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      6 Terrific Comedy Specials Worth Streaming

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      Jenny Slate, Dan Soder, Cara Connors, Tig Notaro, David Cross and Dave Attell stamp these hours with particularly rich sensibilities.Jenny Slate, ‘Seasoned Professional’(Amazon Prime Video)Wearing a bow tie, pocket handkerchief, crop top and shorts, Jenny Slate stands on a shiny circular platform on the distressed BAM Harvey theater stage. It’s an image of sharp contrasts, the kind you find in her comedy, where commonplace subjects are imbued with manic, absurd charisma. Her version of relatable is asking: “You know that one feeling when you can tell you’re going to pass away?”Whereas her debut special incorporated documentary elements, this hour effectively captures the improvisational eccentricity of her live act. Slate is blessed with a spectacularly nimble comic voice. She’s also a deft physical comedian, and her best bits show off both traits. When trying to describe the strangeness of giving birth, she likens it to the discomfort of being invited to audition for Pennywise the evil clown. Rattled, she expresses the shame at being considered for the part by flapping her hands, looking perplexed (“That couldn’t be the murdering, kidnapping, balding male clown, right?”), doing a creepy impression of the character as well as the meeting among producers that led to this offer. It’s a screeching, sputtering display of kvetching that builds runaway comic momentum.Dan Soder, ‘On the Road’(YouTube)While most specials go too long, this one, at 39 tightly funny minutes, is just right. Punchy, diverting, varied, it’s a perfect pick-me-up for your lunch hour. In clothes as casual as his delivery, Dan Soder presents himself as a laid-back people-pleaser, the kind of guy aiming for a specific kind of dumb. As he puts it, he wants to see a trailer for a new “Fast and Furious” movie and be shocked that they found a way to go faster. But make no mistake: His lightness requires heavy effort. And his comedic tool kit is full, featuring sharp impressions (Batman villain, Enrique Iglesias), melancholy notes and clever phrasemaking. In a story illustrating the childhood joy of curse words, he says this line with a genuine (and ridiculous) sense of nostalgia: “I was 8 years old, just out having a cuss.”Cara Connors, ‘Straight for Pay’(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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      ‘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