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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ and the Golden Globes

    The competition show featuring drag queens comes back for a 16th season. The annual award show airs on CBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.Monday2023 ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CEREMONY 8 p.m. on ABC. Though celebrating music highlights of 2023 on the first day of 2024 feels a little belated, for Missy Elliott and Sheryl Crowe I’ll let it go. This ceremony, which took place in Brooklyn in November, includes performances by Elliott and Crowe, inductees that year, as well as appearances by Stevie Nicks, Elton John and LL Cool J.From left: Harpo, Zeppo, Chico and Groucho Marx in “Monkey Business.”Film Society of Lincoln CenterMONKEY BUSINESS (1931) 8 p.m. on TCM. The title of this movie aptly portrays the shenanigans that go on when the Marx Brothers stow away on an ocean liner, stirring up drama and laughs while they avoid the wrath of the captain and his crew.TuesdayFINDING YOUR ROOTS 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This show has told us that Bernie Sanders and Larry David are in fact related, the best-friend duo Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are 10th cousins (once removed) and Kevin Bacon shares relatives with his wife, Kyra Sedgwick. Now it’s back for its 10th season, hosted, as always, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The first episode will feature the singers Ciara and Alanis Morissette.WednesdayI CAN SEE YOUR VOICE 8 p.m. on Fox. “The Voice” allows judges to hear contestants’ singing before laying eyes on them. This competition show does the opposite. Judges on the show, hosted by Ken Jeong, have to rate contestants based on lip-sync challenges and facts about them. The answers are revealed when the celebrity judges, including Adrienne Bailon-Houghton and Cheryl Hines, sing a duet with the contestant — either it goes really right or really wrong.ThursdayTHE POWER OF FILM 8 p.m. on TCM. This original six-part documentary series uses storytelling devices to take a closer look at some of the most popular films of the last century. Using more than 50 film scenes, the episodes go through themes of paradoxes, character relationships and heroes and villains to illuminate what makes a film powerful.Maurice Benard and Lexi Ainsworth on “General Hospital.”ABC/Adam LarkeyGENERAL HOSPITAL: 60 YEARS OF STARS AND STORYTELLING 10 p.m. on ABC. The first episode of “General Hospital” had its premiere on April 1, 1963 — and it is now the longest running soap opera still in production and has a record for most outstanding daytime drama award wins. This special, celebrating the show’s 60 years (and counting!), features some of its actors, including Maurice Benard, Jane Elliot, Genie Francis, Finola Hughes, Kelly Monaco and Laura Wright. They will share behind-the-scenes memories, bloopers and a fan tribute.FridayRUPAUL’S DRAG RACE 8 p.m. on MTV. The new year is exactly when we need to hear: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?” RuPaul Charles returns for the 16th season of this drag queen competition show; as usual, we will see amazing customs outfits, passionate lip syncs from the queens and panels of celebrity guest judges, including Charlize Theron, Becky G and Ronan Farrow.SaturdayMeryl Streep and Steve Martin in “It’s Complicated.”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesIT’S COMPLICATED (2009) 10:30 p.m. on E! Just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean we have to say goodbye to Nancy Meyers — the filmmaker has plenty of movies for every occasion. This one stars Meryl Streep as Jane, a restaurateur who is divorced from Jake (Alec Baldwin), except their romance has been rekindled — until Jane finds out Jake is remarried and she is now “the other woman.” Meanwhile, the architect Adam (Steve Martin) starts remodeling Jane’s kitchen (one of the most gorgeous I have ever seen), and you can guess what happens next.SundayTHE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. This award show has been struggling to get back on its feet after NBC bowed out as the broadcaster in 2022 because of ethical concerns and a lack of diversity within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hosts the event. In June, the Golden Globes brand was bought by Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, and the voting body expanded to about 300 — so change is in the air. For movies, “Barbie” leads the nominations with nine, followed by “Oppenheimer” with eight — for television, “Succession” has the most nominations at nine.THE GREAT NORTH 9:30 p.m. on Fox. This animated adult cartoon is back for a fourth season. Nick Offerman voices Beef Tobin, an eccentric dad trying to keep his equally eccentric children close. The season begins with Ham Tobin (Paul Rust) enlisting his family to help out with a speech he has to present during his public speaking class. More

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    Shecky Greene, High-Energy Comedy Star, Is Dead at 97

    A Las Vegas institution, he would do just about anything for a laugh, including physical comedy so broad that it sometimes left him black and blue.Shecky Greene, a high-energy stand-up comedian who for many years was one of the biggest stars in Las Vegas, died on Sunday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 97.His daughter Alison Greene confirmed his death. Mr. Greene was a frequent guest of Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and other television hosts, and had acting roles in movies and on television. But he never reached as wide an audience as many of his fellow comedians, probably because his humor was best experienced in full flower on a nightclub stage rather than in small doses on the small screen. In Las Vegas, though, he was an institution. A versatile entertainer of the old school — he told stories, he made faces, he ad-libbed, he did impressions, he sang — he would do just about anything for a laugh, including physical comedy so broad that it sometimes left him black and blue.He was not one to stick to a set routine. “I wasn’t an A-B-C-D comic. ‘Hello, ladies and gentlemen’ and then the next line,” he told the comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff in 2011. Audiences who went to see Shecky Greene never knew quite what to expect.“One of the greatest I ever saw in a nightclub,” his fellow comedian Pat Cooper told Mr. Nesteroff. “I saw him climb the curtain and do 20 minutes on top of the curtain! He destroyed an audience.”Some said he was at his funniest when he was angry, which was often. “He’s got to be somewhere where he hates the owner, hates the hotel,” the comedian Jack Carter once said, “so that he’s got something to go on.”He was at least as unpredictable off the stage as he was on it. He became famous not just for his act but also for his drinking binges, gambling sprees and erratic, often self-destructive behavior.“I should have been fired maybe 150 times in Las Vegas,” Mr. Greene told The Las Vegas Sun in 1996. “I was only fired 130 times.”Probably the most famous Shecky Greene story involved the time he drove his car into the fountain in front of Caesars Palace. In a 2005 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he confirmed the story, but admitted that the way he told it in his act was slightly embellished: He did not really greet the police officers who rushed to the scene with the words “No spray wax, please.” That line, he said, was suggested to him after the fact by his friend and fellow comedian Buddy Hackett.Another of his best-known jokes was also, he insisted, based on a true story. Frank Sinatra, the joke went, once saved his life. Five men were beating Mr. Greene, but they stopped when Sinatra said, “OK, boys, that’s enough.” Onstage, Mr. Greene told stories, made faces, ad-libbed, did impressions and sang. He also appeared on various television shows.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesAs amusing as the stories of Mr. Greene’s behavior were, the truth is that he had severe mental health problems, including bipolar disorder and panic attacks, which were apparently exacerbated when he developed a dependence on his prescription medication. He had other ailments as well, including cancer, and by the mid-1980s he had stopped performing.Mr. Greene, who had a family history of mental illness, went public with his condition in the 1990s and, with the help of a new therapist and new medication, gradually resumed his career. He even incorporated his illness into his shtick.“I’m bipolar,” he told a Las Vegas television interviewer in 2010. “I’m more than bipolar. I’m South Polar, North Polar. I’m every kind of polar there is. I even lived with a polar bear for about a year.”By 2005, although he was happily describing himself as retired, he could be persuaded to perform at private parties. In 2009 he made his first Las Vegas appearance in many years, at the Suncoast Casino, and he continued to perform occasionally in Las Vegas. As early as 1996, Mr. Greene was performing, he said, for one reason only. “I’m not in it for a career anymore,” he told The Sun. “I had my career. I’m in it to enjoy myself.”Although never known as the most decorous of comedians, Mr. Greene made news in the comedy world in 2014 when he stormed out of a Friars Club event in Manhattan and announced that he was resigning from the club after his fellow comedian Gilbert Gottfried did material that Mr. Greene, who had been scheduled to speak, found offensive. “He got dirtier and dirtier,” Mr. Greene told a radio interviewer, without providing details, “so I got up and I said, ‘That’s it.’”Fred Sheldon Greenfield was born on April 8, 1926, in Chicago. (In 2004 he legally changed his name to Shecky Greene, long after his professional first name had come to connote a certain kind of brash, aggressive, old-school comedian even to people who had never seen him perform.) His parents were Carl and Bessie (Harris) Greenfield. His father was a shoe salesman and his mother sold hosiery at a department store before quitting to focus on raising their three children. Mr. Greene performing on “The Hollywood Palace” television show in 1965.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesAfter serving in the Navy during World War II, he enrolled at Wright Junior College (now Wilbur Wright College) in Chicago with plans of becoming a gym teacher. But he was sidetracked by his interest in performing.He took a summer job at a resort near Milwaukee, where, he once recalled, “They paid me $20 a week and gave me a fancy title, ‘social director.’” He became a performer, he said, because the resort couldn’t afford to hire big-name acts. “I wasn’t Red Skelton,” he recalled, “but I got a few laughs.”He returned to college that September but also continued developing a comedy act and occasionally performed in nightclubs. It would be a few years before his commitment to show business became full time.He left college to accept a two-week engagement in New Orleans; that booking stretched into three years, and ended only when the nightclub burned down. Unsure of his next move, he returned to Chicago and went back to college, but left for good when the comedian Martha Raye offered him a job as her opening act in Miami.“This time,” he said in an interview for his website, sheckygreene.com, “I made up my mind: I would stick with show business. I was only 25 years old and making $500 a week. Besides, I had a silent partner to support — I had discovered how to bet the horses.”He first ventured into Nevada, then in its early days as an entertainment mecca, when the Golden Hotel in Reno hired him for four weeks in 1953. His opening-night performance so impressed the hotel’s owners that they held him over for 18 weeks and offered him a new contract, for a guaranteed $20,000 a year (the equivalent of more than $200,000 today). He was soon headlining in Las Vegas, where for one week in 1956 Elvis Presley was his opening act.Mr. Greene on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson in 1975.Gary Null/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesBy 1975 he was making $150,000 a week (more than $800,000 in today’s money), one of only a handful of comedians in that salary range at the time. He liked to say that he gambled most of it away, but that it didn’t matter because he had more money than God — whose weekly salary, he happened to know, was only $35,000.He was also gaining a reputation for his sometimes violent offstage behavior. A decade later, his mental health problems had brought his career to a halt.He eventually overcame those problems, for which he gave much of the credit to the support of his wife, Marie (Musso) Greene, whom he married in 1985.His first two marriages, to Jeri Drurey and Nalani Kele, ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Alison, he is survived by another daughter, Dorian Hoffman — Mr. Greene and his first wife adopted both of them at birth — and by his wife. He moved to Las Vegas several years ago; previously, he had lived in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, Calif.Although destined to be remembered primarily as a Las Vegas performer, Mr. Greene had a considerable television résumé, as both a comedian and an actor.He had a recurring role on the World War II series “Combat!” in 1962 and 1963 and appeared on “The Love Boat,” “Laverne & Shirley” and “Mad About You,” as well as variety and talk shows. (He was an occasional “Tonight Show” guest host in the 1970s.) He appeared in a few movies as well, including “Splash” (1984) and Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part I” (1981).Interviewed by The Washington Times in 2017, Mr. Greene looked back on his career philosophically:“Why did I do this and that? At 90 I still don’t know. Once in a while I’ll have a nice sleep. Most nights I wake up yelling, ‘Why did I do that?’“Life is strange, but if you’ve had a mixture of a life like I had, it’s all right.”Alex Traub More

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    Dave Chappelle Releases a New Netflix Special, ‘The Dreamer’

    “The Dreamer” predictably includes trans and disabled jokes but punches down in other ways, too. Chappelle is part of a comedy elite that Gary Gulman pokes at.The wildest moment in the new Dave Chappelle special, “The Dreamer” (Netflix), arrives about two-thirds of the way through when the comic says he’s about to tell a long story. That’s not the unusual part.Some 36 years into a storied comedy career, Chappelle, 50, is better known for controversial yarns than carefully considered punchlines. At this point in the special, he tells the crowd in his hometown, Washington, D.C., that he is going to get a cigarette backstage, asks them to act as if he were finished and says he would prefer a standing ovation. He then does something I have never seen in a Netflix special: He walks off for a smoke and costume change, leaving the stage empty. He strolls back as everyone waits, politely clapping. No one stands. He sits down and even mentions that he didn’t get the standing ovation, grumpily.He could have cut that out but didn’t. Why? Was it to reveal that his crowd refused to be told what to do, how he doesn’t mind, as he said at another point, if most people didn’t laugh at some jokes? Was it to include a momentary reprieve from the self-aggrandizing tone of the hour, which begins with rock-star images of Chappelle walking to the stage in slow motion and ends with a montage of him with everyone from Bono and Mike Tyson to the Netflix C.E.O. Ted Sarandos? I have no idea, but what sticks with you in Chappelle’s sets these days is less the jokes than the other stuff, the discourse-courting jabs, the celebrity gossip, the oddball flourishes.Later, Chappelle says, “Sometimes, I feel regular.” As an example, he describes being shy at a club where a rich Persian guy surrounded by women recognizes him and the comedian imagines him telling the story of seeing Dave Chappelle the next day. The idea that this is Chappelle’s idea of regular is funny.The last time he released a Netflix special on New Year’s Eve was in 2017, which now appears to be a turning point in his career. After vanishing from popular culture for a decade, Chappelle came out with four specials that year, a radically productive run that was the start of a stand-up phase that would grow to overwhelm the memory of his great sketch show, which then dominated his legacy.“Chappelle’s Show,” now two decades ago, began with a brilliant sketch about a blind Black white supremacist named Clayton Bigsby. It was inspired in part by Chappelle’s grandfather, a blind man named George Raymond Reed, who had served on the D.C. mayor’s commission for the disabled. Reed was funny. His Washington Post obituary reported that in describing how to spell his name, he would joke: “Reed with no eyes.”Back in 2017, Chappelle began making jokes about transgender people — and he hasn’t stopped, in special after special, show after show. How you feel about this fixation is baked in, at this point. He begins his new hour with a labored trans joke, before saying he’s finished making them. (Fat chance: They are as much a part of his brand as his name on his jacket.) Then he says he has a new angle: disabled jokes. “They’re not as organized as the gays,” he says. “And I love punching down.”He covers other topics. There’s a big set piece about Chris Rock getting slapped at the Oscars, the most popular subject of 2023 in comedy, and he does some cheap racial jokes, like an elaborate bit merely meant to set up his doing an Asian voice.At one point, he tells the audience that people in comedy think he’s lazy because he’ll tell a joke for a crowd of 20,000 that makes only two or three people laugh, but they will laugh hard. He goes on to tell that joke, an impression of the dead people on the Titanic seeing the doomed OceanGate submersible coming toward them, and it’s silly and fun, a throwback to earlier days. The truth is the more common criticism you hear these days is not that Chappelle aims for a niche but that he seems to prefer making points to getting laughs.This happens to some star comics. This month, Ricky Gervais released a dutifully predictable collection of jokes about supposedly taboo subjects. That special, “Armageddon” on Netflix, makes Chappelle look fascinating and unexpected by comparison.Gervais trots out complaints about people being easily offended, before setting up bits that lean so hard on the assumption of that response that there isn’t much more to them. His fans eat it up. But what’s striking about his hour is the justifications, the defensive explanations, the spelling out of themes. Fine, make your Holocaust and pedophile jokes. But how about: Show, don’t tell.Comedy is a crowded field, but for most audiences, it’s still defined by its biggest stars. Chappelle and Gervais are part of that elite, and the distance between them and the rest of the stand-up world feels greater than ever. That growing inequity is one of the subjects of Gary Gulman’s new special, “Born on 3rd Base” (Max), a meticulously funny hour that digs into the gap between the haves and have-nots.He attacks this subject in a variety of ways, in jokes dissecting the comedy world, an inspired bit about how people order at Chipotle and a rebuttal to the argument that welfare payments destroy initiative. As different as Gulman is from Chappelle in the choice of targets, style and level of fame, they share some qualities. Gulman, 53, also likes jokes that only some will get, and he has a distinct sense of timing that insists on the crowd adjusting to him. He begins his special with the word, “Anyhow.” Is he in the middle of a thought or the end? Either way, we’re disoriented. He likes us there. He plays at his own off-kilter pace.One tactic is the stop-and-go move of slowing down to let his viewers get ahead of him. He announces he has a one-man show called “Mommy, Look,” and the title, he explains, stems from his theory of “just about every one-person show.” Then he pauses and holds, and the crowd laughter grows as they anticipate his point about the origin of the artistic impulse. “You show me a 4-year-old on a diving board to an unreceptive audience,” he says, “I will show you a theater major.”But Gulman also likes to get ahead of his audience, with language-drunk sentences, references intended to be over some heads (“bandicoot,” “paramecium”) and others that wallow in wordplay. One gets the sense that he has whole jokes that are, among other things, an excuse to say words like “burglar” or “guillotine.”This is the only special that dares to engage in this debate: What is the most pretentious suffix in the English language?You’ll have to watch to find out. But the second most pretentious, he argues, is “-esque,” before qualifying the point in the most pretentious way possible: “Unless you’re talking about something French.”“I pander to my base,” Gulman confesses, “which is librarians.” More

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    ‘Dinner for One,’ a German New Year’s TV Tradition, Moves Online

    The British comedy short has aired annually in Germany and other European countries for decades. Now, members of Gen Z are having fun with it on social media.“OK, the butler’s setting the table,” the YouTuber Ryan Wass begins, skeptically.In his video “American Reacts to ‘Dinner for One’ (First Time Watching),” which he uploaded 11 months ago and now has 180,000 views, Wass takes a look at the beloved cult comedy short on the recommendation of one of his followers. It’s part of a longstanding tradition for the creator: On his YouTube channel “Ryan Reaction,” Wass films himself being introduced to local German idioms, customs and old movies and TV programming from the perspective of an unwitting American viewer who responds with confusion and awe.But “Dinner for One” is no ordinary slice of quirky German culture. The 18-minute, black-and-white comedy of manners, filmed in 1963, is about a quintessentially British butler orchestrating a solo birthday celebration for his 90-year-old employer, the cheery Miss Sophie (May Warden), whose closest friends and customary guests have all long since passed away. (The butler, James, played by the comedian Freddie Frinton, is obliged to fill in for the missing attendees, including quaffing each of their drinks.) It’s very British in style and setting, and, apart from a brief German introduction, the action plays out in English.“I have more questions than I did before it started,” Wass says as the screening comes to an end, burying his face in his hands. “Like, how is this a German tradition?”

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    @beac_basti Was sind so eure Vorsätze fürs neue Jahr❓ #silvester #neujahr #dinnerforone #dönerforone ♬ Originalton – Sebastian 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?  More

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    Bobby Rivers, Witty VH1 Host, Dies at 70

    After getting his start as an entertainment reporter and film critic, he went on to host a show on the Food Network and establish a presence in the blogosphere.Bobby Rivers, an affable and playful television host, entertainment reporter and film critic, died on Tuesday in Minneapolis. He was 70.The cause was complications of cancer, said his brother, Tony. He died in a hospital.Bobby Rivers got his start on television on “Good Morning Milwaukee” in 1979. “That was huge,” his brother said in an interview. “It was a wonderful springboard for him. People got to see his talent, his wit, his humor, his ability to turn a phrase, and I think that blew people away.”He moved to national TV in the early days of the VH1 cable music channel, where he had his own talk show, “Watch Bobby Rivers.”That show was hailed by the critic Stephen Holden in The New York Times. “Mr. Rivers is a disarmingly sweet, quirky personality who exudes a benign sense of mischief as he joshes with stars,” Mr. Holden wrote in 1988. “A nerdy, post-collegiate Eddie Murphy with no axes to grind, he is a master interviewer with a gift for light, impromptu banter.”Mr. Rivers’s interview style was friendly, and he always seemed to be joking with his guests. But that didn’t prevent him from bringing up tough subjects, and his amiability could draw out revealing responses. In the late 1980s, for instance, he called Norman Mailer to account for sexism with such a big smile that Mailer almost didn’t notice.In the 1990s he became an entertainment reporter for local stations in New York, appearing on “Weekend Today in New York” on WNBC and “Good Day New York” on WNYW.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?  More

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    Ncuti Gatwa Is the Newest ”Doctor Who.” Here’s How He Stacks Up.

    As Ncuti Gatwa makes his proper debut, we take a look back at the recent history of those to inhabit the TARDIS.With most TV shows, a major casting change is a dreaded event. But for fans of the long-running British series “Doctor Who,” big casting changes are expected, even anticipated. With the show’s latest Christmas episode, which premiered Monday on Disney+, we got acquainted with the newest Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa (“Sex Education”) — the 15th Doctor and the first Black, openly queer one in series history.The arrival of a new Doctor, the show’s titular time-traveling, space-wandering alien, is always a buzzy occasion. But although the Doctor typically dies and is regenerated in the final minutes of some climactic episode, it is the one immediately following that truly establishes the new incarnation and what kind of flavor he or she will offer. These first full episodes with a new Doctor, including this year’s Christmas special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” can reveal a lot about how that Doctor’s tenure will go.Here’s a look back at the first post-regeneration episodes of every Doctor since the show’s 2005 revival.David Tennant and Billie Piper from 2005 in “Doctor Who.”BBC10th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Christmas Invasion”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “Hello. OK. New teeth, that’s weird. So, where was I? Oh, that’s right! Barcelona.”After a successful revival in 2005 — with one tight season of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as the Doctor’s plucky shopgirl companion, Rose Tyler — the series hit its stride with the next three seasons, starting with what is perhaps the best reincarnation episode since the series’s return, “The Christmas Invasion.” The episode was an auspicious start to the show’s new Golden Age, led by the showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies, with David Tennant as the Doctor.The 10th Doctor delivers a rambling monologue full of queries about what kind of man he is, like Shakespeare refracted through some prism of intergalactic and temporal mysteries; but Tennant’s performance never allows any doubt that he knows who his Doctor is. In a scene near the end of the episode, Tennant’s Doctor firmly declares, “No second chances; I’m that kind of man,” while sending an enemy to his doom. The scene offered a preview of how perfectly Tennant’s Doctor would embody the duality of this hero through his three-plus seasons in the TARDIS — a masterly balance of stillness and chatter, heft and levity.Karen Gillan with Matt Smith, who became the youngest Doctor in the show’s history.BBC11th DoctorActor: Matt SmithFirst Full Episode: “The Eleventh Hour”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst Words: “Legs! I’ve still got legs!”It’s fitting that Matt Smith’s playful young Doctor (the youngest, in fact; Smith was just 26 when cast for the role) begins his tenure in a state of chaos, hanging out of a spinning TARDIS. Known for his fast talking, ebullient charm, the 11th Doctor is manic and wide-eyed in the manner of a precocious kid on a sugar high.Crashing into the yard of a young Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan), who is independent and fearless but for the menacing crack in her bedroom wall, the Doctor arrives ready to step into the role of savior, though he is frazzled dealing with a resetting TARDIS and the aftereffects of his regeneration. Popping back into his TARDIS and promising Amelia he’ll be back in five minutes, the Doctor returns to find that little Amelia has grown up into Amy, who spent years waiting for a man everyone doubted was real.Amy’s life is shaped around the absence of a magical man whom she clings to with a strangely unflappable faith. Her emotional arc with the Doctor is her learning to become independent from the Doctor. But the 11th’s moments of tenderness — as when he grabs the young Amelia’s hand, anticipating the danger — presage the familial relationship that the Doctor will develop with the older Amy and her boyfriend and future centurion husband, Rory (Arthur Darvill).Peter Capaldi, center, as the 12th Doctor.BBC12th DoctorActor: Peter CapaldiFirst Full Episode: “Deep Breath”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst words: “Kidneys! I’ve got new kidneys! I don’t like the color.”In Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald, Moffat created another cute, flirtatious pairing for the TARDIS. The rapid-fire repartee and seamless synergy between the two got a harsh shake-up in the form of the Doctor’s regeneration into the 12th, played by Peter Capaldi.This post-regeneration episode — which starts in Victorian London, where a dinosaur spontaneously combusts in the Thames, and ends as an organ-stealing cyborg tries to escape in a hot-air balloon made of human skin — was a brooding start for the 12th, whose tenure signaled a sharp tonal shift from the 11th’s. Capaldi’s Doctor is rude and pretentious, quick to condescend those around him and snap a quick “shut up.” He is more reminiscent of the Ninth in temperament: He shows more disgust and self-hate, and he is more haunted by his past actions. The 12th appears harsh on the surface but is no less dedicated than previous doctors to keeping everyone safe and alive at the end of the day.Capaldi was 55 when cast in the role, nearly 30 years older than his predecessor, and the show appeared to spend the whole first episode trying to appease fans who might have opposed the big change. In fact, the episode baldly uses the out-of-place dinosaur as a symbol of this much older, out-of-place Doctor. It’s not the most elegant or subtle move, but Capaldi still manages to wring honest emotion from the symbol — something he would continue to do throughout his tenure as Doctor, especially in his later episodes. The 12th never showed the same humanity as the 10th and 11th did, but he had a streak of wisdom that neither could match.Jodie Whittaker, center, presided over a disastrous run as the 13th Doctor.BBC13th DoctorActor: Jodie WhittakerFirst Full Episode: “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”Writer: Chris ChibnallFirst Words: “Oh, brilliant!”“Doctor Who” writers are all guilty, at one time or another, of throwing too much at the wall. But usually a fair percentage sticks. That was not at all true of Chris Chibnall’s writing during Whittaker’s disastrous run as the Doctor.Usually the Doctor’s first episodes are more pared down; there’s no need to get over the top with a Predator-type alien who cheats at his human-hunting exam by using biotech to tag his human — and in the process installs DNA bombs in the collarbones of the Doctor and her new friends.And speaking of friends, the episode is chock-full of them, overcrowding Whittaker’s performance, which remains at a steady level of earnestness and enthusiasm but fails to give nuance or variety. The first episode in a season-long attempt to replicate the more syrupy, wholesome quality of the old “Who” episodes, “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” can’t pull off any sense of menace or stakes, even when some characters begin dying.David Tennant returned as the 14th Doctor.BBC14th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Star Beast”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “I know these teeth. … What? What? What?!”In many ways, the return of Davies and Tennant after the exploding TARDIS disaster that was Seasons 11 through 13 felt like an emergency rescue maneuver. With a few keystrokes, Davies could have undermined or overwritten the 30-plus episodes of the previous Doctor’s arc, but the episode graciously makes a few nods — both comedic and sentimental — to the show’s attempt at telling more progressive and diverse stories during Chibnall’s run, joking at one point that the Doctor’s reversion to cis-male form was clearly a downgrade.“The Star Beast” which begins the abbreviated three-episode return of Tennant’s 10th Doctor, now considered the 14th, is a refreshing return for the show. But even Davies’s captivating dialogue and engaging plots can’t make up for the tissue-thin logic behind this repeat Doctor regeneration.That said, the performances, the reunion of these old faves, the digestible story and the addition of an absurd new alien to the Whoniverse in the form of the Meep (a Furby-type creature that speaks like Yoda), all make “The Star Beast” a solid entry in the “Doctor Who” catalog.Ncuti Gatwa made his full “Doctor Who” debut with the latest Christmas episode. BBC Studios/Bad Wolf15th DoctorActor: Ncuti GatwaFirst Full Episode: “The Church on Ruby Road”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “No way.” “You’re me!” “No, I’m me. I think I’m really, really me!”Another Christmas premiere, “The Church on Ruby Road” is the first full outing for Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor. The plot — involving mischievous, baby-thieving goblins — gets too cutesy at times (a goblin musical number takes things too far), but it tidily connects the Doctor’s complex origin story with that of Ruby, a lively young woman and adoptee who is searching for information on her birth family.Gatwa’s Doctor truly feels like a Doctor Who for the 21st century and a fitting follow-up to Tennant’s Doctor. The 15th is stylish and liberated, with a vibe that is sensual and unbuttoned; he’s a Doctor who seems much more at home than the others in his body. He is chipper but not frivolous, and he is capable of depth that isn’t limited to darkness. At one point in the episode, the 15th Doctor cries — full, drip-down-the-face tears — over the abduction of someone he just met and how that abduction has hardened those implicated in the loss. Gatwa’s Doctor shows a great deal of humanity, which isn’t always a given for the character, who often understands humans intellectually but closes himself off to a more comprehensive human experience. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Season 1, Episode 8 Recap: Exhausting

    In a series full of painful-to-watch interactions, this week’s episode might be the most excruciating yet.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Down and Dirty’This week’s episode of “The Curse” is about friendship. Or maybe, more accurately, it’s about the concept of friendship and the trouble our protagonists seem to have with grasping it. Asher and Whitney call people “friends,” but that’s just empty language to them. They have no true sense of what it means to be a friend to someone else.The backbone of the hour consists of one night in which Whitney and Asher have divergent outings. Whitney goes to a party that Cara is attending in a beautiful home hosted by an art collector, who also happens to be a military contractor. Naturally, there’s an ulterior motive to Whitney’s excursion: She has a camera trailing her to capture footage for the show of what her life is like away from Asher. At the same time, Asher and Dougie have dinner — a sort of apology meal on Asher’s part for having neglected their friendship.The episode brings into focus just how transactional Asher’s and Whitney’s relationships are. Even their marriage is one of convenience. And we’re confronted once again with just how poisonous Asher and Whitney are to the people in their presence.Dougie, who is so mired in loneliness and self-hatred that he craves whatever companionship he can find, has clearly come to despise Asher for what he sees as a dismissal of his feelings. So he has taken to torturing him with the barely concealed glee of a schoolyard menace. Cara, meanwhile, is starting to realize just how soul sucking it is to be beholden to Whitney at any price; indeed, taking Whitney’s money in last week’s episode has only tightened her bind, forcing her to pantomime her way through her revulsion. In a series full of painful-to-watch interactions, this week’s episode might be the most excruciating yet.In some ways, Whitney should be at ease at the art collector’s gathering. These are her people: rich capitalists who use their interest in art to help mask their exploitation. But she doesn’t want to recognize herself in them. She needs to believe she is like Cara — an artist. So she tells her camera guy not to film the host, and she balks when she introduces herself to a group and a man tells her he works in private security.Whitney parades around the room with a drink in hand, posing as she examines the art in the room, making sure the camera captures all of her angles. She approaches other guests hoping for interactions that will make her look good. Some play her game. Cara’s friend Brett (Brett Mooswa), having clearly heard about Whitney from Cara, decides to play the role of the wise and mystical Native American, and she eats it up. “That was so beautiful,” she says after his speech. “Can I give you a hug?” She’s unaware that when he turns away from her he is giggling to himself.But Cara doesn’t find Whitney’s cluelessness as funny as Brett does, especially when Whitney tries to goad her into performing for the camera. Cara seems to know that she has put herself in an impossible position: Whitney’s money has obligated Cara to be cordial, but at a price that seems to exceed the $20,000 she received. Pretending to be Whitney’s friend helps Whitney believe they are artistically on the same level, which Cara and we as viewers know is not true. And while Cara’s good word, even if it’s fake, lends value to Whitney’s work, the association risks having a negative impact on Cara’s own standing in the art world and in her community.Whitney feeds Cara lines she wants her to say about how she’s proud to have her work displayed inside Whitney’s homes, and Cara dutifully repeats them. Finally, however, she gets the opportunity to tell Whitney a little bit about how she really feels when Whitney asks her to explain her performance piece in the tepee way back in Episode 2. Whitney still wants to know if she was supposed to eat the turkey Cara sliced.“The slicing of the meat is me giving pieces of myself to people, whether I want to or not, and as a Native person that’s basically what you are doing every day,” Cara says. She adds: “Whether people choose to eat it is totally up to them. And you ate it.” As Whitney, Emma Stone’s face changes from an understanding smile into a grimace. Someone finally called her out to her face. Maybe that’s just what friends do.While Whitney is learning some hard truths about herself, Asher and Dougie are engaged in an emotional battle of performative friendship. In a way, their date starts with Dougie’s interview with Asher, where he is quite evidently trying both to unnerve him and to catch him in linguistic traps that will make him look terrible in the edit. Dougie brings up details we have never heard about Asher before, among them that he came to New Mexico for another relationship, which ended before he got together with Whitney.Although Asher is uncomfortable during the interview, he leans into congeniality at dinner with awkward attempts at niceties, saying things like “I’m happy you’ve been such a good friend to me” as Dougie throws back beers. And Dougie is hardly a victim. He is also a bully. During the interview, he brings up Asher’s embarrassing sexual proclivities; during their meal, he secretly orders chicken to the table, just to freak Asher out.When Asher has to go to Abshir’s to change the battery in a smoke detector, Dougie comes up with a plan. He wants to see if Nala will curse him with the same chicken-related fate as Asher. If the chicken they have taken home from the restaurant — Dougie’s joke — disappears, then it worked. Asher is resistant, but Dougie forges ahead, essentially barging his way into Nala’s room under the ruse of needing to do housework. As he asks Nala to curse him, he grows desperate, crying. She screams for her father, terrified by this strange man weeping beside her bed.It’s a sequence that’s almost hard to parse. Is Dougie genuinely sobbing? Is he doing this for Asher? Maybe he needs to believe in curses so he can have something to blame his awful life on? Regardless of his motives, Nala doesn’t fulfill his request.When Asher and Dougie get back into the car, they start to fight. It leads to perhaps the most brutal exchange of the series so far. “Does this get exhausting,” Dougie asks, “cosplaying as a good man?” Asher replies, “Like you’re one to talk.” Dougie wants to know what that’s supposed to mean. Asher then coup de grâce: “I don’t know, ask your wife.” He quickly apologizes, realizing the cruelty of his blow. But something has shifted. Even the score sounds different. It is harsher and less eerie, like something out of a sci-fi movie.As Asher moves to exit the car, he tries again to make amends. Dougie coldly agrees, saying, “We need more friends than enemies in this world, right?” His cute little axiom sounds like a threat, and at this moment Asher really doesn’t have any friends. Neither does Whitney.And now Asher has two curses on his back: One from Nala and one from Dougie, who curses him as soon as he gets out of the car. While Nala’s might have been mostly child’s play, there’s deeper malice behind Dougie’s hex.Notes from EspañolaIt’s always a jolt when an episode begins with entirely new faces. This one started with some local kids who have learned that they can steal jeans with no repercussions. There might, however, be some repercussions for Asher and Whitney in the form of Fernando, who sees them as enabling crime.Whitney has spent about $14,000 on the stolen jeans. Jeez.Whitney’s baby voice as she whines to Asher after Fernando leaves is one of the most haunting, grotesque things I have ever heard. Props to Emma Stone for that.Once again, Whitney has an interaction with the Española Sikh community, this time in the form of a man at the party who flirts with her. I’m starting to wonder if this is all going to end with her joining.“Exhausting” is a term that keeps coming up. The experience of being Native in this country is “exhausting” to Cara; Dougie asks Asher if cosplaying as a good person gets “exhausting.” The performance of life is tiring, and “The Curse” is digging into that. More

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    What to Watch This Weekend: Comedy Morsels Galore

    The holiday season means an overcommitted social calendar and low-commitment viewing. Our TV critic has several great suggestions.If the traditional Christmas meal is a feast, the traditional New Year’s Eve fare is hors d’oeuvres. To that end, this weekend is all about tidbits, the only kind of viewing that fits during a time of both busyness and vacantness, of being both off and on.Perhaps no medium operates more like devouring a tray of appetizers than immersing oneself in a TikTok channel. To that end, the soapy spoof “Sylvanian Drama” works beautifully in its one-minute chunks but becomes its own slangy mindset after an hour. I first wrote about the series in 2022, and since then my adoration for its deranged perfection has only grown.In each episode, little flocked animal dolls — you might know them as Calico Critters — enact a sort of “Euphoria” by way of Weird Twitter; one recent episode includes a wizard advising a cow that the purpose of life is “to go on Instagram (and vaping).” Little outrageous thrills abound, and you don’t even need to have the sound on. (You can also watch it on Instagram.)Just as distinctive but in a completely different vein is “The Mask,” now available on YouTube, a 24-minute short from the comedy auteur Conner O’Malley that follows an aspiring improv comedian from his cemetery job in Illinois through a descent into a conspiracy-fueled crisis in Los Angeles. Satirical horror tragedy is an underpopulated genre, but I’m not sure how else to describe this; it is specific, mesmerizing, strange and just on the edge of realism, like catching something out of the corner of your eye. O’Malley’s other work includes “Joe Pera Talks With You” and “How To With John Wilson,” and while “The Mask” does not share their more sanguine sensibilities, it does share their fascination with the minutiae of personhood and their ability to shade in certain kinds of rarely depicted masculinity.Let’s call that more of an acquired taste, though. If you want something explicitly ha-ha funny and more appealing to a wider group, the stand-up comedy special “Born on 3rd Base” (on Max), from Gary Gulman, is fantastic. Some comics cultivate intimacy through a relaxed, faux-spitballing casualness, but Gulman has a refined precision, like an opera singer or elite athlete who turns a lifetime of effort into what looks miraculously like effortlessness.But maybe you just want to graze all day. For something silly, easy and low-commitment, Season 16 of the British panel show “Would I Lie to You?” is now on BritBox. Think Two Truths and a Lie, but dorkier. Seven seasons of the show are on BritBox, and one is on FreeVee, and you can’t really go wrong — but if you must optimize, pick any episode where Bob Mortimer is a guest. More