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    New Season of ‘The White Lotus’ Brings a Tourism Boom in Thailand

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    Crowds of visitors descended on Maui and Sicily after the HBO show’s first two seasons. Is the tropical resort island of Koh Samui ready for Season 3?When the third season of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” debuts on Sunday, viewers will be transported to the tropical island of Koh Samui, Thailand. And if previous seasons are any indication, many of them will soon be booking vacations there, too.The show, which takes place at a different fictional White Lotus luxury resort each season, centers on a group of wealthy tourists, their interpersonal dramas and the inevitable tension with staff and locals, all against a backdrop of paradise skewed.Members of the “White Lotus” cast this season include Lalisa Manobal, right, who performs as Lisa with the K-pop group Blackpink.Fabio Lovino/HBO, via Associated PressThe travel industry has been anticipating the new season almost as much as fans have. Partly thanks to the so-called “White Lotus” effect, Koh Samui and Thailand have already emerged as top destinations. Koh Samui was one of the New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025, and Thailand was Travel+Leisure’s 2025 destination of the year.With a wave of tourists set to wash ashore, the roughly 68,000 residents of Koh Samui are about to get a lot more familiar with the “White Lotus” effect.On the pristine white sand of Chaweng Beach one recent evening, Tey, 46, a local carpenter who declined to give his last name, said he didn’t really know much about the series. But then came a flash of recognition.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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      HBO Ends Partnership With ‘Sesame Street’

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      The venerable children’s series must find a new home after about a decade on HBO and its streaming service, Max. Old episodes will be available through 2027.“Sesame Street” is relocating.Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit company that makes the venerable children’s educational program, is looking for a new distribution partner after Warner Bros. Discovery decided not to renew its agreement to air new episodes of the show on HBO and its streaming platform, Max.Max said the decision was part of a broader corporate shift away from children’s programming. The 55th season of “Sesame Street” — featuring Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster and other colorful Muppets — will be the last to arrive on Max, in January. Old episodes will remain available through 2027.“Based on consumer usage and feedback, we’ve had to prioritize our focus on stories for adults and families,” a Max spokesman said. “And so new episodes from ‘Sesame Street,’ at this time, are not as core to our strategy.”Sesame Workshop partnered with HBO in 2015, granting the premium cable outlet a nine-month window of exclusivity for new episodes. Under the agreement, the episodes were later broadcast for free on PBS, which has aired “Sesame Street” since 1970.The deal provided a significant cash infusion for Sesame Workshop, which expanded its production schedule to 35 episodes a year from 18. It is unclear which platform might pick up the series, but contenders could include Apple TV+ (which aired three seasons of “Helpsters,” another Sesame Workshop children’s series), Netflix and Amazon.“We will continue to invest in our best-in-class programming and look forward to announcing our new distribution plans in the coming months,” a spokesman for Sesame Workshop said in a statement.Sesame Workshop and HBO have been accused of contributing to inequality by allowing families who can afford premium cable to get new episodes of the show before others. In 2022, nearly 200 episodes of the show were pulled from Max.“HBO is holding hostage underprivileged families from having access to timely first-run episodes of perhaps the single most educational children’s franchise in the history of electronic media,” Tim Winter, who was then the president of the Parents Television Council, said in a statement in 2019. More

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      ‘Get Millie Black’ Is a Fresh Take on the Cop Drama

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      Created by the Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, the HBO series puts a new spin on a lot of old crime show conventions.“Get Millie Black,” beginning on Monday at 9 p.m., is another high-end HBO crime drama about a cop who does things her own way — against the rules, no matter what her angry boss says. She does so on account of her too-personal investment in this and all cases because of the way they remind her of her childhood. (Her lousy childhood, obviously.)And yet this rogue officer may be the only truly ethical one around, the only one who actually gets things done, the only one who actually cares about the people everyone else ignores! Why must corruption follow her, even though she herself is more or less upstanding? And hey — has anyone else noticed that the rich get richer?One twist here is that “Get Millie Black” is also pretty dang good; perceptive, aerodynamic, rich in artistry and in specifics. “This crime story is old,” Millie (Tamara Lawrance) tells us in the pilot. “But people make it new every day.” When she’s right, she’s right, and part of the premise of the show is that Millie is often right.Created by the Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, “Millie” is set in Jamaica, where Millie, the prodigal daughter of an abusive mother, has returned after 18 years in England and is now a police officer. Millie thought her brother, Orville, had died while she was gone, but in fact Orville has transitioned and is now Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen). She is very much alive, though often in peril.The catalyzing incident here is the disappearance of a teen girl, which of course turns into a much larger investigation of more widespread and depraved criminality, as these cases always do on TV. When a white Scotland Yard detective (Joe Dempsie) arrives on the scene, Millie is not enthusiastic. “Here to colonize our case?” she half jokes.Crime shows, especially missing girl shows, often feel barren, or at least frozen in their Scandinavian snowscapes. “Millie,” on the other hand, feels abundant. Each episode has a different anchor character providing the perspective and narration, and each character, including the one-offs, has a clear voice. Millie is our star, but she is part of a bright constellation.There are only five episodes (four of which were made available for review), and new installments air on Mondays.Also this weekA dish seen in the Ángel León episode of Season 7 of “Chef’s Table.”Netflix“Anthony Jeselnik: Bones and All” arrives Tuesday, on Netflix.The season finale of “Dancing With the Stars” airs on Tuesday at 8 p.m., on ABC.A new batch of “Chef’s Table” episodes arrive Wednesday, on Netflix.“The Madness,” starring Colman Domingo, arrives Thursday, on Netflix. More

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      Review: ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Is Still Looking for Its Voice

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      A long-gestating prequel, about the women who seek to guide a galaxy, is splashy, somber and insufficiently spicy.“Dune,” the multi-novel, multi-movie saga, is in part about the battle for a precious commodity hoovered up from a desert planet to enrich the rapacious nobility. It’s called spice.“Dune: Prophecy,” the six-episode prequel series beginning Sunday on HBO, also concerns a valuable resource hoarded by empires and processed through machinery. It’s called intellectual property.Spice is a dangerous substance, controlled through violence, but at least the universe gets something out of it. Its mind-expanding properties make hyperspace travel possible and can induce prescience in the user.I.P., on the other hand, tends to simply give us lavish, lesser copies of things we already have. “House of the Dragon” is “Game of Thrones: Blonder and Blander”; “The Rings of Power” substitutes the mystic wonder of “The Lord of the Rings” with C.G.I. and metalsmithing.“Dune: Prophecy” is set 10,000 years before Timothée and Zendaya strode the sands. Its action unfolds shortly after an uprising against “thinking machines” that enslaved humanity. But the series itself is securely in the control of the I.P. machine.Its focus is the Sisterhood, the precursor to the Bene Gesserit of the films, now overseen by the ruthless and subtle-minded Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). A combination of deep-state apparatus and deadly yoga colony, this secretive society of female mentalists provides “truthsayers” (human lie detectors) to the ruling nobles while guiding history with a genetics program designed to breed ideal rulers. (Humankind may have faster-than-light spaceships, but the galaxy remains a patriarchy that women can influence only by stealth.)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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      ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Faced a Pitiless Terrain: Adapting Anything ‘Dune’

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      The novels were famously tough to adapt until Denis Villeneuve came along. Can an HBO prequel about the origins of the Bene Gesserit follow suit?For over 50 years, Frank Herbert’s best-selling science-fiction novel “Dune” was a puzzle no one in show business seemed able to solve. Published in 1965, the book had inspired a shelf full of sequels and prequels — along with scores of imitators — yet it defied every attempt to turn it into a blockbuster film or TV series.In the 1970s, the beloved avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky spent two years and millions of dollars developing a movie and never shot a single frame. David Lynch tried next, but the resulting film, released in 1984, was a personal and box-office catastrophe. The story’s vastness and exoticism proved as perilous to storytellers as the fictional planet Arrakis, whose hostile deserts inspired the franchise’s name.When the HBO series “Dune: Prophecy” was announced, in 2019, its prospects seemed just as murky. Indeed the production struggled to find its footing. By the premiere, it will have seen four showrunners, three lead directors and high-level cast changes — not to mention a pandemic and two crippling industry strikes.But then in 2021, the French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who was set to direct the pilot, released Part 1 of his two-part adaptation of “Dune.” Critics were ecstatic, and the film grossed over $400 million worldwide. Suddenly a “Dune” franchise looked viable. Villeneuve’s team had offered a blueprint for other creators to work from, tonally, aesthetically and narratively. (The studios behind the film, Legendary and Warner, which owns HBO, are also behind the series.)Perhaps more important, there was now a huge audience that had never read Herbert’s famously dense novels but had become invested in the story and characters. The resounding critical and financial success of “Dune: Part Two,” released in February, indicates viewers are still invested in the franchise.“I think Denis really unlocked this universe for people in a way that was relatable,” said Alison Schapker, a “Westworld” veteran who took over as the sole showrunner of “Dune: Prophecy” in 2022. “He grounded it. We wanted to tell a story that takes place in that universe.”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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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Is Going Out on a Bittersweet Note

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      Ahead of the final season, the creators discuss Midwestern humor, queer communities of faith and why they made a show “about people who aren’t very equipped to talk about their feelings.”Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen met at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where they bonded over being displaced Midwesterners and began writing plays together. A few years later, in early-2000s Manhattan, they met a bawdy, big-voiced cabaret performer named Bridget Everett.“I played harp in a two-girl ukulele band, and we were often on the same bill as Bridget,” Thureen said recently. “Which kind of makes sense.”As the three became fast friends, Bos and Thureen came to believe there was more to Everett than her outsize stage personality, which is perhaps best exemplified by her tendency to rub her breasts in an unsuspecting audience member’s face. They saw a quieter, more vulnerable side, and they wanted to write something that honored both that and her rollicking stage persona.The series the three of them came up with (along with the executive producer Carolyn Strauss), “Somebody Somewhere,” premiered in 2022. Its third and final season debuts Sunday on HBO and Max.“We would keep on doing this show as long as we could, if it was up to us,” Thureen said. “But we also know that it’s not up to us and that in this landscape, more than three seasons of a show our size would be unlikely.”Set in Everett’s hometown, Manhattan, Kan., the series finds quiet drama and humor in a pocket of open-minded Midwestern tolerance, where Everett’s character Sam and her friends, including her best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller), deal with loneliness by creating a sort of found family. They’re all trying to have a good time and create meaningful relationships in their small town. “Somebody Somewhere” also, unassumingly, remains one of the most L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly series on television, a place where church, beers and queerness coexist with barely a shrug.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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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Is Back for Its Final Season

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      The HBO dramedy about a Kansas woman finding love and community after tragedy returns for its third and final season on Sunday.Bridget Everett in a scene from Season 3 of “Somebody Somewhere.”Sandy Morris/HBO“Somebody Somewhere,” a perfect dramedy starring Bridget Everett as a Kansas woman finding love and community after her sister’s death, returns for its third and final season starting Sunday at 10:30 p.m., on HBO. The show is full of ecstatic tenderness and easy warmth, but it avoids pat tidiness.Sam (Everett) is ebullient and loyal, and over the course of the series, her life has stabilized a lot: The cold clutch of grief has loosened, her friendship with Joel (Jeff Hiller, fantastic) continues to blossom, and she’s more comfortable singing in front of everyone. But her battle between vulnerability and defensiveness wages on. As often as “Somebody” is a detailed taxonomy of love — platonic, familial, religious, romantic — it is also a portrait of loneliness. Perhaps there is no such thing as “enough” love, the show admits; things can be wonderful without being perfect, and they can be painful but still worth it. Even the seemingly simple love of a dog comes with complications.One of my favorite parts of “Somebody” is how often the characters laugh. They all find each other screamingly funny, for good reason, and they’re all able to laugh at themselves, too. Usually when we think about Big Acting Moments, they’re quivering, tearful monologues, sobbing or ranting. “Somebody” certainly has those, but its more cathartic scenes are ones of laughter — where the real bonding happens, the real changes, the real surrender. They are also where the ensemble shines the brightest.One of the primary arcs of the show is about Sam’s re-embracing her singing voice, and in the first episode of Season 3, she sings “Smalltown Boy” alone in her car. She moves through various harmonies but then backs off a big wail, sighing that she wishes she could hit that note. But it seems like she could hit it, if she could relax into it and be a little brave.“I’ve never been comfortable expressing my feelings in public, you know?” admits Brad (Tim Bagley), Joel’s prim and adoring boyfriend. “Yeah, I think I understand that,” Sam replies. “I think that’s what’s so great about singing: Somehow the music just makes it so much easier. It’s like you’re not doing it alone.” More

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      ‘It’s Florida, Man’ Reveals the Lives Behind Bizarre News Stories

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      The HBO series uses familiar comedic actors in cheeky re-enactments of real Florida events, most of them subjects of past viral news reports.Simon Rex plays a man who survives an alligator attack in Episode 2 of “It’s Florida, Man.”HBO“It’s Florida, Man,” premiering Friday at 11 p.m., on HBO, takes a “Drunk History” approach to the intimacy and portraiture of “How To With John Wilson.” It uses familiar comedic actors in cheeky re-enactments of real events, but those events are all personal sagas; they are obscure and strange, sometimes disturbing and sometimes enchanting — and all very Florida.For example, a man named Eric had his arm bitten off by an alligator, but he believes the animal was inhabited by his dead mother’s spirit and maimed him to help set his life straight. Eric says he is indeed the “Florida man” the memes suggest.“I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed,” he says in the second episode. “But I’ll stab you with the sharpest tool.” He grins. Later, he offers some of the most sanguine enlightenment one can find on television.“Florida” is the latest show to come with a winky disclaimer about its veracity, that it’s “all true. Sort of.” It blends the docudrama format with a boppy documentary style in quick-hit, episodic tales that layer re-enactments and firsthand accounts on top of one another. The recreations highlight how much these stories, most of them subjects of past viral news reports, have taken on lives of their own. But the show’s beating heart is its real-life subjects.Each episode focuses on one wild tale. The variety is both an asset and a hiccup: The tone ranges from warmly mystical to uncomfortably blasé about domestic violence. In the four episodes (of six) made available to critics, the show’s melody is “Get a load of this!” But its harmony kicks in with cheerful depth, a curiosity about the loves and agonies that extend beyond a local news segment.Luckily, everyone seems pretty much in on the joke. The first episode, “Toes,” centers on a music lover who posts on Craigslist for odd — very, very odd — jobs. One client wants to arrange an extreme encounter and asks the man to bring a friend along, which poses a challenge. “Who is (1) free on a Thursday, and (2) is down to witness cannibalism?” the man wonders.There’s a tabloid, almost sideshow glee to some of the episodes, but then again, lots of people join the circus. One man’s Jerry Springer is another (Florida) man’s Studs Terkel. More

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      ‘The Franchise’ Review: Cutting Marvel Down to Size

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      A new HBO comedy takes a jaundiced look at the making of a second-rate superhero film.The new HBO series “The Franchise” satirizes the making of a superhero movie by a fictional movie studio that is Marvel in all but name. (The actual fictional name is Maximum Studios.) Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent, is Marvel’s bitter rival in the superhero field, so you might expect the show to offer an extra measure of savage mockery.But the eight half-hour episodes (premiering Sunday), while nominally dark and sardonic, do not have anything approaching the visceral pleasure that the genre they are spoofing can often provide. “When you make movies like this, but good, there’s nothing better,” the beleaguered first assistant director, Daniel (Himesh Patel), says in one of the show’s few moments of genuine feeling.The movie-within-the-show, a second-tier effort called “Tecto,” is clearly not one of the good ones. “The Franchise,” somewhat perversely, operates on the same tepid, clichéd level as the production it is supposed to be mocking.More could have been expected. The show’s creator, Jon Brown, wrote for “Succession” and, way back, for the barbed British comedy “Misfits.” And the list of executive producers includes the accomplished veterans Sam Mendes and Armando Iannucci. Mendes directed the first episode, and his touch can be seen in an early three-minute shot that follows Daniel as he walks through the cavernous set of “Tecto,” putting out fires (and encountering many of the other central characters). It is a virtuoso moment that nothing else in the show approaches.Iannucci, of course, is a specialist in the specific sort of satire “The Franchise” undertakes: the acidic depiction of institutional vanity, insecurity and ineptitude. But the vitality of Iannucci creations like “The Thick of It” and “Veep” is exactly what the new show is missing. It has more in common with Iannucci’s most recent show, the scattered outer-space cruise comedy “Avenue 5,” on which Brown worked as a writer and producer. (The sinking-ship metaphor that underlies “The Franchise” was explicit in “Avenue 5.”)“The Franchise” leapfrogs through the 117-day shoot of “Tecto,” named for its hero, an off-brand Thor (Billy Magnussen) who wields an invisible jackhammer. Each episode finds Daniel and the power-hungry third assistant director, Dag (Lolly Adefope), confronting crises drawn from the musty archives of the Hollywood backstage comedy and then tweaked to fit the world of contemporary big-money filmmaking. Bowing to commercial reality means product-placing Chinese tractors; last-minute rewrites are driven by protests over the studio’s “woman problem”; a temperamental director melts down because Martin Scorsese accuses the studio of killing cinema.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