Television

What’s on TVCHARLIE SAYS (2019) 9 p.m. on Showtime. Mary Harron vacillates between prison and movie ranch in “Charlie Says,” her drama about the Charles Manson cult. Though she is best known as the director of the satirical serial-killer study “American Psycho,” Harron here pays relatively little attention to Manson himself (played by Matt Smith), instead focusing on three of his female followers (played by Hannah Murray, Marianne Rendón and Sosie Bacon). That trio tells the story here. The movie shows them both during their time with Manson and after the fact, in prison, where they recount their story to a graduate student (Karlene Faith, played by Merritt Wever). “It’s a tough, difficult story that, anchored by Guinevere Turner’s script, Harron recounts with lucid calm, compassion and intelligent interpretive license,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. “She revisits some of the familiar locations, including the dusty California ranch where the Manson family set up house, and she carefully restages some of the murders. For those familiar with the horrific details of those crimes, the movie may seem wholly uninviting, but bear with Harron — she has something to say.”THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT 11:35 p.m. on CBS. Last week, the Dixie Chicks released the title track of their latest record, “Gaslighter,” which will be the group’s first new album since 2006. They will be interviewed and perform on “The Late Show” on Thursday night in support of that album. Also in the lineup: the author Michael Pollan, who recently released an audiobook about caffeine.What’s StreamingCONTAGION (2011) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. “I paid $12.99 to watch a 10-year-old movie,” the director Barry Jenkins told The Times earlier this month. “I’ve never done that before.” He was referring to this Steven Soderbergh thriller, and he’s not alone: As worry about the Covid-19 outbreak has mounted, “Contagion” has been climbing the streaming charts. Revisit it to see Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law and others play characters contending with the global outbreak of a deadly, thankfully fictional virus.SHOP CLASS Stream on Disney Plus. If you’d prefer good-natured rivalry to pandemic scares, consider turning instead to this new competition show, which pairs teams of young builders and shop teachers against each other in elaborate construction challenges. Justin Long hosts.BEACH RATS (2017) Stream on Hulu; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. The filmmaker Eliza Hittman is back in theaters this weekend with “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” a drama about a teenager who travels to New York City for an abortion. Her previous feature, “Beach Rats,” also centers on a teenager. This one, Frankie (Harris Dickinson), spends much of the movie grappling with his sexuality, his relationships and his family. Hittman’s portrait of Frankie, Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times, “doubles as a portrait of Brooklyn’s southern-shore neighborhoods, lyrically photographed by Hélène Louvart.” More

“It feels like we’re auditioning,” a dazed Ryan Seacrest said on live television Wednesday morning, before a sea of empty seats.Two hours later, in another bare studio, Whoopi Goldberg sat at a table with her four co-hosts on “The View” and put it plainly: “For the first time ever, as you can see, if you looked around, we made the decision not to have a studio audience. This is unprecedented.” And later on Wednesday, several late-night shows in New York, including “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on CBS, and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on NBC, announced that they, too, would film without studio audiences starting on Monday. As the coronavirus severely disrupts daily life in the United States and limits the number of in-person gatherings being held around the country, it is also affecting an American institution that provides a virtual gathering spot for millions of people: the daily talk show. Talk show producers have said for years that they need a good audience to make a good episode. Many of the shows bring audience members into the studio an hour before showtime. For some shows, music is pumping at eardrum-splitting volumes, the better to whip fans into a frenzy and get them primed for big reactions live on air.Now those big laughs and cheers will be silenced for the foreseeable future.The syndicated talk shows “Live With Kelly and Ryan” and “The View” both barred studio audiences beginning on Wednesday because of fears surrounding the coronavirus. Other talk shows, such as “Dr. Phil” and “The Wendy Williams Show,” have made the same decision, joining Los Angeles-based game shows, like “Wheel of Fortune” and Jeopardy!,” that said this week that they would forgo studio audiences.“That shouldn’t stop everyone from watching at home,” Mr. Seacrest’s co-host, Kelly Ripa, said on Wednesday. “Because let’s face it: You can’t go anywhere else!” More

What’s StreamingAMAZING STORIES Stream on Apple TV Plus. A smartphone-obsessed man gets more than he swiped for in this new anthology series, which is based on a 1980s sci-fi show created by Steven Spielberg. The first episode stars Dylan O’Brien as a man who is unwittingly transported from 2019 to the early 20th century through supernatural means. He makes the best of it, finding unlikely love in a rebellious local played by Victoria Pedretti.ORLANDO (1993) Stream on Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. For a different kind of time-bending story, see Sally Potter’s loose adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel “Orlando.” Like the book, the film distorts both time period and gender; it stars Tilda Swinton as its title character, who begins the story as a 17th-century English nobleman and ends it as a late 20th-century author and mother. Potter “takes a huge, audacious and necessary leap away from the page,” Caryn James wrote in her review for The New York Times. “The film distills Woolf’s rich literary manner into sumptuous backdrops and visual styles that change with the centuries, suggesting a pageant of art history from Renaissance chiaroscuro to misty Romanticism and beyond.”UGLY DELICIOUS Stream on Netflix. The chef and restaurateur David Chang cooks Indian food with Padma Lakshmi, gets a lesson in “modernist cuisine” from the tech executive turned cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold and eats at an Outback Steakhouse in the second season of “Ugly Delicious.” Like the first season, the new episodes look at foods in their larger cultural contexts. (In his review of the first season for The Times, Mike Hale described the show as “an extended television essay, in the form of free-associative, globe-trotting conversations about food and culture.”) Season 2 opens with an episode built around food for children, with notable chefs discussing how to cook for kids, and how they balance their professional lives with parenting.What’s on TVJOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017) 5:30 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. on USA Network. Here’s a moment from this second entry of the “John Wick” series: Despite having just been struck by a four-door sedan, the former hit man John Wick (Keanu Reeves) manages to dodge about a dozen gunshots. He then vaults over the hood of a Mercedes and tackles a beefy bodyguard played by the rapper Common. The two punch and kick at each other, then tumble down a dingy Roman staircase. And that’s not even the end of the fight. The plot of the second “John Wick” movie “matters only inasmuch as it allows the returning director, Chad Stahelski, to stage his spectacular fight sequences in various stunning Roman locations,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times, “where they unfold with an almost erotic brutality.” Such scenes have proven to be a potent force at the box office: The series has grown more popular with each entry. More