Sarah Krasnostein

Writer and Matildas fanatic Sarah Krasnostein on the Women’s World Cup – and the impact the Tillies will have on Australian sport.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author of a new Quarterly Essay on the mental health system Sarah Krasnostein on how Australia’s history of incarceration and shame informs the current crisis.

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

Have you ever wondered how long you would last if you were dropped into the wilderness with just a hunting knife, a shovel, and a sleeping bag? A day? A week? That’s the premise of a show called ‘Alone’. Think ‘Survivor’, but on steroids.

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

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

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

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

Today, Sarah Krasnostein, the best-selling author of ‘The Trauma Cleaner’, reads her essay from the latest issue of The Monthly. It’s called ‘The most hated man’ and it explores the sentencing of Richard Pusey, who was convicted of outraging public decency after he filmed the horrific aftermath of a car crash that killed four police officers.

Whether it’s podcasts like ‘Serial’ or ‘The Teacher’s Pet’, Netflix documentaries like ‘Making a Murderer’ or ‘Tiger King’, true crime is absolutely dominant.

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.

“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 …”

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.

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.

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.”