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    Jimmy Kimmel Makes an Intriguing Offer to Logan Paul

    The YouTube personality called Kimmel out for referring to him as one of the worst people in the world — alongside Donald Trump.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.‘I’ll Introduce You to Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’The YouTube personality Logan Paul called out Jimmy Kimmel this week for referring to him and Donald Trump as “the very worst people in the world” during a recent broadcast. Kimmel apologized on Thursday night to Paul, who affectionately referred to him as “J.K.” during his complaint and said he’d opened up to Kimmel about missing a testicle.“Oh, come on now. Had I known you fondly called me ‘J.K.’ I never would have said any of that stuff,” Kimmel said.“I’m sorry, L.P. I hope we can be bros again, dude. I really do, and I’m sorry about your testicle. I forgot about that. You know what? To make up for it, I’m gonna give you one of my testicles. Or, wait a minute — I just thought of something. Maybe I’ll introduce you to Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend. This guy, he’s got more testicle than he knows what to do with.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (SpaceX Edition)“Last night, SpaceX made history when it launched the first all-tourist crew into orbit. Sadly, one of them forgot to tell Verizon he’s traveling, so now he’s up there like, ‘Damn it, I’ve been roaming this whole time.’” — JIMMY FALLON“This is the first orbital mission in the history of spaceflight staffed entirely by nonprofessionals. No one on board is an astronaut; none of them have any training. One of them is a geologist. So if there’s an emergency, they’ll at least know what kind of rock they’re gonna crash into.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“These are the four winners of the golden ticket. They include a billionaire, a cancer survivor, a geologist and a raffle winner. All they’re missing is the professor and Mary Ann.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[Imitating SpaceX passenger] Houston, we have a problem, but I have no idea what the problem is, since I own a chain of laundromats. I have already cleaned the lint trap. I’m gonna try putting in more quarters.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Imagine that — going on a rocket, no one on board is qualified to fly? It’s like if Spirit Airlines went to space.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“By the way, if you’re not real astronauts, I feel like you shouldn’t get to pose like the crew from Apollo 13.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But you have to love humans — we just launched four civilians into orbit on a recreational spaceflight. We’re still more interested in uncovering the mystery of Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s balls.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingLeVar Burton talked with Trevor Noah about two of his favorite things: reading and “Jeopardy.”Also, Check This OutA scene from “My Name Is Pauli Murray.” The documentarian Betsy West, who made the film with Julie Cohen, said, “We just thought, why didn’t anybody teach us about this person?”  Amazon StudiosA new documentary highlights the unsung influence of the activist, lawyer and minister Pauli Murray. More

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    Sondheim Is Writing a New Musical, and Hopes to Stage It Next Year

    The actor Nathan Lane said he had recently participated in a reading of the show, titled “Square One.”Stephen Sondheim, the 91-year-old composer and lyricist widely regarded as among the greatest musical theater artists in history, is writing another show and said he hopes that a production will be staged next year.“I’ve been working on a show for a couple years with a playwright named David Ives, and it’s called ‘Square One,’” Sondheim said Wednesday night during an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” “And we had a reading of it last week, and we were encouraged, so we’re going to go ahead with it. With any luck, we’ll get it on next season.”Sondheim did not reveal any other details, and he did not immediately respond to an email seeking clarification. But the actor Nathan Lane, in an appearance earlier that day on “Today,” said he had participated in the reading last week.“I just did a reading of a new Sondheim musical,” Lane said. “It was very exciting. Bernadette Peters and I. A whole group of wonderful people.”“Square One” is a version of a project that Sondheim and Ives have been thinking about for years, but had set aside while they tried to write a musical adaptation of two films by Luis Buñuel. Both projects were being developed in association with the producer Scott Rudin, who has stepped back from producing theater after renewed media attention concerning his bullying behavior toward subordinates and collaborators. Sondheim had once said he hoped for a production of the Buñuel musical in 2017, but it didn’t happen, and last year, he told the Public Theater, which had been planning to stage the Buñuel musical, that he was no longer working on that show.In the meantime, Sondheim fans will have plenty of opportunities to revisit his work. Steven Spielberg is directing a new film adaptation of “West Side Story,” with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, that is scheduled to open Dec. 10. Sondheim wrote the lyrics for that 1957 musical.Also, a revival of “Company,” in which the genders of the protagonist and several other characters have been swapped, is scheduled to resume previews Nov. 15 and to open Dec. 9 on Broadway. The revival, directed by Marianne Elliott and starring Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone, got through nine preview performances before theaters were shut down in March 2020. Sondheim wrote the show’s music and lyrics.Off Broadway, the Classic Stage Company is planning, on Nov. 2, to start performances of a starry revival of “Assassins,” directed by John Doyle, which was also delayed by the pandemic. Sondheim wrote that show’s music and lyrics.And the “Encores!” program at New York City Center is planning a revival of “Into the Woods,” directed by Lear deBessonet and featuring Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife, next May. Sondheim wrote that show’s music and lyrics. More

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    Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings to Host ‘Jeopardy!’ Through End of Year

    The sitcom star and the former contestant will split hosting duties while the show continues its quest to find a permanent replacement for Alex Trebek.The game show “Jeopardy!” announced on Thursday that its host, Mayim Bialik, would split hosting duties with Ken Jennings, a former contestant, through the end of the year.It was the latest twist in the game show’s drawn-out struggle to find a replacement for Alex Trebek, the popular longtime host whose death in November started a fraught succession battle. “Jeopardy!” began by cycling through a series of guest hosts. Then it announced that the job would go to Mike Richards, who had been its executive producer. After a reporter unearthed a series of offensive and sexist comments that he had made on a podcast, he stepped down as host, and shortly after that left the program entirely.Bialik, who had initially been tapped alongside Richards to host a series of prime-time “Jeopardy!” specials, was enlisted to begin hosting weeknight programs as well. On Thursday, the program announced that she would share hosting duties with Jennings through the end of 2021.“Everyone on the staff is supralunar,” the @Jeopardy account tweeted on Thursday.Bialik will host episodes starting Monday, which will air through Nov. 5. After that, she and Jennings will split hosting duties as their schedules allow, according to Sony, which produces the show.Jennings, who holds the record for the show’s longest winning streak as a contestant, had been considered a strong contender to take over as the show’s permanent host during the guest host tryouts, but past insensitive tweets of his came to light, which he then apologized for.“Jeopardy!” had tried to settle its future over the summer when it named Richards, 46, as host, despite lack of name recognition among viewers and the fact that, as the show’s executive producer, he had overseen elements of the succession planning.But after a report in The Ringer revealed degrading comments he had made on a podcast several years ago — including a 2013 episode where Richards called his female co-host a “booth slut” because she once worked as a model at a consumer show in Las Vegas, and referred to stereotypes about Jews — he stepped down as host. Old lawsuits also resurfaced from Richards’s previous job running “The Price Is Right” that included accusations of sexist behavior.Sony initially said he would remain as executive producer of “Jeopardy!” but soon afterward announced he would leave the show entirely.Before his resignation, Richards taped a week’s worth of “Jeopardy!” episodes in a single day of filming, which are currently airing. Bialik’s episodes will follow.A spokeswoman for Sony said the network had no update on its timetable for naming a new host, or whether it would be by the end of the year. More

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    ‘Hamilton’ Cancels Atlanta Performance Over Covid Concerns

    After some members of a touring company tested positive for the coronavirus, Wednesday night’s show did not go on.“Hamilton” canceled a performance in Atlanta Wednesday night after some members of a touring company tested positive for the coronavirus, and the show was unable to get test results for other company members before curtain.The cancellation, of a touring production at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, is a reminder that the coronavirus pandemic is likely to remain a disruptive factor as large-scale theater resumes performances across the country this fall. Throughout the pandemic, returning performing arts events around the world have been canceled or postponed because of health concerns; now, as Broadway shows reopen in New York and on tour, producers say they expect occasional incidents like this.A “Hamilton” spokesman said he expected the Atlanta production to resume performances Thursday night. The show is adding a performance next week for those patrons who held tickets to the Wednesday night performance and are willing to be rescheduled; refunds or exchanges are also available.“We received some positive cases last night in the company, and needed to confirm that everyone else was negative,” said Shane Marshall Brown, the “Hamilton” spokesman. “The turnaround time for the P.C.R. tests were unexpectedly delayed and we were unable to get them back in time to continue with the show.”On Broadway, where nine shows have begun runs since June, none has yet canceled a performance. At “Waitress,” a cast member tested positive a few days before the first performance; she was replaced by an understudy while she recovered from Covid, and the show went on. More

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    Andrew Garfield Can’t Remember Who He Was Before ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’

    In the movie musical, Garfield plays the creator of “Rent,” who died unexpectedly at 35. Making the film helped Garfield process a death in his own life.Jon (Andrew Garfield) is throwing a party, though there’s hardly a reason to celebrate. He’s riven with anxiety, his cramped apartment is overpacked with people, and he’s just spent money he doesn’t have, a down payment on success that will not come within his lifetime. But still, with a wide grin, Jon toasts his friends, leaps on his couch and sings, “This is the life!”Jon is Jonathan Larson, the composer and playwright who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 in 1996 just before his new musical, “Rent,” would become a global smash. The new film “Tick, Tick … Boom!” portrays Larson struggling to find success in his late 20s, as he frets about whether he should pack it in and choose a more conventional path than scripting musical theater.Larson originally created “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as a solo show, “Boho Days,” starring himself in 1990; after his death, it was reworked by the playwright David Auburn into a three-person production that the “Hamilton” creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, saw in 2001, when he was still a senior in college.“Here’s this posthumous musical from the guy who made me want to write musicals in the first place,” said Miranda, who’s now made his feature directorial debut with the film.Miranda saw Garfield in the 2018 Broadway production of “Angels in America” and thought he was “transcendent” in that show. “I just left thinking, ‘Oh, that guy can do anything,’” the director recalled. “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything. So I cast him in my head probably a year before I talked to him about it.”Miranda put Garfield through his paces, sending him to a vocal coach and ensuring that the actor would be able to play enough piano so the camera could pan from his fingers to his face throughout the film. But those are just the technical aspects of a performance that is impressively possessed: Garfield plays the passionate, frustrated Larson with enough zealous verve to power all the lights on Broadway.Garfield as Jonathan Larson in a scene from “Tick, Tick … Boom.”Macall Polay/NetflixIt’s all part of a very busy fall for the 38-year-old actor, who recently appeared in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” as the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker and, it’s rumored, will suit up alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” out in December. (Of that supersecret superhero team-up, Garfield can divulge nothing.) Still, it’s clear that “Tick, Tick … Boom!” meant much more to him than he initially expected.“It’s a strange thing when there’s someone like Jon that you didn’t have any relationship to before, and then suddenly now there’s this mysterious forever connection that I am never, ever going to let go,” Garfield told me on a recent video call from Calgary, Canada, where he’s shooting “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a limited series. “I just feel so lucky that Jon was revealed to me, because now I don’t remember who I was before I knew who Jon was.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did “Tick, Tick … Boom!” originally come to you?One of my best friends in New York is Gregg Miele, and he’s the great body worker and massage person of New York City — he works on all the dancers and actors and singers on Broadway and beyond. Lin was on his table one morning and asked, “Can Andrew Garfield sing?” And Gregg, being the friend that he is, just started lying, basically, and said, “Yes, he is the greatest singer I’ve ever heard.” Then he called me and said, “Hey, go and get some singing lessons because Lin’s going to ask you to do something.”Lin and I had lunch, and he told me briefly about “Tick, Tick” and Jon. I’m not a musical theater guy in my history — it’s not something that I’ve been introduced to until the last few years, really. So Lin left me with a copy of the music and lyrics, and he wrote at the front of it, “This won’t make sense now, but it will. Siempre, Lin.”Garfield hadn’t done much singing when he was cast in “Tick, Tick … Boom” opposite musical theater veterans. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.’”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesYou’ve performed in plays like “Angels in America” and “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway, but in this film, Lin surrounded you with a lot of musical-theater ringers, and even some of the smallest roles and cameos are filled by major players from that world. That had to have been a daunting space to step into.I remember a very specific moment where we were in music rehearsal. Alex Lacamoire was at the piano walking us through the songs — he’s Lin’s musical arranger and producer — and I was with [“Tick, Tick” co-stars] Robin de Jesus and Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Henry and Alex Shipp. You can imagine how I’m feeling! They’re all just pros, they know exactly what they’re doing, they’re making notes. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”Then it comes time for me to get into the song and I’m just trying to get through it. I remember Alex Lacamoire going, “Woo, Andrew!” And then everyone behind him, like Josh and Vanessa and Alex and Robin, were like, “Yeah baby, that’s it baby! You got it, baby!” I go beet red and five minutes pass, and I’m just like, “Hey guys, sorry.” I start crying, and I say, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy in my entire life, to be surrounded by the most supportive liars I have ever known.”Garfield working with his director, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who cast him after seeing the actor in “Angeles in America.” Miranda recalled, “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything.”Macall Polay/NetflixJonathan spends the movie anxious about this ticking that only he can hear. How did you interpret that?There was a line in the original one-man show “Boho Days”: “Sometimes, I feel like my heart is going to explode.” It was too on-the-nose for people after he passed away, and they had to cut it, but he spends the story trying to figure out what this ticking is: “Is it turning 30? Is it that I haven’t succeeded? Is it some unconscious idea of my girlfriend’s biological clock combined with the pressure of my career? Or is it all of my friends who are losing their lives at a very young age because of the AIDS epidemic?”It could even be a musical metronome. The way you play Jonathan, as this theatrical person who feels so deeply and urgently, it’s almost like he needs to break into song because normal life just doesn’t cut it.Everything is up at an 11. Even when he’s making love, it’s at 11! Somehow he knows that this is all going to end, that this is all so ephemeral, and I think he was acutely, painfully aware that he wasn’t going to get all of his song sung. And I think he was also agonizingly aware that he wasn’t going to get the reflection and recognition that he knew he was supposed to have while he was still breathing.On the last day of shooting, what I understood is that Jon had it figured out. He knew that this is a short ride and a sacred one, and he had a lot of keys and secrets to how to live with ourselves and with each other and how to make meaning out of being here. Once he accepted that, he could be fully a part of the world, and then he could write “Rent.” I don’t think there’s an accident in that. That very visceral knowing of loss and of death, that’s what gives everything so much meaning. And without that awareness, we will succumb to meaninglessness.So what kind of meaning did this story give to you?Every frame, every moment, every breath of this film is an attempted honoring of Jon. And, on a more personal level, it’s an honoring of my mom. She is someone who showed me where I was supposed to go in my life. She set me on a path. We lost her just before Covid, just before we started shooting, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. So, for me, I was able to continue her song on the ocean and the wave of Jonathan’s songs. It was an attempt to honor him in his unfinished song, and her in her unfinished song, and have them meet.I think that’s part of the reason I didn’t want this movie to end, because I got to put my grief into art, into this creative act. The privilege of my life has been being there for my mother, being the person that gave her permission when she was ready. We had a very amazing connection, and now an audience will know her spirit in an unconscious way through Jon, which I just find so magical and beautiful.“I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing,” Garfield said, adding, “Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm.”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesStill, that’s a lot to deal with while you were shooting this movie. It can’t have been easy.I was hesitant whether I was going to share that, but I feel like it’s a universal experience. In the best-case scenario, we lose our parents and not the other way around, so I feel very lucky that I got to be with her while she was passing, and I got to read her favorite poems to her and take care of her and my dad and my brother. I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing. It’s the person that gives you life no longer being here. Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm. For me, everything has changed: Where there was once a stream, there’s now a mountain; where there was once a volcano, there’s now a field. It’s a strange head trip.You put parts of yourself in other people, almost like they’re the stewards of who you are. And when you lose those people, suddenly you become their steward.As you say, it’s like my mother now lives in me in a way that maybe is even stronger than ever when she was incarnate. I feel her essence. For me, it only comes when one can accept the loss, and it’s so hard for us to do that in our culture because we’re not given the framework or the tools to. We’re told to be in delusion and denial of this universally binding thing that we’re all going to go through at some point, and it’s fascinating to me that this grand adventure of death is not honored.Actually, the only thing that gives any of this meaning is if we walk with death in the far corner of our left eye. That’s the only way that we are aware of being alive in this moment. I think that was the legacy that Jon leaves and the legacy that my mom leaves for me personally, is just to be here. Because you’re not going to be here for long.It reminds me of what was written on your script before all of this happened: “You don’t understand now, but you will.”“You don’t understand now, but you will.” I’m still reeling from the download of understanding what Jon’s life was about, what my mother’s life was about, what all of this is about. Oh God, how lucky to explore that in one’s work! More

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    In London, Musicals That Stay True to a Brand

    “Frozen” and “Back to the Future: The Musical” are sure to please fans of the original screen works, without offering much more of interest.LONDON — There’s a human story embedded within the shiny toy that is “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which opened Monday night at the Adelphi Theater here. But you pretty much know from the start that a revved-up audience is saving its greatest roar of recognition for a certain prop.That would be the whiz-bang car so beloved from the 1985 blockbuster film that it’s the calling card for the Tony-winning director John Rando’s transcription of the film on the West End. (A run in Manchester in March 2020 was cut short by the pandemic.)And so it proves. Scarcely has the vaunted DeLorean made its way onto a set by Tim Hatley — which itself resembles a mammoth LED-framed computer console — before the theater erupts in cheers that back in the past, so to speak, might have been reserved for legends of the stage. Its gull-wing doors all but ready to take flight, the vehicle later soars into the auditorium, doing a somersault in the process. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” eat your heart out.The result honors a hard-working array of lighting, sound and video designers — not to mention Chris Fisher’s illusions — and recalls the era of the 1980s mega-musical and its dependence on visual effects: the falling chandelier in “The Phantom of the Opera” and the whirling helicopter in “Miss Saigon,” to cite just two examples.What about the actors? “Back to the Future”’s opening performance, as it happened, suffered a last-minute cast replacement when its (terrific) co-star, Roger Bart, was sidelined that day by a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. The role of the wild-haired Doc Brown — immortalized by Christopher Lloyd onscreen — has been given over temporarily to Bart’s understudy, Mark Oxtoby. I caught Bart’s gleeful performance, manic and unexpectedly touching, at the final preview.Still, can you imagine the mayhem that might ensue were the show’s mechanized capabilities to shut up shop? That would bring to grief a stage venture that, as with so many films turned stage musicals, exists essentially to honor the brand. As with “Frozen,” the Disney extravaganza that opened on a newly bustling West End a mere five days earlier, the creators must give obsessives a reasonable facsimile of the movie while attempting to find something uniquely stage-worthy to what, after all, is a franchise. (Both musicals go heavy on the merchandise.)Olly Dobson as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future: The Musical.”Sean Ebsworth BarnesThe need to think outside the celluloid box explains the 16 new songs from the Grammy winners Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard currently overburdening a story known onscreen in musical terms for Huey Lewis and the News rocking out “The Power of Love.” That ever-welcome rouser shows up just in time to fuel a clap-happy finale.The new songs, by contrast, feel largely like filler, though Bart lands the appealingly plaintive “For the Dreamers,” and Olly Dobson brings boundless energy and a strong voice to that wannabe rocker Marty McFly — the teenage time-traveler played in the movie by Michael J. Fox. “Something About That Boy” has an up-tempo catchiness appropriate to the era of “Grease” to which the material pays homage, and several numbers reference time specifically, as befits a sci-fi narrative in which the skateboard-happy Marty is forced to repair nothing less than the space-time continuum.And yet it’s the DeLorean again that prompts a double-page program spread explaining such vehicular specifics as temporal field stabilizers, a Tachyon Pulse Generator and, most crucially, a Flux Capacitor. That last item gets a workout as the engine — you’ll forgive that word choice — that drives the plot when an anxious Marty hurtles back to 1955 in an effort to bring his parents together so as to ensure that his own existence isn’t erased.Because 1985 is by now itself long ago, the book by Bob Gale (a co-author, with Robert Zemeckis, of the film) has sensibly jettisoned the Libyan terrorists who figure in the movie. Instead, we get a rather desperate-seeming reference to the current appetite for kale, and a tongue-in-cheek allusion to 2020 as a time without war, crime or disease.I hadn’t recalled the degree of Oedipal depth to a story that finds Marty resisting advances from his own mother, Lorraine (a clear-voiced Rosanna Hyland), in order to bring her under the romantic 1950s sway of the geeky George (an immediately appealing Hugh Coles). This slow-blooming charmer, given in song to rhyming “myopia” and “utopia,” is the one who belongs in Lorraine’s arms, not her own son.A bromance develops along the way between Marty and Doc, a mentor of sorts who in this iteration breaks the fourth wall more than once to express dismay at finding himself surrounded by choreographer Chris Bailey’s high-stepping chorus line. The surprise, in context, is understandable. After all, it can’t be easy folding dance into a scenario in which the car gets all the best moves.Samantha Barks, left, as Elsa and Stephanie McKeon as Anna in Disney’s “Frozen,” directed by Michael Grandage at the Theater Royal Drury Lane.Johan Persson“Frozen” induces gasps of its own when the vast stage of the Theater Royal Drury Lane gives itself over to a shimmering icescape against which the magic-endowed Elsa can belt out “Let It Go” — the Oscar-winning power ballad from the 2013 animated film that sends the audience into the intermission on a high. But for all the transformations wrought by Christopher Oram’s set, the emphasis remains firmly on the characters, not least the reined-in Elsa (Samantha Barks) and her comparatively harebrained younger sister, Anna, whose bumptious peppiness is meant to seem endearing but, I’m afraid, left me cold onscreen and again onstage. (A perky Stephanie McKeon, it should be said, delivers what the part requires.)It’s Barks’s superbly realized Elsa who benefits most from this reconsideration of a show that was the first Broadway title forced by the pandemic to call it quits. Having had time to look at the material afresh, the director Michael Grandage and his team have beefed up the fraught emotional state of a snow queen at savage odds with her own powers and given the siblings a duet, “I Can’t Lose You,” that places this show on a continuum set by “Wicked” and centered around a literal or figurative sisterhood.The plotting is still peculiar: Anna and Elsa’s parents die at sea, a loss that seems barely to register, and a lot of the shifts in behavior look decidedly arbitrary. Oh, and how else to explain that second-act opener, “Hygge,” involving the ensemble emerging semi-clad from a sauna, beyond giving the choreographer Rob Ashford something to do?A definite bonus to the London production is the restoration for a reported 60 million pounds of the theater itself, which now looks sufficiently luxuriant that I, for one, might be cautious about inviting many thousands of people through such elegantly appointed portals. “Frozen” is sure to attract innumerable families throughout its run. Let’s just hope these hungry and thirsty patrons treat their newly ravishing surroundings with respect.Back to the Future: The Musical. Directed by John Rando. Adelphi Theater.Frozen. Directed by Michael Grandage. Theater Royal Drury Lane. More

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    The Dead Get a Do-Over

    In a flurry of streaming television shows, the departed get a second chance. And viewers find an outlet for sorrow and remorse.In “Manifest,” a series streaming on Netflix, Michaela, one of the show’s more candidly troubled characters, turns up with her companions after a lengthy, unexplained absence to be reunited with their families.She ought to be ecstatic. But her reactions more aptly reflect the Kübler-Ross model of grief, some of its stages — denial, depression and anger — mingling on her features, along with a slow-dawning acceptance. As she tells Jared, her former fiancé, “Part of me wishes we hadn’t come back at all.”Her response seems relatable. Mourning her life as she knew it, Michaela is one of some 200 passengers on the Montego Air Flight 828, who have mysteriously vanished only to return five years later, not a day older and sound of body but freighted with all manner of weighty emotional baggage.In “Glitch,” Maria (Daniela Farinacci) resurfaces still caked in the soil from her grave.NetflixThat tale is but one in a rash of streaming series finding new audiences in the midst of a lingering pandemic, luring viewers with the suggestion that the boundary between life and death may be porous indeed. The departed get a new purchase on life in “Glitch,” an Australian offering in which the long-expired denizens of Yoorana, a fictional community in the Australian outback, stagger back to their homes, bodies still caked with the soil from their graves.“The 4400,” focused on the undead but with none of the zombie horror effects, shows the newly risen wielding oddly assorted superpowers. In “The OA,” a fable-like iteration of the resurrection theme, the heroine has perished many times over, blind in one incarnation but gifted in another with an extraordinary second sight. Death itself is illusory, she assures a young school friend. “I think you are always somewhere.”There is “The Returned,” an American adaptation of “Les Revenants,” a decade-old series about the long-gone members of a French Alpine village intent on picking up the shards of their lives, unaware that their near and dear have long since moved on. And “Katla,” an Icelandic production in which the deceased resurface in the shadow of an active volcano, seeking to salve emotional wounds.At a time when people are grieving not only their dead, but lost jobs, opportunities and daily routines, the appetite for such fare seems especially poignant. Reveries, sci-fi fantasies or meditations on life’s great mysteries, these shows offer viewers little in the way of resolution but hold out a promise of redemption, reunion and, not least, a chance to muse on their mortality.“Death has been a more omnipresent force in our lives in the last 18 months than it has been in our lifetimes,” said Steve Leder, the senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and the author, most recently, of “The Beauty of What Remains,” about the nature of bereavement.“Death is no longer something we can banish to the basement of our psyches,” Rabbi Leder said. “It is that broomstick pounding on that basement ceiling, demanding: ‘What about me? Pay attention. I must be reckoned with.’”Dr. Andre (T.L. Thompson) and Claudette (Jaye Ladymore) of “The 4400” beam down with a mission.Adrian S. Burrows Sr./THE CW, via Associated PressSuch shows offer, as well, a chance for viewers to confront, or at least contemplate, their most nagging anxieties. “These shows are our version of a roller coaster, a death-defying ride with the things you fear most.” said David Kessler, whose most recent book, “Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief,” explores the reverberations of loss.“When people are grieving, one of their greatest fears is that they’re going to forget about the person they have lost,” Mr. Kessler said. “We don’t want to move on because that feels like abandoning those we love.”There is scant chance of that in the latest shows, many of them defunct network series revived for streaming at an eerily opportune time. “We live in the world’s first death-free generation, meaning that many people live into their 40s before experiencing the death of a parent, sometimes even a grandparent,” said Alan Wolfelt, a death educator and grief counselor.“In a mourning-avoidant culture such as ours watching these shows is, in part, a rehearsal,” he said. “They permit audiences to mourn and to acknowledge the reality of their own death.”Yet they raise more questions than they can or care to answer. What makes us special? Do we, as in the case of “Manifest,” return with a mission or calling? Are there others like us? Are we in danger, or are we among the chosen? Will we get the chance of a do-over?Matters of faith are underscored in “Manifest,” as when a startled passer-by drops to her knees at the sight of Cal, the youngest and most insightful of the Flight 828 returnees, chanting, “He is risen.” For people eager to regain some semblance of certainty in a disordered time, these stories exert a powerful pull.“We’re a very mastery-oriented culture, always wanting answers,” said Pauline Boss, an emeritus professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and the author of “Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change.”“With the spread of the virus, those answers are not necessarily forthcoming,” Dr. Boss said. “We don’t know if we can trust the person at the grocery store, whether or not they have been vaccinated. People are dying apart from their families, and those families may be feeling no sense of closure.“What we have now is this whole host of ambiguous losses: loss of life, loss of jobs and loss of faith that the world is a safe place.”“Manifest” will return for a fourth and final season, though Netflix has not announced a date. Peter Friedlander, who heads Netflix scripted series in the United States and Canada, said the series resonates with viewers because of their insatiable craving for mystery.“It scratches that itch, trying in some way to hypothesize about the great unknown, to explore the notion of revisiting unfinished business,” Mr. Friedlander said. Such fare is a balm as well for people dealing with regret, he suggested, those eager to extract a message of hope from apparently meaningless, ungovernable events.Sean Cohen, 27, a digital artist in Chicago who posts “Manifest”-inspired illustrations on Instagram, finds solace in the series. “It creates this whole story of how everything that happens is connected,” he said in a direct message on Instagram. There is also the emotional uplift, he said, “of seeing the passengers come together to help one another as the mystery unfolds.”The show also captivates Princess Louden, 25, a dancer and graduate student in social work in Los Angeles. “‘Manifest’ technically is about something that could never happen,” Ms. Louden said. “It’s not like aliens are invading the planet. But it leaves a little room for all kinds of possibility. That’s what draws me in.”The show is pure escapism, said Audra Jones Dosunmu, 52, a talent manager in the fashion and entertainment industries. “But there is also the idea that ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”“In a way I think of these shows as crisis pornography,’” Ms. Dosunmu added. “People like to see others going through things that they could never manage. But if that makes them feel thankful and better about their own lives, it’s a good thing.”Many of the shows offer the tantalizing possibility of rescue and redemption, reassuring fans that, as is repeated like a mantra on “Manifest,” “all things work together for good. …”In “Katla,” the dead, rise naked and covered in ash, a volcano erupts.  NetflixOn “Manifest,” the risen heed inner voices urging them to acts of heroism. Michaela responds to a “calling” to free two teenagers trapped in a killer’s lair. In “Glitch,” a young woman sets out to confront her rapist and murderer. In “Katla,” estranged sisters, one of them dead, work at mending their frayed relationship; and in “The Returned,” a serial killer in a former life learns to rue and curb his lethal impulses.These shows explore the prospect of a second chance, of tackling unfinished business, revisiting relationships, and dealing with regret, Mr. Friedlander said. “They let you look at the choices you’ve made and reflect on your priorities and values.“It’s that sliding-door scenario that asks, ‘What if I could say one more thing to that person I’ve lost?’” More

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    Late Night Takes Lots of Jabs at Nicki Minaj

    The rapper’s tweets about her cousin’s friend, who she said had swollen testicles after taking the Covid vaccine, set off a flood of commentary.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 Swell GuyOn Tuesday’s late-night shows, Nicki Minaj’s tweets about her cousin’s friend in Trinidad who she said got swollen testicles after receiving the Covid vaccine were a hot topic.On Wednesday, the rapper responded to the hosts who had poked fun, including Jimmy Kimmel, who asked to be connected with the afflicted man, saying he had questions.“And I guess Nicki saw it, because she reached out on Twitter,” Kimmel said. “She wrote: ‘He’s willing to talk for the right price. I’m his manager. Call me, Jimmy.’ Which was exciting. Don’t have Nicki’s number, and I do want to get an idea of what kind of money we’re talking about, so I wrote back, ‘Does he charge by the pound?’”Tuesday’s “Late Show” parodied Minaj’s hit “Super Bass,” which Minaj found amusing, writing that she wasn’t upset because she “rlly” likes Stephen Colbert.“Nicki, for the record, I ‘rlly’ like you, too,” Colbert said on Wednesday. “That’s why I want you to get vaccinated so you can come on the show again, because without a shot, the network ‘rlly’ won’t let you come on.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Crisis Averted Edition)“California Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday defeated a recall attempt by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and Newsom was so relieved, his hair unclenched.” — SETH MEYERS“Sorry, California Republicans, I know you spent 20 months and millions of dollars on this recall, but you know what they say.: You win some, but not in California.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Did he win? Can you win an election you didn’t want to happen?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The cost to our state was about $300 million, which I think is the third-most-expensive dinner at French Laundry ever.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The race was called for Newsom less than an hour after the polls closed. Less than an hour. Amazing how fast an election can end when Rudy Giuliani isn’t involved, isn’t it?”— JIMMY FALLON“The election was called so early, Newsom was able to get his beauty sleep, which, by the looks of him, is like 17 hours a day.” — JAMES CORDEN“In fact, there were three options on the ballot that said ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘This is a bigger waste of time than driving into L.A.X.’” — SETH MEYERS“A vast majority of Californians voted no on the recall. So many people marked no, it was like the R.S.V.P.s for a destination wedding.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “Full Frontal,” Samantha Bee skewered conservatives for perpetuating vaccine misinformation and mixed messaging.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightSeth Meyers will host the cast of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” for the last time on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutSamantha Bee and other late-night hosts will focus their Sept. 22 episodes on climate change. “We need to not be submerged underwater in order to have successful late-night shows,” she said.TBSLate-night hosts will address climate change on their respective shows as part of Climate Night on Sept. 22. More