Eliana Willis

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    Interview: Rick Riordan, the Man Behind ‘Percy Jackson’

    What books are on your night stand?I usually have three books going at a time: one in Italian to improve my fluency, a novel in English and a nonfiction work in English. Right now it’s “Il Metodo del Coccodrillo,” a thriller by Maurizio de Giovanni, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” a near-future dystopian novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and “The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s” by Piers Brendon.How do you organize your books?“Organize” might be too kind a word. I try to group books loosely by subject matter. Celtic studies and books in Irish take up two shelves. Another two shelves are for books in Italian. Not surprisingly, Greek and Roman mythology takes up about four shelves. The rest is a scattered assortment of novels, nonfiction, poetry and graphic novels.What’s the last great book you read?“How to Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne,” by Sarah Bakewell. I was not well versed in Montaigne’s work, but I admire any biography that can bring its subject to life in such a vivid and relatable way.Are there any classics that you only recently read for the first time?“La Divina Commedia.” I had only read portions of the “Inferno” in English, but my Italian finally got to the level that I could tackle the “Commedia” in the original. It was quite a challenge and took me about a year, but it was well worth the effort to appreciate the poetry in its original form. What struck me was how topical and regional Dante’s references were. For such a timeless poem, it is deeply rooted in the personal dramas and “pop culture” of 13th-century Tuscany.Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?So many. N.K. Jemisin has a brilliant iconoclastic imagination that has reframed fantasy and science fiction for me many times over. Madeline Miller has breathed new life into ancient Greek stories. China Miéville is a genius of speculative fiction whose quirky world-building always delights me. I also love the Irish-language poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).I am lucky enough to have a home office with a large window looking over the Charles River in Boston. During the winter evenings, when the trees are bare and the view is wide open, the sunset on the water is spectacular. With the fireplace going and a bit of soft instrumental music playing … I can’t imagine a better place for enjoying a good book.What kind of reader were you as a child?Reluctant. I rarely read assigned texts in school, and reading for pleasure wasn’t something that would have occurred to me. That changed when I discovered “The Lord of the Rings,” which was my gateway into fantasy, and from there into mythology and the wider world of literature. I like to say that my karmic punishment for never reading an English text in school was becoming an English teacher.What book should everybody read before the age of 21?I don’t really believe in a canon of must-read texts for everyone. My gateway books were J.R.R. Tolkien’s. Would I recommend them to most 12-year-old kids today to get them interested in reading? Probably not. The most formative books I had read by age 21 were probably Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and “The Habit of Being,” a collection of letters by Flannery O’Connor. Great books, but again, I am not sure I would make them blanket recommendations for every young adult today.What is the best writing advice you have ever gotten?To avoid the cycle of dissatisfaction. Before I was published, I took a class from a mystery novelist who warned me that writing could turn into a succession of moving goal posts. It can be easy to lose sight of why a writer writes — because you have an internal need to turn your thoughts into words.What do you write when you sign books for fans?I usually sign 1,000-5,000 books at a time, in advance of each event, so alas, I don’t get to personalize many books anymore. My signature has become an illegible scrawl. On those rare occasions when I get to have a one-on-one interaction with a fan, I try to add a few vowels and consonants to my scrawl, and perhaps sketch a lightning bolt underneath.Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?Any time I relax and enjoy a book rather than working, or cleaning the house, or running errands, I consider that a guilty pleasure. The type of book doesn’t matter.Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?This is a complex ask, but I would personally love to read more anthologies of Indigenous folklore and mythology from around the world. When my family and I were traveling through the Pacific Northwest last summer, through the lands of the Tlingit, Haida and Chugach, we heard such wonderful stories. I’d love to learn more. Perhaps those books are out there and I’ve simply been unsuccessful finding them, or perhaps the books are not getting the coverage and attention they deserve. It’s also possible some Indigenous writers are wary of popularizing their sacred stories for a mass-market audience, which is totally fair. You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?I don’t do dinner parties, so I would probably invite the most introverted writers I could think of — perhaps Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson — because none of them would show up. Then we could enjoy a quiet evening at home by ourselves, reading by the fire. More

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    Frances Sternhagen, ‘Sex and the City’ Actress and Tony Winner, Dies at 93

    Her Tony-winning Broadway career included “Driving Miss Daisy,” “On Golden Pond” and “The Heiress.” On TV she had maternal roles in “Cheers” and “Sex and the City.”Frances Sternhagen, the Tony Award-winning actress who played leading roles in stage productions of “Driving Miss Daisy” and “On Golden Pond” as formidable older women when she was so young that she had to wear aging makeup, died on Monday at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 93.Her son Tony Carlin confirmed the death.Ms. Sternhagen won Tonys as featured actress in a play for her performances in two very different productions. In a 1995 Broadway revival of “The Heiress,” based on Henry James’s novel “Washington Square,” she was Cherry Jones’s well-meaning, matchmaking Aunt Lavinia. In “The Good Doctor,” Neil Simon’s 1973 take on Chekhov, she played multiple roles in comedy sketches.Ms. Sternhagen came into her own in mature Off Broadway roles: as the strong-willed 70-something-and-up Southern widow in Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1988, when she was still in her 50s, and the concerned retirement-age wife in Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond” in 1979, when she was 49.She received Tony nominations for her roles in the original productions of “On Golden Pond,” “Equus” and the musical “Angel” and in revivals of “Morning’s at Seven” and “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”People who never saw a Broadway show or even went to the movies may have known Ms. Sternhagen’s face from television. Beginning in the 1980s, when she played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin on “Cheers,” she sailed through a period of playing maternal figures in memorable recurring roles in a number of hit series.Ms. Sternhagen in a 1990 episode of the sitcom “Cheers.” She played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger, right).Kim Gottlieb-Walker/NBC Universal, via Getty ImagesOn “ER,” she was Dr. John Carter’s aristocratic Chicago grandmother. On “Sex and the City,” she was Trey MacDougal’s rich but peculiar mom. Most recently she played the mother of Kyra Sedgwick’s Southern character on the police procedural “The Closer.” She received three Emmy Award nominations, two for “Cheers” and one for “Sex and the City.”Ms. Sternhagen was known to turn down movie roles because they would take her away from her family for too long, but over the years she did appear in some two dozen films. She was Burt Reynolds’s intensely caring sister-in-law in “Starting Over” (1979), a perfectionist magazine researcher in “Bright Lights, Big City” (1988), and the cookbook author Irma Rombauer in “Julie & Julia” (2009). Her other films included “The Hospital” (1971), “Independence Day” (1983) and “Misery” (1990).But stage was her first home, and her career flourished in Off Broadway productions. She made her New York stage debut at 25 in Jean Anouilh’s “Thieves’ Carnival” at the Cherry Lane Theater, and she won her first Obie Award the next year, for George Bernard Shaw’s “The Admirable Bashville” (1956). She won again in 1965 for two performances (“The Room” and “A Slight Ache”) and received a lifetime achievement Obie in 2013.Ms. Sternhagen, right, and Cherry Jones in the 1995 Broadway revival of “The Heiress.” In a Tony-winning performance, Ms. Sternhagen played the well-meaning, matchmaking Aunt Lavinia.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHer reviews were positive from the beginning. “When an intellectual comedy is about to be staged, it is always a wise notion to send for Frances Sternhagen,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in 1959, reviewing “The Saintliness of Margery Kempe,” an Off Broadway comedy. “She is the mistress of sardonic fooling.”Frances Hussey Sternhagen was born on Jan. 13, 1930, in Washington, D.C. She was the only child of John Meier Sternhagen, a United States tax court judge, and Gertrude (Hussey) Sternhagen, a World War I nurse who became a homemaker.Frances attended the Potomac School and the Madeira School, both in Virginia. At Vassar College, she originally studied history but was persuaded by an adviser to give drama a try.Ms. Sternhagen in 1999 at her home in New Rochelle. “It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate,” she said in 2001.Chris Maynard for The New York TimesAfter graduation in 1951, Ms. Sternhagen taught briefly at the Milton Academy in Milton, Mass. When she auditioned at the Brattle Street Theater in nearby Cambridge, she was rejected. “They said I read every part as if I was leading a troop of Girl Scouts out onto a hockey field,” she told The Toronto Star decades later.Returning to Washington, she took theater courses at the Catholic University of America and began appearing in Arena Stage productions.At the same time she began working in New York theater, Ms. Sternhagen also ventured into television work; she made her small-screen debut in 1955 in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” alongside Helen Hayes, on the series “Producers’ Showcase.” But she didn’t make her feature film debut until a decade later, with a supporting role as a high school librarian in “Up the Down Staircase” (1967). Like many working actors, she appeared on soap operas, including “Love of Life,” and in television commercials.She continued working into her 80s. Her last Broadway appearance was in a 2005 production of Edward Albee’s “Seascape.” Her last New York stage appearance was Off Broadway in “The Madrid” (2013) at City Center, playing the mother of a kindergarten teacher, played by Edie Falco, who up and leaves her job and family.In Ms. Sternhagen’s final film, “And So It Goes” (2014), a comic drama with Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, she played a wise, snarky and chain-smoking real estate agent.Ms. Sternhagen and Phoebe Strole in an Off Broadway production of “The Madrid,” at City Center in Manhattan in 2013. It was Ms. Sternhagen’s last stage performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMs. Sternhagen married Thomas Carlin, a fellow actor, in 1956, and they had six children. The couple had met briefly at Catholic University, acted together in “The Skin of Our Teeth” in Maryland and fell in love when both were in the cast of “Thieves’ Carnival” in New York. Mr. Carlin died in 1991.In addition to their son Tony, she is survived by three other sons, Paul, Peter and John; two daughters, Amanda Carlin Sanders and Sarah Carlin; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. She lived in New Rochelle for more than 60 years.In 2001, Ms. Sternhagen talked to drama students at Vassar and gave an interview to the college’s alumni publication. She revealed that as an actress she liked working from the outside in, starting with how a character speaks and walks rather than with her inner motivation. And she attributed a good deal of her personal emotional development to acting.“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate,” she said.As for young aspiring actors who look down on paying their dues by appearing in commercials, Ms. Sternhagen suggested, “Think of it as children’s theater.”Alex Traub More

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    Two New Books Consider Comedy and the Culture Wars

    The authors of “Comedy Book” and “Outrageous” argue that culture-war worries about what’s a laughing matter have been overplayed.COMEDY BOOK: How Comedy Conquered Culture — and the Magic That Makes It Work, by Jesse David FoxOUTRAGEOUS: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, by Kliph NesteroffDid you hear the one about cancel culture?Of course you did, several times over, if you’ve paid any attention to modern comedy and its purveyors, many of whom have groused about how hard it is to be funny in today’s climate. But two new books share an exasperation with the common sentiment that there’s never been a worse time to express oneself than the present. Taking them, well, seriously can liberate us from repeating the past.Kliph Nesteroff’s fact-packed “Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars” finds American entertainers in a perpetual state of despair over the censorious climate of their day — whatever day it happens to be. Steve Allen, the original host of “The Tonight Show,” complained about the “very touchy times” in 1955; in 2015, Jerry Seinfeld said he’d been warned away from playing colleges because of students’ sensitivities.Social media “gives the impression that people are more irrational, humorless and overly sensitive than in the past,” Nesteroff writes, but vintage letters to the editor contain “remarkably similar” sentiments.To Jesse David Fox, the author of “Comedy Book,” the risk of backlash is part of the point. Fox, a senior editor at New York magazine’s Vulture and a podcaster who regularly interviews comedians, puts it this way: “Does political correctness make comedy harder to do? Sure, in the sense that it would be easier to run for a touchdown if you didn’t have to worry about holding the ball, but that’s the game. It’s what makes it more exciting than watching a bunch of men sprinting with helmets on.” This is just one example of Fox’s keen insight in his energetic and wise book, which focuses on the ’90s and beyond, when, the author reckons, comedy became an “ever-present, important, valued societal force.” (Fox points out that before “Seinfeld” premiered in 1989, no comedian had ever headlined a show at Madison Square Garden’s arena, yet by the time he wrote his book, 18 had.) Within broadly named chapters (“Truth,” “Context,” “Audience”), he crams vivid examples; his “Timing” section, which explores 9/11 jokes and the notion of “too soon,” is particularly adept at illustrating the use of humor in the face of tragedy.Like many of his subjects, Fox knows his way around a pointed one-liner. “A roast might sound mean, but it’s another way of saying ‘I see you’” is one. “If you are saying supposedly offensive things and the audience is instantly all onboard, it is not a comedy show, it’s a rally” is another. That such rigorous thinking should at one point lead him to defend an Adam Sandler poop joke is a great gag in itself.Fox is allergic to the kind of snobbery directed at broad comedy, maintaining that “if it’s funny to anyone, it’s funny.” Still, he’s interested in parameters — how “8:46,” Dave Chappelle’s Netflix monologue inspired by the murder of George Floyd, functions as “a piece of work in conversation with the history of comedy,” and why the same comedian’s jokes targeting queer people fall short.Comedy, Fox writes, is fundamentally play, and in his deft hands, the analysis of comedy can be playful, too. Fox knows that grand pronouncements on what makes funny things funny is dicey territory: “The sense of what is funny is so subjective — so completely built into your person — that it feels objective,” he writes.His own life experiences and tastes are integral to his reporting. The first and last chapters of the book recount the deaths of immediate family members, which, he says, comedy helped him process. “Comedy Book” is not the definitive history of the past three-plus decades. It’s Fox’s history, and better for it.“Outrageous,” the product of herculean research, has a wider purview than just comedy. Nesteroff touches on rock ’n’ roll, talk radio, the initial blowback received by early critics of Hitler and more.However, what does and doesn’t, should and shouldn’t, make us laugh does take up a lot of space (Nesteroff’s 2015 “The Comedians” is a full-fledged history of the form). Sometimes the laughs are inadvertent, as in a 1959 complaint from a viewer of the TV series “Lassie” who compared its portrayal of a litter of puppies to a sex show.In no-frills prose, Nesteroff races through some two centuries of expression and backlash — from blackface minstrelsy (criticized early on by Frederick Douglass) to the (formerly Dixie) Chicks (the country music trio whose titanic profile shrank several sizes after its lead singer publicly criticized President George W. Bush) — rarely pausing for analysis and sometimes breezing by useful context. The book tends to home in on the moment when each brouhaha reached a fever pitch, which can give a distorted picture of the controversies and their ensuing fallouts.“Outrageous” is nonetheless a useful compendium. Placing so many outrages next to one another exposes a call-and-response pattern, in which both sides of the political divide have tried to dictate acceptable speech for all. We may be partial to the intentions of one side, but the mechanics often look identical.Unsurprisingly, it’s those already in power who often succeed. If there is a main character in Nesteroff’s sea of stories, it’s Paul Weyrich, a John Birch Society alum who helped build “an elaborate Culture War infrastructure” with corporate cash and evangelical muscle, eventually cofounding the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority.In sometimes clandestine ways, those groups have had a major impact in seeding American culture with conservative ideology, raging against what Weyrich called “the Cultural Marxism of an elite few to dictate words, language and opinions” while, Nesteroff writes, doing precisely that.“Outrageous” portrays a country divided; there’s no shortage of strife in Fox’s book, but he believes fundamentally in the unifying power of comedy, which “smooths conflicts and unites disparate groups.” His faith is contagious. Comedy is not stifled, he argues, but has “enmeshed itself in how millennials and now Gen Z communicate.” Superstars like Chappelle and Amy Schumer are endowed with the kind of trusted status once reserved for those in the purported truth business, like journalists, public intellectuals and politicians.“Can comedy make everything all better?” Fox asks in conclusion. “Of course not. But it makes it easier.”COMEDY BOOK: How Comedy Conquered Culture — and the Magic That Makes It Work | More

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    How Jewish People Built the American Theater

    HOW ARE THINGS in Glocca Morra?” is a song from the 1947 musical “Finian’s Rainbow,” which is about, among other things, a leprechaun. Glocca Morra doesn’t exist, and if it did, it wouldn’t be in, say, Poland. The song is sung by a homesick Irish lass in the American South; like the show overall, it […] More

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    Best TV Shows of 2023

    Series like “The Bear,” “Beef,” “Happy Valley,” “Reservation Dogs” and “Succession” dazzled in a year when much of the TV business was in disarray.Best Shows of 2023 | Best International | Best Shows That EndedJames PoniewozikBest Shows of 2023TV in 2023 was like synchronized swimming. Below the surface, there was roiling and churn. The writers’ and actors’ strikes wiped out much of the production year. The hangover from the corporate binge on streaming platforms led to cancellations and cutbacks. A number of hall-of-fame series left the air, with no clear plan of, as it were, succession.But above the waterline, the dance went on. As usual, it was challenging to whittle down my year-end list to 10. (So I picked 11.) As usual, I am listing it in alphabetical, not ranked order. As usual, I made it a rule not to repeat shows from the previous year, and as usual, I broke that rule. (I couldn’t not include “Reservation Dogs.”)And as usual, I probably missed stuff: I have the same number of hours in the day as you, even if I spend more of them in front of a screen. Herewith, the best of what I did see, for your catching-up pleasure. Even if Peak TV is dead, Off-Peak TV should keep us plenty busy.‘The Bear’ (FX)When “The Americans” was on the air, I used to say that it was good it came first on my list alphabetically, because it was probably the series I would rank No. 1 if pushed. Now “The Bear” has that pride of place (at least until “Abbott Elementary” makes it back on my list). After a much-hyped 2022 premiere, the restaurant dramedy leveled up, exploring the volcanic dysfunction of its central family and celebrating the care and feeding of guests as a quasi-spiritual calling. This show is cooking with gas. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Beef’ (Netflix)Steven Yeun in “Beef,” which used a road rage incident to explore many different modern tensions.Andrew Cooper/Netflix“Beef” was a good story about people getting mad: Amy Lau (Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), whose road-rage encounter descends into a quagmire of terrible choices. But it was a great story about why people get mad. It unpeeled the blazing onion of their conflict to expose class differences, family resentments and inter- and intragroup tensions among its Asian American characters, in an unsparing but empathetic telling. A big enough collection of last straws, “Beef” said, can build a highly flammable house. (Streaming on Netflix.)‘The Curse’ (Showtime)Like the mirrored eco-houses that its two lead characters build, “The Curse” is a polarizing creation. The collaboration between Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, with a stunning performance by Emma Stone, is deeply uncomfortable. It is also an entrancing, original, astute, creepy — and funny! — study of guilt, marriage and benighted altruism. Enter this haunted house if you dare, but watch your step. (Streaming on Paramount+.)‘Dead Ringers’ (Amazon Prime Video)We’d have been just fine without so many remakes, reboots and adaptations in 2023. “Dead Ringers” was a bloody, brilliant exception. Rachel Weisz — playing twin gynecologists in a gender-swapped version of the Jeremy Irons film role — and the writer Alice Birch delivered a truly distinctive reimagining of this story that kept the body horror while adding a contemporary take on scientific hubris and big-money medicine. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)‘I’m a Virgo’ (Amazon Prime Video)Boots Riley’s Brobdingnagian satire was both fabulistic and fabulous. Through the misadventures and explorations of Cootie (a marvelous Jharrel Jerome), a 13-foot-tall teen in Oakland, Riley personified the idea of the young Black man as threat, while spinning a wild, political and relentlessly entertaining tale that incorporated superhero mythology and anticapitalist critique. The series strained to control its outsized ambitions, but it was proof that you can never aim too big. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)‘Jury Duty’ (Amazon Freevee)Like a jury summons, this innovative reality-comedy was a surprise. But in this case, it was a pleasant one. An unsuspecting citizen, Ronald Gladden, was called to serve on a fictional case, joining a jury of his fake peers played by actors (as well as the actor James Marsden, playing himself). Miraculously, the production pulled off the elaborate “trial” without blowing its cover. And marvelously, what might have sounded like a cruel joke turned out to be a feel-good, hilarious test of decency, in which Gladden, er, acquitted himself with charm and integrity. (Streaming on Amazon Freevee.)‘The Last of Us’ and ‘Somebody Somewhere’ (HBO)You might think that a thriller about a fungal zombie apocalypse has nothing in common with a slice-of-life account of friendships, queer life and cabaret music. But these very different HBO series showcased two of 2023’s great duos. (Each of them involving a Joel!) In “Last of Us,” Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey starred as Joel and Ellie, an odd couple forced to consider what they would sacrifice for endangered humanity. Season 2 of “Somewhere” tested the bond of Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) in an endearing story of heartland eccentrics. One series splattered more guts than the other, but each had heart to spare. (Streaming on Max.)‘Reservation Dogs’ (FX)From left, Paulina Alexis, Devery Jacobs, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Lane Factor and Elva Guerra in “Reservation Dogs,” which ended this year.Shane Brown/FXIt is fitting that the final season of this comedy, set on a Native reservation in Oklahoma, had a story line involving extraterrestrial life. This was a story of a small community that, over its three seasons, managed to fill an entire universe. A rare coming-of-age story that does as well by its elder characters as its young leads, it left me with my heart brimming and my eyes wanting more. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘South Side’ (Max)What is a “year,” really? Yes, eagle-eyed readers will note that the final season of this comedy aired at the end of 2022, but it arrived too late for my previous list. Over a too-short, three-season run, “South Side” expanded a workplace comedy about a Chicago rent-to-own shop into a fantastical universe of eccentrics, scammers and hapless police and pols, and the final season packed years’ worth of ideas into a final blaze of surreal world-building. This was one for the ages, even if it lived on borrowed — or rented — time. (Streaming on Max.)‘Succession’ (HBO)Like the Roy family empire, the final season of this corporate saga dominated all available media. But the saturation coverage was deserved. The drama followed its dark instincts to the end, giving a send-off for the ages to the patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and living up to its title in his heirs fight for his legacy. The C-suite brawl — in which American democracy was collateral damage — managed to be cynically satisfying and deeply emotional. Money could not buy the Roys happiness, but their misery was priceless. (Streaming on Max.)Honorable mention: “Barry” (HBO); “Blue Eye Samurai” (Netflix); “Dave” (FXX); “Happy Valley” (BBC America); “How To With John Wilson” (HBO); “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” (Netflix); “Killing It” (Peacock); “Minx” (Starz); “Mrs. Davis” (Peacock); “Party Down” (Starz); “Scavengers Reign” (Max); “The Traitors” (Peacock).Flawed but fascinating: “Foundation” (Apple TV+); “Hello Tomorrow!” (Apple TV+); “Three-Body” (Rakuten Viki); “The Wheel of Time” (Amazon Prime Video).MIKE HALEBest International ShowsIt cannot be overemphasized: The wild proliferation of series, especially imported ones, makes the word “best” at the top of any list a hazy approximation at, you know, best. Here are 10 shows from outside the United States, in alphabetical order, that I particularly enjoyed in 2023.‘A Spy Among Friends’ (MGM+)“A Spy Among Friends,” with Guy Pearce, left, and Damian Lewis, was based on actual events.Adi Marineci/Sony Pictures TelevisionThis languorous yet nail-biting variation on the espionage thriller dramatized the end of the friendship between Kim Philby, the British spy who was a double agent for the Soviets, and Nicholas Elliott, the fellow spy sent to bring Philby home and then suspected of treason himself when Philby escaped. Written by Alex Cary (“Homeland”) based on Ben Macintyre’s book, it was a smart and complicated puzzle play and an icy dissection of the British class system; most of all, it was a tour de force for Guy Pearce as Philby, Damian Lewis as Elliott and Anna Maxwell Martin as a fictional agent caught in the middle. (Streaming on MGM+.)‘C.B. Strike’ (Max)The rapport between Tom Burke, as the gruff British private eye Cormoran Strike, and Holliday Grainger, as his assistant and then fellow investigator Robin Ellacott, has always been more than enough reason to watch this series based on J.K. Rowling’s Strike mystery novels (written under the name Robert Galbraith). The show’s balance of detection and thorny, soulful friendship-cum-romance is close to ideal; the fifth season, based on Rowling’s book “Troubled Blood,” combined a cluster of family crises with a deft, surprising mystery involving the 40-year-old case of a missing doctor. (Streaming on Max.)‘Happy Valley’ (BBC America)Siobhan Finneran, left, and Sarah Lancashire in “Happy Valley,” which wrapped up this year. Matt Squire/AMCSally Wainwright’s intimate, everyday epic about the life-or-death struggle between a Yorkshire police officer and her nemesis, the blandly brutal sociopath who was also the father of her grandson, reached its reckoning in its third and final season. Sarah Lancashire and James Norton were terrific to the end, along with Siobhan Finneran as the cop’s ruinously, redemptively softhearted sister. (Streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV.)‘Oshi no Ko’ (Hidive)From idol singing groups to TV dramas, reality-dating shows, anime musicals, modeling, YouTube stardom, performing-arts high schools, celebrity journalism and online trolling, this animated series offers an almost documentary-style account of the wages of success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Because it is a sprightly, goofy anime, its darkly earnest accounts of struggle and exploitation share space with teenage romance and a murder mystery, and its hero and heroine are a young doctor and his teenage patient reincarnated as the twin babies of a pop singer they both idolized. (Streaming on Hidive.)‘Paris Police 1905’ (MHz Choice)The latest winner from the French network Canal+ (progenitor of “Spiral” and “The Bureau”) is a police procedural that doubles as a panorama of French society at a time when overwhelming change barrels into ossified conservatism and privilege. (The first season was titled “Paris Police 1900.”) The plot of the new season of this highly entertaining melodrama, which matches a grisly sang-froid with the driest humor, is driven by syphilis, homophobia and a deadly new menace, the automobile. (Streaming on MHz Choice.)‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)“Slow Horses” had even more twists in its second season. With Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Gary Oldman.Apple TV+The second season of this wonderfully sardonic British series about a cadre of misfit, career-stalled MI5 agents (which premiered on Dec. 2, 2022, after last year’s edition of these lists appeared) was, if anything, better than the first — its mystery twistier, its action more tense and shocking. Season 3, premiering Wednesday, is a slight step back — the bullet count goes way up, which is always a bad sign — but the average of the two seasons is still awfully high. (Streaming on Apple TV+.)‘Somewhere Boy’ (Hulu)In its flashbacks, this compact drama is a dark fable: a bereaved Welsh husband, terrified of also losing his young son, keeps the boy captive by telling him that the world outside their isolated home is populated by monsters. In the present, it’s an astringent coming-of-age story, as Danny (Lewis Gribben), now nearly an adult, emerges into the confusing, disappointing, equally frightening real world. Gribben and Samuel Bottomley, as the cousin suddenly saddled with being Danny’s protector, are excellent. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘30 Coins’ (Max)“It’s all quite incomprehensible,” a character says of events in the second season of Álex de la Iglesia’s apocalyptic theological thriller. “But life is incomprehensible, too.” That’s the correct spirit in which to watch de la Iglesia’s rococo riot of a series about a handful of ordinary, though in some cases extraordinarily attractive people — a small-town mayor, a veterinarian, a lapsed cop, a YouTube ghostbuster — battling Satan, the Vatican, Paul Giamatti (as an L. Ron Hubbard-style cult leader) and possibly God over the fate of the world. (Streaming on Max.)‘Wolf Like Me’ (Peacock)Abe Forsythe’s charming, sometimes extremely bloody Australian dramedy is a moving and tartly comic account of a blended family in which part of the blend is a werewolf. Isla Fisher is enormously appealing as the no-nonsense, highly suspicious wolf, Mary, who spent the second season pregnant by her lumpenly human boyfriend (Josh Gad); the season-ending cliffhanger promises to radically change the show. (Streaming on Peacock.)‘Yosi, the Regretful Spy’ (Amazon Prime Video)The Argentine writer and director Daniel Burman based this absorbing drama on the true story of a government agent who infiltrated the Jewish community of Buenos Aires in the years leading up to the horrific terrorist bombings that targeted that community in the early 1990s. Through two seasons, its depiction of the automatic, paranoiac anti-Semitism of the country’s establishment is all the more chilling for being utterly matter-of-fact. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)Margaret LyonsBest Shows That EndedThis year brought a few banner finales and a few shows unjustly cut off in their primes, some slow fades and some purposeful but (to a fan) premature endings. So goes my lament each year.To qualify for my list, arranged below in alphabetical order, shows had to air in 2023 (or just about) and also officially end; renewal limbo is the enemy of the fan and the list-maker alike. Miniseries and limited series did not count (God bless, though), and I considered shows in toto, not just their final runs.‘Barry’ (HBO)“Barry,” cocreated by and starring Bill Hader, was by turns both brooding and snappy.Merrick Morton/HBOBill Hader cocreated, starred in and directed most of this assassin black comedy, which was among television’s most brooding and violent shows but still bubbled over with snappy one-liners and zippy satire. The show’s virtuosic action sequences and fight choreography were only part of its appeal, though. Barry discovering a love of and aptitude for acting; his relationship with his grandiose mentor, Gene (Henry Winkler); his abusive romance with Sally (Sarah Goldberg) — all of these marvelous facets refracted light through a dark gem. (Streaming on Max.)‘Doom Patrol’ (Max)The first two seasons of this show are much better than the second two, but, man, they are a ton of fun. While a lot of comic book fare is trite, didactic and redundant, “Doom” was raucous, silly, arch — but with a fairy-tale wistfulness and a real, beating heart. It was filthy and funny, and not particularly attached to always making sense, full of a vibrant strangeness that allowed for both immature humor and richly depicted sorrow and longing. (Streaming on Max.)‘The Great’ (Hulu)Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning starred as Peter III and Catherine the Great in “The Great.”Christian Black/HuluFew shows, if any, wring as much from each fiber of their existence as “The Great” did: Every line, every gesture, every hat, every plate conveyed something rich and thrilling, a ballerina telling an entire tragedy through the tilt of her pinkie. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult cultivated an electrified sense of menace and then a real but twisted love between Catherine the Great and Peter III. So many period dramas just feel like inert, expensive Wikipedia entries, but “The Great,” through its irreverence and artistry, was alive at every turn. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Happy Valley’ (BBC America)“Happy Valley” debuted in 2014, when the bleak foreign crime show was more in fashion, but it was never strictly a misery-murder show. Sarah Lancashire starred as Catherine Cawood, a police sergeant in West Yorkshire still tormented by her daughter’s suicide and raising her grandson in the shadow of that grief. Where lots of sad cop shows flatten their characters, “Valley” always sought depth and fullness — characters make jokes, the relationships have texture, choices have emotional heft. (Streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV.)‘How To With John Wilson’ (HBO)This mesmerizing collage series always felt maybe a little too fragile for this harsh world, its tender musings and awkward but reverential curiosity leading to moments of human resonance that were so lovely they were almost painful. John Wilson reassembled his obsessive catalogs of New York City (and occasionally elsewhere) into poems about yearning, growing, belonging, changing — all these snippets of minutiae that would add up to a beautiful, illuminating gut punch. The end of this show stings harder than most because there won’t ever be anything else quite like it. (Streaming on Max.)‘The Other Two’ (Max)Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke in “The Other Two,” which mocked both fame and its characters’ thirst for it. Greg Endries/MaxOver its three seasons, “The Other Two” was thrillingly catty and cynical while keeping a tiny ember of sweetness burning all the way through. Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver starred as the older siblings to a teeny-bopper idol who each crave the spotlight in their own ways, too. The show loved mocking their thirst for fame and especially ridiculing the hollowness of much of the entertainment industry and media. The Season 3 episode about a play called “8 Gay Men with AIDS: A Poem in Many Hours” is a particular treat. (Streaming on Max.)‘Reservation Dogs’ (FX)“Reservation Dogs” was so suffused with death and absence, maybe I shouldn’t feel so aggrieved that it is ending after just three seasons. Maybe I should internalize one of the central ideas of the show, that the end of a life is not the end of a relationship. Maybe someday I will be that sanguine, but for now, I’m still bummed out! In its short run, this coming-of-age series about Native American teens in Oklahoma was as gorgeous, surprising and nimble as TV gets — funny and whimsical, daring and important. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘Single Drunk Female’ (Freeform)This is one of our unjustly canceled specimens this year, a show cut off mid-blossom. In Season 1, we met Sam (Sofia Black-D’Elia) as she hit rock bottom, moved home with her difficult mother, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to crawl out of her despair. In Season 2, the show, like Sam, found its footing, and its warm approach made grim themes accessible to Freeform’s younger audience and to anyone drained by sad-coms who still wanted something with depth. Adding insult to injury, Disney, which owns Freeform, also pulled the show off its streaming platforms. (Buy it on Amazon Prime Video.)‘South Side’ (Max)This is our asterisk entry this year — “South Side” did not air in 2023, but its third and final season aired in December 2022, after last year’s list went to print, and its cancellation wasn’t official until February of this year. So it is sneaking through on multiple technicalities. Also because it was so dang funny, with among the highest jokes-per-minute rate of any contemporary show. The show, set on the South Side of Chicago, had one of the most fully developed worlds on television, where characters who were onscreen for only a line or two still felt woven in. (Streaming on Max.)‘Succession’ (HBO)From left, Fisher Stevens, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook in the final season of “Succession.”Macall B. Polay/HBOI mean … it’s “Succession.” Bury me in its fine textiles and viciousness, its fascinating ability to depict its characters as piñatas filled with more emptiness, its filthy rejoinders and knack for detail. A show this grand had to go out big, too, and killing off Logan not as its denouement but rather as its 11 o’clock number gave its final batch of episodes a swirling urgency. (Streaming on Max.)Honorable mention: “A Black Lady Sketch Show” (HBO); “Miracle Workers” (TBS); “Painting With John” (HBO); “Sex Education” (Netflix); “Summer Camp Island” (Cartoon Network). More

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    Casey Likes of ‘Back to the Future,’ Is on a Roll

    “I either suck or I’m awesome,” Casey Likes said as he entered Frames, a snazzy bowling alley tucked into a corner of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. “There is no in-between.”It was shortly after 11 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Likes, 21, the toothy, wholesome star of the Broadway musical adaptation of “Back to the Future,” was there to bowl as part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.With the alley closed to the public, he strode into the room like the boy-mayor of the place, resplendent in an ultramarine bowling shirt. On his first lap, he greeted friends from “MJ” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” then paused at the bar to order a drink and some fries. He maintains a strict anti-inflammatory diet during the week, but on bowling nights he lets that regime slide. Fries collected, he turned to join some other friends. Clowning, he accidentally streaked a colleague’s hair with ketchup, then helped to clean it. This clumsiness is not new to him. At the opening night party for his Broadway debut, “Almost Famous,” he spilled soda on Joni Mitchell.Thursday night strikes: Likes is part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNot many young men can claim that honor. And only a handful have led two Broadway musicals before their 22nd birthday. But Likes has. A mix of the extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, he is a boy-next-door type, as sincere as sunlight, as unthreatening as oatmeal, who can still command a Broadway stage.“He found his way there because of pure joy,” Cameron Crowe, who worked with him on “Almost Famous,” said. “And that joy is infectious.”Likes grew up in Chandler, Ariz., a medium-size city southeast of Phoenix. His mother, a former Broadway actress, managed a theater there, and Likes has been onstage since he was 3, playing Tiny Tim to his mother’s Mrs. Cratchit. He also appeared in several local commercials. Sometimes people ask him when he knew he wanted to be an actor. The better question: When didn’t he?He continued acting all through his childhood. He couldn’t help it. When his elementary school told him that he couldn’t play another lead because other students should have a chance, he headed up the tech crew. In the summer after his junior year of high school, having already starred as Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables” and Jack in a youth theater production of “Newsies,” he was invited to participate in the Jimmy Awards, a competition for high school musical theater students held in New York City. He didn’t win, but his solo (he performed “Santa Fe” from “Newsies”) caught the attention of a casting director of the Broadway-bound musical “Almost Famous,” who brought him in for an audition. Likes, then 17, attended exactly one day of his senior year, then flew out to join a workshop, completing high school online.Roger Bart, left, as Doc Brown, and Likes as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which is onstage now at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSolea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane and Likes as William Miller in “Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the film that had a short run last fall at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the musical’s brief run at the Old Globe in San Diego and a pandemic pause, it opened on Broadway last year with Likes as William, a teenage journalist trailing a volatile roots rock band. He was the baby of the show, by several years, which made his experience not so different from William’s — awestruck, out of his element, sometimes lonely.Though the reviews for the show were generally unenthusiastic (“You can say bad,” Likes said), critics described Likes as appealing, endearing, and as his name demands, likable. The actor felt pressure, wholly self-imposed, to live up to those notices. Toward the end of the run, he began to experience what he describes as unrelated health problems.“I was worried,” he said. “I was like, ‘Are people going to be disappointed in me?’”When “Almost Famous” closed, he had planned to take some time off to recover. Instead he was quickly offered “Back to the Future,” another musical based on a popular film. Another musical that kept him constantly onstage. He didn’t hesitate. “If you asked me at any point in my life, ‘Do you want to play Marty McFly on Broadway?’ The answer is obviously yes,” he said. “Like, duh.”“I’ve been waiting for this community,” Likes said. “I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesJohn Rando, who directed the “Back to the Future” musical, hired Likes for his youth, his amiability, his soulful rock tenor. Once previews began, he was also impressed with the confidence that Likes brought to the role and his effortless engagement with viewers.“Part of his charm is that he’s fearless with an audience,” Rando said.Likes knows that he has to get the audience on his side, smile by smile, note by note. And he feels that he has to pay homage to the actors who created the roles he plays (Patrick Fugit in the “Almost Famous” movie, Michael J. Fox in the “Back to the Future” franchise), while making the parts his own.“That might be my little hidden superpower,” he said. “To be able to take the things that made them iconic, distill them and put them in a little smoothie with all the things that make me special.”A particular flair for bowling is not necessarily one of those things, though Likes did say that at the previous week’s outing he had bowled a strike. This week the “Back to the Future” team, the Pinheads, would play the “Kimberly Akimbo” team, Pinberly Akimbowl. (Other team names of current Broadway shows: Hamilpins, Some Strike It Hot, Sweet Spareolines and, from “Moulin Rouge,” Bowlhemians.)Asked if his co-star Roger Bart (who plays Doc Brown) was on the team, Likes shook his head and laughed. (As Bart said, in a recent interview, “He’s got one of the great laughs. And the biggest, most contagious smile.”) People like Bart, Broadway veterans with families, don’t come out to bowl. They leave that to their younger colleagues, such as Likes.“I just want friends!” Likes said.Bowling night seems to be more about hobnobbing than actually bowling. “I’ve never played a full game,” Likes said. George Etheredge for The New York TimesIndeed, Likes was so busy hobnobbing that he neglected to register with his team and the game was already in progress when he found them at their assigned lane. Apparently this happens often. Asked about the rules of the league, Likes shook his head. “I’ve never played a full game so I truly do not understand,” he said.An ensemble member allowed him to sub in for one frame. Likes approached the foul line with his typical ease, then bowled a three. (In the interest of fairness, his score was then erased and the frame was bowled again.) He shrugged it off and fed some French fries to a castmate. Two other colleagues staged an impromptu dance-off, trading pirouettes and arabesques.“I just love it. I love the vibes,” Likes said.The evening wore on. Likes bowled another frame.“You got it,” his co-star Jelani Remy called out to him. “You look great.” Likes struck down three pins, then two more. (That frame was also erased.) The Pinheads beat their rivals 1,176 to 943 — though the “Kimberly Akimbo” team was admittedly down a player. A second game began. Likes wouldn’t bowl this one either, he had more circulating to do. He feels that he has spent his whole life getting to a place like this. He is determined to enjoy it.“It’s the reason I’m wearing the bowling shirt,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this community. I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.” More

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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 3 Recap: Preparing for a Blood Bath

    Dot’s pursuers seem to be on the verge of being pursued themselves.Season 5, Episode 3: ‘The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions’The Coen brothers filmography is speckled with a specific type of abstract character, a dark and indomitable force of nature who isn’t quite human and operates on a code that is known only to him. Think Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb) in “Raising Arizona,” a mercenary biker who seems manifested from a nightmare, or Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) in “Barton Fink,” a gregarious insurance man who presents himself as “the common man” but reveals a second identity that is exceptionally uncommon. Then there’s the gun-for-hire Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in “No Country for Old Men,” who asks his victims to “flip a coin,” but always seems in control of their fate regardless. He may represent Death itself, but his agenda has an odd rigor and consistency to it.We have seen these types in Noah Hawley’s TV “Fargo,” too, like David Thewlis as a mirthless, ruthless British business V.M. Varga in the third season or Billy Bob Thornton as the hit man Lorne Malvo in the first season, a satanic figure who believes people are primal beasts and acts accordingly. And now for this new season, Hawley has offered Sam Spruell as Ole Munch, who seemed at first like a highly seasoned contract killer — nothing like the rank amateurs played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare in the movie — but who takes a leap to the mythic in the third episode. His clients are now his targets and it is safe to say they don’t know much about him.Neither do we, frankly, even after the episode makes an unexpected leap to early 16th-century Wales, when Munch or a Munch-like ancestor takes part in a sin-eating ritual. He’s asked, “In forgiveness of your debts to man, will you consume his lordship’s sins to god?” And so he does, a poor man collecting coins for absorbing a rich man’s wrongdoings so he can ascend to heaven.That is the spiritual burden his earthly humility has forced him to take on, perhaps. In 2019 Munch has accepted coins to do a dirty job for Roy Tillman, who was neither clear about the difficulties of the work nor honorable about paying the money he owed. That has turned Munch into a 21st-century debt collector, owed much more than money.Though Hawley owes the Coens a debt of his own for his open-ended lease on their audacity, he keeps moving the season forward with a confidence that often tilts into swagger. When Munch lays in bed listening to a police radio, the show samples a music cue from “The Shining,” if to suggest that he is an eternal presence like Jack Torrance at the Overlook Hotel, where Jack was told he had “always been the caretaker.” That’s terrible news for Munch’s mother, who looks uncomfortable with the prospect of her creepy son occupying the rocking chair upstairs indefinitely. And it is even worse news for Roy and his half-wit son, Gator, who underpaid, undermined and underestimated Munch and now have to anticipate his revenge.But first, Gator has to prove to his father that he is not a loser, which isn’t easy for a kid with a Confederate flag posted over his bed. All this business with Dot comes as the Hillmans appear to stocking munitions for an insurrection-to-be-detailed-later, but Dot has prepared herself for a second abduction attempt.Last week she enlisted Scotty’s help to improvise a security system like Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.” This week she switches up the street signs to confuse the Hillmans and brings her husband on a trip to Gun World, where she racks up $5,000 worth of weapons before learning about a federally mandated waiting period. Her cheerful Midwestern pivot to the clerk (“Let’s take a look at that pepper spray then”) echoes the opening scene of the movie, when Buscemi gets impatient with Jerry and asks to “take a look at that Cierra” he stole off the lot.Dot’s insistence on digging into this domestic life that she has built with Wayne and Scotty puts her in a fascinating spot, because those are the only two people who accept her absurd denials. She has been unmasked as a fraud to the police and to her mother-in-law, and she has the Hillmans and various contract goons who are not only after her, but know exactly where she lives. We do not know what her former life was like as “Nadine,” Roy Tillman’s wife, but their relationship now feels a lot like Uma Thurman and David Carradine’s in the “Kill Bill” movies, in that epic revenge is all that stands between the heroine and the peaceful, normal life she thinks she deserves.Getting there will be a blood bath, it would appear. The episode ends on the sort of cliffhanger that leaves you wishing for back-to-back hours like the premiere. Gator and his crack team of masked yahoos have found Dot, despite their confusion over the mixed-up street signs, and Munch has reverted to a scary, primal state to stalk his prey. One sequence seems set up for folly, the other for a disturbing spasm of violence. That’s a balanced “Fargo” diet.Lamorne Morris in “Fargo.”Michelle Faye/FX3-Cent StampsUsing the phrase “Antecedently on …” for “Previously on …” sequence continues to be an eye roller. This show can get too cute for its own good.Roy’s preoccupation with Dot keeps him from getting aroused by a truck full of sexual role-playing costumes, like “helpless hitchhiker” or “angry feminist.” (It says something about Roy’s view of women that those specific types turn him on.)Another small callback to the movie: Dot tells Wayne that Scotty “signed off on” the change in costume to zombie hunters. This is what Jerry tells his father-in-law’s lawyer about the parking lot deal.The return of Witt Farr, the North Dakota state trooper injured in a shootout at the convenience store, suggests a possible lifeline for Dot. Witt catches Gator pocketing evidence from a case file and isn’t intimidated by the young man’s threats.The overt politics of the season come out in a spicy monologue from Lorraine, who’s annoyed that the police are still asking questions about Dot. In her estimation, their job is to “separate those who have money, class and intellect from those who don’t.” They’re not supposed to interrogate people like her. More

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    Stephen Colbert Cancels ‘Late Show’ Episodes After Rupturing Appendix

    Colbert posted on social media that he was recovering from surgery and unable to host this week.Stephen Colbert canceled his “Late Show” episodes for the week as he recovers from surgery for a ruptured appendix, he announced on Monday.“Sorry to say that I have to cancel our shows this week,” Colbert, who is 59, wrote in a social media post. “I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Turkey overdose, Steve? Gravy boat capsize?’ Actually, I’m recovering from surgery for a ruptured appendix.”“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” had new shows scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with planned appearances from Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Garner, Baz Luhrmann, Patrick Stewart and Kelsey Grammer.Colbert has been hosting his late-night talk show on CBS since 2015. He canceled several shows last month while recovering from Covid-19.“I’m grateful to my doctors for their care and to Evie and the kids for putting up with me,” Colbert wrote. “Going forward, all emails to my appendix will be handled by my pancreas.” More