March 27, 2026 - Week in Review: Hannah Montana at 20, SNL's UK debut, and remembering Tracy Kidder

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and James Parker, staff writer at The Atlantic, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines:Twenty years after Hannah Montana premiered, Disney is marking the anniversary with a new special celebrating the show and the fandom that never let go. After 50 years of turning American politics and celebrity into live comedy, Saturday Night Live is heading to Britain. The new adaptation raises the question: can the SNL formula survive a culture with a  different comic sensibility? Meta and Google have lost a major case over social media addiction, with a California jury finding Instagram and YouTube liable and awarding $6 million in damages. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tracy Kidder has died at 80. In books like “The Soul of a New Machine” and “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” he brought narrative force and moral seriousness to stories about people under pressure and the systems that shaped them. Stephen Colbert is taking his Tolkien fandom to a new level: the late-night host is now co-writing a new “Lord of the Rings film.” His move from superfan to franchise writer has fans wondering what one of pop culture’s most devoted Tolkien obsessives will bring to Middle-earth. And we close the show with our week in preview. Jared recommends “Nixon in China” at Symphony Hall, James Parker offers “An Evening with Black Seed Writers” at Brookline Booksmith and Callie suggests the play “Lifted,” by Mfonisao Udofia onstage at Wellesley College Theatre.