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    Richard Belzer, Detective Munch on ‘Law & Order: S.V.U.,’ Dies at 78

    A stand-up comic, he called his hard-boiled character on the long-running TV drama “Lenny Bruce with a badge.”Richard Belzer, who became one of American television’s most enduring police detectives as John Munch on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and several other shows, died on Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. He was 78.The death was confirmed by Bill Scheft, a friend of Mr. Belzer. Mr. Scheft, who has been working on a documentary about Mr. Belzer’s life and career, said that the actor had suffered from circulatory and respiratory issues for years.As Detective Munch, Mr. Belzer was brainy but hard-boiled, cynical but sensitive. He wore sunglasses at night and listened to the horror stories of rape victims in stony silence. He was the kind of cop who made casual references to Friedrich Nietzsche and the novelist Elmore Leonard. He spoke in quips; when accused of being a dirty old man, he responded: “Who are you calling old?”In a 2010 interview with AARP The Magazine, Mr. Belzer — who was a stand-up comic when he was not playing Munch — described his television alter ego as “Lenny Bruce with a badge.”With Munch, Mr. Belzer found phenomenal success. In 2013, when the character was written out of “SVU” — as the “Law & Order” spinoff is often called — Mr. Belzer wrote in The Huffington Post that he had appeared as Munch in more than 500 hours of programming on 10 different shows.The character’s run began in 1993, on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and included guest appearances on “Sesame Street” and “30 Rock.”At his retirement, Mr. Belzer was often described as the actor with the longest run playing the same character on television, as well as the actor who had played the same character on the largest number of different shows.Mr. Belzer performing in Central Park in 2011. Karsten Moran for The New York TimesA life of mistreatment, misbehavior and missed opportunities prepared Mr. Belzer for his star turn as a streetwise detective.Richard Jay Belzer was born on Aug. 4, 1944, in Bridgeport, Conn. He grew up in a housing project in the city. His father, Charles, co-owned a wholesale tobacco and candy distributor, and his mother, Frances (Gurfein) Belzer, was a homemaker.“Our mother didn’t know how to love her sons appropriately,” Leonard, Mr. Belzer’s brother and a fellow comedian, told People magazine in 1993. “She always had some rationale for hitting us.”Richard added, “My kitchen was the toughest room I ever worked. I had to make my mom laugh or I’d get my ass kicked.”She died of cancer, and Charles died by suicide before Mr. Belzer turned 25. Leonard jumped from the roof of his Upper West Side apartment building and died in 2014.Mr. Belzer routinely fought authority. “I was thrown out of every school I ever went to,” he told AARP. He served in the army for a little under a year, then received a discharge on psychiatric grounds after repeatedly injuring himself.He went on to work as a truck driver, jewelry salesman, dress salesman, dock worker, census taker and reporter for The Bridgeport Post. In that job, he dreamed of becoming a serious writer — but instead spent his free time dealing drugs.In 1971, Mr. Belzer answered an ad in The Village Voice for auditions for a sketch show, and soon enough he found himself performing stand-up. In 1975, he began working as a warm-up comic for the “Saturday Night Live” audience, but his friend Lorne Michaels did not invite him to join the cast. Mr. Belzer accused Mr. Michaels of breaking a promise to him — a charge Mr. Michaels did not comment on to People.Absent fame or fortune, Mr. Belzer became the bohemian prince of New York City comedy. His fans included Robert De Niro, John Belushi and Richard Pryor. Mr. Belzer gained renown for working the crowd, which often meant insults — labeling, for instance, the bejeweled get-up of a drunk audience member as “Aztec pimp” — but could also include his attempting to start a brawl.He held court at an Upper East Side club called Catch a Rising Star, where he was given an hourlong slot on a nightly basis. In 1981, a Rolling Stone profile described him as spending his final three dollars on a taxi to his set, performing while on quaaludes and mocking a famous talent manager in the audience.“On the outside, he was still ‘The Belz,’ in shades and black leather punk jacket, coke-dealer thin, lupine, always cool and relentlessly self-assured,” David Hirshey and Jay Lovinger wrote. But on the inside, he was “scared” — 37 years old and still struggling to afford meals.Mr. Belzer performing his stand-up act in 1988 at Caroline’s comedy club in New York.Catherine McGann/Getty ImagesHis life began turning around in the mid-1980s, when Mr. Belzer survived testicular cancer, quit drugs and married Harlee McBride, a former Playboy model and actress.In 1990, he found financial stability in a characteristically absurd and brutal fashion. Five years earlier, Hulk Hogan, demonstrating a wrestling move on Mr. Belzer on TV, knocked out the comic and dropped him headfirst to the ground. An out-of-court settlement enabled Mr. Belzer and Ms. McBride to buy a home in France, which they called variously the Hulk Hogan Estate and Chez Hogan.His career took off after he began appearing as Detective Munch on “Homicide,” when he was nearly 50 years old.Mr. Belzer’s first two marriages — to Gail Susan Ross and Dalia Danoch — ended in divorce. He is survived by Ms. McBride; two stepdaughters, Bree and Jessica Benton; and six step-grandchildren.Mr. Belzer came to own two homes in the south of France, and he built a basketball court at one of them. He enjoyed shooting baskets and waiting for one of his dogs to collect the rebounds. He read up on Roman history and visited ancient ruins.At the start of his career in television, he spoke happily about leaving behind his romantic, rough-and-tumble years in stand-up comedy.“I tell you,” he said to People, “I won’t miss making drunks laugh at 2 in the morning.” More

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    Marc Maron, Roseanne Barr and Nathan Macintosh Have New Specials

    In the mix this month are hour sets from a maturing Marc Maron, a very funny Nathan Macintosh and a pandering Roseanne Barr.Marc Maron, ‘From Bleak to Dark’HBO MaxIn his new hour, Marc Maron says he refuses to outgrow blaming his parents for his problems. “They did it,” he grumbles, concisely. His graying hair bouncing off a dark leather jacket, Maron, 59, has remained a vital comic voice by staying in touch with his inner brooding teen. And yet, don’t be fooled: Maron is maturing. His comedy has become more intricate, varied in timing and tone, and politically astute. After decades of leaning over stools, his years of touring theaters — and perhaps film work — have turned him into more of a showman, with a repertoire of small scenes, satires (his spoof of the TED Talk is pitch perfect) and act-outs.The emotional centerpiece of his new special is the 2020 death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. Here is where he really shows his evolution, because he handles this passage with a light touch, humbly and without the melodramatic negativity of his title. What stands out is his lack of philosophizing or waxing poetic. There’s a lot of art, including comedy, that exploits the gravity of death. And why not? Our greatest play, “Hamlet,” is about a neurotic, grief-struck young man who can’t stop obsessing over the death of a loved one. But Maron brings an older man’s perspective. He tells us he’s not the victim. Shelton is. He calls his loss ordinary, common. Can art help? People send him “The Year of Magical Thinking,” and it does nothing for him except make him compare himself unfavorably to Joan Didion.What does help, he says, is “the Jewish thing.” Maron has long been fascinated by religion and spirituality, but this hour is his most Jewish by far, featuring the most jokes on the religion, including punch lines about the Holocaust and antisemitism. He says he finds solace in the Jewish epithet “May her memory be a blessing.” This phrase, dating at least to the Talmud, contrasts with the Jewish stereotypes of neurosis and kvetching. Maron pokes fun at the idea of him doing an emotional Jewish one-man show about the death of his girlfriend, but in a way, he has done it — or at least, his version. Looking to the wisdom of religion is perhaps the most hack move possible, but one of the things you learn as you get older is that clichés exist for a reason.Nathan Macintosh, ‘Money Never Wakes’YouTubeWhen it comes to stand-up specials, it’s a “best of times, worst of times” situation. There have never been more being made, released and available to a global audience than right now. According to Sean McCarthy’s newsletter Piffany, there have already been 55 released this year — more than one a day. While most hours are terrible, rote or entirely mediocre, there are gems that would have remained entirely obscure in previous eras.Take Nathan Macintosh, an inauspicious-looking blond guy dressed in khaki pants, a white T-shirt and a button down. His new hour did not get picked up by any major platform, but you can watch it free on YouTube and, if you’re like me, convulse with laughter. His jokes won’t translate well to the page because his delivery is so eccentrically goofy while still managing a momentum that keeps building and building. His main mode is end-of-your-rope exasperation, with eyes popping, voice squeaking and a jittery physicality. He can be funny on mute.The panic in his voice is a perfect match for his preoccupation: The confusing way money works and the infuriating inequities of class. That makes him sound didactic, but his jokes stay close to the ground and unexpected, sympathizing with much-mocked figures like landlords or subway drivers. There’s a novelistic detail in his description of his own apartment, with rats scurrying above the ceiling. (“Have you ever heard rats above you having a better life?”) His self-loathing bit on losing money on crypto is a wonderful time capsule of our moment.But his funniest jokes are about the pampered rich, whom he portrays as aliens speaking to one another and oblivious of everyone else. In dark comic set pieces, they are forced into contact with ordinary people, who must treat them with extreme deference. He acts out one scene in which a rich person complains about his chicken being cold at a fancy restaurant. The manager says with practiced professionalism, “Look, we’ll have the waiter murdered in front of his family.”Roseanne Barr, ‘Cancel This!’Fox NationIn the oral history “We Killed: The Rise of Women in Comedy,” Roseanne Barr explained how she adjusted her stand-up act in the 1980s to fit in with comedy clubs. “I had to make it less political and more mainstream,” she said. This clearly worked. Barr became one of the most successful comics in history, turning her fed-up housewife persona into one of the best sitcoms of the era. But now, several years after an offensive tweet led to her being fired from a reboot of that show, Barr has adjusted again by becoming more political, aggressively courting right-wing audiences as a conspiracy-minded victim of cancel culture.Her new special, which arrives on the Fox Nation streaming service, feels like a mix of rally and fan convention, with some stand-up sprinkled on top. Barr, who alternates between long pauses and flashes of anger, gets an applause break from saying “Baby blood drinking Democrat community” and a big laugh from “I don’t want to talk to no Hillary donors.” It’s a balky production, with abrupt edits and occasional tangents that belong more to the green room than the stage, like an extended gripe about doing promos for her sitcom.It’s the culture war material, though, that gets her crowd fired up. She berates #MeToo victims, suggests that taking the vaccine will prevent you from getting pregnant, and in bemoaning the decline of men, orders the ones in her audience to tell their wives and girlfriends to sit down, shut up and make them a sandwich. Barr says she plans to offend, but this has become another pander, since obviously her crowd loves the grievances, the resentments. She even clarifies that she likes doing promos for Fox.Watch Barr’s early sets and you will find not only a quick comic mind, but also tightly written jokes. Neither appear here. Of course, it’s not just Barr who has changed. Comedy has, too. The scene is more political, polarized, desperate for outrage. Jim Jeffries prefaces the trans jokes in his new Netflix special by saying he’s doing them because he wants the press that Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais received. I’m sure he’d say it’s a joke, but I believe it. When Barr trots out a stale gag about gender, riffing on the question “What is a woman?” she gets a predictable roar. It’s a reminder that Barr once ran for president, and how much comedy and politics have blurred. Cheap nostalgia can be powerful in both arenas. At one point, Barr jokes, “The world has changed a lot since I was alive.” More

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    Milo Ventimiglia on the ‘Honest Deception’ of ‘The Company You Keep’

    In his first regular TV role since the hit series “This is Us,” the actor plays a character who is himself a kind of actor: a charming con man.Milo Ventimiglia reached television stardom during the age of cable and streaming dominance. But his signature shows, including “Heroes,” “Gilmore Girls” and “This Is Us,” have all aired free of charge on network TV.And that’s just the way he likes it.“I’m a product of broadcast television,” Ventimiglia said in a recent video call. “I like the idea that anyone can turn their TV on and watch the show.”“People want to give exclusivity,” he added. “I prefer inclusivity.”Ventimiglia’s newest venture, “The Company You Keep,” based on the Korean series “My Fellow Citizens!,” follows suit, but with a twist on his usual handsome charmer persona. Premiering Sunday on ABC, the series tells the story of Charlie Nicoletti, the main talent in a family of Baltimore con artists that also includes his sister, Birdie (Sarah Wayne Callies); his dad, Leo (William Fichtner); and his mom, Fran (Polly Draper). It’s Ventimiglia’s first starring vehicle since the hugely popular “This is Us” ended its six-year run last year. (He is also an executive producer.)A smooth operator and skilled thief, Charlie finds himself facing changes bad and good as the series opens. The family, which owns a neighborhood bar as a front for their capers, has just been burned on a job, owing mostly to Charlie’s carelessness. The consequences are dire. Reeling from his mistake, Charlie falls into the arms and bed of Emma (Catherine Haena Kim). They’re a very secretive couple, especially with each other. She is a C.I.A. agent. He’s a con man.Unbeknown to them, their jobs are about to converge. It’s love, and lust, at first sight. Trust, however, is another matter.“It’s a different kind of communication when you are playing two people that are fundamentally in love, but there are a lot of obstacles to their being together,” he said. “I think it mostly comes down to communicating vulnerability.”Reeling from a mistake, Ventimiglia’s character, Charlie, falls into the arms and bed of Emma (Catherine Haena Kim), a C.I.A. agent.Eric McCandless/ABCVentimiglia, 45, was drawn to Charlie’s duality. “As a barkeep, he’s unremarkable, a simple neighborhood guy,” he said. “But as a con artist, he has to adapt and change shape and become somebody else believably, as a real human being, not a caricature.”Ventimiglia discussed the art of the con, moving on from “This Is Us” and why he looks to help military veterans however he can. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was the transition from “This Is Us” like?I brought over about 90 percent of the “This Is Us” crew. For me, it was always them that made the show. It wasn’t just the subject matter. It wasn’t just those beautiful Dan Fogelman scripts that he and the writers crafted. It was the different departments, everything from camera to grips, electric, art departments, transportation, craft services, the folks that were feeding us. There was a lot of magic in that show, and I loved bringing that team over. I miss Fogelman, and I miss aspects of production. But because of the crew, there was no real loss.That was such a beloved show. Why do you think it struck a nerve in so many viewers?I think it had a commonality. Viewers were able to see themselves inside of a lot of the characters. It wasn’t built for one lane. It didn’t fall under any particular genre. It was just a show about everyone.The original title was “36,” which was the birthday that Jack and the three kids were celebrating. But Dan Fogelman kept toying with this idea: This is us and us and us. And it just makes sense. That’s what the show was about. It was about all of us, every single one of us. That always felt like the appeal: Everybody could relate to the life that was lived in those characters.I Imagine people often identify you with Jack.I remember once I was getting off a plane and a guy stopped me and said, “Hey, you’re that guy from that show.” I said: “Yes, sir, I am. Nice to meet you.” And he goes, “Man, you’re my Tuesday night.” I thought, wow. Every Tuesday, this guy sits down and he hangs out with me and my co-stars on the show. There’s something really rewarding about that when you know an audience member is giving you time.How do you approach playing a con man? It’s interesting that the word “con” comes from “confidence,” which Charlie definitely has.To be an actor, you’ve got to be confident in what you do, but you can’t cross that line and be cocky because you get knocked right down. And you’ve got to be confident as a con man to get people to do what you want need.With the cons that we’ve been setting up, and the characters that Charlie plays within those cons, it’s exciting and it’s fun. It’s given me an opportunity to stretch, not just playing one part, but playing several parts through a season.“At 45 years old, I feel like I’m just getting started,” Ventimiglia said. “That’s a good feeling.”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesCharlie is kind of an actor in that sense.Totally. Either that or I’m realizing that acting is absolutely a con. When I was a little younger, I used to joke and say, “I lie for a living.” Then it turned into, “I wear makeup and read lines for a living.” Now, in a way, I’m back to what feels like an honest deception.How do you think the secrecy of the characters translates to the performances?It’s funny, in real life, romantic partners tend to under-talk things until they realize they need therapy. On set, we’re over-talking things for absolute transparency and communication to find the best possible solution that works for [Kim’s] character, my character, and then ultimately the show.You have worked with and supported several veterans organizations, including the U.S.O., Team Rubicon and America’s Gold Star Families. What is the source of that passion?My dad was a Vietnam War veteran, so I think I always had this understanding of the community from that point of view, and from studying the war. But having never served in uniform, I asked myself how I could serve the community. The work is never done. But I think it’s a community to which we owe a lot of gratitude. I nearly went into the Navy when I was 18. I had this grand idea that I was going to be flying jets because I grew up on “Top Gun.” But then I took a different path.When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?I’d always put on plays and stuff when I was a little kid. And I remember when award shows still felt glamorous, and I would hear Whoopi Goldberg talk to the camera at the end of the Oscars, when she was hosting, saying, “Maybe one day you’ll be on this stage.” That inspired me. I’d see an actor putting on a character, and then I’d see him putting on a different character. You’d see Michael Keaton as Mr. Mom. Then you’d see Michael Keaton as Batman. You’re like, Oh, it’s Batman. But no, it’s Mr. Mom.It was all an understanding that these people are playing different roles, and that is the profession of acting. How do you do that? How do you make those roles so convincing that you get to do the next one? It’s weird. At 45 years old, I feel like I’m just getting started. That’s a good feeling. More

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    Late Night Weighs in on President Biden’s Annual Physical

    Jimmy Fallon joked that Vice President Kamala Harris “seemed a little too eager to hear the results.”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.So Far, So GoodPresident Joe Biden received a clean bill of health after his annual physical at Walter Reed on Thursday.Late night hosts used the opportunity to poke fun at Biden’s age. Jimmy Fallon joked that Vice President Kamala Harris “seemed a little too eager to hear the results.”“Yeah, it’s never good when the doctor examining you is like, ‘I don’t know if they even make these parts anymore.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, the exam was going great until Biden confused the eye chart for a teleprompter.” — JIMMY FALLON“The White House said Biden’s exam took three hours. It’s never good when your physical has an intermission, you know what I’m saying? Nothing says ‘peak physical condition’ like a doctor’s visit with the same running time as ‘Avatar 2.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fit as a Fiddle Edition)“So today, Joe Biden had his annual physical. It was a clean bill of health, although his X-ray did reveal several classified documents. Gotta look everywhere.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The presidential physical is pretty thorough. They do a colonoscopy, blood tests, and, as part of the dental exam, Biden pulls Air Force One with his teeth.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The physician reported that the president remains healthy and vigorous. That’s right, you tuned in to this show to be entertained, and you are hearing about an 80-year-old man’s doctor visit.” — JAMES CORDEN“Between the F.B.I. search and undergoing a physical, this is a huge week for Biden getting probed.” — JAMES CORDEN“This seems like one of the worst parts of being the president of the United States, just having the entire country know your height, weight and that you’ve got some kind of weird rash.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper found out where Republican voters stood on Donald Trump at a recent rally for Nikki Haley, Trump’s first declared rival for the presidential nomination.Also, Check This OutIn the revival, all of the original main characters (except for Casey, played by Lizzy Caplan, not pictured) are either pulled back into cater waiting or never stopped.StarzThe all-star sleeper hit comedy series “Party Down” returns for a new season 14 years after the comedy first premiered on Starz. More

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    Ryan Seacrest Is Leaving ‘Live with Kelly and Ryan’

    The Hollywood multitasker provided a steady hand at a somewhat tumultuous time for the talk show. He will be replaced by Mark Consuelos, the husband of “Live” co-host Kelly Ripa.Ryan Seacrest announced on Thursday that he was leaving “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” the syndicated morning talk show mainstay that he has hosted with Kelly Ripa since 2017.Ms. Ripa said Thursday on the show that a familiar face, and frequent guest host — her husband, Mark Consuelos — would assume co-hosting duties. The show will now be known as “Live With Kelly and Mark.”“I’m so grateful to have spent the last six years beside my dear friend of too many decades to count and will miss starting my days with Ryan,” Ms. Ripa said in a statement. “Ryan’s energy, passion and love for entertainment is one of a kind.”Mr. Seacrest, a Hollywood multitasker, arrived at “Live” after a one-year search, and provided a steady hand at a somewhat tumultuous time for the show. In 2016, when Mr. Seacrest’s predecessor, Michael Strahan, announced that he was leaving the show for “Good Morning America,” Ms. Ripa felt blindsided and that the Walt Disney Company — which syndicates the show — was favoring its morning show franchise over her longtime talk show, which she has co-hosted since 2001. She walked off the show, setting off a tabloid feeding frenzy.Mr. Seacrest’s arrival nearly coincided with what seemed at the time to be a formidable rival: NBC was giving Megyn Kelly a 9 a.m. talk show, and investing tens of millions of dollars in it.Although Ms. Kelly’s morning show could veer dark — “Megyn Kelly Today” often ran segments on topics like revenge porn and sexual harassment — Ms. Ripa and Mr. Seacrest kept it light, providing a soothing antidote to the divisive Trump years. Ms. Kelly’s show was trounced by “Live” in the ratings and was canceled roughly a year after it started.“Live,” which started in the 1980s as a New York talk show co-hosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, has long centered on a simple concept: two hosts chatting about their lives, and bringing in celebrities for breezy interviews.“The hosts have changed, but the overall concept continues on: two people, a man and a woman, and enjoying the chemistry between them,” said Michael Gelman, the longtime executive producer, in a 2017 interview.“Live” has been the top-rated daytime talk show among women ages 25 to 54, a demographic important to advertisers, for more than a year.Mr. Seacrest will continue hosting the show until the spring, and will also continue hosting “American Idol,” ABC said. He said in a statement that working with Ms. Ripa for the last six years had been a “dream job.”“It’s been a memorable ride, and now I’m excited to pass the baton to Kelly’s ‘real’ husband, Mark,” he said. More

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    ‘Hello Tomorrow!’ Review: It’s Only a Paper Moon

    This comedy about hustlers selling lunar condos launches with visual pizazz. The emotions take longer to land.“The moon belongs to everyone,” declared “The Best Things in Life Are Free.” This was an easy enough sentiment to sing in 1927, before anybody planted a flag up there.In “Hello Tomorrow!,” a 10-episode comedy starting Friday on Apple TV+, Jack Billings (Billy Crudup), a traveling real-estate salesman, would like to offer you different terms. The moon, or at least a piece of it, can be yours for zero down and $150 a month, courtesy of Brightside Lunar Residences. Just don’t look too closely at the fine print.Is he selling a chance at a better life, or just a load of green cheese? What’s striking is not only how well Jack, with his spit-shined zeal, sells his earthbound customers on his blue-sky pitch; it’s how deeply he believes himself. “Hello Tomorrow!” spins out a galaxy of deceptions both personal and professional, devised by Jack and those around him, to show how the most powerful and important lies are the ones you tell yourself.The first thing that catches your eye about “Hello Tomorrow!” is, well, everything. While its conflicts are familiar — too much so, at times — it is visually unlike anything you’ve seen on TV outside “The Jetsons.” The creators, Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen, have conceived an alternative, future-past Earth that looks like an illustrator was hired to design a space-themed malt-shop menu in 1955 and got hopped up on bennies.Tin-can robots in avocado green and goldenrod yellow float about serving drinks and spraying shrubbery. Deliveries arrive to ticky-tacky suburban houses in a hover-van “driven” by a cartoon-video bird. A paperboy pulls a wagon that shoots today’s news out of pneumatic cannons.Some things haven’t changed, however: Money is still green and foldable and the source of heartache. The rich still get richer, and now they also have the moon as a luxury playground. To everyone else it’s a taunt, one more shiny thing that someone else gets to touch.The opening scene plays like a Buck Rogers burlesque of the “Mad Men” pilot. Jack sidles up to a miserable barfly (Michael Harney) and fires up his pitch, producing a rock from his pocket that he says came all the way from the lunar Sea of Serenity. “Wow,” his mark says. “That,” answers Jack, “is the one word none of us can live without.”From left, Dewshane Williams, Nicholas Podany and Hank Azaria play Jack’s sales team.Apple TV+Jack himself leads a distinctly wow-less life, as do his sales associates. Eddie (Hank Azaria) is an unlucky gambler who believes that “desperation is a salesman’s greatest asset.” Herb (Dewshane Williams) is an anxious expectant father of twins. Shirley (Haneefah Wood), Jack’s right-hand woman, sees through his upbeat blarney but is herself cheating on her husband with Eddie.Jack’s own personal secret is Don Draper-sized: He abandoned his wife and baby years ago. When a tragedy brings Jack to his old hometown, he longs to reconnect with his now-grown son, Joey (Nicholas Podany), the only way he knows how: deceitfully, by offering Joey a sales job without identifying himself as Joey’s father. That lie, and the questionable machinations of the moon-condo business, are the twin nuclear reactors that power the first season.“Hello Tomorrow!” is a hell of a looker. Its midcentury-modern version of steampunk — chromepunk? — is packed with analog-tech wonders like self-popping popcorn buckets at a ballgame. But the early episodes left me wondering if there was anything behind its polished facade.“Pleasantville”-style spoofs of 1950s suburbia have been done to death. The society of “Hello Tomorrow!” is not exactly Eisenhower-era America; on the one hand, it’s casually racially integrated, but on the other, women still hold pre-Betty Friedan housewife roles. There are vague references to a past “war” and hints that automation has cost some people their jobs and purpose, but no explanation of how technology has made the world so small while leaving America so homogeneous.In general, “Hello Tomorrow!” breezes past the world-building, hoping, not unlike Jack, that you’ll get too caught up in the pretty pictures to worry about the details. And damned if it doesn’t work, some of the time.Crudup is marvelously cast, letting Jack’s inner aches occasionally slip past his practiced smile. (Among a slew of quirky supporting performances, Susan Heyward is an absolute pip as Herb’s shrewd wife, Betty.) The season builds screwball momentum as Jack and company try to outrun the consequences of their choices.But the series is so stylized, not just in the design but also in the performances and the “Guys and Dolls” dialogue, that the characters often feel cartoony and unconvincing. Alison Pill, as a customer determined to expose Jack as a fraud, is like a black-and-white floor-wax commercial come to life. The sales staff’s various personal conflicts are weightless and one-note.Alison Pill stars as a customer convinced that Jack is a fraud.Apple TV+What is thoroughly, achingly real is the pervasive theme of lies and why people tell them. Falsehoods are an effective plot engine, of course, but here they are also about character; they’re the sad, sleazy cousins of wishes.The deeper you get into Jack’s business and personal deceptions, the more you realize that every character here — even the most upright — is lying to someone, or to themselves, in the sad belief that voicing the lie can somehow make it true. Underneath the show’s sleek shine is a story of beat-up dreamers trying to convince themselves that, with one lucky break, they might lasso the moon.You could ask whether they might be better off being honest with themselves, just as you could ask whether Jack couldn’t make a simpler living by selling some nice encyclopedias. But “Hello Tomorrow!” suggests that deceptions, self- and otherwise, are the rocket fuel that keeps us moving through an otherwise indifferent universe. “What’s life without a dream to make it go down easy?” Jack asks. It’s the oldest story under the sun. More

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    Jason Alexander Will Direct a Comedy on Broadway This Summer

    “The Cottage,” written by Sandy Rustin, will star Eric McCormack, Laura Bell Bundy and Lilli Cooper.“The Cottage,” a farce inspired by and also sending up the work of Noël Coward, will come to Broadway this summer in a new production directed by the “Seinfeld” alum Jason Alexander.The play, which has had several productions in small theaters over the last decade, will star Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”), Laura Bell Bundy (“Legally Blonde”) and Lilli Cooper (“Tootsie”).“The Cottage” is a British farce by an American writer, Sandy Rustin, whose murder mystery drama, “Clue” (adapted from the board-game-based film), is now among the most-produced plays in the United States.Set in England in 1923, the comedy is set off by the revelation of an extramarital affair that brings a group of interconnected people together at a country house.It was first staged in 2013 at the Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens, and has since had productions in Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, and Florida, as well as on Long Island, and it has been optioned for television.Alexander directed a reading of the play in 2016 and led a developmental workshop in 2017. This production will be his Broadway directing debut, but he has appeared on Broadway in six shows and won a Tony Award for starring in “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.”“The Cottage” is scheduled to begin performances July 7 at the Hayes Theater, with the opening scheduled for July 24. It is a commercial production, renting space from a nonprofit; the lead producers are Victoria Lang and Ryan Bogner, who last collaborated on the stage adaptation of “The Kite Runner” that ran on Broadway last year.This summer is shaping up to be an unusually busy one for Broadway: “The Cottage” is the fifth show to announce a summer opening thus far, joining the musicals “Back to the Future,” “Here Lies Love” and “Once Upon a One More Time” and the play “Purlie Victorious.” More

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    ‘Party Down’ Is Back. Did You R.S.V.P.?

    The invitations have been sent, the appetizers plated, the bottles opened. Rows of glasses gleam like baby stars. And somewhere, on the fringes of the celebration, a cater waiter is about to do something very wrong.This was the template of “Party Down,” a Starz comedy that ran for two 10-episode seasons, debuting in the spring of 2009. Canceled just as critics and niche audiences were beginning to catch on, the show followed the disaffected employees of a mid-tier catering company as they moved from party to party, one per episode, filching booze, seducing guests, snorting coke,  flirting with Nazism and accidentally poisoning George Takei.The original 20 episodes never included a surprise party. But get your streamers and party blowers ready. Because in a surprise to just about everyone — most likely including the folks at Nielsen, who once awarded the show’s finale a 0.0 rating among 18- to 49-year-olds — “Party Down” is back. A six-episode revival will premiere on Starz on Feb. 24, with new episodes arriving weekly.Martin Starr, a returning cast member, seemed to genuinely marvel at the development.“This was the only show I’ve worked on where people came to work when they weren’t working,” he said in a group video call. “It’s crazy that we get to come back and do it again.”“Truth be told,” his co-star Ken Marino said, “the reason I came back to set when I wasn’t working is I was between homes.”Starr: “I do remember you were finding places to go to the bathroom that maybe didn’t have your name.”Marino: “I still do. I’m going to the bathroom right now.”Is this the same “Party Down” that failed to dominate cable television over a dozen years ago? Mostly. The show’s original creators, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, Rob Thomas and Paul Rudd, remain, as executive producers, and Enbom oversees a small staff of writers. The party-a-week structure also endures, as does the original cast — with the exception, based on the five episodes provided in advance, of Lizzy Caplan.In the revival, all of the original main characters (except for Casey, played by Lizzy Caplan, not pictured) are either pulled back into cater waiting or never stopped. Starz“All of us, for the entire 13 years since we stopped shooting the show, all we wanted to do is make more ‘Party Down,’” the show’s lead, Adam Scott (“Parks and Recreation,” “Severance”), said in a separate interview last month. “We all would have been there for free.”But the world has changed in the dozen or so years since the original run was canceled. So have the actors. Unknowns or barely knowns when the show debuted, most have since become household names. (The others? Depends on the household.) And they’ve all seen the current crop of disappointing reboots and reprises. “Party Down” could just be the rare show to get it right, mixing the perfect cocktail of star power, nostalgia, growth and gags.Then again, the characters never put a lot of muscle into bartending. So here’s a Zen koan for a deeply un-Zen show: Can you throw the same party twice?Are we having fun yet?The first run of “Party Down” was both structural marvel and joke spectacular. Each episode was simultaneously a workplace comedy, a hangout comedy and a procedural — a sitcom that never sat down. The celebrations it featured — birthdays, after parties — typically bordered the entertainment industry and nearly all of the cater waiters harbored industry dreams of their own.Those dreams eluded them, which fueled the philosophical inquiry at the show’s center.“What we were asking was: How long do you chase the dream?” Thomas, one of the creators, said. “When do you grow up? When do you quit banging your head against the wall?”The “Party Down” staff are all trying to make it, as actors, screenwriters and comedians. (Marino’s Ron, the manager, has a different dream: a Soup ’R Crackers franchise.) Only Henry (Scott), who has traded beer-commercial celebrity for free-floating despair, has opted out. The actors were trying back then to make it, too. None of the original cast — Caplan, Ryan Hansen, Jane Lynch, Marino, Scott, Starr — were anything like famous when the show began. Acting in a comedy about the entertainment industry’s has-beens, also-rans and never-wills resonated with the cast, sometimes uncomfortably.“It felt so close to home, this show, because I felt like I could be a caterer the next day easily,” Hansen said.Scott, who at the time had yet to play a lead, then shared that sense of career tenuousness. The cast felt deeply connected to the show in those first seasons, he said, and protective of it. “We just wanted to do it forever, because it made us feel better,” he said. “It really did.”“All of us, for the entire 13 years since we stopped shooting the show, all we wanted to do is make more ‘Party Down,’” Scott, fourth from left, said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThe salaries, though small, kept a few of the actors on the sunny side of financial precarity. The camaraderie helped, too. (That camaraderie remains; I had four of the actors together on a video call, and I have never heard grown men exchange so many “Love yous.”) Several actors separately compared the original shoot to summer camp.That genuine affection altered the show’s tone. Some first season episodes included “edgy” humor — gay jokes, post-racial jokes. (“It’s cringey, yeah,” Starr said.) But the creators quickly realized they didn’t need that edge. The show was sadder than that. Funnier, too. The characters are screw-ups, sure, but the show suggests that everyone is a screw-up, especially after an hour at an open bar. So maybe the best thing is to find common cause as you pass the hors d’oeuvres.“It’s about people who think that they’re going to find happiness in something out there,” Lynch said. “But what they have right in front of them is really quite sweet.”Lynch shot the first eight episodes. Then she had to leave for the Fox show “Glee.” Marino hired a stripper for her wrap party. The stripper, Lynch recalled, smelled of French fries. The show went on, with Jennifer Coolidge replacing Lynch for two episodes and Megan Mullally, the only actor who was already well-known, coming in for the final 10.The creators believed that it would keep going, even though, according to Nielsen, the Season 2 finale attracted only 74,000 viewers. Starz had other plans. Those plans didn’t involve letting the creators take the show elsewhere. “Party Down” languished.One decade, zero dinnersIf the original run argued that it’s healthier to let some dreams die, the creators and the cast could never quite manage that. There were talks, every year or so, of getting the crew back together — for a special, for a movie, for a move to another network. Friends and fans often asked Marino about it.“I was like, ‘They’re working on it,’” he said. “‘It’s going to happen! Right around the corner!’” It took him eight or nine years to accept that maybe that corner wasn’t coming.Then in 2019, Starz appointed Jeffrey Hirsch as its new president and chief executive. Thomas reached out to Hirsch and began pitching the show again. Hard. This time, Starz said yes.That was only the first hurdle. The actors had conflicts and prior commitments now. The revival was approved in the summer of 2021, with production scheduled for early 2022. Lynch was to begin rehearsing a Broadway musical. Scott was making the Apple TV+ show “Severance.” Mullally had booked a movie being shot in Idaho.Somehow a six-week window was found, even though that window involved flying Mullally to Los Angeles every weekend and back to Sun Valley by Monday.When “Party Down” debuted in 2009, none of the main cast were anything like famous.StarzIn the new season, the main cast has become more diverse, with the inclusion of two new regulars: Zoë Chao, second from left, and Tyrel Jackson Williams, far right.Starz“We could never get together for dinner for a decade,” Etheridge, a creator, said. “But when we came to shoot the show, everybody was there.”Everybody except for Caplan, who had signed onto the FX series “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” (Asked whether Caplan might make a surprise appearance in Episode 6, Starz declined to comment.) Enbom had originally structured this new season around the on-again-off-again relationship between Henry and Caplan’s Casey. He had to restructure it, adding a new character, a studio executive played by Jennifer Garner. The revival’s first episode takes time out to heckle Caplan: Casey, now a successful comedian, can’t make a crew reunion.“She’s shooting in New York,” Starr’s Roman, still an aspiring “hard sci-fi” writer, says. “Too big time for the likes of us.”There were fewer jokes in real life. Hansen tried to make light of the situation. “Listen, we get it,” he said. “She had a job, whatever. I mean, I personally turned down a Marvel movie to do ‘Party Down.’”“Tell that to everybody,” he added.But just about everyone described themselves as heartbroken, including Caplan. “If I think about it for too long, I start to cry,” she wrote in an email. She sent cupcakes to the shoot.The bow tie abidesHollywood has transformed in the years since “Party Down” first concluded, and in some ways the show has, too. Gratuitous boobs are gone now. And the catering crew, once blindingly white, has become more diverse with the inclusion of two new regulars: Sackson, a YouTube-style content creator played by Tyrel Jackson Williams, and Lucy, a chef played by Zoë Chao who styles herself as a “food artist.”Yet, the sweet-sour, slightly funky flavor of “Party Down” — like a margarita made with off-brand liquor — is mostly unaltered. This seems to be the rare revival that understands what made the original work, yet can still move (or move just enough to include the occasional TikTok dance challenge) with the times.“We kept doing what we’d always been doing, just with new details,” Enbom said. “Because society certainly has not changed into a more wholesome place.”Have the returning characters changed? That depends on how much you and your therapist believe that change is possible. “They’re still the same lovable knuckleheads,” Mullally said. “Most of these people haven’t really moved on, or they haven’t really become any happier, or more fulfilled in their lives.”Friends and fans often asked Marino, top left, whether the series would be revived. “I was like, They’re working on it!,” he said. “Right around the corner!” It took nearly 13 years.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesSlinging hors d’oeuvres hits different and more darkly in midlife. Still, the creators and the cast didn’t want the revival to feel like a bummer.“It’s going to be fun watching the characters try to claw their way toward something other than their current circumstances,” Scott promised.And if not exactly “fun,” then certainly relatable. “Really who gets what they want in this life?” Lynch said.She probably meant that rhetorically. But the “Party Down” die-hards, Lynch included, did get what they wanted, a third season. And they seem to have delighted in making it, though Marino joked that he’d had to slim down before he could fit into his signature pink bow tie.“Had to work off that neck fat,” he said. “Got my neck nice and lean.”Slipping on that outfit was a little more stressful for Chao, a newcomer. She had watched the show, years after its debut, while working a food-service survival job herself. “Party Down” had made her feel less alone. She didn’t want to ruin it. “I whispered to myself every day, going onto set, ‘Be the least funny, but by as little as possible,’” she said.Williams expressed similar gratitude and anxiety. “Everyone was so sweet and welcoming from the very beginning,” he said. “It never felt like an intimidating environment.” And yet, he added, “there was still like this insane fear.”The returning cast faced related, if less acute, worries. They have been in the business long enough to understand how revivals can go wrong. (A few of them had even appeared in revivals that flopped.) But they were reassured by the scripts, written by Enbom and a small staff, which suggested a continuity of character and tone and food-poisoning-induced body horror. There was also the pleasure of being together again — a little older, a little grayer, but still able to drop a tray on cue.Will the ratings for this coming season be better? Comfortingly, they can’t get much worse. But the cast and creative team are counting on the show’s turning enough heads that Starz will greenlight a fourth season. (“You better believe I’m not missing that one,” Caplan wrote.)Though Starr is inclined to cynicism, he sounded only mildly sardonic in discussing this ambition. “I really do hope we’re allowed to come back and do it again and keep up this little charade we’ve got going,” he said.Hansen put it a bit more pragmatically. “In 12 years, people are going to love Season 3.” More