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    Jon Hamm Finds His Way Back to the Hilltop

    As we ascended the trail into Griffith Park, Jon Hamm gazed up at the scrubby ridge to our left. From our perspective, the ridgeline traced a clean horizon, uninterrupted by cell towers or midcentury modern palaces. He nodded toward a man sitting up there alone.“See that dude sitting on the point there?” he asked. I looked: The dude could have been meditating or having a Don Draper moment, dreaming up the next big Coca-Cola campaign.For Hamm, the image of the man brought him back to 2017, when he first moved to the Hollywood Hills. His career-making, Emmy-winning role as Draper in the AMC drama “Mad Men” had ended two years before, as had a romantic partnership of 18 years. It had been by most accounts, including his, a tough period of transition.“I was newly single — I was like, I just need to concentrate on myself again,” he recalled with some apparent wistfulness. “And I would just take this walk, every day,” to the top of that ridge, and then back toward his house, memorizing lines along the way.Eventually he began to settle into his new home, his new neighborhood, his new rhythm. He turned a corner, pushed ahead.Jon Hamm has appeared in multiple series in the past two years, including “Fargo” and “The Morning Show.” Next up is the Apple TV+ drama “Your Friends & Neighbors,” his first lead TV role since “Mad Men.”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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    Why Wasn’t Anyone Traumatized in the ‘White Lotus’ Finale?

    After a violent climax to the third season of the hit HBO show, everyone seems A-OK. Was it a Hollywood ending, or a natural trauma response?This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of “The White Lotus.” Unless you’re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.“The White Lotus” is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don’ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.) Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)And it is a show about murders.And apparently, based on Sunday’s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.“Only in Hollywood,” Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.But some of the characters’ reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character’s athletic sprint, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.“Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system — physically, mentally, emotionally — you’ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,” Marchese said.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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    UK Version of ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will Start in 2026

    A British version of the television sketch comedy program “Saturday Night Live” is set to debut in 2026.“Saturday Night Live” is coming to Britain.A British version of NBC’s late-night comedy sketch show is set to premiere next year on Sky, the broadcaster announced on Thursday. The new edition of the program will have Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator, as executive producer and will feature “a star-studded lineup of hosts.”The familiar catchphrase used to kick off the weekly show will be slightly modified: “Live from London, it’s Saturday night!”Sky said the show would follow a similar format to the American version, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It will star a yet-to-be-announced cast of British comedians who will perform sketches, alongside rotating hosts and featured musical acts.“For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live has held a unique position in TV and in our collective culture,” Cécile Frot-Coutaz, the chief executive of Sky Studios, said in the announcement.“The show has discovered and nurtured countless comedy and musical talents over the years, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Lorne and the ‘S.N.L.’ team to bring an all-British version of the show to U.K. audiences.”The remake comes after years of speculation that a British version of the comedy show was in the works. Versions of the program have already been produced around the world, including in Germany, Spain, Italy, China, Japan, South Korea and Egypt. More

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    New Season of ‘Black Mirror’ on Netflix Satirizes Streaming Services

    The new season, premiering Thursday on Netflix, includes the show’s most blatant satire of streaming services yet.The deal is too good to be true: The setup is free, the monthly fee low. Streaming is unlimited with further benefits still to come. But hidden costs emerge. Intrusive ads pop up. The app’s time in sleep mode becomes longer and longer. Those perks? You’ll have to pay more for them — much, much more.This story arc should be familiar to anyone who has ever downloaded a free app or subscribed to a streaming service, which at this point is pretty much all of us. And it is at the very dark heart of “Common People,” the first episode of Season 7 of “Black Mirror,” the anthology sci-fi series that helped to give Netflix, which has distributed it since its 2011 debut, artistic cred. All of this season’s six episodes arrive on Thursday.Is mocking streaming services biting the hand that keeps renewing you? Charlie Brooker, the creator of “Black Mirror,” was more equivocal. “To be honest, I’m probably more nibbling the hand that feeds us,” he said on a recent video call.In its past seasons, “Black Mirror” has promoted a skeptical view, perhaps an utterly nihilistic one, regarding the ways in which entertainment is created and enjoyed. In the near future, we are all amusing ourselves to death, or worse. But with the exception of last season’s episode “Joan Is Awful,” written by Brooker and directed by Ally Pankiw, in which a Netflix stand-in creates humiliating shows adapted from its subscribers’ lives, Brooker has never come for streamers so baldly.Brooker first conceived of “Common People” while listening to true-crime podcasts. He was struck by the disjunction of hearing a host describe a mutilated corpse in one moment and advertise a meal prep service the next. What, he wondered, would make a human integrate sponsorship into their ordinary speech?At that point, he thought that the show would be, like “Joan Is Awful,” a dark comedy, a funny story. “He kind of tricked me,” Pankiw, who also directed “Common People,” said of Brooker’s pitch. “I was like, OK great. Then I read the script and I was like, Oh, it’s actually incredibly devastating.”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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    Late Night Finds Trump to Be His Own Worst Enemy

    “Yeah, Trump was, like, ‘I just saved the economy from me. You’re welcome,’” Jimmy Fallon said on “The Tonight Show.”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.Marked Safe From SelfJust hours after instituting new global tariffs on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reversed course and announced a 90-day pause for some countries.Late night hosts were united in believing that Trump needed to act swiftly to safeguard the economy from his own actions.“Yeah, Trump was, like, ‘I just saved the economy from me. You’re welcome,’” Jimmy Fallon said on “The Tonight Show.”“Thank God he is there, to stop him from doing the things he does there.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Ah, yes, ‘The Art of the Deal’: create a global crisis and then dig yourself halfway out. It’s truly masterful, Donald.” — DESI LYDIC“You don’t get credit for releasing someone you trapped in your basement. That’s not how it works.” — TAYLOR TOMLINSON“It’s been fun watching this lunatic gamble our life savings this week. It’s like — it’s like handing your Social Security check to your dog and sending it to Caesar’s Palace: ‘If the dealer has 16, stay, OK? Stay.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“President Trump today announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for some countries and increased the duty on Chinese imports to 125 percent. Where did he learn his trade policies, from a kid in an elevator — just pushing random buttons to see what happens?” — SETH MEYERS“Come on, Trump, just admit that you started a game of chicken and you got too scared to finish it.” — DESI LYDIC“With the tariffs paused, the U.S. now has three months to work out all its relationships with all these countries. Basically, our economy now mimics the exact plot of ‘90 Day Fiance.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Yippy and Queasy Edition)“Trump said that he paused tariffs because people were getting ‘yippy’ and ‘queasy.’ Then Trump tried naming the other seven dwarves.” — JIMMY FALLON“Sorry, I tend to get a little yippy when my retirement plan starts to look like the elevator from ‘The Shining.’” — DESI LYDICWe 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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    ‘Manhunt’ Is a Case Study in Fragile Masculinity

    A new play by Robert Icke about a real-life police chase takes the form of an imagined trial.One of the largest manhunts in British police history took place in northeastern England in summer 2010. The fugitive was Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former nightclub bouncer with a history of violence. He had just been released from prison when he shot Samantha Stobbart, his former girlfriend, and her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, in a jealous rage. Stobbart survived, Brown didn’t.The next day, Moat fired a sawed-off shotgun at a police officer, David Rathband, at point-blank range, blinding him. While he was on the run, Moat reportedly vowed to “keep killing police until I am dead.”The story was a rolling news sensation at the time. Moat was a clear and present danger, and the situation was fluid. But sheer scale of the police operation to track him down — involving more than 100 armed officers and a military aircraft — was unusual by British standards. The manhunt ended when, after a six-hour standoff with the police, Moat turned his gun on himself.In the weeks after his death, Moat was celebrated as a folk hero in some corners of the internet, and was lauded for what was seen as uncompromising machismo. A Facebook page in his honor amassed 35,000 members.The cast of “Manhunt.” Alongside Edward-Cook, center, a small ensemble plays multiple parts.Manuel HarlanA bracing new play, “Manhunt,” at Royal Court Theater in London presents Moat’s story as a case study in fragile masculinity. Written and directed by Robert Icke — whose recent West End “Oedipus” is heading to Broadway — it takes the form of an imagined trial in which Moat, speaking from beyond the grave, both re-enacts and reflects on the terrible events of the last week of his life.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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    Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Old Friends’ Review: A Broadway Party With 41 Songs

    Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead the festivities in a new Broadway revue of the great musical dramatist’s work.Fast approaching the number of musicals Stephen Sondheim wrote is the number of revues written about him. The first, to my knowledge, was a 1973 fund-raiser held on the set of the original production of “A Little Night Music.” It featured so many stars, speeches and songs that even truncated, even then, its recording filled two LPs.I snapped that album up and wore it out. The cover alone was fascinating, with the titles of nine of his shows spelled out in intersecting Scrabble tiles. (Something like nine more shows were to come before his death in 2021 — and one after.) Threaded through those tiles like a secret theme was Sondheim’s name itself.I was younger then, a teenager, but that secret theme became part of my life’s music.How then to hear a new Sondheim revue with fresh ears and fresh heart? As the latest, “Old Friends,” says right in its name, we are already well acquainted.Whether onstage, online, in cabarets or, like “Old Friends,” on Broadway, all such compendiums play their own game of Sondheim Scrabble. Though there are many hundreds of songs in the catalog, compilers must pick from the same limited subset of favorites, arranging them in various concatenations and outcroppings. Occasionally a 10-point rarity turns up, but most of the choices are deeply familiar to those who have followed the man’s work.Peters and Jacob Dickey in the “Hello, Little Girl” number from “Into the Woods.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Old Friends,” which opened on Tuesday at Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is in that sense a lot like its predecessors. The 41 numbers it features come from the main pool, with an emphasis on songs from “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Company,” “Follies” and “Into the Woods.” Most of them were brilliant in their original context; many remain so outside it. Some are sung spectacularly by a bigger-than-usual cast of 17, led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. Others are middling, a few are misfires.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 Best Classical Music Performances of March 2025

    Watch and listen to recent highlights, including Nicole Scherzinger on Broadway, a pair of Janacek operas and Cécile McLorin Salvant.The New York Times’s classical music and opera critics see and hear much more than they review. Here is what has hooked them recently. Leave your own favorites in the comments.Nicole ScherzingerAn excerpt from the song “With One Look.”I would not have expected the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, Nicole Scherzinger, to convincingly portray a Hollywood has-been in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s almost irredeemably cheesy musical “Sunset Boulevard.” And yet she is giving a spectacular and audacious performance as Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s dark, stripped-down revival on Broadway.Where Norma typically recedes, a reclusive grande dame floating about the stage in a fog of self-regard, Scherzinger explodes with kinetic energy. Her singing, sculpted and emotive, soars. She stares down the challenge of a rangy song like “With One Look” with a clean, secure belt and still accesses an undeniably pretty, flutelike head voice. Her Norma’s eager desire to entertain and be adored, in stark contrast to the modern-noir staging, becomes a clear sign of her derangement.But there’s pathos, too. When Scherzinger’s Norma shows up to the Paramount lot, her fantastical confidence cracks a bit in front of Cecil B. DeMille, the director on whom she has pinned her hopes of a career resurgence. In her insecure hesitation, she seems to acknowledge, on an almost subconscious level, that Norma knows she’s kidding herself.Like a nuclear reaction, though, that fissure in Norma’s self-perception generates a colossal amount of emotional energy, which Scherizinger pours into a coruscating performance of “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” Norma may be a joke to the outside world, but Scherzinger’s performance creates a world of its own, one where a silent-film star has a magnificent inner life that truly sings. OUSSAMA ZAHRWe 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