Eliana Willis

What’s on TVBETTER CALL SAUL 9 p.m. on AMC. The fifth season of this series saw Jimmy McGill’s transformation into the Saul Goodman character we know from “Breaking Bad” accelerate in earnest. At the end of Season 4, he announced his intention to start a criminal law practice using the Goodman alias but it wasn’t until this season that Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) began to fully embrace his relationship with the underworld. He was quickly drawn into a conflict between the Salamanca family, members of the Juárez Cartel, and Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who is affiliated with the cartel but working to establish his own empire. The die may have been cast, but Jimmy’s relationship with his wife, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), has kept him from falling too far too fast.THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA 9 p.m. on HBO. In the first episode of this adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, Charles Lindbergh was an obnoxious voice on the radio whose isolationist and anti-Semitic sentiments were disturbing to Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) and his wife, Bess (Zoe Kazan), but not a clear and present threat to their well-being. Unfortunately, in this alternative history, Lindbergh didn’t remain an ineffectual agitator. He defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, signed a neutrality pact with Nazi Germany and began his own persecution of American Jews. These political developments have devastated the Levins, who were upwardly mobile before Lindbergh’s ascension. Their son Sandy is being turned against them by anti-Semitic propaganda and Alvin, their nephew, is being shadowed by the F.B.I. Even if the country manages to reverse its direction in the final episode of the mini-series, serious damage has already been done to the family.What’s StreamingPARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (2011) Stream on Amazon, Hulu and Tubi. Rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This installment of the found-footage horror franchise is a prequel to the 2009 low-budget hit. It explains how Katie, the main character of the original movie, and her sister Kristi, the star of the sequel, came to be connected to the demonic force that terrorizes the women and their partners in the first two movies. The trouble begins when Kristi started conversing with an imaginary friend, Tobi. It’s clear from the beginning that he’s no figment of the imagination, but even once Julie, the girl’s mother, recognizes the threat, it’s far too late. It turns out that the family’s connection to Tobi runs deep.BALTHAZAR Stream on Acorn TV. In the second season of this French crime series, Tomer Sisley returns as the gifted but eccentric forensic pathologist Raphaël Balthazar. His ability to coax answers from the dead is unparalleled but one case continues to stymie him even after more than 13 years: the killing of his wife. Balthazar pursues new clues in her case while working with the taciturn police commander Hélène Bach (Hélène de Fougerolles) on others. More

Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Decoherence’With only two episodes left in the season, “Westworld” spent this week’s putting all the pieces in place for a mix-and-match battle royale between humans and hosts, hosts and hosts, and humans and humans. There was still the usual chatter over free will, mostly in a metaphysical group therapy session where William confronts his father and various incarnations of himself, but the episode was mostly about arranging the pieces on the board.Many major characters have clocked out for long stretches this season — Bernard has been close to a non-presence, for example, and the Man in Black has disappeared into his own navel — but all of them make an appearance here.The episode opens with Maeve in a simulation of the Valley Beyond, imagining the permanent reunion with her daughter that she has been pursuing for nearly the entire run of the show. (Maeve’s attachment to this sentimental and illusory mother-daughter relationship plays against the shrewdness and lethality she displays in almost any other circumstance. She can never see through it.) Burned by her failure to contain the Dolores’s coordinated insurrection, Serac wants to give her proper motivation to get the job done, and he wants to give her the team she needs to battle multiple Doloreses, Caleb and their mercenary hangers-on. So Hector gets taken out of cold storage and the other decommissioned host bodies are torched.The timing coincides with Serac’s successful corporate takeover of Delos, secured by murdering a board member in broad daylight. He wants Charlotte to deliver the data he has coveted, after which he intends to obliterate a trillion in intellectual property because keeping Delos operating isn’t a priority. This will surely be a blow to elites anxious to murder robots on their vacations, but Serac’s focus is entirely on Incite and Rehoboam and on getting back to exercising more control over human destiny.Serac figures out the big twist that Charlotte is actually Dolores — has he been reading Reddit threads, too? — but Charlotte-bot has prepared for this contingency and gases all his cronies in the boardroom. (Of course, he prepares for this contingency by being a hologram.)“Westworld” hasn’t needed to spend much time on how Dolores has learned to play various humans so convincingly, presumably because she has all the personal information required. But there’s a fascinating thread here about how the host and human separate from each other over time, as Dolores’s conscience processes events and relationships differently than Charlotte herself would have. It’s significant that the tip-off for Serac was Charlotte-bot’s interest in her son, whom the real Charlotte would never have prioritized over running the business. One of the basic conceits of “Westworld” is that the hosts are more human than humans, and Charlotte’s ex-husband and son are the beneficiaries of that — at least until they’re blown to bits for it.With the coalescence of forces in this episode, the good news is that the Man in Black, now dressed in white, finally has an active purpose this season, in alignment with Bernard and Stubbs. The bad news is that it takes some absolutely grueling scenes to get there. After proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s not fit for group therapy, the Man in Black gets shifted to a special “A.R. treatment” that’s usually reserved for soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. The treatment is invasive and confrontational, a virtual meet-up with his childhood, young adult, and elderly selves, along with his cruel stepfather. But there’s been so much foul anguish whipped up around this character that the treatment feels like another form of wheel-spinning. He marinates in the past without doing anything to move the larger narrative forward.The Man in Black’s emergence as a self-described “hero” completes all the table setting required for the homestretch, but some excitement is lost in the process. The show stages a few action sequences to try to quicken the pulse, including Maeve’s Nazi-punching warm-up in Warworld, the activation of the riot control robots at Delos and the massive fireball that consumes Charlotte’s SUV. But what’s missing from the episode is a more proper follow-through on the data leak that has thrown society into chaos. These are the horses Serac is trying to put back into the barns, but it’s hard to get a sense of how much human life has been transformed by the leak.The one exception is the fate of the Man in Black’s therapist, who learns along with her husband that she is projected to lose her medical license and get divorced because of multiple affairs with patients and an opioid addiction. For all the show’s talk about the potential for free choice, this destiny is accepted as such a given that her husband already leaves with the kids and she hangs herself in her office. It never occurs to anyone that she might steer clear of popping pills and sleeping with patients now that the algorithm has detailed the consequences. For the main characters on the show, such moments of existential recognition are a catalyst for change. Others, apparently, find it impossible to break out of their loops.Paranoid Androids:“You have no past because it’s always present.” That’s one good insight from Serac about what makes the hosts different from humans. All the experience and knowledge they have is easily accessible, whether it happened a minute ago and hundreds of lives ago. For characters like Dolores and Maeve, that makes it impossible to forgive and forget past transgressions. All grievances are raw.Likening humanity to “a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void” and “maggots eating a corpse” in the same session is an excellent way to get kicked out of group therapy. If that was the Man in Black’s intention, mission accomplished.“My body will be reprinted shortly.” Sounds like a good “$25,000 Pyramid” clue for Things Robots Say.“I can keep you safe.” The ultimate empty promise when an all-knowing trillionaire and his goons have you and your family in the cross hairs. More

Songs called for inspiration, empathy and perseverance on “One World: Together at Home,” the prime-time special produced by Global Citizen that was broadcast Saturday night on CBS, NBC and ABC and online. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, late-night representatives from each network, were the hosts, toggling awkwardly between deadpan comedy and earnestness. Lady Gaga helped select the musical lineup, which included Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and more — many more, since there was also a six-hour webcast before the televised broadcast.Billed as a special to celebrate Covid-19 workers and to support the World Health Organization, the show was not a fund-raiser. Instead, it was a reminder of the medical, logistical and humanitarian efforts being made worldwide.Global Citizen’s productions — it has presented annual all-star concerts in Central Park since 2012 — hammer home messages about worldwide predicaments and relief efforts between acts. “One World: Together at Home” was full of stay-inside advisories alongside tributes to and testimonials from health care workers, volunteer initiatives and international officials fighting the pandemic. It also extolled palliative efforts by corporations, and it urged viewers to pressure governments to provide far more extensive testing.[embedded content]Musicians sometimes performed in split-screen with montages of health care workers (like Paul McCartney doing “Lady Madonna”), and they took care to thank those on the pandemic’s front lines. Beyoncé and Alicia Keys, who didn’t sing, used their segments instead to point out the severely disproportionate effect of the coronavirus on African-Americans.Popular music is still seeking appropriate ways to face this crisis. Musicians are separated from both bandmates and audiences, forcing both players and listeners to reconsider what they have always taken for granted. Performers are coming to terms with the unpolished sound and look of playing from home online: solo in the living room or home studio or, more ambitiously, collaborating virtually with homebound bandmates. And then there’s the question of tone: Mourning? Sympathy? Stoicism? Comfort? Dogged determination? Upbeat defiance? Let’s just try to forget?On “One World: Together at Home,” the mood was usually reflective, with a handful of more lighthearted moments. Many stars chose to revive an inspirational oldie. Lady Gaga reached back to “Smile,” the 1954 song with music by Charlie Chaplin, in a poised Broadway mode. Shawn Mendes, at the piano, and Camila Cabello shared a reverential “What a Wonderful World”; as a coda to the song’s resolute optimism, they added lines about, “all the pain that we’ve been through/All the fears and the hurt.” More

Right now, 10 hours of old playoff basketball should probably be broadcast with a trigger warning. Ten hours of Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls playoff basketball should probably come with a chaplain. For “The Last Dance” is 10 hours of all-time postseason sports. The documentary is ostensibly about the season that culminated in the team’s historic sixth and final N.B.A. championship title, in 1998, led by Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson, the coach. That’s a story that may not require a show that runs about as long as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Ten Commandments parable, “The Decalogue.” But what else are you doing?Moreover, this is a team whose personalities, personal dramas and feats warrant just this sort of excess. It’s a team that inspired its own commandments: Thou shall not doubt. Jordan’s 15 seasons of brilliance, cunning, ruthlessness, volition, perfectionism and artistry render him impervious to overstatement. He essentialized the sneaker as casual wear and luxury item. He made cause-free celebrity — cause-free black celebrity, no less — seem viable, preferable to having to mean all things to all people. One size had to fit all. Few team players had ever became as rock-star, movie-star famous and with nary a scandal the way Jordan had — almost exclusively through athletic supremacy. There was basketball Jordan and Air Jordan. No athlete anywhere will ever have a mid-motion logo as triumphantly hieroglyphic as his, the silhouette as sentence.In Pippen, Jordan had the greatest wingman ever; in Rodman, the most mercurial, most formidable Dennis. In Jackson, among the least likely of masterminds. How did the team’s core last so long? How’d it keep winning so big, bigger, biggest? Over and over, the series reminds you how many times things came yea close to falling apart. And, remarkably, even then, the pieces were reassembled and reconfigured for further dominance.You could call these 10 hours a walk down memory lane. But that’d be like calling Mardi Gras a parade.The series is this ocean of archival game clips, dunk montages, smack talk, mea culpas, cigar smoking, backstabbing, frontstabbing, manfully restrained tears, endorsements of the triangle offense, interviews with anybody who even blinked at the N.B.A. from 1984 to 1998, including with Jordan’s mother, Deloris, whose serenity creates the flabbergasting illusion that she’s younger than her 57-year-old son. I can think of maybe four living athletes important enough to lure the participation of two living ex-presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama), but only one whose team could necessitate appearances by both of those guys plus Carmen Electra. This thing is absurdly, almost comically, exhaustive.ESPN Films, which produced the series with Netflix, had planned to air it during the finals. But we’re all a little desperate. Traffic to the network’s site is down. Its handful of cable channels are either going archival and morphing into the Sportsonian or impersonating Twitch, the all-day live-stream gaming site. Quarantined current stars are playing HORSE against their quarantined retired elders — people are placing bets! The thirsty need a slaking. So “The Last Dance,” which debuts Sunday, is a company opening up that case of good, special-occasion Château Margaux for crisis drinking.The show’s sprawl — two episodes per night for five Sundays — is more about vastness than depth. The filmmakers have access to unseen off-court footage from 1997 and ’98. When a title card announced that, I got chills: We’re going all the way back there?But the old footage doesn’t feel entirely tamed. It turns up a few locker-room eyepoppers, like a clip from one evening before the ’98 All-Star Game. A retired Magic Johnson drops by to say hi to Jordan, and Jordan’s All-Star coach, Larry Bird, asks Jordan about Magic, “Wouldn’t you like to have some of his ass today?” You really have to hear it with Bird’s Indiana twang. It’s the “picture your parents having sex” of sports-legend vulgarity. Johnson’s response is even less printable. (Picture your parents making porn.)The first four episodes loosely concern the personal stories of the team’s four main stars: Jordan, Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Coach Jackson. The structure is irritating. A visual timeline slides us back and forth between the 1997-1998 season and just about every pertinent year before it. That strategy leaves us in no single place for terribly long. Just as you’re about to settle into, say, Jackson’s Montana upbringing, his career as a gangly Knick or his spirituality and adventures with psychedelics, it’s onward to add those biographical chips to the team mosaic.Once in a while, the to-and-fro produces a comedic masterstroke. Episode 3 ends with Jordan recalling the time Rodman requested a Las Vegas vacation, and Episode 4 opens with a title screen that says, “Dennis Rodman has been absent with permission from the Chicago Bulls for 24 hours.” The sentence then updates itself — “with” expands to “without” and “24 hours” reddens and ticks up to 88. And just like that, we’re looking at Electra, in the present, who goes on to conclude that “it was definitely an occupational hazard to be Dennis’s girlfriend.” Watching her interlude, it hit me: Electra, a pop singer, model and muse, was a Kardashian trial balloon.There’s no overarching big idea in this series, which Jason Hehir directed. It doesn’t have a big question to ask. No grand thought emerges about the league after Jordan, or about how he changed the sport. Nobody, for instance, scores the way Jordan did, from midcourt. It’s raining threes now. His 10 scoring titles aren’t likely to get a toppling anytime soon — seven of those were in a row. (And: Is the pregame headphones craze his doing? What was he listening to?)You’d welcome any thoughts on his Bulls being the last dynasty before the N.B.A.’s hip-hop and Instagram eras. The shorts were short back then and the suits hideous (baggy, endless, with too many buttons and too many breaks; its wearers looked like deacons at a car-salesman church). But they were standard before Allen Iverson, the Sixers phenomenon, who in the late 1990s and 2000s, brought swagger, bravado and cornrows to the league and with those a different kind of racism that pried “thug” from traditionalists’ lips and crested with a brawl between players and fans one night outside Detroit in 2004.The roundabout consequence was the institution of an official dress code that, on the one hand, inspired pre- and postgame sartorial inspiration and, on the other, served to remind the players of their places as employees. ESPN shared only the first eight episodes with critics. Maybe some of this is up for consideration during the dismount.As a whole, though, “The Last Dance” doesn’t hunger to be a work about the cultural psyche or the country’s racial history. It’s not Ken Burns or “O.J.: Made in America,” the current yardstick for redwood-size nonfiction storytelling. And that’s all right. Jordan has never felt quite comparable to Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson or Barack Obama, these towering figures who double naturally as Rorschachs of a roiling national consciousness. Jordan is as important but less transcendent, less polarizing, less political, therefore less politicized.It’s quite something witnessing Obama practice cultural criticism in an expression of empathy for and disappointment in Jordan’s refusal, in 1990, to endorse the futile Senate candidacy of Harvey Gantt (the first of two tries); Gantt was a black architect and former Mayor of Charlotte, N.C., running to unseat the super-racist Jesse Helms in Jordan’s home state. Obama wasn’t the only person who wished Jordan had spoken out. When the series digs up Helms’s victory speech (“There’s no joy in Mudville tonight!”), it’s tempting to be mad at Jordan all over again. But his remaining apolitical was by design. The ambition was to achieve unimpeachable, unparalleled excellence in his chosen career. Everything else was a potential distraction.A more-than-casual basketball person, such as myself, might know all of this about Jordan and think, as I actually, did: This seems like a lot of stone for such a little bit of blood. But here’s the achievement of this series: Jordan isn’t boring. At all. He’s thicker now, handsome in a seasoned way, that dark-brown dome of his having eased more into “rotunda”; his buttonhole eyes retain a mild haze of puddled rheum; that tiny hoop remains affixed to his left ear, birthmark-stubborn. To his right, there often sits a whiskey glass; my gaze would occasionally drift its way for status checks — full, half full, more empty. Regardless, he’s wonderful throughout this thing, more than he needed to be, more than I would have guessed: present, open, ruminative, so funny.Hehir has this trick where any time someone says something debatable or controversial or simply worthy of running by Jordan, he hands him an iPad and makes him watch what was said. And every time Hehir does it, Jordan turns the reaction into gold. He’s an incredulous Zeus in these moments, lightning bolts falling from his toga as he laughs, zapping lesser gods. To Gary Payton, his momentarily wily foe in the 1996 finals, I say: Ouch. (It could have been worse. Jordan drops a house on Isiah Thomas.)Payton pops up in Part 8 and is also fantastic. All the talking heads here bring good stuff. The coach Pat Riley, remembering Jordan’s arrival in the league: “As a rookie, he wasn’t a rookie.” Magic Johnson, shaking his head at Jordan’s dethroning him: “That dude was just … Mmm mmm mmm.” Some of the joy in spending all this time with “The Last Dance” comes from who the series has gathered to sing Jordan’s praises and tell the truth on him — broadcast journalists like Hannah Storm, Willow Bay, Bob Costas, Andrea Kremer, Ahmad Rashad and Michael Wilbon; former teammates like Steve Kerr, Toni Kukoc, Horace Grant and B.J. Armstrong.Jordan’s evasion of zeitgeist sizzle simply takes some of the pressure off Hehir. He could’ve leaned on all those clips of Jordan’s electric breakaways and all-court modern dance. He is determined, instead, to leaven deification with intimacy and humor. The series feels unafraid to broach the tricky stuff about Jordan’s life, personality and career, like his gambling, his father James’s murder, the sour aspects of his ambition and those fascinating 18 months, in 1994 and 1995, when he quit the N.B.A. to play baseball for a White Sox farm club. (Imagine Superman auditioning to play Wolverine.) Jordan seems ready to go there for all of it, into the valleys and darkness. This show is among the most fascinating examinations of greatness of I’ve seen.People who missed the Jordan era might receive his totalizing prowess as myth. They know him as a brand, as the baldheaded middle-aged meme who leaks courtside tears for their tweets, as one of the worst-dressed men in sports retirement. “The Last Dance” is an invitation to meet the legend who sparked the memes, to witness a newly human — or perhaps simply also human — figure who, in his prime, loved his sport above all else. We learn nothing about Jordan’s marriages or children.But more than once, the series shows us the child in him. It tends to surface after he has won, as in the heartbreaking sight of him minutes after taking title No. 4 in 1996, still mourning his father. A camera catches him sprawled on the locker room floor, still in his uniform and crying convulsively, onto no one’s shoulder — a sudden metaphor of himself. Alone, weeping into a basketball. More

What’s on TVAUSTIN CITY LIMITS 11 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This live music show is resurfacing an episode from 2018 to honor the Grammy-winning folk singer-songwriter John Prine, who died of complications from the coronavirus on April 7 at the age of 73. Prine was revered by Bob Dylan, and in 2019, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. This performance, his eighth and final for “Austin City Limits,” came 40 years after he made his debut on the show in 1978. It features a few classics, such as “Illegal Smile,” off Prine’s debut record; “Lake Marie,” from 1995’s “Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings,” and seven tracks from his final album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” including “When I Get to Heaven.” It’s a joyful farewell, in which Prine makes peace with mortality and sings: “When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand/Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band.”ONE WORLD: TOGETHER AT HOME 8 p.m. on various networks. Alanis Morissette, Billie Eilish, Chris Martin and more than a dozen other stars will celebrate and support front-line medical workers in the battle against the pandemic in this two-hour special. Presented by the advocacy group Global Citizen, the telecast will feature musical and comedic performances, as well as stories from doctors, nurses and grocery workers, and will benefit charities working to help those most affected by the outbreak. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert will host. “One World” also includes an event with athletes, artists and social media influencers that will stream online from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. A full list of networks and digital platforms is available at globalcitizen.org.What’s StreamingTOO HOT TO HANDLE Stream on Netflix. We’ve all heard of this format: A group of attractive, fit single people are isolated together in a luxurious location, and it’s only a matter of time before drama — and lots of bad behavior — erupts. This new dating series wants to turn that model on its head. After 10 single contestants from around the globe arrive on an island expecting a wild summer, a digital personal assistant lays down the rules: “No kissing or sex of any kind.” Each time that rule is broken, money will be deducted from the $100,000 grand prize. Some contestants try to commit to the challenge and forge emotional rather than physical connections, while others just can’t help themselves.HOME Stream on AppleTV Plus. While we’re all isolated in our own homes, it doesn’t hurt to imagine what it would be like to live in someone else’s — especially if that someone is a visionary architect. This new show, the first documentary series on AppleTV Plus, explores innovative homes from around the world and the minds of the people who built them. More

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. If you’re interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox.Gridlocked and GoadedLate night celebrated one month of Covid-19 quarantining by riffing on demonstrations this week in Ohio, Michigan and other states where locals protested state-based shutdowns.One protester in Michigan misspelled “governor” on her sign, which Jimmy Kimmel said “showed us how important it is that we do get schools open ASAP.”“If you’re curious what all that schmutz on the window there is,” Kimmel said, pointing to a photo of Ohioans screaming into the closed State Capitol, “that is the coronavirus. Yes, so well done.”“The real problem is you can’t make Americans do anything. We just won’t. If you tell us to do something, we won’t do it. We only exist because someone tried to make us pay extra for tea once.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’m sure that convinced the legislators. [imitating legislator] You know, the medical data doesn’t back up an early reopen, but I heard some sound policy ideas from Lady Flag Screamer and Guy in a ‘Purge’ Mask.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Angry Trump supporters were also at Michigan’s State Capitol, where they blocked traffic and honked their horns in a protest called ‘Operation Gridlock.’ Who are you gridlocking? There’s nobody else out there. Blocking empty streets is like streaking in your shower — it doesn’t count!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The event had the feel of a free-floating Trump rally. Protesters carried Trump flags, MAGA signs, even Confederate flags — because nothing says ‘Never surrender’ like a Confederate flag.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (New York Masks Edition)“Big news in New York, where yesterday the governor announced an executive order that requires everyone in the state to wear a mask in public when not social distancing. It’s a big change for all New Yorkers, except Jets fans.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, alongside a photo of Jets fans covering their faces“Yeah, everyone has to wear a mask. The players on the New York Jets said, ‘That’s OK, we’re used to hiding our identity.’” — CONAN O’BRIEN“[imitating New Yorker] Hey, I’m breathing here. And don’t forget to wash your finger! Your mother — is high risk. Seriously, you’ve got to be good to your mom — like I was, last night.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s suggestion that New Yorkers will politely police one anotherThe Bits Worth WatchingJoe Biden popped up on “Desus & Mero” on Thursday night to talk about plans to beat Donald Trump and how Barack Obama came to endorse him earlier this week.Also, Check This OutAnyone can enjoy John Cassavetes’s oeuvre if you start with “A Woman Under the Influence,” his 1974 portrait of a marriage starring his real-life wife, Gena Rowlands. More

What’s Streaming#BLACKAF Stream on Netflix. “We’re celebrating my dad’s new Netflix show,” Drea (Iman Benson) says at the self-referential beginning of this new sitcom. “I don’t know exactly what it’s about, but pretty sure it has something to do with black stuff.” Created by the screenwriter Kenya Barris (“black-ish,” “Girls Trip”), “#blackAF” stars Barris as a fictionalized, exaggerated version of himself. The show’s Kenya is a successful, cynical screenwriter living an extravagant Los Angeles life and raising children with his wife, played by Rashida Jones. The show explores issues of race, class and wealth — with family dynamics that should resonate well beyond the story’s rarefied setting. “Most families are functionally dysfunctional,” Barris said in a recent interview about the show with The New York Times. “You want the house to be a little bit messy,” he added. “You want the mom to be a little bit frayed. The dad to be a bit out of touch. Some of those things are just part of what family is. I want people to realize that that dysfunction is part of our functionality.”SELAH AND THE SPADES (2020) Stream on Amazon. This debut feature from the filmmaker Tayarisha Poe was praised by critics when it debuted at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. Set at a fictional, prestigious boarding school in Pennsylvania, the movie centers on Selah (Lovie Simone), the head of a powerful clique who takes under her wing a new student, Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), whom she mentors in navigating the school’s knotted social order. The dynamic between the two shifts when Paloma begins to threaten Selah’s grasp on social power. In her review for The Times, Teo Bugbee called the film “exceptionally composed.” Poe, she wrote, “designs her frames with care and sets a languid pace, a relief from the desperate freneticism of many teenage tales.”HERE WE ARE: NOTES FOR LIVING ON PLANET EARTH (2020) Stream on Apple TV Plus. The artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers’s children’s book “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth” gets an infusion of star power in this animated short film adaptation. Ruth Negga and Chris O’Dowd voice parents walking their young son through essential pieces of knowledge, like why humans keep track of time. Meryl Streep narrates.What’s on TVHAROLD AND LILLIAN: A HOLLYWOOD LOVE STORY (2017) 8 p.m. on TCM. Harold Michelson was a storyboard artist, art director and production designer who worked on classic movies including “The Graduate,” “West Side Story” and “Spaceballs.” Lillian Michelson was a film researcher who contributed to “Scarface,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and more. Together, they were a behind-the-scenes Hollywood power couple. Their lives and work are profiled in this documentary from Daniel Raim, which includes interviews with its two subjects and some of their friends and collaborators, including Francis Ford Coppola and Mel Brooks. In her review for The Times, Monica Castillo wrote that the film “maintains a free-flowing tone as it uncovers the work that went into creating some of the indelible scenes in Hollywood history.” More