Time USA-October 3-2016

TIME

PICKS

TELEVISION

The documentary

Amanda Knox, which

hits Netflix on Sept. 30,

revisits the 2007

murder of student

Meredith Kercher,

featuring interviews

with her roommate

Knox, who was charged

with and later acquitted

of the crime.

▽

MUSIC

On22, A Million

(Sept. 30), indie-folk

groupBon Iverdeparts

from the quiet sadness

of previous albums with

an eclectic blend of

Auto-Tune, saxophone

solos and sampled

riffs from the likes of

Mahalia Jackson.

BOOKS

Bruce Springsteen’s

long-gestating

autobiographyBorn to

Run (Sept. 27) traces

his path from the

bars of Asbury Park,

N.J., to stages as big

as the Super Bowl.

It coincides with a

companion album that

includes unreleased

tracks from his

high school band.

MOVIES

The upliftingQueen

of Katwe(Sept. 23)

tells the true story of

a teenage girl from

Uganda, Phiona Mutesi

(played by newcomer

Madina Nalwanga),

who, with the help

of her coach (David

Oyelowo) and mother

(Lupita Nyong’o),

becomes a decorated

chess prodigy.

Caption right

goes here

Itationsequid

enda escit

voluptas rem

eati at quam

nonsed

‘Only the people

with the very

highest scores,

the true cream

of the crop, get to

come here—the

good place.’

TED DANSON, as Michael

eleanor shellstrop is

a bad person. She’s bad in

the ways most of us are bad:

she litters, she’s impulsive,

she blows off commitments.

So how’d she get to heaven?

That’s the question that

animatesThe Good Place,

NBC’s bid to begin rebuilding

its Thursday-night comedy

legacy. Creator Michael

Schur(Parks and Recreation)

drops the late Eleanor

(Kristen Bell) in “the good

place”—an afterlife reserved

for humanity’s very best.

(Yes, there’s a “bad place”

too.) Eleanor plays along as

Michael (Ted Danson), the

seraphic architect of her

“neighborhood,” explains

the rules of an afterlife that

every religion in the world

got a little bit right. He

tells her that, as far as he

knows, she was a death-row

defense attorney in life and

her humble, ascetic nature

means she’ll be satisfied

with a small cottage and an

ethics-professor soul mate

(William Jackson Harper)

for all eternity. While she’d

be happy to play along, her

inability to even pretend to

be as nice as her insufferable

fellow angels means she

requires some quick lessons

in ethics—and, now that her

human life has ended, in

humanity.

This may be the most

erudite network sitcom since

Frasier; Chidi, the professor

stuck protecting Eleanor’s

secret, has her read Kant,

Heidegger and Hume. While

the show is far from perfect,

its imagination papers over a

great many sins.

Those weaknesses include

Eleanor, who in the early

going is less a character than

a stick figure acted upon

by the weirdness of the

universe. The struggle to be

good is less pronounced if

the person struggling is as

sunny as Bell, and I’m not

convinced that she can be as

bad as the script demands.

More concerningfor

those wondering how to

spend their own limited time

on earth is the question of

the show’s future. The first

several episodes spin their

wheels, hard, to keep Eleanor

from being found out, and

to keep a heavenly sphere

where anything is possible

from growing stale. (Con-

fronting the question of this

afterlife’s maker—Michael’s

boss, whomever He or She is,

would have been potentially

alienating, and far more am-

bitious.) Great, long-running

sitcoms tend to bloom in

straightforward settings: the

family home, the office, a bar

if you’re feeling adventurous.

An imagined Valhalla is likely

to be more vibrant than the

characters who inhabit it.

But the universe we see is

imaginatively drawn enough

to make me hope the writers

have a workable plan to tease

out Eleanor’s bad side. The

characters who got into the

good place did so because,

on a divine numerical scale,

the trees they planted

outweighed the traffic lights

they blew through. It’s a

canny, engaging idea, and

fitting:The Good Place’s

weaknesses are no match for

its thoughtful, sharp laughs.

—daniel d’addario

THE GOOD PLACE airs Thursdays

at 8:30 p.m. E.T. on NBC

TELEVISION

Infinite jests

fromThe

Good Place

Bell plays a typically “bad” person struggling among the good

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: SONY; BRYNNER: EVERETT; THE GOOD PLACE: NBC