Who is popular today?

In this week’s newsletter: The Netflix doc pulls its punches at a vital moment, while Oprah has canned her series entirely. Is this all we can hope for in the age of star signoff?• Don’t get the Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up to get the full article hereA couple of weeks ago, I powered through Mr McMahon, the six-part Netflix profile of the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO. If you watch it you’ll soon see why, whether you’re a wrestling fan or not: Mr McMahon has that same propulsive quality as The Last Dance, managing to illuminate a world that plenty will only have the most cursory knowledge of. Vince McMahon (pictured above with Hulk Hogan) built an empire on salacious spectacle, with a fictionalised “bad guy” version of his own mogul persona (Mr McMahon) at the centre of it all. The series attempts to find the line between McMahon and his in-ring alter ego, featuring extensive interviews with the man himself and just about anybody of note who has ever worked alongside or against him, from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Bret “The Hitman” Hart.Still, as engrossing as Mr McMahon is, it isn’t perfect. In fact, it has a near-disastrous flaw (spoilers of a sort ahead): right at the series’ climactic point, midway through its sixth and final episode, the show addresses the allegations of sexual assault and trafficking against McMahon that came to light during the series’ making and that have prompted a federal investigation into his conduct. (McMahon denies the allegations.) By this point, McMahon has long since vacated the interviewee’s chair: he withdrew from the documentary after the first tranche of misconduct allegations emerged in 2022. Absent too are the many wrestlers who had previously lauded their former boss (the WWE had ceased being a co-producer somewhere along the way). So the series muddles on, with a handful of non-wrestler talking heads and an awful lot of news report snippets doing the heavy lifting. It’s an unsatisfying end to say the least. Continue reading...