Black Rabbit

The restaurant is fake. The harassment file is not.

Zach Baylin and Kate Susman lived catty-corner to the Spotted Pig in the 2000s and ate there often enough to steal the furniture. When Black Rabbit hit Netflix on September 18, 2025, the New York Times mapped eight ways their fictional gastro pub copies Ken Friedman's Greenwich Village hotspot, the clubby room that closed in 2020 under a sexual harassment scandal that helped start restaurant #MeToo. Jake Friedken, Jude Law's owner, is a former music manager with British-leaning vintage rooms and a habit of expecting staff to swallow abuse from regulars. Friedman was a former music manager too. Sope Dirisu plays Wes, latestnetflix.com contends, a Black recording star who puts money into the place. The surnames even rhyme.

Susman told Esquire they were "completely intoxicated and obsessed" with those dining rooms, then learned later "there was so much going on there that we weren't aware of." She and Baylin had both worked restaurants in school. They knew the difference between what you see and what happens when the lights go off. They keep calling the series fiction. The plot still puts a rape, a deleted security tape, and a dead bartender named Anna inside the Black Rabbit, and chef Roxie has to drag the owner toward the cops. Deadline locked the September 18 date in June with first-look stills of Law in the suits and Bateman in the hair.

Two brothers, one roof.

Jason Bateman plays Vince, the older screw-up who comes home with loan sharks on his heels. He also directed the first two episodes. Laura Linney, his Ozark colleague, directed the next pair. Justin Kurzel and Ben Semanoff split the rest. The show hangs on two brothers who love each other but do not match. One is a screw-up. The other is better at hiding his dysfunction. Law, hunting a look for the brothers' old-band flashbacks, kept landing on Kurt Cobain. "I just kept coming back to Cobain," he told Collider.

The eight episodes screened at Toronto on September 7, then dumped on Netflix eleven days later. In the last minutes Vince walks onto the restaurant roof and jumps while Jake watches. Entertainment Weekly got Law, Bateman, Baylin, and Susman on the record about that jump. Vince takes the fall. Jake ends up behind a bar in a jean jacket, riding the subway, walking his son to class. Awards bodies liked the brother act more than the burger. Law drew a Golden Globe nomination. Bateman drew SAG and Emmy attention for lead actor in a limited series. Pete Konczal won an American Society of Cinematographers award for the finale. Rotten Tomatoes settled at 68 percent. The consensus said the grit can be off-putting and still credited the two leads.

The trailer sells the party. The Times sold the pig. That is the whole trick of this show. A beautiful room, a celebrity crowd, and a file in the back office that nobody wanted opened until the cameras were already rolling.