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      ‘Game Theory’ Host Bomani Jones Calls an Audible

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      “Game Theory,” his HBO talk show, has pulled off the difficult feat of mixing sports and comedy with a political bite. Now he’s trying to up his game by going unscripted.You know Bomani Jones is about to say something funny, deadly serious or both when he spits out a sentence like “The question is simple” or “Let me tell you a secret” or, in this case, “Here’s the thing.”Explaining why he no longer regularly debates sports with people on television, Jones, 42, paused dramatically, his lanky frame swimming in sweatpants as he sat on the sofa of his Harlem apartment. “Don’t no one want to argue with me on television,” he said, a snap in his voice, dropping into a baritone. “Ain’t a whole lot of people going to come out a winner. As a result, I don’t come out a winner. I just come out a bully.”What’s characteristic here is the mix of swagger and self-awareness, and also how quickly he shifted angles when making a point. Jones did it again with his final thought: “You can make an argument that I should let them win now and again,” he said, before another one of those punchy setups: “I’ll be honest.” Pause. “I’m not that good at that.”Bomani Jones has been arguing with sports journalists on ESPN shows like “Around the Horn” and “Highly Questionable” for nearly two decades. “Game Theory With Bomani Jones,” entering its second season on HBO on Friday, is the first time he is sitting at his own desk alone. And while he’s got more than enough charisma and dynamism for the job, the real challenge is pulling off something that, he will be the first to tell you, almost never works: a comic show about sports.“This is something that no one has really figured out,” Jones said, adding that he included himself. Television is full of shows starring clever comedians doing topical jokes and sports journalists making smart points, but a happy marriage of these popular forms is rare.Comedy is hard, smart comedy even harder. But with sports, Jones explained, real fans won’t easily accept a comic with no credentials. “Bill Maher can be a comedian who happened to go to Cornell and be treated with the intellectual gravitas to do the show he does. Sports doesn’t work like that.”He continued, “Comedians love sports, but the ideas they have are typically the same as everybody else’s.” With “Game Theory,” his goal is to use sports to say something deeper, more probing and political. “We’re trying to make a funny show,” Jones said, “but that still has the weight and make points that advance things.”Jones in Season 1 of his HBO show “Game Theory.” The second season won’t be as scripted.HBOThis intellectual ambition distinguished the first season, particularly in his virtuosic desk pieces that were unlike anything else on television. They can remind you of the work of John Oliver, mixing long, intricate, forceful arguments with knowing jokes, and while Jones speaks gushingly about that host (whose offices are right across the hall), it’s a comparison he balks at. Jones is harder to pin down ideologically, and as he pointed out, unlike Oliver, he doesn’t do explainers. Jones aims to jump right into the issue, one his viewers already know, and make them look at it a new way.What Oliver and Jones share though is fierce intelligence and high standards on coming up with a novel perspective. “What I tell my writers is I’m always looking for the zag,” he explained to me, before clarifying that he did not mean a cheap contrarian take.This paid off at the height of crypto mania last year, when everyone from Steph Curry to Tom Brady were spokesmen for digital currency. Jones not only bluntly called it a grift, but also explained how crypto’s popularity in the sports world was tied to the decline in trust in institutions and how normalized gambling on games had become. It was an unusually assured and complicated take that appears prescient.Asked for his favorite segment, Jones pointed to the very first episode, when he commemorated the retirement of Duke’s legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski with a historical deep dive into how and why Black fans hate his teams, quipping that if they played the Ku Klux Klan, “we would have rooted for a zero-zero tie.”Jones, who went to Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college, said that while he wanted to appeal to all viewers, he paid particular attention to, as he put it, “never boxing Black people out.” If only the white writers in his room laugh at a joke, he won’t use it. But if only the Black ones do, he’ll think about it. “What I mean for that segment of the audience is different,” he said. “When I walk down the street and am stopped, it’s ‘thank you for what you do.’ It’s far more essential there.”Jones, who called this show his dream job, talks as if he’s only now getting the hang of it. He’s supremely confident in his voice, but fitting it into a talk show is tricky. This is the first time he’s used a writing staff that includes veteran joke writers along with a small news department. But he is convinced that he’s at his best and funniest when he sounds as if he’s speaking off the top of his head. “One thing Season 1 didn’t have enough of is just me cooking,” he said.You hear this most clearly on his podcast, “The Right Time,” in which he can find all kinds of unexpected laughs just thinking aloud. Jones has the cadence of a natural comic even when the subject is serious. That’s why in Season 2, “Game Theory” tweaked the format of its topical segment, changing it from a script to bullet points to allow him to riff. “That’s his superpower,” said Stuart Miller, an executive producer of the series who worked on “The Daily Show” for 13 years.Jones’s background in economics means “he doesn’t do pure hot takes,” said Spencer Hall, a former colleague. Brian Karlsson for The New York TimesOn a recent morning in the writers’ room, Miller, home with Covid, stared at a table of staff members from a laptop. On the wall were cards mapping out the season. In the premiere, Jones commemorates LeBron James’s 20th anniversary in the N.B.A. with an argument that the player empowerment movement, which James is widely credited with leading, is a myth. A later episode will make another zag when he makes the case that the N.F.L. is more woke than you think.Jones had a firm command of the room as he ran through a segment with bullet points of big stories that week, testing out the new format. At one point, he reflected on a riff about how a kid who got into a fight with basketball star Ja Morant needed better fathering, saying, “ESPN wouldn’t let me do that. Now I’m on HBO.”In a segment on a video of Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, slapping his wife, Jones adopted a skeptical voice about whether he would face any repercussions. After he finished, one of the writers suggested that the White joke needed to be set up better and offered a tweaked phrase.When he ran through it again, Jones didn’t take this specific advice but found a third way. First, he added a new joke. “Do you realize how insulting it is to get caught slapping your wife and no one is disappointed?” It got a big laugh from the writers. Then with a head of steam, he pulled the brakes. “If you want to hurt the brand,” he said very slowly, pausing after each word, “then he would have to say something bad about incels.”The day before, he met with a performance coach who mentioned the value of adjusting his pace. That informed his shift, but what mattered more was just working without a script. “Part of going to this format is that intuitively I know when to slow up and go faster,” he said. “It’s a feel thing. Once things get written, I struggle a little bit more.”Jones has two master’s degrees, including in economics, which inform his thinking (look at the title of his show). “He doesn’t do pure hot takes,” said Spencer Hall, a sportswriter, podcaster and former colleague. “That’s the economics training: He’ll say, ‘This is bad, but here’s an unexpected upside.’”When it comes to his comedic sensibility, Jones said, nothing was more influential than “Chappelle’s Show,” and explained that what he admired most was how a sketch like “Black Bush” used a simple premise (what if George W. Bush were Black?) to make layered jokes. “Dave is always coding it on many levels,” Jones said. “The joke is landing is so many different ways.”The simplicity is as important as the complexity. “If I find a basic idea that people aren’t thinking about it, that’s it,” he said. “If I need to go a long way to get there, it probably won’t work.”What makes doing political commentary about sports a balancing act is that fans watch games to escape. Jones understands this well, carefully managing the amount of humor in his arguments while trying to avoid dogmatism. “I don’t know how many interesting screeds are left,” he said, making a subtle point about how television has evolved in the last two decades. “Think of how impactful Olbermann’s screeds were in 2006,” he said of the sports broadcaster who shifted into politics. “Do it now and it doesn’t hit the same. You have to be more sophisticated.”That sophistication should not be mistaken for snobbery. Jones’s focus is not on who wins or loses games, but he doesn’t look down on anyone who cares deeply about that. “The place sports exist in people’s lives is important, and we get ourselves in trouble as high-minded commentators when we trivialize that,” he said. “No one would say music isn’t important. It’s a big part of the fabric of our lives. It matters. Sports is the same.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Is Charmed by Republican Concerns About Ron DeSantis

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      “It’s true. DeSantis is best on paper — specifically, that roll by the toilet,” Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.This Charming ManRepublicans are eyeing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an alternative presidential candidate to Donald Trump for 2024, but G.O.P. insiders are struggling with DeSantis’s perceived lack of charm, saying he’s better on paper.“Oh, come on! You’re telling me this man lacks charm?” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday. “He’s got the smooth style of a nonplayable character in a PlayStation 2 game.”“Hey, get out of my bank with your skateboard, Tony Hawk!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT, imitating a stiff DeSantis as a character in a video game“It’s true. DeSantis is best on paper — specifically, that roll by the toilet.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“In a new episode of a podcast, former President Trump said that he heard Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may challenge him for the Republican presidential nomination and added, ‘We’ll handle that the way I handle things.’ So, get ready, Ron — he’s gonna cheat on you.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Brady’s Big Loss Edition)“Last night, the Dallas Cowboys knocked Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of the playoffs. Yeah, and now fans want to know, will Tom Brady retire, or retire then immediately unretire?” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, after the game, Brady was thinking about retiring, but then he saw the price of eggs and was like, ‘I can’t retire now.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I don’t know what else Brady wants to accomplish, though. It’s kind of like Jeff Bezos playing Mega Millions. It’s like, you already have all the money.” — JIMMY FALLON“He was 7-0 against Dallas lifetime, now he’s 7-1. Brady was reportedly so upset after the game, he ate a carb.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“According to a new report, three N.F.L. teams are considering pursuing quarterback Tom Brady when he becomes a free agent. Not to mention about a dozen bocce leagues.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Late Night” writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel returned for another segment of “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” on Tuesday.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe “Shotgun Wedding” star Jennifer Lopez will stop by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This OutBen WisemanBroadway has deepened its gayness of late with new plays and musicals exploring queer themes, characters and songs. More

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      ‘The Traitors’ Was a UK Hit. Will the US Version Catch On?

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      A cross between “Survivor” and the party game Mafia, the competitive reality show arrives on Peacock after a British version became a word-of-mouth hit.For television fans, a favorite reality show can spawn viewing parties, themed WhatsApp groups and memorable moments quoted without context.But James Symonds, 25, a British graphic designer, recently became so obsessed with the BBC reality game show “The Traitors,” that he hosted a party at which he and his friends re-enacted its first season.“Never has a TV show ever had me like this,” Symonds said in a video interview. After watching episodes broadcast live with his partner, he said they “had so much sort of adrenaline we couldn’t sleep.”“The Traitors,” which premiered in Britain in November and has an American version arriving Thursday on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, is an adaptation of the Dutch television game show “De Verraders.” The British version was unusual in that it was not the typical type of show broadcast on the BBC, but it was one of the most talked-about shows of 2022 in Britain.A blend of “Survivor” and the party game Mafia, “The Traitors” is set in and around a castle in Scotland. Contestants work together through a series of grueling challenges to win money that is added to a final prize fund. Participants are divided into “Traitors,” whose identities remain secret and who choose a player each day to “murder,” and “Faithfuls,” who try to uncover the Traitors’ identities throughout the show.The whole group also votes for those who it thinks are Traitors, eliminating the person or people from the show. The result is a thoroughly unpredictable competition series.The British and American versions of the show were filmed at the same Scottish castle.Mark Mainz/BBCIn a scene from the British show, the contestants gathered to discuss who they thought were the Traitors.Mark Mainz/BBCFor Symonds’s party, he secretly assigned Traitors and Faithfuls, repeated monologues from the show’s host, Claudia Winkleman, and warned guests, “‘You can no longer take each other at face value,’” he said.Like in the show itself, the party became immersive. “My friend had brought his relatively new girlfriend along,” Symonds said. Soon, her boyfriend had been “murdered,” and “everyone just turns on her,” the host said, accusing her of targeting her boyfriend.This tendency for viewers to take the show’s gameplay almost as seriously as the contestants helped “The Traitors” become a word-of-mouth hit in Britain.“It’s a format that creates an enormous amount of drama,” said Stephen Lambert, whose production company, Studio Lambert, made the American and British versions of “The Traitors,” “and it is ultimately about the way in which people make judgments about each other.” In Britain, the show was broadcast during prime time, three times a week on the BBC, but it found a bigger audience during its run on the BBC’s streaming service, iPlayer (an average of 3.7 million viewers watched the first episode within the first seven days of its broadcast, with more than 1.5 million viewers watching the episode in the subsequent weeks, according to figures from the BBC).All 10 episodes of the American version of the show, which were filmed at the same Scottish location before the British show was shot, will arrive on Thursday on Peacock.Contestants on the American version of “The Traitors,” from left, Shelbe Rodriguez, Rachel Reilly, Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick and Ryan Lochte.Euan Cherry/PeacockThe U.S. show’s format is similar, but with a couple of adjustments: The Scottish actor Alan Cumming hosts, and half of the show’s 20 contestants are reality TV stars from shows including “The Bachelor,” “Big Brother” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”The oldest contestant on the British version was in her 70s, and for many fans, it was refreshing to see a diversity of ages and backgrounds in a reality show.“We’ve all sort of been exhausted by the format of ‘Love Island’ and dating competitions where people are bronzed up and dressed to the nines,” Hamza Jahanzeb, a fan who ran a Twitter Space dedicated to “The Traitors,” said in a video interview. At 29, Jahanzeb is one of the show’s many viewers ages 16 to 34, and he said he felt the cast “was a reflection of our reality.”Mike Cotton, who is the executive producer of the British and American versions of the show, said in a video interview that this was intentional: “We always knew that we wanted to have a cast — have an eclectic cast — that represented a broad age range of people, much like you would get in a traditional murder mystery.”When it came to making the American version, producers at NBC decided to include reality TV regulars “to see if preconceived notions of known personalities would affect the game,” a representative from NBC said over email. Lambert noted that in the United States, a new show faced “even more competition than there is in Britain,” and that having recognizable faces among the first season’s contestants could be “helpful, in terms of getting attention and drawing an audience.”This mix of contestants also meant that “there was an added frisson,” Cumming said. The reality TV stars “were accused of being able to be more manipulative because they’ve done things like this before — in ‘Big Brother,’ in those shows where you have to kind of form alliances,” he said.“It’s kind of hilarious that the American version of the show is much camper than the British one,” Cumming said. Euan Cherry/PeacockWhile on the British show, it was “fascinating,” Cotton said, to see “how some people will become very convinced, 100 percent certain, someone is a traitor based on almost no evidence whatsoever,” in the U.S. version, a question that emerged for all contestants, including celebrities, was, “Can you sort of get rid of your preconceived notions about someone?”In both shows, if only Faithfuls remain at the end of the competition, the overall prize fund is split evenly between them. If a Traitor makes it to the end undiscovered, however, he or she takes all of the money.At a time when viewers often accuse reality shows of being overly produced and storyboarded, the producers on both versions of “The Traitors” had a deliberately hands-off approach to try to keep the gameplay feeling authentic and immersive.“We didn’t have the kind of reality show producers pulling people in for chats, chatting with people whilst they were taking a break or anything like that,” Cotton said.This lack of intrusion also added to the pressure cooker environment. On the British show, contestants “started talking about people as if they had actually died,” Cotton said. “And we just had to remind them that they hadn’t died, but were removed from the game.” The production team said that the show had a robust contestant welfare system, and an on-site psychologist.Cumming, who is touring his cabaret show in Australia, had never hosted a reality show before. He discussed with producers playing the host as a “James Bond villain,” he said, wearing tartan and a beret.It ended up being a “heightened sort of weird, dandy, Scottish, layered version of me,” he said. “It’s kind of hilarious that the American version of the show is much camper than the British one.”“But I guess that’s me,” he added. “That’s my fault.” More

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      Building a House Is Stressful, Even if You’re Sanjay Gupta

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      The CNN correspondent was traveling for work during construction of his family’s house, leaving the decision-making to his wife. (Yes, they’re still married.)The overwrought and the over-scheduled may be cheered to learn that Sanjay Gupta speaks quite highly of stress.“Often, the aspiration is to reduce it. But what we’ve found is that reducing or eliminating stress is not necessarily the best goal when it comes to brain health,” said Dr. Gupta, 53, a neurosurgeon, Emmy Award-winning chief medical correspondent for CNN, and an author whose books include the recently published “12 Weeks to a Sharper You: A Guided Program.”“We sometimes even need high periods of stress,” he continued. “But you’ve got to have the means in between to decompress. Your environment and how you live, where you live — it all makes a big difference. I come home to find those periods of downtime, which is critically important to energy and brain health.”Sanjay Gupta, 53, a neurosurgeon and the chief medical correspondent for CNN, lives with his wife, Rebecca Gupta, and their three daughters in a custom-built house on almost three and a half acres in Atlanta.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesDr. Gupta’s recharging station is a slate-shingled, beige-stucco house in Atlanta that calls to mind a grand French Renaissance chateau and, thanks to the Italian windows and small balconies, a cozy Tuscan villa. Curiously, and maybe fittingly, this is a place born of stress. Which is another way of saying that Dr. Gupta and his wife, Rebecca Gupta, had it built.The couple’s previous house — the first they ever owned — was a three-bedroom in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland district, a highly walkable neighborhood full of children and dogs, close to a hospital and to the highway for speedy trips to the airport. “But by the time we had our third child, we began to realize we were going to need more space,” Dr. Gupta said. “We looked into adding another level or something, because we really loved the house, but it just wasn’t possible.”Sanjay Gupta, 53Occupation: neurosurgeon, author, CNN correspondentNo place like home: “We have three teenage kids, and we wanted to create a place that their friends would want to come to rather than going elsewhere.”Initially, the idea of building a house wasn’t on the table. But then they found the ideal lot: large (almost three and a half acres), flat where it needed to be flat, and full of old-growth trees arrayed so they wouldn’t have to be sacrificed to accommodate an 8,000-square-foot house.Somewhat unnervingly, Ms. Gupta, a lawyer-turned-venture-capitalist, once mentioned to her husband that 80 percent of couples who build a house together end up getting divorced. (A quick Google search turned up slightly rosier statistics.) So perhaps it was fortunate that Dr. Gupta was frequently out of the country on assignment for CNN while construction was at full throttle.“It was really a situation where Rebecca did what she thought was best,” he said. “But the process was hard on her.”Determined not to make it harder, Dr. Gupta tried to limit the “helpful” suggestions and the second-guessing. “I think it’s how you ask that’s important,” he said. “‘I’m sure there’s a really good reason, but why is that wall there?’ rather than ‘Why in God’s name did you….’”“I have three kids and three dogs, so it’s great having a space where there’s not so much noise and stuff,” said Dr. Gupta, explaining the value of his study.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesIt’s hard to assess the effect on Dr. Gupta’s mental health, but “the few times I was asked for my opinion, basically, the opposite thing was done,” he said.Never mind. He is very happy with the results: the many archways that make it easier for his elderly parents and in-laws to move among rooms when they come visit; the sunroom that seems to bring the outside in; and, most especially, his two-story oval study at one end of the house.A photograph of an old Cuban theater, a gift from Ms. Gupta, hangs over the working fireplace on the upper level. (“I’ve always been fascinated by Cuba,” said Dr. Gupta.) The figure of a medicine man stands sentry just outside the surround. On the shelves: models of a cervical spine, a lumbar spine, thoracic spine, a model of a skull and lots of neurosurgery texts. A hidden staircase presents a challenge for those who aren’t conversant with the phrase “do not disturb.”Dr. Gupta also derives pleasure from what the house is missing — specifically, a dining room. “That was a conscious decision,” he said. “Rebecca and I didn’t grow up in a super formal way. Things were more casual and family-oriented. That’s a metaphor for the house overall.”Three interior designers have passed through since the house was completed 13 years ago. When the family first moved in, the palette was earth tones. These were replaced by neutral tones and soft colors like pale lavender. (Dr. Gupta has a pronounced weakness for purple.) The most recent designer lobbied for white walls and bold pops of color. Castoff saris belonging to Dr. Gupta’s Pakistani-born mother were cut up and made into throw pillows to add a personal touch.The “secret” staircase that connects the upper and lower level of Dr. Gupta’s office is lined with plaques, diplomas and photos. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe grounds have had their own makeover, with the addition of a fountain, a pool, a hot tub and a vegetable garden. On a trip to Xi’an, China, the Guptas became so enamored of the Terracotta Army, a group of terra-cotta soldiers depicting the military force of the first emperor of China, that they had five clay figures made to serve as garden ornaments, each representing a member of the family.Two of the sculptures have since shattered. So be it. Dr. Gupta isn’t especially sentimental.“I knew this would be a good house for raising kids, and that has been true. But whenever I think about the house itself, I don’t have a grand affinity,” he said. “We’ll sell it someday. We don’t need a place this big.”It’s the memories of his three teenage daughters growing up in the house that will have the greatest resonance, he said: “And those memories will exist no matter what, whether we’re here or not.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Late Night Chides Biden Over Birthday Gaffe

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      Stephen Colbert and other hosts poked fun at the president for seeming to forget the name of Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter-in-law while singing her a birthday tune on Monday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Forget-Me-NotLate night hosts poked fun at President Joe Biden on Monday after he seemed to forget the name of Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter-in-law while singing her happy birthday at an event honoring the civil rights leader.“People are accusing him of forgetting her name,” Stephen Colbert said. “That’s not fair — he clearly never knew her name.”“Or maybe they’re just such good friends that he’s calling her by her nickname: ‘Lar-lurh.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“First rule: Don’t start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ unless you know the person’s name.” — JIMMY FALLON“There’s a reason why the birthday song at TGI Fridays doesn’t have the name in it.” — JIMMY FALLON“Rookie move, Joe. Every singer knows that when you forget the lyric, that’s when you point the mic towards the crowd.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Clue Edition)“The White House announced over the weekend that a third batch of classified documents was found at President Biden’s Delaware home. You know, finding new ones every few days isn’t helping. What are you guys doing over there? Searching one drawer at a time? Did he hide the documents in an advent calendar?” — SETH MEYERS“Over the weekend, five more classified documents were found at his home in Delaware, along with 9,000 stolen packets of Sweet’N Low” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At this point, they’ve found documents in so many places, it’s like we’re playing Clue. It’s like, ‘North Korea’s nuclear codes in the garage with the Corvette!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yup, the scandal has gotten so big, today Hunter Biden told his dad, ‘I can’t be seen with you right now.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Joe’s making me do something I swore I would never do: care about what happens in Delaware.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This might not even be the end, because sources say there are multiple additional spots that could be searched and it’s possible additional documents could still be found. Well, if this goes on till the spring, they can kill two birds and combine the search with the White House Easter egg hunt.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingNatalie Portman, Stephen Yeun, Danny DeVito, and several other actors performed a dramatic re-enactment of a NextDoor thread on Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightLeslie Jones will kick off a weeklong guest-hosting residency on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutA selection of designer sunglasses owned by the late Andre Leon Talley are among his possessions to be auctioned by Christie’s.Christie’s“The Collection of André Leon Talley” is a 448-lot estate auction that will go on a three-city tour this winter, with proceeds benefiting Black churches. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Independent Lens’ and ‘Night Court’

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      A documentary about racial reparations in the United States airs on PBS. And NBC reboots the 1980s and ’90s sitcom “Night Court.”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. 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: THE BIG PAYBACK (2023) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In 2021, Evanston, Ill., became the first American city to approve a compensation program intended to address historical racism and discrimination, a significant step for proponents of racial reparations, an issue that has long been frozen by political concerns. This documentary looks at how the measure passed, paying particular attention to a former alderman, Robin Rue Simmons, who was a primary architect of it, and to its place in the context of the larger conversations about race in the country.JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021) 9:30 p.m. on TNT. Daniel Kaluuya won an Oscar for his portrayal of Fred Hampton, the Illinois Black Panther Party leader who was killed in an infamous 1969 police raid, in this drama. Directed by Shaka King, the film is told from the perspective of William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), an informant who helped the F.B.I. orchestrate Hampton’s killing. The result is a “tense, methodical historical drama,” A.O. Scott said in his review for The New York Times. “The script,” Scott wrote, “by King and Will Berson, is layered with ethical snares and ideological paradoxes, and while King’s fast-paced direction doesn’t spare the suspense, it also makes room for sorrow, anger and even a measure of exhilaration.”TuesdayMelissa Rauch and John Larroquette in “Night Court.”Jordin Althaus/NBCNIGHT COURT 8 p.m. on NBC. Melissa Rauch (“The Big Bang Theory”) picks up the gavel once held by the actor Harry Anderson in this reboot of “Night Court,” the 1980s and early ’90s NBC sitcom that followed a young judge, Harry Stone (Anderson), working the night shift in a Manhattan municipal court. The new version of the show casts Rauch as Stone’s daughter, Abby, who lands in her father’s old gig (the latest example of a nepo baby?) and has to contend with a cast of bizarro characters. One of them is Dan Fielding, a now-former prosecutor played by John Larroquette, reprising his role from the original series.WednesdayDIRTY OLD CARS 10:03 p.m. on History. Car enthusiasts and neat freaks alike might take some pleasure in this new series, which follows a group of vehicle restorers who bring moldy, rusted-out old cars back to life. (It’s more “Revive My Ride” than “Pimp My Ride.”) The first episode includes a pair of classic American cars: a 1981 Chevrolet Camaro and a 1972 Ford Maverick.ThursdayFrom left, Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”A24EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) 4:30 p.m. on Showtime. “An exuberant swirl of genre anarchy” is a label A.O. Scott used to describe “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in his review for The Times. That swirl turned out to be a potent mix: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s universe-bopping tale of a laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) fighting evil in a multiverse has turned into an awards-season heavy hitter. Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, one of her co-stars, won Golden Globes last week for their performances in the film. And it’s set to be a wonderfully weird presence in the Oscars discussion.FridayGAME THEORY WITH BOMANI JONES 11 p.m. on HBO. The sharp sports commentator Bomani Jones returns for a second season of his HBO series. The show mixes commentary, comedy and reporting — it’s something like a “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” for sports. The first season included episodes about nepotism among N.F.L. coaches, the draw of historically Black colleges and universities for many sports recruits, and the N.F.L. draft.GLASS (2019) 5 p.m. on FXM. The filmmaker (and twist-maker) M. Night Shyamalan is set to return to theaters early next month with a new movie, “Knock at the Cabin.” For a refresher on Shyamalan’s style, consider revisiting “Glass,” which brings together characters from two of his previous movies — “Unbreakable” (2000) and “Split” (2016) — for a superhero story with horror trappings.SaturdayRUNNING ON EMPTY (1988) 5:45 p.m. on TCM. Judd Hirsch, the veteran stage and screen actor, leaned into a juicy supporting role recently in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” in which he plays an oddball great-uncle who briefly shows up and injects some idiosyncratic, chaotic energy into the titular family’s home life. Hirsch played a father dealing with a different kind of familial chaos in this 1988 drama directed by Sidney Lumet. The plot centers on Arthur (Hirsch) and Annie (Christine Lahti), a husband and wife who for years have been on the run from the F.B.I. because of their involvement with extreme antiwar activities during the Vietnam War. Their children, Danny (River Phoenix) and Harry (Jonas Abry), have been brought up to play along with the fugitive life — until Danny, the elder sibling, starts to wrestle with a desire to break free of it. In her review of the film for The Times, the critic Janet Maslin wrote that the screenplay is uneven, but that “the actors are often so good that they’re able to be real and touching even when the material sounds strained.”SundaySissy Spacek in “Carrie.”United ArtistsCARRIE (1976) and CHRISTINE (1983) 4:45 and 7 p.m. on AMC. Cars and teenagers. These are two things that can be frightening and bewildering — especially when mixed — both in our own world and in Stephen King’s fictional ones. And both factor heavily into these two King adaptations. Up first, Brian De Palma’s take on King’s debut novel, “Carrie,” about a bullied 16-year-old (Sissy Spacek) who learns she has supernatural powers and uses them for revenge. Next, John Carpenter’s adaptation of King’s “Christine,” which follows another socially challenged teenager, Arnie (Keith Gordon), who buys a psychotic car. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Series Premiere Recap: Fungus Among Us

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      It’s too soon to say whether HBO’s big-budget video game adaptation will become a zombie classic. But it delivers one heck of an opening catastrophe.‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 1: ‘When You’re Lost in the Darkness’Every great post-apocalyptic saga should begin with a killer “here’s where everything went wrong” sequence.Think of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” with its single zombie lumbering through a graveyard, chasing after a young woman and her obnoxious brother. (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) Or think of the 2004 remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” or the first episode of “The Walking Dead,” both of which begin as the heroes wake up in a nightmarish world that collapsed while they were asleep. We understand right from the start what these people have been through because we go through it right along with them, minute by agonizing minute, as they panic and flee from the bloodthirsty ghouls and the mounting mayhem.It’s too soon to say whether HBO’s big-budget adaptation of the video game “The Last of Us” will become a classic like Romero’s “Dead” movies. But I’ll say this for the series’s creators, Craig Mazin (the Emmy-winning writer and producer of “Chernobyl”) and Neil Druckmann (a creator of the video game): They do deliver one heck of an opening catastrophe.The first half-hour of the show’s 80-minute premiere is set mostly in Austin, Texas, in 2003, where a construction worker named Joel (Pedro Pascal); his teenage daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker); and his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) endure a harrowing 24 hours. It begins with them minding their own business on Joel’s 36th birthday. It ends with them trying to escape a city that has been devastated by rampaging monsters, trigger-happy soldiers and exploding vehicles.Mazin (who also directed the episode) and Druckmann spend a lot more time than one might expect with these three characters in Austin, given that their story’s primary action is set 20 years later and hundreds of miles away — and especially given that Sarah does not survive the day. Most of the Texas scenes are from Sarah’s point of view, too, although there are sly hints throughout that something bigger is happening. In one scene we hear radio reports about “disturbances in Jakarta.” In another, the next door neighbors’ grandmother twitches in the background, her mouth gaping unnervingly wide.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.The Austin sequence matters, though, and not only because it grabs the viewer with some thrillingly chaotic spectacle. By the time we leave 2003 — with Sarah laying dead from a soldier’s bullet and Joel emotionally wrecked — we have learned some plot-relevant details. We know that humans all over the world are becoming infected with something that turns them into ferociously violent savages. We see during the escape that Joel is willing to ignore other people’s suffering, or even to inflict harm wantonly, in order to protect himself and his family. And we discover that the government’s response to this crisis can be as destructive as the crisis itself.A short scene before the opening credits is just as important. Set in 1968, the prologue features a TV interview with a scientist who explains that his greatest fear isn’t a “global pandemic” (a term that, in a moment of dark humor from Mazin and Druckmann, is defined by another guest for the blissfully ignorant ’60s audience) but rather a mind-controlling fungus that could one day thrive on a warming planet, turning humans into fiends. This, put concisely, is what the characters in “The Last of Us” are going to be dealing with: “Billions of puppets with poisoned minds.”But as Romero showed over and over again with his zombie pictures, it isn’t always the infected alone who turn monstrous. The second half of this first episode takes us to the overgrown ruins of Boston in 2023, where in a “quarantine zone” Joel is taking odd jobs — some legal, some not. He does general cleanup work for the same kind of gun-toting authoritarians who killed his kid. (In 2023, they are called “FEDRA,” for the Federal Disaster Response Agency.) And he smuggles drugs with his business and romantic partner, Tess (played by the magnificent Anna Torv, beloved of science-fiction/fantasy/horror fans from her days on “Fringe”). They are trying to scrape together enough money to buy a battery and a truck so they can reunite with the still-alive and possibly endangered Tommy in the wilds of America, where the danger of the fungus creatures is rivaled by the viciousness of roving noninfected gangs. Nowhere, it seems, is safe.If the last half of the pilot is less exciting than the first, it also has to do the hard work of setting up the rest of the series. Beyond establishing the miserable conditions of 2023, Mazin and Druckmann must introduce the show’s other leading character: Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a feisty 14-year-old who is the only known person to survive an infection — and, hence, could be the key to saving humanity. When Joel and Tess’s truck battery plan goes awry, they take an assignment from the anti-FEDRA resistance fighter Marlene (Merle Dandridge) to shepherd Ellie to one of the safe houses of her organization, the Fireflies. So the real story begins.Still, even when they’re just moving pieces into place, the creators keep adding fascinating little wrinkles that make their world and its inhabitants more multidimensional. The best touch is also the quirkiest. It seems Joel has stayed in contact with the outside world — including with Tommy — by way of encoded radio messages. With a well-thumbed volume of “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by his side, he waits to hear specific songs that signal whether it’s safe to venture beyond the Q.Z.Unfortunately, Joel and Tess have already left the apartment when the radio crackles to life and starts blaring Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again.” That’s a song from the 1980s, which is a sign that there is trouble all around. Our heroes will have to find out for themselves what bad business awaits out there. And Joel will have to see if he can live up to the song’s lyrics — or if, for the second time in his life, he will fail to save a young girl.Side QuestsBy the way, “Never Let Me Down Again” never reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts, but we can let that slide, because it’s a great song. Besides, I believe this show is a work of fiction, given that we don’t live in a 2023 where half the population has been taken over by fungi.Mazin and Druckmann do a good job of setting the stage and telling their story through visual cues and subtle dialogue rather than blunt exposition. The most devastating example is in the first Boston scene, when an injured boy stumbles into town and is immediately checked over by the authorities. We can see in the background that the boy’s fungus test is glowing red, but he is told nothing of it, promised he’ll receive a good meal and a pile of toys once they give him some medicine — “just a little needle.” Later, we see the kid’s body in a pile of corpses Joel is burning. We can fill in the rest ourselves.Full disclosure: I have never played “The Last of Us,” and I am not really a gamer (though I have spent a lot of time watching my gamer wife and gamer kids play the likes of “Breath of the Wild” and “Xenoblade Chronicles”). So as I write about the show, I will be focusing on how it works as a television series, and not on how well it does or does not adapt the game.Make sure to read the extensive coverage of “The Last of Us” that the Times has run this week, including Brian Tallerico’s primer on the show and the game, Conor Dougherty’s behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series, Douglas Greenwood’s interview with Ramsey and James Poniewozik’s review. More

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      ‘Emily in Paris’ Star Would Like Your Paris Tips

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      Lily Collins explores the city, and the world, with the help of Monocle, word searches and Norwegian coffee.Lily Collins has been “Emily in Paris” for so long that she’s expected to be a Parisian authority. Three seasons into her run as Emily Cooper, an American marketing executive on assignment in the City of Light, she spends large portions of the year in France and is constantly asked for recommendations. But she’s there to work.“I don’t have as much free time as I wish that I had to explore,” she said in a phone interview, which she conducted from her car, parked next to the road in Los Angeles before an appointment. “I’m constantly discovering new places and asking for people’s lists because I like the non-tourist spots.”Collins, 33, has been building her own list by scootering along the Seine, making regular visits to Canal Saint-Martin, and getting to know the side streets around the Clignancourt flea market. But, she admits, one of the best sights in the city is still its most famous.“Whenever I’m in the city and I look up and I see the Eiffel Tower, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still get giddy,” she says. “It’s such a feat.”Season 3 of “Emily in Paris” began streaming on Netflix last month. Collins spoke with us about Five Minute Journals, the concept of hygge and other things she gravitates to at home, in Paris and beyond. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Greeting Cards I have a box where I keep cards that I’m saving for people. Some are over 10 years old. I have people in mind and I’ll get them cards knowing that one day they’re going to have a 25th birthday and they will need this card. I love the idea that a single piece of paper can say so much about how you’ve been thinking of someone.2. Self-Portraits It’s so interesting when an artist or a photographer paints, draws or takes a self-portrait because it’s such an inside look into how someone views themselves. The late photographer Vivian Maier is a really beautiful example.3. The Five Minute Journal It gives you easy prompts to answer and helps you be aware of how you can view things in multiple different ways. Instead of saying the crap that happened to you that day and how you were so upset about something, you get to look at how you could have handled certain things throughout the day better, what you were grateful for, what you’re excited about and what’s good in your life. You also write daily affirmations and things that you would like to accomplish. It’s beautiful to look back to previous journals and see how far you’ve grown.4. Treehotel One of the bucket-list places that I’d been wanting to stay in was the Treehotel in Swedish Lapland, which is basically a collection of beautiful tree houses. Each tree house looks like something different — a bird’s nest, a U.F.O., a steel dragonfly. My husband booked us one during our honeymoon that’s high in the trees. Staying there, you get to feel like an adventurer and you get that little kid feeling that I’ve always loved.5. Word Searches I have always carried a word search book with me on flights. It’s a way to turn my mind off. They put me in a kind of meditative trance. Also, I get a weird sense of accomplishment when I complete one.6. Dried Flowers When we go to farmers’ markets, I always end up finding amazing dried flowers. I sometimes keep them for years so I can look at different flowers and remember where I got them. If I get them from a farmers’ market in a different city or in a different country, I push them in books and bring them back. They’re such romantic mementos.7. “Van Go” On the Magnolia Network show “Van Go,” Brett Lewis converts things like vans and sprinters into homes, stores, food trucks — whatever people want. It’s an interesting way to see what people need, what they want and what their aesthetics are. It’s also a look at what the core necessities are when you pare things down and what can be done in such a small space.8. Hygge I’ve always been someone who loves being cozy: cozy socks, my grandma’s cozy sweater, a fire going, playing a game with friends or family — being cozy in an environment is so important to me. When I learned about the Danish concept, hygge, I felt seen, like, oh my God, someone gets me.9. Coffee I look for coffee shops everywhere I go. In a foreign city, they can provide a sense of home and a sense of comfort. There’s a Norwegian coffee brand called Tim Wendelboe that I’ve discovered on our many trips to Denmark. It’s probably the most incredible coffee I’ve ever had.10. Monocle When we’re traveling, we sometimes schedule our trips around things we read about in Monocle magazine. Art, fashion, you name it, they have the places where residents go and that celebrate local artisans. It also can help dictate where we go next. If there’s a place that is so cool and has all these amazing places to visit that we didn’t know about, maybe that’s the next destination. More