What’s Streaming
THE VIRTUES Stream on Topic. By the time the kettle wails, Joseph is crying. It’s a couple of minutes into “The Virtues,” and Joseph (Stephen Graham), an Irishman living in England, is readying for a final meal with his ex, his son and his ex’s new partner, before those three leave to start a new life in Australia. That is the foundation of this four-part mini-series, the latest project from the British filmmaker Shane Meadows. “The Virtues,” written by Meadows and Jack Thorne, delves into loneliness, sexual abuse and trauma. It follows Joseph on a path of despair — and eventual reconciliation.
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019) Stream on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. It doesn’t have Baby Yoda, but this most recent “Star Wars” movie has plenty of series staples to offer fans, including lightsabers and a heroic betrayal. Directed by J.J. Abrams, “The Rise of Skywalker” wraps up the dispute between the promising jedi-in-training Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren, the conflicted young villain played by Adam Driver. Here, the struggle of good against evil “feels less like a cosmic battle than a longstanding sports rivalry between teams whose glory days are receding,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. “The head coaches come and go, the uniforms are redesigned, certain key players are the subjects of trade rumors, and the fans keep showing up.” Which, Scott added, “is not entirely terrible.”
What’s on TV
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (2019) 7 p.m. on HBO Signature. “It’s like Bruce knows everything I’ve ever felt,” Javed (Viveik Kalra) says of Bruce Springsteen. It’s a somewhat unlikely match: For one thing, in this musical drama, Javed is living in the suburbs of London, a long way from New Jersey. For another, he’s the 16-year-old son of Pakistani immigrants. These differences between Javed and Springsteen are part of the point of “Blinded by the Light,” a coming-of-age story that’s both very 1980s and very timeless: Javed finds Springsteen, then himself. The film was adapted from a memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor and directed by Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham”), who infuses the story with Bollywood-style musical sequences and Springsteen lyrics that at times physically spring to life onscreen. “I didn’t want to make a jukebox musical,” Chadha said in an interview with The Times last year. “The film is about writing and words.”
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER 10 p.m. on ABC. After airing part of its sixth and final season late last year, this legal thriller series will return Thursday night for the first of its final episodes. Pieces of how the series will wrap up have been teased: Earlier episodes included flash forwards to a funeral for Annalise (Viola Davis), the law professor at the series’s center. But they also made it unclear whether she actually dies.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
