SERIES PREMIERE: Can The New Yorker translate to a newsmagazine TV format? Documentaries, poetry, personal essays, animated cartoons – can a brilliant, creative magazine transfer its long-established spirit to another medium? Tune in and see. This new series begins streaming today, on Amazon. The presentation is classy and literate (what a surprise), the animation is lovely, but the pieces in the opening installment are somewhat uneven. A piece on a paranoid delusion based on The Truman Show is interesting, and one on the agents who initially connected the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole to Al Qaeda, and were denied access to information that might have prevented 9/11, is excellent, and very disturbing. Other pieces are either too short (the pigeon guy) or too long (a film featuring Paul Giamatti as Balzac, drinking 50 cups of coffee). But worth sampling? Definitely.