For All Mankind (TV Program)

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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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      ‘For All Mankind’ Launches a Mission to Mars, With New Wrinkles

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      For a show that has aged its characters over many decades, the biggest challenge is not sending people to Mars but making them look believable once they arrive.When Ed Baldwin lands on the moon in October 1971, he is in early middle age. His light brown hair swoops across his forehead. His clean-shaven face is ruddy and, excepting a divot between his eyebrows, unwrinkled. But space can really age a man. By 2003, on Mars, his hair has grayed and receded, and the wrinkles have multiplied and deepened. His skin is sallow, marked with age spots. His cheeks have sunk in.Ed, a highly decorated astronaut, is a central character of the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind.” He is played by the Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman, who was a few years younger than Ed during the first season, which debuted in 2019. Kinnaman is now 43, but in the fourth season, which premieres on Nov. 10, Ed is in his 70s. Which meant that Kinnaman’s shooting days typically began before dawn, with four hours in the hair and makeup chair.This is one of the myriad hurdles and minor miracles of “For All Mankind,” a series that posits a world in which the space race never ended. From its painstaking aging process to its imagination of an alternative past and interplanetary future, “For All Mankind” is both quiet and wild in its ambitions, a work of science fiction that retains the texture of observable reality. And in this coming season, which shows characters first seen in their 20s now in their 60s and 70s, the crew has had to work harder than ever to achieve plausibility. Sure, you can send men and women to Mars. But can you make them look believable once they arrive?The new season largely unfolds on a base on Mars.Apple TV+“When we were pitching the show, we were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be so great,’” Ben Nedivi, one of the show’s three creators, said during a recent video call. “Now that we’re in Season 4, the challenge has been enormous.”Season 1 began in 1969, when — mild spoilers for the first three seasons follow — in the initial shift from our own timeline, the Russians first land a man on the moon. It ended in 1974, with American men and women having built a lunar base. Season 2, which took place in the ’80s, expanded on this base. Season 3, set in the 1990s, brought Americans, Russians and a lone surviving North Korean to Mars. Season 4 jumps forward another decade. Throughout, the remaining characters are played by the same actors. (The exceptions are characters who first appear as children.)“For All Mankind,” which Nedivi created with Matt Wolpert, his fellow showrunner, and Ronald D. Moore, was always intended as a generational show. Its goal was to take the space race from the 1960s to the present and perhaps beyond, showing exploration and advancement across lifetimes.Sometimes those lifetimes are short. “Space is an insanely dangerous place,” Wolpert said. Otherwise the show’s format requires its characters to age a decade between seasons, without the use of computer-generated effects. (The C.G.I. on “For All Mankind” is for asteroids and explosions, not hair loss.)“The amount of time that Ben and I spend talking about hair and makeup and aging is not something we anticipated,” Wolpert said.“It doesn’t hurt that we’re aging during the show,” added Nedivi, who is visibly grayer than he was when the show debuted. “Trust me, I feel like I’m aging double-time.”From top, Joel Kinnaman in the first, second and third seasons. The makeup artists tried to age the stars subtly.Apple TV+This illusionism began years ago, in the initial casting sessions. Nedivi and Wolpert were looking for actors who were somewhat older than their characters, with the thought that they could be aged down for Season 1 and up beginning in Season 3.During Season 1, the makeup department, led by Erin Koplow, used foundation to give the actors a youthful, dewy look, covering up wrinkles and any discoloration. For the women, makeup appropriate to the era was laid over that. Hair was given extra luster.In the second season, the actors were more or less left alone, though some were given small pieces of what Koplow calls “stretch and stipple,” a latex solution that gives the appearance of fine lines. (The actors are mostly in their 30s, which means they should have fine lines of their own. That’s between them and their dermatologists.)For Season 3 there was more stretch and stipple, more gray hair. Kinnaman, whose character is older than most in the show, was given prosthetic silicone pieces, which created deeper wrinkles. If dark circles or eye bags existed, they were left uncorrected or were even accentuated. And the actors learned to hold themselves differently, better reflecting sore backs and joint pain.Several critics reviewing Seasons 2 and 3 found these interventions insufficient. “The effort to age its stars is negligible at best,” a Vanity Fair writer wrote of the third season. But this was intentional, meant to reflect a natural, gradual process.“With women in particular, it’s really easy to go too far and to make them monstrous with aging,” Glen P. Griffin, who oversees makeup’s special effects and prosthetics, said. “So you have to be really, really subtle.”That subtlety can be thankless: The actors don’t enjoy it; the viewers don’t see it. Griffin and Koplow both described believable middle-age makeup as the hardest part of the job. But this nuance is necessary. Should characters survive, the hair and makeup teams will have to intervene further.Kinnaman’s shooting days typically began before dawn, with hours in the hair and makeup chair.Apple TV+Costuming also helps to age and situate the characters. As with the makeup, the period clothes are meant to murmur, not to shout.“It’s best if they’re not overtly loud,” said Esther M. Marquis, the costume designer for the third and fourth seasons. “There has to be space for the actor to be who their character is. I don’t want to crowd in.”As the characters have aged, the tailoring has changed. “Hollywood loves to get all trim and put together, and that’s not really our show,” Marquis said. The fit in subsequent seasons does not always flatter, suggesting maturity, even subtle weight gain.The few costume pieces that do fit and do shout are the spacesuits, each of which is custom-built. While the suits in the first season were closely modeled on NASA’s designs, by Season 2, Americans had established a permanent base on the moon, outpacing current technologies. For the third and fourth seasons, Marquis had to imagine a suit appropriate for Mars’s climate that could be made mostly from materials and methods available in 2003.“The suit that I was designing had to live in both worlds, a future world and a past world,” she said. “I didn’t want to get too far away from a 2003 reality.”But Marquis did give herself some license, dreaming up a textile that would lead to a slimmer and more pliant silhouette. Most real spacesuits are 14 layers thick. Marquis’s are slighter, as are the astronauts’ backpacks, which would struggle to hold both life support and backup life support systems.“There’s a lot of action in Season 4,” she said. “So the suits had to get lighter.” She noted that the real-world suit designers she had spoken to were also wrestling with the same question.Kinnaman and Casey W. Johnson in Season 3 of “For All Mankind.” In the new season, the spacesuits had to be lighter.Apple TV+The show’s depiction of a different Earth extends beyond crow’s feet and helmets. Its approach to alternate reality is typically subtle. A Mars landing is an admittedly big swing, yet most of the other timeline changes are more restrained. Ted Kennedy skips the Chappaquiddick party. John Lennon survives. Michael Jordan plays for a different team.In each subsequent season, the divergence from our world is greater, a butterfly effect enhanced by the technologies the space race of the show has yielded. Most significantly, the moon’s supply of helium-3 has been mined for cold fusion, effectively solving the climate crisis. (Unscientific viewers like me might have assumed that helium-3 was among the show’s inventions. It’s very real.)This reflects the show’s arguably less subtle message, that something profound was lost when America gave up the space race.“That longing is what inspired us,” Nedivi said. “The show presupposes the idea that actually going out into the unknown and learning more about the world will teach us more about who we are and what we’re capable of.”Since the series’s 2019 debut, the space race has coincidentally begun to run just a little faster. More private companies have launched rockets. The Artemis 3 mission, slated for 2025, plans to land a woman and a person of color on the moon, both for the first time. There is new interest in mining metal-rich asteroids, a Season 4 plot point and another example of the show’s science fiction edging closer to reality.“A lot of the technology that we highlight has become part of the conversation in the real timeline,” Wolpert said. “That’s one of the secret weapons of our show: It’s not about impossible stuff. Nothing in our show is impossible.”Nedivi said “For All Mankind” was intended as escapism, as entertainment. “But if we can encourage further space travel,” he said, somewhat grandly, “that would be a huge plus.”While the show can’t take credit for advancing exploration, it has made at least one contribution to the space program, a small stitch for mankind. Last year, Axiom Space, a private company contracted to supply the suits for the upcoming Artemis missions, contacted Marquis. It wanted her to create a spacesuit cover, a garment meant to cloak Axiom’s proprietary technology during a news conference.“There’s no way they can use it in space because it is black and colored,” Marquis said of the cover. “But it was a wonderful experience.”Axiom has since asked her to design flight suits that real astronauts will eventually wear. In tailoring the flight suits for those astronauts, at Axiom’s Houston headquarters, Marquis was struck with a feeling of déjà vu.“It’s very similar to fitting an actor,” she said. “That’s crazy, right?” More

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      Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in November: ‘Invincible,’ ‘Fargo’ and More

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      The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony will be live-streamed, and “Julia,” “Fargo” and more return. “The Buccaneers” is among the new series out this month.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of November’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‘Invincible’ Season 2, Part 1Starts streaming: Nov. 3Season 1 of this ultraviolent superhero cartoon (based on a comic book series by “The Walking Dead” creator Robert Kirkman) introduced the title character: a teenager still developing and honing the superpowers he inherited from his space-alien father. Steven Yeun voices Invincible, a.k.a. Mark Grayson, who at the end of last season learned that his dad, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), had been serving as one of the Earth’s protectors while secretly paving the way for a future invasion by his own planet’s people. Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of that revelation, as Mark and his fellow heroes face a series of new supervillains while also strategizing for Omni-Man’s possible return. Though “Invincible” has dark moments, the show’s overall vibe is bright and entertaining, with enough nods to classic superhero tropes to please devoted comics readers.Also arriving:Nov. 10“007: Road to a Million” Season 1“Dina Hashem: Dark Little Whispers”Nov. 14“Trevor Wallace: Pterodactyl”Nov. 17“Ex-mas”“Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story”“Twin Love” Season 1Nov. 21“Bye Bye Barry”Nov. 29“Pretty Hard Cases”Anna Sawai in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.”Diyah Pera/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Buccaneers’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 8Based on Edith Wharton’s final novel — left unfinished when she died in 1937 — “The Buccaneers” explores the flowering of the late-19th-century American aristocracy. Like the book, the series is about a group of wealthy young women who go to London to take part in the debutante season, invited by some established British families who want to lure these ladies (and their money) into marriages with cash-poor dukes and lords. Kristine Froseth takes the series’ lead as Nan St. George, the brightest of the Americans, who is supposed to be waiting in line for a husband behind her sister, Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse), but who instead finds herself courted by two men — Guy (Matthew Broome) and Theo (Guy Remmers) — who find her independence refreshing.‘For All Mankind’ Season 4Starts streaming: Nov. 10This terrific alternate-history science-fiction TV series had an uncharacteristically shaky third season, with its thrilling outer-space action — set mostly on Mars — butting up against some much drearier relationship melodrama. Season 4 resets “For All Mankind” a bit, introducing new characters and kicking off a new story, set in the 2000s. These episodes see multiple private and government space agencies working together on ambitious areas of exploration, including tapping asteroids for their mineral resources. At the same time, issues with the existing infrastructures on the Moon and Mars create a fresh set of practical problems for our heroes to solve. Newcomers to the cast include Toby Kebbel as a former oil-rigger looking for work away from Earth and Daniel Stern as a former corporate chief executive trying to bring efficiency to NASA.‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 17This first live-action TV series set in the recent “Godzilla” and “King Kong” movies’ “MonsterVerse” divides its action between two eras: the 1950s, when the existence of giant creatures is still a closely guarded secret, and the present, where some cities have built underground shelters to withstand Godzilla attacks. Anna Sawai plays Cate, who goes looking for the truth about her father’s connection to the mysterious monster-studying Monarch agency. Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell both play Lee Shaw, who became involved with Monarch as a U.S. soldier in the 1950s — and who a half-century later may be the only one who can help Cate. The creator Chris Black, who developed the show with the writer Matt Fraction, uses footage from the MonsterVerse films to add a sense of scope and awe to a series that is as much about the humans than it is about the big beasts looking to stomp them.Also arriving:Nov. 3“Fingernails”Nov. 22“The Velveteen Rabbit”Disney+New to Disney+‘The 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony’Starts streaming: Nov. 3After years of HBO airing a recorded and edited version of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony, this year Disney+ has the rights to the event, and will be broadcasting it live and uncut. The 2023 inductees, some of whom will be performing, include Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Chaka Khan, Willie Nelson and Rage Against the Machine. Presenters include Carrie Underwood, Common, Ice-T, Queen Latifah and Sia. These ceremonies do last a while, but they also tend to be full of emotional moments and genuine surprises, so for pop music buffs who can’t see the show in person, this is a rare chance to watch the action unfold as it happens — and then to watch it again later, in the Disney+ catalog.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Behind the Attraction” Season 2“The Three Detectives”Nov. 8“Daddies on Request” Season 2“The Santa Clauses” Season 2Nov. 17“Dashing Through the Snow”Nov. 23“The Naughty Nine”Emma Corrin and Harris Dickinson in “A Murder at the End of the World.”Christopher Saunders/FXNew to Hulu‘A Murder at the End of the World’Starts streaming: Nov. 14The writer-director-producer team of Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling are best-known for their Netflix supernatural mystery series “The OA,” which was canceled before Batmanglij and Marling could finish the story. They are staying in the same genre for this mini-series, which puts the duo’s usual spacey spin on the “country house murder mystery” plot. Clive Owen plays an eccentric tech billionaire who invites a group of influential thought leaders to his magnificent resort hotel in an icy wasteland. The one guest who does not seem to fit in with the rest is Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), a skilled hacker and amateur detective who wrote a popular true crime book. When someone on the property turns up dead, Darby has to find the killer and also convince her fellow partygoers that something strange is going on — all while she reckons with some secrets from her own past.‘Fargo’ Season 5Starts streaming: Nov. 22After a long layoff, Noah Hawley’s offbeat crime series “Fargo” is back, with 10 more episodes set (very loosely) in the same blood-spattered “Minnesota nice” reality as Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning 1996 movie. Previous seasons took place in 1950, 1979, 2006 and 2010. The fifth season takes place in 2019, and stars Juno Temple as Dot, a seemingly ordinary housewife who gets in trouble with the law and sees her shady past catching up to her, in the form of an authoritarian right-wing sheriff (Jon Hamm) determined to catch her. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Dot’s mother-in-law, an icy collection agency magnate who usually leans on her lawyer (Dave Foley) to get her family members out of trouble — but who has no idea what she is dealing with in the sweet but deadly Dot.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Arthdal Chronicles: The Sword of Aramun”“Black Cake”“A Christmas Frequency”“Reporting for Christmas”Nov. 2“Pam’s Garden of Eden” Season 2“Magic Mike’s Last Dance”Nov. 3“L.A. Law” Seasons 1-8“Quiz Lady”Nov. 6“JFK: One Day in America”Nov. 8“Vigilante” Season 1Nov. 9“The Croods: Family Tree” Season 8“The League”Nov. 13“The Lady Bird Diaries”Nov. 15“Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story”Nov. 16“Black Ice”“Drive with Swiss Beatz”“The Secret Life of Dancing Dogs”Nov. 20“Incredible Animal Journeys”“The Last Rider”“My Hero Academia” Season 6, Part 2Nov. 21“Obituary” Season 1Nov. 26“Faraway Downs”Nov. 29“The Artful Dodger” Season 1Nov. 30“A Compassionate Spy”“Wild Crime” Season 3Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce in Season 2 of “Julia.”Sebastein Gonon/MaxNew to Max‘Julia’ Season 2Starts streaming: Nov. 16Season 1 of this delightful biographical dramedy was one of last year’s unexpected TV gems, thanks in large part to Sarah Lancashire’s luminous performance as the boisterous, can-do cooking instructor Julia Child, coupled with David Hyde Pierce’s warm, wry take on her supportive husband, Paul. The first season was all about how the Childs committed their time, energy and money toward realizing their dream of creating a public television show that could demystify and popularize French food. In Season 2, Julia has become an unlikely celebrity, and she and Paul have to fight to maintain the quality of their show while all the people who doubted them before come running to cash in on their success.Also arriving:Nov. 3“Scent of Time”Nov. 7“Stand Up & Shout: Songs from a Philly High School”Nov. 8“You Were My First Boyfriend”Nov. 11“Albert Brooks: Defending My Life”Nov. 13“Love Has Won”Nov. 14“How We Get Free”Nov. 28“South to Black Power”Nov. 30“Bookie” Season 1David Oyelowo in “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.”Emerson Miller/Paramount+New to Paramount+ with Showtime‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’Starts streaming: Nov. 5The first installment of a new true crime anthology series — with each season telling the story of some famous cop or crook — “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” stars David Oyelowo as Reeves, the western hero who in his life went from being enslaved on a Texas plantation to serving with distinction as a U.S. Marshal. Oyelowo is also an executive producer (as is the “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan) on this historical drama that stretches across decades, covering an eventful life that overlapped with some of the biggest social changes in America: from the end of the Civil War to the expansion of the frontier. Created by the writer-producer Chad Feehan, this first season of “Lawmen” looks at classic Western mythology through different eyes, considering what ideals like freedom and justice mean to someone born in chains.‘The Curse’Starts streaming: Nov. 10The comedian Nathan Fielder has spoofed reality TV throughout his career, and especially in his series “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal.” His latest project — cocreated with the filmmaker Benny Safdie — takes a different approach to the genre, via a fictional story with a serrated satirical edge. Fielder plays Asher Siegel, who alongside his wife, Whitney (Emma Stone), is shooting an HGTV show called “Flipanthropy,” in which the couple helps the struggling residents of a small New Mexico town move into cutting-edge eco-friendly houses. When a young street peddler puts a curse on the stingy Asher, the Siegels’ marriage and television collaboration both begin to suffer. A commentary on the contrived rosiness of home improvement shows, “The Curse” also touches on gentrification, xenophobia, and the deep need of some do-gooder types to be lauded for their largess, even when their efforts hurt more than help.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Ink Master” Season 15Nov. 7“De La Calle”Nov. 9“Colin from Accounts”Nov. 22“Good Burger 2” More

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      Fall TV 2023: New and Returning Shows to Watch

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      Even with much of Hollywood on strike, there will be plenty of notable new and returning shows arriving in the next few months.We’ve been here before. In 2020, to be exact, when it was the pandemic that played havoc with fall network television schedules.The effects of the writers’ and actors’ strikes this year are a little less drastic — they took hold later in the production cycle than the pandemic did, and they only affect American series. But once again we are looking at lineups full of reality programs and game shows. Fox will still have its animation lineup (their long lead times mean more episodes were completed); CBS will repurpose and recycle (“Yellowstone,” the original British “Ghosts”); CW will offer a Canadian smorgasbord. On cable, streaming and PBS, meanwhile, with shorter seasons and more flexible scheduling, the effects are not so noticeable.Here is a roundup of strike-proof shows on fall schedules. Dates are subject to change.September‘THE SUPER MODELS’ Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington Burns are executive producers of this documentary series about their ’90s heyday, which promises to be as luxurious as the goods they modeled. (Apple+, Sept. 20 )‘SEX EDUCATION’ With Moordale Secondary closed, everyone has to get used to a new school in the fourth and final season of this popular, award-winning, sex-positive soap opera. (Netflix, Sept. 21)‘YOUNG LOVE’ “Hair Love,” the Oscar-winning animated short film from 2019 about a Black father learning to style his daughter’s hair, has been expanded into an animated series about a Chicago family. (Max, Sept. 21)‘THE CONTINENTAL: FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK’ Mel Gibson headlines this three-episode extension of the John Wick universe, a prequel focused on a private hotel for assassins called the Continental. Colin Woodell (“The Flight Attendant”), as the future proprietor Winston Scott, has the unenviable task of convincing us that he’s a younger version of Ian McShane. (Peacock, Sept. 22)‘DEADLOCKED: HOW AMERICA SHAPED THE SUPREME COURT’ Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) directed this four-part documentary about the modern history of the Supreme Court. (Showtime, Sept. 22)‘KRAPOPOLIS’ Dan Harmon, creator of “Community” and “Rick and Morty,” joins Fox’s Sunday-night lineup with a comedy about a young king (Richard Ayoade) trying to foster civilization in a brightly animated ancient Greece. Fox has ordered three seasons of the show, which if nothing else will provide ample opportunity for the inimitable Matt Berry to voice the king’s father, a debauched half-centaur, half-manticore. (Fox, Sept. 24)Created by Dan Harmon, “Krapopolis” joins Fox’s Sunday night animation lineup.Fox‘THE IRRATIONAL’ Jesse L. Martin, a star of “Rent” on Broadway and a “Law & Order” mainstay for nine seasons, gets his own show for the first time in a three-decade TV career. In mainstream TV’s long tradition of offbeat crime solvers, he plays a behavioral scientist whose quirky team tackles “illogical puzzles and perplexing mysteries.” (NBC, Sept. 25)‘FRIEREN: BEYOND JOURNEY’S END’ This anime series begins after its heroes have completed their ultimate mission; one of the group, the elf Frieren, will outlive her human companions by hundreds of years and come to regret not having known them better. In a genre that gives a lot of space to melancholia, “Frieren” is particularly wistful. (Crunchyroll, Sept. 29)‘GEN V’ Amazon expands the world of its buzziest show, “The Boys,” with a spinoff set in a college for superheroes. (Amazon Prime Video, Sept. 29)October‘BOB’S BURGERS’ Fourteen seasons in (with No. 15 already ordered), Loren Bouchard’s animated comedy remains the sweetest, truest series about family love and dysfunction. With the recent revitalization of “The Simpsons,” it makes Sunday night on Fox the closest thing left to a destination on terrestrial TV. (Fox, Oct. 1)‘FOUND’ Shanola Hampton of “Shameless” stars as a public-relations expert who looks for missing persons of color in NBC’s second new series about an unconventional crime-solving team (after “The Irrational”). (NBC, Oct. 3)Shanola Hampton and Bill Kelly in “Found,” coming to NBC in October.Steve Swisher/NBC‘THE SPENCER SISTERS’ Lea Thompson, starring in a live-action series for the first time since ABC Family’s “Switched at Birth” ended in 2017, plays a Canadian mystery writer who solves crimes with her ex-cop daughter. The joke is that the vain, libidinous mom and the no-nonsense daughter get mistaken for sisters, or so the mother would believe; call it “Murder, She Flirted.” (CW, Oct. 4)‘BARGAIN’ The story line of this Korean series involving an organ auction, a remote location and an earthquake carries some “Squid Game” vibes. (Paramount+, Oct. 5)‘LUPIN’ Netflix’s contemporary take on a classic French character, the turn-of-the-previous-century master thief Arsène Lupin, resurfaces more than two years after its last appearance. Omar Sy returns as the Lupin aficionado Assane Diop, who spent the show’s first two seasons clearing the name of his unjustly imprisoned father. (Netflix, Oct. 5)‘OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH’ David Jenkins’s singular concoction — a queer romance and office sitcom set aboard an 18th-century pirate ship — returns for a second season. (Max, Oct. 5)‘TRANSPLANT’ A pre-strike Canadian import, this conventionally well-made medical drama about a Syrian refugee (Hamza Haq) who becomes a surgeon at a Toronto hospital enters its third season, with Rekha Sharma replacing John Hannah as the chief of the emergency room. (NBC, Oct. 5)‘LOKI’ The most multiverse-y of the Disney+ Marvel series returns for a second season, with Tom Hiddleston as a variant of the shifty Norse god Loki who is reluctantly attached to a timeline-policing authority. The Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan joins the cast. (Disney+, Oct. 6)From left, Tom Hiddleston, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson in “Loki.”Gareth Gatrell/Marvel, via Disney+‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER’ Having adapted Shirley Jackson (“The Haunting of Hill House”) and Henry James (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”) for Netflix, Mike Flanagan tackles Edgar Allan Poe in a story that reimagines the Ushers as a big-pharma family. Flanagan regulars like Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas and Michael Trucco return. (Netflix, Oct. 12)‘FRASIER’ Intellectual property that deserves the name. The sparkling sitcom returns with Kelsey Grammer’s sniffy psychiatrist, Frasier Crane, having relocated to Boston (scene of the character’s original incarnation in “Cheers”) after his 1993-2004 run in Seattle. Not making the trip, unfortunately, is David Hyde Pierce as Frasier’s brother, Niles, nor, apparently, any of the other original cast members. (Paramount+, Oct. 12)‘GOOSEBUMPS’ R.L. Stine’s series of comic horror books for teenagers, already the basis of a popular series on Fox Kids in the 1990s, gets a new adaptation created by Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and Rob Letterman (the 2015 “Goosebumps” feature film). (Disney+, Oct. 13)‘LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY’ Apple has shown a taste for shows with a nostalgic flavor, whether or not they are set in the past — “Hello Tomorrow!,” “Physical,” “The Morning Show.” (Remember when morning shows mattered?) Brie Larson stars in this one as a woman in the 1950s who channels her skills as a scientist into hosting a cooking show. (Apple+, Oct. 13)Brie Larson stars in “Lessons in Chemistry” as a scientist turned cooking show host.Apple TV+‘SHINING VALE’ Courteney Cox, as a blocked writer who moves to the suburbs, and Mira Sorvino, as the jealous ghost haunting the writer’s new house, return in a comic take on “The Shining” whose first season was cleverly macabre. (Starz, Oct. 13)‘ANNIKA’ The second season of this under-the-radar British cop show will be American viewers’ only ration of the wonderful actress Nicola Walker this fall, now that “The Split” and her run in “Unforgotten” have ended. Walker plays the leader of a “marine homicide unit” based in Glasgow. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘BILLY THE KID’ It’s not obvious why this workmanlike western with the British actor Tom Blyth in the title role got a second season, but it may have something to do with the track record of its creator, the British writer Michael Hirst, who was also responsible for “The Tudors” and “Vikings.” (MGM+, Oct. 15)‘RICK AND MORTY’ The seventh season of the celebrated sci-fi cartoon will be the first without Justin Roiland, who created the show with Dan Harmon and voiced both of the title characters. (Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland after his 2020 arrest on domestic abuse charges was publicized; the charges have since been dropped.) (Adult Swim, Oct. 15)‘WORLD ON FIRE’ The first season of this British series about ordinary people proving their mettle, or failing to prove it, in the various theaters of World War II was not the most sophisticated of melodramas. The return of Lesley Manville (after a four-year gap between seasons), as a bigoted Manchester woman coping with her son’s sudden acquisition of a Polish wife, makes up for a lot, though. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘THE AMERICAN BUFFALO’ For the first time, Ken Burns directs a documentary that is not about man or man’s accomplishments. (Well, the second time if you count “Not for Ourselves Alone,” the one among his three dozen projects as a director that focuses specifically on women.) But the four-hour series is equal parts human history and natural history, as it traces the intertwined fates of the bison and the tribes that depended on them. (PBS, Oct. 16)‘EVERYONE ELSE BURNS’ The CW slips a British comedy onto its menu of mostly Canadian series. Simon Bird of “The Inbetweeners” and Kate O’Flynn of “Landscapers” play the parents in a family that struggles with the strictures of their Christian sect, whose many no-nos include drinking coffee and celebrating birthdays. (CW, Oct. 16)Simon Bird and Kate O’Flynn star in “Everyone Else Burns,” a British import coming to the CW.James Stack/CW‘NEON’ Three friends portrayed by Tyler Dean Flores (who plays the singer), Emma Ferreira (the overbearing manager) and Jordan Mendoza (the social media geek) move to Miami in search of reggaeton stardom in a comedy whose executive producers include the Taylor Swift antagonist Scooter Braun. (Netflix, Oct. 19)‘WOLF LIKE ME’ This Australian dark comedy is a mix of rom-com and broken-family drama in which one character’s being a werewolf is both the classic impediment to true love and an all-purpose allegory of the need for safety in relationships. Its first season was slight, amusing and often moving. (Peacock, Oct. 19)‘30 COINS’ The Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia’s entertainingly lurid thriller about a demonic conspiracy focused on a small village gets a second season and a substantial new cast member, Paul Giamatti, who plays a mysterious American tech billionaire. (HBO, Oct. 23)‘LIFE ON OUR PLANET’ The creators of British series like “Planet Earth” and “Our Planet” join forces with Industrial Light and Magic and Steven Spielberg for a natural-history series about the ebb and flow of life across the eons, which provides copious opportunities for animating the 99 percent of earth’s species that have gone extinct. (Netflix, Oct. 25)‘FELLOW TRAVELERS’ Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey star as clandestine lovers in a nostalgic march-of-history mini-series — McCarthyism, Vietnam, disco, AIDS — written by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”), based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon. (Paramount+, Oct. 27; Showtime, Oct. 29)‘THIS ENGLAND’ Hamlet and Hercule Poirot are all well and good, but here’s a real challenge for Kenneth Branagh: playing the Brexit-boosting, Covid-partying former prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, in a six-episode mini-series written by Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke. (BritBox, Nov. 1)‘ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE’ Steven Knight, creator of “Peaky Blinders,” developed this mini-series from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning World War II romantic thriller about a brave, blind French girl and a German boy whose technical skills pull him into the Nazi army. Marie-Laure, the blind heroine, is played by Aria Mia Loberti, a Fulbright scholar, disability advocate and first-time actor; Marie-Laure’s father and great-uncle are played by the more seasoned Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. (Netflix, Nov. 2)Aria Mia Loberti, a first-time actor, stars in an adaptation of the novel “All the Light We Cannot See.”Katalin Vermes/Netflix‘LAWMEN: BASS REEVES’ Originally billed as yet another spinoff of “Yellowstone,” the latest show from the executive producer Taylor Sheridan is now an anthology series that will feature various real-life old-west lawmen. The first season stars David Oyelowo as Reeves, a formerly enslaved man who developed a formidable reputation as a deputy U.S. marshal. Lauren E. Banks plays Reeves’s wife and the cast includes Dennis Quaid, Donald Sutherland and Shea Whigham. (Paramount+, Nov. 5)‘THE BUCCANEERS’ “A group of fun-loving young American girls explode into the tightly corseted London season of the 1870s,” according to the press release, which sounds like a cross between “Downton Abbey” and a reality dating competition (never mind that it’s based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel). (Apple TV+, Nov. 8)‘FOR ALL MANKIND’ Equal parts soap opera and engaging alt-history of the space race — you didn’t see the North Korean thing coming, did you? — “Mankind” jumps ahead another decade for its fourth season, with international partners uneasily working together to mine asteroids in 2003. (Apple TV+, Nov. 10)‘BELGRAVIA: THE NEXT CHAPTER’ Written by Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) and starring redoubtable British performers like Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter, the mini-series “Belgravia,” about 1840s London society, was a distinct pleasure. This sequel jumps ahead 30 years and has a new cast and a new writer, Helen Edmundson (“Dalgliesh”). (MGM+, Nov. 12)‘PARIS POLICE 1905’ The first season of this historical police procedural — titled “Paris Police 1900” and set when the procedures we’re used to seeing were being invented — was handsomely produced, crazily plotted and consistently entertaining. The new season returns most of the cast (with the regrettable exception of Valérie Dashwood’s laudanum-sniffing, steel-nerved Mme. Lépine) and adds automobiles. (MHz Choice, Nov. 14)‘MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS’ Kurt Russell’s last regular role in a series was nearly 50 years ago, in the 1976 western “The Quest,” so kudos to Legendary Pictures and Apple for talking him into starring in their Godzilla-adjacent MonsterVerse mystery. It’s a package deal: Russell and his son Wyatt both play the central character, an Army officer somehow connected to kaiju research and development. That would seem to prevent them from appearing onscreen together, but we can always hope for a time warp. (Apple TV+, Nov. 17)‘SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF’ Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels about a mopey Toronto bassist who is also, accidentally, a video-game warrior — already made into a 2010 film starring Michael Cera, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” — are now adapted into an anime series produced by the Japanese studio Science SARU. O’Malley is on board as a writer and showrunner. (Netflix, Nov. 17)‘FARGO’ After an underwhelming sojourn in 1950s Kansas City in its fourth season, Noah Hawley’s arch rural noir heads back north to Minnesota and North Dakota for a story starring Jon Hamm as a sheriff and Juno Temple as the woman he’s hunting for. The typically eclectic cast includes Dave Foley, Lamorne Morris and Jennifer Jason Leigh. (FX, Nov. 21)‘ECHO’ Like alien invaders sending out spores, Marvel series multiply on Disney+. This one — starring Alaqua Cox as the Native American hero who can perfectly mimic movement and Zahn McClarnon as her father — is an offshoot of “Hawkeye,” from 2021. But it lies closer to “Daredevil” in the Marvel narrative architecture, so Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are also in the cast as Daredevil and the Kingpin. (Disney+, Nov. 29)December‘PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS’ Ten years after the second and, so far, final Percy Jackson film, Walker Scobell (he played Ryan Reynolds’s younger self in “The Adam Project”) takes on the role of the 12-year-old demigod in a new series. (Disney+, Dec. 20)Other returning shows: “American Horror Story” (FX, Sept. 20); “Starstruck” (Max, Sept. 28); “The Simpsons” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Family Guy” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Magnum P.I.” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Quantum Leap” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Creepshow” (Shudder, Oct. 13); “Hotel Portofino” (PBS, Oct. 15); “Bosch: Legacy” (Freevee, Oct. 20); “Upload” (Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 20); “Native America” (PBS, Oct. 24); “American Horror Stories” (FX on Hulu, Oct. 26); “Shoresy” (Hulu, Oct. 27); “The Gilded Age” (HBO, Oct. 29); “Invincible” (Amazon Prime Video, Nov. 3); “Rap Sh!t” (Max, Nov. 9); “Julia” (Max, Nov. 16); “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” (Starz, Dec. 1) More

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      The Best TV Episodes of 2021

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      Among the thousands of hours of television that came out this year, episodes of “Call My Agent,” “For All Mankind,” “Mythic Quest,” “Pose” and “WandaVision,” among others, stood out.From left, “Dave,” PEN15” and “Genius: Aretha” put out some of TV’s best episodes of the year.From left: Byron Cohen/FX; Hulu; Richard DuCree/National GeographicTelevision today comes in big portions, as anyone who spent seven-plus hours with the Beatles over Thanksgiving weekend can attest. But just as a marathon jam session can yield a few tight singles, the most memorable TV is still often the well-crafted individual episode. As Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I end another year’s binge as TV critics for The New York Times, here are a few of the installments from 2021 that topped our personal hit parades. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Call My Agent!’ (Netflix)‘Sigourney’More than 30 European actors — including stars like Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno — have graciously and often mercilessly lampooned themselves in this French dramedy, playing clients or prospective clients or angry former clients of the fictional talent agency ASK. In this Season 4 episode, an American stepped in, and Sigourney Weaver, speaking more than passable French and playing herself as an utterly charming manipulator, was flawless. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘City of Ghosts’‘Bob & Nancy’Plenty of children’s shows are cute but “City of Ghosts” is also beautiful, and its poetic wistfulness about Los Angeles would be at home on a premium cable drama. Instead it’s in this plucky, naturalistic cartoon about ghost-hunting kids who have a podcast. I loved every episode of this show. But I picked “Bob & Nancy” because it’s about a marionette theater, and thus it toys with ideas of animating the inanimate — rich ground for a show in touch with the spirit realm. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSHarley Quinn Smith in the finale of “Cruel Summer,” which offered both a happy ending and a surprising twist.Freeform/Bill Matlock‘Cruel Summer’‘Hostile Witness’This teen kidnapping mystery took all the hallmarks of prestige-y crime shows — split timelines, dark lighting, tangential secrets — and repackaged them with a kicky ’90s YA flare. It was one of the juicy highlights of the summer. But shows like this are only as good as their finales, and “Cruel Summer” managed the trick of both a happy ending and a thrilling, dark twist. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Dave’ (FXX)‘Somebody Date Me’Texting can be a crutch for TV shows, a way to use pop-up bubbles to give characters phone-enabled telepathy. Not so in this playful, smart half-hour, in which Dave Burd’s up-and-coming rapper made (and lost) a date with Doja Cat. As the two musicians courted with their thumbs, “Somebody Date Me” showed how context and time can change the meaning and reading of the smallest online (mis)communication. Thumbs-up emoji! (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKThe Season 2 finale of “For All Mankind,” with Krys Marshall, revolved around multiple white-knuckle missions.Apple TV+‘For All Mankind’ (Apple TV+)‘The Grey’Each season of this space-race alternative history is a multistage booster rocket. The slow-moving early episodes expend a lot of fuel, building energy and narrative force until the show reaches escape velocity. (My aerospace engineer readers, I beg you not to fact-check my metaphors.) The white-knuckle Season 2 finale moved with the deftness of a docking maneuver, as a U.S.-Soviet conflict on the moon and a threatened war on Earth required risk and sacrifice on two celestial bodies and points in between. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Genius: Aretha’ (National Geographic)‘Amazing Grace’‘Pose’ (FX)‘Take Me to Church’The music and community of the Black church co-starred in two praiseworthy hours of TV. The Aretha Franklin bio-series peaked as it focused on the recording of the 1972 “Amazing Grace” live album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, fusing the artist’s past and present in a crucible of soul. In “Pose,” a grim diagnosis led Pray Tell (Billy Porter) back to his hometown and church community, both to confront the homophobia that drove him from it and give voice to the music that sustained him. (Stream “Genius: Aretha” on Hulu; buy “Pose” on Amazon.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKPerry Mattfeld, left, and David Webster, in the “Somewhere Over the Border” episode of “In the Dark.” CW‘In the Dark’ (CW)‘Somewhere Over the Border’This CW drama about a blind woman and her buddies, who run a rescue-dog agency and get involved in drug dealing and murder, is no more than a serviceable thriller. But the rapport among its central characters, Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), Jess (Brooke Markham) and Felix (Morgan Krantz), has developed into one of the more believable and moving portrayals of friendship on TV. When Murphy found herself stranded in a strange country, the strength of those ties was the foundation of a taut and agonizing hour. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘Line of Duty’ (BritBox)Season 6, Episode 5Tension and deception pump through the veins of this breakneck procedural about a British internal-affairs unit, and no show does cliffhangers better. You could point to just about any episode; this one, with one of the heroes following a possibly dirty cop into an abandoned industrial park because that’s what the job called for, was off the charts. (Streaming on BritBox.) MIKE HALE‘Love, Death & Robots’‘The Drowned Giant’In just 13 minutes, this elegant short about a giant’s corpse that washes up on a beach one day captures, in a perfect snapshot, humanity’s tendency to desecrate marvels, to behold a world-changing event and decide simply to carry on. Based on a short story by J.G. Ballard, “The Drowned Giant” is rendered here in mostly realistic animation, with the giant’s clean-shaven cheeks, tidy fingernails and muscular chest shown in aching detail. In an era when so many shows just blend together, this episode stands out for its light touch and sad imagination. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSIn a memorable episode of “Making It,” contestants like Jessie Lamworth, (right, with the host Amy Poehler) made Halloween costumes.Evans Vestal Ward/NBC‘Making It’‘All the Holidays at Once’Post “Great British Baking Show,” lots of reality competition series have gone away from the cutthroat in favor of the warm and fuzzy, and perhaps no show is warmer and fuzzier than the craft competition “Making It.” Each episode has its charms but “All the Holidays at Once” was especially thrilling, because unlike some of the show’s grander projects, crafting your own Halloween costume is pretty standard fare, even for layfolk. The contestants’ giddy joy in presenting their creations to the judges was matched only by my own giddy joy at seeing their silly and spectacular costumes. Jess won with her superb alien-abduction costume but when everything is this fun, don’t we all win? As a bonus, this episode also included Melañio telling a story about a bat in a toilet, a tale that will haunt me for the rest of my days. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Mythic Quest’ (Apple TV+)‘Backstory!’Having come up with one of the best pandemic-inspired episodes of 2020, this video game-industry comedy is gunning for TV’s high score in stand-alones. This installment gave the back story-obsessed game writer C.W. Longbottom (a wonderfully blustery F. Murray Abraham) his own flashback as a struggling sci-fi author in the 1970s — a funny and poignant tale of irony, professional jealousy and success at a cost. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Nuclear Family’ (HBO)Episode 3Ry Russo-Young’s three-part documentary about her lesbian mothers and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights, threatening to pull apart her family, built to a powerful and eloquent conclusion. It both affirmed the importance of the battle her mothers fought and questioned the assumptions of everyone involved. (Streaming on HBO Max.) MIKE HALEIn a March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle discussed their separation from the royal family.Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’One so rarely gets to receive or send a “turn on your TV right now” text, especially in my line of work. So for that dual thrill alone this interview earned a place in my heart. It was the kind of programming that barely exists anymore: a tell-all network special in which celebrities share genuine new information with Oprah, the patron saint of soul-baring. There were Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aglow in the California sun, decrying racism and candidly discussing mental health crises. Which would have been enough, but they also reset the royal narrative, gave Oprah eggs, fought back tears and gazed lovingly at one another — all while sitting in chairs sold by Christopher Knight from “The Brady Bunch.” Television, baby! I love you! MARGARET LYONS‘PEN15’ (Hulu)‘Yuki’Mutsuko Erskine had never acted before her daughter, Maya, cast her to play Maya’s mother in Hulu’s brutally funny teen comedy. Sometimes daughter knows best. This showpiece episode, in which a chance meeting with an ex-husband led Yuki to look down a road not taken, was a rich vignette of an immigrant’s experience and a subtle performance to cap off the role, literally, of a lifetime. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)‘The Dad-Feelings Limited’Who would have thought that the origin story of Comic Book Guy, done partly as an affectionate sendup of a Wes Anderson film, would be so lovely? (Streaming on Disney+.) MIKE HALE‘Snowfall’ (FX)‘All the Way Down’This brutal and only-as-sentimental-as-it-needs-to-be drama about a rogue C.I.A. agent and a young Black entrepreneur, partners in the crack wars in early 1980s Los Angeles, still does not get enough attention. That’s especially true of the stories written by the novelist Walter Mosley, like this chilling, tightly packed episode about rage, revenge, gentrification and wanting to go straight. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALEIn “WandaVision,” Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen channeled multiple eras of TV including, in the premiere, 1950s sitcoms.Marvel Studios‘WandaVision’ (Disney+)‘Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience’Several installments of this superhero psychodrama, set in a bizarro-world version of classic sitcom formats, could have made this list. But might as well start at the beginning, in which Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) played house on a 1950s stage set whose made-for-TV perfection turned horrifyingly (and ingeniously) wrong. (Streaming on Disney+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘What We Do in the Shadows’‘Casino’“Shadows” is one of the funniest shows on TV right now, and “Casino,” where the gang heads to Atlantic City, was my favorite episode this season. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) becomes entranced by a “Big Bang Theory” slot machine — “‘bazinga’ is the war cry of Sheldon,” he explains — and in perfect, cascading horror, this leads to the total dissolution of his understanding of the universe. “Shadows” is its best when the vampires’ grandiosity clashes with their vulnerabilities, especially their excitability, and I’ll never see another in-house ad on a hotel TV without thinking that it’s Colin Robinson’s favorite show. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS More