All posts tagged: genre

At BookCon 2026, Rachel Reid, Stephanie Archer talk the success of hockey romance and the future of the genre and sport

At BookCon 2026, Rachel Reid, Stephanie Archer talk the success of hockey romance and the future of the genre and sport

Published by skeptic

With the fervor of Heated Rivalry, there’s a fierce desire among book readers for even more hockey. On Sunday, April 19, at BookCon, the “You Had Me at Hockey: A Look at One of Sports Romance’s Hottest Genres”, authors Rachel Reid (Heated Rivalry, Game Changer), Emily Rath (Pucking Around), Ngozi Ukazu (Check Please), Stephanie Archer (The Wild Card), and Kate Cochrane (Wake Up, Nat & Darcy) were joined by moderator and fellow author Bal Khabra (Collide) to discuss the rise and continued success of hockey romance. Khabra kicked off the panel, asking just how hockey became so popular. Ukazu joked that it was as if the genre “escaped containment,” like when the Omegaverse went mainstream, while Reid described the mystery around hockey, saying, “what [the players] are doing seems impossible.” Archer also added that the sport itself is exceptionally hard on the body, and the celebrity around players, especially in Canada, is fun to play with. But there’s more to the genre’s success than the tropes. “It has to be said,” Rath argued, “that the …

How Bob Odenkirk and the ‘Nobody’ team set out to elevate the genre with ‘Normal’

How Bob Odenkirk and the ‘Nobody’ team set out to elevate the genre with ‘Normal’

Published by skeptic

At first glance, many may have assumed that Bob Odenkirk’s new film, Normal, was another sequel in the Nobody franchise. With the same star, writer, and producer, the two films do share much of the same DNA. However, the team’s new movie is not only a completely new story but attempts to blend genres in a way that further separates it from its predecessor. Mashable’s Entertainment Editor, Kristy Puchko, caught up with the Normal team at SXSW to talk about the film, its themes, and why they chose to film on 35mm. The film’s writer, Derek Kolstad (John Wick, Nobody), noted how this film differs from Nobody, the team’s previous collaboration. “To this point, you know, in Nobody, if there’s a house on fire, Hutch is going to run into it and hopefully fight anyone who’s in there. In Normal, he’s going to look at the house on fire and say, ‘I don’t know.’” Odenkirk added, “It’s not that much fire.” The Normal star described the film as “a story of a guy who has …

Tradwife fiction is this year’s most talked-about literary genre

Tradwife fiction is this year’s most talked-about literary genre

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Natalie Heller Mills is “the mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to”. The protagonist of Yesteryear, the much talked-about debut novel from Caro Claire Burke, possesses the low-maintenance beauty of a period drama heroine. An adoring mother to six children who are so all-American that one of them is actually named “Stetson”, she spends her days churning butter, baking sourdough and feeding the chickens on her family’s sprawling ranch, Yesteryear. Its name is something of a mission statement. Natalie is harking back to the good old days of American homesteaders, while broadcasting the minutiae of her aesthetically pleasing ye olde lifestyle to her 8 million followers on Instagram. She is the “tradwife” par excellence, espousing a back-to-basics ethos perfectly calibrated to enthral and appal burnt-out 21st-century women with a doomscrolling habit. Natalie …

Prime’s ‘masterpiece’ crime film Searching is the perfect modern twist on the genre

Prime’s ‘masterpiece’ crime film Searching is the perfect modern twist on the genre

Published by Daniella Wilson

Crime films are some of the earliest known genres of the medium, with some of the originals dating all the way back to the early 1900s. As such, it may feel that every avenue has been explored, but in 2018, the film Searching took the genre in an entirely different direction. Set entirely across smartphones and computer screens, the film followed single dad David Kim (John Cho) as he attempts to solve the disappearance of his teenage daughter, Margot (Michelle La). Although initially conceived as an eight-minute film, it was expanded to feature length to great critical and commercial success, earning $75 million against an $880,000 budget. The film’s synopsis reads: “David Kim becomes desperate when his 16-year-old daughter, Margot, disappears and an immediate police investigation leads nowhere. He soon decides to search the one place that no one else has: Margot’s laptop. Hoping to trace her digital footprints, David contacts her friends and looks at photos and videos for any possible clues to her whereabouts.” The success of the film, which is now available …

The elusive spark the British comedy genre needs to thrive

The elusive spark the British comedy genre needs to thrive

Published by Daniella Wilson

Click here to vote in RT’s poll for the greatest modern British comedies. There are plenty of words that you could use to describe British sitcoms: silly, sarcastic, sympathetic, or even sad. But arguably the most consequential of modern times is ‘short’. The limited runs exemplified by Fawlty Towers and The Office, both of which bowed out after a dozen or so episodes, has seemingly become the favoured model by today’s writers and commissioners. Take a look at the shortlist in RT’s greatest modern British sitcom poll and you’ll find many more recent examples, including Big Boys, Derry Girls, Fleabag, Car Share, W1A and After Life. The average number of lifetime episodes per show in the entire line-up is… a rather modest 21. For context, that’s one shy of a single traditional season of US network telly (admittedly, those have shrunk lately due to the shift towards streaming). On the other hand, only five adult-oriented British sitcoms have ever topped 100 episodes: The Army Game (1957-61), Last of the Summer Wine (1973-2010), Birds of a …

Fran Drescher reveals the one TV genre she likely won’t return to

Fran Drescher reveals the one TV genre she likely won’t return to

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Years after Fran Drescher’s sitcom success on The Nanny, the actor has opened up about the future of her career. Drescher was a guest on Wednesday’s episode of Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, where she discussed the one genre she likely will not be returning to. “Well, I don’t see myself doing another sitcom,” she told fellow sitcom alum Danson as he replied, “Nor I — at least the three-camera live. That takes a lot.” The Marty Supreme actor starred on the CBS sitcom from 1993 through 1999, playing nanny Fran Fine who is hired to care for the three children of a wealthy Broadway producer. When explaining why she did not want to be in another sitcom, Drescher said, “You know, it’s just the idea of going into the soundstage every day. Speaking on Ted Danson’s ‘Where …

New Christian artists push genre boundaries with rap, Afrobeats and R&B

New Christian artists push genre boundaries with rap, Afrobeats and R&B

Published by Sam Flores

A new wave of artists is transcending traditional notions of Christian music, drawing young global audiences to faith-based rap, Afrobeats and R&B. Often boosted by social media, many of them got their start with independent labels or by uploading self-made songs to streaming platforms. Now, bigger labels and streaming services are catching on. People are looking for “something soul-feeding, something forward-looking, positive,” said James “Trig” Rosseau Sr., CEO of Holy Culture Radio. “They find a sonic coziness, but then a message that is feeding that need.” Interest in the music has proliferated since 2022, said representatives at Spotify and Amazon Music. However, breaking into the mainstream has been challenging for this group of mostly Black and/or African artists who are making music that can’t always be defined and that hasn’t been well-represented in the Christian music industry. “Over the last two years, there’s something happening momentum-wise, and it still feels underground, but now it’s starting to get the visibility that it’s deserving,” said Angela Jollivette, who previously oversaw the Grammy Awards’ Gospel/Contemporary Christian categories and …

Gaming’s new coming-of-age genre embraces ‘millennial cringe’ | Games

Gaming’s new coming-of-age genre embraces ‘millennial cringe’ | Games

Published by Sam Flores

I’ve noticed an interesting micro-trend emerging in the last few years: millennial nostalgia games. Not just ones that adopt the aesthetic of Y2K gaming – think Crow Country or Fear the Spotlight’s deliberately retro PS1-style fuzzy polygons – but semi-autobiographical games specifically about the millennial experience. I’ve played three in the past year. Despelote is set in 2002 in Ecuador and is played through the eyes of a football-obsessed eight-year-old. The award-winning Consume Me is about being a teen girl battling disordered eating in the 00s. And this week I played a point-and-click adventure game about being a college student in the early 2000s. Perfect Tides: Station to Station is set in New York in 2003 – a year that is the epitome of nostalgia for the micro-generation that grew up without the internet but came of age online. It was before Facebook, before the smartphone, but firmly during the era of late-night forum browsing and instant-messenger conversations. The internet wasn’t yet a vector for mass communication, but it could still bring you together with …

Emilia Clarke Is Over the Fantasy Genre Following ‘Game of Thrones’

Emilia Clarke Is Over the Fantasy Genre Following ‘Game of Thrones’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Emilia Clarke definitely wants to expand beyond the fantasy genre and dragons. The actress, best known for portraying Daenerys Targaryen, aka the Mother of Dragons, on HBO’s Game of Thrones, recently told The New York Times that she would prefer to never be seen with the fictional creature again. “You’re highly unlikely to see me get on a dragon, or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again,” she asserted. The HBO show took up nearly a decade of Clarke’s life, running for eight seasons, from 2011 to 2019. The role also earned the actress four Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Daenerys. While Clarke is now excited to be starring in Peacock’s espionage show Ponies, she admitted that signing on for another TV show after Game of Thrones was still daunting. Especially since she’s been focusing on film roles for the last few years. “I was definitely, like… a lead in a TV show? I know what that commitment feels like,” she told the Times. But Clarke eventually was able to go …

Will K-pop earn its first Grammy in 2026? Experts explain how the genre has hit the mainstream

Will K-pop earn its first Grammy in 2026? Experts explain how the genre has hit the mainstream

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This K-pop, an inextricable force in global pop culture, has long been under-celebrated at institutions like the Grammys, where artists have performed but never taken home a trophy. This could change at the award show next month, as songs by K-pop or K-pop-adjacent artists have received nominations in the prestigious ‘big four’ categories for the first time. Rosé, best known as one-fourth of the juggernaut girl group Blackpink, is the first K-pop artist to ever receive a nomination in the Record of the Year field for APT., her megahit with Grammy favourite Bruno Mars. The Song of the Year category also features K-pop nominees for the first time. APT. will go head-to-head with the fictional girl group HUNTR/X’s Golden, performed by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami from the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. And the girl group Katseye, the brainchild of HYBE – the …