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      in Television

      ‘My Lady Jane’ Is a Sly and Sassy Historical Comedy

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      Inspired by the very (very) brief reign of Queen Jane, the Amazon series has fun rewriting Tudor history — complete with magical creatures.“My Lady Jane,” whose eight-episode first season is available now, on Amazon, seems to be in the vein of “The Great” or “Bridgerton,” irreverent historical fiction with aggressively contemporary mores and scores. But it is perhaps better understood as a fantasy comedy because not only does it break with history, it breaks with reality: It is Tudor palace intrigue with shape-shifting, a joyful and breathless more-more-more. A lot of “Jane” adheres, happily, to genre conventions, but it is done with a well-pitched playfulness. Even the stained glass in so many of the backgrounds has a funfetti color scheme.Our heroine is Lady Jane Grey (Emily Bader), a multilingual genius and healer who is at the mercy of a harsh mother (Anna Chancellor) and a cruel system. “I will do everything in my power to get out of this marriage,” she swears. “Jane, you have no power,” her mother replies. Well, we’ll see about that.Jane’s power comes from her intelligence, resolve and pluck, but some folks around her have another power: ethians, scorned and abused by conventional humans, known as verity, can turn into animals. Jane’s trusty maid (Mairead Tyers) is also a hawk, and now that you mention it, that dog hanging around does seem unusually nosy. If you’re ever confused about how it all works, frequent snarky narration fills in the blanks and adds to the show’s cheeky charm.“Jane” takes its historicity lightly and chemistry seriously. Jane is forced to marry the smug Lord Guildford Dudley (Edward Bluemel), and over the course of the season, they have a real Chuck and Blair pas de deux, an inevitable enemies-to-lovers arc made festive with seething and swordplay. Jane’s more dangerous nemesis is Mary (Kate O’Flynn), a scheming loose cannon with an always-a-bridesmaid complex, and when the two battle — sometimes physically, sometimes verbally, sometimes just with stare-downs — the whole show trembles.Early in the season, one of the more sheltered characters learns about flipping the bird and gets a huge thrill from deploying the gesture, which becomes a little running joke through the show. Is this the most mature experience a person can have? I guess not. But assessing a situation — a rude person, a flawed monarchy or even a well-worn TV subgenre — and deciding that what it truly merits is a grand one-finger salute? Ah, what a rush. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      NBA Agrees to Massive Rights Deals With Disney, Comcast and Amazon

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      The agreements, set to begin after next season, could potentially pay the league about $76 billion over 11 years.The National Basketball Association’s Board of Governors has approved a set of agreements for the rights to show the league’s games, Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday, moving one step closer to completing deals that would reshape how the sport is watched over the next decade.Mr. Silver declined to discuss any financial details or even the companies involved, though there have been reports for months that Disney, Comcast and Amazon were close to deals with the league. TNT, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, but its prominent on-air personalities like Charles Barkley talked during the playoffs about how they worried that the network would lose the rights after next season, the last covered by the current nine-year TV deal.The companies are expected to pay the N.B.A. a total of about $76 billion over 11 years. On average, ESPN would pay the N.B.A. about $2.6 billion annually, NBC around $2.5 billion and Amazon roughly $1.8 billion, according to three people familiar with the agreements, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the financial details.The Board of Governors voted to approve the deals at its yearly meeting in Las Vegas. The N.B.A. must now present the deals to Warner Bros. Discovery, and once that happens, the company will have five days to match one of them to remain in the mix.“We did approve this stage of those media proposals, but as you all know there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners,” Mr. Silver said.Warner Bros. Discovery was expected to try to match Amazon’s offer, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Netflix and Amazon Drive Bump in TV Show Market

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      Netflix and Amazon are driving a small bump in the market for TV shows after a major slowdown.It has been nearly seven months since Hollywood resolved its strikes, but momentum still hasn’t taken hold in the entertainment industry. “Survive till ’25” has become an informal slogan among entertainment workers.But the global market for ordering new TV shows is beginning to show some signs of life, and it’s been overwhelmingly driven by two players — Netflix and Amazon.Netflix greenlit more scripted television projects through the first quarter of this year than in any quarter since 2022, according to Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Amazon had its most active quarter since Ampere started tracking market activity five years ago, the firm said.Many of their competitors are still taking a more cautious approach. As a result, Netflix and Amazon collectively accounted for 53 percent of the scripted television series orders among the major studios through the first three months of the year, according to Ampere.Most of the series orders have been made internationally. Netflix has been particularly active in Britain, Germany, Spain and South Korea, the research showed, while Amazon has been investing aggressively in India.Netflix and Amazon have also purchased more projects in the United States compared with the tail end of 2023, but the increases have been more modest. Netflix had its most active quarter domestically since the first quarter of last year. Amazon had its biggest quarter since the spring of last year, according to the research.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘My Lady Jane’ Asks: ‘What if History Were Different?’

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      A fantastical series about the very short-term 16th century queen Lady Jane Grey takes historical liberties in the name of reclamation — and fun.Lady Jane Grey is generally considered a tragic heroine, the teen queen of England and Ireland for nine days in 1553 before her foes manipulated her into an early death by execution. As the cheeky narrator of the Amazon series “My Lady Jane” puts it, “History remembers her as the ultimate damsel in distress.”He then adds, using a vulgar term for “forget”: “[Expletive] that. What if history were different?”This is the animating question (and tone) of “My Lady Jane,” which premiered on Prime Video on Thursday. Playful, optimistic, a little raunchy, this take on the Jane Grey story plays like an R-rated version of “The Princess Bride,” with touches of everything from “A Knight’s Tale” to the cult Britcom favorite “Blackadder.”It is also just the latest of a handful of recent series that feature strong women attempting to wrest control of their destinies in the oppressively patriarchal societies of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, a period perched between the Middle Ages and the stirrings of modernity.These shows take liberties with history, none more so than “My Lady Jane.” Like the real historical figure, the title character, played by Emily Bader, is an educated and strong-willed young woman. Unlike the real Jane, the fantasy version is also able to outfox the political and religious forces conspiring against her, with swashbuckling flair and a self-knowing wink. There is also colorblind casting: King Edward VI (Jordan Peters) and one of his sisters, Bess (Abbie Hern), are Black, a decision made by the show’s producers in adapting the series from the novel by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand and Jodi Meadows.And oh, yes: The show has human characters who turn into horses, dogs, snakes and other animals. (Those didn’t really exist).For the showrunners, Gemma Burgess and Meredith Glynn, the series offered a chance to reclaim Jane from the cruelties of history — and have a bit of fun in the process.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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Film Crew Veteran, Injured in an Accident, Faults Amazon for His Pain

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      The visual effects supervisor, hurt in one of three recent accidents on Amazon film sets, has sued, but the company says it is not to blame.In March 2023, the producers of Amazon’s holiday movie “Candy Cane Lane,” starring Eddie Murphy, were determined to set a 15-foot fir aflame for a scene, according to court papers filed in a recent lawsuit.But the weather was not cooperating, the court documents say. Producers had already canceled the shoot on several occasions because of rain and winds.Yet, on this day, production would press forward amid winds gusting up to 30 miles per hour, the court papers say.One intense gust sent a tent on the set flying into Jon Farhat, a visual effects supervisor. In the lawsuit he filed last fall, Mr. Farhat said the tent speared him in the back and threw him into the air “as if he was caught in a tornado.” He landed on the ground, unconscious.A video animation created by Jon Farhat shows a simulation of how he says he was injured on the set of the film “Candy Cane Lane.”Jon FarhatCut to 15 months later, and Mr. Farhat, 66, is still primarily bedridden in his home, unable to sit, unable to stand for more than an hour. He broke five vertebrae and two ribs. An ambulance is required to transport him to medical appointments, he said. And his struggle to recover has been made all the more frustrating, he says, by what he describes as a jumble of workers’ compensation red tape that has left him dissatisfied with his doctors and his pain management plan.Share your experience on film and TV sets.If you have worked in film or TV production, we want to hear from you. We won’t publish any part of your response without following up with you first, verifying your information and hearing back from you. We won’t share your contact information outside our newsroom or use it for any reason other than to get in touch with you.

      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

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      As N.B.A. TV Deal Nears, Warner Bros. Discovery Is on the Outside

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      The company’s TNT channel and the N.B.A. have long been inextricably linked, but that may end after next season. Plus, Charles Barkley is retiring.Warner Bros. Discovery executives thought they had given the National Basketball Association a proposal it would accept.In April, after months of negotiations, the company made an offer to pay billions of dollars to the league for the rights to continue showing its games on TNT, as well as its Max streaming service. TNT has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, and its “Inside the NBA” is widely considered one of the best-ever sports studio shows.But with the end of Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window looming, the N.B.A. insisted on changing the package of games the company would receive, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private dealings. Warner Bros. Discovery balked, and while the two sides have continued negotiating, the company now finds itself on the verge of losing the rights to televise the sport with which it has become inextricably linked. And on Friday night, the beating heart of “Inside the NBA,” the Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, said he would be retiring from TV after next season.“The first thing anybody thinks about when you say TNT is the N.B.A.,” said John Skipper, the former president of ESPN.Media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were prepared for bruising negotiations with the N.B.A. Sports rights remain an extremely valuable commodity for traditional TV networks, and companies increasingly also see them as a way to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.The league made clear it wanted a sizable increase on the roughly $2.66 billion in total it receives annually, on average, from Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN under its current rights agreements, which went into effect in 2016. Executives at those companies knew if they wanted to retain N.B.A. rights they would have to pay more for fewer games so that the N.B.A. could create a third package of games to sell.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

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Erin Moriarty Is a Woman Among ‘The Boys’

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      The actress in the hit superhero satire mulled her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism: “Thank God there are characters like this.”Erin Moriarty just stopped a stranger in his tracks. But it wasn’t because he recognized her as a star on one of TV’s most popular shows, or because he was taken by her charm.We were tucked into a quiet corner table on an outdoor patio in West Hollywood, where an attentive server had been mid-stride when he overheard Moriarty, a star of the hit Amazon show “The Boys,” describe her belief that feminism had become an “obligatory thing for studios to exhibit.” He tentatively performed the briefest of check-ins and scurried away.“I love how he hears the word ‘feminism’ and his approach starts to slow,” she said with a laugh. She took a sip of black iced coffee and resumed her thoughts.“I think it’s dangerous,” she said. “I feel like we’re putting a Band-Aid on systemic diseases that we’re not inoculating against.”As the highest-billed actress on “The Boys,” Moriarty, 29, has had to think a lot about performative feminism lately, and whether the show that made her famous is really part of the solution. On one level, the series, which returned for Season 4 on Thursday, is satire, centered on the exploits of a team of morally depraved superheroes known as the Seven.The show targets the steroidal conventions of the genre, along with the corporate pandering and exhibitionist feminism that often accompany it. Much of that critique is focused through Moriarty’s character, Annie January, better known as Starlight.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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Curse’ Is a Pulpy and Self-Aware Heist Series

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      In the best ways, this endearing and very bingeable British show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.”From left, Hugo Chegwin, Allan Mustafa, Emer Kenny and Tom Davis in a scene from “The Curse.”BritBox“Some of this might have happened,” “The Curse” declares at the top of each episode. The show is loosely inspired by the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery in London, when robbers stole a mountain of gold bullion from a vault and largely evaded capture. As with many plundered caches, though, those bricks came at a cost, and where money led, misery followed.But veracity claims feel beside the point for “The Curse” — a British show that debuted in 2022, not to be confused with the unrelated 2023 Showtime series starring Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone — which shines bright enough on its specifics, its self-aware pulp and especially its antsy momentum.Our doomed squad centers on the calculating cafe owner Natasha (Emer Kenny), her bumbling husband, Albert (Allan Mustafa), and her even more bumbling brother, Sidney (Steve Stamp, who also created the show). Mick (Tom Davis) is the muscle, but definitely not the brains, and Phil (Hugo Chegwin) is convinced he is the group’s leader — which the others dispute.In the best ways, the show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.” Anxious wannabe-tough guys argue over inane minutiae while fumbling their way through the criminal underworld. After Phil gives a grandiose pronouncement, Mick asks if he is quoting the Bible. “It’s our new Bible,” Phil says. “‘Scarface.’”The Brink’s-Mat robbery was recently the basis for the also terrific 2023 mini-series “The Gold,” which is witty but takes a more grounded approach. “The Curse” is more cartoonish, blending sitcom one-liners with flashes of abrupt violence — neurotic, endearing infighting in the foreground, international crime rings in the background. The plotting is brisk approaching breakneck, which highlights just how much its ding-a-ling characters are struggling to keep up, getting both luckier and unluckier at every turn.Episodes of “The Curse” are a half-hour, and most end on cliffhangers, so the show is practically begging to be binged. Season 1, available on Amazon Prime Video and BritBox, starts with the heist and ends with a great escape; Season 2, available on BritBox only, is set in Spain, where characters are avoiding extradition, building a water park and trying to break into the cocaine industry. More