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Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

Rachel Brosnahan stars in <em>The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel</em>.
Nicole Rivelli
/
Amazon
Rachel Brosnahan stars in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

When The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won two Golden Globes a few weekends back — one for Best Musical or Comedy TV Series and one for its star, Rachel Brosnahan — it helped transform a word-of-mouth sleeper hit into a something closer to a phenomenon. So it only made sense to discuss the show in depth.

To do so, we mixed up the panel a bit, teaming Glen Weldon and host Linda Holmes with two guests: Weekend Edition's Barrie Hardymon and longtime NPR Music contributor Katie Presley. Together, they discuss the show's high concept — created by Gilmore Girls' Amy Sherman-Palladino, it tells the story of a fictional '50s housewife-turned-comedian — as well as its Jewishness, its supporting cast, its period setting, its depictions of comedy, its narrative priorities, its music and, of course, its remarkable array of period dresses.

Finally, as always, we close with What's Making Us Happy this week. Glen loves a BBC drama full of sexy hijinks, boosted by a stellar cast. Barrie is hooked on an insufficiently heralded singer whose music you can hear on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Katie is hooked on a feminist science-fiction book trilogy. (Story checks out.) And Linda, who has been watching a lot of TV pilots in the past few weeks, is digging a fun new Science Channel show about bigness.

Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: Linda, Glen, Barrie, Katie, the show, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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