On Immigration

When President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown began, PBS News Hour did what it does best, sending reporters to the scenes where news was happening, from raids to protests to press conferences. The organization’s ongoing coverage, Immigration Crackdown, also included deeper dives into the history of immigration policy in the United States and scrupulously documented the views of not only immigrants under scrutiny, but also the Trump administration and its supporters. Meanwhile, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution took an interactive approach to its local Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps, bringing viewers inside the operations through affectingly intimate social video and body-cam footage. The assembled series, ICE Sweeps Georgia, was viewed 2.8 million times—coincidentally, the same year the paper published its final print edition after 157 years. And finally, in HBO Max’s Critical Incident: Death at the Border, we learn about wrongdoing inside the U.S. Border Patrol, starting with the in-custody death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas and exposing a wider culture of violence and impunity within the agency. Through shocking eyewitness footage and leaked internal documents, the film reveals the presence of secret teams created to shield agents from accountability, leading to multiple congressional investigations and underscoring the pressing need for oversight and reform in this influential law enforcement body.

Explore More on Peabody’s Website: Immigration Crackdown, ICE Sweeps Georgia and Critical Incident: Death at the Border

On Incarceration

In “The Strike,” PBS’s Independent Lens documents a 2013 hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners against solitary confinement in the super-max prison Pelican Bay. The film spotlights the strikers’ personal stories and, through interviews with incarcerated people and prison officials, looks at the effects of solitary confinement. HBO Documentary Films focused on a broader pattern of abuse in The Alabama Solution, which came about when, In 2019, filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited an Alabama prison for a sanctioned filming of a religious revival, but inmates off-camera revealed the brutal conditions and corruption they faced daily. Over the following years, incarcerated men risked their lives to provide Jarecki and Kaufman with stealth video recordings of the dire realities in Alabama prisons—ranging from drug overdoses and beatings to suicides—ultimately leading to legislative hearings aimed at reforming these conditions.

Explore More on Peabody’s Website: The Strike and The Alabama Solution

On Natural Disaster

The National Geographic documentary series Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time from 2025 takes a retrospective look at the disaster, focusing on the experiences of Black communities in New Orleans during and after the storm, prioritizing personal stories over sensationalized media portrayals. It sheds light on systemic inequalities and government failures, illustrating how the storm worsened existing social injustices while offering local voices a platform to reclaim their narratives and share their resilience, grief, and wisdom for future generations.

Explore More on Peabody’s Website: Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time

On Policing

Plans to improve the relationship between the police and the Black community in Louisville, Kentucky, collapsed with the fatal 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home, which became a national flashpoint. Louisville Public Media investigated what went wrong in 2021, during season 2 of its podcast Dig. Three years later, ABC15 Arizona produced a 32-part investigative project, “Policing Phoenix,” to break down a U.S. Department of Justice report—itself a product of the news station’s previous reporting—that showed systemic discrimination, excess use of force, and civil rights violations by the city’s police department.

Explore More on Peabody’s Website: Dig:The Model City and Policing Phoenix

Andrew Jarecki’s Peabody Acceptance for ‘The Alabama Solution’

“The truth is that the condition of people in prison in the United States is worse than you can imagine, and we don’t hear about it. The reason we don’t hear about it is that, even though we lock up more of our citizens than any democratic country at a cost of $116 billion a year, journalists like us, and many people in this room, are routinely denied access to U.S. prisons. So those of you who’ve been able to see The Alabama Solution were able to see inside because incredibly brave incarcerated men risked their lives, risked everything, risked bodily harm, to help us.”

Where to Watch: PeabodyAwards.com

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‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 Trailer

Dive Deeper

Starred Review: Alienating, awkward, anxiety-inducing: why ‘The Rehearsal’ is TV’s most fascinating show

“What do couples counseling, a reality-singing competition, three cloned Yorkies, the content moderation of Paramount+ Germany and aviation safety all have in common?” Adrian Horton writes for The Guardian. “Virtually nothing, except the interest of television mastermind Nathan Fielder, who braids such disparate concepts together in the galaxy-brained second season of The Rehearsal.”

Where to Read: The Guardian

Further Listening: What It Was Like to Win ‘Wings of Voice’ on Nathan Fielder’s ‘The Rehearsal’

Decoding TV interviews Isabella Henao, who won Wings of Voice, the singing competition within The Rehearsal season 2, offering interesting insider perspective on one of the series’ many interrelated layers of “reality.” “Never once were we made a joke of,” Henao says, noting that there were several legitimate rounds of competition, performances, and meticulous costume fittings. “Even on the show, Wings of Voice wasn’t a joke.”

Where to Listen: YouTube

Further Viewing: ‘Nathan for You’

In this progenitor to The Rehearsal, which ran from 2013 to 2017, Fielder advises small businesses, suggesting outrageous solutions in a parody of management consultants and aggressive consumer advocacy segments on local news. As in The Rehearsal, some of the humor derives from Fielder’s deadpan awkwardness and his subjects’ willingness to go along with almost anything on camera. His escapades include trying to boost the popularity of a petting zoo by making one of its pigs into a (real) celebrity, opening a (totally real) coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks, and launching a winter clothing brand called Summit Ice dedicated to Holocaust education. (The latter shows up as the subject of a season 2 Rehearsal episode after its removal from Paramount+ in Germany.)

Where to Watch: HBO Max

Fielder’s Peabody Conversation about ‘The Rehearsal’

“Sometimes when you create an environment that’s fake but it feels identical to a real space, I’ve experienced it at times where I’ll actually forget that I’m in the fake environment … That mix of something feeling real but also knowing it’s safe because it’s not maybe allows you to explore different parts of yourself that you wouldn’t.”

Where to Watch: PeabodyAwards.com

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‘Come See Me in the Good Light’

In this documentary, director Ryan White tells the story of poet and activist Andrea Gibson, from their struggle with sexual and gender identity to their marriage to wife Megan Falley and their terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2021. White’s cameras follow Gibson and Falley at their home in Colorado throughout 2024 as Gibson undergoes cancer treatment and care before her death in 2025. The film celebrates Gibson’s poetry as well as the couple’s humor, love, joy, and warmth in their waning time together.

Where to Watch: Apple TV
Explore More Come See Me In The Good Light on Peabody’s Website

‘Dying for Sex’

Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock adapted the real-life story of Molly Kochan, whose podcast documented her quest to face a terminal cancer diagnosis in her early 40s by leaving her husband and going on a sexual odyssey before her death. The TV series features Michelle Williams as Molly and Jenny Slate as her best friend and caretaker, Nikki, in stellar performances, with unflinching—and often very funny—depictions of Molly’s myriad sexual encounters. It also includes Molly’s increasingly assertive interactions with her doctor, Nikki’s frustrating attempts to navigate Molly’s health care, a touching relationship with a palliative care manager, and a breathtaking depiction of Molly’s death. It’s unlike anything ever seen on television before.

Where to Watch: Disney+
Explore More Dying for Sex on Peabody’s Website

‘Hacks’

The masterful comedy about an aging female comedian, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), and her Gen Z writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), ended earlier this year with Deborah facing her mortality. The final season begins with the accidental reporting of her death, which gives her a glimpse at what her obituaries might say—and prompts her to change her narrative by planning to sell out Madison Square Garden. But after a grim cancer diagnosis, her impending death turns quite real, and she decides to go to Switzerland for a medically aided death on her own terms. The final twist is worth watching.

Where to Watch: HBO Max
Explore More Hacks on Peabody’s Website

‘The Pitt’

HBO Max’s breakout medical hit is known for its relentless pace and realistic portrait of an overtaxed emergency room, but it has repeatedly taken the time to craft careful storylines around end-of-life care. In the first season, the adult children of a patient with Alzheimer’s, who comes in with pneumonia and sepsis, decide to override his advance directive and do-not-resuscitate order. Harried attending Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) explains clearly and patiently that they are causing their father further pain, emphasizing that extending life is not always the best option. The second season features a young mother, Roxie Hamler (Brittany Allen), choosing how she wants to die—at home or in the hospital, with painkillers or not—despite what her family or doctors may say.

Where to Watch: HBO Max
Explore More The Pitt on Peabody’s Website

Further Listening: ‘Dying for Sex’ on ‘We Disrupt This Broadcast’

On this episode of our podcast collaboration with the Center for Media and Social Impact, Dying for Sex co-creators Meriwether and Rosenstock talk about cancer, caregiving, and women’s sexuality, while sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski weighs in on the significance of Molly’s story.

Where to Listen: PeabodyAwards.com

Ryan White’s Peabody Acceptance for ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’

“In an extraordinary act of vulnerability they both allowed us to capture our final year together,” White said of Gibson and Falley. “Andrea spent that year working on a poem about mortality that they called ‘Death Anthem,’ and they eventually retitled it ‘Life Anthem.'”

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A Moment from ‘Heated Rivalry’

‘Heated Rivalry’

Jacob Tierney adapted Rachel Reid‘s bestselling book series into a crowd-pleaser for the ages that has given new meaning to “I’m coming to the cottage.” While a sexy, gay hockey romance starring two unknown actors did not sound like a sure thing for American television, it turned out to be just what we all needed. It’s also quietly subversive, spotlighting not only a queer relationship that doesn’t end in tragedy, but also sex as genuine connection, men working through their feelings together, sports’ inherent homophobia, the pressures of fame, and autism as a fact of Shane’s character. Its impact is likely to reverberate through programming executives’ choices for years to come.

Where to Watch: HBO Max
Explore More Heated Rivalry on Peabody’s Website

‘Mr. Loverman’

This British series, based on a novel by Bernardine Evaristo, stars the suave and dapper Lennie James as Barrington Jedidiah Walker, an Antiguan-British man whose marriage ends with the revelation that he’s been having a decades-long affair with his male best friend. Adapted for television by Nathaniel Price, Mr. Loverman explores the complications of coming out as a septuagenarian and finding true self-acceptance late in life in a story that is at turns both moving and funny.

Where to Watch: Amazon

‘Invisible Boys’

Nicholas Verso‘s adaptation of Holden Sheppard‘s novel follows a group of gay teens in Western Australia as they struggle with their identities against the backdrop of the 2017 national postal survey on same-sex marriage legalization. It begins with the outing of the rebellious Charlie (Joseph Zada) on social media after an encounter with a married man. And as the boys band together to deal with social pressures, we learn about Zeke (Aydan Calafiore), who is from a strict Sicilian Catholic family; Hammer (Zach Blampied), a popular soccer player; and Matt (Joe Klocek), a responsible farm boy. The result is gritty, messy, real, and raw.

Where to Watch: Stan

Francois Arnaud’s Peabody Acceptance for ‘Heated Rivalry’

Actor Francois Arnaud, who plays seasoned hockey player Scott Hunter, said, “The heart of the show is built on celebration and happiness and love. And because of that it isn’t surprising to us at all that audiences worldwide have responded passionately to it and have embraced the series. People crave that warmth and they see themselves reflected in it.”

Where to Watch: Peabody Awards on YouTube

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