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    ‘The Confidante’ Is a Layered French Drama About a Heartbreaking Scam

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    Streaming on Max, the series tells the story of woman who lies to a grief support group about her connection to the Paris terrorist attacks of 2015.Laure Calamy stars in “The Confidante.”MaxThe four-part French mini-series “The Confidante,” beginning Friday, on Max (in French, with subtitles), is based loosely on a true story and follows a woman named Chris (Laure Calamy), who claims falsely that her best friend was a victim of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Chris ingratiates herself into a survivors’ support network, providing real time and energy but also catfishing other members and committing fraud. She posts constantly on Facebook, offering herself as a shoulder to cry on, fielding texts, chats and calls from bereaved, traumatized — legitimate — victims.“Confidante” keeps its focus tight, with only slivers of Chris’s previous grifts creeping into the narrative — just enough to feel like half remembered rumors. We see Chris’s pain and vulnerability, the shabby ways some people treat her. And we also see her shamelessly scam cabdrivers and bartenders.In one of the show’s knottiest, most striking scenes, members of the support group join Chris at the hospital to visit “Vincent,” her comatose friend. They promise an unconscious Vincent that they care about him, they’re waiting for him. We, and Chris, know the man in the bed is not Vincent but rather a random victim whose room she weaseled into weeks earlier. What does one make of a misdirected vigil?Chris often blasts music on her headphones, which we hear in tinny second hand. A man sighs that everyone in Paris is connected to a victim somehow, given the scale of the attack. Another man, whose wife survived the attack, describes the second-degree trauma he and his son experience from watching her suffer. “Confidante” layers these moments carefully to build Chris’s psyche: Just because you’re not wearing the headphones doesn’t mean you can’t hear the music, right? Just because it didn’t happen to Chris the way she said doesn’t mean it didn’t happen in the broader sense, right? … Right?Well, no, of course not. “Confidante” subtly, effectively depicts how a fraud turns everything inside out. What seemed like generosity was selfishness. What seemed like support was damage.“The Confidante” kicks off a little social fraud boomlet in the coming days: “Anatomy of Lies,” “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare” and “Scamanda” all premiere next week, and all follow outrageous, compounding scams. Those are all documentaries, and what a fictionalized drama can offer that ripped-from-the-podcast docs can’t is a real evocation of the present tense, the part before ruefulness, the part where it all feels true. More

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      How Everyone Got Lost in Netflix’s Endless Library

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      If you take a journey deep within Netflix’s furthest recesses — burrow past Bingeworthy TV Dramas and 1980s Action Thrillers, take a left at Because You Watched the Lego Batman Movie, keep going past Fright Night — you will eventually find your way to the platform’s core, the forgotten layers of content fossilized by the pressure from the accreted layers above. Down here, if you search hard enough, you will eventually find your way to “Richie Rich.”Listen to this article, read by Ron ButlerYou know the one, from the old comic books. In Netflix’s series, he was reimagined as a self-made boy who discovered a novel source of energy derived from all the vegetables he never ate, making him the world’s first trillionaire. And now he lives in a mansion with an amusement park and a robot maid; his dad is an oaf and a layabout; his best friend, played by the future Netflix superstar Jenna Ortega, is a mooch; a rapper named Bulldozah lives next door, with a son who is also friends with Richie. In contrast to the dark, lonely and besieged version of Richie played by Macaulay Culkin in 1994, here Richie’s life is basically good, though not without the sort of headaches that arise from being a prepubescent trillionaire.In the fourth episode of the show, Richie struggles to write a book report on “The Wizard of Oz”: The book puts him to sleep, the movie puts him to sleep, he doesn’t know what to do. Bulldozah’s son suggests he remake the movie, and with no practical reason not to, he does. But as soon as he begins, things deteriorate. The Lion character has rewritten himself to be cool and have a motorcycle. Dorothy also wants to be cool; she thinks she should be from Paris, not Kansas, and wants to be named Véronique. His robot maid can’t accept that the Tin Woodsman would rust because he’s made of tin — she’s apparently right about this — so she decides she’s the Tungsten Carbide Woodsman. By the end, the movie is being shot in 3-D and there are time-traveling dinosaurs, an asteroid and evil space robots — a decision that offends Richie’s maid.“For once,” she says, “it would be really cool to see a positive role model for young robots.”“Did someone say ‘cool’?” says the Scarecrow, now dressed up as an ice cream cone. “You know what else is cool?” (He has secured a product-placement deal.)Rather unwittingly, the episode poses a question that haunts our age: What happens to entertainment when a newcomer, armed with an effectively endless amount of money, starts making it? What happens, in other words, when you become Netflix?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Industry’ Blends ‘Succession’ With ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

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      Set in the high-pressure world of investment banking, the series, now in Season 3, started out unremarkably but has since become appointment viewing.When “Industry,” a jargony drama about climbing the ladder in the investment banking industry, debuted back in 2020, it was clunky and too generic, and it often telegraphed its twists. But the show found its sea legs, and its slick second season was a ruthless, breathless treat — fast and good-mean. Each episode turned the temperature up and up and up, taking the conflict among our miserable bank bébés from a simmer to an aggressive boil.Then it cranked things even hotter, turning steam to plasma in its last moments — a wilder, more significant phase change.Season 3, which began on Sunday, picks up a few months into this shift. Harper (Myha’la) is licking her wounds after her ouster from the high-pressure London firm Pierpoint, but she has landed at FutureDawn, the female-led, ostensibly socially-conscious fund from Season 2. She is working as an assistant, well outside — and, in her eyes, well beneath — her biz-whiz skill set, but she has never been one to follow workplace rules. She aligns herself with an equally disgruntled senior portfolio manager, Petra (Sarah Goldberg, of “Barry” fame), and starts sharpening her knives.“Industry” can sometimes feel like “Succession Jr.” with its icy palate, its appetite for financial lingo, its characters’ soulless scheming and lines like “I haven’t done blow since 9/11” and “the only famous salesman is Willy Loman.” The incessant shouting, lies, secrecy and debt recall “The Bear,” and its snappy critiques of faux liberalism remind me of “Hacks.” (“I never watch [porn] … unless it’s directed by women,” brags one guy, on a private jet.)But the show it reminds me of most is still “Grey’s Anatomy”: “Industry” also begins on everyone’s first day, with our crew of newbies jockeying for top spots and hooking up with each other, enduring grueling hours and harsh — alluring — mentorship. The rookies’ ingenuity is sometimes valorized, but sometimes it is illegal, and sometimes super-duper illegal. Each character’s family of origin has some murky secret, and none of them are quite sure whether they should be ride-or-die loyal to one another or “all’s fair in work and war” competitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Kite Man’ Is a Fun, Irreverent ‘Harley Quinn’ Spinoff

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      Like “Harley,” the series is set among Gotham’s villains and goons, with a similarly lewd and rowdy vibe.“Harley Quinn” is one of the best comedies going these days, quick and filthy and ambitious. (It’s all on Max.) Perhaps predictably, it has earned itself a spinoff; perhaps unpredictably, that spinoff is pegged to one of its lesser characters. “Kite Man: Hell Yeah!,” premiering Thursday on Max, keeps the nervy lewdness and contemporary pop-psychology of “Harley” but redirects its energy to Kite Man (voiced by Matt Oberg).“Kite Man” operates as an ensemble show and might be more accurately titled “Kite Man and Golden Glider,” since Kite Man’s girlfriend has just as big a slice of the narrative pie. On “Harley,” the will-they-won’t-they of Harley and Poison Ivy drives a lot of the first few seasons. Here, Kite Man and Golden Glider (Stephanie Hsu) are together and thriving, in their warped and sometimes dopey ways, from the get go, and their conflicts stem largely from their decision to buy a decrepit bar. Well, that and the super villainy: The setting here, as with “Harley,” is among Gotham’s villains, goons, thugs and scoundrels and their various appetites for destruction.The show gets off to a bumpy start because Kite Man is mostly just an airhead with daddy issues, which the show says overtly and often. The real momentum of the season follows Golden Glider and her mommy issues — hers is the richer story because she is more biting and self aware. I do wish the show dropped all its episodes at once because it makes for such a zesty binge and because I wasn’t quite sold right out of the gate.Even bad guys have their bad guys, and on “Kite Man,” our pals are up against the ever-expanding Villigans corporation. “Villigans isn’t a chain restaurant/global e-commerce/privatized prison system; we’re really a data business,” boasts its leader (Judith Light) as she rattles off personal details and manipulates the gang.If the plot of “Kite Man” doesn’t always quite soar, the dialogue is a ton of fun. “I guess one slippery slope couldn’t hurt,” says a teetotaler looking at a cocktail menu. A new character, Dubelz (Michael Imperioli), a mobster with two heads (sort of …), advises Kite Man that Golden Glider is out of his league. “You’re dating a meatball bigger than your mouth,” he huffs. And all the silliness and non sequiturs mean dramatic lines land even harder. “My parents were doing their favorite thing in their favorite place: fighting in a bar,” Golden Glider laments.The best part of the show — and the best part of “Harley Quinn” — is Bane (James Adomian), and he gets more screen time as the season goes on. His shimmering insecurity and fealty to social rules make him a consistent fish out of water, too rigid for both the evildoers and the regular joes of the world. He gets roped into balloon-animal duty at a child’s birthday party and hands them a mangled snarl. “It is despair!” he announces, proudly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Smiling Friends’ Is a Deranged Blast

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      This warped Adult Swim animated series, streaming on Max, is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Charlie, Pip and Allan try to make people smile at Smiling Friends Inc.Adult SwimThe setup for the Adult Swim series “Smiling Friends,” available on Max, sounds like the premise of a cheery, do-unto-others children’s show: Charlie and Pim (voiced by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, the show’s creators) and their kooky pals work at Smiling Friends Inc., where their job is to make clients smile.But there is nary a shred of cutesy wholesomeness here — instead, there is cursing, bloodshed, absurdity, silliness. The show is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Each 12-minute installment takes us on another deranged misadventure, to odd enclaves and foreign planets, to find lost loves, influence political elections, revamp video-game franchises. “Smiling Friends” has an omnivorous sensibility, and its punchlines can be surreal and warped or grounded and tenderly specific, all part of its grand ethnography of weird little freaks. It also varies its animation style, with Charlie and Pim looking mostly unchanged but guest characters depicted in a range of formats: live action, grotesque illustration, rotoscoped realism.If some of this character design conjures fond associations with “Tom Goes to the Mayor” or “Beavis and Butt-Head,” well, that’s how you know you are in the right place. “Smiling” is more acrid than “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and plays by different rules than “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” but it has a similar naughtiness.The show first aired as a backdoor pilot in 2020, was ordered to series in 2021, debuted in 2022 and is about to finish its second season on Sunday at midnight on Adult Swim. (It was recently renewed for a third season.) Part of the appeal here is the show’s wide curiosity and unpredictable rhythm; its grab-bagginess recreates the lure of a blind-box toy. There’s also a snacky quality to “Smiling,” thanks to the peppy vulgarity that is basically Adult Swim’s Doritos powder.Its episodic nature and short running times help, too — though as with any modern show that wants to be loved, Easter eggs and deep-cut callbacks abound. More

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      HBO Could Use a Hit and ‘House of the Dragon’ Could be the Answer

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      The network has hit an unusually fallow period. Executives hope “House of the Dragon,” which returns Sunday, could be the start of a new winning streak.The dragons are back. And not a moment too soon.On Sunday, “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” prequel series, will return to HBO for its second season. The show became a bona fide hit in its first season, in 2022, and helped kick off a torrid winning streak for the network that included the beloved sophomore season of “The White Lotus”; the premiere of a new hit, “The Last of Us”; and the decorated final season of “Succession.”But over the past year, HBO has encountered a fallow stretch — unusual for America’s pre-eminent premium television network.There have been disappointments (the music drama “The Idol” and the Kate Winslet-starring limited series “The Regime,” for instance), and delayed premieres because of the double Hollywood strikes last year. According to one widely used industry metric, Max, the 13-month-old streaming service that houses HBO’s shows, has plateaued during that time. One high-ranking executive at Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, chalked up Max’s slow start to “probably the lightest content slate we’ve ever had.”HBO’s one-year slowdown could be underscored when Emmy nominations arrive next month, usually a cause for celebration for the network. But in contrast to previous years, shows from HBO and Max will not be favorites in some of the major categories, including drama, a category that HBO dominated at the most recent Emmys.According to some award forecasters, HBO could finish third among networks in total nominations, which would be its lowest ranking since 1996. HBO executives acknowledged that they were anticipating reduced award recognition this year. But they said they were looking to the months ahead, starting with this weekend.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Suits’ and ‘Friends’: Here’s What Americans Streamed in 2023

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

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      Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in January: ‘Echo,’ ‘True Detective’ and More

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

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      What Your Favorite Streaming Services Will Cost You in 2024

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      Amazon will start showing ads to some Prime Video subscribers who pay less. They’re not alone.If you were planning on watching the final season of “Jack Ryan” or eight seasons of “House” without commercials on Amazon Prime next year, get ready to dig a little deeper into your pockets.In September, Amazon announced it would soon add advertisements to Prime Video, its streaming service, and this week announced when that change would go into effect: Jan 29. Customers wanting to avoid the ads would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month.Less than a decade ago, the streaming era took off on the promise of letting users cut the cord from expensive cable bills and enjoy a blissful ad-free viewing experience. But as we enter 2024, Amazon isn’t the only service bringing back ads or driving prices higher.Studios and streaming companies that make all this entertainment say they are struggling, and that it’s getting increasingly hard to attract new customers. The result is higher prices, or plans that are cheaper but include ads.There are also other measures. This fall, Netflix announced a price hike and said it would start clamping down on users who share their passwords with people outside of their households for free.To help you make a choice for the new year, here’s what some of the main streaming services will cost and what they will offer. (All prices are in U.S. dollars and apply to U.S. accounts.)Amazon Prime VideoAmazon executives have said that including the video service helped keep people subscribed to its Prime memberships, which include free shipping.In 2022, the company completed its purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — and, crucially, its extensive catalog of movies and television shows, including titles like James Bond, which is available on Prime Video.The current price for an Amazon Prime membership is $14.99 a month (or $139 per year). Prime Video by itself is $8.99 a month. For ad-free viewing, Amazon will add $2.99 per month to your bill starting Jan. 29. And careful: If you opt into a free trial, Amazon will automatically start charging you after it ends.John Turturro in “Severance” on Apple TV+.Wilson Webb/Apple TV+, via Associated PressApple TV+In 2019, Apple announced that it would start creating its own television shows and movies at an extremely star-studded event in California. The streaming service offers Apple originals — “Severance” and “Ted Lasso” — and a subscription can be shared with up to five people. There are no ads.A monthly subscription for the streaming service costs $9.99. Apple also offers three free months when you buy one of their devices.Disney+For $7.99 a month, subscribers get content with ads. For $13.99 a month (or $139.99 a year) you can stream Disney+ without ads and download content for when you’re offline.Its offerings include Pixar and Disney movies as well as “Star Wars” and Marvel movies and TV shows, 34 seasons of “The Simpsons” and about 7,500 episodes of old Disney-branded shows.MaxWarner Bros. Discovery unveiled this combined streaming service in April, rebranding the former HBO Max. An ad-free experience will cost you $15.99 a month. An “Ultimate ad-free” version for $19.99 allows users to add more devices to the account as well as up to 100 downloads. For a $9.99 add-on per month, you can also watch live sports.Max offers the “Harry Potter” movies, classic HBO shows such as “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” as well as newer releases, such as “Barbie.” The streamer has also ordered a “Harry Potter” TV series.HuluFor $17.99 a month you can watch Hulu’s vast catalog — titles include “New Girl,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Fargo” — without ads. If you’re willing to sit through commercials, it’s $7.99 a month.Hulu also offers the option of adding live television to your plan, as well as content from other streaming services such as Disney+ and ESPN+, although the latter does come with ads. Those options range from $75.99 to $89.99 a month.If you want to watch Lauren Graham, left, and Alexis Bledel in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” that’ll be at least $6.99 a month on Netflix.Saeed Adyani/NetflixNetflixRaise your hand if you remember getting DVDs from Netflix in the mail in the early 2000s. In 2010, Netflix started selling its streaming service for $8 a month and offering one DVD at a time for an additional $2.Netflix now offers a $6.99 per month subscription, which is ad-supported, which the company says “allows you to enjoy movies and TV shows at a lower price.” A standard plan (without ads) is $15.49 a month. For access to more devices, the cost goes up to $22.99 a month. Adding additional people that aren’t included in your subscription will cost you an additional $7.99 per person per month. Netflix mailed its last DVD in September.Among its offerings: “Gilmore Girls,” “La La Land,” and international series such as “Squid Game.”Paramount+In 2021, CBS rebranded its streaming platform, which it heralded as “a big day, a new day, a new beginning.” That announcement came with promises of a “Frasier” reboot and a revival of the animated series “Rugrats.”A lot of other Paramount content can be found elsewhere. The company sold the rights to the “South Park” library to HBO Max, and series like “Jack Ryan,” produced by Paramount, have gone to Amazon.Paramount+ Essential will cost you $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year) and includes “limited commercial interruptions.” The service also offers a bundle together with SHOWTIME in a plan that costs $11.99 a month (or $119.99 a year).PeacockThe premium subscription for NBC Universal’s streaming service will cost you $5.99 a month and includes original content, films, live sporting events and more. A Premium Plus subscription is priced at $11.99 a month and offers — mostly — no ads as well as the ability to download content.Some of the programs you can watch include “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Downton Abbey,” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as well as Bravo content like the “Real Housewives” franchise. More