But for me, there’s a lot more exciting programming where nostalgia is kept at arm’s reach. In fact, a slew of contemporary series set in the ‘90s — only one of which, incidentally, features a white male protagonist — have proved much better at scratching that scrunchies-and-flannel itch while recalling the Clinton era for what it was. Netflix’s teen dramedy Everything Sucks! initially feels like a ride in a time machine — no other show captures the clothes and lingo of the ’90s so precisely — but the show features a budding black filmmaker and a teenage lesbian as its dual protagonists. That’s also true of the most recent season of American Crime Story, which explores in part the anti-gay sentiment that enabled Gianni Versace killer Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree. The previous season of ACS, The People v. O.J. Simpson, similarly used hindsight to illuminate how race and gender dynamics warped “the trial of the century.” And the 2015 HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, about an anti-desegregation effort in Yonkers and set between 1987 and 1994, evinces no nostalgia at all, and is all the more powerful for its firm unsentimentality.
Critic’s Notebook: The Blinding Whiteness of Nostalgia TV
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