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      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

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      ‘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

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      in Television

      ‘Outer Range’ Is a Dizzying Sci-Fi Drama, With Buffalo

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      The second season of this Amazon series, all of which is available now, cranks up both the time-travel and the outrageous soapiness.Season 1 of “Outer Range,” on Amazon, was intriguing and unsatisfying — lush, expansive and compelling, but also marred by abundant faux-deep nonsense and a total lack of resolution. It’s a “this is my family’s land, grumble grumble” ranch drama ostensibly starring Josh Brolin, but the real star of the show is a big hole. And not just any hole — a magic hole! A hole that transports you through time! Sometimes people disappear. Sometimes the hole disappears.I happily devoured that first season but didn’t think I cared much about it. And yet, I kept thinking about “Outer Range” in the two years since its debut. When I watched other shows in which people dejectedly shook their heads, slowly put on their cowboy hats and then sadly — maybe … sexy-sadly? — stammered wisdom, I thought, “What ever happened to that hole show?” When I saw other dramas include bar fights that went way wrong, I wondered, “Is that the exterior of that bar from that hole show?” What was that other series where people were constantly tripping on earthy psychedelics? Where did I just see that actress play a different zany lady? Ah, right: the hole show.I don’t know if Season 2, which premiered last week, rewards my devotion per se, but I also marathoned its seven episodes, bouncing between enchantment and eye-rolling. I love my dumb show! Sometimes you just want to see a Native American sheriff fall into a hole, travel back to 1882, reconnect with her Shoshone ancestors, meet another time traveler à la “Outlander,” come back to the present day and be driven to the hospital by Josh Brolin under tense circumstances. Sometimes you want to see people’s eyes go black like in that episode of “The X-Files” with the snake lady. There’s something invigorating about a show that just does not care if the actors playing the younger and older versions of the same person resemble one another whatsoever.“Outer Range” emphasized drama over sci-fi in Season 1, but Season 2, all of which is available now, cranks up both the time-travel-portal aspect and the outrageous soapiness. The hole is less a profound mystery and more an incredibly handy mechanism for creating bananas telenovela moments. I’m your son! Or I didn’t die! Or I’m … you! Work your magic, magic hole.The show loves its musings and mantras about time. “Time doesn’t have a beginning or an end, it just is,” we’re told. “Time is a river.” “Time reveals all.” Such lines are fine on their own, though they inevitably recall “time is a flat circle,” the “True Detective” quote that has become synonymous with TV shows getting high on their own supply.The performances in “Outer Range” hail from different planets. Brolin grounds his work as Royal, who is secretly a time-traveler from the 1800s, in a simmering, fragile stoicism, whereas Lili Taylor, as his long-suffering wife, channels the aggression and frustration of a Melissa McCarthy character. Imogen Poots is the dreamy, dangerous boho blonde, out of the “Orphan Black” Rolodex of crazy sages, while Shaun Sipos and Noah Reid, as embittered brothers, would be at home in “The Righteous Gemstones.”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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      in Television

      The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV

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      A few years ago, “Atlanta” and “PEN15” were teaching TV new tricks.In “Atlanta,” Donald Glover sketched a funhouse-mirror image of Black experience in America (and outside it), telling stories set in and around the hip-hop business with an unsettling, comic-surreal language. In “PEN15,” Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle created a minutely observed, universal-yet-specific picture of adolescent awkwardness.In February, Glover and Erskine returned in the action thriller “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” on Amazon Prime Video. It’s … fine? A takeoff on the 2005 film, it updates the story of a married duo of spies by imagining the espionage business as gig work. The stars have chemistry and charisma; the series avails itself of an impressive cast of guest stars and delectable Italian shooting locations. It’s breezy and goes down easy. I watched several episodes on a recent long-haul flight and they helped the hours pass.But I would never have wasted an episode of “Atlanta” or “PEN15” on in-flight entertainment. The work was too good, the nuances too fine, to lose a line of dialogue to engine noise.I do not mean to single out Glover and Erskine here. They are not alone — far from it. Keri Russell, a ruthless and complicated Russian spy in “The Americans,” is now in “The Diplomat,” a forgettably fun dramedy. Natasha Lyonne, of the provocative “Orange Is the New Black” and the psychotropic “Russian Doll,” now plays a retro-revamped Columbo figure in “Poker Face.” Idris Elba, once the macroeconomics-student gangster Stringer Bell in “The Wire,” more recently starred in “Hijack,” a by-the-numbers airplane thriller.I’ve watched all of these shows. They’re not bad. They’re simply … mid. Which is what makes them, frustratingly, as emblematic of the current moment in TV as their stars’ previous shows were of the ambitions of the past.What we have now is a profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence. We have tasteful remakes of familiar titles. We have the evidence of healthy budgets spent on impressive locations. We have good-enough new shows that resemble great old ones.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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      in Movies

      Video Shows Crash That Injured Crew Members of ‘The Pickup’

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      The collision on the set of “The Pickup” is under investigation. Video shows an armored truck and an S.U.V. veering off a road before the truck flips onto the smaller vehicle.A two-vehicle crash that injured several crew members on the set of the movie “The Pickup” is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency said on Wednesday.Amazon MGM Studios said the crash occurred on Saturday but did not provide any details about the injuries. According to two people with direct knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, at least a half-dozen people who were inside the vehicles sustained injuries and were transported to a hospital. One person remained hospitalized on Wednesday with a back injury, those people said.They said that none of the actors in the film, which features Eddie Murphy, Keke Palmer and Pete Davidson, were involved in the crash. An OSHA inspection report said it occurred at a small airport outside Atlanta.Video of the crash that was obtained by The New York Times shows an armored truck pulling up alongside an S.U.V. before swerving into it. After the collision, both vehicles veer off the road in tandem and drive onto grass, where the armored truck flips on top of the S.U.V.Both vehicles completely roll over and end up upright but mangled. As a back door of the armored truck swings open, one person inside can be seen lying limp.The video is a cellphone recording of a monitor playing back the footage of the crash.Several crew members of the movie “The Pickup” were injured when two vehicles collided during filming. The crash is under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.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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      in Television

      ‘Fallout’ Finds the Fun in an Apocalyptic Hellscape

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      TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, from the creators of “Westworld,” takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times.The scream was just right — bloodcurdling, if also very funny — and the practical effects crew had finally found the proper volume and trajectory of the water cannon. The idea was to film what might happen if you ripped a man from the throat of a mutant salamander, exploding its guts like a giant water balloon.All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander’s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers.Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of “Fallout” in early 2023, Amazon had spared no expense to make the show, the latest genre-bending series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of “Westworld.” So it was no surprise when Nolan, on set to direct that chilly afternoon, was presented with not one but some half-dozen buckets of bile to choose from, in a variety of revolting hues. He settled on a pukey pinkish yellow.“This is the closest thing to comedy that I’ve worked on,” he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Prestige,” Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts — this was new territory.“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media feeds? Yes, please.“Fallout” premieres Wednesday on Prime Video, and at first it may sound familiar to viewers of a certain postapocalyptic HBO hit from last year, “The Last of Us.” Imagine: a sprawling, expensive adaptation of a beloved videogame franchise that features an unlikely duo — a nihilistic old gunslinger with a tortured past and a tough young woman whose mission overlaps with his. Together, they travel a lawless America plagued by criminals, fanatics, killer mutants and trigger-happy survivors.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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      in Television

      ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Is a Childhood Dream Streamed Out to the World

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      Vivienne Medrano’s animated musical series went from middle-school sketches to YouTube to a series streaming on Amazon.On Oct. 28, 2019, the animator and YouTube personality Vivienne Medrano celebrated a milestone: the release of “Hazbin Hotel,” a 30-minute pilot for an animated musical-comedy about a rehabilitation program that aspires to help Hell’s repentant demons get to Heaven.Produced and directed by Medrano and brought to life by a team of several dozen freelance animators, the pilot was self-financed with contributions from Medrano’s Patreon subscribers, who helped support her and the project with monthly donations during the episode’s more than two-year development process. When she finally uploaded it to YouTube, Medrano was both relieved and excited — it felt like the culmination of something a long time in the making, and she was eager to show her work to her small but dedicated group of fans.She was not prepared for what happened next. Almost immediately, the video went viral, attracting fans of adult animation, Broadway musicals and ribald comedy who, based on the comments and other online reactions, were charmed by the project’s original voice and punky, carefree style. Within months, it drew tens of millions of views and sent Medrano’s Patreon subscriptions skyrocketing; admirers coalesced into an ardent fandom that generated fan fiction, tribute art and elaborate costumes. (As of late January, it had nearly 95 million views.)“I’ve been an artist online basically my whole life, and I had an audience,” Medrano said in a phone interview earlier this month. “But when the pilot came out, it just exploded — there were so many people so fast and so suddenly. It became this massive hit in a way that I never expected.”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?  More

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      How ‘Last One Laughing’ Took Over (Most of) the World

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      “Last One Laughing,” an Amazon Prime show in which contestants try not to crack up, has spawned spinoffs in more than a dozen countries — though not the United States.In early 2016, James Farrell, then the head of content at Amazon Studios for Japan, was looking for original programming that could help the streamer gain a foothold in the region.After months of searching, Farrell recalled recently, he was open to any concept, no matter how strange or unconventional. Then, over a late night dinner, one of the country’s most prominent comedians, Hitoshi Matsumoto, suggested an idea to Farrell that he said the Japanese networks had never let him do: Ten comedians gather in a room and try to make each other laugh. The last one to keep a straight face wins.It might not sound like much. But Farrell, who is now a vice president at Amazon Studios, based in Los Angeles, thought “‘That’s it. That’s the one,’” he said. “I was so certain that this was the monster I was looking for.”The resulting program, a four-episode, roughly three-hour comedy game show called “Hitoshi Matsumoto Presents: Documental,” quickly became one of the most popular shows on Prime Video in Japan, producing a rabid fan base and 13 seasons over the past eight years.Hitoshi Matsumoto pitched “Documental” to James Farrell, then the head of content at Amazon Studios for Japan, in 2016. The show spawned 13 seasons and many spinoffs around the globe.Sports Nippon/Getty ImagesIt also launched a sprawling international franchise, with local versions in more than a dozen territories around the world. Rebranded abroad as “LOL: Last One Laughing,” the format remains almost exactly as Matsumoto first pitched it, with each version drawing contestants from the country’s top comedians and comedy actors. It now has iterations in Italy, Mexico, Spain, France, Canada (both in French and in English), Denmark, Colombia and more — each of which, almost without exception, has found an enthusiastic audience in its country of origin.“On paper, the idea of people not laughing for however many hours doesn’t sound like it’s going to be entertaining,” said the comedian Graham Norton, the host of an Irish version of “LOL” that premieres Friday. “And yet when you watch it, you realize that it is fun — it is oddly entertaining.”The comedy antics — some prepared, some improvised — are often amusing. But it’s the contestants’ strained efforts to suppress their laughter that is really compelling. They moan and scream; their faces cramp and contort wildly. There’s an air of frenzied desperation. “I think of it almost like a psychological experiment, a human experiment,” said the actress Anke Engelke, who has starred on “LOL Germany.” “It’s an intense experience.”Juan Carlos Nava and Juan Carlos Casasola in “Last One Laughing Mexico.”Amazon StudiosThe cast of “Last One Laughing Canada.”Alex Urosevic/Prime VideoIn its early days, the franchise’s success didn’t seem guaranteed. Even after the runaway success of “Documental,” Farrell and his colleagues had a hard time persuading producers in other territories to take a chance on the format. Part of the problem was the Japanese version’s style of humor, which skewed ribald and scatological: Some of the contestants stripped nude to make their competitors crack up, and the gags could sometimes get outrageously suggestive. “I’d show it to other countries,” Farrell said, “and they’d be like, ‘Uh, we don’t have to get naked, right?’”Michael Bully Herbig, a German comedian who hosts “LOL Germany,” was put off immediately. “I thought it was too weird,” he said. The show’s German production company, Constantin Entertainment, convinced Herbig that theirs would be a more family-friendly version. He ultimately agreed, in large part, because he assumed “LOL Germany” would be a niche show: “I said, you know what? Let’s try it. Nobody will ever see it anyway,” he said.Instead, it became the most-streamed series on Amazon Prime Video in Germany, spanning four seasons and a Christmas special, and was recently nominated for an International Emmy Award. “Nobody could have ever imagined how successful this would be,” Herbig said. “It’s the best job I ever had.”Michael Bully Herbig, center back, with the cast of the third season of Germany’s “Last One Laughing.” The show is on its fourth season, despite the host Herbig’s fear it would be “too weird.”Frank Zauritz/Prime Video“LOL Germany” is made by Germans for Germans, and despite its Emmy nomination it has not found an audience elsewhere: pretty much the only people watching “LOL Germany” outside of the country, according to Farrell, are Germans living abroad. That’s been the true of each version of the show. “LOL France” is a hit among French viewers; “LOL Mexico” is adored in Mexico and Mexico alone. It is specific, highly localized content, entirely by design.Pretty much the only place “Last One Laughing” is not a hit is the United States. Prime Video’s American programming teams, Farrell said, are responsible for big-budget spectacles such as “Reacher,” “The Rings of Power” and “The Boys” — broad, widely accessible action and fantasy blockbusters which draw audiences across the world.“But for the price of one of those big U.S. shows, I can make 20 versions of ‘LOL,’ and in aggregate those 20 ‘LOL’s will do as well as any of the big tent-poles,” Farrell said. According to Amazon, the third season of “LOL France” had the biggest day-one launch ever on Prime Video, and “LOL Italy” is its most watched Italian show.From left: Estevam Nabote, Thiago Ventura and Nany People in “LOL: Se Rir, Já Era!” the show’s Brazilian version.Reproducao/Prime VideoBasketmouth, the host of the Nigerian spinoff of “LOL.”Amazon StudiosThat allows “LOL” the freedom to lean in to cultural specificity. The Japanese version had its over-the-top raunchiness; the Germans are milder and more PG. Though the format never changes, each version, owing to the national character of the humor, feels unique.“One of the things I enjoy about the show is that they didn’t try to make it bland, or international,” like so much of contemporary TV, Norton said. “The Irish version “is so Irish,” he said. “Lots of the references in the show are deep-dive Irish references, things that a U.K. audience wouldn’t even understand.” (A possible British version has been rumored, though not confirmed.)Not every iteration of “LOL” has been a resounding success: The Australian, Hindi and Tamil versions only had one season apiece. But because “LOL” is so inexpensive and quick to produce (it takes about a day and a half to shoot a series), and because it features a group of famous comedians, “it’s always going to do at least OK,” Farrell said.“It isn’t something that can really bomb,” he added. “The floor is really high.” More