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    Alex Newell Earns First Tony Nomination For Their Role in ‘Shucked’

    Alex Newell’s Monday night was already pretty great. They attended the Met Gala, landing a spot next to Jimmy Fallon and Glenn Close. “I was like, ‘I’ve made it,’” they said.Then boom — on Tuesday morning, their first Tony Award nomination.“I haven’t cried yet,” they said in an interview from the Pierre Hotel on Tuesday, “so I’m waiting for that little dime to drop soon.”Newell, 30, who uses they/them pronouns, was nominated for best featured actor in a musical, for their role as the big-voiced whiskey entrepreneur Lulu in “Shucked,” the new, countrified Broadway musical about a small farming town whose corn crop begins mysteriously dying.In The New York Times review of the production, Jesse Green wrote that Newell, who may be most recognizable for their time on “Glee” as the transgender teenager Unique Adams, turns Lulu “into a full-blown comic creation.” They have become the show’s breakout star, bringing down the house in the middle of the first act with the showstopping feminist anthem “Independently Owned,” a soulful, commanding number in which Lulu emphatically declares that she doesn’t need a man to be fulfilled. (Newell’s powerful voice is showcased in two Tony-nominated productions this season: Their high-energy bop, “Kill the Lights,” plays during the disco-inspired dance party at the end of “Fat Ham.”)Newell, operating on a few hours of sleep, discussed their first nomination, their dream role and their feelings about corn. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How does it feel to receive your first nomination?Surreal. Crazy. Absurd. I feel like I could throw up at any time.Your performance of the feminist anthem “Independently Owned” has been earning nightly standing ovations. Did that happen at the first preview?Yes.Were you expecting it?This is going to sound like the most pretentious thing in the world, but we built it for that. We made the song to make people lose their minds.It happens every night now, right?That’s the part that’s flabbergasting. The standing ovation isn’t jarring as much as the consistency of it. I’m beside myself a lot of the time because I’m like, “Y’all are really still standing up.”How similar are you to your character?Very, in the sense this woman has built her career and her livelihood on her own. I’m not saying I’ve done everything on my own without any help, but I’ve been making life decisions, moving cross-country on my own. So when I sing “Independently Owned,” it’s kind of my own anthem talking about what I’ve done for myself as well.You identify as nonbinary, and the Tony Awards use gendered categories. Why did you choose to compete in the best featured actor category?I look at the word “actor” as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don’t say plumbess for plumber. We don’t say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That’s how I look at the word, and that’s how I chose my category.Have you seen any of the other nominated shows?I saw “Some Like It Hot,” and I’m so happy that my friend J. Harrison was nominated. I haven’t gotten to see “Kimberly Akimbo,” but I’m superexcited that my good friend Bonnie Milligan is nominated.If you could have anyone in the audience at a performance, who would you choose?Beyoncé.What would be your dream role?I’m still gunning for Effie in “Dreamgirls.”Last question, and I must ask — do you like corn?My publicist says I’m not allowed to say it, but I do hate corn. OK, I don’t hate it. I’ll eat it from Chipotle, and there’s this lovely corn couscous dish at Glass House Tavern that’s tolerable. And my mom makes a great cornbread, so I’ll eat that, too. More

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    ‘Some Like It Hot’ scored the most nods as nominators showered attention on a wide variety of shows and performers.

    As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot” scored 13 nominations, the most of any show. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical: “& Juliet,” “New York, New York,” and “Shucked” each picked up nine nods, and “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite, picked up eight.Among the well-known performers who were nominated are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt, as well as the perennial Broadway favorite, Audra McDonald.The nominees for best play were “Ain’t No Mo’,” by Jordan E. Cooper; “Between Riverside and Crazy,” by Stephen Adly Guirgis; “Cost of Living,” by Martyna Majok; “Fat Ham,” by James Ijames; and “Leopoldstadt,” by Tom Stoppard. “Between Riverside and Crazy,” “Cost of Living” and “Fat Ham” have already won Pulitzer Prizes.Here are some other notable developments:Not everyone can wake up to good news on Tony nominations morning. Take a look at this year’s snubs and surprises.When it came to musicals, the nominators favored a familiar mix of both smallish sweethearts and biggish blowouts, our critic writes.Jessica Chastain and Jodie Comer were both nominated for best leading actress in a play, a highly competitive category in which they will face Audra McDonald and Jessica Hecht.Two gender nonconforming performers, J. Harrison Ghee of “Some Like It Hot” and Alex Newell of “Shucked,” earned nominations.Broadway is showing signs of recovery: Its shows have grossed $1.45 billion so far this season — more than double what they had grossed last year at this same point, but still lower than the last full season before the pandemic.Check back here throughout the day for more news about the Tony Awards, including reaction from nominees, as well as analysis from reporters and commentary from critics. More

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    J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell, Gender Nonconforming Performers, Earn Tony Nominations

    Even as gender identity has become an increasingly politicized subject in a polarized America, Broadway shows are featuring a growing number of gender nonconforming performers, and two of them scored Tony nods Tuesday morning.J. Harrison Ghee, one of the stars of a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” was nominated in the best leading actor in a musical category. And Alex Newell, who plays a whiskey distiller in the country musical “Shucked,” was nominated in the best featured actor in a musical category.Both performers use he/she/they pronouns, and both agreed to be considered as actors (rather than actresses) for Tony purposes.Another gender nonconforming performer on Broadway this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted out of awards consideration, rather than choosing between the actor and actress categories. More

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    Seth Meyers Contemplates the 2024 Presidential Matchup

    Meyers said a Biden-versus-Trump rematch would be “like a book club you feel obligated to attend.”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 Painful Re-pairingBefore the Hollywood writers’ strike was announced on Monday, Seth Meyers ruminated on the forthcoming 2024 presidential campaign, wondering who might be the Republican front-runner.“We’re still a year and a half away, so a lot could change,” Meyers said. “Like, I don’t know, the Republican nominee could be running while under house arrest.”“Ron DeSantis was supposed to help the G.O.P. move past the former president, but he has one big political liability: He’s Ron DeSantis.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“A Biden-versus-Trump rematch is like a book club you feel obligated to attend even though everyone there annoys the [expletive] out of you.” — SETH MEYERS“At this point, the Biden-Trump rematch just feels like your six-month checkup at the dentist. Like, when they ask you when you want to come back, you want to say ‘Never’ but, you know you just have to pick a random Tuesday in November and get it over with.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (White House Correspondents’ Dinner Edition)“Speaking of Biden, on Saturday night, he gave some remarks at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Yep, Biden made jokes about his age, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News. Afterwards he called me up and said, ‘Jimmy, I’ve gotta say your job’s not that hard.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden took a few shots over the weekend at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which, you know, Trump never went to this event when he was in office. Hard to believe he doesn’t have a great sense of humor about himself.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingSasha Colby, the most recent winner on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” sat down with correspondent-turned-guest host Dulce Sloan on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What to Expect on Tuesday NightIt is unlikely that any late night shows will be taped on Tuesday because of the strike. Earlier, British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks had been scheduled to perform on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutCovers of some of the books out in May.The New York TimesTom Hanks’ debut novel and a landmark biography of Martin Luther King Jr. are two of 13 recommended new books coming in May. More

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    What Is an EGOT? A Detailed History of Its Origins and Winners.

    Many people were introduced to the idea of an EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — through “30 Rock.” But it’s an actor from the 1980s who deserves the credit.Common would be the first to admit that he has an EGO — that is, an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and an Oscar — making him just a Tony Award shy from securing the coveted EGOT, the achievement of winning all four major entertainment awards.Eighteen other people have done so, and the “Frozen” songwriter Robert Lopez is the only person to do it twice. The most recent addition was the actress Viola Davis, who earned a Grammy in February for the audiobook of her memoir, making her one of six women to have an EGOT.Now Common has a shot at joining this rather uncommon club. The Tony nominations will be announced on Tuesday, and he is eligible in the featured actor in a play category after making his Broadway debut in “Between Riverside and Crazy.”But where did the EGOT acronym come from, and what does it really take to earn the accolade?Why did we start talking about EGOTs?Many people who first heard of an EGOT assume it originated on the hit NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” which began airing in 2006. But it turns out the term dates back to 1984, when only three people had achieved EGOT-hood: the composer Richard Rodgers and the actresses Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno.It’s actually Philip Michael Thomas, Don Johnson’s partner on the police drama “Miami Vice,” who deserves the naming credit. The accomplishment was previously known as a “grand slam,” a term used for similar achievements in golf and tennis.Thomas has told reporters that his dream was to win an Emmy for his work on “Miami Vice,” a Grammy for his record albums, an Oscar for a play he wanted to adapt as a film, and a Tony for some musicals he had written.Thomas, who later claimed the acronym also stood for his career mantra — “Energy, Growth, Opportunity and Talent” — even wore a medallion with “EGOT” engraved on it. But he was never nominated for any of the awards he dreamed of winning.How did EGOT enter the popular lexicon?Despite Thomas’s efforts, it took a couple of decades before “EGOT” became a thing. Then Kay Cannon, a writer and producer on “30 Rock,” decided to incorporate the rare feat into a satirical story line that began in 2009. “You’d hear this red carpet commentary,” Cannon told The New York Times recently, “that they were one award away from EGOT-ing.”At the time, even some luminaries didn’t know about the distinction. The comedian Whoopi Goldberg first learned she had achieved EGOT status when she guest-starred on one of the four “30 Rock” episodes in which the character Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, bought Thomas’s necklace and started strategizing to achieve his own EGOT. (“A good goal for a talented crazy person,” he says in the show.)“I watched ‘30 Rock’ and loved the concept,” Lopez said. “One doesn’t really ever think of themselves as a candidate for achieving something so ridiculous, but I realized that maybe I could do it one day.” Lopez got his wish in 2014, winning an Oscar for the song “Let It Go” from the Disney animated hit “Frozen.”The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was more old school. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘If I get this Emmy, I’d be an EGOT,’” Lloyd Webber said about achieving the feat in 2018 for “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.” The lyricist Tim Rice and the singer John Legend, who played the title role, reached EGOT status at the same time.“It hadn’t really crossed my mind,” Lloyd Webber said. “I’m much more conscious of it now.”So, what is the best strategy for winning an EGOT?The not-so-quiet secret is that when you’re close to an EGOT, it is possible to game the system.Lloyd Webber said he was recently asked by a fellow artist — someone famous, he won’t say who — how to add a Tony to an awards collection that already included a Grammy and an Emmy. “I said, ‘Well, one way you could do that is become a producer, put some money into a few shows,’” he said. “Every show seems to have 20 producers these days.”That strategy worked for the singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, who achieved an EGOT in 2022 with her Tony win as a producer of “A Strange Loop.”Lloyd Webber thinks getting an Oscar is the most difficult. A Grammy is the easiest, he said, simply because there are more available categories: “You could be the best banjo player in Latin America.”And if Davis’s clinching Grammy win — in the best audio book, narration and storytelling category — revealed anything, it’s that nonmusical methods can be just as effective. “Do a comedy album or narrate your own audio book,” Cannon said. “Write a book, narrate that and then adapt it to the stage.”After considering her own track record (“I’m 0-for-4 right now”), Cannon said she thought her best bet could be a Broadway adaptation of “Pitch Perfect,” the 2012 musical comedy film that she co-wrote.Does it help to have an EGOT as your goal?Probably not. The renowned composer Alan Menken had already won 11 Grammys, eight Oscars and one Tony when his representatives realized he just needed an Emmy to complete the EGOT. “To be honest, it wasn’t something that was really on my wish list until it was brought up, and brought up, and brought up,” he said. “But you can’t will something like that into existence.”So about six years ago, Menken wrote a song about wanting to achieve an EGOT, soliciting assistance from comedy writers like Judd Apatow. The idea was that it would start off sounding sincere, and then would get more and more desperate with each section. Ultimately, he discarded the song (“It wasn’t any good, I can promise you”) and instead secured an Emmy for the animated series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”What is the value of an EGOT?An EGOT is a flattering distinction that ultimately means nothing, said Menken, who described it as a “random assortment of honors.”“Just do what you do, as well as you can, and don’t think about it,” he added. “If you get awards, great.”There is no organizing body that awards EGOTs, and no ceremony at which a trophy is handed out. But there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards. There are also EGOT enhancements, like the PEGOT, for either a Peabody Award or a Pulitzer Prize. Some say the G should instead represent a Golden Globe, or that the EGOT should become an EGGOT.Menken is proud of the fact that he also has a REGOT — the four traditional awards, plus a Razzie, also known as a Golden Raspberry Award. The ignoble prize was for worst original song from the film “Newsies,” the same project for which he won a Tony. “The Razzie puts everything in perspective, frankly,” he said.At least with the Razzies, there is a ceremony and a physical award. Cannon thinks there should be a similar ceremony for EGOTs, if only a mock version. After all, even “Saturday Night Live” commemorates the occasion when someone hosts the show for a fifth time. “You become a member of the Five-Timers Club, they give you a jacket.”Who’s not throwing away their shot?Over the years, artists have become more comfortable expressing their EGOT dreams. In a segment for the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards, the composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda rattled off his scorecard: “Got a Grammy, got a Tony, got an Emmy,” he rapped, adding, “Somebody show me the way to the Oscars.”Miranda’s dream could come true next awards season: He has written new songs for the live-action “The Little Mermaid” movie, which will be released in late May.Menken, Miranda’s collaborator on the three new “Little Mermaid” songs, mused about whether he should take his name off them to give Miranda a better shot. “I have eight Oscars,” he said. “They’re probably going to go, ‘Alan, man, no.’ So I feel guilty.”Lopez agreed that Manuel deserves it, but he’s also rooting for someone else: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, his collaborator and wife. She just needs a Tony to secure the EGOT. An added benefit, he said, is that it would bring “more peace to my household.”Wait, so who exactly is in the EGOT club?These are the 18 people who have won EGOTs, along with the year and award that secured the achievement:Mel Brooks (2001, Tony)Viola Davis (2023, Grammy)John Gielgud (1991, Emmy)Whoopi Goldberg (2002, Tony)Marvin Hamlisch (1995, Emmy)Helen Hayes (1977, Grammy)Audrey Hepburn (1994, Grammy)Jennifer Hudson (2022, Tony)John Legend (2018, Emmy)Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018, Emmy)Robert Lopez (2014, Oscar)Alan Menken (2020, Emmy)Rita Moreno (1977, Emmy)Mike Nichols (2001, Emmy)Tim Rice (2018, Emmy)Richard Rodgers (1962, Emmy)Scott Rudin (2012, Grammy)Jonathan Tunick (1997, Tony) More

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    In ‘A Small Light,’ an Ordinary Woman Helps Anne Frank’s Family

    A new series on Disney+ and Hulu tells the story of Miep Gies, a secretary who helped Anne Frank and others hide in Amsterdam during World War II.Two days after the Gestapo’s 1944 raid on the annex where Anne Frank and others were hiding, Miep Gies, a seemingly ordinary secretary, and her colleague walked into the hiding place and encountered a chaotic scene left behind by the Nazis.Years later, Gies described what she saw that day as a mess of books, newspapers and other everyday items. “And then we started searching. For what, I don’t know, but we were looking for something,” she said in a 1958 interview. Among the items, she found a red plaid diary. Gies grabbed it and put it in a drawer in her office.She had just saved one of the Holocaust’s most famous accounts: Anne Frank’s diary.On the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the building that housed Otto Frank’s office is now the Anne Frank House, a museum that tells Anne’s story.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn the show, Anne Frank is played by Billie Boullet as an angsty girl chafing against the restrictions of German occupation. Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyThat moment, and much more about Gies’s life and heroism, is at the center of “A Small Light,” a new eight-part series that tells the story of Gies (Bel Powley), her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), and their involvement in Dutch resistance efforts during World War II. The show premieres Monday on National Geographic, and comes to Disney+ and Hulu the following day.Work on “A Small Light” began six years ago, after its showrunners Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, a married couple who used to be producers and screenwriters for “Grey’s Anatomy,” visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Walking around the museum and listening to tour guides, they learned that many people don’t really know the story of the Frank family anymore, let alone the story of the people who helped them, Rater and Phelan said in a recent video interview.Since then, they said, the moral question at the heart of Gies’s story — whether to do the right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all — has only become more important, given how war, nationalism and antisemitism have once again been spreading across Europe.“When we started this project,” Phelan said, “it certainly didn’t feel as relevant as it feels now.”While the show opens with Gies, who wasn’t Jewish, trying to dodge a Nazi checkpoint, the first episode quickly takes the viewer back to 1934, when Gies was single and living with her adopted Dutch family. She finds employment with Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) — a stern, fellow German-speaking immigrant — and meets her future husband, a social worker. Much of the first episode follows Gies living life as a modern young woman, meeting friends and going out dancing.Rater and Phelan wanted to give the show a contemporary feel by focusing “A Small Light” not just around war, but also around ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.The show’s creators wanted to give the episodes a contemporary feel by focusing not just on war, but also on ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“Period pieces for me sometimes feel a bit sepia-toned, and that makes you feel distanced from them,” Powley said. But “A Small Light” didn’t feel that way. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she added.“These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen,” Rater said.While the story of Anne Frank and what happened to her is well known, Gies — who died in 2010 at 100 — largely stayed out of the limelight. She published a memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” in 1987 and was involved with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but much of her story stayed private.“When we started digging, we started putting together these pieces that I don’t know that anybody had ever put together before,” Phelan said. In the course of their research, with the help of a local researcher in the Netherlands, Rater and Phelan discovered that Gies and her husband also helped people hide in their own home, including two nurses.In the show, we see nurses help save babies from being killed by the Nazis, and instead sending them to live in the Dutch countryside. One memorable scene shows how nurses swapped babies for dolls, telling Jewish mothers to lose the dolls on their way to concentration camps.Miep and Jan Gies, pictured in 1957, hid people from the Nazis in their own home, as well as in Miep’s office.Sueddeutsche Zeitung, via AlamyIn the show, Jan is played by Joe Cole, and Miep by Bel Powley.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“It is such a fascinating, heartbreaking, hard to believe story at times,” Cole, who plays Gies’s husband, said in a video interview.When in 1942, Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide him, his daughters, Anne and Margot, and his wife, Edith, in an annex at their office, Gies didn’t hesitate before saying yes.“She had no idea what she was saying yes to,” Rater said. “And then she had to keep saying yes for two years.”This was until a warm day in August 1944 when Nazis raided the office and found the eight people — the Frank family and four others — hiding in the annex.“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and in Prague.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyIn “A Small Light,” Gies’s decision to help despite the dangers and disruption this posed to her life (she kept the secret, brought food and books and more), her unwavering spirit and her reluctance to be seen as a hero makes the viewer ask: What would I have done in that situation? The show’s title is taken from a quote by Gies: “Even a regular secretary, a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”The show “is about your personal dynamics that are interrupted by the war,” said Schreiber who recently spent time in Ukraine raising money for humanitarian aid. “That’s part of what I saw in Ukraine. These people’s lives have been interrupted and they try to continue.”“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and Prague, where the interior scenes were filmed in a three-story replica of Otto Frank’s Amsterdam office, where the annex was hidden behind a bookcase. (The original building, on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, is now the Anne Frank House.)While “A Small Light” has moments of levity and snippets of life’s mundanity despite the war raging outside, the episodes gradually become more intense, leading up to the inevitable betrayal that doomed all the people in the annex except for Otto Frank, Anne’s father.For Powley, the show never felt like a period piece. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she said.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneySchreiber, who is Jewish, said he was often asked to play roles in Holocaust films. “I hate the narrative that we went like lambs to the slaughter,” which is common in such movies, he said.“But this felt different,” he added. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘A Small Light’ and the Met Gala

    A new series about the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family premieres on National Geographic, and E! streams “the party of the year.”Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, May 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.MondayE! LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET: MET GALA 2023 6 p.m. on E! Officially known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit (unofficially as the party of the year) and attended by some of the biggest names in the media and art world, the Met Gala is a black-tie event that raises money for the fashion wing of the museum. This year’s themed exhibition is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” a homage to the longtime luxury brand designer who helped shape the modern fashion world. (Mr. Lagerfield died in 2019). Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lin-Manuel Miranda are the event’s co-chairs this year.A SMALL LIGHT 9 p.m. on LIFETIME, NGC and NAT GEO WILD. This limited series tells the story of Miep Gies (Bel Powley), a Dutch woman who was the secretary to Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber), the father of Anne Frank (Billie Boullet), during World War II. Premiering on what would have been Gies’s 114th birthday with two back-to-back episodes, the series follows Gies and her husband whose lives changed when they agreed to help hide the Frank family — and four other individuals — over the course of two years.TuesdayJohn Pingayak, right, and his grandson Sonna Boy in “Life Below Zero: First Alaskans.”Tyler Colgan/National GeographicLIFE BELOW ZERO: FIRST ALASKANS 8 p.m. on NGC. This unscripted series, a spinoff of the Emmy Award-winning series “Life Below Zero,” follows Indigenous Alaskans as they survive and thrive in one of the most remote landscapes on Earth. In the show’s second season, the cast stays true to the traditions passed down from generations of Alaska Natives while adapting to 21st-century technology and advancements.COUPLES RETREAT 9 p.m. on MTV. Celebrity couples head to Las Vegas for the third season of this MTV reality series, in which they will challenge their relationships with the help of some unconventional experts. The couples, who range from R&B legends to “Real Housewives of Atlanta” alums, break out of their comfort zones in a series of adrenaline-fueled activities like zip-lining, cattle herding and wilderness training.1000% ME: GROWING UP MIXED 9 p.m. on HBO. The Emmy Award-winning producer and comedian W. Kamau Bell explores the joys and challenges of growing up mixed-race in this hourlong compilation of interviews with multiracial children in the Bay Area. Topics like casual racism, microaggressions and the pressure to pick a side are all fair game, as is a chipper rundown of the interviewees’ favorite animals and weekend hobbies.WednesdayTommy Lee Jones, right, and Garret Dillahunt in “No Country for Old Men.”Richard Foreman/Miramax FilmsNO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) 10:17 p.m. on MAX. Joel and Ethan Coen “combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits” in their film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name, writes A.O. Scott in his review for The New York Times. This neo-western thriller, which won the Oscar for best picture, follows three men entangled in a drug deal gone awry in 1980 West Texas. Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a “deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut.” Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is a jaded sheriff, trailing the detritus Chigurh leaves behind. Both are following Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), “the human center of the film, the guy you root for.” Scott promises you will be “jangled, stunned,” and “completely and ecstatically absorbed.”ThursdayVictor McLaglen, left, and Cary Grant in “Gunga Din.”Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesGUNGA DIN (1939) 3:30 p.m. on TCM. “All movies should be like the first twenty-five and the last thirty minutes of ‘Gunga Din,’” wrote Benjamin Crisler in his review for The Times. This classic adventure film, which pulls elements from Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem by the same name, follows three British sergeants in colonial India (Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who fight a murderous cult, with the titular Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) as their guide. The film was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress in 1999 and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.FridayRhiannon Giddens, right, and Francesco Turrisi in “The Articulate Hour.”Tom Contarino/The Ariculate FoundationTHE ARTICULATE HOUR 9 p.m. on PBS. This three-part mini-series features the journalist Jim Cotter in conversation with poets, musicians, neuroscientists and historians on a variety of topics. The first episode delves into the concept of human memory, while the second explores our contrasting needs for community and solitude.SaturdayChol Soo Lee, center, surrounded by TV news crews in “Free Chol Soo Lee.”Grant DinFREE CHOL SOO LEE 8 p.m. on PBS. For Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month, PBS’s Emmy Award-winning anthology series, “Independent Lens,” presents a documentary about Chol Soo Lee, a Korean immigrant who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1973. Though he is ultimately exonerated, this “isn’t an uplifting movie,” wrote Ben Kenigsberg in his review for The Times, as the documentary follows Lee on his troubled post-prison journey. “Just because Lee was innocent doesn’t mean he was perfect,” Kenigsberg writes.SundayMTV MOVIE & TV AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The actress Drew Barrymore will host this year’s awards show, where a number of film and television stars will be recognized for their work — among them Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”), the 2023 winner of the Comedic Genius Award, which will be presented to her at the event.THE 2010s 9 p.m. on CNN. This seven-part series, from Emmy Award-winning executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, examines the last decade influenced by Instagram, the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, marriage equality and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, before culminating with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. More