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      Stephen Colbert Recaps Jan. 6 Hearings’ ‘Episode One’

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      He called the prime time congressional hearings “this summer’s most compelling drama.”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.The First EpisodeLate night hosts weighed in on the first Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday night, or as Stephen Colbert referred to it, “Episode One of this summer’s most compelling drama.”“It’s like ‘Stranger Things’ — we met the monster years ago, and we’re pretty sure the Russians are involved.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, guys, we had a great lead-in tonight. We’re following the Jan. 6 hearing, so, you guys ready for some comedy?” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, earlier tonight, Congress held the first public hearing on the Jan. 6 attack, and it aired in prime time across all major networks. Yep. The footage is rough to get through. Right after the hearing, I watched an episode of ‘Dateline’ just to lighten the mood.” — JIMMY FALLON“Five minutes in, even Mike Pence was like, ‘I’ve had enough — let’s see what’s happening on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race.’” — JIMMY FALLON“After two hours of documentary evidence and testimony, we learned that this insurrectionist conspiracy was, like everything else associated with that last administration, exactly what you thought, but worse than you could have imagined. The next episode drops on Monday morning, and to quote the former president, ‘Be there. Will be wild.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bad News Edition)“It was such a juicy burger that Fox News knew that even their viewers would be tempted to take a bite, which is why — and this is true — for the first hour of his show opposite the hearings, Tucker Carlson took no commercial breaks. Do you understand what that means? Fox News is willing to lose money to keep their viewers from flipping over and accidentally learning information.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, the Jan. 6 committee aired a 90-minute hearing tonight, which was carried live by all the major news networks except Fox News. Though Fox ended up with better ratings by just airing the original Capitol attack.” — SETH MEYERS“Instead, they’re showing reruns of Jan. 6 with a laugh track.” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course Fox isn’t airing it — they’re a key suspect in it. They would be — that would be like if Court TV’s coverage of the O.J. trial had been hosted by O.J.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee took Republicans to task for the gun violence epidemic on this week’s “Full Frontal.”Also, Check This OutMembers of the Jane Collective, an activist group that helped provide safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade.HBOHBO’s new documentary “The Janes” spotlights the women activists who banded together to form Jane, a clandestine group providing safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade. More

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      Song Hae, Beloved South Korean TV Host, Dies at 95

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      Born in what is now North Korea, he was known for his cheeky grin and folksy wisecracks as the host of South Korea’s weekly “National Singing Contest” for more than three decades.SEOUL — Song Hae, who fled North Korea as a young man during the Korean War, became a beloved television personality in South Korea and was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world’s “oldest TV music talent show host,” died at his home in Seoul on Wednesday. He was 95.His death was confirmed by Lee Gi-nam, the producer of a 2020 documentary on Mr. Song’s life, which charted a tumultuous course that reflected South Korea’s modern history through war, division, abject poverty and a meteoric rise. No cause of death was given.A jovial Everyman figure known for his cheeky grin and folksy wisecracks, Mr. Song became a household name in South Korea when he took over in 1988 as the host of the weekly “National Singing Contest,” a town-by-town competition that mixes down-home musical talent, farcical costumes, poignant life stories and comedic episodes.Mr. Song was recognized by Guinness World Records in April as the “oldest TV music talent show host.”Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis talent show, which he announced with his booming voice piped into households in South Korea every Sunday, ran for more than three decades. Mr. Song traveled to every corner of South Korea and to the Korean diaspora in places like Japan and China, and even to Paraguay, Los Angeles and Long Island, N.Y. He continued as host until the show went on hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic, and officially remained at its helm at the time of his death.While the show was on hold, his health seemed to deteriorate without his weekly outlet, according to Jero Yun, director of the documentary, “Song Hae 1927.”“It was, in some ways, the driving force of his life, meeting people from all walks of life through the program and exchanging life stories,” Mr. Yun said. “People would always recognize him, crowd around him and want to talk to him.” Referring to the K-pop megagroup, Mr. Yun added, “He might as well have been BTS.”Mr. Song was posthumously awarded a presidential medal for his contributions to South Korea’s culture, the president’s office announced on Wednesday. He was entered into Guinness World Records in April.Mr. Song was born Song Bok-hee on April 27, 1927, under Japanese occupation in what is now Hwanghae Province in North Korea. His father was an innkeeper. A few months after the Korean War broke out in 1950, he left his home at 23 to avoid being drafted to fight for the North, and made his way south. He eventually boarded a U.N. tank landing ship, not knowing where it was headed. Staring out at the water, he would later say, he renamed himself Hae, for the character meaning sea.He left behind his mother and a younger sister in North Korea, and well into his 90s, any mention of them would reduce him to tears.After the ship took him to the South Korean city of Busan, on the peninsula’s southern coast, he served as a signalman in the South’s army. He had said in interviews that he was one of the soldiers who tapped out the Morse code in July 1953 transmitting the message that there was a cease-fire halting the war.After his discharge from the army, he peddled tofu in impoverished postwar South Korea before joining a traveling musical theater troupe, in which he sang and performed in variety shows. He eventually became a radio host, anchoring a traffic call-in show that catered to cab and bus drivers. It aired an occasional segment in which the drivers would dial in for a sing-off.In 1952, Mr. Song married Suk Ok-ee, the sister of a fellow soldier he had served with in the war, and they had three children. After 63 years of marriage, Mr. Song and his wife held the wedding ceremony they never had, having originally married in the poverty and turmoil of their youth. She died in 2018.He is survived by two daughters, two granddaughters and a grandson. In 1986, his 21-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident, and Mr. Song could not bear to continue working on his radio traffic show. Around the same time, he was tapped to host the singing contest for the national broadcaster, KBS.With Mr. Song at its center, the show quickly became a national pastime, particularly among older residents and those in rural communities — groups that the program spotlighted and that were seldom seen on television.Grandmothers break-danced and rapped; grandfathers crooned sexy K-pop numbers. Countless young children charmed the host onstage, some of whom went on to become stars. Once, a beekeeper covered in bees played the harmonica while a panicked Mr. Song cried out, “There’s one in my pants!”Mr. Song never fulfilled his lifelong dream of revisiting his hometown in North Korea, but because of his show, he came tantalizingly close.A memorial to Mr. Song at a hospital in Seoul on Wednesday.Korea Pool/Yonhap via APIn 2003, during a period of détente between the Koreas, the show filmed an episode in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The songs were carefully screened by the North’s censors to include only propagandist ones, and the atmosphere was so tense that Mr. Song never broached the possibility of visiting his hometown, Chaeryong, even though it was just 50 miles south of the capital, he said in interviews.At one point during the trip, he recalled, he got drunk with his North Korean minder, who told him that he wouldn’t recognize his hometown anyway because everything had changed in the intervening five decades and most of the people had moved away.In a 2015 biography of Mr. Song, Oh Min-seok, a poet and professor of English literature, wrote: “As a refugee who fled south during the Korean War, there is a loneliness that is wedged in his heart like a knot. He has no problem connecting with anyone, from a 3-year-old to a 115-year-old, from a country woman to a college professor, from a shopkeeper to a C.E.O. That’s because inside, he’s always pining for people.”In South Korea, the show’s contestants and adoring fans became his family. Women — including the show’s oldest contestant, a 115-year-old — took to calling him “oppa,” or older brother, Mr. Song later recalled.“Who else in the world can claim to have as many younger sisters as I do?” he said. “I’m happy because of the people who boost me, applaud me, comfort me.” More

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      Jodie Comer to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Prima Facie’ Next Spring

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      The “Killing Eve” star will reprise her role in Suzie Miller’s solo show, which is wrapping up a run in London.Jodie Comer, known for playing the charismatic assassin Villanelle on “Killing Eve,” has received glowing reviews for her West End stage debut in the one-woman play “Prima Facie.” Now she’s setting her sights on Broadway.Next spring, Comer will reprise her role, as a lawyer named Tessa who discovers the limitations of the law after being sexually assaulted, when the show arrives on Broadway at a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater. This will be her Broadway debut.The play, written by Suzie Miller, is currently in the final weeks of its run in London’s West End. Critics praised Comer for her breakneck performance in an emotionally demanding role that, under Justin Martin’s busy staging, is quite physical. It calls for her to leap onto furniture, endure a brief onstage rainstorm and more as she tells the story of working her way up from working-class origins and later being assaulted by a colleague whom she brings to trial.“There’s no denying the visceral power of an evening that owes its sellout status to a theatrical neophyte who possesses the know-how of a seasoned pro,” Matt Wolf wrote in his review for The New York Times.The play originally premiered in 2019 in Miller’s native Australia. The playwright is a former human rights and children’s rights lawyer.No dates have been announced for the Broadway production, which will be directed by Martin. The lead producer is Empire Street Productions, led by James Bierman. More

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      Are Jan. 6 Hearings Flashy Enough for Prime Time? Late Night Isn’t Sure.

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      “Hanging over the hearings is one question that could define the future of our republic: Who cares?” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday.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.Are You Still Watching?The Jan. 6 committee hearings will be televised beginning Thursday night, but late night hosts wondered if Americans would pay proper attention.“Hanging over the hearings is one question that could define the future of our republic: Who cares?” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday.“Yeah, it doesn’t have to look like ‘Top Gun,’ but just in case, they’re going to have Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin play hot shirtless volleyball.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What they need to do, you want people to watch in America, is you have to spice things up. You know, have a kiss cam going for the witnesses. Yeah, get Shakira to do a halftime show.” — TREVOR NOAH“Americans like entertainment; Congress wants Americans to pay attention to politics. Those two don’t mix. But there is one person who can make political machinations interesting for the masses; there is only one man: Lin-Manuel Miranda.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know who is going to be torn about the coverage of this? Donald Trump. Yeah, ’cuz think about it: On the one hand, he doesn’t want anyone to know what he did on Jan. 6, but on the other hand, you know he would love his hearings to get the highest ratings of all time. You know it. He’s going to be out there like [imitating Trump] ‘Don’t watch the hearings, folks. The fake news is saying I overthrew the government, which I didn’t do. But it was the biggest overthrow of all time, but I didn’t do it.’” — TREVOR NOAH“In other political news, tomorrow night, the Jan. 6 committee will hold a special prime time hearing, which will air live on all the broadcast networks, and it’s being produced by a former ABC executive. And even more exciting, the halftime show will be performed by Imagine Dragons featuring Congresswoman Liz Cheney.” — JAMES CORDEN“The hearing is being produced by a former ABC executive, which is why it’s being marketed as, ‘Extreme Takeover: Capitol Building Edition.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fox News Stays on Brand Edition)“Fox News announced this week that it will not air carry live coverage of Congress’s prime time hearings over the Capitol attack. To focus on more important news like, ‘Would it kill Mulan to wear a dress?’” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, they’re going to be spending all night talking about the real culprit: [imitating Tucker Carlson] ‘Why is nobody talking about how Congress has too many doors? If there was only one door in and out, this never would have happened. The crowd would have peacefully dispersed after hanging Mike Pence, huh?’ ” — TREVOR NOAH“Fox, by the way, has decided not to carry the hearings about Jan. 6 on their news network tomorrow night. Instead, they will show their new special, ‘Tucker Carlson presents: A Racist Cat Meows Confederate Battle Hymns.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It doesn’t surprise me that Fox isn’t airing the hearings. Fox is news the same way ‘The Kardashians’ is reality. Just once, I’d love to see an actual reality TV show, something called, I don’t know, ‘A Man Quietly Eating a Cinnabon Because He Missed His Connection at LaGuardia.’” — SETH MEYERS“It’s not a surprise, because Fox constantly says the opposite of what the hearings will say. The committee will lay out the truth of what happened, and Fox will lie. It’s that simple. The hearings will say Jan. 6 was a violent insurrection fomented by an outgoing president who nearly pulled off a detailed plan for an attempted coup to unlawfully cling to power that would have installed him as an unelected autocrat and destroyed American democracy. And Fox will say it was just a pro-freedom, patriot party where everyone peacefully toured the Capitol like they were on a school field trip, having to find items their teachers gave them on a worksheet.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingPresident Biden sat down with Jimmy Kimmel for a lengthy conversation about the modern Republican Party, gas prices and gun violence, among other things.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightDemi Lovato will appear on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJuancho Hernangómez, left, and Adam Sandler in “Hustle.”Scott Yamano/NetflixAdam Sandler and Juancho Hernangómez, a Utah Jazz player, star in “Hustle,” a crowd-pleaser about the N.B.A. draft. More

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      Ken Bode, Erudite ‘Washington Week’ Host on PBS, Dies at 83

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      Beginning in 1994, he brought to the moderator’s role credentials as a political activist, an academic and a national correspondent for NBC News.Ken Bode, a bearded, bearish former political operative and television correspondent who, armed with a Ph.D. in politics, moderated the popular PBS program “Washington Week in Review” in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 83.His death, in a care center, was confirmed by his daughters, Matilda and Josie Bode, who said the cause had not been identified.Beginning in 1994, Mr. Bode (pronounced BO-dee) coupled congeniality and knowledgeability in steering a Friday night discussion among a rotating panel of reporters about the issues of the day coming out of Washington. His role, as he saw it, was to “bring in people who are really covering the news to empty their notebooks and provide perspective, not to argue with each other,” he told The Washington Post in 1999.As host of the program, now called “Washington Week,” he succeeded Paul Duke, who had helmed that roundtable of polite talking heads for two decades, and preceded Gwen Ifill, a former NBC News correspondent who died in 2016 at 61. The program, which debuted in 1967, is billed as TV’s longest-running prime time news and public affairs program. The current host is Yamiche Alcindor.The program’s loyal and generally older viewers were so brass-bound in the 1990s that when Mr. Bode took over, even his beard proved controversial. He proceeded to introduce videotaped segments and remote interviews with correspondents and bring more diversity to his panel of reporters.He also took more liberties with language than his predecessor.Mr. Bode moderating an episode of “Washington Week in Review.” He hosted the program from 1994 to 1999 while teaching politics at DePauw University in Indiana. PBSEnding an interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post about President Bill Clinton’s economic policies, Mr. Bode quoted a British newspaper’s snarky prediction that the president’s impending visit to Oxford, England, would present people with an opportunity to “focus on one of the president’s less well-publicized organs: his brain.” He described a vacancy on the Supreme Court as constituting “one-ninth of one-third of the government.”Still, Dalton Delan, then the newly-minted executive vice president of WETA in Washington, which continues to produce the program, wanted to invigorate the format. He proposed including college journalists, surprise guests and people-on-the-street interviews and replacing Mr. Bode with Ms. Ifill (she said she initially turned down the offer) — changes that prompted Mr. Bode to jump, or to be not so gently pushed, from the host’s chair in 1999.Kenneth Adlam Bode was born on March 30, 1939, in Chicago and raised in Hawarden, Iowa. His father, George, owned a dairy farm and then a dry cleaning business. His mother, June (Adlam) Bode, kept the books.Mr. Bode in his office in 1972, when he was involved in Democratic politics.George Tames/The New York TimesThe first member of his family to attend college, Mr. Bode majored in philosophy and government at the University of South Dakota, graduating in 1961. He went on to earn a doctorate in political science at the University of North Carolina, where he was active in the civil rights movement.He taught briefly at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton, and then gravitated toward liberal politics.In 1968, Mr. Bode worked in the presidential campaigns of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George S. McGovern. He became research director for a Democratic Party commission, led by Mr. McGovern and Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, that advocated for reforms in the selection process for delegates to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. He later headed a liberal-leaning organization called the Center for Political Reform.His marriage to Linda Yarrow ended in divorce. In 1975, he married Margo Hauff, a high school social studies teacher who wrote and designed educational materials for learning-disabled children. He is survived by her, in addition to their daughters, as well as by a brother and two grandsons.After working in politics, Mr. Bode began writing for The New Republic in the early 1970s and became its politics editor. He moved to NBC News in 1979, encouraged by the network’s newsman Tom Brokaw, a friend from college, and eventually became the network’s national political correspondent. In that role he hosted “Bode’s Journal,” a weekly segment of the “Today” show, on which he explored, among other issues, voting rights violations, racial discrimination and patronage abuses, as his longtime producer Jim Connor recalled in an interview.Mr. Bode left the network a decade later to teach at DePauw University in Indiana, where he founded the Center for Contemporary Media. While at DePauw, from 1989 to 1998, he commuted to Washington to host “Washington Week in Review” and wrote an Emmy-winning CNN documentary, “The Public Mind of George Bush” (1992).Beginning in 1998, he was dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for three years and remained a professor there until 2004.Mr. Bode said he retired from broadcast journalism for family reasons. “I was raising my kids from 100 airports a year,” he said. As he told The New York Times in 1999, “I knew then that my problem was, I’ve got the best job, but I’ve also got one chance to be a father, and I’m losing it.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Will Go Live After Jan. 6 Hearings

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      “They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python,” 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.Not Too ProudStephen Colbert announced that “The Late Show” will go live on Thursday night after the prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearings.“They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV,” Colbert said on Tuesday, “like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python.”“Now, here’s the deal: all the major news outfits — CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN — will be covering the hearings live, while the Fox News Channel will stay with its usual prime-time lineup. Well, that’s actually good. No, it’s actually good. We’ll hear directly from the people who planned the coup.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Proud Boys are going to be prominently featured during the live hearings on Thursday, because the committee intends to present live testimony from a British documentarian who was filming the group, with their permission, during the riot. Why do you let a film crew follow you while you commit treason? Well, same reason Benedict Arnold commissioned that painting of him handing over the plans.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’ve got to tell you, seeing those guys arrested makes this boy proud.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, if you’re not familiar with the Proud Boys, that sounds lovely. But as a refresher, they’re a far-right, anti-immigrant, all-male group who take their name from an obscure show tune from the Disney musical ‘Aladdin’ entitled ‘Proud of Your Boy.’ It was actually their second Disney song choice. Originally, they were the Supercalifragilisticexpiali-douchebags.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Going to the Dogs Edition)“According to a new study, dogs are more effective at detecting Covid than rapid tests. I’m glad we’ve reached the point in the pandemic where the C.D.C. is like, ‘I don’t know, dogs?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Knowing the C.D.C., in two days, they’re going to be like, ‘Never mind, it’s actually rabbits, I’m sorry.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Seriously, I have no idea what’s going on. Today, I saw Sarah McLachlan snuggling a person with Covid asking pets to help.” — JIMMY FALLON“Here’s how it works with dogs: If you have symptoms, they sniff your crotch. One hump — one hump means you’re negative, two humps means you’re positive.” — JIMMY FALLON“Apparently, dogs are better at detecting Covid than rapid tests, which explains now when you take an at-home test, the instructions look a little different. Yeah, now the steps are: ‘One, open package. Two, remove at-home Covid test. Three, walk and feed at-home Covid test.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers went day drinking with Post Malone on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About Wednesday NightPresident Biden will visit “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This OutCustomers in Bookmongers of Brixton, a book store in London. Apps have struggled to reproduce the kind of real-world serendipity that puts a book in a reader’s hand.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNew apps like Tertulia are helping avid readers discover new books. More

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      Todd and Julie Chrisley, Self-Made Moguls on Reality TV, Are Convicted of Fraud

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      The couple, who star on the popular show “Chrisley Knows Best,” used money from fraudulently obtained loans on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, the Department of Justice said.Todd and Julie Chrisley, the stars of “Chrisley Knows Best,” a reality TV show in which the couple project themselves as real estate moguls who judge PG-rated family squabbles according to strict standards for comportment, were convicted on Tuesday of conspiring to defraud banks out of $30 million and avoiding years of tax bills, the Department of Justice said.After a three-week trial in Federal District Court in Atlanta, a jury found the Chrisleys guilty on all counts — jointly, eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion, with Ms. Chrisley also being convicted of additional counts of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.Their accountant, Peter Tarantino, was found guilty of filing false corporate tax returns for the Chrisleys’ company.“When you lie, cheat and steal, justice is blind as to your fame, your fortune, and your position,” Keri Farley, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Atlanta, said in a statement.The Chrisleys could each be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Eleanor L. Ross of the Northern District of Georgia set sentencing for Oct. 6.“Disappointed in the verdict,” Bruce Howard Morris, a lawyer for Todd Chrisley, wrote in an email on behalf of the couple. “An appeal is planned.”Lawyers for Mr. Tarantino did not immediately reply to requests for comment.Despite the Chrisleys’ self-presentation as self-made businesspeople, their wealth depended in large part on fraud, according to the indictment against the couple.They obtained loans, for example, by using a bank statement saying they had $4 million at Merrill Lynch when they did not even have an account with the bank, the indictment said. Mr. Chrisley directed his accountant to perform actions he himself suggested would be “crooked,” and Ms. Chrisley repeatedly used glue and tape to falsify documents, according to the indictment.The couple used money from loans for “luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel,” the Department of Justice said, even as they also filed bankruptcy and walked away from more than $20 million in loans. They did not pay the Internal Revenue Service in a timely manner for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, the indictment said.NBC Universal announced last month that “Chrisley Knows Best” had been renewed for a 10th season. The network also said that “Growing Up Chrisley,” a spinoff starring two Chrisley children, Chase and Savannah, had been renewed for a fourth season, and that a new series, “Love Limo,” a dating show hosted by Todd Chrisley, would begin next year.The release described “Chrisley Knows Best” as USA Network’s “most-watched current original series,” with an average of 1.8 million total viewers.A spokesman for NBC Universal declined to comment on the verdict or on the company’s plans regarding any of the shows. The second half of Season 9 of “Chrisley Knows Best” is still scheduled to air starting June 23.Following a proven American formula, the show depicts a family with traditional values and a down-home style of self-expression who just happen to be fantastically rich.In the show’s trailer, Mr. Chrisley describes himself and his wife as people from a “small rural town” who now live in a “gated neighborhood” outside Atlanta alongside “celebrities.” Their “main home” is 30,000 square feet, they spend at least $300,000 per year on clothes and Mr. Chrisley earns “millions of dollars a year” — but the Chrisleys still face the same issues as families making $40,000, he says.Mr. Chrisley plays the controlling and fastidious patriarch, the sort of father who responds to his son’s misbehavior by throwing his laptop into the pool. His wife’s role is to comment sarcastically yet forgivingly about her husband’s foibles.The Chrisleys join a growing roster of reality TV stars who have gotten into legal trouble.In 2018, Michael (The Situation) Sorrentino, an actor in MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” was sentenced to eight months in prison for violating federal tax laws, and in 2014, Joe and Teresa Giudice, two stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” were sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud, among other charges.Eduardo Medina More

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      Review: Sarah Silverman’s ‘Bedwetter’ Musical Has Sprung a Leak

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      The comedian’s memoir was funny. But when the new show based on it tries for something deeper, it sinks into bathos.Zingy, 10-year-old Sarah Silverman (Zoe Glick) isn’t a natural fit for the town of Bedford, N.H., where sour, flinty fatalism is the norm. “May all your dreams come true,” one local says at a birthday party. “Mine did not.”The Silvermans, who anchor the new musical “The Bedwetter,” are defiantly nonconformist: all id, all the time. Sarah’s lately divorced father, the proprietor of Crazy Donny’s Factory Outlet (Darren Goldstein), encourages her to wow her new classmates with the dirty jokes he’s taught her. Dipso Nana (Bebe Neuwirth) thinks Sarah’s bartending skills are a better bet to impress. And if Sarah’s mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), expresses herself by spending days in bed watching old movies, Sarah, taking the family’s let-it-all-out mojo perhaps too far, does so by wetting hers at night.Still, she is cheerfully resigned to being a misfit, taking no offense even when her sister, Laura (Emily Zimmerman), wanting nothing to do with her in public, sings a song called “I Don’t Know This Person.” And to beat her new fifth-grade classmates to the punch, Sarah pre-emptively tells them, in “I Couldn’t Agree More,” that she’s “eww-y” and “Jewy.” Not only are her arms “so hairy,” but “You should see my back.”The musical depicts one year in the life of 10-year-old Sarah, who quickly manages to make frenemies of three new classmates.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSatisfying as the standup rhythm is, “The Bedwetter,” which opened Tuesday at the Linda Gross Theater, is sometimes, like its title character, a bit of a misfit. Based on the real Sarah Silverman’s 2010 memoir, subtitled “Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee,” it works best when it aims for the comic highs of that charming if gangly book. As long as it sticks close to young Sarah’s resilience as she tries to make friends without revealing her mortifying condition, “The Bedwetter,” an Atlantic Theater Company production, is a potty-mouthed pleasure. But in jimmying the original into a more serious musical format as it proceeds, it achieves only a middling geniality.It starts out promisingly enough, establishing the main characters efficiently and with good humor. The songs, with music by Adam Schlesinger and lyrics by Schlesinger and Silverman, have the cheesy irreverence and synth-y disposability of period television jingles — the period being the early 1980s. Donny’s numbers, performed with schlubby insouciance by Goldstein, are a highlight, including one, whose refrain can’t be printed here, that explains how he knows all the other girls’ mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what rhymes with “along.”But a little of that sound goes a long way, just as Silverman’s naïve inappropriateness, so effective in her standup, works only the first few times onstage. When Sarah, introducing herself to her class, mentions a brother who died, her reflex not to seem piteous makes her explanation weirdly funny: “He was just like a baby, so it wasn’t sad or anything.” But when that death — and a lot of other dark material — comes to the forefront, the laughs wear thin.If such moments don’t feel out of place in Silverman’s memoir, that’s in part because its episodic narrative leaps froglike through 40 years of her life, quickly dispensing with even the most disturbing events. And though it makes sense that the musical’s authors would narrow the focus and shorten the time span, the book by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”) and Silverman overreaches; in attempting to backfill the story with drama to justify the addition of songs, they put too much pressure on the one year it depicts.That’s the year in which Sarah arrives at McKelvie Middle School, manages to make frenemies of three classmates and, at the end of the first act, in an unconvincing scene involving diapers, finds the one thing she had hoped to keep private revealed. The second act deals with Sarah’s resulting depression — a state uncomfortably reminiscent of Beth Ann’s — as well as Nana’s mortality and a minor character’s suicide.The music, and especially the lyrics, cannot support this turn toward “Fun Home” territory. (In her black wig, Glick, a very talented 14-year-old, looks like she’s already playing the young lead in that show.) What works well in the lighter material — like the earwormy title song, which sounds like “Day Tripper” being covered by the Partridge Family — feels flimsy in the heavier material, especially Beth Ann’s overdramatic arias. (Levy sings them beautifully, though.) As a result, the show seems to spring a leak, losing all its giddy energy as it sinks into the serious.That’s a shame — the more so because Schlesinger, having died from Covid-19 complications in 2020, was not able to finish developing the musical with his collaborators. (The songwriter David Yazbek joined the team as a “creative consultant.”) Schlesinger’s songs for the 2008 stage version of “Cry-Baby” (written with David Javerbaum), as well as his experience in the pop-rock band Fountains of Wayne, demonstrated a quick ear for neat hooks but not yet the kind of complexity needed to carry theatrical emotion. And his lyrics with Silverman too often wander in search of a rhyme, then, sighting one in the distance, botch it.Glick, outnumbered by her meds, in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMuch of this might have been improved had Schlesinger lived. And much could still have been camouflaged by a strong staging. But “The Bedwetter” doesn’t get that, at least in this incarnation; the usually acute director Anne Kauffman, working on an awkward set by Laura Jellinek, seems to be going for a middle-school aesthetic to match its milieu. Even at two hours, the show feels needlessly elongated by switchovers from one vague locale to another — and by numbers, including one about Xanax, that extend well past their welcome.About that Xanax: It’s a bizarre omission in the musical that it does not highlight, as the book clearly does, the role the massive over-prescription of that drug played in Sarah’s depression. (By age 14 she was taking 16 pills a day.) Perhaps this was a choice to make the drama more emotional than pharmaceutical but, in any case, it further burdens what is already a weak plot about a weak bladder. But then many of the show’s choices, like the promotion of a Miss New Hampshire character (Ashley Blanchet, suitably lovely) from cameo to mascot, seem similarly random. That’s true of Silverman’s comedy in general, built as it is on apparently aleatory mismatches of tone and content.If that kind of randomness can be a convincing aesthetic in some art forms, I’ve never seen it work in musicals, where “that seems weird enough to work” never does. A show that operates on that principle may still hit a few highs; Neuwirth, dry and suave, certainly knows how to find them. The song in which she tells Sarah, warmly but practically, “You’re beautiful — to me,” is one of the few serious numbers that lands. Too often the rest of “The Bedwetter,” at least when aiming for tears, feels merely wet.The BedwetterThrough July 3 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours. More