The Oprah Conversation

Series
Where to Find It: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/the-oprah-conversation/umc.cmc.49yt85r7ow6904u0177r694qy
Rating: TV-MA
Release Date: 2020
Seasons: 1 Season
Length: 59 minutes

Recommended by:

Melissa Roth

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What it’s about:

For 25 years, from 1986 to 2011, the groundbreaking Oprah Winfrey Show became a national touchstone, the one talk show that could draw in everyone, uniting races, classes, generations, and geographies. If you didn’t see it when it aired at 4pm or 5pm, you heard about it in the news. She was warm, ebullient, incisive, and wise, easing her guests and audience into the hot topics of the day, or sometimes just the hot diversions of the times.

As her star rose, Oprah elevated and anointed newsmakers, easing them into an intimate and difficult conversations like a calm, sage therapist. When she got her own network, OWN, in 2011, the talk show was over it, and we lost our collective “hearth.”

During the pandemic, amidst escalating racial tensions, she returned to what she did best, and Apple TV’s The Oprah Conversation was born.

Names you might know:

Her guests have ranged from the activist and creator of “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man,” Emmanuel Acho, to bestselling authors like Isabel Wilkinson, who wrote Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, to icons like Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, Will Smith, and Mariah Carey, to the man she introduced to the world: Barack Obama.

Why it’s worth your time:

At a time when Twitter mobs pounce and polarize people on complex issues, The Oprah Conversation brings much-needed perspective, nuance, and dialogue. Her wide ranging guests represent the issues of the day, and they save their best revelations for their sit down with “the Queen of All Media,” speaking honestly about hot-button topics, shedding new light and provoking more reasoned debate.

The takeaway:

A timely, much-needed series that combines raw honesty with the guidance only Oprah can bring, offering a road map for how to respond — and how to move forward.

Watch it with:

Yourself, your quarantining mates, and your friends/colleagues/relatives with different backgrounds. The show is meant to spark ongoing dialogue.