Dustin Lance Black on the Education and Entertainment in ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’

Welcome to the 167th episode of TV’s Top 5, The Hollywood Reporter’s TV podcast.

Every week, hosts Lesley Goldberg (West Coast TV editor) and Daniel Fienberg (chief TV critic) break down the latest TV news with context from the business and critical sides, welcome showrunners, executives and other guests, and provide a critical guide of what to watch (or skip, as the case may be).

Here’s how this week’s episode plays out:

1. Headlines
Pete Davidson, Danielle Deadwyler, Blue Bloods and an ouster on American Gigolo and more lead the week in headlines as we break it all down.

2. WTF with… TBS and TNT
Stop us if you’ve heard this before but TNT and TBS are no longer allocating resources to scripted originals. The Last O.G.’s cancellation leaves only a handful of originals on TBS, with Snowpiercer’s future undecided at TNT. It’s not surprising if you take a look at the current television landscape.

3. Another Walking Dead bombshell
The planned Carol and Daryl Walking Dead spinoff will now just focus on Daryl after star Melissa McBride declined to participate after the shoot was set for Europe. We discuss.

4. Showrunner Spotlight
Oscar-winning Milk writer Dustin Lance Black joins the show this week to discuss his FX limited series Under the Banner of Heaven. Black, who is openly gay and Mormon, opens up about the 10-year road to the screen for the project that originally started as a feature at Warners. “Unless you believe we have reached the perfection of society, this is what we should be doing. If you have lived experience with injustice, you have an obligation to shine a light on it and to crack it open,” he says in the interview. Black details the painstaking amount of research and interviews he did to tell the story and how the larger canvas allowed him to educate as well as entertain with the series. “I hope the church looks into its soul and thinks about what it has done and the great harm that exists when we teach kids that God is a misogynist.”

5. Critic’s Corner
As usual, every episode ends with Dan offering his reviews of what to watch in the week ahead. In this episode, he reviews The Offer on Paramount+, FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven, Apple’s Shining Girls and the final season of Netflix’s Ozark, among others.

Hear it all now on TV’s Top 5. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to never miss an episode. (Reviews welcome!) You can also email us with any topics or Mailbag questions you’d like addressed in future episodes at [email protected].