Eliana Willis

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    in Television

    Donald Trump Promised a Softer Image. He Delivered Hulkamania.

    The last night of the Republican National Convention featured glimpses of a more sober tone — and a whole lot of testosterone.Who is Donald J. Trump?After over four decades of tabloid celebrity, reality-TV stardom and presidential politics, you would think this would be a settled question. But after his near assassination in Pennsylvania, the Republican National Convention teased that the former president was going to unveil a softer, changed version of himself. He would recast his acceptance speech to emphasize “unity,” a word that, in four days of TV coverage, was endlessly parroted and rarely defined.Mr. Trump turned himself into his own surprise guest. Would the final night of the convention portray him as a bellicose, combative alpha male, or as a sensitive late convert to empathy and self-reflection?The answer was: Yes, and yes. The night began with a pageant of hypermasculinity, with musclemen and ripped garments. It led to Mr. Trump’s taking the stage with a new, somber voice as he recounted his brush with death. Then, over the course of a digressive hour-and-a-half speech, he somehow changed back before our eyes.First came The Man Show. The introductory hours of the night featured a rotation of admirers, heavily male, who cited Mr. Trump’s close call and defiant survival as testimony to his macho fighting spirit.This is what male identity politics looks like. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality — who has embraced the alt-right angst over testosterone levels — spoke off the cuff, suggesting that the shooting established Mr. Trump as a leader on a biological level. “A leader is the bravest man,” Mr. Carlson said. “This is a law of nature.” Kid Rock retooled his rap-metal anthem “American Bad Ass,” exhorting the delegates to throw up their fists and “Say fight! Fight! Say Trump! Trump!” Dana White, the beefy chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, introduced Mr. Trump.But the splashiest spectacle brought Hulkamania to Milwaukee. Terry G. Bollea, the handlebar-mustached wrestler who performs as Hulk Hogan, took the stage in character to praise “my hero, that gladiator,” working himself into a rage over the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life and ripping open his shirt to expose a “TRUMP-VANCE” tank top.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

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    ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Review: Imelda Staunton Has the Wow, Wow, Wow Factor

    The veteran British actress shines in a new revival that is the musical theater highlight of the West End summer.Love affairs in the theater take different forms — between characters onstage, of course, but also between a performer and the public.In a new London revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” the leading lady, Imelda Staunton, grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout. Ths show is the musical theater event of the West End summer, running at the London Palladium, through Sept. 14.“Hello, Dolly!” has always been a star vehicle. Carol Channing first played the matchmaking Dolly Gallagher Levi on Broadway in 1964 and made it her signature part, returning to the role of the deliciously meddlesome widow throughout her storied career. The others to take it on have included Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and, on film, Barbra Streisand. This production, indeed, owes quite a bit to the 1969 movie, the choice of opening song (“Just Leave Everything to Me”) included.But Staunton — who on Wednesday received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown” — is probably the only English performer who can command as much respect in the role as those American ladies. She occupies a special place in British playgoers’ hearts, which this production, directed by Dominic Cooke’, taps into directly. Her acquaintance with the classics — Albee, Chekhov, Sondheim — lends a gravity to the performance, so that we understand Dolly as a fully realized person, pain and all, and not just a figure of fun.Staunton plays Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who has taken on the role of matchmaker in her community.Manuel HarlanWe 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

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    At ‘Slave Play’ in London, a ‘Black Out’ Night Emerges From Controversy

    Critics slammed the idea of “restricting audiences on the basis of race,” but at a recent performance, Black spectators praised producers for creating a safe space.Elaine Grant was pleased with the scene unfolding outside the Noël Coward Theater in London on Wednesday night.Unlike most nights at the theater in the West End, there was a sea of majority Black faces laughing and jovially chatting in a line that snaked around the block before a performance of Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play.”Grant, who works in the arts, had organized a group of more than 100 people, mostly Black women, to see the show. “A lot of the people that I work with don’t necessarily go to the theater a lot,” she said, and so it was important for them to be in a space where they could feel safe experiencing a range of emotion.This was a “Black Out” performance, an idea Harris first announced for his play’s Broadway 2019 run, in which he invites Black audience members to attend a specific performance, to experience and discuss art away from the white gaze. Joaquina Kalukango, an actress in the show’s New York run, told the Times in 2020 that she felt on those nights that she was performing to an audience “that fully understood the story and understood where these characters were coming from.”In London, the mood on the theater steps was upbeat and there seemed little concern that when this “Slave Play” transfer — including two Black Out performances — was announced in February, it drew the wrath of some British commentators, and got caught up in ongoing debates over race in British cultural institutions. Even the office of the prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, chimed in, saying, “restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.”Harris responded to the widespread criticism on social media, addressing what he called a “moral panic” among parts of the British public.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

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    in Television

    ‘The Fortress’: A Norwegian Export About the Danger of Closed Borders

    Both sociopolitical thriller and parable, this Viaplay series presents a future that can feel uncomfortably plausible.In “The Fortress,” a new series about pandemic, isolationism and government corruption, something is rotten in the state of Norway. The year is 2037, and the country has spent the last decade cut off from the rest of the world, behind a wall of its own making. When a deadly virus sweeps through the land, the prime minister blames refugees for bringing the illness to an insulated paradise.But in this case, the menace is a domestic breed. And the government will do anything to cover up its origins.A sociopolitical thriller and a parable, “The Fortress,” a seven-part Norwegian series, made its American debut on Tuesday, the latest in a wave of Scandinavian dramas cresting on American shores in recent years that tend to be brainy, rooted in reality and, yes, chilly. (This one is available on Viaplay.)It is also timely — dystopian and futuristic but only just, playing off the rising tide of isolationism in Europe and around the world in these post-pandemic, post-Brexit, “build the wall” times.“Our main theme is that to solve the world’s problems, everybody needs everybody,” said John Kare Raake, a co-creator of the show and its lead writer, in a video interview from his home in Oslo. “We can’t just say, ‘That’s not our problem.’ We have to work together and decide that we can relate to problems in other countries that are not at our doorstep.”With a star-filled cast and an award-winning script (it won best screenplay last year at the Series Mania festival in Europe), “The Fortress” is a high-profile venture for Viaplay, a Swedish-based streamer that made its North American debut only last year. The show’s assortment of characters representing the different strata of Norwegian society are played by some heavy hitters of international drama.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

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    Jimmy Fallon Finds Bright Side of Biden Testing Positive for Covid

    “It’s the first positive news he’s had in months,” Fallon said on Thursday.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.A Positive for BidenPresident Joe Biden tested positive for Covid on Wednesday, forcing him to cancel campaign events and self-isolate.“On the bright side, it’s the first positive news he’s had in months,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.“Yep, Biden had fatigue, a cough and brain fog — and then he got Covid.” — JIMMY FALLON“President Biden tested positive yesterday for Covid-19. On the plus side, everyone around him was already distancing.” — SETH MEYERS“Biden has Covid, which is no joke for a man of his age, especially because this is an unusual strain where the brain fog hits you three weeks ago.” — JORDAN KLEPPER, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Thankfully, Biden is expected to make a full recovery, and his doctor said that he’ll be back to 60 percent in no time.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Matt Gaetz’s New Face Edition)“Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz spoke last night at the Republican National Convention. When reached for comment, he couldn’t get his phone to unlock.” — SETH MEYERS“I mean, he looks like he’s trying to be an NBA player’s third wife.” — ANTHONY ANDERSON, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“It looks like his eyebrows are reacting to a picture of his eyebrows.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Bits Worth WatchingThe James Beard-winning barbecue master Kevin Bludso showed Guillermo and the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” guest host Anthony Anderson how to apply dry rub to dino ribs and pork shoulder on Thursday.Also, Check This OutFrom left, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and Glen Powell in “Twisters.”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures & Amblin EntertainmentDaisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell star in “Twisters,” the new stand-alone sequel to the hit 1996 tornado-themed thriller “Twister.” More

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    Bob Newhart Stayed Funny His Entire Life

    He basically invented the stand-up special in 1960 and continued to be a source of comic brilliance until his final years.Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy.Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.Onstage, he didn’t curse, bust taboos or show anger. His style was gentle and wry. As opposed to motormouth contemporaries like Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl, his defining trait was a cheerful, sloth-paced delivery, stammering, pausing, gradually, meticulously working his way through a sentence. He belonged to neither of the great branches of American humor — the legacies of Jewish or Black comedy. A Roman Catholic from the west side of Chicago, Newhart came off as an entirely respectable example of Midwestern nice.Newhart brought his own kind of neurosis, a comedy rooted in nuanced deadpan and silence. He was exasperated, clinging to sanity. He wasn’t one to get revenge in a joke. When I met him at his home for an interview tied to his 90th birthday, he had no scores to settle, no grievances or assumptions he was looking to upend. He was even humble and magnanimous talking about death, saying he thought he knew what awaited him after he passed away, but wasn’t sure. Then he joked about a comic who famously (and unfairly) accused him of stealing a bit: “Maybe I’ll come back as Shelley Berman and be pissed at myself.”Bob Newhart could occasionally get lumped in with the “sick comics” of the mid-20th century and his early work did have a political, even slangy edge. One of his signature bits, where an advertising man coaches Abraham Lincoln before the Gettysburg Address, was a pointed critique of the cynicism of professional politics. “Hi, Abe, sweetheart” begins the man from Madison Avenue, who encourages him to work in a plug for an Abraham Lincoln T-shirt. When the president says he wants to change “four score and seven years ago” to “87,” the ad man first patiently explains they already test marketed this in Erie. Then he says: “It’s sort of like Mark Antony saying “Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’ve got something I want to tell you.”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

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    The ‘Newhart’ Finale Is One of Bob Newhart’s Crowning Achievements

    The finale has become so famous in part because it offered a rare moment of real surprise from a taped prime-time television sitcom.Open any search engine you like and type in these words: “best TV finales.” Scroll through the dozens — heck, hundreds — of articles written about which shows really “stuck the landing,” delivering the kind finish that fans still talk about.The “Newhart” finale should be on nearly all of those lists. For its last few minutes alone, “Newhart” deserves emeritus status on every roundup of best TV endings, best TV moments, funniest pranks, you name it. In perpetuity.What makes it an all-timer? One knockout of a punchline.For eight seasons — from 1982 to 1990 — Bob Newhart entertained millions on “Newhart,” playing Dick Loudon, a how-to book author and the co-owner of a quaint Vermont inn with his wife Joanna (Mary Frann). The success of “Newhart” was especially remarkable given that Newhart had already had a long run on TV in “The Bob Newhart Show,” which ran for six seasons, also on CBS, from 1972 to 1978.He had spent those six years playing Bob Hartley, a Chicago psychologist who coped with his kooky patients with the help of his loving wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). These two characters, Loudon and Hartley, both drew on Newhart’s stand-up comedy persona: the stammering, muttering everyman, delivering hilariously deadpan reactions to the madness of modern life.The “Newhart” finale bridged the gap between the two shows, with an ending that had Dick Loudon getting knocked out by a golf ball in Vermont and then waking up in a Chicago bedroom as Bob Hartley, with Emily by his side. The implication was that the entire run of “Newhart” had been Bob’s dream. On the night of the finale’s taping, the “Newhart” studio audience whooped in delight.Most of the series finale was a seemingly straightforward “Newhart” episode. With, foreground from left, Newhart, Mary Frann, Gedde Watanabe and Tom Poston.CBS, via Everett CollectionWe 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

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    Where to Stream Bob Newhart’s Greatest TV and Movie Performances

    Newhart, who died on Thursday, became a standup star in the early 1960s and later developed two hit sitcoms built around his nervous Everyman persona.The legend of Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at 94, holds that he was once just an ordinary Chicago accountant who honed a stand-up act in his spare time. Overnight, the story goes — almost accidentally — he became a Grammy-winning sensation with his debut album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” a collection of one-man sketches in which he play-acts one half of funny conversations.That story is exaggerated. Newhart worked in advertising for longer than he did in accounting; and his showbiz ambitions were never just an afterthought. It is true, though, that Newhart rocketed to the top because he innately understood a certain midcentury Middle American type: the meek and anxious Everyman, overwhelmed by a world that sometimes seems deeply weird.Newhart first made good use of that understanding onstage in comedy clubs, where he became a phenomenon in the early 1960s, setting him up for a thriving career in that decade as a variety show and talk show guest. He then played variations on his stand-up character in two hit sitcoms: “The Bob Newhart Show” through much of the ’70s and “Newhart,” which ran from 1982 to 1990.By the 21st century, he had settled into emeritus status, reviving his old routines in concerts while doing his beloved shtick in supporting roles in movies and on TV. Here are six of Newhart’s most memorable performances, all available to stream:‘Bob Newhart: Off the Record’ (1992)The best way to understand how a “button-down” office drone became a perennial presence on TV is to watch this comedy special, in which Newhart revisits some of his earliest stand-up routines. At the time, these bits were over 30 years old, but they still — even today — get laughs. “Off the Record” shows one of the best-ever comics doing his thing: delivering one side of ludicrous phone calls and chats while giving the audience just enough information to imagine what is happening on the other end. In doing his bits about ordinary schmoes in extraordinary situations — such as crossing paths with King Kong or consulting with Abe Lincoln — Newhart spoofs the language of American life.Rent or buy it on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.‘The Bob Newhart Show’ (1972-78)After Newhart’s decade-plus of stand-up success and frequent TV guest gigs, the writer-producer team of David Davis and Lorenzo Music finally figured out how to harness his comic persona in a sitcom. In their “The Bob Newhart Show,” the comedian plays Bob Hartley, a Chicago psychologist managing the neuroses of his patients and the frustrations of his oft-neglected wife, Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). The show’s premise allows Newhart to make great use of his deadpan reactions, witty remarks and nervous stammer — all opposite a crack cast of funny character actors. But the real reason the series ran for so long is the star’s chemistry with Pleshette. Their easy banter and obvious affection make even a chilly Windy City feel inviting.Buy it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV or Vudu.‘Newhart’ (1982-90)A few years after ending one popular, long-running sitcom, Newhart moved on to another. In “Newhart,” he plays Dick Loudon, a successful how-to book author who buys a quaint Vermont inn to run with his wife, Joanna (Mary Frann). Though again surrounded by eccentrics, Newhart’s character — and his approach to comedy — is subtly different here than in “The Bob Newhart Show.” Over the course of the series, Dick essentially becomes another one of those small-town kooks, with his own stubborn tics and habits. The show is plenty charming, even as it relies more on wackiness than warmth.Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.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