Eliana Willis

Netflix announced on Thursday that “The Crown,” its hit drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, would film a sixth and final season, months after saying the series would come to a close with Season 5.Peter Morgan, the writer and creator of “The Crown,” said that the possibility of a reversal was raised during the show’s planning process.“As we started to discuss the story lines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons,” Mr. Morgan said in a statement. “To be clear, Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”In January, Mr. Morgan said that the show’s fifth season was the “perfect time and place to stop” and that Netflix and Sony supported him in the decision.The show debuted in 2016, with Claire Foy playing a young, newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II in the first two seasons, and focused on the early years of the monarch’s reign and her family’s drama during those years. In November, Netflix released the third season, starring Olivia Colman as the queen in the 1960s and ’70s. The season follows the queen as she navigates Britain’s political and economic issues, as well as numerous problems with family members, including her two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne.A release date has not yet been announced for the fourth season, which will again feature Ms. Colman as the queen, and revisit her reign through Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and Prince Charles’s relationship with Princess Diana. Ms. Colman will then pass the crown to Imelda Staunton for the fifth season.The streaming service announced last week that in the fifth installment Lesley Manville would take over the role of Princess Margaret, who was played in the first two seasons by Vanessa Kirby, and by Helena Bonham Carter in the third and fourth.“We can’t wait for audiences to see the upcoming fourth season,” said Cindy Holland, vice president of original content for Netflix, “and we’re proud to support Peter’s vision and the phenomenal cast and crew for a sixth and final season.”She said in a statement that the show was “raising the bar” for each new season.With its high-profile cast, precise period detail and gilded settings, “The Crown” has also drawn steep bills. It has cost Netflix nearly $150 million, about twice as much as the royal family costs British tax payers each year.Mr. Morgan compared the production process to making a movie, as opposed to a serialized drama. Before the pandemic, a team of researchers convened at Mr. Morgan’s home once a week, helping weave together story lines for script meetings with documents, transcripts and press clippings they had collected.There is an expectation to “deliver TV on an annual basis,” he said. “But what we’re making now is feature-film-quality stuff, and no one ever expected you to make 10 feature films a year — because you’d die.” More

Naya Rivera, 33, who starred in six seasons of Fox’s “Glee” as the sharp-witted cheerleader Santana Lopez, was missing on Wednesday night as a search team scoured Lake Piru in California, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.The sheriff’s office said that it was searching for a “possible drowning victim” in the lake. The search was suspended late Wednesday and will be resumed Thursday morning.A sheriff’s office spokesman, Eric Buschow, said that Ms. Rivera had rented a boat with her 4-year-old son on Wednesday afternoon. Another boater found the son alone on the boat at 4 p.m., he said.The boy was safe on Wednesday night, he said. Ms. Rivera’s son said the pair went swimming but his mother did not get back on the boat, Dean Worthy, another spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said in a telephone interview. Ms. Rivera’s son had been found wearing a life vest, he added, but the sheriff’s office did not believe Ms. Rivera had been wearing one, he said, as a second life vest was found inside the boat.Ms. Rivera began acting as a 4-year-old on the CBS sitcom “The Royal Family” and made guest appearances on a number of shows, including “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Family Matters” and “Baywatch.”She broke through to wider stardom on “Glee,” with her role growing throughout the first season before she was made a series regular in the second season.Ms. Rivera married the actor Ryan Dorsey in 2014 and gave birth to their son, Josey Hollis, in 2015. The couple split in 2018.Her most recent post on Twitter was a photo of herself and her son.The cast of “Glee” has dealt with its share of heartbreak. Cory Monteith, who played Finn Hudson, was found dead in a hotel room in 2013 from a drug overdose when he was 31. Mark Salling, who played Noah Puckerman, was 35 when he died in an apparent suicide in 2018, weeks after he pleaded guilty to federal charges of being in possession of child pornography.Alex Marshall contributed reporting. More

If you’re particularly hungry to escape current realities, and have a susceptibility to industrial-strength sentimentality wrapped in tastefully autumnal lighting, then “Little Voice” on Apple TV+ might appeal to you. A half-hour dramedy premiering Friday about an aspiring singer-songwriter who tends bar, teaches music and walks dogs on the suspiciously clean streets of New York, it’s coronavirus-free.Created by the musician Sara Bareilles and the filmmaker Jessie Nelson, the team behind the Broadway musical “Waitress,” the series espouses a democratic ideal: Anyone can find and cultivate her own little voice, conquer her stage fright, get up before an audience and (in a future season, anyway) become a star.It takes place, however, in the Kingdom of Twee. Bess (Brittany O’Grady), the confidence-impaired heroine, navigates the gig economy in a cloud of adorable pooches and adorable students (They come in two varieties, very young and very old). She works on her songs in a storage unit that looks like an Anthropologie-appointed seraglio, next door to the unit where handsome but obnoxious Ethan (Sean Teale) is editing his film about dancing grandparents. It’s as if WeWork has spun off WeMeetCute.And there’s more. The South Asian roommate (Shalini Bathina) who plays guitar in an all-female mariachi band. The brother (Kevin Valdez) who lives in a group home for young men on the spectrum and whose adorable obsession is Broadway musicals. (Apparently it’s OK, in the name of representation, to use a bunch of guys with autism as a comic chorus. That said, they’re reasonably funny.) The first word Ethan makes when he and Bess play Scrabble: songbird. Bingo.“Little Voice” is not, on the surface, anything like “Friends,” but it weds the mechanics of that kind of glib New York sitcom with the grittier, but still fanciful, aesthetic of John Carney’s musical films like “Once” — dressing up the former, but not capturing much of the energy or the spirit of the latter. In the show’s vision of the city, musical talent is everywhere, and wherever Bess goes, people are busking. Sidewalk? Guy playing a grand piano. Central Park? Guy drumming on plastic pails. Subway platform? Old guys singing R&B.In fairness, this fairy-tale ambience is intrinsic to the show, and you may find it charming in its own right. But the story elements Bareilles and Nelson provide over the nine-episode season (three will be available Friday) don’t have enough originality or energy to get you sufficiently invested in the fantasy. (Another of the show’s executive producers is J.J. Abrams, whose “Felicity” looks dark by comparison.)There’s a tepid rom-com triangle among Bess, the caustic Ethan and an earnest, supportive musician, Samuel (played with abashed charm by Colton Ryan). There are the complications supplied by Bess’s semi-guardianship of her sibling (an increasingly common trope, also seen this season in “Stumptown” and “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay”). Most familiar is the meddling-Indian-parents routine involving the roommate, an already timeworn device that’s enlivened by the casting of Sakina Jaffrey as the mother.And Bess herself, despite an appealing, self-effacing performance by O’Grady, is more of a commercial jingle than a soulful ballad. As with the characters in Carney’s films, we’re meant to see that she’s the real thing and to take a rooting interest in her overcoming her self-imposed barriers to success. But the insecurities and familial dynamics she deals with aren’t compelling enough to attach us to her. (And Bareilles’s anodyne, mushy tunes don’t do the trick on their own.)One thing that distinguishes “Little Voice” from other musical theater-meets-karaoke shows of its type is that it acknowledges its own crowd-pleasing tendencies. Samuel gently suggests adding a backbeat to Bess’s music to cut against its treacly qualities, and an overt nostalgia for vinyl records and classic rock and soul permeates the series; Bess’s YouTube viewing runs toward old interviews with Aretha Franklin and Joni Mitchell.The effect isn’t to undercut the ambient sentimentality, though, but to highlight it. Bess may sound embarrassed when she says, “My stuff seems earnest,” but “Little Voice” isn’t making any apologies. More

I’ve watched “Peaky Blinders” more times than I can count and have tried watching numerous other shows but nothing is as good.  It has everything: the best writing, acting, cinematography, music — and Cillian Murphy. Can anything match it? — ArleneIt sounds like you have a severe, wonderful case of having a favorite show. Our tastes are not one lifelong upward trajectory, where we constantly find “better” things. It’s completely possible that you will never love another show as much as you love “Peaky Blinders.” Based on my inbox, you would not be alone! But also, having a favorite show is not a bad thing. It’s energizing. It’s pleasurable. Your quest is complete.Steer into the skid. Watch shows that have a similar vibe and use those similarities to reflect on the specifics of how much better your favorite show is than its closest brethren. One reason I like, for example, “Better Call Saul” so much is I know who else is in its weight class, and I know how many shows have had “I do things my way” kinds of protagonists and how often shows seem to forget little, but important, details. And every time another show does something stupid that “Saul” doesn’t, I feel a juicy thrill of superiority, like my horse won.So, for period dramas with lots of male pouting and no sideburns, “Boardwalk Empire” (which is available to stream with an HBO or HBO Max subscription) covers some similar territory and has those luxe production values that can hide some, but not all, sins. If you don’t mind a much slower pace and love all the biological decrepitude of period shows, try “Taboo” (Hulu), which stars Tom Hardy, who created the show with his father, Chips, and Steven Knight, the creator of “Peaky.” I wonder if grand-scale historical dramas like “Vikings” (Hulu) or the flashier “Spartacus” (Starz, or see three of four seasons free on IMDb TV) might sharpen what feels special about “Peaky Blinders,” too.Once you’re stocked up on genre context, go further afield. If you like the score to “Peaky,” I wonder if you’ll like the score from “Gentleman Jack,” which is based on a true story and is about a jazzy lesbian in Britain in the 1830s (on HBO). My favorite cinematography on TV right now is “Queen Sugar,” a present-day family drama set in rural Louisiana (Hulu). I think about the writing from “Lodge 49,” a gentle, dreamy drama about a fraternal order, and “David Makes Man,” an artful coming-of-age story, all the time because they have such distinctive voices. (“Lodge” is available on Hulu; Season 1 of “David” will be streaming on HBO Max starting July 16.)Oh, and duh, try “Deadwood” (on HBO).Can you recommend a show (maybe like “Friday Night Lights”?) for a teenage boy and his mom? As he has grown, we loved watching “Robin Hood” (surprisingly good), “Malcolm in the Middle” (also excellent) and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and now we’re casting about. — LindsayIt’s more like “The O.C.” than “Friday Night Lights,” but try “All American,” a high school football drama on the CW starring Taye Diggs. If you’ve watched a lot of teen shows, some of its ideas will be familiar to you, but presumably your son is just arriving at the genre. I dug “Cleverman,” an Australian superhero show based on Aboriginal mythology; it can be on the bleak side, but that doesn’t strike me as a vice (on Netflix). “Malcolm In the Middle” (on Hulu) makes me think you might like other quirky single-camera family comedies like “Everybody Hates Chris,” “Fresh Off the Boat” or “The Middle.”I know we’re all tired of making our own fun during the quarantine, but this might be the time to make the selection process part of the shared activity itself and agree to try five minutes of 10 different shows (each pick five? each pick four and two chosen at random?) just to see what happens. You can even teach him what channel surfing used to mean.My spouse and I have been watching “Killing Eve” and just finished the first season of “Queen Sono.” What other female assassin shows can we watch? — Kathleen, a Times Culture editor (and devoted reader)If you wish “Killing Eve” (on BBC America) would cross pollinate with a really good episode of “The X-Files,” you will love “Orphan Black” (Amazon Prime Video), which is not strictly an assassin show but does include a central female assassin, and lots of chasing and violence and phone calls that end abruptly. I love the incongruous buoyancy of “Killing Eve,” and “Orphan” has some of that, too, like the crunch and intrigue of a pickle spear on a diner plate.If you’re getting maxed out on genuine violence and want something lighter but still in a similar space, watch the cartoon series “Harley Quinn” (DC Universe), which is a clever satire of supervillainy but keeps that “do ‘bad guys’ overcome their guilt over doing evil things, or do they never experience the guilt at all, which is actually what makes them bad?” thread that many cat-and-mouse stories rely on. It’s bold and racy in all the fun ways.Series’ availability on streaming platforms is subject to change, and varies by country. Send in your questions to watching@nytimes.com. Questions are edited for length and clarity. More

Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Chapter Three’Sister Alice is out to sea. Literally. In the shot that ends this week’s episode of “Perry Mason,” the charismatic preacher is shown blissfully adrift in her tiny ship, figuratively kept afloat by her conviction that God has spoken to her.The leaders of her congregation, however, are facing stormier seas. Sister Alice remains involved in the life of Emily Dodson even as District Attorney Maynard Barnes mounts what appears to be an airtight case against her — helped by the distraught woman’s murmur of “guilty” when asked for her plea at an arraignment hearing. To make matters worse, we can add seizures to auditory hallucinations in the tally of neurological conditions that seem to plague the preacher; when she collapses and convulses in the middle of a theatrical church service, the rich and powerful elders ensure that the show goes on around her.Then, to the horror of her mother and handler, Birdy, Sister Alice whispers — loudly enough for a nearby reporter to hear — what God has commanded her to do: raise the slain infant Charlie Dodson from the dead. That final, surrealistic shot of Sister Alice floating alone is belied by the tension and turmoil her faith has wrought in those around her.It’s a bold choice to end the episode this way. But on this show, bold choices abound. There always seems to be some new weirdness around the corner, something stranger or sharper or gorier or more romantic or more unpleasant than what is strictly called for by the standards of a whodunit.Take the plight of E.B. Jonathan, who is Perry’s de facto boss and Emily’s lawyer. Over the course of this episode, we see him suddenly struggling with what ought to come naturally to him. He repeatedly loses his train of thought. He bobbles a statement to the press. He seems perpetually one step behind in court. He notices blood in the sink after he brushes his teeth. He stares at a hummingbird outside his window so fixedly that he doesn’t hear his assistant, Della Street, calling his name.In the end, E.B. gets dumped by his client Herman Baggerly — who is busy planning the construction of a religious community with his son Matthew Dodson, recently cleared in the case — and is reduced to begging an old associate for a loan, unsuccessfully. Thanks to a precise performance by John Lithgow, Jonathan’s dissolution over the course of an hour feels both sudden and inexorable, as if it were bound to happen sooner or later. It adds a tragic dimension to a character who could have remained a stock figure in lesser hands.The same can be said of the Los Angeles police officer Paul Drake, a reluctant participant in the cover-up of key facts in the Dodson case. Followed around by the crooked and murderous Sgt. Ennis — who puts the “offensive” in “charm offensive” when he puts his hand on the belly of Drake’s pregnant wife, Clara (Diarra Kilpatrick), and pays for the couple’s groceries — he beats Perry when the private eye approaches him about his bare-bones crime scene report. When Perry ironically employs a racial slur to describe Drake’s acquiescence, Drake threatens him with the violence that, as a police officer, is his to mete out with impunity, throwing the epithet back in Mason’s face.But when his wife instructs him to go along to get along, despite knowing full well what kind of person Ennis is, it’s too much for Drake to take. (There’s a separate conversation we can have about Clara and other wife characters who, like, just don’t get it, but I’m willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt at this point.) Drake approaches Perry under cover of darkness and admits that he doctored the report, changing the facts to fit the bogus theory that Emily’s lover George Gannon killed his co-conspirators and fled the scene instead of getting killed there as well. As evidence, he proffers a broken set of dentures he recovered in the alley where Gannon fell to his death.So, like grim Prince Charmings searching for their Cinderella, Mason and his wisecracking sidekick, Pete Strickland, race to the morgue to locate Gannon’s body before it gets cremated. After fighting their way through the tangle of corpses, they locate their man and discover that the broken dentures match the fractured partial set still in his mouth. It is perhaps the most disgusting investigative breakthrough TV has seen since Will Graham was out there profiling serial-killing installation artists in “Hannibal.”But for all its darkness, “Perry Mason” still has a lighter side. Sometimes it comes out in the form of humor, like the off-color anecdote that the mortician, Virgil (Jefferson Mays), shares with Perry and Pete while they’re searching for the personal effects of the two other dead kidnappers. (“Never would’ve caught him if it weren’t for the mayonnaise,” goes the punchline. The rest is probably better left unwritten.) Pete’s grousing and grumbling and his own penchant for foul-mouthed tale-telling is another example.At other times, the show’s warmth stems from romantic chemistry. Perry combines business with pleasure when he and his girlfriend, Lupe, travel to a desert casino to investigate one of George Gannon’s old jobs, from before Gannon found Jesus. Lupe smiles when she realizes she has been dragged along on an assignment in lieu of simply having a nice New Year’s Eve date — but that doesn’t stop her from making Perry take off her high-heeled shoes and hop in a fountain with her, finally getting the New Year’s kiss she’d been demanding. The easy, sexy rapport between the actors Matthew Rhys and Veronica Falcón is such that you half expect the fountain’s water to begin steaming.For all its darkness, “Perry Mason” illuminates its world with flashes of the unexpected and the light of human connection. It could skate by as a grim-and-gritty revisionist riff on the “Perry Mason” of yore — and to an extent, that’s exactly what it is — but only to an extent. It’s too smart, too strange and sometimes too sweet for that critique to stand up in court.From the case files:Fans of great character actors take note: That’s the former Max Headroom, Matt Frewer, as the judge at Emily’s arraignment. Personally, I have a soft spot for his portrayal of the pyromaniac Trashcan Man in the old ABC mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Stand.”As Emily Dodson, Gayle Rankin is really put through her paces in this episode, whether she is screaming “Shut up!” at the top of her lungs as her husband chews her out or reeling from the illegal interrogation to which detectives Holcomb and Ennis subject her.Something to keep an eye on: Perry pays special attention to a photo representing the “Child Adoption” aspect of Sister Alice’s ministry. Combine that with her ambiguous declaration to Emily that “You didn’t kill your baby any more than I did — bad men did that,” and I think it might be time to view the good Sister as a suspect. More