Sarah Krasnostein

is The Saturday Paper’s television critic and a Walkley winner for arts criticism (2022) and long-form feature writing (2024).

By this author


Culture April 02, 2025

Netflix’s Adolescence

The stunning narrative arc of Netflix’s crime drama Adolescence explores the connecting currents that lead a child to violence, and delivers an uncertain hope.

Culture February 19, 2025

Love Island Australia

The raging popularity of Love Island owes less to the reality show’s slick production and contestants than to the audience’s own primal obsessions.

Culture December 21, 2024

Best television: Shrinking, Kaos and The Bear’s third act

The Saturday Paper’s television critic looks back at the highlights of 2024.

Culture November 30, 2024

Shrinking

Apple TV+’s Shrinking is a glorious study of connection, and of friendship through life’s inescapable transitions and difficult initiations.

Culture September 18, 2024

Hit and myths: Kaos opens up another world

Charlie Covell’s brilliant Netflix series Kaos doesn’t so much retell the Greek myths as overthrow their narrative laws to build a new and necessary story.

Culture August 28, 2024

Apple TV+’s Sunny

The unpredictable and compelling new series from Apple TV+, Sunny, morphs through sci-fi, thriller, noir mystery, family drama and comedy.

Culture July 31, 2024

The Bear’s season 3

Season three of The Bear is as good as television can be: a mastering of time and emotion, a study of character and success, and the gaps between the two.

Culture May 18, 2024

Season two of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst

The 2015 docuseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst famously led to the real estate heir’s conviction for murder. Now season two documents the aftermath.

Culture April 03, 2024

Dear Child

Netflix’s unsettling psychological thriller Dear Child explores the archetypes of family to reach unerringly into the subconscious.

Culture February 24, 2024

Director Ethan Coen and editor Tricia Cooke

Drive-Away Dolls – the new film from director Ethan Coen and editor Tricia Cooke – took only a month to shoot but, like their partnership, was a long-term commitment.

Culture February 14, 2024

True Detective: Night Country

Night Country – the fourth season of the darkly philosophical police procedural True Detective – brilliantly reinvents the show.

Culture December 23, 2023

Best television: The Bear, a Dog and the end of Succession

The Saturday Paper’s television critic looks back at the highlights of 2023.

Culture November 25, 2023

The Curse

Nathan Fielder’s new comedy drama, The Curse, takes his work into wilder territory.

Culture October 28, 2023

The Changeling

The Changeling demonstrates how fairytales can be used to devastating effect to process  our deepest fears and desires.

podcast August 31, 2023

Sarah Krasnostein Was Wrong About Peter Carey

Sarah discusses how reading that book challenged her expectations and why many people who own Peter Carey's work might be surprised to discover what his books are actually saying.

Culture July 29, 2023

Matildas: The World at Our Feet

The Australian women’s soccer team has finally captured the nation’s hearts – the question is why it took so long.

Sport June 17, 2023

Emily van Egmond’s high hopes for the World Cup

Matildas stalwart Emily van Egmond has watched women’s soccer in Australia come into its own, and she hopes this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, the first to be played on home soil, will unleash its full potential.

Culture May 27, 2023

Succession

The racing pulse of HBO’s prestige hit Succession is the emotional whiplash of unresolved family abuse.

Culture March 04, 2023

The Last of Us

The powerful adaptation of PlayStation’s zombie game The Last of Us has unexpected glimpses of human grace amid the primal horror.

Culture January 14, 2023

Stutz

Jonah Hill’s astonishing Netflix documentary about his psychiatrist, Phil Stutz, opens up the possibilities of the talking cure.

Culture September 24, 2022

Pointing the cameras at Woodstock ’99

A new documentary and a docuseries explore the catastrophe that was Woodstock ’99.

Culture August 13, 2022

Killing It

A masterful comedy series takes the American dream and reveals its human cost in consistently surprising ways.

Culture May 21, 2022

Our Flag Means Death

The genre-busting pirate romance Our Flag Means Death is straight up hilarious – and artistically and emotionally gorgeous.

Culture April 09, 2022

Severance

Few television series have captured the uncanny as elegantly as Dan Erikson’s beautifully realised Severance.

Culture March 05, 2022

Cheer

A gripping docuseries about the gruelling sport of cheerleading reveals its subjects’ lives with finely drawn seriousness.

Culture October 02, 2021

SBS’s Chad

Nasim Pedrad’s Chad brings an inspiring complexity to the comic gaps of adolescent awkwardness.

Culture September 11, 2021

Alone

In opening up interior terrains, the survival series Alone makes other reality television look like pantomime.

Culture July 31, 2021

Katla

Baltasar Kormákur’s eerie Netflix series Katla is an original work of poetic myth about grief, longing and guilt.

Culture June 26, 2021

Solos

Amazon’s star-studded science fiction series Solos takes on the monologue but doesn’t quite fulfil the promise of its form.

Culture May 15, 2021

The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness

True crime series such as The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness feed our appetites for fear, while shielding us from the crimes of which we should really be afraid.

Comment June 01, 2019

Character assessment in sentencing decisions

“Some time between 8.58am and 10.43am on June 29, 2016, after Borce and Karen Ristevski’s daughter, Sarah, left for work, Borce killed Karen, his wife of 27 years, in a manner known only to himself. He then moved her body from their home, placed it in …”

Life March 30, 2019

The new taxidermy

The tricks of the taxidermy trade were once held tight by older, male enthusiasts. But today a new generation of young women are lending their artistic and scientific talents to preserving dead animals in the most lifelike manner.

News March 16, 2019

Full circle

As Chief Judge Peter Kidd steadily reads his sentencing of George Pell, the author sits among those assembled in court, watching the cardinal, and considering the nature of power in the justice system.

Culture October 06, 2018

The stocking truth of Polly Borland

Living in different places around the world has left artist Polly Borland feeling like an outsider with unwanted opinions, but she’s happy to let the subversion of her work speak for itself. “She grew up alone in this apartment with this doll,” Borland said of Dare Wright, creator of the Lonely Doll books. “Her mother would go out, leave her alone. Eventually she became a model and started taking photos. It’s no wonder I’m into dress-up. I get a lot from childhood. What might look childlike is not. There’s a sinister undertow to a lot of my imagery.”