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      TV Shows and Movies Streaming in September 2023: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ ‘Gen V’ and More

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      Spinoffs and chillers abound in a month filled with tons of new television. Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others. Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’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‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 2Started streaming: Sept. 1Season 1 of this handsome-looking fantasy series introduced some of the major characters and concepts from the first book of the novelist Robert Jordan’s hefty “The Wheel of Time” saga. Season 2 adapts parts of the second and third books — “The Great Hunt” and “The Dragon Reborn” — and continues moving the pieces into place for the grand apocalyptic battle prophesied at the start of the story. Rosamund Pike returns as the mystic Moiraine, who is helping a group of young people escape the shadowy forces pursuing them. Josha Stradowski plays Rand al’Thor, who may be his land’s last best hope to stand up against the Dark One and his minions — or may be the one to usher in a new age of chaos.‘Neighbours: A New Chapter’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 18The original run of the soap opera “Neighbours” began in 1985 and concluded in 2022 after 38 seasons and nearly 9,000 22-minute episodes. During that time, the show’s melodramatic tales of suburban Melbourne life were seen around the world and introduced viewers to future stars like Natalie Imbruglia, Kylie Minogue, Radha Mitchell, Guy Pearce and Margot Robbie. Now Amazon Studios and Fremantle Australia are bringing the series back, along with some of the old cast (including Pearce), who join an array of new characters. Plans are to run 200 episodes a year for the next two years on Amazon’s ad-supported, free-to-stream Freevee service, where viewers can also watch the older episodes, giving Americans a chance to immerse themselves in these Australians’ love affairs and personal crises.‘Gen V’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 29A spinoff of the adults-only superhero satire “The Boys,” this action-dramedy series is set at a special school for young crime fighters, where the students engage in the same kinds of cliques, rivalries and romances that happen in any normal school but with the constant threat that super powers make every conflict more dangerous. A few of the adult characters from “The Boys” will drop in on the new show (which has a creative team drawn from some of that show’s writers and producers); but the focus here is on the kids, who have a lot in common with classic comic book super teams like the X-Men and the Teen Titans. Expect plenty of irreverence and dark humor, along with some sly takedowns of familiar superhero mythology.Also arriving:Sept. 1“God. Family. Football.”Sept. 5“One Shot: Overtime Elite”Sept. 8“Sitting in Bars with Cake”Sept. 12“Kelce”Sept. 15“A Million Miles Away”“Wilderness” Season 1“Written in the Stars” Season 1Sept. 22“Cassandro”Sept. 22“The Fake Sheikh”Norman Reedus in the latest “Walking Dead” spinoff, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 10Like “The Walking Dead: Dead City” earlier this year, the latest entry in the long-running, ever-expanding “Walking Dead” franchise takes one of the most popular characters from the show’s original run and plops him in another part of the world. Norman Reedus reprises his role as Daryl Dixon, a talented marksman and tracker who had to overcome his loner tendencies to become a vital part of an embattled postapocalyptic community in the American southeast. In this new series, Daryl takes his talents to France, where he allies with a tough nun (Clémence Poésy) who shows him the unique ways that continental Europe handled the zombie outbreak and helps him to figure out who he can trust.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Perpetrator”Sept. 8“Blood Flower”Sept. 10“Ride With Norman Reedus” Season 6Sept. 15“Elevator Game”Sept. 20“Thick Skin”Sept. 22“The Angry Black Girl and Her Mother”Sept. 29“Nightmare”LaKeith Stanfield in a scene from “The Changeling,” based on the Victor LaValle novel.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Changeling’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Like the Victor LaValle novel that inspired it, the supernatural horror series “The Changeling” combines everyday drama with terrifying nightmares, in a story that sprawls across multiple generations. LaKeith Stanfield plays Apollo, a shy book dealer who is haunted by memories of the father he barely knew. He is also attracted to a vibrant but eccentric woman named Emmy (Clark Backo), whom he eventually marries. The show’s creator and writer, Kelly Marcel, shifts the narrative focus freely among different characters and different eras, as a crisis with Emmy and their newborn child drives Apollo to confront his troubled family history. In doing so, he finds that his past is shrouded in the kind of wondrous darkness common to fairy tales, and he is challenged to untangle fantasy from fact in an enchanted version of New York City.‘The Morning Show’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 13One of Apple TV+’s flagship series returns for a third season of punchy boardroom drama, set in the modern TV news business. The show is still powered by its two charismatic leads: Jennifer Aniston as the veteran morning show anchor Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson, a feisty hard news reporter who has become Alex’s co-host. Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass play two of the behind-the-camera bosses who sometimes make morally questionable choices. This season they are joined by Jon Hamm as a cocky tech billionaire who might be able improve their network’s cash-flow. Although “The Morning Show” started as a ripped-from-the-headlines look at how the #MeToo era has upended the male-dominated media, the series has since opened to encompass other hot-button contemporary issues, which in Season 3 include cyberattacks and corporate blackmail.Also arriving:Sept. 20“The Super Models”Sept. 22“Still Up”Sept. 29“Flora and Son”Sinclair Daniel, left, and Ashleigh Murray in a scene from “The Other Black Girl.”HuluNew to Hulu‘The Other Black Girl’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Part wry social commentary and part intense mystery-thriller, “The Other Black Girl” examines the racial and gender dynamics of the New York publishing industry. Sinclair Daniel plays Nella, an aspiring assistant editor who befriends Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), her publishing house’s latest hire and the only other Black person in her department. When Hazel’s collegial advice starts derailing Nella’s career — around the same time that Nella starts experiencing some unnerving paranormal activity around the office — she begins looking into her new friend’s past and the history of their employers. Adapted from a best-selling Zakiya Dalila Harris novel, this show finds the humor and the anxiety inherent in the life of a woman who is struggling to stand out in a tough business without losing her identity.Also arriving:Sept. 6“Never Let Him Go”Sept. 13“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2Sept. 14“Dragons: The Nine Realms” Season 7Sept. 20“American Horror Story: Delicate” Part 1Sept. 22“No One Will Save You”Sept. 27“Love in Fairhope” Season 1Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in scene from Season 3 of the Max series “Starstruck.”Mark Johnson/MaxNew to Max‘Starstruck’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28This charming romantic comedy is one of the streaming era’s hidden gems, and it is ripe for discovery now that the fall TV schedule has been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Through its first two seasons, “Starstruck” followed the unlikely on-again/off-again love affair between Jessie (Rose Matafeo), a young New Zealander struggling to make ends meet in London, and Tom (Nikesh Patel), an A-list movie star who is smitten with her. Season 3 has the couple going their separate ways but still frequently and awkwardly crossing paths. The show’s short, breezy episodes capture how the “getting to know you” phase of romance can be equal parts exciting and difficult, especially when one of the people involved is rich and famous.Also arriving:Sept. 2“The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart”Sept. 13“Donyale Luna: Supermodel”Sept. 21“Young Love” Season 1A scene from the Season 4 premiere of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” which centers on the underlings of a starship.Paramount+New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 7“Star Trek” fans who are still buzzing from the excellent, recently completed second season of “Strange New Worlds” should roll those warm feelings over to the fourth season of the animated “Lower Decks,” which has established its place as one of the best of the modern “Star Trek” shows. Like “Strange New Worlds,” “Lower Decks” balances old-fashioned “interstellar adventure of the week” stories with involved subplots and rich character development. This cute-looking cartoon is fundamentally comic — following the goofy mishaps of a bunch of Starfleet’s least vital employees — but its writers and animators respect the franchise’s lore enough to deliver cleverly plotted, action-packed episodes, season after season.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Dreaming Whilst Black”Sept. 12“Football Must Go On”Sept. 17“The Gold”Sept. 18“Superpower”Sept. 22“Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court”Sept. 26“72 Seconds”Colin Woodell as Winston Scott in a scene from “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”Katalin Vermes/Starz EntertainmentNew to Peacock‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’Starts streaming: Sept. 22Fans of the first “John Wick” movie will always remember the moment when its weary hit man hero walked into a strange, assassin-friendly hotel called the Continental and was reminded of its arcane codes of behavior. Suddenly a movie that had previously seemed like a low-stakes underworld revenge thriller opened up into something more fantastical and globe spanning, with a dense mythology. The TV mini-series “The Continental: From the World of John Wick” is set in the 1970s and stars Mel Gibson as Cormac, the hotel’s New York manager at that time. Colin Woodell plays a young version of the franchise’s Winston Scott, who is tasked by Cormac to solve a family problem that may threaten the viability of this super secret criminal hideaway.Also arriving:Sept. 4“Chucky” Season 2Sept. 28“Dino Pops” Season 1 More

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      ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ Review: A Rite of Passage

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      In Oz Rodriguez’s coming-of-age film, a martial arts-obsessed teenager is determined to throw his first punch.In the lives of the four protagonists of “Miguel Wants to Fight,” brawls are ubiquitous. But when a fight breaks out on a basketball court and the martial arts film aficionado of the group, Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores), doesn’t participate, it becomes clear that he has never actually thrown a punch.After his parents break the news that his family will be moving soon, Miguel becomes obsessed with picking a fight before he leaves — a misguided way to cope with his anger.Directed by Oz Rodriguez (“Vampires vs. the Bronx”), “Miguel Wants to Fight” is an endearing and offbeat take on the teenage coming-of-age film. It centers on best friends Srini (Suraj Partha), Cass (Imani Lewis), David (Christian Vunipola) and Miguel, who grew up together in Syracuse, N.Y., immersed in the boxing world. Miguel’s father Alberto (Raúl Castillo), owns a gym, and David’s father was a boxing star. Miguel spends his time making TikTok reels of fight scenes starring his friends.There are some laughs and the cast is talented, but the movie ultimately falls flat, missing an opportunity to delve into the insecurity, teen bravado and anger that leads to physical fighting in the first place.Instead, it leans too heavily into references to and re-enactments of classic films, like “The Matrix” or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which take up space in the film that could instead have been devoted to character development. As a result, “Miguel Wants to Fight” ends up feeling one-note, lacking the depth that might have elevated it to a must-watch movie.Miguel Wants to FightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch it on Hulu. More

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      As Hollywood Strikes Roll On, Viewers Catch Up With a TV Glut

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      After years of being inundated with new shows, some are using a pause in production to finally watch all the stuff they missed when it came out.With Hollywood’s labor disputes grinding on, and virtually all production stopped, anxiety began creeping into Zain Habboo’s house in Chevy Chase, Md.She and her husband had recently finished the latest season of HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones,” but now they were worried that new episodes of favorite shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” would be significantly delayed.What on earth were they going to watch?Ms. Habboo, 49, quickly realized she had options. She might revisit classics like “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” with her 17-year-old son. She could join him in watching a show he’s bingeing, like all 62 episodes of “Breaking Bad.” She has also never seen any of the “Mission Impossible” movies, and she has barely made a dent in the Oscar-nominated films from the past four or five years.For many viewers, the writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood will soon be felt in the form of altered film release schedules and prime-time lineups littered with game shows, reality TV and reruns.At the same time, the pause in new scripted material provides a moment for many viewers to catch up after the breakneck pace of the so-called Peak TV era, when dozens of shows were premiering each month.“I have a Netflix queue that is so deep and so long, it would take me months or a year or two to go through it all,” said Dan Leonhardt, a 44-year-old engineer who lives in Copenhagen. “And that’s just Netflix! I also have a Max subscription.”Dan Leonhardt subscribes to two streaming services. “I have a Netflix queue that is so deep and so long, it would take me months or a year or two to go through it all,” he said.Mathias Eis for The New York TimesThe slowdown will represent a major shift from recent years, when viewers were inundated with a fire hose of content — a record 599 new television scripted premieres last year.On almost a daily basis, audiences found themselves clicking past new shows on their TVs, often ones they had never heard of, trying to figure out from a one-sentence description whether a series like “Altered Carbon” on Netflix or “The Path” on Hulu was worth their time.For streaming services, the strategy was straightforward: The more shows they produced, the more chances they had to attract subscribers. The number of people who watched any one show wasn’t as important as the number of people who paid for the service.So the promise of a constant flow of new stuff became a hallmark of the streaming era. One of the outstanding questions as the labor stalemate goes on has been whether viewers would start to cancel subscriptions to streaming services en masse when fewer new shows and movies became available.For many, though, a slower output is just fine, giving them time to pick their way through streaming libraries, one missed TV series and movie at a time.Emily Nidetz, a 41-year-old in Madison, Wis., said she was relieved that production for reality series had not been affected and that there were still plenty of sports to watch. And though she is worried about a slowdown in prestige shows, she said she could always stop by a Facebook community page for The Ringer’s podcast “The Watch” to get some ideas.“If you go to the Facebook page and write, ‘Hey, I really loved “The Bear,” tell me what to watch,’ there will be like 400 replies,” she said.Tasha Quinn said she planned to take her time to enjoy shows without feeling pressure to keep up with the latest series.Obinna Onyeka for The New York TimesTasha Quinn, a 36-year-old therapist from Chicago, said there was a moment last year when she was so overwhelmed by the conveyor belt of new series that she finally had to take a break. HBO’s “House of the Dragon” was the breaking point.“I made it through two episodes, and didn’t finish it,” she said. “There was too much hype, and there were a lot of other things coming out at the same time. I was like, nope, I’m too overwhelmed, I’m too overstimulated, I’ll just go back to my comfort shows. I’m going to go watch ‘The Office.’”Ms. Quinn said that the labor disputes had worried her briefly because new episodes of the dystopian workplace drama “Severance” on AppleTV+ would be delayed — but that she then quickly thought of the upside.“I can take my time without everyone talking about what’s coming next,” she said, adding that she’s currently wrapping up “Succession.”The length of the labor disputes will determine the length of the disruption. Actors have been on strike since July 14. Writers have been walking picket lines for more than 100 days. Formal talks between the writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, were held on Friday for the first time since early May. No talks involving the actors are scheduled.Third-party researchers believe that most of the streaming services should be well insulated if the strikes last another month or two — though that risk rises the longer production is shut down. The amount of content in their streaming libraries was one reason the studios initially said they could weather the strikes, at least in the short term, a pointed message to writers and actors currently going without paychecks. (For instance, “Suits,” a USA Network show that went off the air in 2019, has recently surged in popularity on Netflix.)Leaders of the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents thousands of striking screenwriters, recently said it was “disinformation” that the strike would have “no impact because streaming services have libraries and some product in the pipeline.”“It is not a viable business strategy for these companies to shut down their business for three months — and counting — no matter how much they try and pretend it is,” they said in a note to members.Ms. Habboo said she sympathized with the striking writers and actors, but had no plans to cancel her streaming subscriptions.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesMany viewers say they support the striking writers and actors. Ms. Habboo said she believed they were not being fairly compensated, and “that is a huge bummer.”Still, when asked if she would cut any of her streaming subscriptions, she was emphatic. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Canceling is never an option.”Mel Russo, a 56-year-old yoga teacher who lives in Brooklyn, said the Max service alone “could keep you busy for the next 10 years, to be honest.”“I think it’s disgusting what’s going on,” she added. “But I am not in dire straits about it as a watcher and as a lover of entertainment.”The streaming services seem keen to capitalize. Last month, Netflix rolled out a new banner, “10 Years of Netflix Series,” which presents viewers with dozens of older titles from its library.Eric Martinez, a 25-year-old video producer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, had been a big fan of the HBO series “Euphoria.” But the earliest that show will return for its third season is now 2025, so he went looking for an alternative.On his Amazon Prime page, Mr. Martinez had been seeing a tile for the show “The Boys” for some time. The superhero series was one he thought he had no interest in. But with time on his hands, he finally took the plunge. “I’m enjoying it, and I’m glad I started it,” he said.Not all the viewers need a new old show to watch.Brenda Stewart, a 71-year-old Nebraskan, said she and her husband often fired up their Roku and watched reruns of older series including “CSI” and “Murder, She Wrote.” She’s also a big fan of rewatching movies like “The Lion King” and other Disney classics.Ms. Stewart, who has six grandchildren, said it was not uncommon to have “Bluey” episodes playing again and again in her house when the children were over. And, sometimes, it’s not exclusively for the little ones.“It’s a cartoon series for kids, but I’m not going to lie — it’s also for adults,” she said, laughing. “There’s stuff in there that just makes me chuckle.” More

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      in Theater

      For ‘Only Murders’ Season 3, Not the Same Old Song and Dance

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      Meryl Streep joined the cast for a season that moved much of the action to Broadway, enlisting a musical theater supergroup to write the songs.Meryl Streep was looking for levity — she was “in despair of the world for so many reasons,” she said, namely the climate crisis. So she reached out to the funniest people she could think of: Steve Martin and Martin Short, whose late-career resurgence as a double act has included a touring stage show, TV specials and their Emmy-winning Hulu comedy, “Only Murders in the Building.”“I knew they were doing their tour,” Streep said. “So I just basically called them and said, ‘If you ever want to work together, let’s do something.’”They did. Short and Martin suggested a stint on the third season of “Only Murders,” in which they play, along with Selena Gomez, amateur sleuths and podcasters who solve murders in their Upper West Side apartment building. Streep said yes without knowing what exactly would be required of her, but the series’s co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman already had a part in mind.“It really was like the stars were aligned,” Streep said.As it turned out, not only would she play a prominent guest role as Loretta Durkin, a struggling actress cast in a play directed by Short’s Oliver Putnam; she would also have to sing. (Streep and the other cast members interviewed all spoke before the actors’ strike began.)That’s because Season 3 of “Only Murders,” which premiered on Tuesday, moves out of the building — well, mostly. There is still a murder; viewers saw Paul Rudd drop dead on a stage at the end of Season 2. And technically, the murder still happens in the Arconia (it’s complicated), the stately prewar co-op of the series’s title.But rather than risk letting the show’s winning formula become too formulaic, the producers this season took the investigation to Broadway, where Oliver is staging an original musical. And to do it right, they enlisted the aid of a musical theater supergroup led by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known for their work on “Dear Evan Hansen” and “La La Land.”Given the cast and creative team assembled, it all makes for a very star-studded love letter to Broadway. Streep likened the experience to being a “theater company.” Paul compared it to “theater camp.”“It was just through and through a Broadway experience — there are just cameras filming it,” Paul said. “There was that same sort of ensemble sense, whether it was Meryl or Paul Rudd or Marty or Steve, that everybody was making this show together.”Paul Rudd, left (with, center left, Gerald Caesar; center right, Steve Martin; and Jason Veasey), plays a vainglorious movie star who makes a lot of enemies. Patrick Harbron/Hulu“Only Murders” has always had show-business jokes — Oliver is known for his legendary flops; Steve Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage is a washed-up TV star — but this season leans even further into its jazz hands impulses. In the premiere, a vainglorious movie star played by Rudd, who is starring in a nonmusical production from Oliver titled “Death Rattle,” is mysteriously offed (it turns out he survived that collapse onstage), potentially by another cast member.Desperate for the show to go on, Oliver tries to save his already absurd production by turning it into a musical: “Death Rattle Dazzle!,” an all-singing spectacle about infant triplets who might have committed murder.Hoffman said he could have played it safe, knowing that the coup was just getting the celebrities on board. Instead he decided to get ambitious with the song and dance numbers.“My idiocy is that instead of containing myself and giving them nothing but great, hopefully, dialogue scenes to do, let’s swing for the fences and go for everything we could possibly dream of,” he said.And it was the stuff of Hoffman’s dreams. He had thought Streep would be right for the part of Loretta but figured it would never happen, before learning that Short and Martin had been speaking with her. He also had Pasek and Paul on his wish list of potential composers when he discovered that one of his writers, Sas Goldberg, was an old friend of theirs. Turns out, they had already expressed interest in contributing when they learned she was on staff.“I was like, if they need a ditty, if they ever need anything, we’re obsessed with that show,” Pasek said. When Goldberg texted to take them up on that offer, “it felt like a very serendipitous moment,” Pasek added.Pasek and Paul just had one condition for Hoffman: They wanted to bring in several top Broadway songwriters to help out. Hoffman said yes.From left: Martin, Selena Gomez and Ryan Broussard in a scene from Season 3, which situates much of the action amid the production of a Broadway musical about murder.Patrick Harbron/HuluIn the show, the songs are written by Oliver, a man who survives mostly on dips and once directed a musical called “Newark! Newark!” In reality, the songs were written by accomplished professionals, who thus had to master a tricky tone: The songs needed to work for a patently ridiculous production but also be genuinely entertaining for viewers at home.For a complicated, ear worm of a patter song that Martin’s character sings as the detective in “Death Rattle Dazzle!,” Pasek and Paul brought on Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman of “Hairspray” and “Some Like It Hot.” (“It was a thrill to sing and a thrill to be done with,” Martin said.) The playwright and composer Michael R. Jackson, whose musical “A Strange Loop” won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tonys, contributed a late-season showstopper for Streep.The Tony-nominated and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles was called in to co-write a lullaby titled “Look for the Light,” which Streep’s Loretta, playing a nanny in the musical, delivers to the tiny murder suspects. To prepare, the songwriters listened to Streep’s previous vocal performances to get a sense of her range.“It’s always nice when you know who you’re writing for because you can sort of tailor something to play to someone’s strengths,” Bareilles said. They emerged with a lovely ballad in which Streep croons in harmony with her fellow cast member Ashley Park, another Broadway veteran (“Mean Girls”).Streep, however, said she had been intimidated by the challenging melody. On the day of the recording session, she said, she had a “sort of a mental breakdown” after having to prep in only two days and being faced with new orchestration and a group of about 20 people gathered to hear her sing.“I really felt a responsibility to the music and to the song, which is a beautiful song, and I felt observed,” she said, adding that she “basically pulled a tiny diva move and said, ‘I can’t work like this’ or something.” (She laughed and then noted: “Oh god, that will be horrible unless you put it in all caps in print.”)There’s a burden to the expectation that comes with being Meryl Streep. “I just feel like sometimes the Meryl Streep of it all walks in like this ship, and everybody thinks, ‘Oh we’re going to watch the launch.’ And I think, ‘Oh yeah, you’re going to see the Titanic go down,’” she said.Her collaborators sang her praises.“It’s quite beautiful to witness after all of the laudatory things that have come her way, justifiably so, to watch her be nervous and to watch her be unsure,” Hoffman said.And Streep, of course, nailed it.“There was so much tenderness in her vulnerability,” Bareilles said. “She let that speak through her singing.”Short’s character, Oliver, tries to salvage his Broadway play by turning it into a musical, “Death Rattle Dazzle,” about whether infant triplets could have murdered their mother.Patrick Harbron/HuluThe world of backstage drama was, of course, familiar for the central trio. Short got his start in the 1972 Toronto production of “Godspell.” Martin has written two Broadway productions: the play “Meteor Shower” and the musical “Bright Star.” Gomez is the only one of them without Broadway experience, but she has toured as a pop star.“All three of us know show business and, I’d say, the stage world so well,” Martin said on a video call with Short and Gomez. “We draw upon a lot of memories: You know, the volatile director, the sensitive actor. And we don’t have to exaggerate to do it because we all have been there.”Still, Streep’s presence can be daunting for even the most seasoned performer, including Short.“I’m old and I’ve done this a long time,” he said. “And I’m driving to work the first day to work with Meryl, who I’ve known socially through the years but never worked with, and I found myself for first time in a long while going, Gee, I’m a little bit nervous.” During a pause in filming, Short was surprised to learn she had similar jitters.Selena Gomez was also star struck. “I never in a million years thought I would get to work with Meryl Streep,” she said. Streep’s performance, she added, made her cry. Alas, despite her other career as a pop recording artist, Gomez does not have a song in the onscreen musical.“I’m a terrible singer,” Martin said. “Selena should have a song, but her character is not in show business.” (Gomez does perform a quick Fosse-inspired dance number in a dream sequence.)During filming of the stage performances, which were shot at the United Palace in Washington Heights, Streep took up residence in the audience. Specifically, she wanted to watch Martin do his big tongue-twister number, “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”“We had a green room we could go to and sit around and bitch, but nobody went,” Streep said. “Everybody sat up there and watched him over and over and over. It was just divine.”So did the experience cure Streep’s malaise?It did, indeed, she said.“They go into everything on this show with this kind of 1940s cockeyed optimism,” she said. “And it was so lovely to be in that world.” More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Strike Leaves Influencers Sidelined and Confused

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      Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike.Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show “Only Murders in the Building.”But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu.The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent. “I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. “People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”That difference comes at a cost. In addition to the Hulu deal, Ms. Giulietti recently declined a $5,000 offer from the app TodayTix to promote the Searchlight Pictures movie “Theater Camp.” (Disney also owns Searchlight.) She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income.Representatives for Searchlight and TodayTix did not respond to requests for comment. Hulu and Influential declined to comment.The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. The actors’ union began admitting content creators in 2021 and still has only a small number of them, but questions have quickly emerged around how the union’s dispute with the major Hollywood studios will affect popular internet personalities.The union’s message that content creators will be blocked from membership if they provide work or services for struck companies has sent many scrambling. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 movie and television actors, approved a strike on July 13. The division with the studios is driven largely by concerns about compensation in the streaming era and artificial intelligence. They joined screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, the first dual shutdown since 1960. During the strike, actors are not able to engage in publicity efforts for their projects or appear at film festivals or events like Comic-Con.Influencers have become crucial to the entertainment industry in recent years, especially during the pandemic, building buzz and promoting products. They post videos to hype new TV shows and movies, appear on red carpets and at events like the MTV Video Music Awards, and unbox products tied to film and television characters. Typically, as in the case with Ms. Giulietti, outside agencies hire creators on behalf of the studios.“If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future,” said Mario Mirante, a comedian with 3.6 million followers on TikTok.Marshall Scheuttle for The New York TimesNow those activities, besides limiting their career ambitions, could lead to internet backlash, with one nonunion influencer already posting an apology video for appearing at a recent Disney movie premiere. Others have posted promotional videos anyway, without backtracking or pulling the content. At least one creator posting from a recent premiere opted to turn off their TikTok comments, possibly to avoid potential criticism. On the flip side, videos from creators about jobs and events that they rejected in solidarity with actors have racked up praise and views on TikTok.“We don’t have power to make decisions for the talent, but we will in this moment recommend not engaging with struck work or struck companies on paid or organic projects,” said Victoria Bachan, president of Whalar Talent, a unit of a creator commerce company that works with more than 200 content creators. She added that young creators were also more apt to be supportive of unions and organized labor.Still, Whitney Singleton, a 27-year-old with 1.2 million TikTok followers, has been frustrated by what is being asked of her. She had never heard of SAG-AFTRA until the past couple of weeks. Ms. Singleton, using the moniker @KeepUpRadio, has attracted fans by singing and rapping about her favorite video games like Fortnite and streaming herself playing video games. It has been her full-time job for three years. She has collaborated with struck companies like Amazon in the past.“I really do value creators, and I want them to get what they deserve,” Ms. Singleton said. “But it’s really hard for me to just be finding out about an organization and being expected to fall in line with their initiative when I feel like it’s new to me and the influencer space.”She said some influencers were being asked to turn down five-figure deals, and that “the majority of creators I’ve talked to about it feel it’s unfair that as nonunion members, they’re being included in this conversation.”Ms. Singleton was invited to an early screening of the “Barbie” movie and said that while it wasn’t a paid promotion, the union’s guidelines for promoting the movie were “what I would deem murky.” Ultimately, she decided to post about the event, for which she dyed her hair pink.“I actually got no negative feedback, it was all positive,” she said. “For a moment, I felt a bit scared and put in a corner with these requirements because I respect creators in all industries, but I wouldn’t be being true to my heart if I had let those things stop me from living my life and sharing the content.”The union did not respond to questions about the criticism or about how many influencers are included in its membership. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the biggest studios, has said its offers to the writers and the actors were “historic” improvements on their previous contracts.The reality for many creators is that they dream of someday achieving a level of fame beyond the smartphone screen, making the threat of blacklisting by Hollywood’s most powerful union an ominous one.Mario Mirante, a 28-year-old comedian on TikTok with 3.6 million followers, recently posted a popular video about turning down a deal to promote a show based on his support for actors and writers and his long-term ambitions. Mr. Mirante has hoped to work in Hollywood since childhood, and even has a tattoo of Jim Carrey as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” on his arm.“That’s a lot of influencers’ goal and aspiration and why they do it,” said Mr. Mirante, who lives in Las Vegas. “We love to entertain and express ourselves, and that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the ultimate, being in a movie or a TV show.”Mr. Mirante has previously been paid to promote the movie “Champions” starring Woody Harrelson and a product tied to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. “If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future, if that makes any sense,” he said. “Of course I’m not a part of it right now, but they’re fighting for basic rights, livable wages, not to have their A.I. likeness taken.”Krishna Subramanian, a founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, said studios might need to pivot away from creators during the strike and get agencies to make more traditional display ads to place on Facebook and other sites.Simone Umba is a TikTok creator with more than 300,000 followers who primarily posts about TV shows and movies but has paused making such videos. She said that many influencers felt that they were “stuck in the middle,” but that most were opting to side with the union even as invitations and deals piled up.“We knew we were going to get approached, and it’s like we’re in a really messy family feud,” Ms. Umba, 26, said.She added, “Regardless of if you want to join the union or not, you don’t want to be one of those people that was willing to take a check instead of standing in support of people fighting for actual livable wages.”Ms. Umba said that it had been painful to miss out on posting about the star-studded “Barbie” movie after this summer’s marketing bonanza and that she had declined to attend an early screening of the film in Atlanta. She and a friend were messaging recently after trailers for “The Marvels” dropped, agonizing over their inability to post.“We were texting each other back and forth, like, this is so hard,” she said. She said she was prepared to hold out for months but was already thinking of holiday releases. She crossed her fingers, held them up and said, “Please, please, don’t let it get to Christmas.” More

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      ‘Creamerie’ Season 2 Review: Where the Boys Aren’t

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      In a raunchy, rollicking post-pandemic (not that one) comedy from New Zealand, the men are gone but the women are as nasty to one another as ever.Contains many spoilers for Season 1 of “Creamerie.”The New Zealand post-viral-apocalypse comedy “Creamerie” likes to begin an episode right where the previous one left off. So the show’s second season, which premiered Saturday on Hulu, begins mid-cliffhanger: Its three heroines cowering and aghast as they watch their mean-girl nemesis French kiss the traitorous man they thought they loved. (One of them is his sister, another his widow. It’s complicated.) Underscoring the action are the moans of the naked men in the background who are attached, like dairy cattle, to stainless steel tubes that are rhythmically collecting their semen.Oh, did I forget to mention that the viral apocalypse in question only killed humans with Y chromosomes? “Creamerie” is in the science fiction subgenre of world-without-men shows; others include the new Netflix anime “Ooku: The Inner Chambers” and FX on Hulu’s “Y: The Last Man” from 2021. These are actually, almost invariably, world-with-a-handful-of-men shows, since much of their pleasure comes from seeing what happens when the power balance is reversed.“Creamerie” was created by the actresses who play the leads — J.J. Fong, Perlina Lau and Ally Xue — along with the writer and director Roseanne Liang. The four have been collaborators for a decade, making Web series about relatably snarky young women in urban New Zealand. What distinguishes “Creamerie” is how seamlessly it incorporates the raunchy, silly, casually comic vibe of those online shorts (along with their female point of view) into a sci-fi-series framework. It’s a clever but unassuming show, which is why its package of laughs, sentiment, consciousness raising and low-budget Saturday-serial action has considerable appeal.Fong, Lau and Xue play Jamie (determined, sorrowful, sexy), Pip (uptight, repressed, resourceful), and Alex (rebellious, profane, loyal), the proprietors of a dairy farm in rural New Zealand. (That they’re in the milk business is a joke that pays off in full with the reveal of the semen farm at the end of Season 1.) Eight years before, a virus was thought to have killed all men and it continues to kill male embryos; the survival of the remaining half of the human race is presumed to depend on the leftover inventory of sperm banks, which is distributed by lottery to prospective mothers.The fundamental question of these shows is how women would act if they were in charge, and the answer “Creamerie” offers is deflating but comically fertile: They would be really, really mean. The area around the farm is governed by Nordic-featured, yoga-toned, ecru-linen-wearing Amazons, led by Lane (the excellent Tandi Wright), an unholy cross of Gwyneth Paltrow and Martha Stewart who wields “wellness” as a tool of oppression. In the new world ruled by women, if you question authority, you are dispatched for a lobotomy — it’s called being permed — and if you don’t fit the right physical and racial mold, your place in society may be tending cows in the countryside.Of course, Lane and her cohorts are keeping secret the existence of a few surviving men, one of whom, Bobby (Jay Ryan), shows up at the farm. His arrival turns Jamie, Pip and Alex into reluctant insurgents, sending them on an antic, highly messy journey of discovery, liberation and violent payback, one that continues through the second season against ever greater odds.Liang, who has directed all 12 episodes of “Creamerie” and written them with several other writers, primarily Dan Musgrove, is best known for the rousing 2020 action-horror feature “Shadow in the Cloud.” Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, a B-17 bomber and a toothy special-effects gremlin, the film played like an extended, well-choreographed “Twilight Zone” episode. Like “Creamerie,” it wasn’t that deep or self-serious, but the confidence and brio with which it was made gave weight to its mix of feminist and maternal motifs and to its emotional payoffs.Something similar happens in the series: the jokes, the shambolic action and the matter-of-fact satire of gender, race and class alchemize into something funnier and more moving than you might expect. Fong, Lau and Xue aren’t, individually, expert comic performers, but together they have a rapport and timing that expertly serve the material.In Season 2 the scope of the story expands, moving into Auckland, where the national government is led by a gently woke prime minister (Isabella Austin) with pink-and-blue hair and a furry green hipster hat. The heroines continue to find improbable escapes from their increasingly perilous situations, falling out and making up with one another in classic buddy-comedy fashion. And they remain gloriously themselves, no matter how dire things get.Waking up after being tranquilized, not knowing where she is or why, Pip frantically checks her hair, in a joke that reaches back to the characters Lau plays in the collective’s online shorts. Against the notion of a female utopia, “Creamerie” stubbornly insists on the primary value of the individual. More

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      British Spies, Japanese Teens and a German Cop’s Wild Ride

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      Recent international series of note include “A Spy Among Friends” on MGM+ and “Sam: A Saxon” on Hulu.It has been a quiet season for international television on American screens — nothing has grabbed attention on a “Squid Game” or “Downton Abbey” scale. But barely a day goes by, in the streaming age, without an interesting series washing up from some foreign shore. Here are four recent shows worth tracking down, from an elegant British thriller to a Chinese dramedy about a demon god and an immortal warrior who meet cute on the mortal plane.‘A Spy Among Friends’Alexander Cary, a writer and executive producer on “Homeland,” wrote this six-episode spy thriller as a leisurely, literate, three- or four-dimensional game of chess. Based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, it tells the story of Kim Philby (and the other high-level Soviet spies known as the Cambridge Five) by focusing on a set of intertwined sparring matches: Philby’s with his friend and MI6 colleague Nicholas Elliott, sent to Beirut to bring the disgraced Philby home; Elliott’s with a (fictional) agent, Lily Thomas, assigned to interrogate him when he returns to London alone; and Elliott and Thomas’s with the MI6 hierarchy once he brings her around to his side.Made for the British streaming service ITVX and available here on MGM+ and Prime Video, “A Spy Among Friends” is smart, complicated (at times overly so) and saturated in a particular Cold War blend of tragic romanticism and kitchen-sink class politics. What makes it stand out, though, is its casting. Anna Maxwell Martin and Guy Pearce are excellent as Thomas and Philby, and Damian Lewis is outstanding as Elliott, the colorless spy’s spy whose skills and motives are in question until the end. Tightly controlled yet somehow relaxed, Lewis gives a performance in which the coldblooded manipulator and the sentimentally loyal bro coexist at every moment.Malick Bauer is an East German policeman tossed around by history in “Sam: A Saxon” on Hulu.Stephan Burchadt/Disney‘Sam: A Saxon’As triumph-of-the-spirit stories go, “Sam: A Saxon” is notably low on triumph. Sam Meffire, the subject of this German biographical mini-series from Hulu, grew up in Dresden, both acutely aware of how his skin color set him apart and fiercely loyal to his East German homeland; shortly before the Berlin Wall fell, he became the country’s first policeman of African descent. His life since then — he’s only 52 — has been a carnival ride that no screenwriter would be likely to dream up: first a poster boy in a national ad campaign designed to humanize the police, and then a fugitive fleeing to Africa to avoid arrest for armed robbery.Jörg Winger, a creator and the showrunner of “Sam,” was also a creator of “Deutschland 83” and its sequels, and the shows share a knack for embedding engaging characters in real-world events in a way that feels both credible and suspenseful. In this dramatized telling, Meffire, played by the imposing actor Malick Bauer, is a true believer who finds himself continually and perversely acted upon by history. He is tossed about by the fall of Communism, and by the ravages of capitalism, racist nationalism and crime that the collapse unleashes. “Sam: A Saxon” stands firm against streaming-video bloat: Its seven episodes barely contain the story it sets out to tell.“Skip and Loafer” presents an expressionistic depiction of the life of a high-school girl.Misaki Takamatsu,KODANSHA/”Skip and Loafer” Production Committee‘Skip and Loafer’This sweet, lightly sentimental slice-of-life anime, halfway through its 12-episode season on Crunchyroll (and available for purchase on Prime Video), is an example of something that Japanese animation provides more consistently than American live-action TV: a comic, even expressionistic depiction of high-school life that still feels unforced and natural. Mitsumi, the star student of her small seaside town, moves to Tokyo to attend an elite prep school. Ferociously single-minded, very impressed with herself and determined to take her new school by storm, she’s also a quick-to-embarrass country bumpkin, a classic setup for teenage comedy.An early scene of Mitsumi’s childhood friends chasing after her departing train is a ruse, a poke at the conventions of this sort of story in traditional anime and Studio Ghibli-style films. And the bending of perspectives continues: While Mitsumi runs a gantlet of welcoming ceremonies, classroom presentations and karaoke parties in Tokyo, we and everyone around her — new friends, old friends and family — can see the anxieties and mortifications that she thinks she is hiding. The show (whose cryptic title, taken from the manga on which the anime is based, probably alludes to Mitsumi and her slacker crush, Sousuke) is a lighthearted essay on loneliness and the life-or-death nature of every decision a 15-year-old makes.In “Till the End of the Moon,” Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu play characters who are entangled across time and space.Rakuten Viki‘Till the End of the Moon’While a demon god is in the process of destroying the world, the resolute mystical warrior Li Susu (Bai Lu) is sent back in time 500 years to find the demon while he is still in mortal form and kill him. Arriving in the kingdom of Sheng, she discovers that she is in the body of a headstrong, very poorly behaved princess who is married to — do I have to spell it out?“Till the End of the Moon,” which is 35 episodes into its 40-episode run on Rakuten Viki, was a major hit in China, where it wrapped up this week; its premiere reportedly drew the highest numbers in three years for a xianxia (immortal heroes) drama. It’s an excellent example of the Chinese streaming-video industry’s capacity for making slickly disposable, highly enjoyable entertainment that combines elements of costume drama and special-effects-laden fantasy action with a healthy portion of romantic comedy. The humor will largely translate for a Western viewer, and Luo Yunxi (“My Sunshine,” “Ashes of Love”), who plays both the annihilating god and the possibly sympathetic human prince, is a hypnotic camera subject. More

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      In ‘A Small Light,’ an Ordinary Woman Helps Anne Frank’s Family

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      A new series on Disney+ and Hulu tells the story of Miep Gies, a secretary who helped Anne Frank and others hide in Amsterdam during World War II.Two days after the Gestapo’s 1944 raid on the annex where Anne Frank and others were hiding, Miep Gies, a seemingly ordinary secretary, and her colleague walked into the hiding place and encountered a chaotic scene left behind by the Nazis.Years later, Gies described what she saw that day as a mess of books, newspapers and other everyday items. “And then we started searching. For what, I don’t know, but we were looking for something,” she said in a 1958 interview. Among the items, she found a red plaid diary. Gies grabbed it and put it in a drawer in her office.She had just saved one of the Holocaust’s most famous accounts: Anne Frank’s diary.On the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the building that housed Otto Frank’s office is now the Anne Frank House, a museum that tells Anne’s story.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn the show, Anne Frank is played by Billie Boullet as an angsty girl chafing against the restrictions of German occupation. Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyThat moment, and much more about Gies’s life and heroism, is at the center of “A Small Light,” a new eight-part series that tells the story of Gies (Bel Powley), her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), and their involvement in Dutch resistance efforts during World War II. The show premieres Monday on National Geographic, and comes to Disney+ and Hulu the following day.Work on “A Small Light” began six years ago, after its showrunners Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, a married couple who used to be producers and screenwriters for “Grey’s Anatomy,” visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Walking around the museum and listening to tour guides, they learned that many people don’t really know the story of the Frank family anymore, let alone the story of the people who helped them, Rater and Phelan said in a recent video interview.Since then, they said, the moral question at the heart of Gies’s story — whether to do the right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all — has only become more important, given how war, nationalism and antisemitism have once again been spreading across Europe.“When we started this project,” Phelan said, “it certainly didn’t feel as relevant as it feels now.”While the show opens with Gies, who wasn’t Jewish, trying to dodge a Nazi checkpoint, the first episode quickly takes the viewer back to 1934, when Gies was single and living with her adopted Dutch family. She finds employment with Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) — a stern, fellow German-speaking immigrant — and meets her future husband, a social worker. Much of the first episode follows Gies living life as a modern young woman, meeting friends and going out dancing.Rater and Phelan wanted to give the show a contemporary feel by focusing “A Small Light” not just around war, but also around ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.The show’s creators wanted to give the episodes a contemporary feel by focusing not just on war, but also on ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“Period pieces for me sometimes feel a bit sepia-toned, and that makes you feel distanced from them,” Powley said. But “A Small Light” didn’t feel that way. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she added.“These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen,” Rater said.While the story of Anne Frank and what happened to her is well known, Gies — who died in 2010 at 100 — largely stayed out of the limelight. She published a memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” in 1987 and was involved with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but much of her story stayed private.“When we started digging, we started putting together these pieces that I don’t know that anybody had ever put together before,” Phelan said. In the course of their research, with the help of a local researcher in the Netherlands, Rater and Phelan discovered that Gies and her husband also helped people hide in their own home, including two nurses.In the show, we see nurses help save babies from being killed by the Nazis, and instead sending them to live in the Dutch countryside. One memorable scene shows how nurses swapped babies for dolls, telling Jewish mothers to lose the dolls on their way to concentration camps.Miep and Jan Gies, pictured in 1957, hid people from the Nazis in their own home, as well as in Miep’s office.Sueddeutsche Zeitung, via AlamyIn the show, Jan is played by Joe Cole, and Miep by Bel Powley.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“It is such a fascinating, heartbreaking, hard to believe story at times,” Cole, who plays Gies’s husband, said in a video interview.When in 1942, Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide him, his daughters, Anne and Margot, and his wife, Edith, in an annex at their office, Gies didn’t hesitate before saying yes.“She had no idea what she was saying yes to,” Rater said. “And then she had to keep saying yes for two years.”This was until a warm day in August 1944 when Nazis raided the office and found the eight people — the Frank family and four others — hiding in the annex.“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and in Prague.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyIn “A Small Light,” Gies’s decision to help despite the dangers and disruption this posed to her life (she kept the secret, brought food and books and more), her unwavering spirit and her reluctance to be seen as a hero makes the viewer ask: What would I have done in that situation? The show’s title is taken from a quote by Gies: “Even a regular secretary, a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”The show “is about your personal dynamics that are interrupted by the war,” said Schreiber who recently spent time in Ukraine raising money for humanitarian aid. “That’s part of what I saw in Ukraine. These people’s lives have been interrupted and they try to continue.”“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and Prague, where the interior scenes were filmed in a three-story replica of Otto Frank’s Amsterdam office, where the annex was hidden behind a bookcase. (The original building, on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, is now the Anne Frank House.)While “A Small Light” has moments of levity and snippets of life’s mundanity despite the war raging outside, the episodes gradually become more intense, leading up to the inevitable betrayal that doomed all the people in the annex except for Otto Frank, Anne’s father.For Powley, the show never felt like a period piece. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she said.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneySchreiber, who is Jewish, said he was often asked to play roles in Holocaust films. “I hate the narrative that we went like lambs to the slaughter,” which is common in such movies, he said.“But this felt different,” he added. More