Hamnet novelist O'Farrell turns to her own family story in Land. Maureen Corrigan reviews Talking Classics, by Mary Beard. Richard Pryor's daughter, Elizabeth, is a scholar of the N-word.

Backrooms, by 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons, is set in a mysterious maze of abandoned offices. Curry Barker, 26, tells a horror story about consent and male loneliness in Obsession.

The Tony Award-winning actor, who died in 2022, starred in the Broadway musicals Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd, as well as in the TV series Murder, She Wrote. Originally broadcast in 1980.

Cumming has starred in the musical Cabaret three times. He talks about everything from his costume (which he calls a "Wonder Bra" for men) to the show's darker themes. Originally broadcast in 2014.

"He's the guy I want to be when I grow up," Peters says of his Wire character, Lester Freamon. In The Boroughs, Peters plays a member of a retirement community that's plagued by mysterious forces.

Javier Bardem is riveting in this 10-part Apple TV miniseries about a man who, recently released from prison, goes on to terrorize his former attorney.

The team behind Stranger Things has another series about a group of quirky misfits and mysterious creatures. The Boroughs is well worth seeing — as much for its veteran cast as for its story.

Pope Leo's Black family roots inspired journalist Susan Saulny to research her Creole great-uncle who moved to Chicago, became white and didn't return. She describes her journey to reunite her family.

As a classics professor, Beard has spent her career pondering life in the ancient world. The central question of her latest book is: What on earth was it like to be there?

O'Farrell's new novel is based on the story of her own great, great-grandfather, and tells the story of a father and son mapping 19th-century Ireland after the devastation of the Great Famine.