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      ‘Ren Faire’ Is ‘Succession’ With Turkey Legs

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      An engrossing documentary debuting Sunday on HBO, it chronicles a Renaissance festival impresario’s effort to find a worthy heir.George Coulam, known as King George to his acolytes, in a scene from “Ren Faire.”HBO“Ren Faire,” an engrossing and inventive three-part documentary that debuts on HBO Sunday at 9 p.m., centers on George Coulam, founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival. King George, as everyone calls him, claims he wants to retire; he believes he’ll live for another nine years, and he has a vision for how he wants to spend this remaining time.“I wanna do art and chase ladies,” he says. If only he could find a worthy heir.Coulam comes across as part Logan Roy, part Joe Exotic — cruel, charismatic, driven and able to inspire fealty even as he dispenses bitter nastiness. (He has an assistant maintain his profiles on sugar-daddy websites and asks all dates, within moments of meeting them, if they have breast implants.)People on the show compare him to Willy Wonka and King Lear, and he says he followed Walt Disney’s playbook for land acquisition and political strategy. One employee weeps with glee upon meeting him, and others curtsy when he walks into their office. He’s not a king! you want to shout. He’s just some guy! But I guess someone wants to shout that about every king.George’s ambitious underlings strive for his intermittent approval and prostrate themselves, enduring petty humiliations only to crawl back and beg for more. The most debased and tragic is Jeff, who, with his wife, has worked at the fair for decades. He gets frustrated with her comparative lack of loyalty to the king, even as George pushes them both aside. “Just say that you serve George,” he insists, past the point of banter.Later, as Jeff schemes and stresses, she asks him earnestly, “Is it folly?”“Of course it’s folly!” he bellows, his voice shaking. Usually these kinds of lines are heard only in particularly farcical episodes of “Frasier,” but here they are both laughable and heartbreaking.There’s something ridiculous about renaissance fairs, and so there’s something ridiculous about “Ren Faire,” which blends hallucinatory nightmare sequences and fiery cinematic moments into its nonfiction. Those clever additions echo the agreed-upon dumb fantasy of renaissance fairs: Nay, my lord, this meager pub be all out of Red Bull.Directed by Lance Oppenheim and produced by Benny and Josh Safdie among others, “Ren Faire” depicts and embodies a Möbius strip of truth and grandiosity. The fair really is Jeff’s life’s work, as he says multiple times; it really is George’s gilded isolation chamber; it really is a business and a dream. Things can be silly and true and meaningful at the same time. Huzzah. More

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      Charles Barkley’s Barbs on ‘Inside the NBA’ Infuriate and Fuel Players

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      With the future of “Inside the NBA” in flux, athletes say their respect for Barkley means his unsparing evaluations are a rite of passage.When Charles Barkley, the quippy commentator on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” studio show, grew tired of Draymond Green’s aggressive on-court antics several years ago, he made it exceedingly clear that he wanted to punch Green in the face.Green responded during a postgame news conference by calling Barkley’s bluff, telling the Hall of Fame player known for his rebounding prowess to “shut up.” “No one cares what you would have done,” Green said. “You old, and it is what it is.”Verbal jousting in response to Barkley’s wisecracks has been commonplace during his two-decade tenure on “Inside the NBA,” which is in jeopardy of ending as soon as Thursday night because competing networks are negotiating for the N.B.A.’s media rights.Green, a four-time N.B.A. champion, said in an interview that any wounded feelings spoke to the reverence players have for Barkley and his colleagues, the former players Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith, and the veteran host, Ernie Johnson.“It’s almost like a rite of passage,” Green said of being criticized or praised by basketball heavyweights on national television. “I think N.B.A. players look to that show for validation, and that’s a reason so many guys could get upset when things don’t go their way.”Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and Barkley on an “Inside the NBA” broadcast in 2013. O’Neal and Barkley are Hall of Fame players.Issac Baldizon/NBAE, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      How Some ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Tips Turned Into $50,000 in Prizes

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      The Upshot’s guide helped a New Jersey man, who has some good tips of his own.Last December, the Upshot published a guide to Wheel of Fortune strategies, using data from more than 6,000 bonus-round puzzles. Our guide has influenced the behavior of at least one contestant. Scott Menke, a data analyst from New Jersey, won $52,690 in cash and prizes on an episode last month after creating a strategy based on our article, he said.Some of Mr. Menke’s preparation, and his calmness under pressure, is not easily replicable. It came from experience: He had been a semifinalist on the “Jeopardy!” college championship, won $20,000 on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” and banked $50,000 on “The $100,000 Pyramid.”When competing on “Wheel,” he said, he hardly had any nerves.But much of his preparation is a practical case study for future contestants. He went beyond our guide and came up with a good set of tips for blank words.Here’s Mr. Menke’s final bonus-round puzzle (with the letters R, S, T, L, N and E already given and B, G, H and O selected). Feel free to pause and consider possible solutions. Then read on to see how he prepared for the moment.Once Mr. Menke learned he was going to be on “Wheel of Fortune” in February, he had just 20 days before taping. To study for the main game, when he would be up against two other contestants, he downloaded old puzzles from the fan-created Wheel of Fortune Puzzle Compendium. But given the unpredictability of the main game, he decided that “95 percent” of his prep would be on the bonus round. He found our article on bonus-round strategy and began training. More

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      No Sophomore Slump for ‘We Are Lady Parts’

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      The comedy about a Muslim punk band returns for a raucous encore.For the early punks, many of them white British blokes, their music was about declaring themselves outside the larger society. The Sex Pistols dreamed of “anarchy for the U.K.” The Clash howled for “a riot of my own.” To be punk was to give offense, to make one’s self unpalatable, to choose to stand apart.But what is punk when your society has already made you an outsider? This is the musical question that the raucous, cheeky comedy “We Are Lady Parts,” returning Thursday for its second season on Peacock, seeks to answer.The first season, back in 2021, introduced Lady Parts, a punk band of Muslim women in London: Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), the caustic lead singer; Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), the fearsome drummer; and Bisma (Faith Omole), the earth-motherly bassist. Together with their manager, Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), a savvy Malcolm McLaren in a niqab, they recruit a reluctant lead guitarist, Amina (Anjana Vasan).Amina is no one’s idea of a rock star, least of all her own. She is an introverted microbiologist who worships Don McLean, with a severe case of stage fright that causes her to heave her guts while performing — and not in a defiant, Iggy Pop way. (Vasan gives Amina an engaging nerd-hero energy, similar to Quinta Brunson in “Abbott Elementary.”)Over the six-episode season, Amina finds that Lady Parts gives her a way of defining herself rather than being defined, whether by the conservative suitors who tell her “Music is haram” or by her free-spirited mother (Shobu Kapoor), who wishes Amina would wait to seek a husband.The root conflicts of “We Are Lady Parts” are familiar rock-band woes — having no money, having no gigs, being judged by family and by hipsters. This is where making the series about Muslim women rockers accomplishes more than representational box-ticking: It makes an old story new and nuanced.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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      ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Goes Back to the Beginning

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      Her new “Star Wars” show is a dream come true, but she knows it carries enormous expectations. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared,” she said.Leslye Headland has been telling “Star Wars” stories onscreen since she was a teenager. Ostracized at school for being different, she retreated inward, making stop-motion films starring her action figures.So when she found success as an adult in Hollywood — Headland helped create “Russian Doll,” the 2019 Netflix comedy starring Natasha Lyonne — and got the chance to create an actual “Star Wars” show, it was the realization of a lifelong dream.And a chance for humiliating failure. On a galactic scale.“I essentially cold-called Lucasfilm and, after a lot of conversations, found myself pitching a show — utterly elated, my ultimate career goal, the culmination of my fandom,” Headland said. “At the same time, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. There is so much pressure. It’s extreme. I had never done anything this big before.”Headland’s show, “The Acolyte,” will debut on Disney+ on June 4. Costing roughly $180 million (for eight episodes) and taking four years to make, it attempts two feats at once: pleasing old-school “Star Wars” fans — who can seem unpleasable — while telling an entirely new story, one that requires no prior knowledge of “Star Wars” and that showcases women and people of color.For the faithful, “The Acolyte” serves up scads of Jedi, a franchise fundamental that the other live-action “Star Wars” TV shows have depicted sparingly or not at all. The opening scene in “The Acolyte” takes place in an eatery crowded with colorful aliens, a callback to the Mos Eisley cantina from the first “Star Wars” movie, in 1977.Other shout-outs to core fans — we see you, we haven’t forgotten about you — are sprinkled into the dialogue: “May the force be with you” and “I have a bad feeling about this” makes an early appearance.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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      A Show That Makes Young Japanese Pine for the ‘Inappropriate’ 1980s

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      A surprise television hit, now on Netflix, has people talking about what Japan has lost with today’s changed sensibilities.The younger generation has frequently called out Japan’s entrenched elders for their casual sexism, excessive work expectations and unwillingness to give up power.But a surprise television hit has people talking about whether the oldsters might have gotten a few things right, especially as some in Japan — like their counterparts in the United States and Europe — question the heightened sensitivities associated with “wokeness.”The show, “Extremely Inappropriate!,” features a foul-talking, crotchety physical education teacher and widowed father who boards a public bus in 1986 Japan and finds himself whisked to 2024.He leaves an era when it was perfectly acceptable to spank students with baseball bats, smoke on public transit and treat women like second-class citizens. Landing in the present, he discovers a country transformed by cellphones, social media and a workplace environment where managers obsessively monitor employees for signs of harassment.The show was one of the country’s most popular when its 10 episodes aired at the beginning of the year on TBS, one of Japan’s main television networks. It is also streaming on Netflix, where it spent four weeks as the platform’s No. 1 show in Japan.“Extremely Inappropriate!” compares the Showa era, which stretched from 1926 to 1989, the reign of Japan’s wartime emperor, Hirohito, to the current era, which is known as Reiwa and began in 2019, when the current emperor, Naruhito, took the throne.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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      Charles Barkley Has Thoughts on the Future of ‘Inside the NBA’

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      Next season could be the last for TNT’s influential and beloved studio show, and Charles Barkley, for one, will not be going quietly.The future of “Inside the NBA” was already a sensitive topic when Charles Barkley stepped into an elevator in Minneapolis after Game 3 of the Western Conference finals late Friday night. Barkley’s on-air candor as an analyst is a key reason that the studio show has become so influential and beloved among basketball fans and around the league.But these are tense times for the show and those who work on it. Warner Bros. Discovery has not secured the rights to continue broadcasting N.B.A. games on TNT beyond next season. Without those, the long-term future of “Inside the NBA” is uncertain. So when Barkley, who had already batted away several attempts by security and public relations officials to prevent him from doing an interview, ushered me into an elevator filled with his co-workers, not everyone was happy.Kenny Smith, Barkley’s on-screen foil, voiced his irritation. But Barkley, as he has done throughout his decades in the public eye, made clear that he wouldn’t be muzzled.“Hey, man, I can talk to who I want to,” Barkley said to Smith, using an expletive. Others in the elevator shifted uncomfortably.“You should do that out there,” Smith said, suggesting the interview be done outside the elevator.Barkley turned to me: “Don’t worry about him.”“She should clear it through Turner,” Smith said. “She should do it the right way.”Why was it so important for him to talk, I asked Barkley, even if others around him didn’t want him to? He nodded to the impact the uncertainty has on staff members who work on the show. And not just the well-known, on-air personalities: Barkley, Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and the host, Ernie Johnson.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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      Johnny Wactor, ‘General Hospital’ Actor, Reported Killed in Shooting in Los Angeles

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      Johnny Wactor was fatally shot when he interrupted a person who was stealing his vehicle’s catalytic converter, his mother told a news outlet.Johnny Wactor, an actor best known for his role in “General Hospital,” was shot and killed on Saturday, reports said, amid what his family described as an attempted theft of a catalytic converter in Los Angeles.The fatal shooting took place around 3 a.m. on Saturday, when Mr. Wactor approached three men in downtown Los Angeles, The Associated Press reported, citing the Los Angeles Police Department.His mother, Scarlett Wactor, told the local news station ABC7 that Mr. Wactor left the rooftop bar where he worked late in the evening and was walking with a co-worker toward his vehicle when he interrupted someone who was in the process of stealing the vehicle’s catalytic converter.Ms. Wactor said her son thought his car was being towed at first, and when he approached the person to ask, the person “looked up, he was wearing a mask, and opened fire.”Three men fled the scene in a vehicle, and Mr. Wactor was taken to a hospital, where he died, The A.P. reported. No arrests have been made.Representatives for the Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.Mr. Wactor had played Brando Corbin in more than 160 episodes of the soap opera “General Hospital,” according to his IMDB page. He also appeared in episodes of “Westworld,” “The OA” and “Station 19.”In a statement on social media, a page for “General Hospital” said the show’s cast and crew were “heartbroken to hear of Johnny Wactor’s untimely passing.”Many of Mr. Wactor’s co-stars from the show posted tributes on social media, including Kirsten Storms, who played the character Maxie Jones. Ms. Storms wrote in an Instagram post, “I just cannot believe that his life was stolen from him the way it was.”There has been a jump in the number of thefts of catalytic converters, or “cats” for short, in recent years. These critical emission-control devices are valuable because they contain rare metals, like palladium and rhodium, that can be extracted and resold. More