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      ‘Washington Black’ Is a Defiantly Joyful Fable

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      Adapted from the Esi Edugyan novel, this Hulu series follows a child who escapes slavery and embarks on a life of swashbuckling adventure.As the opening scenes of “Washington Black” come into view, the narrator Sterling K. Brown tells viewers that what’s about to unfold is “the story of a boy brave enough to change the world.”In the sweeping 19th-century adventure that follows, the wide-eyed, kindhearted George Washington Black, a.k.a. Wash, escapes the Barbados sugar plantation where he has been enslaved since birth, finds freedom and romance in Canada and uses his keen intellect to make marvelous scientific breakthroughs.The eight-part series, based on Esi Edugyan’s acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name, debuts Wednesday on Hulu.As the saga bounces back and forth in time, Wash (played by Eddie Karanja) as a boy and by Ernest Kingsley Jr. as a young man) hones his prodigious artistic talents with help from Christopher Wilde (Tom Ellis), a white scientist who facilitates the boy’s escape from bondage. Wash learns crucial lessons about the world — and his socially precarious place in it — as he soars through the air in a fantastical flying machine, sails the Caribbean Sea with pirates, rides a dog sled through the Arctic tundra and dodges a relentless bounty hunter hired by his former enslaver.Brown’s production company, Indian Meadows Productions, secured the rights to the novel in 2019 and the show’s creator, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, set about transforming the transcontinental coming-of-age tale for the screen.Tom Ellis plays a scientist who facilitates the boy’s escape from bondage.Lilja Jonsdottir/DisneyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alt Comedy Is Dead. Long Live Alt Comedy!

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      The term has fallen out of fashion, but the experimental spirit of the genre lives on in the refreshingly off-kilter Brent Weinbach and Eddie Pepitone.If Nathan Fielder performed stand-up comedy, he might look something like Brent Weinbach.It’s not only that Weinbach maintains an impenetrable deadpan or seeks out awkward silence (“Round of applause if there are any gay people in the closet here tonight”) or builds jokes around overly elaborate setups. His new special, “Popular Culture” (YouTube), also exploits the central conceit of Fielder’s “The Rehearsal,” including several bits where Weinbach prepares for a future event with a practice run. To get ready for fatherhood, for instance, he acts out responses to discovering his daughter smoking marijuana. Things get weird.Weinbach’s hour, a very funny collection of eccentric impressions, oddball advice and flights of fancy, would have once been quickly classified as alternative comedy. So would the new special from Eddie Pepitone, “The Collapse” (Veeps). That term has fallen out of fashion in part because it became too vague, and yet I increasingly find myself missing it. All genre designations rely on simplifications, but they provide a useful shorthand that helps audiences navigate a vast culture.Alternative comedy meant theatrical novelty to some, indulgence to others. But for a couple of decades starting in the 1990s, it signaled something more specific. Weinbach and Pepitone, both Los Angeles-based comedians, are wildly different in sensibility, not to mention volume. Weinbach’s equanimity evokes that of a TV weatherman; Pepitone projects the chaotic energy of a thunderstorm. But they share the spirit of classic alt comedy: experimental, self-aware, at odds with conventional style and notions of success.Weinbach’s first special, which closed with his pitch-perfect impression of generic stand-up, was called “Appealing to the Mainstream” (2017). Pepitone made “For the Masses” three years later. These titles are tongue-in-cheek, pointedly.“I’m not a mainstream guy,” Pepitone says more directly in his new special, later adding that people ask him if he has seen the new Marvel movie and he balks: “I only watch extremely independent movies from places with no drinkable water.”There’s a touch of the professional wrestling heel in Eddie Pepitone’s comedy.Peter BonnelloWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Shari & Lamb Chop’: A Singular Talent Gets Her Due

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      Shari Lewis’s pioneering role in children’s television becomes clear in a new film that can be perfunctory about her life.I was a PBS-watching child, and one of the shows I loved was “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” with a theme song I could still sing for you today and an infinitely earwormy outro, “The Song That Doesn’t End.” (Sorry.) I was a little old for the show when it started airing in 1992 — I watched with my brother, who would have been a toddler around then — but no matter. The mechanics of the puppetry and ventriloquism were entrancing, and they all revolved around a curly-haired woman named Shari Lewis and her puppet friends, especially the lightly sardonic and always funny Lamb Chop.My mother told me she used to watch Shari and Lamb Chop on TV, too. But it wasn’t till I was older that I realized what a trailblazer Lewis, who died in 1998, had been over her long career. She’s the subject of Lisa D’Apolito’s light and nostalgic new documentary, “Shari & Lamb Chop” (in theaters), which is full of archival footage stretching from Lewis’s early days on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” the CBS variety show that provided her big break, through the children’s shows she hosted single-handedly (so to speak) with her puppets from the mid-1950s to 1960s, including “Facts N’ Fun,” “Shariland” and “The Shari Lewis Show.”The film explores her work in the years after “The Shari Lewis Show” was canceled, including nightclub acts, variety shows, telethons, county fairs and guest turns on various TV shows. And it chronicles her triumphant return to TV in the 1990s with “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” as well as her emergence as an advocate for children’s educational television.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stephen Colbert Laments the End of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS

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      CBS “will be ending ‘The Late Show’ in May,” Colbert told his audience on Thursday. He kept the announcement brief and light.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.End of an EraAt the top of Thursday’s “Late Night,” Stephen Colbert announced that CBS will bring the show to an end in May.The network says the cancellation was “purely a financial decision,” but there’s speculation that Colbert’s recent criticism of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was a factor. Colbert kept the announcement brief and light. When the audience booed the news, he responded with a smile, “Yeah, I share your feelings. It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”“I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I’m so grateful to the Tiffany network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home. And of course I’m grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us every night in here, out there, all around the world, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. I’m grateful to share the stage with this band, these artists over here every night. And I am extraordinarily, deeply grateful to the 200 people who work here.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“We get to do this show — we get to do this show for each other every day, all day, and I’ve had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years. And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it. And it’s a job that I’m looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months. It’s going to be fun. Y’all ready?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Epstein Edition)“Well, guys, President Trump’s handling of the Epstein files continues to dominate the news. Yeah, I wonder if we’re ever going to see the Epstein files. At this point, our best chance is if Coldplay shows them on the Jumbotron.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, the Epstein files won’t go away. Trump is so stressed, he’s like, ‘I need a vacation. What was the name of that fun island I used to go to?’” — JIMMY FALLON“President Trump said yesterday that he would rather talk about the success of his administration than the Jeffrey Epstein files. Yeah, I’m sure you would. That’s like Diddy saying he’d rather talk about his V.M.A.s — you don’t get to pick.” — SETH MEYERSWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fans React to Colbert ‘Late Show’ Cancellation With Puzzlement and Anger

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      Many questioned the timing of and motivation for the announcement, noting that Mr. Colbert hosted the most-watched show in late night television.The first people to hear that CBS was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” reacted to the news loudly, and viscerally, with a chorus of “No!” that turned into a sustained round of boos.They were sitting in the audience in the Ed Sullivan Theater in Midtown Manhattan when an emotional Mr. Colbert announced the decision at the conclusion of the taping of his Thursday night show.Among those who were watching was Claire DeSantis, 29, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After the show concluded, she said, Mr. Colbert told the audience there would be an alternate taping of the cold open.“I thought it was going to be a fun surprise,” she said.Instead, Mr. Colbert stumbled a few times on the opening line — “Oh hey, everybody!” — before delivering the announcement about the cancellation in a single take. Ms. DeSantis, who does not regularly watch the show and wanted to go for the experience, said she cried, but not everyone in the audience was in tears as they left the theater. She called her mother and roommate to tell them what had happened.“I thought this was a legacy show,” Ms. DeSantis said. “I was just really surprised that it’s just going away completely.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Is Being Canceled by CBS

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      The show will end in May, the network said, calling it “a purely financial decision.”In a decision that shocked the entertainment industry and comedy world, CBS said on Thursday that it was canceling the most-watched show in late night, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and ending a franchise that has existed for more than three decades.Mr. Colbert’s run — and “The Late Show” itself — will end in May after his contract expires.CBS executives said in a statement that the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” said the executives, who included George Cheeks, the president of CBS and a co-chief executive of Paramount, CBS’s parent. “Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”Paramount is in the midst of closing a multibillion-dollar merger with the movie studio Skydance, a deal that requires approval from the Trump administration. Paramount recently agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over an interview on “60 Minutes,” a move Mr. Colbert criticized on his show as “a big fat bribe.” The merger still requires the approval of the Federal Communications Commission.Mr. Colbert said during the taping of “The Late Show” on Thursday that he was informed of the decision on Wednesday night. When his studio audience unleashed a chorus of boos upon hearing the news, Mr. Colbert said, “Yeah, I share your feelings.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 8 Recap: Bringing Sexy Back

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      And just like that, a “Sex and the City” revival seemed to remember the first word in the franchise title.Season 3, Episode 8: ‘Happily Ever After’If anyone else had been wondering where the sex has been in this “Sex and the City” spinoff, it showed up in Episode 8.First, we have Carrie and Aidan, who were able to have sex this week because Aidan was actually able to come to New York. As he tells Carrie, once Wyatt returned from Outward Bound (which was confusing because didn’t Wyatt refuse to get on the plane?), he decided he wanted to live with only Kathy.While this is obviously sad for Papa Aidan, it’s clearly not that sad because it means he can visit with Carrie almost indefinitely. He shows up on her doorstep with tons of baggage (pun absolutely intended) in the hopes that she will clear her calendar for the day, or week, or lifetime.The two make love and then nap — a true dream — but Carrie wakes up just in time to make her meeting with her neighbor Duncan, with whom she’s swapping pages and notes. It’s strictly a working relationship, she fibs to Aidan, conveniently leaving out the Scotch-sipping and smiles they shared last week.But Aidan isn’t buying it. He is curious about Duncan, at the very least. Invite him to dinner with us! Aidan suggests, but Carrie knows better. Sharing a meal with your “boyfriend” and your “flirking” buddy kind of kills the magic on all sides.Some might cringe at the term “flirking” — a portmanteau of “work flirting” — but not me. If it becomes the Magnolia Bakery cupcakes of this franchise and trends all over the place, I’m OK with it. I think all of us have been unconsciously searching for a word to describe the way we behave with our work crushes, and we finally have it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Porter’ Is a Rich Period Drama About Labor and Dignity

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      The series is substantive, well crafted and a little melancholy, centered on a group of Black train porters in Canada in the 1920s.“The Porter” is a Canadian drama from 2022 that originally aired on the CBC in Canada and on BET+ in the United States, and it’s now available on the Roku Channel, too. The show is set in the 1920s and centers on a group of Black train porters who are trying to improve their lives, some through labor organizing and others through bootlegging.Beyond its porters, the show also follows people at a night club, a brothel, the beginnings of a medical clinic; it covers Canadian politics, American politics and railroad politics. Sure, the characters are all miraculously connected through the enchanting magic of narrative television, but the idea that one’s plight is tied to another’s is also one of the main ideas of the show. Solidarity matters — and the people who tell you that you’re one of the good ones and to slam the door behind you are the people who benefit from your exploitation, not your success. Don’t trust someone else to define dignity.It’s a show about a train, so there’s a sense of real momentum and destiny. Things are moving, and the characters are motivated, so the story feels exciting even when it’s tragic. The camera here is shaky and searching, sometimes tilting with the rocking of the train cars but also, like the characters, always scanning the scene for someone to trust, always a little unsettled.So many streaming shows feel like the TV equivalent of gray laminate Zillowcore, resigned to a lack of specialness and taste in favor of volume and repetition. Part of what’s so pleasurable about “The Porter” is how full its moments are, how crafted. There’s a melody to the clacking of its typewriters and a viciousness to the half-eaten sandwiches on its plates.“Every task is a chance to show your excellence,” says Zeke (Ronnie Rowe), our labor hero, explaining the virtue of the perfect place setting. (I’ve thought about this line every single time I’ve folded a napkin in the past three years.)There’s only one season of “The Porter,” which is a shame, but luckily it is an excellent rewatch. I like it even more now than I did when it debuted. More