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      ‘God Forbid’ Review: An Affair With Political Implications

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      The Hulu documentary covers a high-profile affair involving a pool attendant and the prominent evangelical couple Becki Falwell and Jerry Falwell Jr.“God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty,” a Hulu documentary from the director Billy Corben, concerns a sensational, high-profile affair between Giancarlo Granda, a pool attendant at a luxury hotel in Miami Beach, Fla., and Becki Falwell, the wife of the prominent Republican evangelist Jerry Falwell Jr. — whom Granda claims participated in these relations as a silent voyeur. At the time, Falwell Jr. was the president and chancellor of one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges, Liberty University, and one of the best known evangelical supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.The film describes, in graphic and sometimes vulgar detail, a seven-year sexual relationship that had surprising political ramifications involving the attorney Michael Cohen, the actor Tom Arnold, and President Trump, each of whom, as the film illustrates, became tangentially embroiled in the ensuing drama and fallout.“God Forbid” tries to rationalize its often lurid account of these events, emphasizing the Falwells’ hypocrisy and castigating them as “predators” who showed patterns of abuse — the charming husband and beloved wife are “not the good Christians they present themselves to be,” one observer concludes righteously.But while Falwell Jr. may indeed be a charlatan, ridiculing his sexual predilections seems like a pretty dubious way to prove it. (We’re meant to savor the irony that, as Granda says, Falwell is “trying to appear as the strongman” when he is in fact “the cuck in the corner of the room.”) I’m not sure what’s gained from scrutinizing so many of Becki Falwell’s candid texts and voice messages, other than making her seem foolish.The film combines archival materials, original interviews and various text messages and video and audio recordings pertaining to the case. Its smoking gun is a recording of a late-night video call in which Becki is shown drinking wine and stripping naked, reminiscing with Granda about their past dalliances. I found it incredibly depressing. What, exactly, I had to wonder, is being documented here, and what, exactly, am I meant to conclude?God ForbidNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      In ‘Reboot,’ Everything Old Is New, to Streaming

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      This new Hulu comedy pokes fun at TV’s obsession with bringing back past shows.At a recent meeting at Hulu’s offices, over coffee and luxury bottled water, half a dozen executives entertained a pitch for a new series. Well, not exactly new. The idea: Reboot the beloved early ’00s comedy about a blended family, “Step Right Up.” Though it ended abruptly after its lead departed, the show has, surprisingly, found a robust audience on streaming, particularly among, an analytics specialist notes, the family and “live-to-laugh” quadrants.“Are we sure that’s not just people leaving it on for their dogs?” a colleague asks.Her boss voices a further concern: Are reboots still a thing? His team answers him with a very long list, which includes “Fuller House,” “How I Met Your Father,” “Veronica Mars,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Gossip Girls,” “The Wonder Years,” “Party of Five,” “Party Down” and on and on and on.“What the hell,” the boss says, convinced. “Let’s remake something original.”This is the opening scene of “Reboot,” a Hulu half-hour comedy from the showrunner Steven Levitan (“Modern Family,” “Just Shoot Me!”) with a premise so flawless it seems bananas that no one has thought of it before. A turducken of a show, it features a multicamera family comedy, nested inside a single camera workplace comedy, shoved into a behind-the-scenes Hollywood spoof. The series is also a referendum — a pretty fun one — on the way that the sitcom has advanced in the past several decades and its migration from network to cable and streaming.“This really is an affectionate look at our business,” Levitan said, speaking from a home office with “Modern Family” cutouts in the background. “The bizarre characters, the weird situations, the important meetings you have over something that’s unbelievably trivial and embarrassing. It’s really such great fodder for comedy.”Levitan first had the idea for “Reboot” several years ago when “Roseanne” returned and then disappeared, following a racist tweet posted by its star, Roseanne Barr, and then returned again, sans Barr, as “The Conners.” The presumed backstage drama intrigued him.“I remember thinking to myself, Well, that’s the show I want to watch,” he said. “Modern Family” still had a few seasons to go. He assumed that someone else would dream up the same idea in the meantime, but no one did. Or no one was greenlit, anyway. So he took his pitch to Hulu. (He has an overall deal with 20th Television, which is, like Hulu, part of the Walt Disney Company.)Rachel Bloom, left, and Krista Marie Yu in “Reboot,” a show about a show reviving an old show.Michael Desmond/HuluI asked Karey Burke, the president of 20th Television, who helped to develop “Reboot,” if Hulu’s real-life executives had ever expressed any qualms about the show’s satire. (There’s a dazzling swipe at “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the pilot, for example.)“They love it,” she said. “And I don’t know that other platforms would be able to handle the zingers as gracefully as they have.”Craig Erwich, the president of ABC Entertainment, Hulu and Disney branded television streaming originals, confirmed this, saying that he and his real colleagues enjoyed being in on the joke. “We loved it,” he said. “It’s funny. And it’s funny because it probably rings true.”Not all of these jokes target streaming services. A bunch take aim at networks, where Levitan spent most of his career. Others go after changes within the form of the sitcom itself. Many of these last are voiced in the form of arguments between Paul Reiser’s Gordon, who created “Step Right Up,” and Rachel Bloom’s Hannah, the millennial writer-director who pitched the reboot.“Comedy has evolved since you last wrote for television,” says Hannah, tartly. “I mean, honestly, whole species have evolved.”Some of that evolution has pushed sitcoms away from the live-audience multicamera style, the province of a studio comedy like “Step Right Up,” to more visually sophisticated single-camera formats. The move from network to streaming, a move that “Reboot” explores, has wrought other changes. This new “Step Right Up” no longer need to adhere to a 22-minute format with A, B and C story lines and pauses for commercial breaks. More sexually explicit material is now permissible, as are obscenities.“It’s the world of sitcom, but it’s streaming,” Reiser said in an interview, speaking of the move to streaming generally. “So you can say whatever you want, and you’re not going for the laugh, necessarily.”But old constraints die hard. Though “Step Right Up” has taken on a new look, most of the episodes of “Reboot” do still honor a three-act structure. And if the set-up-punchline, set-up-punchline form has given ground, A, B and C plots remain. “It’s inherent,” Levitan said. “It’s baked into my bones right now that shows will have a certain sense of structure and plot.”And yet, as “Reboot” demonstrates, and as a rewatch of most ’80s, ’90s and ’00s comedies will prove, content has changed. Jokes that punched down at women, queer people, disabled people, people of color — rarely make it to air now. Levitan framed this as a limitation, if a good one.“The whole #MeToo, woke culture, it has changed where you can go, and by and large, in a positive way,” he said. “Where it gets tricky is when everybody is so scared of offending somebody that you don’t even go anywhere near the line anymore.”Bloom, who cocreated the sitcom “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” sees this new sensibility as an opportunity rather than a curb or a cause for angst. “There’s a mindfulness that’s being asked of people now that wasn’t being asked of people before,” she said. “I think it’s making us all better people, better comedians.” And she enjoys playing Hannah, even in her occasional humorlessness.“A girl who wears baggy sweaters with anxiety?” Bloom said. “I know that person.” Reiser, who described himself as “a little bit more aware than Gordon” agreed with his co-star. “I never understand people who say, ‘You couldn’t make that joke anymore,’” he said. “I go, ‘Why would you want to? How much do you want to make a joke?’ It’s kind of not cool and insensitive.”Levitan first had the idea for “Reboot” during the controversy in which Roseanne Barr was fired from her own revived sitcom.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesSome of the strongest scenes of “Reboot” are the ones set in the writers’ room that dramatize this tension. The writers whom Hannah has hired — a queer man and two women of color — clash openly with the older Jewish writers of Gordon’s acquaintance. In one scene, a younger writer critiques a joke pitched by the TV veteran Selma (Rose Abdoo, the series’s stealth M.V.P.).“I thought gay people were supposed to be fun,” Selma snaps back. But eventually they find a joke everyone likes. It involves a pratfall. Pratfalls are funny no matter what.But “Reboot” isn’t only funny. There’s a persistent sweetness to it and a sense that people can change, usually for the better.“That’s something that’s quite thrilling about the show,” said Keegan-Michael Key, a “Step Right Up” star. “It’s a Steve Levitan hallmark, isn’t it, that sense of people being open?”“Step Right Up” is the reboot at the center, but nearly all of the characters are rebooting themselves in one way or another, recovering from divorce, addiction, regional theater. Levitan mentioned how fans had told him how “Modern Family” had helped them work through difficult moments in their own lives. He hopes that “Reboot,” a show about Hollywood elites with Bentleys and real estate portfolios and connections to Nordic royalty, can do the same.“Bringing a little laughter into people’s lives is a really joyous thing to do,” he said.“Reboot” remains agnostic on the question of the worth of reboots themselves. Many real-world ones seem like little more than cheap intellectual-property grabs, and few improve on the original. Some are so dismal that they actually poison their predecessors, retroactively. The creators and stars of “Reboot” had varying opinions on the form. Or no opinion at all.“I don’t think that’s for me to say,” Levitan said. “Yeah, I would rather not draw the ire of comedy writers.” Reiser survived the reboot of “Mad About You” pretty much intact and seemed optimistic about the form. Bloom was less so.“The most exciting part of a reboot for me is the headline of a reboot coming up,” she said. The reboot itself was usually a disappointment.Key sounded more hopeful. He thought that reboots might work, at least notionally, and could even be innovative if the animating idea were persuasive enough. “I really think that is possible,” he said. “It’s all about angles.”Until Hollywood figures out those angles, we’ll just have to make do with something original. Like “Reboot.” More

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      ‘Succession’ Wins Best Drama at Emmys as HBO Triumphs Again

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      “Succession,” HBO’s portrait of a dysfunctional media dynasty, won best drama at the 74th Emmy Awards on Monday night, the second time the series has taken the prize.Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, also took home the Emmy for best writing, the third time he’s won in that category. And Matthew Macfadyen won best supporting actor in a drama for the first time for his performance on the show.It was the sixth time in eight years that HBO has taken the television industry’s biggest prize for a recurring series, making it yet another triumphant night for the cable network. HBO, as well as its streaming service, HBO Max, won more Emmys (38) than any other outlet, besting its chief rival, Netflix (26).“The White Lotus,” the cable network’s beloved upstairs-downstairs dramedy that took place at a Hawaiian resort, won best limited series, and tore through several other categories. The show won 10 Emmys altogether, more than any other series. Mike White, the show’s creator and director, won a pair of Emmys for best directing and writing. And performers from the show, Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge, both received acting Emmys.“Mike White, my God, thank you for giving me one of the best experiences of my life,” Bartlett, who played an off-the-wagon hotel manager, said from the Emmys stage.But HBO’s chronicles of the rich were not the only winners on Monday night.“Ted Lasso,” the Apple TV+ sports series, won best comedy for a second consecutive year, as the tech giant continues on an awards show tear. Apple TV+, which had its debut in November 2019, won best picture at the Oscars (“CODA”) earlier this year. And Jason Sudeikis repeated as best actor in a comedy as the fish-out-of-water soccer coach in “Ted Lasso.”There were other big moments in the comedy awards. Quinta Brunson, the creator of the good-natured ABC workplace sitcom, “Abbott Elementary,” about a group of elementary schoolteachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public school, won for best writing in a comedy. It was only the second time a Black woman won the award (Lena Waithe was the first, in 2017, for “Master of None”).In one of the night’s most electric moments, Sheryl Lee Ralph won best supporting actress in a comedy for her role on “Abbott Elementary” as a veteran teacher at the school. Ralph began her Emmys speech by singing “Endangered Species” by Dianne Reeves, and received a standing ovation from the room full of nominees. Her victory was also historic: It was only the second time a Black woman won the award. The last time was in 1987, when Jackée Harry won for her role in the NBC sitcom “227.”This has been the most competitive Emmys season ever: Submissions for all the categories surged, and 2022 is very likely to set yet another record for the highest number of scripted television series.But there was also a sense of concern among the executives, producers and agents in attendance at Monday night’s Emmy Awards, that 2022 represents the pinnacle of the so-called Peak TV era, which has produced the highest number of scripted television series, nearly every year, for more than a decade.Netflix, which lost subscribers this year for the first time in a decade, has laid off hundreds of staffers and is reining in its spending. HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has shelved projects and is about to lay off a significant number of employees. NBC executives are considering ending its prime-time lineup at 10 p.m., and handing the hour over to local stations.Business challenges aside, the night was mostly a feel-good celebration. Zendaya won her second Emmy by taking best actress in a drama for her role as a troubled teen in HBO’s “Euphoria.” Jean Smart repeated as the best actress in a comedy for her role as a Joan Rivers-like comedian in HBO Max’s “Hacks.”“Squid Game,” the blood-splattered, South Korean Netflix series, won a pair of awards: Lee Jung-jae for best actor in a drama, and Hwang Dong-hyuk for directing. Those wins represented a major breakthrough for a foreign language show as television becomes more global, and as American audiences are increasingly receptive to series with subtitles.Michael Keaton, who played a small town doctor in “Dopesick,” took the best actor award in a limited series. And Amanda Seyfried won best actress in a limited series for her well-received performance as Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout.”Emmy voters often have a habit of finding a winner, and sticking with it, and this year was no different. John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” won the best talk show category for a seventh consecutive year, and “Saturday Night Live” took the best variety sketch series for a sixth straight year.This year’s ceremony was the first return to the Microsoft Theater since the pandemic. Producers for the Emmys incorporated an element that it experimented with at last year’s ceremony, which took place inside a tent: Instead of theater-style seating, nominees were gathered around tables with bottles of champagne and wine around them.This year’s host, Kenan Thompson, the “Saturday Night Live” veteran, opened the ceremony in a top hat and led a group of dancers in a bizarre interpretive dance to theme songs of famous TV series like “Law & Order,” “The Brady Bunch” and “Game of Thrones.”During his monologue, Thompson took a dig at Netflix’s recent woes.“If you don’t know what ‘Squid Game’ is, it is the contest you enter when you’re in massive debt and desperate for money,” the host said. “Joining the cast next season? Netflix.” More

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      41 TV Shows to Watch This Fall

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      Noteworthy premieres include new seasons of buzzy hits (“Abbott Elementary,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”), reboots and revivals (“Quantum Leap,” “Willow”) and more.The fall television season got off to an early start this year with the arrival of the dueling franchise extensions and hopeful blockbusters, “House of the Dragon” on HBO and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Amazon Prime Video. But TV’s vast landscape offers a lot more than expensively produced, effects-laden fantasy. From the relatable delights of “Abbott Elementary” to the highly specific hilarity of “Documentary Now!,” here are some noteworthy fall premieres, arranged in chronological order.All dates are subject to change.THE SERPENT QUEEN The story of Catherine de’ Medici, the 16th-century queen of France, in a satirical, talking-to-the-camera 21st-century telling, with Samantha Morton and Liv Hill as Catherine and a large cast, including Charles Dance, Colm Meaney and Ludivine Sagnier, as the clerics and aristocrats who underestimate her at their peril. Starz, Sept. 11.THE JENNIFER HUDSON SHOW The success of daytime talk-show hosts is notoriously hard to predict, and whether Hudson will have the right skill set and personality for the role is about to be seen. But she immediately becomes the most talented singer and actress in the field, for what that’s worth. Syndicated, Sept. 12.THE HANDMAID’S TALE This bleak allegory and nonlinear-TV pioneer — the first streaming show to win an Emmy for outstanding drama series — soldiers into its fifth season, with June (Elisabeth Moss) quickly coming down from the cathartic high of Season 4’s bloody conclusion. Hulu, Sept. 14.Elisabeth Moss in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” returning for its fifth season on Sept. 14.HuluATLANTA After a third season, ending in May, that was quietly received — and that dropped more than half of the show’s previous broadcast audience — Donald Glover’s prickly comedy quickly returns for a fourth and final go-round. FX, Sept. 15.THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST Ken Burns, directing with Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, devotes six hours to an uncomfortable chapter of American history with an alarmingly familiar backdrop of racism and xenophobia. PBS, Sept. 18.QUANTUM LEAP Raymond Lee (the sympathetic diner owner in “Kevin Can F**k Himself”) plays a new time-jumping do-gooder in this reboot of the early-90s sci-fi series. The Quantum Leap project is restarted and the original hero, Sam Beckett, is still missing, so a Scott Bakula guest appearance seems pretty much preordained. NBC, Sept. 19.PARIS POLICE 1900 In the spirit of “Babylon Berlin,” this period policier sets standard crime drama against a vivid historical backdrop: the Dreyfus affair, organized and violent antisemitism, the rise of the pioneering lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugenie Derouand) and the sometimes deadly career of the Parisian courtesan Marguerite Steinheil (Evelyne Brochu). MHz Choice, Sept. 20.REBOOT Steven Levitan, who grabbed the network-sitcom brass ring with “Just Shoot Me!” and “Modern Family,” indulges in some gentle self-parody. Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key and Johnny Knoxville play the cast of a hacky early-aughts family comedy who reunite for a new version written by a young woman (Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) who is strangely obsessed with the original show. Hulu, Sept. 20.ABBOTT ELEMENTARY Quinta Brunson’s sitcom about struggling teachers at a Philadelphia elementary school, a breakout hit in the spring and an Emmy nominee for best comedy series, embarks on its second season. ABC, Sept. 21.Lisa Ann Walter, left, and Sheryl Lee Ralph in “Abbott Elementary,” returning for its second season on Sept. 21, on ABC.Scott Everett White/ABCANDOR Tony Gilroy has more on his résumé than a writing credit for “Rogue One,” and it looks as if his new “Star Wars” series might incorporate some of the real-world grit he displayed a feel for in the Bourne movies. That would be a good thing, though don’t tell it to your friend with the lightsaber collection. Disney+, Sept. 21.REASONABLE DOUBT Kerry Washington is an executive producer and a director of this legal melodrama created by Raamla Mohamed, who was a writer and producer on Washington’s breakthrough series, “Scandal.” Emayatzy Corinealdi plays a high-rent, high-stress Los Angeles lawyer whose conscience begins to bite her in the first scripted series from Disney’s Onyx Collective brand for creators of color. Hulu, Sept. 27.THE DARK HEART Gustav Möller, director of the Swedish film “The Guilty” (remade in America starring Jake Gyllenhaal), oversaw this five-part thriller inspired by real events. A woman who manages a civilian search team for missing persons takes on the case of a landowner and lumber baron who alienated a lot of people, including his ambitious daughter, before he disappeared. Topic, Sept. 29.SO HELP ME TODD A quirky-funny mystery series — in the long lineage of “Monk” — starring Marcia Gay Harden as a Type-A lawyer and Skylar Astin as her son, who’s better at investigating than he is at adulting. CBS, Sept. 29.Marcia Gay Harden stars in “So Help Me Todd,” premiering Sept. 29 on CBS.Michael Courtney/CBSANNE RICE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE AMC takes its first step toward an Anne Rice universe, under the aegis of the veteran producer Mark Johnson (“Better Call Saul”). Jacob Anderson, the eunuch warrior Grey Worm in “Game of Thrones,” plays Louis, the Brad Pitt role from the movie version; Sam Reid steps in for Tom Cruise as Lestat; and the newcomer Bailey Bass, soon to be seen in several “Avatar” sequels, replaces Kirsten Dunst as the child vampire, Claudia. AMC, Oct. 2.EAST NEW YORK William Finkelstein, a creator of this cop drama, spent the 1990s and early 2000s writing and producing for a good roster of shows: “L.A. Law,” “Murder One,” “Brooklyn South,” “Law & Order” and “NYPD Blue.” On the other hand, he also created “Cop Rock” with Steven Bochco. Amanda Warren (the mayor in “The Leftovers”) plays a new precinct boss in the Brooklyn neighborhood of the title, heading a cast that includes Jimmy Smits, Richard Kind and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. CBS, Oct. 2.THE WALKING DEAD There was a time — and it was only six years ago — when “The Walking Dead” was drawing more than 12 million viewers an episode and the death of a major character was Monday morning news. Now more important as intellectual property than as weekly storytelling, the original series shuffles to the finish line with its final eight episodes. AMC, Oct. 2.Norman Reedus in AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” returning for its final season on Oct. 2.Jace Downs/AMCMAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the codes, networks and private societies that Black Americans have created “behind the veil” of the color line in a four-part documentary series. PBS, Oct. 4.ALASKA DAILY Tom McCarthy, who made one of the best newspaper dramas of our time in the film “Spotlight,” created this series about an abrasive reporter (Hilary Swank) who gets canceled in New York and takes a job in Anchorage, lured by a story about the deaths of Indigenous women. The presence of Jeff Perry as her new boss probably isn’t the only thing that will remind you of the shows of the ABC stalwart Shonda Rhimes. ABC, Oct. 6.A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks star in this true-crime mini-series as the parents of the actress Jan Broberg, who was kidnapped when she was 12 and again when she was 14 by the same family friend (played by Jake Lacy). The bizarre story has also been told in the 2017 feature documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight.” Peacock, Oct. 6.Jake Lacy and Anna Paquin in the Peacock mini-series “A Friend of the Family.”PeacockPENNYWORTH: THE ORIGIN OF BATMAN’S BUTLER This stylish “Batman” prequel series, about the former special-forces soldier who will one day be Bruce Wayne’s butler (as the show’s awkward new title makes clear), leaves Epix for a platform closer to its DC Comics roots. Season 3 also mostly leaves behind the alt-history British civil war that occupied the first two installments, jumping ahead five years and introducing superheroes. HBO Max, Oct. 6.LET THE RIGHT ONE IN John Ajvide Lindqvist’s ultra-bleak 2004 novel about a child vampire keeps circulating through the culture: It has inspired films, plays, a comic book and a TV pilot, with Thomas Kretschmann, that wasn’t picked up. Now the story makes it to TV with Demián Bichir as the father of the girl vampire (Madison Taylor Baez) who’s forever 12. Showtime, online Oct. 7, cable Oct. 9.THE MIDNIGHT CLUB The latest from Mike Flanagan, whose atmospheric horror series (“The Haunting of Hill House,” “Midnight Mass”) have won a following on Netflix. Heather Langenkamp plays the doctor at a hospice where the patients like to tell one another scary stories. Netflix, Oct. 7.BECOMING FREDERICK DOUGLASS The documentarian Stanley Nelson (“Attica,” “Freedom Riders”) fills in some important chapters in his epic yet quotidian history of Black life in America with this film and with “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” (Oct. 4), both directed by Nelson and Nicole London. PBS, Oct. 11.CHAINSAW MAN Anticipation is running high in the anime world for the MAPPA animation studio’s adaptation of “Chainsaw Man,” a dark-comic, body-horror manga about a young devil hunter with a deadly appendage. Crunchyroll, Oct. 11.SHERWOOD The cast of this BBC mystery series is a lengthy British-TV who’s who: David Morrissey, Lesley Manville, Claire Rushbrook, Philip Jackson, Joanne Froggatt, Terence Maynard, Kevin Doyle, Robert Glenister, Clare Holman, Lorraine Ashbourne, Adeel Akhtar, Pip Torrens and Mark Addy, among others. Morrissey is the detective investigating a bow-and-arrow murder in Robin Hood’s old Nottinghamshire haunts that brings up hatreds from a 1980s miners’ strike. BritBox, Oct. 11.THE WINCHESTERS Jensen Ackles returns to the “Supernatural” universe, reassuming his role as the monster hunter Dean Winchester in this prequel series. This time Dean, in a supporting role, is tracking down the real story of the younger days of his mother and father (Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger), which sounds like a good strategy for avoiding pesky continuity questions. CW, Oct. 11Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly in “The Winchesters,” premiering Oct. 11 on the CW.Matt Miller/CWDOCUMENTARY NOW! One of TV’s greatest pleasures returns after a more than three-year hiatus. The fourth season, hosted, as always, by Dame Helen Mirren, will include sendups of “My Octopus Teacher,” “The September Issue,” “When We Were Kings” and Werner Herzog’s “Burden of Dreams.” IFC, Oct. 19.FROM SCRATCH Zoe Saldana stars in a mini-series that crosses cultures — a Black American woman falls in love with a Sicilian chef during her Wanderjahr in Italy — and genres, mixing picturesque Euroromance and sorrowful survivor’s tale. Netflix, Oct. 21.THE PERIPHERAL Scott B. Smith, who wrote the screenplay (based on his own novel) of the excellent 1998 thriller “A Simple Plan,” is the creator and showrunner of this series based on a dystopian, alternate-futures mystery by William Gibson; Chloë Grace Moretz stars; and Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are among the executive producers. That’s an awful lot of bleak-noir experience. Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 21.GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Del Toro takes on the Alfred Hitchcock role, playing master of ceremonies for an eight-episode horror anthology. (A previous title included the words “Guillermo del Toro Presents.”) The first season’s directors include Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”), Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”) and Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). Netflix, Oct. 25.SHERMAN’S SHOWCASE Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin’s consistently clever, stealthily sophisticated, unabashedly nostalgic sendup of old-school variety shows finally returns for a second season. IFC, Oct. 26.Bashir Salahuddin, foreground, in “Sherman’s Showcase,” returning for its second season on Oct. 26, on IFC.Michael Moriatis/IFCTRUE CRIME STORY: INDEFENSIBLE Back for a second season, the comedian Jena Friedman applies the adversarial techniques of topical late-night humor to the true-crime genre, in 20-minute episodes that are less investigations — the facts of the cases are generally pretty plain, at least in Friedman’s eyes — than expressions of darkly comic outrage. SundanceTV, Oct. 27.BIG MOUTH Since Nick Kroll broke the third-dimensional wall in the Season 5 finale and had a heart-to-heart with his animated character, Nick Birch, will any of his castmates get to follow suit in the sixth season of this raunchy paean to puberty? The real-life John Mulaney would probably have some interesting things to say to his animated counterpart, randy Andy Glouberman. Netflix, Oct. 28.MANIFEST A hit in reruns on Netflix after being canceled by NBC, this paranormal mystery-melodrama gets a fourth and final season at its streaming home. Netflix, Nov. 4.DANGEROUS LIAISONS This new adaptation of the Choderlos de Laclos novel was announced nearly a decade ago, with Christopher Hampton, who had already based a play and a film on the novel, attached as writer once again. Hampton didn’t remain as the writer — he gets an executive producer credit — but the mini-series has arrived billed as the “origin story” of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. Apparently they weren’t always jaded monsters. Starz, Nov. 6.MOOD Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”) and Michaela Coel (“Chewing Gum”) before her, Nicole Lecky turns a hit one-woman play into a buzzy British TV series. She plays Sasha, a broke and unemployed young Londoner who finds herself in the potentially lucrative and liberating — and also potentially exploitative and dangerous — world of the influencer economy. BBC America, Nov. 6.Nicole Lecky in “Mood,” premiering Nov. 6 on BBC America.Natalie Seery/BBC Studios, via Bonafide FilmsTULSA KING On the same night that Tyler Sheridan’s flagship show, “Yellowstone,” begins its fifth season, his portfolio of manly genre dramas grows with the addition of this mash-up of gangster story and neo-western. It’s also Sheridan’s latest action-hero reclamation project: Sylvester Stallone stars as a Mafia capo sent to oversee operations in the foreign territory of Tulsa, Okla. Paramount+, Nov. 13.LIMITLESS WITH CHRIS HEMSWORTH Deploying the charm he brings to his depiction of the Norse god Thor for Marvel, Hemsworth headlines a wellness-and-longevity documentary series for Marvel’s corporate parent, Disney. (The sound of his unadulterated Australian accent makes him even more charming, if that’s possible.) Subjects like how to deal with stress and the value of fasting are addressed with superheroic energy. Disney+, Nov. 16.WELCOME TO CHIPPENDALES Robert Siegel, fresh off “Pam & Tommy,” and Jenni Konner of “Girls” are the showrunners of a mini-series starring Kumail Nanjiani as Steve Banerjee, the unlikely and eventually ill-fated founder of a male-stripping colossus. Hulu, Nov. 22.WILLOW Ron Howard’s 1988 fantasy film “Willow” is not the first piece of intellectual property anyone would have predicted for a reboot, but when George Lucas is involved — he received “story by” credit on the film — anything can happen. Lucasfilm and Howard’s Imagine Entertainment are producing this sequel series; Warwick Davis, now 52, returns as the title character. Maybe Willow will be a more consistent spell caster than he was as a teenager. Disney+, Nov. 30.Warwick Davis in “Willow,” premiering Nov. 30 on Disney+.Lucasfilm/Disney+THE ADVENTURES OF SAUL BELLOW Asaf Galay’s documentary, an “American Masters” offering, recruits wives, children and innocent bystanders to talk about being the real-life sources of Bellow’s books. Meanwhile, fellow novelists and critics like Charles Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Stanley Crouch and, in what may have been his last interview, a captivating Philip Roth certify or question Bellow’s place in the American pantheon. PBS, Dec. 12.And if all that isn’t enough for you, these new and returning shows are also coming this fall (new shows in bold):Sept. 11: “Monarch,” Fox; Sept. 12: “War of the Worlds,” Epix; Sept. 13: “The Come Up,” Freeform; Sept. 15: “La Otra Mirada,” PBS; “Vampire Academy,” Peacock; “The Light in the Hall,” Sundance Now; Sept. 16: “Los Espookys,” HBO; Sept. 18: “60 Minutes,” CBS; “SEAL Team,” Paramount+; Sept. 19: “Bob Hearts Abishola,” “NCIS,” “NCIS: Hawai’i,” “The Neighborhood,” CBS; “9-1-1,” “The Cleaning Lady,” Fox; Sept. 20: “FBI,” “FBI: International,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” CBS; “The Resident,” Fox; “New Amsterdam,” NBC; Sept. 21: “The Conners,” “The Goldbergs,” “Home Economics,” “Big Sky,” ABC; “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” CBS; “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Med,” “Chicago P.D.,” NBC; Sept. 22: “The Kardashians,” Hulu; “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC; “Thai Cave Rescue,” Netflix; Sept. 23: “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” HBO Max; Sept. 24: “Finding Happy,” Bounce; Sept. 25: “The Rookie,” ABC; “The Simpsons,” “The Great North,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Family Guy,” Fox; “Van der Valk,” PBS; Sept. 27: “The Rookie: Feds,” ABC; “La Brea,” NBC; “Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” Disney+; Sept. 28: “The D’Amelio Show,” Hulu; Sept. 29: “Young Sheldon,” “Ghosts,” “CSI: Vegas,” CBS; “Welcome to Flatch,” “Call Me Kat,” Fox; “Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky,” Peacock; Sept. 30: “Ramy,” Hulu; Oct. 2: “The Equalizer,” CBS: “Family Law,” “The Coroner,” CW: Oct. 3: “The Good Doctor,” ABC: Oct. 5: “Kung Fu,” CW: “Reginald the Vampire,” Syfy; “Chucky,” Syfy/USA; Oct. 6: “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Station 19,” ABC; “Walker, Independence,” “Walker” CW; Oct. 7: “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” Apple TV+; “Fire Country,” “Blue Bloods,” “SWAT,” CBS; Oct. 9: “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS; “Secrets of the Dead,” PBS; Oct. 10: “All American,” “All American: Homecoming,” CW; Oct. 11: “Professionals,” CW; Oct. 14: “Shantaram,” Apple TV+; Oct. 16: “Magpie Murders,” “Miss Scarlet and the Duke,” PBS; Oct. 20: “One of Us Is Lying,” Peacock; Oct. 21: “Acapulco,” Apple TV+; Oct. 26: “Mysterious Benedict Society” Disney+; Nov. 3: “Blockbuster,” Netflix; “The Capture,” Peacock; “The Suspect,” Sundance Now; “Kold x Windy,” WE; Nov. 4: “Lopez vs. Lopez,” “Young Rock,” NBC; Nov. 9: “Zootopia+,” Disney+; Nov. 10: “The Calling,” Peacock; Nov. 11: “The English,” Amazon Prime Video; Nov. 13: “Yellowstone,” Paramount; Nov. 18: “The L Word: Generation Q,” Showtime; “Planet Sex With Clara Delevingne,” Hulu; Nov. 23: “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin,” Peacock; Nov. 30: “Irreverent,” Peacock; Dec. 1: “Wicked City,” “Hush,” AllBlk; Dec. 22: “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” Peacock. More

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      Lily James Experiences Beaches a Little Differently Now

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      Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several acting nominees. The awards will be presented on Sept. 12 on NBC.Actors usually talk about the thrill of digging into a role, how excited they are when they crack the code. Lily James does evoke those emotions when asked about channeling Pamela Anderson in the Hulu mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” but there is always a slight shadow.She was scared, she said — and she got a little obsessive. She spent her hours in the makeup chair listening to collections of Anderson interviews and excerpts from shows like “Stacked,” “V.I.P.” and, of course, “Baywatch.”“I was so fricking terrified that I wasn’t going to pull it off,” James, who is British, said in a recent video conversation. (Her accent was one of many transformations she had to undertake for the role.) “I haven’t ever worked harder, just because it needed that.”She did pull it off: Her performance earned both wide praise — The New York Times’s James Poniewozik described it as “sneakily complex” when the show premiered, in February — and James’s first Emmy nomination. (“Pam & Tommy” got 10 nods overall, including one for best limited series.)During a recent video chat, the co-showrunners D.V. DeVincentis and Robert Siegel confirmed James was all in, all the time.“There was no hanging out or gossiping by the food, nothing like that,” DeVincentis, also a writer and executive producer on the show, describing her ethic on set. “If she wasn’t shooting she was always sitting listening to interviews with Pamela Anderson to keep the voice in her head.”“Also just being lovely and cheerful and approachable,” Siegel, who is also the creator, added quickly — lest anybody think James had gone to antisocial, diva-like extremes. “She had so many opportunities where she could have snapped or lost her temper, and it would have been completely forgivable and justified. She never really did.”James, 33, could not have been more cordial when we talked, even though she had to carve out time from her last moments of rest in Tuscany — where she was staying before moving on to Rome to start work on a film by Saverio Costanzo, the Italian director behind the Elena Ferrante adaptation “My Brilliant Friend” on HBO.She had the talking-with-her hands thing nailed already, and she looked relaxed and easygoing, with an excellent of sense of how to still look great on Zoom. She projected an endearing mix of low-key confidence and lighthearted self-deprecation, which included an overly severe assessment of her own interview skills.“I feel I’m really bad talking about work,” she said. “I always remind myself, ‘I’m an actor, so it’s fine, I don’t have to be good at this bit.’”Anderson is yet another step up for James, whose three-season stint as Lady Rose MacClare on “Downton Abbey” lifted her into increasingly high-profile roles — including the younger version of Meryl Streep’s Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and Ansel Elgort’s girlfriend in Edgar Wright’s stylish, bubble gum action movie “Baby Driver.”It wasn’t the first time she had played a historical person, though Churchill’s wartime secretary, Elizabeth Layton, who died in 2007, was in no position to nitpick the way James portrayed her in the period drama “Darkest Hour,” from 2017. Both title characters in “Pam & Tommy,” on the other hand, are very much alive.Lily James, left and Sebastian Stan as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, whose stolen and leaked sex tape become a tabloid phenomenon in the 1990s. Erin Simkin/HuluOne of the few moments of hesitation during our conversation came when I asked whether she had ever met Anderson — who was not involved in the series and let it be known afterward that she had not checked it out.“Still nothing,” James said, “and I totally respect that. That’s her choice. It’s a bizarre thing because I’ve played her, and I feel so attached but …” She drifted off. “I hope that if she was ever to watch it, she would feel that the show was just so behind her.”To break away from it all, James enjoys being in nature, away from people and cities. “When you see the perspective of the ocean and the horizon in front of you, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is all OK,’” she said.But asked whether she was still able to chill on beaches — or whether they now triggered visions involving rescue cans and slow-motion running — she flashed back to shooting a big “Baywatch” scene in “Pam & Tommy.”“That one is going to go down in my life as one of the craziest days,” she said, shaking her head. “There were paparazzi wading into the sea, taking pictures of me — and I’m someone that never likes to be photographed in my bikini, let alone in Pamela Anderson’s red bathing suit.”That suit is now an integral part of the 1990s cultural landscape. And if “Pam & Tommy” has achieved one thing, it’s to make us reconsider Anderson’s role in it, particularly the early part of her marriage to the Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan, who was also nominated for an Emmy), when the couple’s sex tape was stolen and found its way on the marketplace.Lee came out of the scandal fairly unscathed — rockers gonna rock — but Anderson was relentlessly mocked and vilified. “The show is about looking at our culpability as a human being, our lack of empathy,” James said. “The responsibility of how the show would be received weighed heavily on me, so I really couldn’t let it go, and I didn’t film for a long time afterwards.”“I didn’t feel able to,” she added. “I found myself still speaking in an American accent.”You can’t let yourself disappear in someone else’s life and psyche — and physical appearance — the way James did without being affected. “Pam & Tommy” may have felt like a bit of a lark on paper, but it led to some soul-searching.“It’s made me want to keep going and shoot for really challenging roles,” James said, adding, “I felt like I needed some sort of change in my career and this was it, a sort of crossroads.” More

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      ‘Aftershock’ Review: A Moving Ode to the Black Family

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      Black mothers are dying from childbirth at alarming rates. A new documentary explains why.There’s no getting around just how terribly sad it feels watching “Aftershock,” the new documentary from the directors Paula Eiselt (“93Queen”) and Tonya Lewis Lee. After all, it spotlights the tragic deaths of two Black mothers in New York City who died from childbirth-related complications — Shamony Gibson, in 2019, and Amber Isaac, in 2020 — leaving behind young children, partners, families and communities gutted by grief.But alongside the despair, there is also light in this documentary. Gibson’s partner, Omari Maynard, and her mother, Shawnee Benton Gibson, a medical social worker with a background in reproductive justice activism, had been mourning their loss for a year and a half when Maynard reached out to the newly bereaved partner of Isaac, Bruce McIntyre. The two men soon banded together with Benton Gibson and others to organize for change.Eiselt and Lee successfully put a human face on the now widely reported crisis of Black maternal deaths, which allows them to unpack the underlying factors that have led to the crisis without bogging down the narrative in a deluge of statistics. Yet scenes with the main subjects sometimes feel more staged than vérité, and the audience walks away wishing we knew them better as people.Still, the images of Maynard and McIntyre parenting their children in the midst of grief and outrage, and expressing vulnerability as well as strength, act as a powerful counternarrative to pervasive stereotypes about absentee Black fathers. “Aftershock” is a moving ode to Black families in a society where too many forces work to tear them apart.AftershockNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in July

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of July’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.)Chris Pratt as James Reece in “Terminal List.”Amazon PrimeNew to Amazon Prime‘The Terminal List’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 1Chris Pratt is the lead actor and an executive producer of “The Terminal List,” a military mystery based on a series of novels by Jack Carr. Pratt plays James Reece, a Navy SEAL whose team is wiped out on a mission under circumstances that look much more suspicious once Reece is back home and able to investigate — a task complicated by a brain injury that makes it hard for the soldier keep his memories straight. This star-studded drama also has Taylor Kitsch playing one of Reece’s buddies, Riley Keough as Reece’s wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn as a top-level bureaucrat and Constance Wu as a reporter who helps the hero understand that the people he had answered to might not have had his best interests at heart.‘Paper Girls’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 29In 1988, four adolescent girls are delivering newspapers in suburban Ohio when they inadvertently travel through time, and in the process get caught up in a long-running battle between bands of adventurers who disagree about who should be allowed to use the time-hopping technology.That is the premise of the writer Brian K. Vaughn and the artist Cliff Chiang’s Eisner-winning comic book series “Paper Girls” as well as its new television adaptation, which is filled with enough metaphysical mysteries, ’80s nostalgia and ray-gun blasts to keep most “Stranger Things” fans satisfied. The show is also a coming-of-age drama, concerned with the past, present and future of its young heroines, who during their journeys get a chance to confront the women they will become, and to think about whether their fates can — or should — be changed.Also arriving:July 8“Warriors on the Field”July 15“Don’t Make Me Go”“Forever Summer: Hamptons” Season 1“Love Accidentally” Season 1July 22“Anything’s Possible”New to AMC+‘Moonhaven’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 7Set 100 years in the future, this quirky science-fiction series takes viewers to a lunar colony where scientists and idealists have spent decades testing out ways to make an increasingly fragile Earth more habitable. Emma McDonald plays Bella, a skeptical pilot and part-time criminal who gets stuck in this weird utopia when she becomes a suspect in a murder. As Bella works alongside one of the colony’s law enforcement officers (Dominic Monaghan) to clear her name, she become embroiled in the political intrigue that is threatening to wreck this grand social experiment.Created by Peter Ocko (a veteran TV writer and producer who has worked on cult favorite shows like “Lodge 49” and “Pushing Daisies”), “Moonhaven” is the kind of drama meant to keep audiences wondering what will happen next and pondering the deeper theme of social interconnectedness.‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Part 2Starts streaming: July 11The final six episodes of this acclaimed “Breaking Bad” prequel has a lot of ground to cover, as the creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan connect all the pieces of the Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman story: from how he cemented his place as Albuquerque’s go-to attorney for drug kingpins to what became of him years later after he changed identities again and moved to Nebraska.The fates of some of the “Better Call Saul” characters are already sealed because of what happened on “Breaking Bad,” but the show’s fans have been nervous about others — and especially about what night happen to Jimmy’s good-hearted, keen-minded wife, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). Regardless of how the plot plays out, these last few chapters will offer another chance to savor one of the most artfully directed, sharply written crime dramas on TV.Also arriving:July 1“Barbarians”July 8“Last Looks”July 12“Cow”July 15“Paris, 13th District”July 22“Happening”Egerton in “Black Bird” as Jimmy Keene, a convicted drug dealer who is offered a deal to leave prison early if he can elicit a confession from another inmate.Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Black Bird’Starts streaming: July 8Based on a memoir, “Black Bird” stars Taron Egerton as James Keene, a seemingly untouchable golden boy — a former high school football hero and policeman’s son — who gets busted for drug-dealing and weapons possession, and is sentenced to 10 years in prison. Then James gets offered a deal: transfer to a rougher facility, where he can cozy up to the suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), and get the man to confess to where he buried the bodies, earning himself an early release.Produced and written by the crime novelist Dennis Lehane, this mini-series features an accomplished cast (including Greg Kinnear as a dogged detective and Ray Liotta in one of his final roles as James’s dad), telling a story about the unsettling mysteries at the heart of some criminal cases, including when the truth is in conflict with the evidence.Also arriving:July 8“Duck & Goose”July 22“Best Foot Forward”“Trying” Season 3July 29“Amber Brown”“Surface”A scene from “The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse.”Disney+New to Disney+‘The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse’Starts streaming: July 8The arrival of a new season brings another of Disney’s quarterly Mickey Mouse anthologies — the third this year, after “The Wonderful Winter of Mickey Mouse” and “The Wonderful Spring of Mickey Mouse.” This new special alters the format a bit, telling five “Rashomon”-like interconnected stories, with Mickey and his pals each explaining how and why they left a trail of destruction while recklessly speeding toward a lakeside vacation resort. As with most of the recent Mickey Mouse cartoons, the emphasis here is on colorful visual design and inventive slapstick, delivered at a frenetic pace.Also arriving:July 1“Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”July 4“America the Beautiful”July 15“Zombies 3”July 20“Siempre Fui Yo”“Tudo Igual… Só Que Não”July 27“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” Season 3“Light & Magic”Aida Osman, left, and KaMillion in “Rap Sh!t.”Alicia Vera/HBO Max New to HBO Max‘The Rehearsal’Starts streaming: July 15Fans of the deadpan comedian Nathan Fielder’s offbeat reality series “Nathan for You” should quickly catch onto the vibe of his new show “The Rehearsal.” The premise is similar: Fielder helps ordinary people with their ordinary problems by going to absurd lengths. In this case, he prepares his clients for potentially stressful or uncomfortable interactions with their friends and families by hiring actors and constructing detailed sets, so that these men and women can practice what they want to say. Because this is a Fielder project, there are a few twists along the way, all intended to jolt the viewer into noticing how awkward and artificial even the simplest human behavior can be.‘Rap Sh!t’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 21Issa Rae follows up her HBO dramedy “Insecure” with the more experimental “Rap Sh!t,” for which she is the head writer and creator, but not the star. Aida Osman plays Shawna, an aspiring rapper who makes ends meet by working at the front desk of a Miami hotel and doing favors — sometimes legal, sometimes not — for her friends.Much of the show is framed through the cellphones the characters use to text each other, to post on social media, to make snarky comments about their rivals and to communicate with the not-always-reliable men in their lives. Like “Insecure,” this new series is about how relationships and careers have changed in the modern era. But the women in ‘Rap Sh!t” are more desperate, feeling anxious to make something exciting happen in their lives before they get stuck in a working-class rut.Also arriving:July 1“Last Night in Soho”July 10“The Anarchists”July 11“Tuca & Bertie” Season 3July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”“Edge of the Earth”July 14“FBoy Island” Season 2July 21“The Last Movie Stars”July 26“Bugs Bunny Builders” Season 1July 27“We Met in Virtual Reality”July 28“Harley Quinn” Season 3“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Season 1New to Hulu‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 4Starts streaming: July 13In its brilliant third season, this hilarious mockumentary about a Staten Island vampire colony took some unexpected narrative turns, becoming more about the existential ennui and centuries-old regrets that threaten to tear these immortal bloodsuckers apart. Season 4 will resolve last year’s surprising cliffhangers, which saw the moody Nandor (Kayvan Novak) set to return to his Middle Eastern homeland, the debauched Laszlo (Matt Berry) staying in New York to look after the newly reincarnated form of his annoying colleague Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and the bossy Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) heading to London to join the Supreme Vampiric Council. Much of the humor in this show is derived from the way these very different characters play off each other, so it shouldn’t be long before their paths cross again.Also arriving:July 1“Feud” Season 1“The Princess”July 2“Asking for It”July 6“Maggie” Season 1July 7“Rehearsals” Season 1“Ultrasound”July 8“Minamata”July 9“Gold”July 10“Killing Eve” Season 4July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”July 13“Solar Opposites” Season 3July 14“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”July 18“The Cursed”July 19“Aftershock”July 21“American Horror Stories” Season 2“You Are Not My Mother”July 22“All My Friends Hate Me”July 26“Santa Evita”July 29“Hatching”“Not Okay”July 31“A Day to Die”Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper as a beleaguered, mystery-solving married couple in “The Resort.”PeacockNew to Peacock‘The Resort’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 28Fans of “The White Lotus” and “Only Murders in the Building” who are looking for another twisty, character-driven mystery in an upscale locale should check out this stylish dramedy, produced by Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”) and created by Andy Siara (the co-writer of the movie “Palm Springs”).Set at an all-inclusive Mexican beach resort, “The Resort” has Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper playing a married couple on the brink of breaking up who stumble upon evidence of an old crime. The series jumps between the events 15 years earlier, filling the viewers in on the details of what might have happened, and the present day, showing the bickering heroes rediscover what they love and loathe about each other while they work together to crack the case.Also arriving:July 1“The Bad Guys”July 5“Dateline: The Last Day” Season 1July 7“The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip” Season 2July 8“Trigger Point” Season 1July 11“Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem” Season 2July 14“Hart to Heart” Season 2July 19“Love Island” Season 4 More

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      The Wild History of the Real ‘Only Murders’ Building

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      Viewers of the Hulu series know it as the Arconia, but the Upper West Side building has a name — and a dramatic story — of its own.Fans of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building,” which returns for its second season this week, know the building at the center of the drama as the Arconia, where Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez play an unlikely trio of residents who become amateur sleuths with a podcast. But the Renaissance-style apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is actually called the Belnord, and it has been making headlines for more than a century.The creators of “Only Murders in the Building” renamed the building the Arconia for the Hulu series, which stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, above, and Selena Gomez as an unlikely trio of residents who become amateur sleuths with a podcast.Craig Blankenhorn/HuluFrom the get-go, the Belnord was a newsmaker — an edifice of excess, a home for hyperbole. When it was finished in 1909, covering a full city block at West 86th Street and Broadway, the architect boasted that it was the largest apartment building in the country, and maybe the world. Newspapers, including this one, touted the interior courtyard as the biggest in Manhattan — a half acre of open space, with a garden and a lawn “for a score of children to romp on,” crowned with a bountiful, tiered marble fountain.They marveled at its capacious rental apartments, 175 of them, each 50 feet deep, stretching from street to courtyard, with interior decoration “in the style of Louis XVI” — pale, painted paneling and “harmoniously tinted silks” on the walls — and the most up-to-date modern conveniences. The refrigerators had ice machines, so no iceman would ever invade the Belnord, as one paper put it. On the roof, each apartment had a private laundry, a low-tech luxury that included a tub, ironing board and clothesline — for the convenience of one’s maid.It would be its own city, this paper noted, with a population of more than 1,500. Over the years, there were notable tenants: Lee Strasberg, the dictatorial father of Method acting, who was often visited by his shy protégée Marilyn Monroe; Walter Matthau, when he was an up-and-coming theater actor with a young family; the actor Zero Mostel, who played Tevye in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof”; and Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize-winning author, who liked to jog around the courtyard in a three-piece suit.When the Belnord was built in 1909, its architect, H. Hobart Weekes, of Hiss & Weekes, boasted that it was the largest apartment building in the country.via The New York Public LibraryBut by the 1970s, that city was in chaos. The ornate limestone-and-terra-cotta structure was crumbling, the roof was leaking and the plumbing cracked. Ceilings were collapsing. Stalactites, The New York Times reported in 1980, had formed in the basement. The fountain had been broken for years, and the garden was a fenced-in jungle, off limits to residents.The building’s owner, Lillian Seril, would earn the dubious distinction of being one of the city’s worst landlords: By all accounts, she was both litigious and recalcitrant, refusing to fix even the simplest issues, but energetic enough to sue not only her tenants but also the landlord association that threw her out for not paying her dues. (Tenants recalled buying their own refrigerators and sneaking them in with the help of sympathetic building staff, because Mrs. Seril would not allow their broken appliances to be repaired or replaced.)The Belnord’s residents, many of whom paid just a few hundred dollars a month for their enormous, house-like apartments, organized and revolted. In 1978, they began what would be the longest rent strike in the city’s history.For the 16 years that it went on, the Belnord battle was so contentious that one housing court judge declared that the two sides deserved each other, before washing his hands of the case when a settlement he had brokered collapsed. “I’m convinced the tenants and the owner are going to litigate the building to death,” he said. A city official likened the situation to the siege of Beirut.LEFT: When the building was constructed, The New York Times touted the courtyard’s lawn as a space for “a score of children to romp on.” RIGHT: Gary Barnett, the developer who bought the building in 1994, spent $100 million restoring it and also resuscitated the fountain at enormous expense.From left: via The Belnord; Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe battle ended in 1994, when the developer Gary Barnett, who was then only 38, bought the building with a group of investors for $15 million. (As part of the deal, Mrs. Seril insisted on retaining a 3,000-square-foot rent-controlled apartment for herself — at her death, in 2004, she was paying just $450 a month.) A decade later, Mr. Barnett and his company, Extell Development, would build One57, the funnel-shaped, blue-glass skyscraper on West 57th that was the city’s first supertall tower and, in so doing, incur the ire of preservationists, urban planners and civic groups. But in those years, he was a hero. The Belnord was his first Manhattan property, and he would spend $100 million shoring it up.He made various deals with individual tenants as he attempted to turn the place into a luxury rental building, with some apartments that leased for up to $45,000 a month. For a rabbi and his family who were paying $275 for a 4,000-square-foot apartment, Mr. Barnett bought a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Then there was the penthouse dweller who hankered for the desert: He flew her to Las Vegas to pick out a house with a pool, arranged for its purchase and paid her moving expenses. Other tenants opted to keep their low rents, but agreed to swap their vast, 11-room apartments for smaller ones.Mr. Barnett once joked that the fountain he had resuscitated at enormous expense — a project that involved disassembling and carting it away for repairs — was the fountain of youth, because nobody ever seemed to die at the Belnord.“It was a labor of love to restore that building,” he said recently. “But I didn’t really understand what I was getting into. It was quite a picture.”LEFT: A detail of an iron gate that Mr. Barnett restored in the 1990s. “It was a labor of love to restore that building,” he said recently. “But I didn’t really understand what I was getting into.” RIGHT: Through the gilded B, you can see the mosaic on a vaulted entrance.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesBy 2015, Mr. Barnett was out of the picture, in a deal worth a reported $575 million.Like everything else at the Belnord, the terms of Mr. Barnett’s mortgage had been problematic, and for a time, after he stopped making the loan payments, the city classified the property as “distressed.” (The calculus of the building’s debt and its rental revenue never quite added up.) And so a new group of investors swooped in — the cast of which kept changing, as various players dropped out because of insolvency, lawsuits and other calamities — to turn the place into a high-end condominium, converting the 100 or so available apartments into showplaces with Italian kitchens sheathed in marble.Robert A.M. Stern, the architect whose firm handled the conversion, described the process as “a very high-class Botox treatment.”Prices for the revamped units ranged from about $3.6 million to more than $11 million, although some tenants bought their own apartments at deep discounts. After a rocky start, the condos are now selling briskly, keeping pace with the high-end market in the city, said Jonathan Miller, the veteran property and market appraiser.And now the Belnord is once again in the limelight, thanks to the Hulu series. John Hoffman, who created the show with Mr. Martin, was delighted and stunned to have scored the place for his production, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. While the atmospheric apartments of Mr. Martin, Mr. Short and Ms. Gomez’s characters were built on a sound stage, the story needed a building like the Belnord, with its grand appointments and panopticon of a courtyard.“I was obsessed,” Mr. Hoffman said. “I knew we could make something as elevated as that amazing building. It’s a cliché to say that the building itself is a character, but I like the challenge of getting beyond that cliché a bit. What pulls us out of our apartments to meet people? How well do you know your neighbors? Do you only connect when it’s necessary? The ways in which we get pulled together when we live in these spaces is what’s really interesting.”Debbie Marx grew up in the classic seven where she now lives — a time capsule of 1959, the year her parents moved into the building. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesOne Friday evening in early June, Debbie Marx, a Latin teacher and longtime Belnord resident, led a visitor through her unrenovated classic seven, its meandering, book-lined hallways a time capsule from 1959, the year her parents moved in. Her father, Josef Marx, was an oboist and musicologist who had his own music publishing company; her mother, Angelina, had been a ballerina. Ms. Marx moved back into her childhood apartment in the late 1980s, when she was pregnant with her first child and her mother was living there alone. Ms. Marx’s father had died in 1978, a victim, in a way, of the Belnord battle, having suffered a heart attack in the courthouse during a hearing with his fellow tenants.Ms. Marx recalled growing up in the building — playing handball in the courtyard, which was forbidden by Mrs. Seril, and slipping through the bars of the fence to the off-limits garden, by then a riot of shrubs and trees. She had her own courtyard gang, with Walter Matthau’s daughter Jenny and others, but their transgressions were mild: nicking the hat from a doorman, commandeering the service elevator, dropping the odd water bomb.“It’s like an archaeological site,” Richard Stengel said of the building. “The further you burrow down, you get a different culture and history.”Mr. Stengel, the author, journalist and former State Department official, has been a tenant since 1992, when he moved into an apartment that had been charred by a fire and left vacant for years. (If you see Mr. Stengel on MSNBC, where he is a contributor, with a deep red bookshelf behind him, he is broadcasting from his apartment at the Belnord.)John Scanlon, the wily public relations man who died in 2001, was also a ’90s-era tenant. In those days, Mr. Scanlon was embroiled in another long-running New York City real estate battle: the first Trump divorce. (He was Ivana Trump’s spokesman.)Like Mr. Stengel, Mr. Scanlon was a member of a Belnord demographic that you might call literary-and-publishing adjacent. He liked to tease Mr. Stengel, who was then the editor of Time magazine, when they collided in the courtyard: “How does it feel to be on the cutting edge of the passé?”LEFT: A Renaissance-style mosaic at the building’s entrance. The entire structure was landmarked in 1966. RIGHT: Debbie Marx and her son, Nicolas Held, in the courtyard.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesEarlier waves of tenants included Jewish European émigrés, unreconstructed Socialists and scores of psychoanalysts.“When we moved in, it had the feel of an Eastern European shtetl,” said Peter Krulewitch, a real estate investor who arrived 35 years ago with his wife, Deborah, a retired Estee Lauder executive, and soon formed what became known as the Belnord 18, one of the many splinter groups of building tenants who tried to negotiate with Mrs. Seril. “There were these wonderful aging lefties that had been there for years — and fought Mrs. Seril for years.”In many cases, those tenants had succession rights for their children. So despite the influx of condo buyers, Mr. Krulewitch said, the Belnord is a city that still — although just barely — has a population more culturally varied than the monolithic moneyed class that has taken over much of Manhattan.As Mr. Krulewitch put it, “It has been quite an adventure.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More