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      SNL Recap: Alec Baldwin Returns as Fox’s Bret Baier

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      The longtime friend of “S.N.L.” made his first appearance on the show since an involuntary manslaughter case against him was dismissed. Michael Keaton was the host.A contentious interview of Vice President Kamala Harris conducted on Wednesday by Bret Baier, the chief political anchor for Fox News, was an inevitable subject of satire on this week’s “Saturday Night Live.” The opening sketch that parodied this interview also marked the return of Alec Baldwin, a frequent “S.N.L.” guest and host who played former President Donald J. Trump in “S.N.L.” sketches during the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s time in office.Baldwin, who played Baier in this segment, was making his first appearance on “S.N.L.” since an involuntary manslaughter case against him was dismissed in July, following a New Mexico judge’s ruling that the state had withheld evidence in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film there.In the sketch, Baldwin was seated opposite Maya Rudolph, in her recurring role as Harris. He introduced himself as Baier, adding, “and to clear the air, yes, I do look like someone made a businessman in Minecraft.”He said it was a pleasure to welcome Rudolph onto Fox News, to which Rudolph replied, “The pleasure is neither of ours.”Baldwin quickly posed a leading question to Rudolph — “Give me the exact number of murderers you let loose in this country,” he said — and he interrupted her each time she attempted to respond. “A million? Two million?” he asked, adding, “Ten million? Give me a number.”Rudolph boasted of her success prosecuting international drug cartels. “If I was in ‘Breaking Bad’ it would have ended in three episodes,” she said.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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      ‘It’s Florida, Man’ Reveals the Lives Behind Bizarre News Stories

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      The HBO series uses familiar comedic actors in cheeky re-enactments of real Florida events, most of them subjects of past viral news reports.Simon Rex plays a man who survives an alligator attack in Episode 2 of “It’s Florida, Man.”HBO“It’s Florida, Man,” premiering Friday at 11 p.m., on HBO, takes a “Drunk History” approach to the intimacy and portraiture of “How To With John Wilson.” It uses familiar comedic actors in cheeky re-enactments of real events, but those events are all personal sagas; they are obscure and strange, sometimes disturbing and sometimes enchanting — and all very Florida.For example, a man named Eric had his arm bitten off by an alligator, but he believes the animal was inhabited by his dead mother’s spirit and maimed him to help set his life straight. Eric says he is indeed the “Florida man” the memes suggest.“I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed,” he says in the second episode. “But I’ll stab you with the sharpest tool.” He grins. Later, he offers some of the most sanguine enlightenment one can find on television.“Florida” is the latest show to come with a winky disclaimer about its veracity, that it’s “all true. Sort of.” It blends the docudrama format with a boppy documentary style in quick-hit, episodic tales that layer re-enactments and firsthand accounts on top of one another. The recreations highlight how much these stories, most of them subjects of past viral news reports, have taken on lives of their own. But the show’s beating heart is its real-life subjects.Each episode focuses on one wild tale. The variety is both an asset and a hiccup: The tone ranges from warmly mystical to uncomfortably blasé about domestic violence. In the four episodes (of six) made available to critics, the show’s melody is “Get a load of this!” But its harmony kicks in with cheerful depth, a curiosity about the loves and agonies that extend beyond a local news segment.Luckily, everyone seems pretty much in on the joke. The first episode, “Toes,” centers on a music lover who posts on Craigslist for odd — very, very odd — jobs. One client wants to arrange an extreme encounter and asks the man to bring a friend along, which poses a challenge. “Who is (1) free on a Thursday, and (2) is down to witness cannibalism?” the man wonders.There’s a tabloid, almost sideshow glee to some of the episodes, but then again, lots of people join the circus. One man’s Jerry Springer is another (Florida) man’s Studs Terkel. More

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      At CBS, Everything Old Is New Again, Including ‘NCIS’

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      Everything old is new again: an “NCIS” spinoff, a “Young Sheldon” spinoff, a “Good Wife” spinoff and … “Matlock”?CBS is reconvening this week, premiering a dozen of its dramas and comedies, including 10 of last season’s 15 most-watched scripted shows. You might dismiss the network’s dominance of the broadcast ratings as a case of being the top dog on a small playground, but the seven million to 10 million viewers each of those shows drew — before any streaming numbers were added — probably don’t care much about your opinion.Along with the returning CBS hits this week come two new shows, “NCIS: Origins” and “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” and one that still feels new, “Elsbeth,” which premiered in February and is starting its second season.These additions to the schedule are nominally very different from one another, contributing to the diverse menu a big-box television outlet needs to offer: a sentimental buds-and-blood crime procedural set on a California military base (“NCIS: Origins”); a wacky-Texas-family sitcom (“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage”); and an archly comic case-of-the-week detective series set in New York (“Elsbeth”).But their differences are less notable than the thing they have in common: Each has emerged from the CBS ecosystem, spun off from one of the network’s existing franchises. “Origins” is the sixth “NCIS” show; “Georgie” follows “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon”; and “Elsbeth” stars a character who was introduced in “The Good Wife” and later appeared in “The Good Fight.”There are a couple of ways to look at that. You can see timidity and lack of imagination, and an overreliance on proven quantities like the sitcom mogul Chuck Lorre (“Georgie”) and the smart-drama mavens Michelle and Robert King (“Elsbeth”). But you can also see shrewd strategy at a time when seemingly unlimited choice and the associated fracturing of the audience make viewers’ desires for familiarity and comfort stronger than ever. All of the major streamers could take lessons in brand management from CBS.The network does not have a “universe” in the sense of Marvel’s crisscrossing superhero stories or the byzantine timelines of the “Star Wars” franchise. But it has a sensibility that is actually more consistent, across a variety of genres and creators. There may not be a CBS universe, but there is a CBS world, a zone with a common language and values. Traveling from “Blue Bloods” to “Fire Country” to “Tracker,” you won’t have any problems at the border.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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      Bruce Campbell on ‘Hysteria!’ and Why the Satanic Panic Never Ended

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      The Peacock horror comedy finds timeliness in a dark chapter of American history. “Satan was always an existential threat,” the actor said.In 1981, Bruce Campbell knocked horror fandom’s socks off as Ash Williams, the iron-jawed demon fighter in “The Evil Dead,” Sam Raimi’s outré and now-beloved film about friends who battle unholy hell at a cabin in the woods. It was, it seems fair to say, a defining role.Now at 66, after decades of swashbuckling, bone-crunching roles in cult horror films and on TV, Campbell’s life seems a bit more Mayberry. He is a grandfather who still uses AOL Mail. Later this month, he’ll host what he called a “casino-ween” party at an Elks Lodge in Ashland, Ore., the mountain town where he lives with his wife, Ida. His taste in music, he said, is “way more Lawrence Welk than you might imagine.”In some ways, his role in the Peacock series “Hysteria!,” which debuted on Friday, reflects something of this kinder, gentler new reality. As the aw-shucks police chief Dandridge, his domain is a sleepy Michigan suburb in the 1980s, a place where boring is beautiful. But this is Bruce Campbell, so of course the peace is shattered as local holy rollers blame a high school heavy metal band for inviting Satan to their town and unleashing a series of deathly evil deeds. But the devil rarely needs an invitation.“Hysteria!” is a supernatural horror-comedy, but it takes its cue from a very real and unfunny chapter in American history: the so-called satanic panic, when a flood of unwarranted accusations about cults committing ritualistic child abuse swept the country. That abuse was abetted, according to many leaders on the religious right, by satanic messaging in popular culture.Campbell stars in “Hysteria!” as the humble police chief of a town consumed by fears about Satan.PeacockBut for a series set in the ’80s, “Hysteria!” is in some ways timely. It is the latest of several popular treatments of the satanic panic in recent years — including the documentary “Satan Wants You,” the novel “Rainbow Black” and the most recent season of “Stranger Things” — as culture wars, new technologies and misinformation have helped incite a fresh wave of conspiracy theories and conservative book bans.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 Night Recaps Harris’s Time on Fox News and Trump’s on Univision

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      “Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club,” Desi Lydic said on “The Daily Show.”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.Lions, Foxes and BaiersVice President Kamala Harris appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, where she was interrupted several times during an interview with Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor. On the same day, former President Donald Trump held a Univision town hall, where, as Desi Lydic joked on Thursday’s “Daily Show,” he “faced down his biggest fear: Hispanic people.”“Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club.” — DESI LYDIC“I’d like to point out that there is no difference between his nervous swaying to Spanish and his dancing to ‘Ave Maria.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now Kamala’s ‘lion’s den’ was Fox News, so I guess it was a Fox den, where she sat down with Bret Baier — so maybe it was a Baier’s den.” — DESI LYDIC“I want to be clear about this: I believe that journalists should always ask the toughest questions of presidential candidates, and Bret Baier certainly plays a convincing journalist on Fox News.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Come on, Bret, you invited her on to speak with you. This is an interview with the vice president, not sex with your wife — you have to let the woman finish.” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Winning? Edition)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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      Sex, Horses and Stately Homes: Bringing a Naughty British Romance to TV

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      Walking into Jilly Cooper’s house in the English countryside is like stepping inside one of her novels.The living room walls are covered in pictures or bookshelves, and the surfaces by ceramic cats, dogs and horses. Pictures of loved ones (family) and notables (royal family) are scattered throughout the room. The windows look over a landscape of rolling hills.It was from this 14th-century home, and on a manual typewriter, that Cooper, 87, wrote the “Rutshire Chronicles,” an 11-book series of romance novels featuring the handsome and troubled horse-riding hero Rupert Campbell-Black. The novels sold 12 million copies in Britain, where they shaped a generation readers’ ideas about romance, sex and the upper classes in the ’80s and ’90s.Known as “the queen of the bonkbuster” — an amalgam of “blockbuster” and “bonking,” a very English way of referring to you-know-what — Cooper’s name is synonymous in Britain with juicy romance and well-heeled naughtiness. In the United States, it has less resonance.Disney+ and Hulu are hoping to change that with the premiere, on Friday, of “Rivals,” an eight-part series based on Cooper’s 1988 novel of the same title from the “Rutshire Chronicles.”“I’m knocked out, because I love this book so much,” Cooper said in a recent interview. “I think it’s my favorite one.” Seeing it turned into a series, she said, was a “great treat,” especially at her age. “Eighty-seven is so old,” she said. “What’s 87 in dog years?”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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      Jimmy Kimmel Slams Trump’s Women-Centered Town Hall

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      “This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA,” Kimmel 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.Father FigureOn Tuesday, former President Donald Trump held a town hall in front of what Jimmy Kimmel called “a handpicked audience of Trump-loving women in Georgia.”“This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In the first part, the women asked questions, and in the second part, Trump went through and rated them physically from 1 to 10.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“One lucky lady was named Miss Fox News Town Hall ’24, so congratulations.” — JIMMY KIMMELAt one point during the town hall, Trump proclaimed himself “the father of I.V.F.”“Now he’s claiming to be the father of I.V.F. — which has been happening since 1978. This guy won’t even admit to being the father of Eric.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s the father of I.V.F. Maybe that’s short for Ivanka, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Y.M.C.A. Edition)“You should not vote for someone because they dance to ‘Y.M.C.A.’ But also, I’m not sure you’d call this dancing.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Those are some bad moves, baby. If this president thing doesn’t work out, he ought to think about being a contestant on ‘Swaying With the Stars’ or ‘So You Think You Can Tilt.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But no matter how gay his music is, young, straight white men love Donald Trump. They see him as a ‘macho, macho’ man, if you will.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He eats red meat, he pretends to follow U.F.C., he’s into crypto and sneakers and NFTs. He’s a dude, a bro and a boss all rolled into one.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday’s “Late Show,” Stanley Tucci fessed up to fabricating his childhood confessions.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Grotesquerie” star Niecy Nash-Betts will appear on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutElizabeth Berkley in the 1995 movie “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsA new French stage play based on “Showgirls” speaks to the 1995 film’s enduring allure. More

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      ‘Sweet Bobby’ on Netflix Tells the Catfishing Nightmare of Kirat Assi

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      A new Netflix documentary tells a sinister tale of a decade-long online romance scam, and the devastation that followed.It started with a Facebook friend request from a man named Bobby.Kirat Assi, a 29-year-old radio host, didn’t usually allow strangers into her private Facebook life. But she’d heard of Bobby, who came from a highly regarded family in their Sikh community in West London. In fact, Ms. Assi’s cousin had dated Bobby’s younger brother, and she’d chatted with him online.So Ms. Assi accepted. It was 2010 after all, and there was still a general sense of optimism about social media. On Facebook, existing friends were coming together and new ones were readily made. It was a seemingly harmless place, full of funny wall posts, photo albums and an endless amount of pokes.For Ms. Assi, now 43, that friend request was the start of what proved to be a decade-long catfishing scheme that is the subject of “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare,” a documentary that began streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.True crime and catfishing have been popular subjects for documentaries and podcasts in recent years, but in an interview ahead of the release of “Sweet Bobby,” Ms. Assi said that the often frivolous portrayal of catfishing can dilute the very real, long-lasting devastation these scammers inflict. She prefers to use the term “online entrapment.”“People need to know how bad it gets,” she said, noting neither the documentary nor the podcast that preceded it explained the full extent of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Bobby, as it was deemed too triggering to include.For six years, Ms. Assi and Bobby chatted online as friends. Then, Bobby got divorced and confessed his love to Ms. Assi shortly after. They dated for three years — chatting, texting, sending intimate voice mail messages and falling asleep on overnight Skype calls. Bobby said he had a stroke, and Ms. Assi cared for him from afar.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