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      ‘Duck Dynasty’ Is Coming Back for a Second Term

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      On Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. Two days later, A&E network announced that it had ordered 20 new episodes of its hit 2010s reality comedy “Duck Dynasty,” titled “Duck Dynasty: The Revival.”The network, in its official statement, did not connect the second restoration to the first. But short of ABC’s bringing Roseanne Barr’s character back from the dead to head the “Roseanne” revival, “The Conners,” it is hard to imagine another programming decision that would so glaringly declare that the times had a-changed back.“Duck Dynasty” actually aired primarily during the Obama era, with 11 seasons beginning in 2012, and it was never overtly about politics onscreen. (Offscreen was another story; we’ll get to that.) Focused on the Robertson family of Louisiana, who made their fortune with the Duck Commander duck-call business before becoming reality stars, the series was first and above all a lighthearted family TV show.But “Duck Dynasty” was also in many ways a precursor of the conservative identity politics that would sweep in after it. It was filled with cultural signifiers — beards, Bibles and buckshot — that spoke to the authenticity of rural life and the reverence for heritage. It became the focus of a controversy that previewed how central grievances over “wokeness” and “cancellation” would become to conservative politics.And it was a mass-market hit that found an audience by representing a kind of life — traditionalist, openly Christian, country — that was absent from much pop culture.Uncle Si Robertson, with Jessica Robertson, often functioned as the show’s gonzo philosopher. via the Robertson family/A&E (inset photo)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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      ‘Adults’ Is ‘Friends’ for a More Anxious Generation

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      A new FX comedy follows a crew of aimless 20-somethings living together in Queens.The FX series “Adults” is the latest of many sitcoms to follow in the footsteps of “Friends,” and it has several qualities typical of such shows: a vague title, a loose premise that is basically, “People hang out.” The wrinkle with this one is that the pals are members of Gen Z, their brains poisoned with all the anxieties of their internet-obsessed cohort.The first episode of “Adults” is rough. The creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, Yale grads who have written for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” seem eager to make their pilot as taboo-breaking as possible. (In the main plotline, the group is jealous of an acquaintance for getting sexually harassed at work.) But the show quickly finds its rhythm and starts to define the characters beyond their relationship to hot-button issues. (The first two episodes premiere Wednesday on FX; the entire season arrives on Thursday on Hulu.)These aimless 20-somethings all stay together in the Queens childhood home of Samir (Malik Elassal), an impulsive, awkward slacker. (His folks are traveling.) They are a motley bunch. Billie (Lucy Freyer) is a neurotic overachiever now flailing. Issa (Amita Rao) is talkative and oversexed with an inflated ego. Anton (Owen Thiele) forms fleeting connections with everyone but is resistant to finding something deeper. Eventually, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), a gorgeous bisexual sweetie pie, moves in. Everyone calls him by his full name, “Paul Baker.”“Adults” starts to sing when it finds creative ways to exploit these roommates’ quirks for comedy. A standout episode involves the gang realizing that Anton — who exchanges phone numbers with everyone he meets — may have accidentally befriended a local stabber. Later, Charlie Cox guest stars in a surprising and delightful turn as Billie’s former high school teacher — she reconnects with him when she visits her old school in an attempt to relive her glory days. If you don’t think Daredevil can be funny, watch Episode 6, in which he unleashes some impressive physical bits.Set in New York but clearly not shot there — it was filmed mostly in Toronto — the show’s strengths lie less in “Girls”-esque verisimilitude than in ridiculous sitcom setups. “Adults” is frank about sex and drugs, but it is best when it is just straight-up zany. While it seems unlikely to become a generation-defining sensation, once “Adults” finds its groove, it is perfectly diverting TV. More

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      Harry, Hermione and Ron Are Cast for HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’

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      After tens of thousands of auditions, three newcomers were selected to play the television show’s leading roles.Accio Harry, Hermione and Ron!After years of intense speculation and tens of thousands of auditions, three young actors have been cast for HBO’s upcoming television series about the boy wizard. The newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout will play Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday.Last month, HBO announced it had cast John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. The show, which will air on HBO and stream on Max, still does not have an official title or air date.“The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen,” Francesca Gardiner, the showrunner of the series, and Mark Mylod, who will direct several episodes, said in a statement about the child actors. They added, “It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”This is Stanton’s first onscreen role, but she previously starred in “Matilda” on London’s West End in 2023. She was one of four girls who played the title role.The “Harry Potter” film franchise accelerated the career of Daniel Radcliffe, who has since anchored movies like “Swiss Army Man” and won a Tony Award last year for his work in “Merrily We Roll Along.” Radcliffe starred in eight “Harry Potter” films from 2001 through 2011 alongside Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played Hermione and Ron.HBO has said the new television series will be a “faithful adaptation” of the seven books written by J.K. Rowling that were published between 1997 and 2007. More

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      Jussie Smollett Donates $50,000 to Arts Center to Settle Chicago’s Lawsuit

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      Although the actor’s conviction for filing a false police report was overturned because of a previous deal with prosecutors, the city wanted him to pay for its hate crime investigation.Jussie Smollett, the former “Empire” star, announced that he had donated $50,000 to a Chicago charity to settle a lawsuit by the city about his claim that he had been the victim of a hate crime.In 2022, a jury convicted Mr. Smollett of felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report after he said he had been attacked in downtown Chicago by two men who hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him. His conviction was overturned last year by the Illinois Supreme Court, which said the special prosecutor’s case violated a previous agreement with Mr. Smollett.Mr. Smollett shared details of his settlement with the city in a statement posted to Instagram on Friday, saying that he had made a $50,000 donation to the Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts. According to its website, the organization’s mission is to “improve the quality of life for underprivileged youth and their families by providing safe, stable and nurturing experiences.”The City of Chicago had sued Mr. Smollett six years ago, seeking more than $130,000 to cover the costs of its police investigation. It said the settlement with Mr. Smollett required the charitable contribution.“The city believes this settlement provides a fair, constructive and conclusive resolution, allowing all the parties to close this six-year-old chapter and move forward,” a city spokeswoman, Kristen Cabanban, said in a statement. She said that Mr. Smollett also made a $10,000 payment to the city in 2019, and that he had faced additional accountability through his criminal trial.Mr. Smollett posted on Friday that, in addition to the settlement, he had also donated $10,000 to the Chicago Torture Justice Center, an organization that “seeks to address the traumas of police violence and institutionalized racism,” according to its website.A representative of the Building Brighter Futures Center confirmed in an email that it had received the donation. The Chicago Torture Justice Center confirmed Mr. Smollett’s donation in an Instagram post last week.Mr. Smollett originally said that the men who hurled slurs at him also tied a rope around his neck and doused him with a chemical substance. The story initially inspired outrage and sympathy for the actor, but prosecutors became suspicious of his account and charged him with felony disorderly conduct.Those initial charges were dropped in 2019 after Mr. Smollett agreed to perform community service and forfeit a $10,000 bond payment. But after an outcry from the mayor and the police, a special prosecutor revived the case.Chicago’s lawsuit had been on pause while the criminal charges worked their way through the courts. Mr. Smollett, who has maintained his innocence and countersued city officials, said in his Instagram post that he was aware the settlement “will not change everyone’s mind about me.”“What I have to do now is move forward,” he wrote. More

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      On ‘Will Trent,’ Ramón Rodríguez Shoots and Scores

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      “My first dunk was on that basket,” the actor Ramón Rodríguez said. This was on a drizzly weekday morning in May, and Rodríguez was revisiting former haunts in the East Village, where he grew up. He began with the Tompkins Square Park basketball courts.“It’s a little low rimmed,” he admitted, pointing at the basket. “But it was a big deal.”At an inch or two under six feet, Rodríguez, 45, is plenty tall for an actor, though short for a basketball player. Still he kept at it, and that tenacity has served him in Hollywood, where he spent years watching great shots hit the rim.”How many times was I told no and cut from a team?” he said. “I mean, countless. Rejection, it was always fuel for me.”It fueled him until 2022, when he was offered the title role in “Will Trent,” an ABC procedural about a dapper, damaged investigator and Chihuahua dad. The series is based on books by Karin Slaughter. In those books Will is described as tall, blond and lanky. So Rodríguez wasn’t an obvious choice. But despite his skepticism — he had been burned by network shows before — he signed on. “Will Trent” was renewed for a second season.Ramón Rodríguez, with Erika Christensen, plays the damaged but gifted title character of “Will Trent,” based on the book series.Zac Popik/Disney“I was like, OK, that does not happen to me,” he said. But it did. A third season followed, ending in May on a cliffhanger (two characters may not survive) that presumably will be resolved when the show returns in January.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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      Why I Find Comedy in Difficult Places. Like My Dad’s Stroke.

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      Mike Birbiglia’s father didn’t want him to become a comedian. But after writing a comedy special about him, he understands his dad better.There’s a story in my new Netflix comedy special, “The Good Life,” where I’m fiercely arguing politics with my father at his house about 20 years ago. The conversation got so meanspirited that when I walked out to my car, my dad didn’t even say goodbye.I said, “Bye, Dad.”And he said, “Well, you’ve gone another way.”At that point in “the special I say, “My whole life I wanted to be my dad, and at a certain point I decided I wanted him to be me.”But if I’m being honest, that’s not what I thought in the moment. I thought something along the lines of, “What is he thinking? He’s just wrong.”About a year ago, my dad had an acute stroke that put him in the hospital for months and now he’s home with care. He can’t stand up. He can’t walk. He can speak, but he doesn’t remember anything that’s happened in the last 12 months. This is a huge change for my family. My dad has always been a big personality. Sometimes too big. When I was a kid, he’d sometimes fly off the handle. So in my special, I make the joke that the silver lining is that as horrible as the stroke has been, “if I’m being completely honest, it has calmed him down.”One night, after I made that extremely dark joke, the audience didn’t know how to feel about it. It sort of sat there. I think the audience thought, Are we allowed to laugh about this guy’s ailing father? So I improvised a line: “Most of the jokes tonight are for you, but some of the jokes are for me. This is a coping mechanism. And I hope it is for you too.” That lit up the crowd. There was an acknowledgment that this was something I was really grappling with. 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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      There Are Problems for Sure. But ‘Étoile’ Has Humor and Heart.

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      Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new series, created with her husband, takes ballet somewhere it doesn’t usually go: the world of comedy.Like the art of ballet, “Étoile,” a television show about ballet, has its ups and downs. Sometimes you want to toss confetti in the air to celebrate how deftly it dives into the intelligence and humor of ballet culture. It lives largely in the world of comedy, which is rare for a ballet story. Yet it also shows a commitment to world-class dance, with snippets from classic works like George Balanchine’s “Rubies.” And it arrives with a narrative miracle — nary an eating disorder in sight.But then comes a scene, or sadly a dance, that makes you want to throw that confetti in the trash. The first time the show seesaws between paradise and purgatory happens in its first five minutes. “Étoile,” on Amazon Prime Video, begins on a poignant note as a young girl, alone in a dark studio, follows along to a ballet class saved on a smartphone. A cleaning woman appears in the doorway to let her know that she has only one more floor to get through. This is the dancer’s mother, who has been secretly recording company class for her.“I’ve barely gotten to frappés,” young SuSu (LaMay Zhang) says to her mom. With a heavy heart, SuSu fast forwards to petit allegro, and an overhead shot pulls back, rendering her tinier and tinier as her feet cross back and forth in springy jumps. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” its beat echoing her rhythm, takes over, and we’re dropped into a pulsating nightclub.A scene from “Étoile,” which often has observant, real-world details about the ballet world.Philippe Antonello/Amazon MGM Studios There, a tipsy and inane conversation about Tchaikovsky and Aaron Copland ensues: Who would win in a fight? (Who cares?) And that generates a new topic: famous composers who had syphilis.SuSu, come back! (She does eventually. And her part gets better and better especially after Cheyenne, the leading French ballerina, sees in a studio “this little girl who appears only at night like a fairy” and takes her under her wing.)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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      10 Books Like ‘The Last of Us’ If You Can’t Wait for Next Season

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      If HBO’s zombie drama has you craving more postapocalyptic action, these books have got you covered.HBO’s propulsive, nail-biting series “The Last of Us” — based on the acclaimed video game by Naughty Dog — offers a bleak and brutal depiction of the apocalypse, as hardscrabble survivors including Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) navigate a fallen world crawling with flesh-eating “infected,” not to mention other healthy humans who range from desperate and mistrustful to aggressively sadistic. The show is violent and at times disturbing — especially in its shocking second season, which recently concluded — but there’s more to it than action spectacle. A deep undercurrent of emotion runs through the series, making this story about zombies compulsively watchable, frequently moving and deeply human.While the first season of the show faithfully adapted the eponymous video game, HBO has split the story of its sequel, 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, into two installments — meaning that we’re leaving things on a considerable cliffhanger. If your craving for killer fungi, survival stories, revenge tales and postapocalyptic considerations of what we owe to each other isn’t quite satisfied, these 10 novels can scratch that itch.Severanceby Ling MaNot to be confused with another popular 2025 series, this darkly comic novel — published two years before Covid-19 — is an incisive (and prescient) portrait of a society stumbling through a devastating pandemic. The contagion here is Shen Fever, a debilitating fungal disease that turns its victims into (harmless) zombies. Even as it decimates the globe, Candace Chen, a millennial Chinese American woman living in New York City, resolves to see out the end of her contract doing product coordination for a Bible publisher. It’s fairly soul-sucking drudgery but, it turns out, an improvement on life after societal collapse, when Candace finds herself sheltering in an Illinois shopping mall with a band of other survivors from whom she’s hiding a secret.Read our review.Manhuntby Gretchen Felker-MartinIn Felker-Martin’s postapocalyptic thriller, a plague that targets testosterone has turned half the population into a brainless mass of murderers and rapists, leaving the matriarchy to reign supreme. But for Beth and Fran, two trans women keeping their hormones in check with home remedies, it isn’t only the bloodthirsty men they need to worry about: Roving bands of TERFs view them not as fellow sister-survivors but as interlopers who need to be expunged. A smart book about the politics of gender and the perils of transphobia, “Manhunt” could easily have turned didactic — but Felker-Martin, a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, delights in the genre’s free-flowing carnage, and that glee is tons of fun.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