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    ‘Midnight Family’ Is a Fresh and Energetic Medical Drama

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    Set among a family of private ambulance drivers in Mexico City, the Apple TV+ series is a thoughtful and cinematic adaptation of a 2019 documentary.“Midnight Family,” on Apple TV+, is a Mexican drama (in Spanish, with subtitles or dubbed) about a family that runs a private ambulance. There aren’t enough ambulances for all the emergencies in Mexico City, so bootleg paramedics blare their own sirens and pitch in.Our heroine is Marigaby (Renata Vaca), who splits her time between medical school and working with her father and brothers on the ambulance. She is passionate about medicine but spread awfully thin — eager to keep the hands-on rush of in-the-field emergency care but desperate to be a proper doctor. She is tired of being looked down on by hospital employees, tired of having to solicit payments from patients mid-ride.Her older brother, Marcus (Diego Calva), likes the ambulance fine but mostly thinks about his girlfriend. Her little brother, Julito (Sergio Bautista), is just a kid, but he handles all the crises with precocious aplomb. Her father (Joaquín Cosío) does not take great care of himself and relies on Julito for probably too much. Her mother (Dolores Heredia) is warily inching her way back into the picture.The show is based on a 2019 documentary of the same name, but the vibe of this TV adaptation is less gritty realism than just solid medical drama. Episode 3, about the 2017 earthquake that killed hundreds of people, has both a bleak, broad grounding and also a weepy individual through line, as all good natural disaster episodes do. Mercifully, this is fresher and more energetic than contemporary network doctor shows and also more cinematic. The nighttime color palate glows, sometimes radiating warmth but other times emitting a kind of woozy menace. Scenes set in traffic don’t feel too phony baloney, even if some characters feel pat.Like many other medical dramas, the show gets flabbier the farther it gets from the hospital, or in this case, the ambulance. The domestic plotlines are a mixed bag: Marcus’s relationship woes are not hugely compelling, though the potential for rekindled romance between the separated parents has a fraught charm.There are graver sins than being reminiscent of “Grey’s Anatomy,” though the pointed voice-overs and rule-breaking romances here add to the similarities. If “Midnight” is a little predictable, so be it; it’s still quite a ride. More

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      Season 2 of ‘Bad Sisters’ Is Still Stylish and Thrilling

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      There is a sense, however, that the most important events in this offbeat Apple TV+ drama happened in Season 1.Season 2 of “Bad Sisters” (two episodes of which are available now, on Apple TV+) arrives after a two-year break, but the plots and pressures are driven completely by the action of the first season. The Garvey sisters are still recalibrating their lives after the secret murder of one sister’s monstrous husband, J.P., a slimy abuser who deserved every bad thing that came his way. But secrets are only ever buried alive — and as any fan of the lurid knows, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.When the season begins, Eva (Sharon Horgan, also a creator and executive producer) has a menopause coach and a pep in her step. Ursula (Eva Birthistle), a nurse, is now thoroughly divorced and co-parenting. Bibi (Sarah Greene), the one with the eye patch, and her wife are preparing for fertility treatments, while Becka (Eve Hewson) has a bro-y new boyfriend. And Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), whose now-dead husband was the source of so much suffering, is getting married to the handsome Ian (Owen McDonnell), who even gets along well with her teenage daughter, Blanaid (Saise Quinn).The central villain of Season 1 has been dispatched, so there’s a new antagonist; this time instead of a smarmy rapist, it’s a pushy busybody named Angelica (Fiona Shaw), identified onscreen as “the Wagon.” That’s Irish slang for … uh … a woman everyone really likes and respects and gets along with. As with Season 1, the true evil is not one individual but rather misogyny.“I’m a woman of the church,” Angelica tells her brother, Roger (Michael Smiley), the neighbor who helped Grace and is haunted by his role in the crime. “I’m in the guilt industry. I know guilt when I see it.” She has plenty to turn her attention to, then, and she wastes no time. Guilt is a constant companion here, a mechanism for control both in broader society and on an individual basis, and we see characters sacrifice more and more of themselves to managing its burden.A lot of what made Season 1 such a thrill is intact here: The show remains pointed and stylish, and the chemistry among the sisters — and their not-quite-matching, not-quite-not-matching costumes — is its most exciting, endearing element. But “Sisters” can’t escape the sense of rehash, the fact that all the most important things have already happened, the biggest bombs have already detonated, the most chilling secrets have already been exposed.Despite a huge, brutal twist early in the season, these additional episodes aren’t deeper or more special and specific than the first season’s. The opening credits this go-round use the same song as the first but set up a new macabre Rube Goldberg machine, and that’s kind of how the whole season feels, like a code you already have the key to.Season 2 has eight episodes, and new installments arrive on Wednesdays. More

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      For One of the ‘Bad Sisters,’ Things Have Gotten Even Worse

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      Anne-Marie Duff, who won a BAFTA for her performance in this black comedy last season, discusses her character’s darker turn in Season 2.This article includes spoilers for the first two episodes of the new season of “Bad Sisters.”The first time Anne-Marie Duff applied to drama school in London, it turned her away. When she applied a second time, she received a spot on the wait-list, and she called the school every day until it admitted her.“I think they just gave me a place to shut me up,” said Duff, the 54-year-old actress who describes herself as “London Irish.”Tenacity and grit characterize many of the women Duff has portrayed throughout her decades-long career, including the indomitable Fiona Gallagher in the British version of “Shameless” and the headstrong Queen Elizabeth I in the BBC mini-series “The Virgin Queen.”But those qualities are particularly evident in Duff’s depiction of Grace Williams, the troubled housewife at the center of an elaborate whodunit in the Apple TV+ black comedy “Bad Sisters.”For much of the first season, Grace trembles under the heavy hand of her husband, John Paul (Claes Bang), a jerk known by an unprintable nickname to her sisters. But beneath her timid exterior and obsequious demeanor, frustration builds and boils as her husband belittles and badgers her — until she finally erupts in a climactic scene that ends with her strangling him.Duff’s performance won her best supporting actress at the EE British Academy Film Awards and helped secure a second season of the show, which had a two-episode premiere on Wednesday.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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      For ‘Disclaimer,’ Alfonso Cuarón Updates His Terms and Conditions

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      Cate Blanchett stars in the acclaimed director’s new TV series, a thriller about a woman whose life is upended by a mysterious novel.About a decade ago, the writer-director Alfonso Cuarón was sent an advance copy of Renée Knight’s book “Disclaimer,” a thriller about a woman whose life is upended when she receives a novel by an unknown author that seems to lay bare her secrets. That novel begins with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”As Cuarón (“Children of Men,” “Y Tu Mamá También”) read, he could picture each scene in his head. This book, he thought, should be a film. There was just one problem.“I didn’t see how the film that I wanted to do could fit into an hour and 45 minutes,” he said.So Cuarón immersed himself in other projects, like “Roma” (2018), which won him a second Oscar for directing. But a few years later, he began to think about “Disclaimer” again, in the context of more expansive films like Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” or Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” works that clocked in at four or five hours.The market for marathon films is small. But Cuarón knew of an alternative: television. And he was mindful that other auteurs, like David Lynch with “Twin Peaks” and Lars Von Trier with “The Kingdom,” had explored that medium before him.Which is how, after a three-decade film career and five Oscars, Cuarón came to make “Disclaimer,” a seven-episode limited series starring Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline. The first two episodes premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, with the rest rolling out weekly afterward.In “Disclaimer,” Blanchett plays an acclaimed journalist and documentarian, and Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband.Apple TV+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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      ‘La Maison’: Like ‘Succession,’ but Better Dressed (and French)

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      The new Apple TV+’s new series takes the viewer inside two rival Paris fashion houses, with gorgeous people in gorgeous clothes who will do anything for power.“Does she know our favorite dish is eating each other alive?”So one family member asks another in an early scene of “La Maison,” a glossy new drama from Apple TV+, about two rival high-end, family-owned French fashion houses: Ledu and Rovel.The show, which premieres on Friday, is filled with gorgeous people living in fabulous homes, fighting, scheming, flirting, plotting and betraying one another as they attempt to gain control of — everything!Yes, like “Succession,” but with more glamorous outfits and, well, Paris.Or akin to “a Shakespearean drama,” said Lambert Wilson, who plays Vincent Ledu, the longtime designer of the Ledu house, whose fall from power is fast and devastating when an unbridled rant about Asian clients goes viral, leading to his cancellation and unwilling resignation. Enter Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot), a young, edgy designer with ideas about waste and sustainability, who is recruited by Perle Foster (Amira Casar), Vincent’s right-hand woman and former muse. (Amping up the tension and resentment, it turns out that Paloma’s dead father was Vincent’s lover.)Zita Hanrot as Paloma Castel, a young designer who comes onto the scene after Vincent Ledu’s fall from grace.Apple TV+In the other camp, the terrifying chief executive Diane Rovel (Carole Bouquet) schemes to have her company take over Ledu, helped by Vincent’s brother, Victor (Pierre Deladonchamps), who is married to Diane’s daughter (Florence Loiret Caille).“All the characters have scar tissue,” said Casar, “they are all damaged and lonely.” Her own character, Perle, is a watchful, lonely outsider. “On the one side, there is this old aristocratic family, the Ledus, who are hanging on to craft and tradition, on the other this nouveau riche bourgeoisie, the Rovels, who will destroy to have it all,” Casar 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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      ‘Slow Horses’ Review: Bucking the Odds

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      The sardonic British series about spies no one wants is as likable as ever in its fourth season. Is that enough?In the television universe, the arc of nearly every series bends toward repetition and gradual decline. The best and most original shows are not immune to this rule (if anything they are more prone to it), no matter how much we would like to tell ourselves otherwise or how willing we are to accept less vibrant versions of a great first season.I did not want to believe this would be true of the satirical British spy thriller “Slow Horses,” whose first two seasons on Apple TV+ were a terrific blend of mordant, melancholy comedy and absorbing action and mystery, not quite like anything else on TV. Maybe the third season, which felt more concerned with plot mechanics and violent set pieces than character, was a hiccup.Season 4, based on “Spook Street,” the fifth book in Mick Herron’s Slough House series, does represent a slight comeback. (Two of six episodes are at Apple TV+.) But it still has a feeling of going through the motions and casting about for new ideas. How many times can the beleaguered hero, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), chase and be chased through London railway and Tube stations? The wait for more of the squirmy, transgressive excitement of the early seasons continues.On the other hand, it is also true — as any number of fans, apoplectic as they read this, will tell you — that “Slow Horses” remains one of the most entertaining and well-put-together shows around. The motions through which it goes are good ones. (In accordance with another general rule of American TV, it is the inferior third season that has finally broken through at the Emmys, with “Slow Horses” up for nine awards including outstanding drama series.)The irresistible premise remains in place. River is one of a motley group of agents from the British intelligence service MI5 who have been exiled to a backwater called Slough House after catastrophically screwing up their careers. They are expected to keep quiet and do nothing, but under the leadership of their unsociable, unhygienic boss, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), they continually outsmart and outmaneuver their more reputable colleagues and prevent disasters from befalling the agency and the nation.The new season retains the obstreperous, excitable River along with the no-nonsense Louisa (an excellent Rosalind Eleazar), the Mutt-and-Jeff action team of Shirley and Marcus (Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Kadiff Kirwan), the timorous old pro Catherine (Saskia Reeves) and the inexcusably gross, though often helpful tech whiz, Roddy (Christopher Chung). New to the team is J.K. (Tom Brooke), a cipher in a hoodie who does not add much, even when he grudgingly starts to open up later in the season.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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      Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses

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      “Wolfs,” a new film starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, was going to get a robust theatrical release. But the company is curtailing that plan.When Apple won a bidding war in 2021 for the rights to make the action comedy “Wolfs” with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, it did so in part because it promised the stars it would put the movie into a large number of movie theaters.“Brad and I made the deal to do that movie where we gave money back to make sure that we had a theatrical release,” Mr. Clooney said last year in an interview with the Hollywood trade publication Deadline.But this month, just six weeks before the film was set to show up in thousands of theaters around the United States, Apple announced a significant change in plans. “Wolfs” will now be shown on a limited number of movie screens for one week before becoming available on the company’s streaming service on Sept. 27. (Internationally, it won’t appear in theaters at all with the exception of the Venice Film Festival, where it will premiere on Sept. 1.)“‘Wolfs’ is the kind of big event movie that makes Apple TV+ such an exceptional home for the best in entertainment,” Matt Dentler, the head of features for Apple Original Films, said in a statement. “Releasing the movie to theaters before making it widely available to Apple TV+ customers brings the best of both worlds to audiences.”The film’s director, Jon Watts, told Vanity Fair that he had found out about the change in plans only days before the announcement. “The theatrical experience has really made an impression on me, of how valuable this thing is and how important it is,” Mr. Watts said. “I always thought of this as a theatrical movie. We made it to be seen in theaters, and I think that’s the best way to see it.”Despite the filmmakers’ desires, the about-face follows a middling run at the box office for Apple, which began releasing films into theaters around the country via partnerships with traditional studios in October.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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      ‘Pachinko’ Is a Gorgeous Epic of Love and Struggle

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      Based on the novel by Min Jin Lee, this thoughtful series about a Korean family across generations returns to Apple TV+ for a second season.Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Min Jin Lee, the Apple TV+ drama “Pachinko” spans decades in the life of a Korean family, beginning first in 1915 under Japanese colonial rule in their home country and later in Japan, where their personal ambitions bump up against ingrained prejudice.“Pachinko,” Season 2 of which premieres on Friday, hits on multiple emotional levels. The high drama of the many romantic entanglements melds with the thoughtful historical fiction about how a strange mixture of trauma and love reverberates through generations. It makes for a gem of a show about a family’s will not only to survive but also to thrive.At the center of the sprawling epic is Sunja, played as a young woman by Minha Kim and as a grandmother by Yuh-jung Youn, an Oscar winner for “Minari.” Season 1 charted Sunja’s childhood, her first romance and betrayal, and then her move to Osaka with Isak (Steve Sanghyun Noh), a young pastor who marries her while she is already pregnant. In the later timeline, which began in New York City in 1989, Sunja’s American-educated grandson, Solomon (Jin Ha), headed to Tokyo with aims of ascending in the business world, assuming at first that he could use his Koreanness to an advantage.Season 2 continues the 1989 story line, but jumps ahead in the earlier timeline to 1945, as the American bombing of Osaka looms. Sunja is now keeping herself afloat selling kimchi, though supplies are scarce. Her eldest boy (Kang Hoon Kim), is studious but tormented by his classmates, while her youngest (Eunseong Kwon) is an adorable firecracker, whose presence does a lot to enliven the otherwise grim circumstances. (The wonderful opening credits sequence, which has the cast dancing to the 1969 Grass Roots tune “Wait a Million Years,” is also a burst of joy.)Even as the two story threads feel mismatched — a lot more happens in the World War II plot than in 1989 — the writers always find savvy links between them. They are helped by the remarkable work of Kim and Youn, each elevating the other as we come to understand the root of Sunja’s resoluteness and how she relates to her grandson’s ambition. Paired with Nico Muhly’s stunning and plaintive score, the performances make it easy to become enraptured by Sunja’s story. More

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      ‘Yo Gabba GabbaLand!’ Revives a Cult Kids Show

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      This reboot features the same characters and still emphasizes music and dance while seeking to “make the world of Gabba an actual place,” a creator said.When “Yo Gabba Gabba!” premiered on Nickelodeon in 2007, the series looked and sounded like nothing else on children’s TV. It starred five toys that have come to life, including Brobee; a half-broccoli, half-bee hybrid with a bushy black unibrow; and Muno, a giant Cyclops with bumps all over his cherry-red body. Preschool viewers, typically treated to less challenging musical fare, heard performances from acts like Bootsy Collins, the Roots, My Chemical Romance and Weezer.Like Disney theme parks, the music and dance-centric show sought to entertain children while also appealing to their parents, a particularly tough task for shows aimed at the preschool set. In many ways it succeeded, garnering a loyal fan base that spanned generations.The show eventually became a kind of cultural phenomenon, spawning a live touring show and a line of toys, and showing up at places as dissimilar as the Marvel series “WandaVision” and Coachella. At the concerts, fans could sing along to lyrics about, say, worms and centipedes hanging out underground (“Follow the Oskie Bugs”) or carrots and green beans that get sad if you don’t eat them (“Party in My Tummy”).“I do think that’s part of the beauty of the show,” said Scott Schultz, who created the show with Christian Jacobs. “It’s confusing, but in a fun way.”“Yo Gabba Gabba!” was canceled in 2015, but the creators continued to dream of ways to revive the characters and the show. “We kept thinking, let’s make it bigger, let’s make the world of Gabba an actual place, almost like a destination,” Jacobs said. They eventually found a willing partner in Apple TV+, and production began in 2022.Now the gang is back in a new series, “Yo Gabba GabbaLand!,” which premieres on Aug. 9. The original host, DJ Lance Rock, has been replaced by Kammy Kam, played by Kamryn Smith, a 13-year-old dancer from Phoenix. The show’s “Beat of the Day” duties have transferred from the late rapper Biz Markie to Reggie Watts, Big Daddy Kane and others.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