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      in Television

      Russell Brand Denies Accusations of ‘Egregious’ Sexual Assaults

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      Three British media outlets published an investigation in which four women accused him of sexual assault in a series of incidents between 2006 and 2013.The comedian Russell Brand denied “serious criminal allegations” against him in a video he posted shortly before three British news organizations published an investigation Saturday in which four women accused him of sexual assault.The investigation was a collaboration by The Sunday Times and The Times of London newspapers, and Channel 4 Dispatches, a television program that broadcast a documentary about the allegations on Saturday. They reported that the women had accused him of sexual assault in a series of incidents between 2006 and 2013.Mr. Brand, an actor and former TV host who has more recently built a significant following on his YouTube channel, where he often opines on wellness and interviews prominent conservative figures, released a short video on social media on Friday in which he said he had received notes from media organizations listing “a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.”“Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Mr. Brand said in the video, going on to say that while he has spoken previously about a “time of promiscuity” in his life, the encounters during that time were “always consensual.”His literary agency, Tavistock Wood, announced this weekend that it had cut ties with him, saying in a statement that it believed it had been “horribly misled” by him when he denied an allegation in 2020.The allegations were published as the comedian, 48, was on a short stand-up tour. At a show in northwest London on Saturday night, he opened the evening with an oblique reference to the accusations.“I’ve got a lot of things to talk to you about,” he said, according to news media reports. “There are obviously some things that I absolutely cannot talk about and I appreciate that you will understand.”In the investigation, one woman accused Mr. Brand of raping her against a wall in his Los Angeles home in 2012. The news organizations said that the woman had provided medical records confirming that she had been treated at a rape crisis center. Another woman accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him when she was 16, despite her pushing him away.In his video, Mr. Brand did not address the specifics of the accusations by the four women, three of whom were not identified in the reports. He said there were “witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives” that had been put forward to him by the news organizations, but according to the article, a lawyer for Mr. Brand did not respond to an inquiry about providing such evidence. A legal representative The New York Times contacted on Sunday did not respond to a request for comment on the specific allegations in the investigation.Known for raunchy, boundary-pushing humor that has gotten him in trouble at times, Mr. Brand’s fame grew in Britain in the 2000s with a one-man show about his heroin addiction, and then as a BBC radio and Channel 4 reality television host. He broke into American pop culture with a prominent role in the rom-com “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in 2008 and a remake of “Arthur” in 2011, and was briefly married to the pop star Katy Perry.The investigation reported on Saturday also included complaints about Brand’s workplace behavior, including from unnamed production workers from Channel 4. They said that Brand would ask staff members to approach female audience members so he could arrange to meet them after filming, according to the reports.Channel 4 and BBC have said in statements that they are investigating allegations against Brand from the periods when he worked at their companies.The Metropolitan Police in London released a statement in response to the article saying that the department had been in touch with the journalists behind the story, and it encouraged any victims of sexual assault to report it to them.Brand did not address the workplace complaints in his video.Mr. Brand’s commentary on his YouTube channel, which has 6.6 million followers, tends to revolve around health, spirituality, so-called woke culture and free speech, and his guests have included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Tucker Carlson and the conservative commentator Candace Owens. In his video on Friday, he accused the “mainstream media” of launching what he called a “coordinated attack” against him. Elon Musk responded to Mr. Brand’s post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, writing: “Of course. They don’t like competition.”Mr. Brand has spoken about and written extensively about battling addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex, writing in his memoir that he was treated for a sex addiction in 2005.Alex Marshall More

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      in Movies

      ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ Windmill Is for Sale in England

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      The property, which was the home of Dick an Dyke’s character in the 1968 film, is listed for 9 million pounds, or $11.4 million.A historic windmill in the English countryside that appeared alongside Dick Van Dyke and a magical flying car in the 1968 movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” has gone up for sale.The black-and-white Cobstone Mill, in Buckinghamshire, England, just outside London, is part of a property that also includes a main house, about 37 acres of land and a swimming pool. It could be yours for 9 million pounds (about $11.4 million).The mill is thought to have been built around 1816 and was used to grind cereal until 1873, according to Savills, the real estate firm selling the property. Before the windmill could be used as a movie location it needed substantial renovations. The property had been damaged by a fire and, according to local media reports at the time, squatters had been living in it.In the film, which was loosely based on a children’s book by the James Bond creator Ian Fleming, the windmill served as the home for Mr. Van Dyke’s character, a nutty, widowed inventor named Caractacus Potts, who lives with his children, Jeremy and Jemima. Together with his love interest Truly Scrumptious, played by Sally Ann Howes, and his car, named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for its distinctive engine sounds, they journey to the land of Vulgaria to battle the tyrant Baron Bomburst.The windmill survived this encounter with Van Dyke’s character’s latest invention. Hughes Warfield/United Artists Britain, via ShutterstockBut the windmill’s film industry connections didn’t end there.In 1971, the actress Hayley Mills bought the property at auction with her husband, Roy Boulting, a film director. Ms. Mills wrote about the first time she saw the property in her 2021 memoir, “Forever Young.”“I recognized it at once as the children’s home in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and it was love at first sight,” she wrote, envisioning her and her husband watching their child play in the afternoon sun, even though the property was “utterly impractical.”Mr. Boulting then surprised her by buying it at auction for 30,000 pounds (about $38,000). “It was crazy, completely, marvelously crazy,” she wrote. While she hoped the windmill would become her dream home in the country, and while she started renovating the property to make it livable, the windmill’s renovations weren’t finished, according to the autobiography, and the couple later divorced.The property was later owned by David Brown, an English industrialist and a former owner of the automaker Aston Martin. In the 1980s, the property was sold to the current owner, according to Stephen Christie-Miller, one of the realtors on the listing.“It’s such a landmark when you drive through the valley,” Mr. Christie-Miller said, “It dominates.”The windmill is a Grade II-listed building, which means it’s considered of national importance and is legally protected from being demolished or significantly altered without special permission.Though the price tag is steep, there has been interest in the property, Mr. Christie-Miller said, especially for the usually slow month of August during which many prospective buyers are on vacation.“So many people know it,” he said, adding that he was planning to show the windmill to two potential buyers on Wednesday and had already showed it to one couple who were, he said, “very keen.”Since peaking in August last year, house prices in Britain have begun to drop. Last month, prices fell 3.8 percent compared with a year earlier, according to Nationwide Building Society, the steepest annual drop in more than a decade.Between the windmill and the house, the property has six bedrooms and four bathrooms, according to the listing. The windmill’s sails were restored in the past 18 months, according to Savills.With views over the nearby countryside, “the windmill itself would be a lovely place to have an office,” Mr. Christie-Miller said, but added, “not that you’d get any work done.”It’s not just “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” fans who might be excited. The windmill looks over the village of Turville, where scenes from the 1990s English sitcom “Vicar of Dibley” were filmed.Mr. Christie-Miller said the listing stands out in his 40-year career. “It comes up once in a generation,” he said. “It was last on the market in 1988. The next person will probably own it for another 30 years.” More

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      in Movies

      Jess Search, a Force in the Documentary Genre, Dies at 54

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      As one of the leaders of Doc Society, she supported countless filmmakers, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups and unconventional stories.Jess Search, a producer on dozens of important documentaries and a catalyst on many more as one of the directors of Doc Society, a nonprofit organization she helped found in 2005 that supports documentary filmmakers, died on July 31 in London. She was 54.Doc Society said in a statement that the death, in a hospital, was caused by brain cancer. Search had announced last month that she was stepping away from the organization because of her illness.Search had been a central figure in the documentary scene in Britain and beyond for years. She was gender nonconforming (she used the pronouns “she” and “her” but preferred not to use the gendered courtesy title Ms.), and she had a special interest in promoting work by filmmakers from underrepresented populations or that dealt with out-of-the-mainstream subjects.She was a producer or executive producer on some of those films, like Matthew Barbato’s “Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother” (2007), about a sex reassignment surgery, and Agniia Galdanova’s “Queendom,” which was released earlier this year and is about a queer Russian performance artist.Her family and colleagues said she was even more devoted to her work at Doc Society, which she led with several other directors and which describes itself as “committed to enabling great documentary films and connecting them to audiences globally.” Since its founding, it has backed hundreds of documentary projects, supporting emerging filmmakers financially and with expert input.“Jess was a builder,” Laura Poitras, director of the Oscar-winning “Citizenfour” (2014), about Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information, said by email. “A builder of communities, infrastructures (material and immaterial), and imaginations.”That film had support from Doc Society, which at the time was called the Britdoc Foundation. (The name changed in 2017 to better reflect the organization’s global focus.) So did “While We Watched” (2022), about the travails of independent television journalism in India, on which Search is credited as an executive producer. Vinay Shukla, its director, called Search “ragingly courageous and resolutely funny.”“It was an impossible film,” he said by email, “and I’d wake up to find new holes in our boat everyday. I would spin and spiral. And then I’d get on a call with Jess and everything would be all right. She would read me poems over Zoom while figuring out my legal strategy. She was always 10 steps ahead.”Tabitha Jackson, who was director of the documentary film program at the Sundance Institute for years and was the Sundance Film Festival director from 2020 to 2022, said Search invigorated the entire genre.A poster for “While We Watched,” about the travails of independent television journalism in India. Search was an executive producer.MetFilm Distribution/Courtesy Everett Collection“In her championing of the field of independent film, and the art of impact and the impact of art, Jess often said that ‘If you are going to move people to act, first you have to move them,’” she said by email, “and that was apparent in the many independent films she was deeply involved in.”“But beyond individual films,” she added, “her strategic laser focus and abundant kinetic energy evangelized and galvanized a collective that could turn a moment into a movement and a challenge into an opportunity for transformation.”Jess Search was born on May 15, 1969, in Waterlooville, England, near Portsmouth, to Phil and Henrietta Search. She grew up in Sevenoaks, southeast of London, and attended Tonbridge Grammar School before earning a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University. In 2008 she added a master’s degree from Cass (now Bayes) Business School.In an interview at the 2021 BFI London Film Festival, Search said she had no particular career aspirations after earning her undergraduate degree but chose her path for an unusual reason.“I knew I was gender nonconforming,” she said, “and at that time, leaving university at the very beginning of the ’90s, I knew that I couldn’t work anywhere that had any kind of formal or informal dress code.”Being a lawyer or management consultant was out, she said, “because I’ll have to turn up every day wearing clothes I don’t want to wear.”“So,” she added, “I was like, ‘I think I’d better go into the media,’ because that seemed like a space where it was less formal.”An uncle working in television hired her as his assistant. That led to a job as a commissioning editor for independent film and video at Britain’s Channel 4, which at the time was programming a wide variety of documentaries. In the BFI interview, she expressed a particular fondness for “the Box,” a cardboard box where unsolicited films and ideas for films were collected.“This box was full of amazing, crazy stuff that people just sent in to us,” she recalled in the interview. The channel programmed mainstream documentaries as well, she said, but the Box provided “that sense that anything might happen, that anything might be in there, and you might hear from anyone around the world with something to say.”In 1998 Search was one of the founders of Shooting People, a networking organization for people in the documentary world. In late 2004 Channel 4 shut down its independent film and video department, prompting her and others to start what became Doc Society.Search is survived by her wife, the producer and director Beadie Finzi, and their children, Ella Wilson and Ben Wilson.The outpouring of tributes to Search on social media and elsewhere after her death included a statement from Joanna Natasegara, an Oscar-winning producer who had worked with her.“She believed documentaries could change the world,” she said, “and she spent much of her life lifting up others and proving her thesis.” More

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      in Theater

      Paxton Whitehead, Actor Who Found Humor in the Stodgy, Dies at 85

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      An Englishman with a deep, cultured voice, he played uptight snobs in films like “Back to School” and on shows like “Friends” and “Mad About You.”Paxton Whitehead, a comic actor who earned a Tony nomination for his role in a revival of “Camelot” and played the starchiest of stuffed shirts in films like the Rodney Dangerfield comedy “Back to School” and on hit 1990s sitcoms like “Friends” and “Mad About You,” died on Friday in Arlington, Va. He was 85.His daughter, Alex Whitehead-Gordon, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of a fall.Mr. Whitehead, an Englishman with a modulated baritone voice, often coaxed humor from his sharp features and dignified bearing. His comic characters typically displayed subtly exaggerated versions of his own traits, which he executed with seeming ease.“He couldn’t help but be funny,” the critic Terry Doran wrote in The Buffalo News in 1997 of Mr. Whitehead’s time at the George Bernard Shaw Festival in Ontario, adding: “He didn’t sweat buckets striving to make us laugh. He just was amusing. It came naturally.”For Mr. Whitehead, finding the comedy was the key that unlocked a role.“You always have to find the core of humor in a character — at least I like to, the same way some people will say, ‘I like to find the good in him, even though he is a villain,’” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1997.One such character was Philip Barbay, the uptight dean of a business school and the nemesis of Thornton Melon, Mr. Dangerfield’s character, in “Back to School” (1986). Melon, a crass but successful businessman, comes to Grand Lakes University to visit his struggling son and winds up enrolling at the school after making a sizable donation.Barbay hates Melon on sight and does his best to get him expelled, to little effect. Early in the movie he and his girlfriend, Diane, a literature professor played by Sally Kellerman, see Melon buying books for students at the university bookstore, and Barbay describes him as “the world’s oldest living freshman, and the walking epitome of the decline in modern education.”Melon goes on to disrupt Barbay’s class and date Diane. Mr. Whitehead infused Barbay with some pathos — the character seemed unable to keep himself from being a killjoy — which added another layer to the humor. While out with the free-spirited, poetry-loving Diane, Barbay proposes that they take their relationship to the next level through “a merger,” adding that they would become “incorporated, if you will.”From left, Rodney Dangerfield, Mr. Whitehead and Ned Beatty in the 1986 movie “Back to School.”Orion, via ShutterstockMr. Whitehead’s stodgy figure in “Back to School” was the archetype for many of his later sitcom roles. He played a stuffy neighbor on “Mad About You,” a stuffy boss on “Friends” and the stuffy headmaster of a prestigious school on “Frasier.”He was also a prolific theater actor. He appeared in more than a dozen Broadway productions, including the revue “Beyond the Fringe” (1962-64) and the 1980 revival of “Camelot,” in which his portrayal of King Pellinore earned him a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical. He played Sherlock Holmes opposite Glenn Close in “The Crucifer of Blood,” which ran for 236 performances at the Helen Hayes Theater in 1978 and 1979.Mr. Whitehead’s roles, especially onstage, were not always comic. One departure was his portrayal of the ambition-crazed lead in a well-reviewed production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” at the Old Globe in San Diego in 1985.“Comedy, tragedy, pathos, spectacle — everything is swept along before the raging kinetic power of this Richard,” the theater critic Welton Jones wrote in The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1985.Francis Edward Paxton Whitehead was born in Kent, England, on Oct. 17, 1937. His father, Charles, was a lawyer, and his mother, Louise (Hunt) Whitehead, was a homemaker. His daughter said that his family and friends had called him Paxton since he was a child.He graduated from the Rugby School in Warwickshire before studying acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His early work was with touring companies, sometimes performing a new play every week. In the late 1950s he earned a stint with the New Shakespeare Memorial Theater, which is now called the Royal Shakespeare Theater and is part of the Royal Shakespeare Company.“But I was the lowest of lows,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, and after playing Shakespearean extras for a while, he decided to move to New York City. (His mother was American, so he was allowed to work in the States.)His Broadway career soon took off, and it continued into recent decades. He appeared in the original productions of the comedies “Noises Off” (1983-85) and “Lettice and Lovage” (1990) and in revivals of “My Fair Lady” (1993), as Colonel Pickering and later Henry Higgins, and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (2011), as the Rev. Canon Chasuble.In 1967, Mr. Whitehead became the artistic director of the Shaw Festival. He produced, acted in or directed most of Shaw’s plays, attracting actors like Jessica Tandy to the festival’s productions, before deciding to return to acting in 1977.His other films include “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1986), which starred Whoopi Goldberg; “Baby Boom” (1987) which starred Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard; and “The Adventures of Huck Finn” (1993), which starred Elijah Wood and Courtney B. Vance. His other television appearances include “Murder, She Wrote,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “The West Wing,” “Hart to Hart” and “Caroline in the City.”His marriage to the actress Patricia Gage ended in divorce in 1986. The next year he married Katherine Robertson, who died in 2009.In addition to his daughter, with whom he lived in Arlington, he is survived by a son, Charles; a stepdaughter from his first marriage, Heather Whitehead; and four grandchildren.Mr. Whitehead told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1986 that he usually preferred to act in comedy, because “it interests me more, and actually I take it a great deal more seriously than I do tragedy.”“The last time I did a tragic role,” he added, “they laughed.” More

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      in Television

      ‘Ted Lasso’ Taught Phil Dunster How to Play Nice

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      The charismatic English actor, who stars as the cocksure footballer Jamie Tartt, had to trust the writers to transform him from villain to hero.As Jamie Tartt in “Ted Lasso,” Phil Dunster began as a bratty showboat and is ending as an emotionally mature team player.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesThe new Jamie Tartt is very different from the old Jamie Tartt. As played by Phil Dunster, the 31-year-old English actor, the Tartt that closes out the third and probably final season of “Ted Lasso” is earnest, candid and emotionally mature — a far cry from the bratty, egotistic playboy and soccer star we were introduced to in Season 1.That Tartt was selfish and preening, a ball-hog on the pitch and a thorn in the side of those forced to put up with him, including his AFC Richmond coach, Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis); his professional rival turned personal trainer, Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein); and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Keeley Jones (Juno Temple). Recent episodes of the hit Apple TV+ comedy have found Tartt opening up to those characters, among others, and learning to forgive his abusive father (Kieran O’Brien). Most surprising of all, he’s leading the Premier League in assists: The showboat is now a team player.In Wednesday’s finale — light spoilers start now — Jamie lands a Nike commercial in Brazil, shares a long-brewing heart-to-heart with Roy and visits his father in recovery, showing how much progress he’s made over the last three years.Dunster credited Jason Sudeikis, the star and co-creator of “Ted Lasso,” with helping him with his character’s evolution.Apple-TV+It has been a drastic reinvention for a character once known strictly for bad-boy smarm. And Dunster, faced with making this transformation convincing, had doubts that he could pull it off.“I was terrified constantly,” he admitted in a video call last week from his flat in London. “Every time I read a new script, I would think, [expletive], I don’t know how to do that.”He credits Sudeikis, as the star and co-creator of the series, with helping him through it, especially in a major scene in Episode 11 in which Tartt breaks down and weeps over the stress of an impending game before his hometown crowd. “There are some lovely things people have said after that episode, and the honest answer is that it was Jason’s idea,” Dunster said.Affable and boyish, with a thoughtful air that often had him gazing off into the middle distance before he spoke, Dunster seemed eager to look back on “Lasso,” as it drew to a close. (While no official announcement has been made about the show’s future beyond Wednesday’s Season 3 finale, there are currently no plans for more episodes or for spinoffs.) He reminisced about the casting process with a wistful glee, speaking in a tone of well-mannered English refinement that contrasts sharply with Jamie’s Manchester brogue.At the time, he said, the character of Jamie Tartt was called Dani Rojas, who was “what the character of Jamie is now, but maybe European or South American, representing where lots of footballers come from that might have a diva-y spirit.” (Dani Rojas later became a separate character, a soccer-loving Pollyanna from Mexico played by Cristo Fernández.)“It was easier to make him unlikable and trust the writing to show that he was redeemable,” Dunster said of Jamie. With, from left, Kola Bokinni, Charlie Hiscock and Cristo Fernández.Apple TV+Dunster auditioned “in a sort of Spanish accent,” he said, which was “not quite what they were looking for.” He assumed that was the end of it. But one afternoon some time later, while playing volleyball, Dunster got a call from his agent telling him that the producers wanted him back — only this time without the Spanish.“The note was, find an accent that would represent footballers in the U.K., that doesn’t sound like me,” he said. As a lifelong soccer fan, his mind went straight to Manchester — home of the vaunted Manchester United and the Premier League’s current juggernaut, Manchester City. Instead of “myself,” Jamie says “me-self”; “Keeley” becomes “Kee-lah.”“I did my best to make a fairly bold choice of who he was,” Dunster said. “It was a pretty broad brush stroke: a fame-hungry young man with a warped idea of celebrity who thinks longevity in this industry is to be as ostentatious as he can be.” He was careful, in the early going, not to soften Jamie’s harsher edges too much — he had to let himself be the bad guy, at least for a while.“It was easier to make him unlikable and trust the writing to show that he was redeemable,” he said. “It’s about getting out of the way of the text, isn’t it?”Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent went from being Jamie’s rival to being his mentor.Apple TV+But his take on the character, informed by his deep soccer fandom, came to dictate much of how the character was written, he explained, right down to jokes that hinge on Dunster’s twanging accent. (One of the most memorable lines in Season 3 revolves around his singular pronunciation of a colloquial term for excrement.) Sudeikis encouraged the actors to “massage the text” so that it felt right for each of them, Dunster said, “whether that was to Anglify it, or Jamiefy it, whatever it needed.”Dunster, who grew up in Reading, England, was drawn to acting from an early age, appearing in school productions that won him much-sought attention in class and at home. “I don’t want to put it down solely to my performance as Oliver in a Year 3 production at school, but that laid the foundation of me being a show-off,” he said.Though he comes from a military background — both his brother and father served in the armed forces — he said his family supported his decision to pursue acting professionally by enrolling at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School. This was in part because, as he dryly explained, “they also knew I had zero academic skills, so they were like, ‘Yeah, mate, you’ve got nothing else going for you.’”After graduating, Dunster took a job as a waiter at an Asian restaurant in Brixton, but after a single trial shift, he could tell it wasn’t for him. “I flocked, man — I had someone who was looking after me, and I still managed to screw everything up,” he said. On the bus ride home, he was dismayed: “I remember thinking, ‘What am I doing? I can’t be an actor if I have to do this.’”Fortunately, he didn’t have to: He was offered a major role in the British period gangster film “The Rise of the Krays” (2015) almost immediately afterward, and just like that, Dunster went from anxious graduate to professional actor and has worked steadily ever since.Before “Ted Lasso,” Dunster won notice in “Murder on the Orient Express,” among other titles.20th Century FoxHe went on to earn notice with parts in the dark parenting comedy “Catastrophe” (2015-19) and in the Kenneth Branagh film “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017). But joining the cast of “Ted Lasso” in 2020 raised Dunster’s profile to new heights as the series became a pandemic-era phenomenon, wooing audiences and critics with its sweetly comic sincerity. Yet despite the show’s stratospheric stateside success, it has not gained a notable cultural foothold in Britain.“I’m constantly telling my friends, like, ‘Guys, I promise you I’m famous in America,’” Dunster joked. While he’s managed to persuade them to watch the show, the overall effect of its popularity on his career has been difficult to gauge.Dunster’s initial conception of Jamie was “a fame-hungry young man with a warped idea of celebrity.” In his real life, he tries not to worry about such things.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesOn the one hand, he said, “it’s slightly easier to come by meetings in America than here, which is not something I take for granted.” On the other, the whole notion of success and viewership at home versus abroad can be an unnecessary distraction.“It’s easy for that to be the focus rather than doing the actual work,” he said. “At the end of the day, the whole point of that stuff is to hopefully aid in me doing more interesting work.”“It’s an insidious thing,” he continued. “You can see it work its way through people — the desire to follow that stuff. It’s important not to fly too close to the sun, as some Greek dude once did.”“Ted Lasso” is above all a show about goodness — about finding the goodness in others and bringing out the goodness in ourselves. That includes Jamie Tartt, who Dunster said came to be “driven by love rather than driven by hate,” which he “never thought he would choose.” It’s perhaps unsurprising that his time on “Lasso” has taught Dunster the importance of “working with good people” — as the series wraps up, at least for now, that’s what he’s looking for again.“The part can be whatever — big or small, a nice guy or a bad guy, a prime minister or the opposite of a prime minister,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, as long as the people making it are good.” More

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      in Music

      James Acaster’s ‘Party Gator Purgatory’ Was Decades in the Making

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      As a child, music was the British comedian’s first obsession. Decades later, his first record tells the story of a toy alligator.The British comedian James Acaster can remember the moment he fell in love with music at 6 years old. At a party held by a member of the congregation of the “hippie-ish” church his parents attended in Kettering, a town in central England, he heard a compilation album featuring songs like Men at Work’s “Down Under” and “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band.“I just couldn’t believe how good every single song was — it was blowing my mind,” Acaster said in a recent video interview. Music became “a pretty immediate obsession.”By the time he was a teenager, Acaster was playing in several bands. He left school at 17, without taking his final exams, and didn’t go to college, so he could focus on building a career in music.At 22, though, he didn’t have a record deal, and when his experimental jazz group split, Acaster started focusing on comedy instead. He had been dabbling in stand-up as a side project since he was 18, and it felt like a welcome break from the pressures of trying to make it in music.“It was nice to do it and not care about it,” he said. “Whereas every time I was onstage with a band, I really cared and wanted it to go well.”In one special in his Netflix series “James Acaster: Repertoire,” the comedian moves from the idea of him being an undercover cop to talking about a breakup. Silviu Nutu Vegan Joy/NetflixToday, Acaster, 38, is one of Britain’s most popular comedians, and he has finally released a debut album of sorts: “Party Gator Purgatory,” a 10-track experimental record featuring Acaster’s drumming and made with the 40-artist collective he founded called Temps.In comedy, Acaster has had critical and mainstream success. A fixture on British comedy panel shows, in recent years he’s also found success in podcasting with “Off Menu,” a show about dream meals he co-hosts with the comedian Ed Gamble.On the talent-filled British comedy circuit, Acaster has carved out a singular voice: a mixture of whimsy and vulnerability, surrealism and biting commentary, as seen in his stand-up special “Cold Lasagna Hate Myself 1999,” in which he explored a difficult period in his personal life with both candor and his signature frenetic performance style.This balance is what has connected with people, said Matthew Crosby, a British comedian and friend, who praised Acaster’s “genuine authenticity” in a recent phone interview.Acaster looms so large on the British comedy scene that others have begun to emulate him. “Anyone who’s got a really distinctive unique style, whether wittingly or unwittingly, gets aped by the circuit — Eddie Izzard and Harry Hill are the people who immediately spring to mind,” Crosby said. “And you see it now with lots of people doing James.”On the talent-filled British comedy circuit, Acaster has carved out a singular voice.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAs comedy, once his low-pressure creative pursuit, transformed into a fully-fledged career, Acaster disengaged from both listening to and making music. Then, in 2017 he had a mental-health crisis precipitated by breakups with his girlfriend and his agent, and he began collecting albums released in the previous year, ultimately purchasing 500 releases from 2016 alone, he said.“When things got a bit rough that was my most recent thing that had brought me a lot of comfort so I carried on doing that,” he said. “I just sort of reacquainted myself or renegotiated my relationship with music as a fan.”He codified the personal project in “Perfect Sound Whatever,” a 2019 book in which he claims that 2016 was the best ever year for music, and explains why.In 2020, he started making music again, and the result is “Party Gator Purgatory,” an experimental, hip-hop inflected and drum-heavy record, which follows the death, purgatory and resurrection of a life-size toy alligator Acaster won at a fair when he was 7.The album’s high concept is typical of Acaster’s creative process, and the way he works his way out from a single idea. “You’re just running with whatever hunch you’ve got that this might be fun,” he said. This approach is clear across Acaster’s books, podcasts and stand-up. On the album, the idea is the travails of a stuffed toy; in one special in his Netflix stand-up series “Repertoire,” Acaster began with the idea of his being an undercover cop, “and by the end you’ve got a show that is about a breakup you’ve had,” he said.“He’s not afraid of being incredibly niche,” Crosby said. “He doesn’t sort of sit down at the start of each day and go, ‘What can I do that’s going to make me a load of money?’ He goes, ‘What am I really interested in?’”This penchant for niche ideas is evident in an album that is dense and genre-defying. “Party Gator” is largely inspired by “What Now?,” a 2016 album from the experimental musician Jon Bap, in which the drums feel deliberately out of sync.“You’re just running with whatever hunch you’ve got that this might be fun,” Acaster said of his approach to the creative process.Tom Jamieson for The New York Times“He’s just a freak and he likes weird music and I think we both like a lot of weird stuff,” said NNAMDÏ, a Chicago-based musician who raps on the album, in a video interview.Making the album was a labor of love, an all-consuming project that stretched over two years. On the album Acaster plays drums, served as a producer and curated a 40-strong roster of collaborators, including the singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos and the rapper Open Mike Eagle. He would listen to a drum track he’d created, figure out who he wanted on it, and reach out. Acaster had interviewed some of the musicians he wanted to work with for his book, “Perfect Sound,” and around half of them he cold emailed. “I just got very very lucky that people would say yes,” he said.Taking place mostly during Britain’s pandemic lockdowns, the collaborations happened over email and Zoom, through which Acaster was able to foster an environment of experimentation. “For the majority of it, he just told me to do whatever I felt like doing,” NNAMDÏ said. “He kind of took what I did and manipulated it. It is still what I did, but he added his own little textures to it and chopped up some things and kind of freaked it, made it cool.”With an album that may not appeal to mainstream audiences, Acaster is levelheaded about what its reception could look like. “I really hope that it finds its audience, and the people who would like it discover it and get into it,” he said.In many ways, the making of the album is a mark of success for Acaster.“I love it all and I love it as much as any of my stand-up shows, anything I’ve done,” he said. More

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      Eurovision 2023: How to Watch and What to Know

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      The Eurovision Song Contest has been an annual fixture in the global pop calendar since 1956 — with the exception of 2020, when the competition took an enforced Covid-19 gap year — and this month, the competition takes place in Liverpool, England.Organized by public broadcasters gathered in the Switzerland-based European Broadcasting Union, Eurovision is a colorful, fiercely contested competition in which each participating country sends an act to perform an original song that’s no longer than three minutes. The winner is decided by vote at the end of the “grand final.”More than 160 million viewers from across the world watched last year’s contest, and Eurovision’s popularity continues to grow steadily. Eurovision has even begun to make inroads in the United States, a country generally immune to the event’s flamboyant celebration of pop music.Below are rundowns on this year’s hotly tipped acts, advice about how to watch from the United States and why the event is being hosted in England this year.The crowd during a Eurovision semifinal in Liverpool. Many fans can sing along to their favorite entries.Mary Turner for The New York TimesWho gets to compete?Only seven European countries competed in the first Eurovision Song Contest, which was staged as an experiment in live, international TV broadcasting.Today, 52 countries have participated in Eurovision at least once. To narrow the field before the grand final, since 2008 there have also been two semifinals. This year, the top 10 countries at each semifinal move on to the grand final.The 2023 edition of Eurovision features a total of 37 entries, including the “Big Five” — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain — who are the top financial contributors to the E.B.U. These five countries go straight to the final, skipping the treacherous elimination round.Bulgaria, Montenegro and North Macedonia are not competing this year, officially because of the costs associated with entering. Belarus has been suspended since 2021, after its disputed 2020 election and subsequent brutal crackdown on dissent, with the E.B.U citing “the suppression of media freedom” in the country.Why does Australia take part?Eurovision has a history of inviting seemingly unlikely participants, provided they are members of the E.B.U. Morocco, for instance, joined the fray in 1980; Israel has won four times since its first appearance in the contest, in 1973.Those two countries are at least nearer Europe than Australia is. But Australians have long viewed the contest in impressive numbers, even though it airs live at 5 a.m. Sydney time, and they have competed in it since 2015. Australia’s current agreement with the E.B.U. is supposed to end after this year, however, so who knows what will happen next time.Ukraine’s entry this year is Tvorchi, featuring Andrii Hutsuliak, left, and Jimoh Augustus Kehinde, right.Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesLoreen, performing for Sweden, is one of the bookmakers’ favorites to win the competition.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe hosts of the Eurovision semifinal, from left, the singer Alesha Dixon, Julia Sanina, another singer, and the actress Hannah Waddingham.Mary Turner for The New York TimesHow can U.S. residents watch?As in 2022, Peacock hosted livestreams for both semifinals, and will do the same for the grand final on Saturday, from 3 p.m. Eastern.For the final, viewers can opt to watch with commentary from the Olympic figure skater and longtime Eurovision fan Johnny Weir, who made an assured debut hosting last year’s livestream.How has the war in Ukraine affected the competition?Traditionally, the country that wins Eurovision holds the event the following year. Ukraine won last year with Kalush Orchestra’s track “Stefania,” but since the country is still at war, Britain — last year’s runner-up — stepped in to host. (And not for the first time: Britain has won five Eurovisions but hosted nine, including this year’s.)Russia was disqualified from the 2022 edition after its invasion of Ukraine. The E.B.U. then suspended Russia, so it will not be competing this year.Since openly political songs are forbidden at Eurovision, some acts are using generic messages of empowerment, like the Ukrainian duo Tvorchi’s song “Heart of Steel,” about bravery. Flirting more brazenly with disqualification was the Croatian entry, Let 3’s “Mama SC,” a bonkers, highly theatrical antiwar number that employs one of Eurovision’s favorite creative devices: allegorical satire.Representing Croatia, Let 3’s “Mama SC” is an insane, highly theatrical antiwar track.Mary Turner for The New York TimesHow does the voting work?Eurovision’s notoriously complicated voting rules and protocols have changed many times over the decades, and again this year. Previously, each country was awarded points based on a combination of votes from viewers at home and by juries in each competing country.After the contest’s organizers found “voting irregularities” among six countries’ juries in last year’s semifinals — many of whom seemed to be voting for one another — the rules were tweaked, with the semifinals now being decided exclusively by viewers and the grand final results combining points from viewers and juries.Oh, and all this voting happens live, which helps explain why the grand final broadcast takes about four hours.Can American viewers vote?Traditionally, voting was limited to viewers in countries participating in the contest — who couldn’t vote for their own act — meaning American Eurovision fans couldn’t cast a vote.But in a change that’s indicative of Eurovision’s world-spanning ambition, this year nonparticipating countries can vote for the first time, via an official online hub. That includes viewers in the United States.Finland’s Kaarija is competing with “Cha Cha Cha,” a track which is basically electronic body music, set in a glittery thunderdome. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWho are this year’s favorites?The bookmakers’ favorite to take the title is “Tattoo” by Loreen, from the Eurovision powerhouse Sweden. Loreen is a known quantity, having won the contest in 2012 with “Euphoria” — a 21st-century Eurovision classic. There are no restrictions on acts competing several times, and other familiar faces this year include Italy’s Marco Mengoni and Moldova’s Pasha Parfeni.Were Loreen to grab the top spot again, she would become the second performer to win twice, after Johnny Logan, who won for Ireland in 1980 and 1987.Finland is another favorite, with a demented entry, Kaarija’s “Cha Cha Cha,” which is basically electronic body music, set in a glittery thunderdome. For Weir, who presents Peacock’s Eurovision coverage, this all shows the daring tastes of Eurovision viewers. “The fact that the oddsmakers think that Finland will do so well this year shocked me just because I didn’t know if everyone could get behind that kind of wild, over-the-top character of Kaarija,” he said in a recent phone conversation.The competition’s dark horses include Spain, which has not won since 1969; this year bookies are placing a few euros on Blanca Paloma and her song “EAEA,” which sounds a bit like Cocteau Twins experimenting with flamenco.Who are the more surreal acts?It’s often countries most Americans would struggle find on a map that deliver Eurovision’s most memorable performances, even if they don’t necessarily make it out of the semifinal.“The response I got last year was just how impressed people were that there was an act for Moldova that had them standing on their couches and dancing,” Weir said.This year, the eye-popping numbers include the Austrian song “Who the Hell is Edgar?,” in which Teya and Salena sing about being possessed by Edgar Allan Poe, and Germany’s outré mini-rock opera “Blood and Glitter,” by Lord of the Lost.Competition for the most awkward Eurovision lyrics is close, as always, but let’s give Israel’s Noa Kirel a nod of approval for coming up with a tongue-twisting rallying cry in her song “Unicorn”: “It’s gonna be phenomen-phenomen-phenomenal/Phenomen-phenomenal/Feminine-feminine-femininal.”Classic Eurovision poetry. 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      James Bowman, Who Helped Resurrect the Countertenor, Dies at 81

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      He took up the repertory for the highest male voice at a time when few were performing it. He was particularly known for two roles in Britten operas.James Bowman, a British countertenor who championed repertory for that voice at a time when few singers were attempting it and inspired more composers, including Benjamin Britten, to write for it, died on March 27 at his home in Redhill, south of London. He was 81.Terry Winwood, his civil partner, confirmed the death but said the cause had not yet been determined.When Mr. Bowman started singing professionally in the 1960s, the countertenor — the highest of the male voices, working the same range as female contraltos and mezzo-sopranos — was something of a rarity on opera and concert stages. Alfred Deller, who died in 1979, was the go-to countertenor of the day, but his voice and his acting ability were said to have been limited.“Bowman was a revolutionary talent,” the critic Rupert Christiansen, revisiting one of Mr. Bowman’s 1970s recordings, wrote in The Daily Telegraph of Britain in 2019, adding that “his technique brought a new power to the countertenor repertory.”Mr. Bowman’s breakthrough came in 1967, when he was working as a teacher and was doing most of his singing in choirs. He described the moment to The Santa Fe Reporter in 1987.“A friend came up from London and told me that Benjamin Britten was holding auditions for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’” Mr. Bowman said, referring to Mr. Britten’s 1960 opera, whose Oberon role had originally been written for Mr. Deller. “This is sort of a fairy story — I’d never done anything onstage in my life, but I wrote to Britten and I said, ‘I think I am eminently suited to the role of Oberon.’”He was invited to audition.“I knew that you could barely hear the people who had sung the part before,” he said. “So I went to Covent Garden and I made a big noise and socked them between the eyeballs — and it worked! The next thing I knew I was on tour.”Oberon became one of his signature roles. Mr. Britten wrote other works for him as well, including the part of Apollo in “Death in Venice,” the 1973 Britten opera.“James Bowman’s ringing Apollo sounded authentically unterrestrial,” Martin Cooper wrote in The Daily Telegraph, reviewing the world premiere of the piece at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, England.Mr. Bowman was heard frequently in concert settings as well, and he had a knack for deploying his musical gifts to striking effect in famed performance spaces. Tim Page, writing in The New York Times about a two-hour concert of works by Handel recorded at Westminster Abbey in 1985, called his voice “unusually versatile and pleasing.” Twenty years later, also in The Times, Bernard Holland, after catching him in a “Messiah” at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan, said that Mr. Bowman “sang the countertenor parts with a voice and a dramatic personality able to command attention in a crowd.”His performances and his dozens of recordings encouraged other singers to explore the countertenor repertory, and Mr. Winwood said he was always generous with advice and support for younger singers.“He would think nothing of hiring a studio and arranging a meeting with young singers who he had never even met,” Mr. Winwood said by email, “and I’m pretty sure he would never charge for his time.”In a tribute on the website of the London-based choir Tenebrae, Nigel Short, the choir’s director, recalled the crucial support Mr. Bowman gave him early in his career. He also shared fond memories of Mr. Bowman’s impish sense of humor.“He was such a brilliant, instinctive singer and musician, a huge character and incredibly kind and generous,” Mr. Short wrote, “but my fondest memories will always be of him giggling and snorting loudly at something totally outrageous he’d just whispered in the ears of anyone standing close by.”Mr. Bowman made for a lively newspaper interview as well. He was always eager to dispel stereotypes about countertenors, especially unflattering ones that branded them as effeminate and made them the target of jokes.“We’re a down-to-earth bunch who just happen to like singing in a high register,” he told The Sunday Telegraph of Britain in 1996. “When I look around at my colleagues, I’m struck by how normal most of them are.”When Mr. Bowman performed Handel’s “Messiah” with the St. Thomas Choir at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan in 2005, one critic wrote that he “sang the countertenor parts with a voice and a dramatic personality able to command attention in a crowd.”Jennifer Taylor for The New York TimesJames Thomas Bowman was born on Nov. 6, 1941, in Oxford, England, to Benjamin and Cecilia (Coote) Bowman. He attended the centuries-old school King’s Ely, beginning in 1951; originally a boy chorister there, he soon became head chorister. According to an obituary published by the school, he gave his first concert as a countertenor in 1959 to a small school group in a chapel at Ely Cathedral. The school now hosts an annual James Bowman Lecture promoting the creative and liberal arts.Mr. Bowman attended New College, Oxford, as an organ scholar and was a member of the New College and Christ Church choirs. In 1965 he met David Munrow, who invited him to join his Early Music Consort of London. He continued performing with that group well into the 1970s, and he was also a member of the early music choral group Pro Cantione Antiqua.Mr. Bowman and Mr. Winwood were together for 48 years. He leaves no other immediate survivors.Producing the countertenor voice, Mr. Bowman told The Sunday Telegraph, involved “using the edge of your vocal cords, and neglecting the central part, which is the bass area.”“I can sing bass,” he added. “I use my bass voice to warm up with, before I sing countertenor. But I can’t keep up a bass voice for long — it feels odd.”Although he was a champion of the countertenor and urged composers to write for it, not all of them hit the mark, he told The Independent of Britain in 1990.“People say, ‘I’ve written you an opera,’ and either the range is too wide or they want you to be something bizarre like a singing corpse,” he said. “I’ve spent my life fighting the idea of being a piece of exquisitery on a table — trying just to be a singer, not a countertenor.” More