Sunday Special: TV's Big Night

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 77th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony is tonight, honoring the best television shows released between June 2024 and May 2025. But before the festivities begin, Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, would like to have a TV celebration of his own. On today’s episode, he gathers Jason Zinoman, a critic at large for The Times, and Alexis Soloski, a culture reporter for The Times, to “channel surf” through some of their favorite shows of the past year.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, everyone, to the Daily Sunday special.
0:05.7	I'm Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, and every week here you'll
0:10.2	find us talking about movies, books, the arts, just all sorts of culture.
0:16.1	Today, we're talking about TV.
0:19.0	The Emmy Awards are tonight, the biggest night in television,
0:22.3	marking the best shows released between June 1st, 2024, and May 31st of 2025. They've made it
0:29.6	very simple. It's not at all confusing. Here in New York, a group of us has gathered to talk about
0:35.6	some of the nominated shows that just keep rattling
0:38.5	around in our brains. And we're going to be talking about some of those shows in depth.
0:43.1	So if we get to something that you don't want spoiled, you're in the middle of the season,
0:47.5	just jump ahead a few minutes, and all will be well. Here with me is Jason Zidiman,
0:53.1	a critic who writes about comedy for The Times. Hello,
0:56.4	Jason. Hello, good to be here. And also Alexis Siloski, one of our culture reporters. Hello, Alexis.
1:01.8	Hi. Hi. All right, this is, there's a conceit here. I'm hoping that you can like, come along
1:09.7	with me. You have to use your imagination. So picture the three of us sitting together on a sofa. It's really relaxed, potato chips and soda. And I'm just flipping through channels. We're looking at TV. I'm going to stop on a show. And then we're going to talk about that show for a few minutes. And then we're going to change the channel. TV roulette. Yes. Can you imagine that?
1:27.9	Yes.
1:28.9	This is audio.
1:29.8	It's the theater of the mind.
1:30.2	Yes.
1:31.8	I'm on board.
1:32.3	Excellent.
1:32.8	Okay. So I am going to pick up this not at all metaphorical remote.
	...

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