Emily Dickinson

Emily is a young woman in 1850s Amherst who writes poetry in secret, chafes against the marriage-and-housework future her family expects, and burns with ambition she isn't supposed to have. She's funny, moody, wildly alive, in love with language and with her best friend Sue, and utterly certain she's a genius.

The show refuses to treat Dickinson as a dour recluse, and Steinfeld plays her instead as a teenager bursting out of her century — sarcastic, horny, grief-struck, hilarious, sometimes in the same scene. The anachronistic slang and needle-drops could feel like a gimmick, but Steinfeld sells the whiplash between comedy and real anguish, making Emily's strangeness feel like the most honest thing on screen.