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    Politicians Get Roasted on This Beloved British Show. Can It Be a U.S. Hit?

    “Have I Got News for You” will inject some levity into the CNN schedule. But on a news network, finding comedy in politics during an election year comes with risks.Weeks before Britain held an election this summer, around four million TV viewers tuned in to the season finale of “Have I Got News for You,” a long-running BBC panel show.For any lawmakers watching, it would have been uncomfortable viewing.That week’s host and four panelists made absurd jokes while answering questions about the news, first mocking the Conservative Party’s chances of winning the coming election, then poking fun at Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, for constantly mentioning in speeches that his father was a toolmaker. (The comedian Jack Dee teased that Starmer’s father had made at least one tool: his son.)Filled with snarky humor, the episode was typical of a show that, since launching in 1990, has skewered Britain’s politicians — often to their faces. Lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have been regular guests.Now, in the middle of a different election cycle, CNN will on Saturday debut a U.S. version of “Have I Got News for You” — hosted by the comedian Roy Wood Jr. — in hopes that the network’s viewers have an appetite for something irreverent amid its serious news coverage.Roy Wood Jr. will host CNN’s version of “Have I Got News for You,” which debuts Saturday.John Nacion/Getty ImagesDespite the show’s popularity in Britain, CNN’s choice to premiere the satirical show during an election year comes with an obvious risk: If viewers perceive the jokes as favoring either the Democrat or Republican parties, it could damage the network’s attempts to position itself as the most centrist of the U.S. cable news networks — an effort that is already under attack from former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly accused CNN of bias.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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    How to Watch and Stream the Emmy Awards: Time, Hosts and More

    The Emmys are on Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, two hours after the red carpet festivities begin.It has been only eight months since the strike-delayed Emmys ceremony in January, and now it is time for the television industry to toast itself once again.For the first time in the 75-year history of the Emmys, there will be two awards shows in the same calendar year. Here’s how to watch on Sunday:What time does the show start?The ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern (5 p.m. Pacific) and will be held at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Unlike the Oscars, the Emmys usually finish on schedule, in about three hours.Where can I watch?ABC is broadcasting the ceremony, making it simple to watch for anyone with access to network television. Online options are a bit trickier. There are plenty of streaming services that have ABC, including YouTube TV or Fubo, but you will need a subscription to those distributors.The Emmys will eventually stream on Hulu, but with a significant catch: The ceremony will not be available until Monday.What’s eligible?Shows that premiered from June 2023 to May 2024. This is why the second season of “The Bear,” which premiered last year, is nominated for Sunday’s event, rather than the third season, which debuted three months ago.“Shogun” (25) and “The Bear” (23) lead the list of nominees.Who’s hosting?The father-and-son duo of Dan and Eugene Levy, the creators of “Schitt’s Creek.” The Levys are familiar faces to award show viewers: “Schitt’s Creek” won big at the Emmys in September 2020, held virtually because of the pandemic, and Dan Levy became the first performer to collect four Emmys during a prime-time telecast (for writing, directing, best supporting actor and best comedy).When is the red carpet?The cable network E! will air a red carpet show that begins at 6 p.m. Eastern and will be hosted by Laverne Cox, the comedian Heather McMahan and the E! host Keltie Knight.ABC has a red carpet show of its own; it begins at 7 p.m. Eastern and will be hosted by the veteran anchor Robin Roberts and the ABC News correspondent Will Reeve. More

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    How to Watch the Emmy Awards

    The Emmys are on Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, two hours after the red carpet festivities begin.It has been only eight months since the strike-delayed Emmys ceremony in January, and now it is time for the television industry to toast itself once again.For the first time in the 75-year history of the Emmys, there will be two awards shows in the same calendar year. Here’s how to watch on Sunday:What time does the show start?The ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern (5 p.m. Pacific) and will be held at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Unlike the Oscars, the Emmys usually finish on schedule, in about three hours.Where can I watch?ABC is broadcasting the ceremony, making it simple to watch for anyone with access to network television. Online options are a bit trickier. There are plenty of streaming services that have ABC, including YouTube TV or Fubo, but you will need a subscription to those distributors.The Emmys will eventually stream on Hulu, but with a significant catch: The ceremony will not be available until Monday.What’s eligible?Shows that premiered from June 2023 to May 2024. This is why the second season of “The Bear,” which premiered last year, is nominated for Sunday’s event, rather than the third season, which debuted three months ago.“Shogun” (25) and “The Bear” (23) lead the list of nominees.Who’s hosting?The father-and-son duo of Dan and Eugene Levy, the creators of “Schitt’s Creek.” The Levys are familiar faces to award show viewers: “Schitt’s Creek” won big at the Emmys in September 2020, held virtually because of the pandemic, and Dan Levy became the first performer to collect four Emmys during a prime-time telecast (for writing, directing, best supporting actor and best comedy).When is the red carpet?The cable network E! will air a red carpet show that begins at 6 p.m. Eastern and will be hosted by Laverne Cox, the comedian Heather McMahan and the E! host Keltie Knight.ABC has a red carpet show of its own; it begins at 7 p.m. Eastern and will be hosted by the veteran anchor Robin Roberts and the ABC News correspondent Will Reeve. More

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    ‘The Penguin’ Waddles Onto HBO

    Played by Colin Farrell under pounds of prosthetic makeup, the character anchors the latest superhero series, a bridge between “Batman” films that aims to be more than a mere brand extension.When Matt Reeves was preparing his 2022 film “The Batman,” his sprawling, blockbuster exploration of crime-ridden Gotham City and its hometown vigilante, he would sometimes remark — half-jokingly and half-not — that it really needed to be an HBO series.Reeves, who directed and co-wrote the nearly three-hour movie, felt there were still stories to tell and characters to explore, like Oz Cobb, a midlevel mobster played with foul-mouthed gusto (and pounds of prosthetic makeup) by Colin Farrell.Though the character appeared in only a few scenes, Reeves said, “There was something electric about Colin. He just completely embodied a spirit that was so fresh and so powerful. You wanted to look at him under a microscope and understand, who is that guy?”That desire is fulfilled in “The Penguin,” an HBO series premiering on Sept. 19. Picking up immediately after the events of “The Batman,” its eight episodes return to Reeves’s grungy incarnation of Gotham while chronicling Cobb’s rise to his perch atop the city’s empire of organized crime.“The Penguin” is an unapologetic bridge to a planned “Batman” sequel, but it is also trying to use TV to provide something that movies cannot: a longform character study of its crude and wily title character, who is very different from the dapper, top-hat and monocle-wearing bad guy seen in decades’ worth of Batman comics.“The Penguin” is arriving amid a boom-and-bust cycle of cinematic superhero universes. “The Batman” was a $772 million-dollar hit for Warner Bros. at the worldwide box office. And while the summertime success of Disney’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” shows there’s still an appetite for the cinematic adventures of comic-book heroes, it’s not always a certainty that viewers want to follow these characters onto TV.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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    How a TV Critic Navigates an Age of Endless Content

    James Poniewozik, The New York Times’s chief television critic, discusses the state of modern television and the struggle to watch it all.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.James Poniewozik has a tough job: He gets paid to watch TV.“There’s a lot to keep up with,” Mr. Poniewozik, 56, the chief television critic for The New York Times, said in an interview. “But much of the time it is really interesting.”For nearly three decades, he has written about dramas, comedies, presidential debates, court hearings, interactive art installations and anything else that plays out on the small screen. Mr. Poniewozik began writing about television as a media columnist for Salon and later became the TV and media critic for Time magazine. He joined The Times in 2015, focusing his coverage on the intersection of TV, culture and society at large.Ahead of TV’s biggest night — the Emmy Awards — on Sunday, Mr. Poniewozik shared the TV trends he’s watching and how he decides what shows to cover in the seemingly infinite modern TV landscape. These are edited excerpts.Fourteen percent of American adults say they get their news from TikTok, up from 3 percent in 2020. Is TV still a force to be reckoned with?TikTok has certainly become more influential. But I was struck while covering the presidential debate between Biden and Trump that it was possibly the most politically consequential TV broadcast ever: Because of one or two hours of TV, a candidate for president changed. All of the reasons Biden dropped out were present before the debate, but once you had tens of millions of people focused on one performance at one time, it became an unstoppable force.How do you weigh how many people will watch a show against its quality when deciding what to review or cover?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 Enjoys Biden’s Encounter With a Trump Fan

    When President Biden briefly donned a Trump hat, he “gave everyone in QAnon a brain aneurysm at once,” Jimmy Kimmel said.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.Hats OffDuring a Wednesday event honoring emergency medical workers from Sept. 11, President Biden shared a lighthearted encounter with a Donald Trump supporter, playfully placing the man’s Trump hat on his own head.“And a new comedy team was born,” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Thursday.“When he put that hat — that Trump hat on his head, he gave everyone in QAnon a brain aneurysm at once.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s sort of a nice moment: two old men from opposite sides, coming together to share a laugh while neither of them run for president.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I will tell you what, if you ask me, this is what you want from the president of the United States when he meets a voter on the other side. He doesn’t get mad at him, he doesn’t try to hard-sell him, he just shows warmth and a bit of empathy. And they did a remarkable thing you don’t see among two people on opposite sides these days: They had a laugh. And with a simple exchange of hats, they are able to share something much more meaningful: lice. Itchy, disgusting, impossible-to-get-rid-of lice. And that warms my dead heart.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“[imitating Biden] Hey, you take that, Jack. I might not be the best debater, but I can still zing you with the old hat chat.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But isn’t it nice to see Biden fooling around? Every time I see him now, it’s like when you go on vacation, and the doggy day care texts you a picture of your golden retriever playing fetch. You’re like, ‘Oh, look at that, he’s having fun.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bad Blood 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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    ‘Counting and Cracking’ Review: One Family’s Tale Fit for an Epic

    No theatrical wizardry is needed for this compelling drama about a woman’s journey to Australia from war-torn Sri Lanka and the generations that follow.Some shows use an extended running time to challenge the audience and its perceptions. Pulling viewers into a trance state and testing their endurance is the ultimate artistic gambit.Then there are the shows that are long simply because they have a lot to tell.Such is the case with “Counting and Cracking,” which fills its three and a half hours with an absorbing tale of family ties and national strife, from Sri Lanka to Australia, across almost five decades. When the first of two intermissions arrived, I had barely recovered from a head-spinning plot twist. And the production, which is at N.Y.U. Skirball in partnership with the Public Theater, had more in store. It’s that kind of good yarn.Written by S. Shakthidharan, who drew from his own family history and is also credited with associate direction, “Counting and Cracking” starts in 2004 Sydney. The show opens with Radha (Nadie Kammallaweera) briskly instructing her son, the 21-year-old Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar), to disperse his grandmother’s ashes in the Georges River, and then immerse himself in the water, as required by tradition.“In Tamil we don’t say goodbye,” Radha tells Siddhartha. “Only, I will go and come back.”As the show progresses, we gradually realize what these words really mean to her, and to her family and community. In 1983, when she was pregnant and living in her home country of Sri Lanka, Radha was told that her husband, Thirru (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), had been killed in the budding civil war between the minority Tamil and the majority Sinhala. She fled the violence and settled in Australia, where she gave birth to a child who would grow up largely unaware of his heritage.At a steady clip, Shakthidharan and the director Eamon Flack (also credited with associate writing) hopscotch between Sydney and Sri Lanka, from the 1950s — when the South Asian nation was still known as Ceylon — to the 1980s and 2000s and back again. Even the language is in constant movement as the 16 actors juggle English, Sinhala and Tamil, providing instant translation when necessary.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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    Review: Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow Clean Up in ‘The Roommate’

    A Bronx grifter and an Iowa homebody share a house and eventually learn from each other in this Broadway star vehicle.“Expansion is progress,” Sharon says sweetly, parroting a phrase from a business journal for the benefit of her new roommate, Robyn.A ditsy 65-year-old divorcée, Sharon is a convert to the virtues of new ventures — even illegal ones — after years of a life in which options for growth seemed few.But Robyn, who encouraged the experimentation from the minute she arrived to rent a room in Sharon’s Iowa City home, is alarmed by the change from meek to monster. A plate of pot brownies for the book club ladies is one thing; larceny is another. “Sustaining and expanding,” she warns, “are two different activities.”Because Robyn is played by the surgically funny Patti LuPone, that line, not especially amusing in itself, gets a big laugh. And because Sharon is played by the preternaturally sympathetic Mia Farrow, her every hiccup and dither evokes a sigh.Most of what either woman says in “The Roommate,” which opened Thursday at the Booth Theater, is greeted by one or the other response. The two actors, old friends and old hands, play beautifully off each other, expertly riding the seesaw of a play, by Jen Silverman, that throws a Bronx grifter looking to reform herself into an unlikely alliance with a flyover frump looking to ditch her flannel ways. The actors’ intense focus and extreme contrast multiply the material exponentially, sending it way past the footlights to the back of the Booth.But as we’ve learned, sustaining and expanding are two different activities. Indeed, the Broadway supersizing of “The Roommate,” which has been produced regionally since 2015, does not necessarily represent progress, even as it no doubt reaps profit.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