Fresh Air - 'Dune' Director Denis Villeneuve

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Villeneuve remembers watching the 1984 movie version of Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel Dune and thinking, "Someday someone else will do it again" — not realizing he would be that filmmaker. He spoke to Sam Briger about shooting Dune in the desert, depicting sandworm surfing, and his love of silent film. Also, David Bianculli reviews the new CBS murder mystery series, Elsbeth. For sponsor-free episodes of Fresh Air — and exclusive weekly bonus episodes, too — subscribe to Fresh Air+ via Apple Podcasts or at https://plus.npr.org/freshairLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The much-anticipated sci-fi movie Dune Part 2 opens in theaters Friday. Its director, Denis Villeneuve, spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger about making Dune Herbert. He was already a fan of science fiction, but Dune was a huge inspiration for him. Even at an early age, he wanted to make it into a movie. After successes making films like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, he got the chance. His movie Dune Part 1 came out in 2021 to critical and commercial success. Now he's directed Dune Part 2, which comes out on Friday. Dune Part 2 takes place in the distant future, mostly on the harsh desert planet Arrakis, after the feudal house Atreides has been wiped out in a conspiracy between the Galactic Emperor and their enemies the Harkonnens, including the head of Atreides, Duke Leto. But Leto's son,

Paul, and Paul's mother, Jessica, played by Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, escape the attack and are taken in by the indigenous people of Arrakis called the Fremen. The Harkonnens have regained control of Arrakis, and Paul and Jessica have joined the Fremen's insurgency against them. Many of the Fremen think that Paul might be a prophesied messiah figure that will help them regain control of their planet. But Paul is wary of these prophecies. He has had premonitions that if he takes on the mantle of prophet, he will set in motion a terrible galactic genocide. The movie follows the choices he makes while pursuing his revenge against the Harkonnens. Along with Chalamet and Ferguson, Dune Part II stars Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh,

Austin Butler, Charlotte Rampling, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, and Christopher Walken. Denis Villeneuve's other films include Sicario and Prisoners. Denis Villeneuve, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. You wanted to make this movie for a long time. How old were you when you read it? I read the first book at 13, but then there's many books, and my love for June went on through the years.

So let's say I discovered between 13 and 14 years old. So what were you drawn to in that first book? I think that the idea that a boy finds home in another culture that feels comfortable in a foreign country, that really moved me at the time. And also, I was in love with biology when I was a student. And it's something that I was mesmerized how Frank Herbert used ecology to express himself. It really deeply moved me. And you thought about early on, like making this book into a movie. Like you made storyboards for it.

Like how old were you when you did that? Did that happen right after you read it? Yeah, around the same period of time, me and my best friend, Nicolas Kedsma, Nicolas was very strong at drawing, and me, I was very bad. But I was good at telling stories. And we started, our friendship was born from that dream of that one day we could be filmmakers. It's the way we met. And we didn't have any cameras at the time, but I was writing stories and Nicolas was drawing them. And we had, like, inspired from the book,

we had started to do some drawings about the making of Dune. But that was like very old dreams. And this was before David Lynch's version of the movie came out in 1984. Is that correct? Absolutely. So you've been thinking about this book visually for a long time. So what was it like for you to see someone make this book into a movie and to see someone's interpretation of this book that you love so much? I was very excited when I learned

that the book will be brought to the screen. And it's something that I remember watching the movie and being very mesmerized and impressed by how David Lynch approached it. I was also destabilized by some of his choices. Because that's not how you would have done it, right? Yeah.

David Lynch has a very strong identity as a filmmaker, of course, and it glided into the... Of course, it's a fantastic interpretation of the book, but there were some choices that were made that was very far away from my sensibility. And I remember watching the movie saying to myself, someday someone else would do it again in the future. It will happen because I didn't feel that it captured some of the essence of, specifically about the Fremant culture.

I felt that there was some things that were missing. And it's like, that's the nature of adaptation, you know. So I was expecting someone else to come back with the project at one point. And that turned out to be you. Yeah, which is, I'm still pitching myself. In Dune Part 1, you have to spend time setting the scene. Like, this is a very complicated and very strange universe. Story takes place on multiple worlds. There are these competing power factions, including secret societies. How did you decide how much you were going to have to

explain versus how much you were just going to show? It's a fine line. I tried to find a balance. I tried to make the movie as cinematic as possible. The first decision was to focus this adaptation on the Bene Gesserit sister power. That sisterhood that controls the politics from the shadows, that use religion as a political tool. And there's a lot of school of thought in Dune. There's a lot of different, there's the Manta, the Spacing Guild. There's a lot of group of people. And I focused on the Bene Gesserit sisters. And then in part one, the idea was to

really see the reality through this young man's eyes. The camera will be just above Paul Atreides' shoulder and the reality of the movie will unfold slowly through his eyes. So it's a movie that is much more meditative, contemplative. And the boy is an old teenager in part one. So he's, let's say, a victim of the events. He has no control. He just tries to survive. Which is the opposite. In part two, it's totally the opposite.

He became active. He became a guerrilla fighter and take control of his own destiny. And it's like, so the second movie was meant to be more of an action movie. When you say you tried to make it as cinematic as possible, by that you mean not using

just a lot of exposition dialogue, right? If I could have made movies without any dialogue, it would have been paradise. Dialogues for me belong to theater or television. I mean, it's like I'm not someone who remembers movies because of their lines. I remember movies because of their images, because of the ideas that are being hidden or unfold through images. And that's the power of cinema. For me, it's not about dialogue.

And I hope one day I will be able to make a movie with as little dialogue as possible. With Dune, it was a bit difficult, but that's my goal. Have you thought of making a silent movie sometime? I will be definitely tempted, yes. By the way, that's why silent movies were so powerful and still today the best movies. I mean, it's like normally a great movie, you should be able to watch it without sound.

And that's the ultimate goal, yeah. So were there lessons that you learned from making Dune Part 1 that you applied to making Part 2? Multiple, and it would be boring to mention all of them, but there was, I would say that there's something about the rhythmic of my mise-en-scene, you know,

how I can convey ideas through choreographies and the movement of camera and trying to be more efficient. I was trying to find an energy that I found more in part two and also being more agile with visual effects. And more specifically, I will say, where I think there was a lot of improvement is in the screenwriting,

trying to be more cinematic. But the project itself, the nature of the project itself, There was a lot of improvement in their screenwriting, trying to be more cinematic. But the project itself, the nature of the project itself, allowed me to go to something much more playful cinematically. You actually film a lot of the movie in the desert. And I was just wondering what complications that brought up. Were you always worried about getting sand in the camera? The complication is, first, to bring a full unit deep in the desert requires a lot of logistics to protect the crew.

And, like, how many people are in a unit? Several hundred. Several hundred. Maybe in Jordan we're at 800 sometimes. I could not give a number for Abu Dhabi exactly, but several hundred people. Because at one point you need people to take care of people. It's just the structure of the base camp.

We had to build roads, eco-friendly roads, I must say, roads that don't exist anymore, but that at the time were meant to build, to bring the trucks deep into the desert and a path also, a sidewalk to bring the crew where I wanted them to be. There was a massive logistic that was deployed to have shelters, to protect actors

and the film crew from the heat. And the heat was our enemy. enemy i mean there was a period of time in the middle of the day where i i've it was the soup mode that you felt that your brain was cooking it's like really um uh i had to bring the crew away from the sun a couple of uh in the middle of the day it was too warm it's The big challenge also is that, and I'm fully responsible for that, is that I wanted to shoot the movie as much with natural light as possible. I mean, we shot exclusively with natural light in the desert, which meant that in order to make no compromise aesthetically,

it drove my first assistant crazy because it meant that you had to, according to sun position, to deconstruct the whole shooting schedule according to the sunlight, sun position. And it was for, and my cinematographer and I, and for the actors, quite a crazy puzzle. So that means that if you're shooting one scene and then you want to do it again or add on to that scene, the next day you have to wait until the sun's in the same position? Yeah, for some scenes specifically, yes. Or to deconstruct the scene in different areas in the desert

so you can have the maximum aesthetic quality for the shot. But it meant that an actor could throw a line to another actor in two different locations. People say, okay, that we can do. But when it becomes 12 locations or 14 locations, it becomes a bit complex for the crew. One of the most stunning scenes in the movie is when Paul first rides one of the sandworms.

And the sandworms are these huge creatures that live in the desert. And the indigenous people ride on the backs of them. So Paul goes up, stands up on top of the sand dune, attracts this worm using this sort of mechanism that creates sound waves. And you're looking off into the horizon and you see this cloud of sand and it's sort of like Jaws. The sandworm is approaching. He has to jump on the top of it using these hooks to attach to it. And it's kind of like riding a train, but the sandworm is more the size of a skyscraper kind of on its side.

And you've said that this was the most complex scene you've ever done. Can you talk about what it took to get it? First of all, I'm very pleased that you mentioned Jaws because it is exactly the reference I used at the beginning when I was in part one, I was with the VFX crew, saying that I was in love with the idea that you could know the presence of the Sandworm just by seeing suddenly the landscape shifting in the distance.

You didn't hear nothing, but just suddenly sand dunes appeared. I absolutely love how it's more frightening to not seeing the beast than actually seeing it. And so Jaws was a very important reference for the sandworm. And this moment where someone rides a sandworm, it's a very important moment in the book, but it's kind of suggested. I mean, there's part of it that are quite vague,

how you get actually on the world. So that was one of the first thing I had to decide is how I will make this believable. How I will believe that a human could actually get on top of that beast. And first of all, I had to think about the behavior of the beast. For me, a sandworm is a powerful creature,

but it's a very shy creature, and it's a creature that doesn't want to be at the surface. It's a creature from the underground and wants to expose itself as less as possible. And that's the way Fremen rides with the worm. I love the idea that when you look at a Fremen in the desert, he looks like a motorbike rider. It's like the worm is under the surface. It looks like a motorbike rider. It's like the worm is under the surface. He looks like a surfer. And it's inspired from different extreme sports,

like people who are jumping and skiing on high peaks in the wild. And so I designed the way someone could jump on a worm. I did diagrams, and I explained that to the crew. There was like a kind of seminar where I explained to my crew how actually... How to ride a sandworm 101. Exactly. How to ride a sandworm first. And once I explained that, I said, oh, we will do it.

Then there was a big silence. Because I didn't want to make any compromises. I wanted it to be as real as possible. And in order to do that, we had to use the most powerful tool we had in our hands, which is natural light. And it meant that this sequence would be shot over the course of many weeks. And in order to do so, I had to figure out a way to split myself. Because it was not possible to be... If I had done that worm ride myself, I would still be shooting right now. So it meant that I would need to be at two places at the same time. I was directing my main unit as there was what we call the worm unit. The worm unit was a special dedicated crew

that were doing, according to my specs and the storyboards and the tech vids, were doing all the research and development. Each shot required a specific way of shooting that has not been done before. And I was giving them precise instruction. That crew was under the supervision of my wife, Tanya Lapointe. So that was happening simultaneously while the rest of the movie was being filmed.

Yeah, that was the most difficult thing for me to do because cinema is an act of presence. It's like I'm used to work with one camera at a time. I'm very old-fashioned in that regard. It was by far the most challenging but rewarding creative experience of my life. At what point did you have the idea that you might want to make movies and that there was this person like a director whose job it was to actually create the films that you were watching?

It's something that happened progressively. As a kid, I was a dreamer. I was reading a lot of books and I absolutely loved cinema. And of course, I discovered at the time a lot of movies through television. I remember the first time I saw the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey. That was like really like absolutely frightening. It brought a lot of beautiful anxiety in me. I remember the shock of it. And just watching the opening, because after that my parents wanted me to go to bed. I remember the first time I saw Duel as a kid, being very impressed by the power of the ideas of creating a being with a truck.

And then learning later that there was something else called Jaws that I was too terrified to watch, and then Close Encounter of the Third Kind. And then there was always a name attached to these movies, and this name was Steven Spielberg. And then I started to be more interested about what it meant to be a director. And I was absolutely, at 13 years old or something like that, absolutely fascinated by the idea of the power of that tool, the camera.

I didn't have any camera in my life, but I was fascinated. There was something so romantic, so powerful about making movies, and I became obsessed with the idea of filmmaker, and I met this friend, Nicola Kadzima, at the time, who had the same passion as me. Nicola wanted to redo Star Wars in his basement.

That's the way I was introduced to him. There's a friend of mine who said, you need to meet that guy, he's as crazy as you. And we started to, we did some short films together and we were like obsessed trying to find new, that's when I we discovered Eisenstein, Leos Carax,

Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, we were like like sponges trying to discover movies and at the beginning it was not easy because there was no V And at the beginning, it was not easy because there was no VHS at that time,

at that period of time, at the beginning. It was just the beginning, you know. It was like there was not a lot of thing available. It was, and yeah, it was, but those were exciting times. Denis Villeneuve is the director of Dune Part 2, which arrives in theaters on Friday. His the director of Dune Part 2, which arrives in theaters on Friday. His other films include Dune Part 1, Blade Runner 2049,

Sicario, Arrival, and Prisoners. He'll be back after a short break. I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air. Hi there, it's Tanya Mosley, here to share more about my new series of Fresh Air Plus bonus episodes. I love when he casts his mom in movies. It feels so authentic. I know. You know, she was also in the film Goodfellas, which I also love.

I need to get that screenplay, by the way. I don't have that one. For the next few weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, I'll be talking about all of my favorite movies with my colleague Anne-Marie Baldonado. If you want to hear what movies I love and which screenplays I actually own and use as creative direction, sign up for Fresh Air Plus at plus.npr.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger. I'm speaking with director Denis Villeneuve,

whose movie Dune Part 2 comes out this Friday. His other movies include Blade Runner 2049, Sicario, Dune Part 1, Arrival, and Prisoners. Denis, you've told the story before about how you got into science fiction as a kid. Your aunt brought you this box of magazines, and it contained some issues of this sci-fi magazine. Can you tell us that story? It's a very, very important moment in my life. It's like one day my aunt, Huguette, came back, who was in love with the science fiction and the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, et cetera. She was like always bringing, she brought home three boxes filled with magazines magazines which were like monthly

or weekly graphic novels, Metal Hurlant or Tintin Magazine, which were like filled with all those stories from those authors from Europe, like Bilal, Druyer, Christin, Jean-Paul Dionnet, Moebius, those masters that absolutely made that huge revolution in the 70s, went so far creating those worlds. As a kid, it really was an electroshock. It was really like a massive... My brain... I don't know if my brain melted or exploded, but I'm still haunted by those boxes, the power of creativity that was in those boxes. Metal, Erlans, was known in the U.S. as heavy metal, but here it was more decidedly R-rated. I think that you've said that it was a different magazine.

It is true that the English American version was much more for adults, which was not the case for the European version. It was more about pure sci-fi. So what intrigued you about science fiction? Like, were you drawn to the spaceships and technology? Or did you appreciate what Ray Bradbury said about science fiction, that it's the history of ideas? Wow, that's a nice quote. I never heard that before. I will say that it's like a way to digest reality and to explore it in a very poetic way. And it's, in a way, the ultimate way of dreaming

because you project yourself in the future. It's an act of hope. And I think that I've been raised, being raised in a village, very tiny village, where there was two structures. One of them was the church. The other one was a nuclear power plant. And I was raised between both powers. And the idea of having that nuclear power plant in the horizon,

that power, the nuclear power, with everything what it meant. At the time, I was raised in the 70s with the fear of the atomic bomb, which was like the big threat at the time. There was something there, that fear of science, that fear of the unknown, that fascination for science also. So how much of a prevailing fear was there in your town in Quebec because of this power plant? The thing is that the scientists were there to reassure us all the time. I think that me as a kid, I had the fear, but around me, the adults were very excited by the economical potential of those powerful devices.

I didn't feel the fear until they were explaining to us that if there was an accident and the wind was blowing in that direction, then you started to question the technology. Everything's fine unless... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was meant to be a very safe technology. Everything's fine unless... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was meant to be a very safe technology. It was just that

unconscious fear of the atom. It's a power that we are not supposed to... We went too far. And it's something that you know inside yourself that it's like you're playing with the power of the stars.

So, you know, there are atomic weapons in Dune Part 2, and one of the characters sort of thinks that they're going to be the solution to all the problems. I was wondering when you did those scenes, if you had been thinking about your hometown. When you do something, as an artist, you're always talking about your hometown. So I think I will say when I'm thinking about the Fremen, I'm thinking about French Canadians. The idea, the alienation of religion. The idea that the population is under the control of the church and that the church is linked with the politics and that for many years, the French Canadians didn't have any economical power and were under the control of the church

and submitted to this power where the church was telling us where to vote. And it's very powerful. It's the absolute power. I mean, if you say to someone tells you if you vote for this guy, you go to hell. Religion is a good thing, but it's not meant to be linked with politics. Was your family religious? Yes, my family was religious. Do you recall hearing about hell

and whether you would go there depending on how you did it? Absolutely. I was raised as a Catholic, and I always say that I really absolutely loved the chants. One of the first discussions I had with Hans Zimmer was about those church... Who wrote the score for D. Exactly, exactly. And to have that kind of sacred power. I mean, it was like a very inspiring, the chants that we were singing as kids. There was something I remember being elevated by.

I'm not a religious person anymore, but at the time, there was a time as a kid, I was like everybody, in my hometown. When you were young, how did you imagine what your adult life was going to be like? Did you see yourself staying in that town? That's a good question. I will say that I became happy when I landed in Montreal. Why?

It's because finally I was in contact with culture, with movie theaters, with museums, with big libraries, with bookstores. I remember the first time I walked in Montreal as a young adult, the impression to be in Blade Runner. I was absolutely deeply excited by culture and the power of having all those resources all around me to learn more about

the world. Well, let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with director Denis Villeneuve. His movie Dune Part 2 comes out on Friday. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. So, Denis, I wanted to ask you about some of your earlier films. I think the first film you made in the United States was Prisoners.

This is a very brutal movie that takes place in Pennsylvania. Just to give a summary, two girls are kidnapped and a man played by Paul Dano is arrested. However, he's released because the police don't believe he could have done it. He has a very low IQ and there's no forensic evidence that he kidnapped the girls. But one of the missing girls' fathers, played by Hugh Jackman, has a strange interaction with Paul Dano's character that makes him think that he really is the kidnapper. And so he takes the law into his own hands, kidnaps Jones, and tortures him

to try to get the information out of him. It's a really hard movie to watch. The torture is really difficult to watch. And the whole tone that you create in this movie is bleak. And like this screenplay was part of something called The Blacklist, which is like the most liked screenplays of the year not yet produced. And I think there was a lot of reluctance for people to make it because it was a hard movie. Was that part of the challenge for you? Yeah, the thing is I knew that people were afraid

of that project. You had to find a very fine line, but it felt very relevant where we were at the time. It felt like very meaningful to approach this subject. This sort of thing of people taking the law into their own hands. Yeah, and the use of torture as a righteous thing and the emotional turmoil of that father trying to find morality. And it felt very disturbing and meaningful. There was something true about that story. How far are you ready to go? And there was something honest about this story that I felt was relevant.

There's this idea that the end justifies the means. Exactly. If I torture this person and I find out where my daughter is, then it would have been worth doing those terrible things. That also plays into part into your 2015 movie Sicario, which is about the U.S. drug enforcement of drugs coming in from Mexico. And like this movie, Emily Blunt is an FBI agent who joins this task force that's trying to bring down a Mexican drug cartel. It turns out like the task force is just using her position as a way to cover their extra legal behavior that they engage in. And they sort of make this argument, we're keeping the monsters out by becoming monsters in Mexico. There's something about being a Canadian and being raised in the suburb of the United States, you know, I'm just... Right, because you're right on the border almost, on the St. Lawrence River, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's like I have been always fascinated by the United States, the power, the creativity in United States, the beauty of the United States, but also the threat sometimes of that power and the relationship of the United States with the rest of the world. And it's something that absolutely fascinated me. And I thought that that border between Mexico and the United States was so meaningful, saying so many things about the state of the world today. And so both for me, there's a continuity between Prisoners and Sicario about an exploration of North America. And when I say United States, I incorporate, you know, we cannot die into it because we are neighbors. There's something we are like,

it's not like what happens in United States always has tremendous impact at home. And so it's like two societies that are like embedded one into the other. But still, I'm not American. I have a kind of little distance that allows me to sometimes, I say that with humility,

just to have like a different perspective, which is, I think, why maybe I'm working in the United States. Sicario is kind of like an anti-action movie in that like Emily Blunt is the protagonist. And we kind of imagine that at some point she's going to like win. Like there are these people that are treating the wrong that's happening around her. Both movies have been made in a world after 9-11. we need to bend law in order to find justice

and our reparation or revenge or have control over the world. I think that's fair to say. I didn't wrote those screenplays, but I thought they were absolutely relevant about what they were saying about the state of the world at that time. When I first saw your movie Sicario, there was this aerial shot that really stuck with me. There's this plane flying over this landscape of hills, and there's something just expressive about the hills themselves.

And there's a very similar aerial shot in Dune Part 1 where Paul is first flying over the sand dunes of Arrakis. You like those aerial shots, don't you? A long time ago, I participated to, I was like an assistant. There's a documentary filmmaker, one of the most important Canadian filmmakers. His name is Pierre Perrault. And Pierre invited me to a shoot nearby the North Pole.

We spent a month on the island of Ellesmere Island. I was there to make the soup and bring the tripod. There was Pierre, two cameramen, and me and another assistant like that. We were there to help. I was just out of film school, and I spent a month with him studying the landscape and being in contact with the power of those landscapes. And Pierre taught me how to listen to a landscape

and how to create poetry, how to capture. There's something about landscape. It's like human faces. It's like according to the light, there's always something new and something that you can bring kind of a meaning or emotional impact out of

the landscape who is reflected on the character. I actually thought that the hills did look like faces. Absolutely. That is... I spent a lot of time in the helicopter shooting and there was something about absolutely mesmerizing about those landscape and I started to study them with the camera.

And I remember with Joe Walker, when we did that shot, Joe and I thought that it felt like faces that were screaming. There was like a power in that landscape, that territory, that place where there's a landscape where the humans draw a line. And a tremendous amount of violence happened because of that line. And there's something about the power of the landscape that will prevail no matter what happens. You started making small independent films with shoestring budgets and unknown actors.

And now you're working, it's like an almost different planet. You're making movies with $100 million budgets, huge crews, you said, like 800 people in the desert, all A-list actors. I just wonder if you could reflect on that. Well, actually, I made sure to not make too big of a step between each project. I would have not been able to make Dune as my third movie.

Some directors can. I'm always impressed by directors that can jump from indie to massive Hollywood budget at ease. Me, I needed to go step by step. I'm a slow learner, and I needed to slowly build stairs, something solid under my feet. So you intentionally did it incrementally. Yes.

And because I didn't want to be crushed by the system, I wanted to keep control on creativity. And also, I will say that I approach those movies absolutely the same way as I did the indie movies, which is that at the end of the day, I'm with actors with a camera. And I try to keep it as intimate on set as possible. It's like the big difference between the movies when I was young and now is the distance between the car and the camera and the amount of people around it. But it's like I have a strong capacity to forget about the scope of things and focus on the intimacy with the actors. Denis Villeneuve, thank you very much for coming on Fresh Air today.

It was my pleasure. Thank you. Denis Villeneuve spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger. Villeneuve directed Dune Part 2, which opens in theaters Friday. Heuve directed Dune Part 2, which opens in theaters Friday. He also directed Dune Part 1. The creators of the series The Good Wife and The Good Fight have a new drama series called Elsbeth. Our TV critic David Bianculli will have a review

after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Tomorrow, CBS presents the latest drama series from Michelle and Robert King, creators of The Good Wife and its spin-off series, The Good Fight. Their newest weekly series, episodes of which will stream the next day on Paramount+, is yet another extension of the franchise. It's called Elsbeth, and it stars Carrie Preston in the role she played in both those other series, eccentric but effective attorney Elsbeth Tassioni.

But this time, Elsbeth has a new job, and she's in a new city. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review. Carrie Preston won an Emmy Award in 2013 as Outstanding Guest Actress for her portrayal of a seemingly scatterbrained lawyer on the CBS series The Good Wife. Her character, Elizabeth Tassioni, really was a character. Her conversations tended to derail into unexpected directions. Her questions never seemed to follow any logical path, but they always had a purpose, and she was keenly, almost uncomfortably observant. Michelle and Robert King, the writing team that created The Good Wife to showcase Julianna Margulies,

quickly recognized Preston's Elspeth as a valuable supporting player. She appeared in six of the seven seasons of The Good Wife and won her Emmy there. Then she returned as the same character in The Good Fight, which the Kings wrote as a sequel series starring Christine Baranski. And now there's a third series, this time bringing Carrie Preston front and center. It's called Elspeth, and all ten episodes have been written by co-creators Michelle and Robert King, with him directing the premiere episode.

So what are they up to this time? They've transplanted Elspeth from Chicago to New York City, where she's been hired to officially observe and secretly investigate some of the police there. In her new job, she's given so much latitude, she even can serve as an ad hoc murder investigator. And does. Elspeth the series is structured like Poker Face Or even more obviously, Columbo I've previewed three episodes And each begins with viewers seeing the murderer commit the crime And then, and only then, does Elspeth enter the crime scene

And start putting the puzzle pieces together Each episode, as with Columbo Features a prominent guest star as the killer of the week For the premiere episode of Elspeth Each episode, as with Columbo, features a prominent guest star as the killer of the week. For the premiere episode of Elsbeth, no spoiler alerts here because the murder is shown in the opening moments, Stephen Moyer from True Blood is the special guest star. He plays an acting teacher and director who has found a way to dispose of his much younger former student and lover by making it look like suicide. But when Elspeth arrives at the victim's apartment, she ignores the dead body and heads straight for the bathroom,

where she pokes around until a detective notices her and objects. But that's when we see how quickly and how sharply her mind processes things. What's going on here? Uh, nothing. We were just talking. I'm Elsbeth. Yeah, I know. I would rather you wait in the hall, please, ma'am. I thought I made that clear. By the way, I'm not sure this is a suicide. In the hall, please.

Why do you say that? Teeth whitening strips. I check her mouth because I don't know anyone who widens their teeth right before they commit suicide. And if she had her diaphragm in, she was probably expecting someone to have sex with. The police aren't sure what to make of her, of course. Wendell Pierce, that wonderful actor from The Wire, plays Captain Wagner, who is exasperated one moment, impressed the next, which is how everyone reacted to Elizabeth way back on The Good Wife.

But as with Columbo, the most important dynamic is between the investigator and the killer. Elspeth, like Columbo, is persistent and underestimated. But where Columbo kept his theories close to his vest, or his raincoat, Elspeth almost delights in revealing her hole cards to unsettle her prime suspect. Carrie Preston and Stephen Moyer work together on HBO's True Blood, and it's fun to see them together again here, this time as adversaries. You know, I'm glad I caught you. I'm sure you are.

This odd thing I found, do you mind if I show you? Does it matter? Yes, of course it matters. This is a copy of the text that Olivia sent to her classmates a few minutes before she killed herself. Or was murdered. Can you see it there? On my screen? Yes, I can.

Do you need me to make it? No, it's fine. Okay. Can you see it there on my screen? Yes, I can. Do you need me to make it? No, it's fine. Okay. It says, I'm so sick of performing for idiots who don't understand what I'm doing. And then she writes, I'm done with it. The hiding who I really am. Do you see there are two spaces after every period?

Okay. Do you know that's something that older people do? Not younger. Two spaces. Younger people like Olivia, they do just one space after every period. So what I did was I went back through Olivia's old texts. And do you know what? She always did one space.

Other episodes shown to critics feature as the murderers of the week, Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock and Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family. Both of them bring a playful energy, sparring with Preston's Elspeth, and she really sparkles, with and without them, and carries the series with ease. Also, the show's New York locations add even more to the flavor and the enjoyment. Altogether, they make Elspeth an undeniable throwback to an earlier TV era. But so is Poker Face, which I love for many of the same reasons. Great leading role, delightful guest stars, decent clever mysteries that are solved by the end of each episode. And in an era where so much TV is so dark and depressing,

Elspeth stands out as a sweet, happy little treat. David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new series Elspeth. It premieres tomorrow on CBS. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about the impact of Christian nationalism on American democracy, including the movement's connections to Donald Trump and attempts to overturn the election. My guest will be Brad Onishi, author of Preparing for War, the extremist history of white Christian nationalism and what comes next. He co-hosts the podcast Straight White American Jesus. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews,

follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Teresa Madden. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.G. Bentham. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.