What’s Streaming
BABYLON BERLIN Stream on Netflix. This German crime noir covered a lot of ground in its first two seasons. It followed the detective Gereon Rath and the aspiring police officer Charlotte Ritter as they came up against rising nationalist sentiments, a stolen train filled with Soviet gold and a disastrous May Day confrontation between the police and Communists, all set in the years that preceded the Third Reich. In its third season, the show returns to explore aspects of Berlin’s gritty underworld and growing film industry as Rath and Ritter work to track down a cloaked killer who’s been terrorizing a movie shoot. Along the way, Ritter works to gain respect with the homicide squad, Rath encounters troubles at home, and the country braces for financial collapse.
MARC MARON: END TIMES FUN Stream on Netflix. At the moment, the world is feeling pretty apocalyptic, between coronavirus fears, economic concerns and the threat of natural disasters. But as anxieties continue to mount, it feels like a prime moment for Marc Maron’s latest comedy special, “End Times Fun.” In it, the comedian chastises the way most people collectively shrug their shoulders when it comes to climate change: “We brought our own bags to the supermarket,” Maron says in his set, pausing, “and that’s about it!” Maron devotes the rest of his time to commenting on Marvel movie fans, life before cellphones and the importance of consuming turmeric.
LITTLE JOE (2019) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, YouTube and Vudu. This film, which earned its star Emily Beecham the best actress award at Cannes last year, tracks the events that occur following the development of a plant that’s engineered to improve people’s moods. Little Joe, as the breed of plant is named, releases a potent antidepressant that not only makes those who inhale it happy, but also seems to strangely alter their behavior. The film has been described as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” for the antidepressant age, but in his review for The New York Times, Glenn Kenny takes that idea a step further. The film looks like “a ‘Snatchers’ reboot as directed by a pod person,” he wrote. “The deliberateness of the styling makes the story’s predictability feel more like inexorability,” he added. “The events may be familiar, but their stagings are unusual and often uncanny.”
What’s on TV
WOMEN OF TROY 9 p.m. on HBO. This documentary focuses not on the mythical Battle of Troy, but on a team of skilled competitors who rose to victory on the basketball court. In the 1980s, the University of Southern California women’s basketball team, led by Cheryl Miller, won two national titles and rose to mainstream prominence. The film explores how Miller, along with her teammates Pam McGee, Paula McGee, Cynthia Cooper, Juliette Robinson and Rhonda Windham, helped pave the way for female basketball players to compete at a professional level with the eventual founding of the W.N.B.A. in 1996.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
