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    ‘Peep Show’ Still Proves That ‘Self-Loathing Is Pretty Universal’

    Over two decades ago, two British shows reinvented television comedy with mortifyingly funny alternatives to regular sitcoms. One of them might immediately come to mind: “The Office,” a cringe-comedy landmark that revived the mockumentary format and inspired an American version that became its own institution.The other never achieved such widespread renown, at least not on these shores. But “Peep Show,” which chronicled two spiraling roommates in a grotty London flat, was highly influential in Britain and beyond.The sitcom aired on Channel 4 for nine seasons, from 2003-15, and it was beloved enough for the British Film Institute to hold a 20th anniversary tribute in 2023. Its stars, David Mitchell and Robert Webb, continue to be fixtures of British comedy. (Mitchell’s latest show, a mystery series called “Ludwig,” arrives on BritBox on Thursday.) A young Olivia Colman, now an Oscar-winning actor, was part of the cast. One of the creators, Jesse Armstrong, later earned international acclaim as the mastermind of the HBO hit “Succession.”Channel 4But “Peep Show” remains a cult item or secret handshake for American audiences. “It’s kind of the hipster’s choice,” Armstrong, who created the show with Sam Bain, said in an interview. “Occasionally, somebody on set would come and say, ‘Hey, I like your other work, especially ‘Peep Show.’”“Peep Show,” which now streams on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, among other services, is filmed in a first-person style, complete with internal monologues. It puts audiences into the minds of two friends who invariably do exactly the wrong thing, in different ways. Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) is a strait-laced insurance adjuster who flails around women, and people generally. Jeremy (Webb), also known as Jez, is a perpetually unemployed techno musician who exhibits the self-control of a puppy.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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    Amanda Batula of ‘Summer House’ on Emerging From Kyle Cooke’s Shadow

    Amanda Batula spent most of eight seasons supporting her husband. Now she’s joining the reality show’s alpha women.There are lots of different reasons people tune in to reality shows — there’s messiness, fights, drama and romance.Over nine seasons, Amanda Batula has contributed each of those elements to “Summer House,” the Bravo reality show set in the Hamptons, while the show’s other women took on dominant story lines. But this season, Batula, 33, has become a fan favorite for breaking out of the norms that “girlfriend” reality stars often get stuck in: starting a family, quitting a job and moving to the suburbs with their attention-hogging male leads.Batula had been very much ready to follow that plan. (She first appeared on the show as a late-night hookup for Kyle Cooke, now her husband.) But this season and the last saw her priorities shift. She started her own business ventures, and prioritized her friendships and mental health.“When I was younger, I thought I’d be married at 24” and “have kids by 30,” Batula said. “I don’t have to follow this timeline that I set.”Last month, Batula discussed in an interview what it’s been like to break out on the show and how she figured out what actually makes her happy.Batula made her reality television debut in 2017 during the first season of “Summer House,” not as a cast member but as a late-night invitee of Cooke, who had recently broken up with her and was filming for the show.

    @bravotv Amanda is doing what works for her ❤️ #SummerHouse ♬ Amandas Journey from Southern Charm – Bravo 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 Tackles the Attacks on Tesla

    Jordan Klepper said no one should be blowing up Elon Musk’s cars, “especially because if you just wait a few minutes, they’ll probably do it by themselves.”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.Where There’s SmokeIn recent weeks, Tesla has been targeted by vandals, who have set the company’s cars on fire and defaced dealership storefronts with messages criticizing Elon Musk, its owner. On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Jordan Klepper said no one should be blowing up Teslas — “especially because if you just wait a few minutes, they’ll probably do it by themselves.”On Fox News this week, Musk spoke with Sean Hannity and, Klepper said, “made the case for his victimhood.”“I shouldn’t have to explain this to Elon, but it’s not about the Teslas. Teslas are actually pretty cool as a car. It’s got that all-glass thing going on, kind of like a popemobile that [expletive]. It’s got door handles that are hard to find, which is what everybody wants in a door handle. Everything in the car is electronic, so if it malfunctions, you just drown in it, you know? It’s like a free coffin. It’s cool!” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I don’t think people, though, are mad at you because of the Teslas, Elon. If I were to hazard a guess about why they’d be mad, it might be because, in the last several weeks, you fired tens of thousands of federal workers, you made cuts to veterans’ care, lifesaving foreign aid and food banks.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Or, here — here’s another guess: Maybe people are mad at you because you don’t seem to know what the [expletive] you’re doing!” — JORDAN KLEPPER“And here’s the thing: I get that people are upset. Burning a car might not be great for the environment. I don’t think that’s what they had in mind when they invented the electric car.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Let me see if I can explain it for you: When you pull out a chain saw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (J.F.K. Files Edition)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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    This Charming British Detective Show Is an Escape From Uncertain Times

    “Ludwig,” streaming on BritBox, stars David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle setter who solves mysteries. And then the world makes sense again.In the opening scene of the detective show “Ludwig,” the camera pans up and down the floors of a glass office building while jaunty music plays on the soundtrack. Employees chat as they pack up and leave for the day, and then we reach an upper level, where a man in a button-down shirt and slacks is sprawled on the floor, an ornate knife sticking out of his chest.When the comedian David Mitchell read this first page of the show’s script last year, he immediately thought, “This aesthetic is exactly what I want,” he said in a recent interview. “It just felt — which is weird to say when it involves someone being murdered — but it felt fun.”When “Ludwig,” starring Mitchell in the lead role, aired in Britain late last year, viewers seemed to agree: Nearly 10 million people tuned in, making it the BBC’s most popular new scripted program in years.In the show, which comes to BritBox in the United States on Thursday, Mitchell plays the kind of endearingly unworldly, fiercely intelligent character that has made him a household name in Britain.Mitchell’s character, John, is a reclusive genius who lives alone, setting crosswords and other brain teasers under the pen name Ludwig.Colin Hutton/Big TalkHis character, John, is a reclusive genius who lives alone, setting crosswords and other brain teasers under the pen name Ludwig. His identical twin brother, James, got married, had a son and is working as a police detective — but then James disappears, leaving his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) a cryptic note.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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    ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Brings the Thrill of Music Making to Broadway

    A new musical inspired by the 1997 hit album gives a fictional back story to the veteran performers of the Havana music scene.The spirit of the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” is evident in its opening scene. Audience members have barely settled into their seats before a group of onstage musicians strikes up the number “El Carretero,” with the rest of the cast gathered around and watching. Some are leaning in from their chairs, others get up and dance on the side. The music is center stage, and we immediately understand its power as a communal experience that binds people.Therein lies the production’s greatest achievement. For a place where music so often plays a crucial role, Broadway hardly ever highlights the thrill of music making itself.Oh, there have been shows that have effectively pulled the curtain on the process — David Adjmi’s play “Stereophonic” takes place inside recording studios, and the most effective scenes in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” are set in one as well. But the interconnections between musicians, songs and a society have rarely been evoked as vividly, and as lovingly, as they are in “Buena Vista Social Club,” which opened on Wednesday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. (This improved version follows the show’s Off Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Company, which premiered in December 2023.)As its title indicates, this production, directed by Saheem Ali, is inspired by the 1997 hit album “Buena Vista Social Club,” on which veterans of the Havana scene performed beloved sons, danzones and boleros from the traditional Cuban repertoire. Many of those songs and others are in the musical (a booklet in the Playbill introduces each one, with illustrations by the flutist Hery Paz), along with most of those musicians and singers. Or at least versions of them are. Tellingly, the book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”) identifies the characters by their first names only, as if to underline that this is more of an evocative flight of fancy than a biomusical — Ramirez makes the most of musical theater’s notoriously loose relationship with facts.The action travels back and forth between 1956, in the tense time leading up to the toppling of the autocratic Batista regime, and 1996, when the young producer Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham) assembles a backing band for the older singers he’s brought into the studio. (The British executive producer Nick Gold and the American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder played important parts in the “Buena Vista Social Club” album and the Wim Wenders documentary that followed, but the musical doesn’t mention them. Instead it focuses on de Marcos’s role in putting together the band and singers.)The show toggles between 1996 and 1956, where the young performers Compay (Da’von T. Moody), Omara (Isa Antonetti) and Ibrahim (Wesley Wray) bond over their love of traditional Cuban music.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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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    “We Had a World” Review: A Poignant New Play From Joshua Harmon

    Joshua Harmon’s new play features uniformly standout performances and tells a poignant story of family dynamics.At the onset of Joshua Harmon’s wonderfully textured new play, “We Had a World,” Josh (played by Andrew Barth Feldman) is in his tighty-whities, scribbling in a notebook with a mechanical pencil at a desk on a corner of the stage. Just then his Nana — his dying Nana, to be specific — shows up onstage with a request. She has an idea for a play her grandson should write, a vicious “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”-style work about their family.The play we’re seeing, in the intimate basement-esque New York City Center Stage II of the Manhattan Theater Club, is the playwright’s answer to his grandmother’s request. It’s not as vitriolic as Nana had asked for, but it is an all too relatable unpacking of the longstanding resentments and challenging dynamics of a family, particularly the ones between two of the central women in his life, his mother and his grandmother. If there’s viciousness here, it’s the complex, often vicious nature of the truth.“We Had a World” is a memory play in which Josh breaks the fourth wall to guide the audience through notable incidents of his childhood and adult life relating to his mother and grandmother. Though the play opens with a phone call between Josh and his Nana at the end of her life, he jumps back chronologically to explain growing up with his grandmother, Renee (Joanna Gleason), an eccentric Manhattanite who takes him to the theater to see “Medea” and to exhibitions of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. She sneaks them in to catch movies for free and they make regular visits at the Met Museum. He credits his grandmother with helping him find his future vocation in the theater. But it’s not long before he discovers a secret about Renee: she’s an alcoholic, which is the source of years of animosity between her and Josh’s mother, Ellen (Jeanine Serralles), a tough lawyer with a chip on her shoulder.“We Had a World” gradually works its way back to, and a little bit past, Renee’s decline and death, though not in a way that’s at all predictable or even linear. Josh remembers and cleverly revises the story as he goes, with Renee and Ellen appearing onstage not just as puppets in his story, manipulated by his telling, but also as autonomous characters who express their own opinions (often, hilariously, at his expense) and intrude to offer their perspectives on events.Harmon’s script doesn’t feel as didactic or self-consciously stagy as many contemporary memory plays can be; it strikes an impressive balance of negotiating a story with many adverse emotional perspectives and moving parts while also maintaining a sense of honesty. I don’t just mean honesty in the sense of facts — though the verifiable biographical facts in Harmon’s story, and a bit of recorded material at the end, lend a gravitas to the characters and occurrences. I mean honesty in the sense of emotional transparency, the very real mix of love and resentment and insecurities and doubts that define all relationships, especially those within a family.Though the script successfully condenses several eras of Harmon’s life and captures the quirks and particularities of his mother’s and grandmother’s personalities, the performances really give the material its extra emotional heft. It takes less than 15 minutes to fall in love with Gleason as Renee, the native New Yorker with a dark sense of humor, a love for ornate French furniture and an inexplicable pseudo-British accent. And Serralles’s Ellen feels most real when she is at her most defensive and sardonic, though her shifts into the character’s more openly vulnerable moments still show some seams.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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    She May Be the Most Powerful Producer Working in Theater

    Sonia Friedman may just be the most prolific and powerful theater producer working today.Over the past 30 years, she has become a peerless figure in the West End, where last year she had a record-setting seven shows running simultaneously, and on Broadway, where she has produced five of the past six Tony Award winners for best play. She has been entrusted both with prestige work by celebrated writers like Tom Stoppard and Stephen Sondheim and with stage adaptations of hugely valuable intellectual property like “Harry Potter,” “Stranger Things” and “Paddington.”But she’s endlessly restless. Taking for granted neither the sustainability of the business nor the security of her own place in it, she has become ever more worried about the industry’s future.A lifelong Londoner, Friedman spends about one-third of each year in New York, but she hasn’t bought an apartment, and only in January started renting, after decades of hotel stays.“I live, literally, with a suitcase in the hall,” she said during one of several interviews. “It could all end tomorrow here. It could all end tomorrow there. And it might. It really might. That’s always how I work. The drive is: It could all end tomorrow. It’s not necessarily a nice way to live, is it?”For years she has expressed concern about the high costs of producing on Broadway, particularly when compared to the West End, but her concern has intensified since the pandemic, as rising costs for labor, materials and services have driven show budgets — and ticket prices for hot shows — ever higher. She said, for example, that “The Hills of California,” a family drama by Jez Butterworth that she produced last year in both cities, faced production costs that were 350 percent higher in New York than in London.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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    On ‘Severance,’ the Food Is Its Own Chilling Character

    This article contains key details from previous episodes of “Severance.” It does not include any spoilers for the Season 2 finale.It wasn’t your imagination: Something was off about the food from the start.That first glimpse of cantaloupe and honeydew, arranged in the office to welcome Helly R., played by Britt Lower, was a little unnerving: Melons in jagged halves — severed! — filled with anemic, out-of-season fruit.“Severance,” the Apple TV+ show written by Dan Erickson and executive produced by Ben Stiller, follows a group of Lumon Industries employees with chips in their brains that divide their work selves (“innies”) from their main selves (“outies”). For innies, whose lives are confined to the office, who never sleep or see the sun, a snack is a treat. So why doesn’t it feel like one?The food on “Severance” leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it’s as fluent in doublespeak as the show’s most ambitious corporate climbers. In the show’s second season, which wraps up this week, food has acquired all the chilling, spine-tingling dissonance of upper management, refusing your request for a raise with a warm, unflinching smile.“Melon has been a theme over the two seasons, and each time we see it, we want to up the ante,” said Catherine Miller, the prop master for “Severance.”Apple“I always try to design the props and food to have some connection, some metaphorical undertone,” said Catherine Miller, the show’s prop master, who devised season one’s melon presentation to fit the “very graphic, very minimal” aesthetic of Lumon’s retro office. “I think food has the ability to define time and place and mood and overall emotional connection — it can become its own character.”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