Space is a place of dark mystery in this new limited series about a destabilized former astronaut. The always compelling Noomi Rapace stars as the sole survivor of an accident on the International Space Station. When she returns to Earth, much about her life feels foreign or wrong to her, including her young daughter, and she battles to understand if she has fallen into madness or discovered a vast conspiracy. Jonathan Banks plays a prize-winning physicist who takes up her cause. Wednesday, Feb. 21, Apple TV+.

By Bianca Bosker

"Bianca Bosker has a flair for sticking her nose where it is not necessarily wanted," said Tobias Grey in Air Mail. To write her 2017 best-seller, Cork Dork, Bosker infiltrated the world of wine snobs by pursuing credentialization as a sommelier. Her follow-up now turns "a similarly exacting lens" on the contemporary fine art scene and the exclusive clique of chilly gallerists and wealthy buyers who decide which of countless aspiring artists will become the next big thing. Bosker, who "exudes bonhomie and a welcome dose of self-deprecating wit," began her new investigation merely hoping to develop a deeper appreciation for art — which she did. But as soon as she asked for insights from likely experts, "she discovered a world as opaque as it was paranoid."  

"Other journalists might have relied on research and interviews. Bosker went gonzo," said Elizabeth Blair in NPR.org. She spent five years working low-level art-world jobs, including gallery assistant, security guard at the Guggenheim Museum, artist apprentice, and sales associate at Art Basel Miami Beach, a top art fair. While Bosker "didn't necessarily set out to write a takedown of the art world," the result is  "pretty much just that," revealing a sub- culture that's "intentionally confusing, elitist, cloistered." The anxiety she encountered  among art dealers "makes a certain sense," said Lauren Mechling in The Guardian. "As Bosker's book lays out, the art world depends on a web of secrecy to protect a select few's social and economic capital, and to justify astronomic price tags." The tastemakers defend their turf by making advanced degrees a membership prerequisite and by using language that sounds, as she writes, "like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out."  

Those gatekeepers have much to apologize for, said Martin Gelin in The Washington Post. The entry-level wages that galleries pay are "so absurdly low" that only rich kids get in the door, and of the 176 members of the Art Dealers Association of America when Bosker wrote her book, only one was Black. All that can be explained by the larger game that art dealers are playing, which is to sell not just to anyone with money, but to "the right kind of money" —  money that can build an artist's market value. But at least the gatekeepers cultivate expertise that can be valuable to mere art enthusiasts. In Bosker's often funny book, artists are largely earnest and gallerists transactional. "It's the collectors who come across as deranged and vapid."

The working man who ruled the country charts

True to his roots, Toby Keith always made sure he didn't "get above his raisin'." The burly former rough-neck proudly called himself "oil field trash," even though his sales figures put him in rarefied company.  After landing the biggest country radio smash of the 1990s with  "Should've Been a Cowboy," he had a streak of 20 No. 1 hits that made him one of country's biggest stars, selling over 40 million albums. Keith's songs encompassed macho swagger, deft wordplay, wry humor, and odes to boozy good times, including "Get My Drink On" and "Red Solo Cup," a country-rap tribute to the plastic party cup that broke through to the pop Top 20 in 2011. After 9/11, he lashed out with the jingoistic "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," which warned America's enemies: "We'll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American Way." Derided by liberal critics, Keith was unbowed. "The secret in this business," he said, "is to make enough people hate you enough to get them to talk about you."

Toby Keith Covel was born in Clinton, Okla., where his father was an oil rigger, said The Oklahoman. A Merle Haggard fan with a gift for songwriting, he worked "as a rodeo hand during high school and in nearby oil fields after graduation." When the oil market crashed, he played semi-pro football, then worked the road house circuit for years, singing  at honky-tonks in Oklahoma and Texas. "Eventually, his path took him to Nashville," said NBCNews.com, where he drew the interest of Harold Shedd, a producer who'd worked with Alabama and Shania Twain. Keith put out a self-titled debut that yielded four Top 10 hits and made him a star at age 32.

As the hits continued in the following decades, Keith branched out into business ventures, including a record label, a restaurant chain, and a liquor brand, said The Washington Post. A 2013 Forbes cover dubbed him "Country's $500 million man." Keith, who died of stomach cancer,  was often pegged as a reactionary conservative. But he said that while he performed at Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration, he'd also played for  Barack Obama and was registered as an independent. "It doesn't matter which one you play for,  you're gonna get flak," he said in 2017. "Most people don't want to go, cause they don't want the flak. And I take it as an honor."