Eliana Willis

It had happened to Saagar Shaikh many times: He would audition for a part, get a callback, then never hear from anyone again. Later, when he would watch the show, movie or commercial he had auditioned for, the same guy always seemed to fill the role he had wanted.So perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised Shaikh when he got the bad news about “Deli Boys,” a new Hulu series about two pampered Pakistani American brothers who become entangled in a convenience-store crime ring. Shaikh had auditioned to play Mir, the buttoned-up business-school grad, and had even tested for the character.But now his manager was calling to tell him that the role had been offered to someone else.Was it Asif Ali, Shaikh asked? The manager sighed.“And here we are today,” Shaikh said last month, sitting within arm’s reach of Ali at a photo studio in Burbank, Calif. It was just a few weeks before the premiere of “Deli Boys” — which now stars them both. Ali had indeed gotten the role of Mir. But Shaikh wound up landing the other lead: the lazy, entitled, hard-partying brother, Raj.Shaikh and Ali play Raj and Mir, two sons of a convenience store mogul who discover that their father was also running a criminal operation. James Washington/Disney“Now I completely understand why he gets all the jobs,” Shaikh said of Ali, “because I worked with him for a whole season.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Jimmy Kimmel noted that the president’s speech started late: “I guess they were waiting for that last coat of shellac to dry on his face.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The White POTUS’President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. Jimmy Kimmel called it “a very special episode of ‘The White POTUS.’”“His speech started late. I guess they were waiting for that last coat of shellac to dry on his face.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Members of the Trump family were there: Eric was there, Lara, Don Jr., Jared, Ivanka, even Melania showed up. So Democrats weren’t the only people who hate him there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Things got off to a big start when Trump and JD Vance held hands and sang a medley from ‘Wicked.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He laid out his MAGA-genda for the next four years. They include wildly unpopular tariffs, abandoning our allies, buddying up to Russia, tax cuts for the rich and turning Gaza into Atlantic City — all the reasons blue-collar America voted for this man.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump said our momentum is back, our spirit is back, our pride is back. And not the gay kind, either: the regular pride.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“What he’s talking about, I have no idea. The stock market’s down, consumer confidence is down, the dollar is down. The only things that are high are egg prices and Elon Musk.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In the end, Trump’s first address to Congress was much like his first six weeks: filled with useful lies, and applauded by useless idiots.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He told our farmers to have a lot of fun and said the days of unelected bureaucrats are over, with Elon standing right there clapping like an imbecile. Yay for unelected bureaucrats.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And the days of rule by unelected billionaires have just begun. Elon! Take a bow, Elon! You paid for it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It was quite a night. There were about 400 people in attendance — 300 were members of Congress, and 100 were Elon’s kids.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, the night was pretty much a welcome back party for Trump, Republicans and measles.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bad Neighbor Edition)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The sort-of-rebooted series from Marvel and Disney+ pits the blind vigilante against a chaos-inducing, revenge-minded office holder.In the new Marvel series “Daredevil: Born Again,” the gangster Wilson Fisk — a felon preoccupied with status, profit and revenge — embarks on a dark-horse, fear-mongering election campaign. It is for mayor of New York, not president of the United States, but the real-life resonance is hard to miss.And as the season, which premieres Tuesday on Disney+, proceeds through its nine episodes, the sense of familiarity only grows. The spuriously-populist Mayor Fisk rules by executive fiat, sidelines anyone who tries to rein him in and cultivates an atmosphere of violent chaos.Yes, Fisk, also known as the Kingpin, first became mayor of New York in the “Daredevil” comic books on which the series is based, and nothing in “Born Again” is at odds with his previous portrayals. But this is not a coincidence of character or timing. Long before the blind crime-fighting vigilante Daredevil intones, “This is our city, not his, and we can take it back,” it is clear that “Born Again” is summoning the specter of Donald Trump — perhaps as a statement of resistance, perhaps as a dramatic convenience, probably both.The problem is that in this case, real life has become stranger than fiction. “Born Again” is a deluxe comic-book adaptation, meticulously produced and filmed, and on that level it will delight a lot of people. But while it tries to get at something meaningful about social tumult, it does not rise above conventional comic-book ideas or emotions. It doesn’t carry the shock of the real.Within the multiverse of Marvel TV series, “Born Again” has a complicated provenance. “Daredevil” was one of the six shows made for Netflix, beginning a decade ago; it ran for three seasons and ended in 2018. After Marvel began making series for Disney+, the stars of the old show — Charlie Cox as Daredevil (real name Matt Murdock), and Vincent D’Onofrio as Fisk — popped up as supporting players in “Hawkeye” and “Echo,” biding their time.Now their new show is here, sort of a reboot and sort of a new season, with story lines that more or less track. If you haven’t checked in since the original “Daredevil” and certain things puzzle you, such as why Fisk is not in jail, then you may want to watch “Hawkeye” and “Echo.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The new streaming series from the Duchess of Sussex has arrived. It shows her cooking, creating and harvesting, and feels like a billboard for things to come.Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has returned to the small screen with a new cooking and lifestyle show that was released on Netflix on Tuesday.Filmed at a property near her home in sunny Montecito, Calif., the eight-episode series positions Meghan, 43, as a modern domestic goddess embracing the do-it-yourself delights of cooking, crafting and entertaining.“Love is in the details, gang,” she says on an episode of the show, while preparing her own lavender towels.The series, which Netflix has pitched as “inspiring,” saying it “reimagines the genre of lifestyle programming,” is directed by Michael Steed, who worked on “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” It is executive produced by Meghan and is loosely organized around a series of creative projects — teaching a friend to make bread, throwing a game night for friends and planning a brunch — and offering tips along the way.“We’re not in the pursuit of perfection,” Meghan explains in the show as she makes crepes. “We’re in the pursuit of joy.”It has been about five years since Meghan, and her husband, Prince Harry, officially stepped back from their royal duties in Britain. The family is now firmly planted in Southern California. Prince Archie is 5 and Princess Lilibet is 3.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

This Indian Netflix series isn’t the most original thing ever, but it comes loaded with brains, humor and electric performances.The Indian drama “Dabba Cartel,” on Netflix (in Hindi, with subtitles, or dubbed), is a lively spin on the “regular people do crimes … and like it?” genre. It incorporates sudsy twists, vicious domestic subplots, corporate malfeasance and social critiques, and its foot stays on the gas. In the course of its seven episodes, characters go from being not totally sure how one consumes marijuana to synthesizing a new street drug and rubbing shoulders with big-time baddies.Raji (Shalini Pandey) runs a lunch delivery service, and she has been sneaking in “herbal Viagra” for some of her customers. Her colleague Mala (Nimisha Sajayan) has a dirtbag boyfriend who coerces her into expanding the drug distribution to include the far more lucrative MDMA. “These are real drugs!” Raji worries.“Madam, all drugs are real,” the dirtbag says.Raji is trying to save money so she and her husband, who works in big pharma, can move to Germany. Beyond the food service, Mala works as a domestic laborer to support herself and her daughter, so every little bit helps. The delivery business also includes Shahida (Anjali Anand), a real estate agent who dreams of more. The three know they’re in over their heads, but their fear and desperation turn to shock and later industriousness when Raji’s mother-in-law, Sheila (Shabana Azmi), turns out to be a retired queenpin.Luckily, she has a plan. Unluckily, that plan is that they all become mega drug dealers together.Alongside our budding Walter Whites, “Dabba” follows a government investigator (Gajraj Rao) who is trying to prevent opioids from flooding the Indian market. They’re illegal in India, but some pharmaceutical companies manufacture the drugs for American distribution, and he is convinced that Fentanyl and its ilk are making their way to the people. No one takes his concerns seriously, and he is paired with a quirky female police officer (Sai Tamhankar) who is herself often overlooked. But she thinks he’s onto something.A little “Dopesick,” a little “Good Girls,” “Dabba” has brains and humor if not total originality. It feels fresh, though, because of its electric performances, especially from Sajayan, whose brusque and perceptive Mala has some of the show’s best lines. “Dabba” also pays sharp attention to all the little moments of social friction, the mounting indignities each character faces, all the various ways to be insecure.The show is visually ambitious, unlike so many drab crime dramas: fun overhead shots, bright umbrellas, lots of high-stress traffic Jenga. And there are no departure episodes in which we leave the main plot to learn sage wisdom from a sad side character. Everything connects — and it cooks. More