by the darker, more skeptical stories. Like Marathon Man (speaking of diamonds). Like 1975’s : After his co-workers are all gunned down, the hero, Turner, a bookish type working for the CIA, has to sort out who he can trust. (Even decades later, I would still think about Turner’s chance escape from death pretty much every time I’d run out from the office to get lunch.)

By contrast, my Gen Z sons have grown up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Wars sagas, the Fast and Furious movies. They’ve seen a few Bond movies, which they liked well enough, but if there’s a suave, steely, gadget-adept action hero who stands out above all for them, it’s Tony Stark.

James Bond, ‘relic of the Cold War’

Bond is a steadfast warrior in the service of the crown; there’s never any real doubt he’ll complete his mission. He has integrity as well as skills. He’s a champagne and caviar snob.

And when it comes to sex, he’s a midcentury fantasy of male dominance from the peak era of pulpy men’s magazines and Playboy clubs. Pussy Galore in the hayloft? Subtle much? Just listen to those theme song lyrics. Look at those old book covers and movie posters.

For a teenage boy in the ’70s, it was titillating — if not exactly a great life lesson.

But even from the beginning, there were women in the Bond movies who knew how to look out for themselves, to take charge. That undercurrent became a riptide in 1995’s , Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as Bond, when the formidable Judi Dench stepped into the role of 007’s boss, M. She wasted no time in setting the record straight: «I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.»

The Bond movies, which too often seemed deeply committed to recycling old material, were evolving after all. It’s something I like to think I was doing at the same time — growing up.

I wasn’t in Maine, or junior high school, anymore. I’d earned a bachelor’s degree and survived basic training. I’d spent time on a big Army post in Texas and at the Defense Language Institute in California.

And I was having a Cold War experience of my own.

In Berlin, where the infamous wall still stood, and seemed like it might last till eternity, I interviewed refugees from Poland — at that time on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain — about their backgrounds, their activities and who they knew. Russian apparatchiks would sometimes park on the street outside the office to take pictures of the facilities and of us.

In another office, in a corner of West Germany that intersected both East Germany and Czechoslovakia, I translated reports of Warsaw Pact military convoys and other suspicious activities on the other side of the border (which made me kin to Condor’s Turner, kinda sorta). My colleagues and I once debriefed a Russian soldier who’d bolted his listening post in the middle of the night and jumped the fences to escape to the West.

By coincidence, this was around the same time that Bond was helping a KGB officer defect across a central European border, in 1987’s .

To spy or not to spy?

To be clear, I wasn’t a spy, or working with spies (that I know of), even if I was an active-duty soldier who got to dress in civilian clothes. It wasn’t covert ops — we could tell people we were in the US Army — but it was useful to be inconspicuous. Even so, the local folk in that West German town sometimes joked about us being CIA. (At least, I think they meant it as a joke.) 

But I did get to thinking: I liked living life out in the open, without a cover story or elaborate layers of deceit. I knew that sooner or later in intelligence work, you’re likely to have trouble sorting truth from lies, the good guys from the bad. Because real life is rarely as clear-cut as Bond good, Blofeld bad.

I realized, too, that there was a lot of really good intel right out in plain view, in public channels like newspapers and TV broadcasts. I’m sure spies do get information of value that’s not available some other way. But even back then, long before social media taught us about filter bubbles, it felt like the intelligence community could be its own closed loop of skewed perception.

Honestly, there was a fair amount of tedium, too. Did I mention I was in the Army?

You don’t learn that from Bond movies. There’s nothing like the pall of mistrust and drab drudgery in John Le Carre’s , the many angles of betrayal in or the amped-up machinations of the TV series on Epix.

As a 22-year-old, I’d signed up for the Army and military intelligence in part because of all those spy novels and movies I’d devoured growing up. Heading toward 30, I decided not to make a career of it. I wasn’t really the James Bond type after all, or George Smiley, for that matter.

Moore, Dalton and Brosnan, oh my

Six decades on, James Bond has become one of the  of all time. The Bond movies continue to inspire spoofs and homages, from Austin Powers to Johnny English to the Kingsman series. But invariably, movie franchises run out of steam, take a wrong turn or just need a pick-me-up. Sean Connery couldn’t have played Bond forever even if he’d wanted to. 

Audiences age out too — well, at least I did.

The , charmingly goofy at their best, had wheezed well past their expiration date. Timothy Dalton brought back an edge, but there was only so much his gravitas and scowl could accomplish. ? I’m sorry, but that’s just an ’80s cop revenge movie. 

GoldenEye took a big step in the right direction, but it didn’t last. To me, Pierce Brosnan is the Derek Zoolander of Bonds, all smirks, pouts and poses, snuggled with smarmy product placement and just plain stupidity (looking at you, invisible car).

I was deep into my 30s and sliding inexorably past 40. Mortgage. Kids. Did I really still need any of that?

James Bond will return in…

Then along comes the reboot, the Daniel Craig era. After riding the Bond formula train for years, Eon Productions actually started over. With the rights to Casino Royale (Ian Fleming’s debut Bond novel) finally in hand, the franchise in 2006 gave us Bond’s origin story.

It was spectacular. One hell of a first impression. Grittier than any of the preceding Bond movies, and with a tempo to match Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible’s Ethan Hunt. Craig’s Bond is stone-faced to good effect, and he’s up for the athletic challenges, but there’s also an emotional tension we’d never seen in 007 before. There’s more at stake for Bond personally.

For my money, it’s one of the very best Bond movies of all time. The ensuing Daniel Craig movies have been a mixed bag, but satisfying on the whole. 

In Diamonds Are Forever, Bond does track down Blofeld, and exacts justice. I wouldn’t recommend Bond’s from those opening scenes — getting high-quality answers usually takes more subtlety and patience — but yeah, they do feel right for this hard-bitten character. Then Blofeld, a fixture of the early 007 movies, essentially disappeared until all the way in 2015, bringing a whole new backstory twist to the Bond-versus-Blofeld saga.

No Time to Die wraps up the Daniel Craig years, and presumably the storyline of his five 007 movies. It’s a moment for the franchise to reinvent itself again and to introduce a new actor as Bond. Ian Fleming’s eternal super-spy has proved to be up to the task, returning the same in essence but changing with the times as well. 

It’s been a long time since I sat in the front row at a theater, but like 11-year-old me, I’m looking forward again to more Bond adventures.