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      ‘Masters of the Air’ Review: Hanks and Spielberg, Back at War

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      The team behind “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” returns to World War II and the Greatest Generation, this time piloting B-17 bombers.This review contains spoilers for the entire season of “Masters of the Air.”When Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg created “Band of Brothers” in 2001, in the wake of their partnership on the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan,” they were the most prominent celebrators of what had become known as the Greatest Generation. Twenty-three years later, with the release of “Masters of the Air,” they’ve become their own greatest generation: upholders of an old-fashioned style of television making, fighting their chosen war over and over again.Created by John Shiban and John Orloff based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same title, “Masters of the Air” — which wrapped up its nine-episode run on Apple TV+ this week — was Hanks and Spielberg’s third mini-series saluting American troops in World War II. (Gary Goetzman joined them as executive producer for “The Pacific” in 2010 and for “Masters.”) The latest band of brothers chosen for dramatization and valorization was the 100th Bomb Group, the “bloody Hundredth,” based in England and decimated during its daytime runs over Europe from 1943 to 1945.The first — and for many viewers, perhaps, sufficient — observation to be made about “Masters” is that the money, more than ever, was right up there on the screen. These producers are Eisenhower-class when it comes to marshaling staff and materiel, as evidenced by the solid five minutes of closing credits, and both the quotidian recreation of an air base in the green English countryside and the special-effects extravaganzas of airborne battle were visually captivating.Some of the images of mayhem in the skies as the American B-17s and their crews are torn apart by German flak and fighters were the kind that will stick with you even if you would rather they didn’t, like the rain of wings and engines slowly falling after two bombers collide or like the airman sliding through the sky and being halved by a plane’s wing.But being absorbingly pictorial (the distinguished roster of directors included Cary Joji Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Tim Van Patten and the team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck) only contributed to the sense that the show existed in amber — more of a well-preserved fossil than a compelling drama. You could argue that this was the inevitable result of trying to celebrate 1940s-style patriotism one time too many. But the issues with “Masters” are artistic rather than cultural or political or factual.In condensing Miller’s broad-ranging history, while also converting it into a drama extending over nearly eight hours, Orloff and Shiban ended up with an ungainly, disjointed story that never gave itself the time or the space to grow. “Masters” felt like a catalog of war movie genres — the home-front melodrama, the aerial-combat blockbuster, the P.O.W. escape adventure, the behind-enemy-lines spy thriller, the racial-harmony drama — strung together in fealty to actual events but with disregard for dramatic development.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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      ‘Constellation’ Review: Alice in Wonderspace

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      A sci-fi mystery from Apple TV+ turns quantum physics into a dark fairy tale.In “Constellation” on Apple TV+, the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace stars as Jo Ericsson, an astronaut whose time on the International Space Station takes a tragic and mysterious turn. The superbly capable Jo battles overwhelming odds to get back to Earth and to decipher why she feels so out of place once she’s there. But the real hero of the story — its emotional center and vigilant conscience — is Jo’s young daughter, a solemn girl with a significant name: Alice. To understand what’s up with her mom, she’ll have to go through the looking glass.The uneven but seductively spooky “Constellation,” which premieres with three of its eight episodes on Wednesday, is a space adventure, mystery and family drama spun from the unstable fabric of quantum physics. People, places and events look different from episode to episode and scene to scene; when a NASA scientist tells Jo that curiosity killed the cat, he is definitely referring to the poor animal inside Schrödinger’s box.In storytelling terms, though, the real quantum entanglement is that of straight science-fiction action with dark fairy tale. The show’s creator and writer, Peter Harness, working with the directors Michelle MacLaren, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Joseph Cedar, carries off both with aplomb, and maintains a dry tone and an appealing atmosphere of foreboding. The mechanics of the narrative, as “Constellation” shifts through its different gears, can be creaky, but the show continually draws you in.The main action begins with a bang, as an unidentified bit of debris cripples the space station during an experiment that seeks “a new state of matter.” Across two episodes the echoes of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” are heavy as Jo, left alone in the station, deals with a cascade of problems while trying to escape in a Soyuz capsule. Where “Gravity” ended, though, “Constellation” is just getting started. The resourcefulness and sanity Jo displays in space define her for the audience, so that we stay on her side when things start to go wrong on Earth.Jo’s memories — of names, cars, relationships — do not completely jibe with what she finds when she gets home to Sweden, and the show slides from adventure into increasingly paranoid thriller, smoothly though perhaps with more time-jumping confusion and open questions than some viewers will have patience for. It plays fair, however — by Episode 6 things begin to come clear. At which point Jo and Alice head into the dark northern woods.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 Dynasty’ Got the Secretive New England Patriots to Speak

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      For an Apple TV+ docuseries, the tight-lipped sports franchise provided insight into six Super Bowl victories as well as darker moments.The New England Patriots, a modern N.F.L. juggernaut with six Super Bowl wins and two cheating scandals, are the perfect subject for a docuseries. They are also one of the most secretive franchises in professional sports.But the filmmakers behind “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” an Apple TV+ docuseries premiering on Friday, convinced more than 25 players, coaches and executives to open up on camera. Among those interviewed are Robert Kraft, the team’s longtime owner; Bill Belichick, who has the most playoff wins of any N.F.L. coach; and Tom Brady, a three-time league M.V.P. who is widely considered the greatest quarterback ever.In an opening montage for the behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of the Patriots, Brady’s voice cracks and he appears to hold back tears while reminiscing on his New England career, which had a tense ending.“The Dynasty” largely focuses on the Patriots’ inner power dynamics and the team’s football mystique — Brady unleashes a comical, profanity-laced defense of a favorable but controversial play in 2002 — but the series devotes three of its 10 episodes to darker moments. Those include the murder conviction of Aaron Hernandez and league punishments for spying on an opponent and playing with deflated footballs. (Hernandez killed himself in prison in 2017.)“I can’t overstate how impressed I was with the honesty that people demonstrated with really difficult content,” said Jeff Benedict, who wrote a book about the Patriots before pitching the docuseries. “Some of the things that we were asking people to talk about were not pleasant.”The Patriots were one of the league’s most tight-lipped teams under Belichick, who left the organization last month after a 4-13 season. His weekly news conferences often consisted of short, unrevealing answers; the team’s “Do Your Job” mantra referred to both on-field assignments and limiting distractions.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 ‘The New Look,’ It’s Chanel Versus Dior in War-Torn Paris

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      Juliette Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn play the two fashion icons during the Nazi occupation of France in a new series from Apple TV+.In “The New Look,” an Apple TV+ show premiering Feb. 14, wine glasses are never empty, cigarettes are always half-smoked and everyone is thin. The series follows two titans of French fashion, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, after all, toward the end of World War II.But this glamorous portrayal of Paris’s creative milieu is also interested in how the French elite collaborated with their Nazi occupiers during this contested period. It offers a startling throwback to a time when swastika-stamped flags hung over the streets of Paris. From 1940 to 1944, the French Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis and deported over 70,000 Jews to death camps, sent French workers to Germany and tried to crush the French resistance.The show’s main action starts in 1943. Chanel (played by Juliette Binoche), a star of French fashion, is living at the Ritz Hotel, which was then a Nazi headquarter, where she hosts her boyfriend, the German spy Hans Günther von Dincklage (Claes Bang).“Chanel was an excellent survivor,” said Binoche, sitting on a couch in the wood-paneled bar at the Hotel Regina Louvre, which stood in for the Ritz on the show. Binoche — wearing a white shirt layered with a black bustier, tie and pants — said she read several biographies of the designer to prepare for the role, and was impressed by how Chanel’s creativity and business savvy took her from childhood poverty to the top of the European elite.Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Christian Dior, at the Hotel Regina Louvre in Paris, where several scenes from were shot.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesPlaying the character in this period of her life was challenging, the actress added, because “there’s so many layers of gray going on.” On the show, we see Chanel invoking Vichy’s Aryan laws in a failed bid to eject her Jewish business partners from the company. She travels to Madrid at the request of an S.S. general in a bizarre attempt to broker peace between Germany and Britain (Winston Churchill, whom she knew personally, declines to meet).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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      ‘Suits’ and ‘Friends’: Here’s What Americans Streamed in 2023

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      Hollywood was on strike for much of the year. And yet the time viewers spent streaming shows and movies went up. A lot.Last year, studios continued to pull back how much they spend on new TV shows. A pair of strikes effectively shut down Hollywood for several months, disrupting new releases of television shows and movies.And yet Americans kept on streaming.The time that people watched streaming services from their TV sets last year jumped 21 percent from 2022, according to a year-end review on streaming trends by Nielsen, the media research firm. There were nearly a million television shows and movies for Americans to choose from on over 90 streaming services.What did they watch? A lot of reruns, it turns out.Here’s a look at some of the trends.‘Suits’ Bests ‘Stranger Things’From left, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard and Sadie Sink in a scene from “Stranger Things.”NetflixIt’s well established that “Suits,” the USA Network’s legal procedural that aired from 2011 to 2019, was an unexpected streaming hit last year. Netflix subscribers began devouring it over the summer. They shattered records in the process.“Suits,” with 57.7 billion minutes of viewing time in 2023, eclipsed both “The Office” in 2020 and “Stranger Things” in 2022 (when its fourth season was released) as the most-streamed show on television sets in a single year, according to Nielsen. (The research firm began releasing yearly figures in 2020.)“Suits” was probably new to most viewers who watched it on Netflix, said Brian Fuhrer, a senior vice president of product at Nielsen.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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      ‘For all Mankind’ Ends Its Greediest Season

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      In an interview, the showrunners discuss the space drama’s just-concluded fourth season, in which exploration gave way to exploitation.This interview includes spoilers for Season 4 of “For All Mankind.”After beginning its story in 1969 and working its way through the following decades, “For All Mankind” reached the year 2003 in its fourth season. At one point, President Al Gore is …Wait, what?Set in an alternate universe, this Apple TV+ series is predicated on the idea that a Soviet cosmonaut became the first man on the moon. The event had a butterfly effect with consequences that included an accelerated conquest of space, the continued existence of the Soviet Union and, yes, a President Gore.Season 4, which concluded last week, toggled between Happy Valley, a Mars base dedicated largely to mining, and Earth, where Americans and Soviets enjoy a distrustful relationship despite being partners in space ventures. The oldest survivors of the previous seasons are Ed (Joel Kinnaman), now an astronaut elder working on Mars for the private company Helios; his former colleague Danielle (Krys Marshall), who leads Happy Valley; and Margo (Wrenn Schmidt), a high-ranking NASA administrator who ended up in the Soviet Union and is roped into that country’s space program.The major question of Season 4 is: What happens when exploitation, in every sense of the word, replaces exploration as a motivation? “To me there’s a little bit of greed that came in this season,” the showrunner and executive producer Ben Nedivi said. “Mars is no longer just about astronauts and engineers anymore — we need labor, people who build things.”His fellow showrunner and executive producer Matt Wolpert emphasized that a different type of character was being thrust into space. “We wanted someone who hadn’t dreamed from early childhood of being an astronaut, someone who was looking to make a living,” he said of the newcomer Miles (Toby Kebbell), a wily mechanic always trying to make an extra buck. “There would be conflict,” Wolpert added, “between the way different people define their jobs in this very cramped environment.”In a joint video call, Nedivi and Wolpert talked about the season’s main story lines, Danielle’s fate and the importance of realistic science-fiction aesthetics. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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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      What Inspires Peter Capaldi: Vermeer, ‘Demon Copperhead,’ ‘The Wire’

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      Seeing “A Maid Asleep” at the Met, he said, “without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with.”Sometimes it pays to stick close to home.The more Peter Capaldi heard as his wife, the producer Elaine Collins, and the writer Paul Rutman hashed out the story line for the new Apple TV+ thriller “Criminal Record,” the more he hinted that he was their man.They cast him as Daniel Hegarty, a veteran detective on the police force, who has a murky past. As Rutman wrote the script, Capaldi’s voice and face were front and center.“That’s the first time that has really happened to me,” said Capaldi, whose adversary, June Lenker — a younger detective contending with misogyny and racism within the force — is played by Cush Jumbo. “I know that that’s who they’re visualizing, so I was able to respond to the material from quite an early date.”Capaldi also had to veil his emotions, a rather tall order for an actor who starred as the 12th Doctor in “Doctor Who.”“I had to hide what was really going on, but at the same time, you still have to have something going on,” he said in a video interview from London, before chatting about the Scottish artist John Byrne and walking in the footsteps of the Romans. “You can’t just sit there.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Vermeer’s ‘A Maid Asleep’Without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with. I was in New York doing a show and perhaps going through some melancholic times and carousing too much and enjoying Broadway, but not really that happy myself. So I would often go to the Met and sit and look at that picture if I was feeling anxious. There was a spirit of wisdom and calmness that reached out.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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      Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in January: ‘Echo,’ ‘True Detective’ and More

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      We’ve rounded up of the titles most worth checking out in the coming month, including an adaptation of “The Expatriates” and the return of “True Detective.”Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of January’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Expats’Starts streaming: Jan. 26Based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s best-selling novel “The Expatriates,” this low-key melodrama is set in Hong Kong, where three very different Americans find their lives intertwining. Nicole Kidman plays Margaret, a socialite and mother whose seemingly idyllic world has been recently marred by tragedy. Sarayu Blue is Hilary, Margaret’s once-close friend, who has drifted away as her own domestic situation has soured. And Ji-young Yoo is Mercy, a younger working woman who takes jobs that put her in the orbit of the rich. The indie filmmaker Lulu Wang (best-known for “The Farewell”) serves as a writer, director and creative supervisor for the miniseries, which is about women enduring crises big and small while trying to make homes for themselves in a foreign land.Also arriving:Jan. 5“Foe”“James May: Our Man in India”Jan. 12“Role Play”“Uninterrupted’s Top Class: The Life and Times of the Sierra Canyon Trailblazers”Jan. 19“Dance Life” Season 1“Hazbin Hotel” Season 1Jan. 23“Kevin James: Irregardless”New to AMC+Clive Owen brings the classic Dashiell Hammett character Sam Spade to the South of France in “Monsieur Spade.”Jean-Claude Lother/AMC‘Monsieur Spade’Starts streaming: Jan. 14The writer-director-producer Scott Frank follows up his hit drama “The Queen’s Gambit” with this offbeat mystery series, created and written with Tom Fontana, the creator of “Oz.” Clive Owen plays Dashiell Hammett’s famed detective Sam Spade, who in the show’s first episode moves to a sleepy village in the South of France in the early 1960s and settles into semiretirement. But Spade’s neighborly interest in the locals’ lives eventually gets him back into the snooping business — especially after a horrific crime at a nearby convent outrages the community. Frank and Fontana are aiming for a soft-boiled Euro-noir vibe with “Monsieur Spade,” staging this story of murder and regret against a backdrop of vineyards and villas.Also arriving:Jan. 4“Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale”Jan. 8“Cheat”Jan. 12“Destroy All Neighbors”Jan. 15“Alex Rider” Seasons 1 & 2Jan. 22“The Guff” Seasons 1 & 2Jan. 26“Suitable Flesh”Jan. 29“Crossroads” Season 2“No Offense” Seasons 1-3New to Apple TV+‘Criminal Record’ Season 1Starts streaming: Jan. 10The British writer-producer Paul Rutman (creator of the historical drama “Indian Summers” and a writer for the cop show “Vera”) continues his fascination with brutal crime and social divisions in his new series “Criminal Record,” a modern murder mystery in which the perception of the evidence differs depending on who is doing the examining. Cush Jumbo plays Detective Sergeant June Lenker, who while following up on a phoned-in tip becomes convinced that one of her superiors — Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) — intentionally nabbed the wrong man in an old case. Lenker’s drive to see justice done sets her against the London police force’s old guard, who suggest that as a Black woman with less experience, she may be looking for bias where none exists.‘Masters of the Air’Starts streaming: Jan. 26A companion piece to the popular, award-winning World War II dramas “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” this miniseries covers the men of the 100th Bomb Group, who suffered heavy casualties while running crucial missions deep into Nazi territory. Austin Butler stars as a handsome officer who heads overseas with visions of glory and soon finds that the realities of combat are more challenging and devastating than he could have imagined. As with the earlier series, this new one (produced again by Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg) is an ensemble piece, showing how camaraderie helps fighting men endure. “Masters of Air” also features an all-star team of directors drawn from the acclaimed indie film and prestige TV ranks, including Cary Joji Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Tim Van Patten and the duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.New to Disney+Alaqua Cox in the new Marvel series “Echo,” a spinoff of the series “Hawkeye.”Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios, via Disney+‘Echo’Starts streaming: Jan. 9The television arm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going through changes, moving away from having every movie and TV series connect closely to a larger transmedia narrative. Although “Echo” is a spinoff from the Avengers-adjacent miniseries “Hawkeye” — with Alaqua Cox reprising her role as a deaf Native American with the power to mimic other people’s fighting styles — and although it will feature the Marvel villain Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), the show is meant to stand alone, appealing even to viewers who have never even heard of the likes of Daredevil or She-Hulk. “Echo” will be available on both Hulu and Disney+. It is the first TV-MA Marvel series, reflecting its more mature story, about a woman who has to reckon with her past in Oklahoma in order to get some killers off her trail.‘Bluey’ Season 3, Part 3Starts streaming: Jan. 12It’s a major event whenever Disney+ imports any new “Bluey” episodes from Australia, where the series airs months before it hits the United States. This latest batch of 10 includes episodes in which the imaginative puppy Bluey and her sweet kid sister, Bingo, build an elaborate furniture fort, take a trip to the beach, pretend to be office workers, play a game with a store’s security monitors and more. Will America’s parents and children be patient enough to parcel out these seven-minute doses of joy over multiple days, or will they burn through them all in one night?Also arriving:Jan. 17“Siempre Fui Yo” Season 2Jan. 24“A Real Bug’s Life”Jan. 31“Choir”New to Hulu‘Death and Other Details’Starts streaming: Jan. 16The “Knives Out”/“Only Murders in the Building” trend toward colorful whodunits continues with this stylish mystery series, set mostly on a high-end cruise ship in the Mediterranean. Violett Beane plays Imogene Scott, a young woman with a tragic past, who ends up becoming the prime suspect in a tricky locked-room murder case. Mandy Patinkin plays Rufus Coteworth, a celebrity detective who 20 years earlier disappointed the adolescent Imogene with his inability to bring her mother’s killer to justice. Reluctantly, she puts her remarkable memory together with Rufus’s keen eye for detail, working with him to find out which of the wealthy, fabulously well-dressed people on a luxury liner may have harpoon-gunned a man to death.Also arriving:Jan. 3“Ishura”Jan. 4“Daughters of the Cult”Jan. 7“The Incredible Pol Farm”Jan. 9“Beyond Utopia”“Safe Home” Season 1Jan. 12“Miranda’s Victim”“Self Reliance”Jan. 17“A Shop for Killers”Jan. 18“Invisible Beauty”Jan. 22“Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People” Season 1Jan. 24“Tell Me That You Love Me” Season 1Jan. 28“R.M.N.”New to Max‘True Detective’ Season 4Starts streaming: Jan. 14The latest edition of the HBO crime anthology “True Detective: (now subtitled “Night Country”) has a new show runner in Issa López, who continues the series’s tradition of attracting big-time movie stars to do television. Jodie Foster plays Liz Danvers, an Alaskan police detective whose contentious relationship with her colleague Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) complicates their investigation into two strange, possibly intertwined cases: the murder of an Indigenous social activist and the disappearance of eight scientists from an Arctic Research Station. The stellar cast includes John Hawkes as Danvers’s slack underling, Christopher Eccleston as their fussy boss and Fiona Shaw as a local with a strange spiritual connection to this dark, desolate, wintry landscape.Also arriving:Jan. 8“Going to Mars: The Nicki Giovanni Project”Jan. 18“On the Roam”“Sort Of” Season 3Jan. 22“Rick and Morty” Season 7New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Sexy Beast’Starts streaming: Jan. 25The arty 2000 gangster movie “Sexy Beast” became a favorite among both cinephiles and crime story aficionados for its darkly comic story of aging British crooks. This prequel TV series is set in the ’90s and catches these men and women in their heyday, when they ruled London’s underworld but also as they began heading in the directions that would later pull them apart. James McArdle plays Gal Dove, a sharp-witted hustler whose attraction to the adult film actress Deedee Harrison (Sarah Greene) gets him to start thinking about a life away from his overly intense partner Don Logan (Emun Elliott) and their boss Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer).Also arriving:Jan. 11“SkyMed” Season 2Jan. 16“June”Jan. 19“The Woman in the Wall”New to PeacockThe title bear of the prequel series “Ted,” as voiced by Seth MacFarlane.Peacock‘Ted’ Season 1Starts streaming: Jan. 11This prequel to the writer-director Seth MacFarlane’s hit movies “Ted” and “Ted 2” jumps back to 1993, following the early misadventures of the Boston-area teenager John Bennett (Max Burkholder) and his walking, talking, swearing teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane). As Ted joins his best buddy, Johnny, in high school, the series riffs on the old John Hughes teen misfit movies and weird family TV shows like “Alf,” in which one kid’s journey through the usual coming-of-age rituals is complicated by his unconventional domestic situation. As with the “Ted” films, MacFarlane gets laughs from the matter-of-fact way that full-sized humans interact with a small, adorable, unapologetically vulgar stuffed animal.Also arriving:Jan. 12“The Traitors” Season 2Jan. 25“In the Know” Season 1 More