What’s Worth Watching: September 12, 2025

Hello, paid subscribers! Here are three things you should try to see this weekend, assuming you’re not trudging miserably along a desolate highway in search of a prize you will almost certainly never see. But really, what are the odds.

The Long Walk (theatrical)

Were I still writing pop-culture thumbsuckers, I would absolutely be writing one about the curious fact that two of Stephen King’s early dystopian novels – published in the late ’70s and early ’80s under the pseudonym Richard Bachman – are coming to the screen within weeks of each other this fall. Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man is coming out in November, and appears be a more faithful take on the book than Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 version … but first, there’s Francis Lawrence’s bleak, epic version of what might be King’s most despairing story.

In a crumbling America, a couple of decades after some sort of fascist takeover, fifty young men – one from each state – assemble for a marathon that will be filmed and televised to the nation. They will walk along the highway, maintaining a speed of three miles per hour, until only one of them remains. The winner gets a lot of money, and a single wish. There are no rest breaks. There is no finish line. There is only the walk.

Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner (Strange Darling) stick close to the book, following the idealistic Ray Garrity (Licorice Pizza’s Cooper Hoffman) as he arrives for the walk and strikes up a conversation with the guys in his immediate vicinity, eventually bonding with the chatty, capable Pete McVries (David Jonsson, of Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus). They pick up some pals: A motormouth (Ben Wang), a cynic (Joshua Odjick) and a would-be journalist (Jordan Gonzalez). Sometimes they’re pestered by a bully (Charlie Plummer), and every now and then this really buff dude (Garret Waering) reminds them to keep the pace up. A hulking authority figure known only as the Major (Mark Hamill) offers similar reminders, barking hollow slogans like a drill sergeant as he rides along in the walkers’ military escort.

It all feels like a slightly older version of Stand By Me, with this little hiking group trading stories, and even getting a little philosophical. Until another walker drops out, and we’re given a horrific reminder of where they are and what they’re doing.

Barring one brief flashback, that’s the entirety of The Long Walk, which deliberately challenges the audience to just sit and watch these guys move through this desaturated, depressed landscape. As in the book, the focus is entirely on the walkers, with all the world-building done through context clues: The clothes and the rudimentary digital technology tell us this is probably taking place in the late ’70s, and there’s a reference to this being the 19^th edition of the walk, but beyond that we’re told almost nothing about this alternate America. It feels almost daring, really, and I imagine Lawrence – having directed four of the five Hunger Games movies – embraced the idea of a smaller, more intimate dystopia.

And the intimacy is really what makes The Long Walk work. Hoffman (whose father appeared in a couple of those Hunger Games movies) and Jonsson (whose charming Rye Lane was a meander of a very different sort) have immediate chemistry, and the way they support each other through mounting exhaustion and panic is both charming and heartbreaking, because we know where this all has to go. The supporting cast is rock-solid, and the two adults we see for any length of time are indelible: Hamill refuses to drop his Warren Oates drill-sergeant mask for even one second as the Major, and Judy Greer is achingly great as Ray’s mother, who knows exactly what her son is walking into. But the movie rests on its leads, and they are exceptional.

I have no idea how audiences will respond to The Long Walk, especially since it’s now arriving in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder and the attendant spike in fascist rhetoric. That said, Lionsgate’s decision to release it the day after 9/11 does feel like an acknowledgement that this movie was always going to be received as a political statement – and it absolutely is.

One year ago this week, The Life of Chuck won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF, and reminded everybody of Stephen King’s huge heart. This movie is not that movie; Lawrence and Mollner are here to remind us that not all of King’s stories are so tender, and that most of them want to grab you by the throat. The Long Walk is one of those.

The Long Walk is in theaters everywhere today.

Only Murders in the Building: Season 5

It’s a miracle that a show as unapologetically silly and light as Steve Martin and John Hoffman’s goofball whodunit has made it to a fifth season, since its restrictive concept – which confines each new investigation to the geography of the Arconia apartment complex on the Upper West Side – has to build new motivations and additional characters onto an increasingly unsteady foundation of lore. Not every classic building can accommodate a new story every year. (See what I did there?)

But from the first episodes of Season 5, it feels like there might be cracks in the foundation. Picking up right after Season 4’s cliffhanger, with podcasters Charles Haden Savage (Martin), Oliver Puttnam (Martin Short) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) trying to prove the death of Lester the doorman (Teddy Coluca) wasn’t an accident, the show seems a little unsteady on its feet, with a very broad opening episode immediately followed by a decades-spanning flashback to Lester’s career at the Arconia, which offers a lot of detail about his relationships with Mabel and missing mobster Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale), who’s already been ruled out as a suspect. (Said flashback episode is also undermined by the fact that Emory Cohen, who plays the young Lester, is a much better actor than Coluca.)

Now, I know it’s still early in the season and the plot will inevitably become much more complicated, and probably much sillier. And when it just hangs out with Charles, Oliver and Mabel as they kibitz about condo politics and five-day-old shrimp, Only Murders is still an entirely charming sitcom about three misfits who’ve accidentally formed a loving, supportive family. That’ll keep me coming back, but if this turns out to be the last season I think I’ll be okay with it.

New episodes of Only Murders in the Building are available to stream Tuesdays on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ internationally. The first and second seasons are masterworks of character comedy, and pretty good mysteries too!

Taskmaster: Series 20 (YouTube)

The world’s strangest game show is back for its twentieth season, and now that the show drops on YouTube on Thursdays, immediately after its UK broadcast, I’ve actually seen the first episode!

Series 20 finds domineering host Greg Davies and his factotum (and secret showrunner) Alex Horne assembling a new quintet of comedians – Ania Magliano, Maisie Adam, Phil Ellis, Reece Shearsmith and Sanjeev Bhaskar – and putting them through a new run of grueling but somehow whimsical challenges for our entertainment. As I’ve said previously, the real joy of the show is in watching funny people cope with frustration and failure, and this series maintains that tradition in the finest way.

The new wrinkle here is that the age range is carefully delineated, with one contestant in their twenties, one in their thirties, one in their forties, one in their fifties and one in their sixties, which takes certain tasks (like “scan this QR code”) in unexpected and very funny directions. This is also the first series in which certain tasks run the risk of actually injuring the participants; the climactic live task, with blindfolded players hopping around the edge of a stage with a four- or five-foot drop, is hysterically funny and genuinely terrifying.

I was a little worried that the show might have hit its peak last time, since it’s now impossible to watch an especially frustrating challenge without wondering how Jason Mantzoukas would have approached it. (He absolutely would have crippled someone – possibly himself – during that live task.) But it feels like his chaotic energy has infected the production; there’s now a sense that the mania is coming from inside the house. Let’s effing go.

New episodes of Taskmaster drop Thursdays at 5 pm ET on the show’s YouTube channel, where you’ll also find all 19 previous series, various international versions and the delightful first run of Junior Taskmaster. Such pleasures await you.

Up next: My reviews of Jurassic World Rebirth and Materialists will hit your inbox later today! Isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?