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Romance has existed in literature for centuries, and in mythology for millennia before that, but the twentieth century produced some of the genre’s most enduring masterpieces. The greatest romance books serve up dramatic plots while also exploring deeper themes, like identity, sacrifice, obsession, and loss.
With that in mind, this list attempts to rank some of the finest of them, from intimate character studies to epic historical sagas. Whether tragic, hopeful, or bittersweet, these novels demonstrate love’s power to shape (and upend) entire lives.
“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life.” The Thorn Birds is a sweeping family saga that spans decades and multiple generations, following the Cleary family as they build a life in the harsh Australian outback. However, the heart of the novel is the relationship between Meggie Cleary and Father Ralph de Bricassart. Their connection is profound and passionate but seemingly impossible, constrained by Ralph’s ambition within the Catholic Church and the demands of faith.
In other words, theirs is a doomed love, one shaped by sacrifice, missed opportunities, and painful choices, and the book is honest about the challenges they face. Unlike most romances, which tend to be optimistic to the point of fantasy, The Thorn Birds is realistic. It acknowledges that love alone cannot always overcome circumstance. Nevertheless, the story resonated, turning the novel into a huge bestseller.
“For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary.” Diana Gabaldon‘s magnum opus blends historical fiction with fantasy, adventure, and intense romance. In it, former World War II nurse Claire Randall is mysteriously transported from 1945 to eighteenth-century Scotland. Stranded in a dangerous and unfamiliar world, she becomes involved with Highland warrior Jamie Fraser. This juicy premise sets the stage for an epic tale of love, war, and political intrigue.
The setting is rich and well-researched, really immersing the reader in the historical details. Claire and Jamie must navigate real issues of the time, like clan rivalries and the looming Jacobite conflicts. That said, the book’s strongest feature is probably the characterization. Claire is an unusually independent and capable person, especially by the standards of the genre. Jamie, meanwhile, is noble and charismatic without feeling idealized.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Most people will be more familiar with Hitchcock‘s movie version, but the original Rebecca novel is a masterpiece in its own right. It follows a young unnamed woman who marries the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter and moves to his estate, Manderley. There, she finds herself living in the shadow of Maxim’s first wife, the seemingly perfect Rebecca. What follows is a romance suffused with Gothic mystery and psychological tension.
The atmosphere is unforgettable. Manderley feels almost alive, filled with memories, secrets, and lingering traces of Rebecca’s presence. A sense of dread hangs over it all. The romance is therefore not simply about falling in love, but about insecurity, jealousy, identity, and the difficulty of truly knowing another person. As the protagonist gradually uncovers the truth about Rebecca, both she and the reader are forced to reassess everything they thought they knew about what devotion really means.
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes.” Set during the final days of World War II, The English Patient follows several characters living in a ruined Italian villa, including a badly burned man known only as the English patient. As his memories gradually emerge, readers learn the story of his passionate affair with the married Katharine Clifton… and the tragedy that followed. Their relationship has all the hallmarks of a classic romance: longing, secrecy, intensity.
However, the novel stands above most stories in this genre thanks to the author’s brilliant prose. Michael Ondaatje’s writing is poetic, filled with evocative imagery and beautifully observed details. The desert landscapes and bombed-out villas are rendered with such richness that they become inseparable from the characters’ emotional lives. The result is a book that feels almost dreamlike and immersive, rewarding careful reading.
“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.” This one served as the basis for David Lean‘s legendary epic. Doctor Zhivago tells the story of Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet whose life is transformed by the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Amid political upheaval and social chaos, Yuri falls deeply in love with Lara, a woman whose fate repeatedly intersects. The book is an interesting fusion of historical scope and personal focus, serving as a snapshot of a whole country while also going deep into the psychology of the protagonists.
Doctor Zhivago is also deeply philosophical. Writer Boris Pasternak uses the characters to explore themes of freedom, morality, creativity, and individual identity. Many of these reflections come from Yuri himself, who makes for a deeply perceptive main character. Ultimately, the book earned its author the Nobel Prize for Literature, much to the Soviet Union’s chagrin.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” This Hemingway classic centers on Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian Army during World War I. Amid the chaos and brutality, he falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Their relationship becomes a refuge from the destruction surrounding them, and the author’s stripped-down approach ensures that it feels intimate and honest.
Hemingway’s famously spare, understated writing conveys enormous emotional depth without sentimentality. Rather than relying on melodrama, he allows simple conversations and quiet moments to carry weight. The lovers are constantly confronted by forces beyond their control, giving everything a sense of impermanence and vulnerability. Through this, A Farewell to Arms explores timeless ideas: love as a sanctuary, the inevitability of loss, and the struggle to find meaning in an indifferent world.
“After all, tomorrow is another day.” Yet another classic that was turned into an equally impressive movie. Gone with the Wind introduces one of literature’s most vivid heroines in the determined, ambitious, and sometimes selfish Scarlett O’Hara, who struggles to survive the American Civil War and its aftermath. Once again, the sweep of the story is epic, but the centre of gravity is the protagonist’s complicated relationship with Rhett Butler.
Their romance is compelling precisely because it’s so combustible. Scarlett and Rhett are passionate, stubborn, proud, and deeply flawed individuals whose desires and ambitions frequently place them at odds with one another. Their relationship unfolds over many years, filled with misunderstandings and missed opportunities, mirroring the social turbulence around them. In the end, while aspects of the book are controversial today, its influence on romantic fiction is undeniable.
“A story has no beginning or end.” This one was written by the influential British journalist and novelist Graham Greene, and it ranks among his very best work. The End of the Affair begins after the collapse of a passionate affair between writer Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles, the wife of a British civil servant. Unable to move on, Maurice becomes obsessed with understanding why Sarah ended their relationship. His search for answers uncovers secrets involving faith, sacrifice, jealousy, and love.
While the plot itself seems simple, Greene handles it with unusual psychological depth. Maurice is a compelling narrator because he’s so three-dimensional, simultaneously intelligent, witty, bitter, and painfully self-aware. His jealousy drives much of the story, and, through him, Greene fearlessly examines the darker aspects of romance, including possessiveness, resentment, and despair. Here, love can be inspiring or endlessly destructive.
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” One of Gabriel García Márquez‘s masterworks, Love in the Time of Cholera tells the extraordinary story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, whose youthful romance is interrupted when Fermina chooses to marry another man. Refusing to abandon his feelings, Florentino spends more than fifty years waiting for another chance to be with the woman he loves.
Márquez spins this setup into a moving slice of magical realism, buoyed along by his rich prose. The emotions are heightened, and there’s a kind of grandeur to even the everyday moments. It makes for a beautiful examination of love’s contradictions. All this culminates in a brilliant final chapter, ranking among the very best in all of fiction.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby is like a talisman of the 1920s, preserving that decade in amber, while also serving up one of the most influential love stories ever. Narrated by Nick Carraway, the novel centers on the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsessive devotion to Daisy Buchanan, a woman he has loved for years despite her marriage to another man. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy to comment on idealism, longing, memory, and the American Dream.
Gatsby’s romance is not simply about winning back a lost love. It becomes a symbol of his desire to recapture an imagined past and achieve an impossible ideal. This makes his devotion admirable in some respects and deeply tragic, even repulsive in others. Here, romance gets entangled with wealth, status, nostalgia, and illusion. A classic.
Years before the BBC struck gold with the near-perfect crime series Broadchurch, there was another realistic drama that cut deep into the characters’ emotions. In 2007, the BBC, in conjunction with HBO, released a harrowing five-part series that had all the makings of a crime classic. Five Days follows five non-consecutive days of a crime that baffles police.
Hugh Bonneville, David Oyelowo, Rory Kinnear, and Penelope Wilton are just a few of the performers in the drama who went on to have impressive careers. Despite its grounded performances and gripping drama, Five Days is not a story that endured in the pop culture zeitgeist. Nevertheless, the grim telling of a classic missing person’s story deserves a second look.
Crime dramas may seem like a dime a dozen, but there is something about English mysteries that cuts to the bone. Five Days isn’t just a typical case of a missing mother but an exploration of some of the darkest emotional experiences. The heartwrenching narrative follows a loving mother, Leanne (Christine Tremarco), who disappears while out with her seven and five-year-old children, Ethan (Lee Massey) and Rosie (Tyler Anthony).
The opening sequence is particularly brutal as it shows the disappearance from the perspective of the children. The audience is thrown into the terrified minds of two kids who feel the fear of seeing their mother one minute and disappearing the next. Abandoned at the side of a highway, Rosie and Ethan take their dog and walk by themselves to civilization. The story gets even more grueling when they themselves are kidnapped in a seemingly unrelated occurrence.
Five Days doesn’t shy away from these difficult subjects in a series that marries storylines of the family affected, the press, and the detectives. Like any good crime drama, this story isn’t just about the mystery at play but how these events unravel the characters. Shows like Broadchurch and Five Days work because these crimes are always personal.
Episode by episode, tensions increase as the crime escalates from a missing person to a murder. The children are thankfully found relatively fine, but Leanne’s death raises the stakes and hypes up the questions that surround the influx of clues. Five Days uses its unique structure and captivating performances to bring home a story that, in any other hands, could have been derivative.
Crime stories often use the mystique of the cheating husband or family secrets to set up twists. Even with these elements in rotation, Five Days sets up red herrings that drive the narrative forward. The five episodes of the series are the perfect length to tell a story with twists and turns and leave audiences guessing until the final moments.
The critical success of the mystery was undeniable, leading to a spin-off series following Hugh Bonneville’s character, DSI Iain Barclay, in the show Hunter, which aired on BBC One. Bonneville may be most recognizable for his work in Downton Abbey, but his early performance in the crime drama should not be missed. Viewers can experience all five episodes streaming on HBO Max.
2007 – 2010-00-00
BBC One
Otto Bathurst, Toby Haynes, Simon Curtis, Peter Hoar
Gwyneth Hughes
Chris Fountain
PC Paul Tait
Edward Woodward
Vic Marsham
Pop star Taylor Swift is officially the richest female musician in history! Fueled by the success of The Eras Tour and her highly publicized master re-recordings, Swift has bypassed Rihanna and Beyoncé to become the richest female singer. She entered the billionaire club in late 2023 and effectively doubled her net worth by 2026, thanks in part to her world-breaking tour and massive music catalog.

At only 36 years old, Swift is worth $2 billion dollars, according to Forbes. The publication called her “one of the most commercially successful songwriters of all time” and described how she changed the music industry in 2020 when she started to re-record some of her old albums.
“As a result, her royalties flowed straight into her pocket, and she inspired fellow artists to take ownership of their music,” the blurb continued. “In 2024, Swift reached billionaire status thanks to The Eras Tour, which became the highest-grossing concert tour in history with revenue of $2.2 billion.”
Swift then used the money generated from her tour to buy back her original masters for approximately $360 million.

According to Forbes, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, 44, became the fifth musician to reach billionaire status last December, thanks in part to her country music album, Cowboy Carter. It won Album of the Year at the Grammys and made her the first Black woman to win for Best Country Album. The Cowboy Carter Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of 2025, earning about $450 million in ticket and merchandise sales. She followed it up with her Renaissance World Tour, which grossed nearly $600 million in 2023.
Unfortunately, neither of them is worth as much as Jay-Z. According to his Forbes profile, he is worth $2.8 billion due to his lucrative liquor businesses. He is also the chairman and cofounder of the entertainment company Roc Nation and has stakes in Tidal, the music streamer, and the 40/40 Club sports bar. His other assets include a fine art collection, his music catalog, and various shares in companies like Block and Uber.
It’s possible that Swift’s net worth can increase following the release of her new song, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which was featured on the “Toy Story 5” soundtrack. She sang the song live for the first time at the “Toy Story 5” premiere in Los Angeles on June 9. She also took the stage to perform a surprise duet of “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” with Randy Newman.
Swift had nothing but praise for the legendary composer in an exclusive interview for the ABC special “Toy Story 30 Years and Beyond — A Special Edition of 20/20.”‘
“There’s country, pop, folk, rock, Randy Newman,” Swift said. “He has his own signature syncopations to things, and the chords that he would reach for are so different than what anybody else would think to go for.”
“He’s got a way of just writing such intricate, yet beautifully pure, simple lyrics about how you feel that get to the heart of it. They’re so complex,” she continued. “They’re exactly how you feel, and they’re so universal.”
She went on to say that she had Newman’s blessing as she entered the “Toy Story” world.
“Knowing I had his blessing to enter this world was really special for me and kind of helped ease what might have been a stressful situation, if I didn’t know that he was good with it,” she said, noting that he has been “amazing and supportive and encouraging” of her new song.

2026 is another big year for Swift. In addition to the release of her new song, many fans anticipate that she will get married this year. She has been engaged to NFL star Travis Kelce since August 26, 2025.
She broke the news on Instagram, with a post captioned, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
Although many fans initially suspected she would marry in Rhode Island, where she owns a home, recent reports suggest she will marry at Madison Square Garden later this year.
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Zoey Deutch has a knack for making even the trendiest accessories feel timeless. The actress recently stepped out carrying a sleek black handbag that instantly elevated her outfit. Her bag choice proves that a structured bag can transform even the simplest summer look, and I found a similar version for just $29 on Amazon.
On June 15, 2026, Deutch was photographed in New York City wearing a silky white satin dress and strappy heels while carrying a retro-inspired bowling bag. Her exact accessory is a $3,050 Alaïa design, but the Molodo Retro Shoulder Bag delivers a remarkably similar look for a fraction of the price. The ‘bowling bag’ trend has been quietly building momentum, and Deutch just gave it a celebrity stamp of approval.
Get the Molodo Retro Shoulder Bag for $25 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate at the date of publication, June 23, 2026, but are subject to change.
What makes the silhouette so appealing is its versatility. The rounded shape feels vintage, while the structured design makes it look polished and modern. It’s the kind of handbag that works just as well with a sundress as it does with jeans and a blazer.
The Molodo bag is made from PU leather and features the same sleek, curved silhouette that made Deutch’s designer version stand out. Despite its compact appearance, the purse has plenty of room for everyday essentials, including a phone, wallet, keys and makeup.
If black isn’t your style, this pick also comes in cream, brown, burgundy and several other colors. The color range makes it easy to find a version that works with the rest of your wardrobe.
A great handbag does most of the heavy lifting in an outfit, and this one delivers the same vintage-inspired energy as Deutch’s designer pick without the four-figure price tag. At just $25, it’s an easy way to try the bowling bag trend before it inevitably takes over summer.

Obsessed with Deutch’s vintage-inspired bag? Check out more trendy Amazon finds below.
Shop more black bowling bag purses that we love:
Not your style? Explore more bowling bag purses here and don’t forget to check out all of Amazon’s Daily Deals for more great finds!
Melissa Gilbert is saying goodbye to eight years of memories in her New York City apartment.
“So long perfect little one bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. The last eight years here have been so special,” Gilbert, 62, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, June 22. “A lot of amazing work was done in and around this city. So many theaters and soundstages. So many wonderful dinners with friends and nights out on the town.”
While Gilbert didn’t provide a specific reason for the move, she expressed hopes of a return in the future.
“I promise we will be back, it’s just that right now…..well….you know,” she wrote. “Excited to live in our wonderful home upstate full time for a good long while. #nyc #goodbye #alwaysanasventure #happytrails #alwaysintherightplaceattherighttime.”
The Little House on the Prairie actress’ post comes as her husband, Timothy Busfield, continues to fight allegations in a child sex abuse case.
Busfield, 69, was first indicted on child sex abuse charges by a grand jury in New Mexico on February 6. The actor was specifically indicted on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child, the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s office said in a press release obtained by Us Weekly at the time.
Busfield — who has pleaded not guilty to the charges — recently filed a motion to quash the grand jury indictment.
“Timothy Busfield is innocent. This motion describes egregious prosecutorial misconduct during grand jury proceedings, thereby preventing the jurors from hearing testimony, witnesses and evidence even after repeated requests by the grand jury itself,” Busfield’s civil attorney Stanton “Larry” Stein claimed in a statement to Us earlier this month. “The government repressed and suppressed exculpatory evidence, misstated the law and failed in the most basic due process afforded any person under either Constitutional or State laws designed to protect actual innocence from abuse of government power.”
Gilbert has stood by her husband and called his arrest “the most traumatizing experience of our lives.”
“Our life as we knew it is done,” she said on Good Morning America in April. “We are grieving what we had — all of our plans, all of our dreams, all of our ideas, all of our projects. For Tim, it’s done. He’s canceled. Even if he’s exonerated, he will always be that guy. [He’s] the last person in the world who would hurt a child.”
In her latest social media post, Gilbert shared the things she will miss most about her neighborhood as she says goodbye to a property she fell in love with.
“I’ll miss the walking and our neighborhood, the subway rides, the amazing people I’ve met there and on the streets. This city truly has a pulse,” she explained after packing up U-Haul boxes. “You can feel it in your heart. Goodbye favorite newsstand, bodega, dance studio and laundry. Goodbye shoe repair, dry cleaners, nail salon. Goodbye sweet neighbors whom we love so much. And a very fond ‘farewell and see you soon’ to our favorite city in the world.”
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The singer faces a felony criminal damage to property charge after an abruptly canceled show on May 27.
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated

For a franchise that is known for its progressive messages, Star Trek has always been known for something else: sex appeal. The first pilot episode featured a scantily-clad Orion slave girl; later spinoffs would shamelessly put attractive female characters in skimpy clothing, from the skant of Deanna Troi to the skintight catsuit of Seven of Nine. Eventually, Enterprise one-upped everything that came before with a sexy Vulcan in a skintight suit and a plot contrivance where characters would regularly strip down to their skivvies and massage each other with gel.
While early Trek was insanely popular with women, the franchise has historically been targeted at men. That’s why the above examples predominantly feature sexy ladies wearing as little as possible. However, The Original Series threw the ladies some serious eye candy in “The Naked Time,” an episode in which George Takei’s Sulu ditches his shirt and shows off a seriously buff bod. What most fans don’t realize is how this scene started: with a director demanding that Takei take off his clothes to make sure he’d look good stripping down onscreen!

“The Naked Time” is one of those Star Trek episodes that really shouldn’t work. The plot involves the Enterprise crew getting infected with a weird space virus that makes everyone act drunk. While this is meant to be a dangerous situation (left unchecked, it will get the whole crew killed), the episode is filled with silly situations that are hard to take seriously, including a wonderfully surreal, wonderfully drunk Irish ballad.
Arguably, the most memorable moment from the episode involves George Takei’s Sulu. He inexplicably takes off his shirt and runs around with a sword like a lost member of the Three Musketeers. Because Takei was in such great shape, fans have spent decades fixated on his topless misadventures. Those misadventures were later referenced in Star Trek (2009), which confirmed that even the Kelvinverse Sulu is a master of fencing.
Interestingly, Takei wasn’t originally scripted to run around the Enterprise half-naked. Rather, Sulu was simply written as someone roaming the ship with a sword, fully clothed. Writer John D.T. Black was divided on whether it should be a samurai sword (signaling Sulu’s Japanese heritage) or a fencing blade. He left the decision to Takei, and the actor chose the fencing blade as a way of signifying that in the far future, nobody’s preferences would be restricted by their ethnicity. Takei ended up really taking to the blade: he practiced extensively with it on set, which resulted in a nearly hypnotic performance onscreen.

So, why did he end up stripping down? This was apparently a command decision on the part of director Marc Daniels. He reasoned (correctly, as it turned out) that Sulu’s big fencing scene would have more impact if the character were shirtless, but he didn’t know if the actor had the physique to pull it off.
Accordingly, he visited Takei’s trailer and asked the man to take off his shirt. Daniels liked what he saw and promptly declared that the fencing scene would be shirtless. As for Takei, he was a little nervous about the scene, so he did what most of us would do in his place: he spent the three days before shooting performing as many pushups as humanly possible.

Fortunately, all that hard work paid off, and Takei looked absolutely stunning as he swashbuckled his way across the screen. This became the most iconic moment of a Star Trek episode that was nominated for a Hugo and named by Gene Roddenberry as one of his personal favorites. Later, “The Naked Time” was homaged in the Next Generation episode “The Naked Now,” where Captain Picard’s crew deals with the same space virus (oh, and Data got lucky).
This Original Series episode even put the show on the map, with Leonard Nimoy estimating that his fan mail went from a few dozen letters per week to a few thousand after it aired. As an episode that has entertained audiences for 60 years, “The Naked Time” helped define decades of Star Trek history. However, that might have never happened if a director hadn’t walked into George Takei’s trailer and asked him to strip down!
Netflix has released plenty of new projects this year, but none have shined as bright as War Machine, the epic sci-fi thriller starring Alan Ritchson. Best known for his lead role as Reacher in the hit Prime Video series of the same name, Ritchson proved to be the perfect action star to lead War Machine — the film is among Netflix’s top 10 most-watched titles ever, and the streamer has already confirmed that a sequel is in the early stages of development. Netflix has maintained an edge over other big streaming services like Prime Video due to its commitment to not only releasing fresh new originals but also picking up discarded classics and giving them a new home. Older shows like Dexter and Suits were both in line for revivals after being added to Netflix in recent years, and picking up a larger audience than they ever had while they were on the air.
Netflix has already picked out another series that could be the perfect candidate for a redemption arc, and all episodes of the five-season show are streaming on the platform right now, as of this Monday. The series in question is The Last Ship, the dystopian sci-fi naval thriller led by the late Eric Dane. The show ran for five seasons on TNT between 2014 and 2018, and it even features other notable stars such as Adam Baldwin and Charles Parnell. It’s been only a few days since all five seasons of The Last Ship were added to Netflix, but the show is already climbing streaming charts — it has crept into the Netflix top 10, and it seeks to rise higher in the rankings before it’s said and done.
An official synopsis for The Last Ship, which holds a 69% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows:
“After a devastating global pandemic wipes out most of humanity, the crew of the USS Nathan James remains one of the last functioning military forces on Earth. Led by Captain Tom Chandler, they embark on a perilous mission to develop a cure, confront emerging threats, and help rebuild civilization while navigating war, politics, and survival on a global scale.”
The show has been compared to The Last of Us due to its dystopian nature, but it also shares similarities to Greyhound, the hit Tom Hanks movie on Apple TV. Fans of either project are sure to find The Last Ship as their next streaming obsession, and if it picks up enough steam in the coming months, it could even be in line for a revival.
Check out all five seasons of The Last Ship on Netflix and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the show.
2014 – 2018-00-00
TNT
Paul Holahan, Jack Bender, Peter Weller, Michael Katleman, Bill Roe, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bobby Roth, Brad Turner, Greg Beeman, Jann Turner, Jonathan Mostow, Kenneth Fink, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Nankin, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Tim Matheson, Nelson McCormick, Reza Tabrizi, Anton Cropper, Mairzee Almas
Eric Dane
CO CDR Tom Chandler
Rhona Mitra
Dr. Rachel Scott
Charles Parnell
CMC Jeter
The magical world of spells and potions isn’t always what the children’s books boast. That is the stance that SyFy’s highly underrated dark fantasy series takes during its five seasons of heartwrenching storylines. The Magicians debuted in 2015, adapted from Lev Grossman’s book of the same name. A marriage between Harry Potter and the dark academia genre, the series follows a group of graduate students invited to the magical university of Brakebills.
Viewers came for the magic but stayed for the enduring and sometimes horrifying storylines about adulthood that put a spin on the whimsy of places like Narnia. Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) functions as a proxy for the audience, who is elated to be a magician. He is doused with cold reality, however, when he learns that magic comes with a price, and all the tales he read as a child are more real than they should be.
Who hasn’t wished that they would be spirited away to a magical school to learn spellcasting and witchcraft? The Magicians posits that even in students’ twenties, they could still have such a gift – only this one some may want to return. Quentin and his group of cohorts learn how to bend the laws of reality, but that is only so they can defend the school against an entity known as the Beast.
The first season chronicles the Brakebills’ students’ attempt to power up and fight a creature that no one in the history of magic has been able to defeat. The Beast is the gut-wrenching antithesis to Voldemort, whose origins are not easy viewing. The villains of The Magicians cause real-world consequences as the series depicts harrowing issues such as mental health issues and sexual assault.
This series is truly for the older set, as these adult magicians have adult problems. This dark material is perfect for viewers ready for the next level, but it also contains much-needed levity. In addition to trickster gods and infinite time loops, The Magicians also shows what Narnia would be like if it existed.
The fantasy show’s version of Narnia is Fillory, a place Quentin first perceived as fictional. This turns out to be false when the students learn they can visit the inspiration for the in-show books. However, it isn’t the world full of wonder that Quentin grew up with. This Fillory is full of monsters, torture dungeons, and a declining aristocratic state. The Magicians is perfect from start to finish and pokes fun at the C.S. Lewis series while also exploring mature themes that set the story apart from every other magical school narrative.
SyFy’s five-part series was perhaps too brilliant because it missed the attention of many. Similar to AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, which has a niche audience, The Magicians also uses dark humor and in-depth lore to tell incredible human stories. The show may have premiered over a decade ago, but these intense themes hit harder than ever before. A series truly about reaching adulthood, The Magicians is a must-watch no matter what the era.
2015 – 2020-00-00
Chris Fisher, James L. Conway, Joshua Butler, John Scott, Carol Banker, Scott Smith, Guy Norman Bee, Rebecca Johnson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Meera Menon, amanda tapping, Bill Eagles, Jan Eliasberg, Kate Woods, Shannon Kohli
John McNamara, Henry Alonso Myers, David Reed, Noga Landau, Christina Strain, Leah Fong, Alex Raiman, Elle Lipson, David Reed
Olivia Taylor Dudley
Alice Quinn
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Judith Sheldon was one of five children born to “Ben-Hur” and “Roman Holiday” director William Wyler.
Sydney Sweeney’s date night loungewear is a must-see.
The Euphoria actress, 28, showed off her curves in a burgundy red set while promoting her lingerie brand, Syrn, via Instagram on Friday, June 19. In the clip, Sweeney panned the camera down to give a glimpse at her ensemble.. She playfully blew a kiss to the camera while clad in matching mid-rise underwear, which she wore with her Lowdown camp featuring a scoop neck and thin straps.
For glam, Sweeney donned a full beat, including dewy skin, filled-in eyebrows, winged eyeliner, blushed cheeks and long lashes. Her blonde hair was parted down the middle and styled in big, voluminous curls.
“Date Night with Syd ✨,” the official Syrn account captioned the post. Her fans were quick to praise her in the comments section. “OKEY, SHE’S SO CUTE!💗,” one gushed. Another follower commented, “Gorgeous Syd❣️,” while a third commented, “😮 oh My god 😍.”
Sweeney’s sexy snap comes amid her relationship with Scooter Braun. Earlier this month, the actress gushed over the music producer via Instagram while celebrating his 45th birthday.
“Happiest of birthdays to the man with the biggest heart I know ❤️,” she captioned a photo of herself kissing his cheek.
The duo was first spotted together in Italy before Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s wedding last summer. A source later told Us Weekly that their relationship was getting “very serious.”
In April, the insider added, “They are the real deal. People around them thought that this would be just a fling, but they are committed.”
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