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    ‘A Thousand Blows’ Is a Knuckle Sandwich of a Series

    From the creator of “Peaky Blinders” comes another brutal and dingy underworld drama, this one set among the boxers and criminals of 1880s London.“A Thousand Blows,” on Hulu, is a grimy historical drama, an evocative boxing drama and a festive crime drama. Its biggest draw, though, is that its creator is Steven Knight, who also created “Peaky Blinders,” and the shows resemble each other quite a bit in their muddy brutality. “Blows” is less brooding, though.The show, based on a true story, follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his best friend, Alec (Francis Lovehall), who emigrate from Jamaica to London in the 1880s. Hezekiah is there to be a lion tamer at the zoo. But when faced with a slew of demeaning setbacks, he winds up in the boxing ring instead, where he becomes something of a star. He catches the eye of Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the leader of an all-female crime ring, who sees him as “the last chess piece” in her plan.“And I am a pawn?” he asks.“More like a knight in battered armor,” she says.Not everyone likes Hezekiah’s shine, though, especially Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), a bare-knuckle boxer and generally volatile dude who has known Mary since she was a kid. They share a destitute, Dickensian background. Most of the characters here are fueled by a lust for vengeance against villains from their past, and they also suffer from shabby treatment in the present because of their race, class, gender or ethnicity. Sometimes they cope with this by forming exciting criminal and romantic allegiances, and sometimes they save their feelings for the boxing ring.Characters in “Blows” punch and get punched a lot, and viewers might feel that they too are on the receiving end of an absolute dagwood of a knuckle sandwich. Some of this thick bleakness is cut with fun sequences of Mary and her crew’s high-end robberies. Glamorous parties — some of which are also part of Mary’s high-end robberies — add trapeze work and candelabras to the show’s mix; one cannot live on bloodied visages and sooty urchins alone.Although much of the show feels predictable, radiant performances — especially from Kirby, Graham and Doherty — lend it a sense of freshness and verve. There’s a fieriness to everything, and at just six episodes, also a breathlessness. That sense of forward momentum carries through the finale, which ends with coming attractions for more episodes.SIDE QUESTS“Peaky Blinders” is on Netflix.If you want a different, slower British period drama starring Tom Hardy and created by Knight (alongside Hardy and Hardy’s father, Chips), “Taboo” is on Peacock.Kirby and Graham are both in the tense restaurant movie “Boiling Point,” and Graham returns for its terrific and different TV sequel, also called “Boiling Point.” (You don’t have to watch one to watch the other.) The movie is on Peacock, and the show is on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and the Roku Channel. More

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    At France’s Oldest Theater, Things Change, but They Also Stay the Same

    A new leader for the Comédie-Française, Clément Hervieu-Léger, is an insider who looks set to keep the venerable Paris company on a steady course.Later this year, the actor and director Clément Hervieu-Léger will assume one of the most influential positions in French theater: general administrator of the Comédie-Française, the country’s oldest active company. France’s culture ministry announced the appointment last week.For now, however, Hervieu-Léger, 47, remains a player in the company’s acting ensemble, and through June 1, he is starring in a production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” that he also directed. Onstage on Sunday, Hervieu-Léger blended in discreetly as Trofimov, an aging student who hovers around the play’s central landowning family. (It took me a minute even to recognize him.)The venerable Comédie-Française was founded in 1680, when a troupe begun decades earlier by the playwright Molière merged with a rival institution. With Hervieu-Léger’s appointment, it has opted — as so often — for continuity. Since 2001, every general administrator has come from the company’s ranks. Éric Ruf, who holds the position until this summer, had over two decades of experience as a Comédie-Française actor before his appointment in 2014.His successor has followed a remarkably similar path. A lithe, elegant performer, Hervieu-Léger was hired by the troupe in 2005 and has since been seen in a vast repertoire of plays, including Molière comedies and Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”In 2018, he joined the ranks of the “sociétaires,” or “shareholders,” a core group of company members who own stakes in the Comédie-Française, make up the board and oversee the theater’s operations. All must abide by the company’s motto: “Simul et singulis,” which means, “Together and individual.”Hervieu-Léger, left, as Trofimov in “The Cherry Orchard.”Vincent Pontet, coll. Comédie-FrançaiseWe 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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    Bill Burr Is About to Hit Broadway. Broadway Better Duck.

    Inside a spacious room on Manhattan’s West Side, rehearsal for the latest Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” was full of macho bluster and trash talk. And that was before the actors started running their scene.It was a Friday morning, and the show’s British director, Patrick Marber, back after being briefly out sick, approached two of his stars, Bill Burr and Michael McKean. They were sitting inside a makeshift restaurant booth, getting ready to play desperate real estate salesmen entertaining the idea of robbing their office.Then Marber noticed a satchel in front of them that he hadn’t seen before. “You were gone, so the play changed,” Burr responded in his staccato Boston cadence.Marber looked somewhere between annoyed and amused. Getting teased by one of the greatest living stand-up comics is an honor. But there was work to be done. Previews would start in just a few weeks, on March 10, at the Palace Theater. He turned, walked back to his table, picked up a vape and took a puff. Burr pounced. “What’s that?” he asked, a scornful snap in his voice. “Smoke a cigarette like a man!”Burr loves messing with people. There’s a more accurate verb than “messes,” of course, but I’m not going to use it here. It’s so intrinsic to his needling personality that when I asked him minutes before rehearsal why he’s studying French, Burr described a revenge fantasy of sorts: an eventual stand-up set in France meant to irritate Parisians snooty about Americans mangling their language. Only Bill Burr learns French “out of spite.”Ed Harris as Moss and Alec Baldwin as Blake in the 1992 film adaptation of “Glengarry Glen Ross.”New Line CinemaWe 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 Laughs at DOGE’s Work Force Demand

    “It’s like the government is being run by BuzzFeed,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday about Elon Musk’s work-tracking request to federal employees.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.Return to SenderOn Saturday, Elon Musk emailed federal employees and asked them to respond with their top five accomplishments during the previous workweek or risk being fired.“It’s like the government is being run by BuzzFeed,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.“It’s not just that they’re firing thousands of federal workers; it is the glee with which they’re firing. Ordinarily, you have some compassion when you lay people off — you wish them well, you thank them for their work. Not MAGA. Not the DOGE Bros.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Federal workers who got this email had no idea what to do, and their Trump administration bosses didn’t seem to know, either. New Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told personnel at spy agencies not to respond. F.B.I. Director Kash Patel told F.B.I. staff to pause any responses, and Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. sent out an email saying, ‘Free roadkill in the break room!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Our federal work force is in the clutches of a heartless billionaire who wants to colonize Mars with vehicles shaped like his penis, by which I mean Cybertrucks. He should see a doctor.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I mean, seriously, if that guy walked into your office and told you he was there to start making cuts, everybody would jump on him and put him in a headlock, right? You’d zip-tie him and hold him until the cops showed up.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Five Things I Did Last Week Edition)“Well, guys, I’m having an odd day. This morning I got an email from NBC asking what I accomplished last week.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, they need to respond with five accomplishments from the last week. Federal workers wrote back: ‘I received this email, I opened this email, I read this email, I laughed at this email, and I deleted this email.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He followed up by tweeting, ‘Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.’ Now, obviously, the only proper email response to that is: ‘What did I do last week? Your mom, your mom, your mom, your mom, and your mom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Of course, the workers were furious, mostly about getting a work email on a Saturday.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJon Oliver scrutinized Facebook’s new posting policies on Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “St. Denis Medical” star Wendi McLendon-Covey will sit down with Desi Lydic on Tuesday’s “The Daily Show.”Also, Check This Out“Leigh Bowery,” by Fergus Greer (1988), from the exhibition “Leigh Bowery!” at Tate Modern in London.Fergus Greer. Courtesy of The Michael Hoppen GalleryA new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern will introduce the artist’s work to a broader audience. More

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    ‘Grangeville’ Review: Am I My Half Brother’s Keeper?

    A story as old as Cain and Abel gets filtered through cellphone and video confrontations in Samuel D. Hunter’s bleak two-hander.“I don’t know why we have to do this over the phone,” says Arnold, speaking from Rotterdam to his estranged half brother, Jerry, in Idaho.That’s how I felt too, at least during the first half of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville,” a bleak two-hander named for the men’s hometown. Most of what happens happens at a distance of thousands of miles — and feels like it.The distance might have been mitigated if Arnold (Brian J. Smith) and Jerry (Paul Sparks) weren’t for the most part kept at opposite sides of a dim, featureless stage in Jack Serio’s halting production for Signature Theater. Until late in the play, the set, by the design collective dots, consists only of black walls and a janky trailer door, signifying the characters’ fractured, unsheltered childhoods. The interiorized sound (by Christopher Darbassie) and crepuscular lighting (by Stacey Derosier) lend many scenes the flat affect of a radio play.But it’s also a problem that Hunter, often brilliant with banality, has buried the characters’ Cain-and-Abel subtext so shallowly beneath repetitive and not entirely credible discussions of their dying mother’s finances. Jerry, an RV salesman and only about 50, cannot figure out how to access her bank accounts online, let alone keep ahead of her bills and reimbursements. Arnold, a decade younger and having fled the family long since, resents being pulled back by end-of-life math. He might as well ask — though it would not be Hunter’s style — “Am I my brother’s bookkeeper?”Yet an ancient fraternal struggle, like those in plays by Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard and Suzan-Lori Parks — and in the Bible — is what “Grangeville,” which opened on Monday, means to dramatize. Between discussions of prognoses and powers of attorney, we learn in the opening scenes how both men were brutalized by their mother’s violent husbands and her failure to offer protection. (She was often absent on benders.) Predictably enough, Jerry turned into a brutalizer too, in an effort, he now explains feebly, to help the sensitive and proto-gay Arnold survive.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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    Alvin F. Poussaint, Pioneering Expert on Black Mental Health, Dies at 90

    A psychiatrist at Harvard and an adviser to Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby, he challenged Black Americans to stand up to systemic racism.Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist who, after providing medical care to the civil rights movement in 1960s Mississippi, went on to play a leading role in debates about Black culture and politics in the 1980s and ’90s through his research on the effects of racism on Black mental health, died on Monday at his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. He was 90.His wife, Tina Young Poussaint, confirmed the death.Dr. Poussaint, who spent most of his career as a professor and associate dean at Harvard Medical School, first came to public prominence in the late 1970s, as the energy and optimism of the civil rights movement were giving way to white backlash and a skepticism about the possibility of Black progress in a white-dominated society.In books like “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” (1972) and “Black Child Care” (1975), he walked a line between those on the left who blamed persistent racism for the ills confronting Black America and those on the right who said that, after the civil rights era, it was up to Black people to take responsibility for their own lives.In books like “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” (1972) Dr. Poussaint balanced the views of those on the left who blamed persistent racism for the ills confronting Black America and those on the right who believed Black people should take responsibility for their own lives.Emerson Hall PublishersThrough extensive research and jargon-free prose, Dr. Poussaint (pronounced pooh-SAHNT) recognized the continued impact of systemic racism while also calling for Black Americans to embrace personal responsibility and traditional family structures.That position, as well as his polished charisma, made him a force in Black politics and culture. He served as Massachusetts co-chairman for Reverend Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and was reportedly the model for Dr. Cliff Huxtable on Mr. Cosby’s sitcom “The Cosby Show.”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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    Luke Thallon Rides the Stormy Seas in a Maritime ‘Hamlet’

    Luke Thallon expertly blends sincerity and neediness as the embattled prince in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest production.In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new “Hamlet,” the Danish royal court is all at sea — quite literally.The set is a ship’s deck that tilts and creaks ominously while a screen plays eerily textured footage of a roiling ocean. At several points, the action pauses and an ensemble of actors in Edwardian dress scatters around the deck in panic, wearing Titanic-style life vests that foreshadow the play’s catastrophic climax.It is a risky move to evoke a sinking ship: If the play falls short, the wisecracks practically write themselves. But this “Hamlet” — directed by Rupert Goold and running at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon through March 29 — proves seaworthy, thanks in large part to Luke Thallon’s psychologically absorbing turn as the embattled prince. Already grieving for his father and sickened by the recent remarriage of his mother, Queen Gertrude (Nancy Carroll) to his uncle Claudius (Jared Harris), Hamlet learns that Claudius had in fact murdered his father, and he is therefore duty bound to exact revenge.This is always a lot for anyone to take in, and Thallon — a rising star with recent stage credits in “Patriots” and “Leopoldstadt” — portrays Hamlet’s anguish with a vulnerable, semi-abstracted candor. He delivers his lines in a pensive, haltingly conversational rhythm, as though feeling his way into them; we get the sense of a man continually processing his incredulity at the baroque predicament in which he finds himself.Thallon also uses his body to good effect in a lithe, controlled display of nervous physicality. He is rag-doll-like, dynamic in his despondency. Now and then, he enlists the audience for moral support, throwing us a wry, self-pitying smirk, or striking ironically hammy poses.Jared Harris as Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius.Marc BrennerWe 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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    ‘Zero Day’ Is a Throwback Thriller With Modern Echoes

    The new Netflix series is a contemporary update of a ’70s-style political drama that is even more contemporary than its creators anticipated.The new Netflix limited series “Zero Day” has been in development for several years, but it is arriving at a time when its primary themes — regarding presidential overreach, the hacking of the federal government and the persistence of disinformation — are dominating the actual news cycle. It is a contemporary update of a ’70s-style political drama that is even more contemporary than anticipated.Asked if the time is ripe for a resurgence of the conspiracy thriller, the executive producer Eric Newman was succinct: “We’re living in one.”Created by Newman and two executive producers with journalism backgrounds — Noah Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News, and Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for the Washington bureau of The New York Times — “Zero Day” depicts a nightmare scenario in which the United States has been attacked and the person in charge of the response might not be of sound mind.After a cyber-strike cripples U.S. transportation systems, leaving 3,400 dead from transit accidents and other disasters, a former president named George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is selected to lead an investigative commission. But Mullen has been having hallucinations and keeps hearing the same Sex Pistols song, “Who Killed Bambi?,” on a loop in his head. Is he cracking up? Has his brain been tampered with, à la “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962)?Whatever the cause, Mullen is soon trampling over civil liberties and resorting to 9/11-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including torture, with U.S. citizens.While “Zero Day” makes explicit reference to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, its details are more current. As evidence seems to implicate Russian agents in the attack, Mullen grows obsessed with a leftist hacktivist collective, a provocateur talk show host (Dan Stevens) who fans the conspiratorial flames and an extremist tech billionaire (Gaby Hoffman) who would be happy to tear the whole system down.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