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    How TV Shows Are Moving Past the Coronavirus Pandemic

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    Remember the coronavirus pandemic? Some shows, faced with an unpredictable reality, prefer to put it safely in the past.“Sex and the City” always existed in a fantasy version of New York City, but in its HBO Max sequel, “And Just Like That,” there’s a different sort of illusion at work. In the opening scene, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) are waiting for a table at a very crowded, very indoor restaurant.“Remember when we legally had to stand six feet apart from one another?” Carrie quips.And just like that … Covid is over. At least it is in this show’s Manhattan, as well as in a cohort of other series that try, wishfully, to press the epidemiological fast-forward button.In the real world, the Omicron variant may be driving case counts into the stratosphere, but on TV, the pandemic is playing dead. In the Season 11 premiere of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David’s HBO comedy of ill manners, chaos breaks out during a party (specifically, a premature funeral) at Albert Brooks’s house when Larry finds a closet stuffed with Purell, toilet paper and KN95 masks, exposing the “Lost in America” director as having been a “Covid hoarder.”You know — during the pandemic. The one that is definitely over.For nearly two years now, representing (or avoiding) Covid on TV has been a choice among bad options. Most shows ignored it altogether. A few, like “Social Distance” on Netflix, made the pandemic a direct subject, earnestly if clunkily.But maybe most awkward have been the series that acknowledged Covid existed but declared or implied it was over long before Covid decided it was over. NBC’s time-skipping “This Is Us” played the pandemic’s greatest hits throughout Season 5 — quarantine, video calls, pandemic unemployment — but this week’s Season 6 premiere suggests that the show has moved on. Season 2 of HBO Max’s “Love Life,” a story that spans several years, includes one pandemic episode, then begins the next in a version of 2021 where an audience is sitting unmasked in New York’s La MaMa theater.Some prime-time series about doctors, police and other emergency workers made fitful efforts to depict Covid, but their mask discipline sagged over time. “Grey’s Anatomy,” for instance, brought the pandemic full-on to Seattle Grace hospital in fall 2020. By fall 2021, it opened with the disclaimer that it now “portrays a fictional, post-pandemic world which represents our hopes for the future.”In the most recent season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David, right, outed Albert Brooks as a “Covid hoarder.”John P. Johnson/HBOThese are all understandable choices, and maybe the only creatively practical ones. But they make for some potent cognitive dissonance. When I watched a “post-pandemic” “Grey’s” episode recently on Hulu, it opened with a pre-roll ad urging me to get a booster shot.For programs that simply try to show how people live daily life, the pandemic’s challenges are both subtler and more pervasive than those presented by past catastrophes. After 9/11, there was no need for homeland-security alerts to impinge on “Friends,” and the subsequent fixation on terrorism was even a natural driver of plot for action thrillers.The pandemic, on the other hand, quelled action. Covid touched every aspect of mundane life. Masks limited facial expression. Real-life distancing practices meant that the basic engine of sitcoms — people in a room or a bar or an office, talking — was now fraught with angst.Very occasionally, series have managed to capture this reality, as in the second and final season of HBO’s naturalistic comedy “Betty,” whose young characters skateboarded through pandemic-era New York in various states of matter-of-fact maskedness.The remake of “Scenes From a Marriage” split the difference oddly, opening with the fourth-wall-breaking image of the cast and crew working under Covid protocols, then letting its domestic dissolution play out sans masks. More often, TV has breezed past the situation, or wished it away. As long as a year ago, series were declaring early victory over Covid. NBC’s “Mr. Mayor,” which premiered last January, starred Ted Danson as the mayor of Los Angeles, a job in which managing public health is not a small detail. The pilot yada-yadas the pandemic away by having him mention that “Dolly Parton bought everyone the vaccine.” (A later episode does involve a lice outbreak.)To its credit, a series like “And Just Like That” is at least trying to acknowledge the pandemic, rather than shunt it offscreen. It just does so in the past tense.The Peloton on which Mr. Big (Chris Noth) takes his fateful last ride was a habit many other shut-ins of a certain income acquired during lockdown, which was also when he and Carrie began their evening ritual of listening to vinyl LPs. Anthony (Mario Cantone) runs a bakery, the offshoot of one more Covid-acquired sourdough hobby. And when Carrie calls Miranda out for her drinking in a recent episode, Miranda shoots back: “I am drinking too much. Yes. We all were in the pandemic, and I guess I just kept going.” Make mine a double.There’s a note of wistful, wishful thinking in all this retconning of reality — would that we could write a time jump into our own scripts! But there’s also the simple matter of timing. TV generally works on a faster schedule than movies or books, but it’s not instantaneous (and shooting during Covid tends to take longer).So TV creators — suddenly conscripted, like educators and restaurant managers, into making public-health decisions they never expected to be part of the job description — have been left to guess at Covid’s future like a hapless pop culture C.D.C.In some cases, what’s onscreen now is a time capsule from the heady early days of vaccine optimism. The post-Covid “Curb” season wrapped production a few mutations ago, in May, when the virus seemed to be fizzling into oblivion. (The executive producer Jeff Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter that the season takes place “Right now, if everyone had the brains to get vaccinated.”) A “comfy chic” challenge in the newest “Project Runway” season, produced in spring, had contestants adapt “those awful couch clothes that we’ve all been living in for over a year,” presumably for a post-Covid future.This week’s season premiere of “This Is Us” suggests that the show has moved past the pandemic.Ron Batzdorff/NBC“South Park,” which released a two-movie “Post Covid” special on Paramount+ in November and December, has one of the quickest turnaround times in TV — the first installment was released just as Omicron was discovered and the second worked in a reference to the variant. But it put the “post” in its “Post Covid” premise by using time travel and alternate reality to depict a future in which humanity had — well, almost — beaten the virus. (Maybe the most far-fetched twist is its resolution, in which, with the series’s frustrating both-sidesing, vaxxers and antivaxxers shower each other with apologies for getting so worked up during the plague years.)Still, it’s striking that TV, whose strength is the ability to stay on top of the moment, has generally worked so hard to avoid the biggest thing to happen to its collective audience in the past two years. You could easily imagine face masks becoming a staple, even a cliché, of period dramas some day — a visual shorthand for “the turbulent days of 2020” the way a shot of the corner of Haight and Ashbury says “the ’60s” — even as future rerun-watchers puzzle at why they’re nowhere to be found in the TV of our own time.Maybe it’s only fitting that TV producers should muddle through this garbage storm like everyone else, unsure what the rules will be by airtime, wishing they knew where the pandemic fell on the spectrum between temporary emergency and permanent way of life. And I’m sure plenty of viewers would rather be reminded of anything else.But you’re reminded anyway, if only by the twinge of uncanniness from seeing TV characters act as if the pandemic were history, even as you’re still trying to get your hands on rapid antigen tests. I bet Albert Brooks has a ton of them. More

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      ‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom Royalty

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom RoyaltyRobert Carlock, Tina Fey and Ted Danson join forces for a show about a businessman who finds himself running a city.Ted Danson, left, and Bobby Moynihan in “Mr. Mayor,” a new NBC sitcom created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey.Credit…Mitchell Haddad/NBCJan. 6, 2021“Mr. Mayor” has good sitcom DNA: Robert Carlock and Tina Fey of “30 Rock” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” on the writing and producing side; Ted Danson, most recently of “The Good Place” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” onscreen. What could go wrong?Yet something did, at least on the basis of the new NBC comedy’s first two episodes, which premiere on Thursday. That’s a very small sample, but it’s what we have, and it’s a jarringly flat 42 minutes of television.No blame goes to Danson, who strides through the role of Neil Bremer, the newly elected and largely unqualified mayor of Los Angeles, with his typical aplomb. Bremer has the charismatic lunkheadedness and chummy-needy temperament Danson has brought to characters from Michael, the afterlife architect of “The Good Place,” all the way back to Sam Malone in “Cheers.”There are moments when Danson reacts to a laugh line from one of Bremer’s aides — a pair of slick, young, neurotically woke apparatchiks (Vella Lovell and Mike Cabellon) and a rumpled white guy (Bobby Moynihan of “Saturday Night Live”) who is given to outsmarting them — with a blank stare. It’s because Bremer, played by the 73-year-old Danson, doesn’t get it. But in your head you may hear Danson, along with the rest of us, asking: “Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?”So far, the show is full of lines that are meant to be funny, in a joke-adjacent kind of way, but don’t quite hit — they have the shape of humor but not the force. Most of these are predicated on a continual but uneasy satire of the current climate of political correctness; “Mr. Mayor” takes on cancel culture as one of its main subjects, and perhaps it does it as directly as you can on prime-time network TV, but the overall effect is of writers boldly tiptoeing.It starts to feel like a receiving line: We meet the pronoun joke (“The look in his eyes — their eyes — a lot of different eyes”); the me-too joke (“If you believe in something, don’t give up, don’t take no for answer, except for with sex, that’s different”); the cleverly inverted race joke (“You need to learn how to listen, whitey.” “Whitey?” “Your hair”).Bremer himself has some Trumpian characteristics. He’s a businessman — a billboard tycoon — with a Brobdingnagian mansion and a golf habit. His chief of staff, horrified at her role in actually getting him elected, moans, “I got him that toy phone and told him he was tweeting on it.” (There’s also a dig at a blue-city politician, when Bremer commits the gaffe of rolling up his pizza slice, inviting de Blasio-style ridicule.)But Bremer isn’t soulless or venal or particularly Machiavellian, in the mode of Alec Baldwin’s TV executive on “30 Rock.” He’s more of an earnest blunderer who ran for mayor to make his daughter (Kyla Kenedy) think he was cool.And that’s not the only note of sentimentality in “Mr. Mayor” — there’s an “aww” vibe to the father-daughter relationship and to Bremer’s jousting with a political rival, a progressive hardcase played by Holly Hunter. Beneath the carapace of political humor there appears to be a pretty ordinary family-and-workplace sitcom developing here. No one in “Mr. Mayor” is as eccentric or as outsize as characters like Liz and Jack in “30 Rock” or Kimmy Schmidt, and the result — perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps not — is that no one is as sympathetic or as moving, either.Maybe it had something to do with the New York settings, or the obvious enjoyment they took in savaging the TV business in “30 Rock.” But Carlock and Fey’s earlier shows had an energy, and a storybook quality, that isn’t there yet in “Mr. Mayor.” You feel it every time a music cue doesn’t make you smile the way they did in “30 Rock.”There’s some of the old offhand joy in scenes involving Bremer’s daughter, who’s running for office at her high school. Her argument that legalizing marijuana is anti-progressive because it hurts marginalized drug-peddling communities like “the poor, surfers and DJ’s with crushing DJ-school debt” is one of the better lines, and when her proud mic drop at the end of a campaign speech results in incapacitating feedback, it’s a minor but genuinely funny touch.They’re just grace notes, but they remind us that until now, Carlock and Fey’s genius has been for making stories entirely out of grace notes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Mr. Mayor’ and ‘Tiger’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat’s on TV This Week: ‘Mr. Mayor’ and ‘Tiger’Ted Danson plays a Los Angeles mayor in a new NBC sitcom. And HBO debuts the first part of a documentary about Tiger Woods.Ted Danson, left, and Bobby Moynihan in “Mr. Mayor.”Credit…Mitchell Haddad/NBCJan. 4, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ETBetween network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 4-9. Details and times are subject to change.Monday30 COINS 9 p.m. on HBO. The Spanish filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia has blended the humorous and the horrific in movies like “Witching & Bitching” and “The Last Circus.” His latest project, the TV series “30 Coins,” is pure horror. It follows an exorcist (Eduard Fernández) who is sent by the church to serve as a priest in a remote Spanish village. He soon discovers that the town is a petri dish for the paranormal.TuesdayGORDON RAMSAY’S AMERICAN ROAD TRIP 8 p.m. on Fox. Gordon Ramsay, the acerbic celebrity-chef host of “Hell’s Kitchen,” doesn’t seem like the type to ask for directions. Luckily, the road trip he takes in this new special isn’t really about driving. “American Road Trip” finds Ramsay and two of his famous chef friends, Fred Sirieix and Gino D’Acampo, traveling North America by R.V. They guzzle gas and have gastronomic conversations over local delicacies.WednesdayRandy Jackson and Jane Krakowski in “Name That Tune.”Credit…Michael Becker/FoxNAME THAT TUNE 9 p.m. on Fox. “Name That Tune,” a competition show created in the early 1950s and rebooted in the ’70s and ’80s, challenged contestants to identify songs played by musicians onstage — sometimes using only a few notes. This reboot of the series, hosted by the actress Jane Krakowski (“30 Rock”) with a band led by Randy Jackson, is an opportunity to grill competitors on the decades of music that have been released since the show was last produced.DEATH ON THE NILE (1978) 8 p.m. on TCM. Kenneth Branagh’s new adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery novel “Death on the Nile” was slated hit theaters this holiday season. It was delayed, so we’ll have to wait to find out how it compares to the 1978 adaptation, whose cast included Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Angela Lansbury. Branagh should hope his version compares favorably to the ’70s adaptation: In a review for The New York Times, Hilton Kramer called it “a big expensive, star‐studded bore.”ThursdayMR. MAYOR 8 p.m. on NBC. A year after “The Good Place” wrapped up, Ted Danson returns to the NBC sitcom realm in “Mr. Mayor,” a comedy series created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Danson plays Neil Bremer, a businessman who runs for mayor of Los Angeles. When he wins, he has to juggle the demands of his job (Holly Hunter and Bobby Moynihan play members of his staff) while navigating a sometimes strained relationship with his teenage daughter (Kyla Kenedy).FridayThe documentary filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz looks at attempts by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to undermine the press.Credit…PBS/FrontlineFRONTLINE: A THOUSAND CUTS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The documentary filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz (“Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey”) looks at attempts by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to devalue the press. To do that, Diaz follows efforts by the journalist Maria Ressa (who founded the news site Rappler) to cover the abuses of Duterte’s presidency — an undertaking that puts Ressa and her fellow journalists in danger. The result is “absorbing and multipronged,” and “a kaleidoscopic dissection of how information courses through the country,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The New York Times. “It illustrates social media’s capacity to deceive and to entrench political power.”SaturdayTHE KING OF STATEN ISLAND (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. The “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson filters his own back story through Judd Apatow’s lens in this comedy-drama. Davidson plays Scott, a couch-bound 24-year-old who lives with his mother, Margie (Marisa Tomei), on Staten Island. Scott’s father, a firefighter, has been dead for over a decade and a half — a loss that Scott is still grappling with. (Davidson’s own father, who was a firefighter, died responding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) Scott is forced to reckon with his father’s death and his own mental health after Margie takes up with a new boyfriend (played by Bill Burr).SundayTiger Woods in 2020. A two-part documentary about him, “Tiger,” debuts on HBO on Jan. 10.Credit…Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTIGER 9 p.m. on HBO. Tiger Woods’s career is famously full of peaks and valleys, so it makes sense that this HBO documentary about him runs three hours. Interviewees include Woods’s former caddie Steve Williams and other golf figures like the English player Nick Faldo. The first part debuts Sunday night; the second airs Jan. 17. The Times critic Mike Hale predicted that the documentary will be compared to ESPN’s 2020 hit “The Last Dance,” about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, but that “Woods’s story is more tragic and more complicated.”THE CIRCUS 8 p.m. on Showtime. When this political documentary series debuted in 2016, it offered a behind-the-scenes look at presidential campaigns. James Poniewozik, in a review for The Times, likened it to a reality show: The series, he wrote, is “a document and an example of the superficiality of today’s elections.” Its fifth season, which covered the 2020 election cycle, ended in November; the sixth season debuts Sunday, in the wake of the Georgia Senate runoffs.ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). If you’re looking for an escape, skip “The Circus” and instead spend your Sunday evening with actual animals — including prim dogs and horses — in this new TV adaptation of the James Herriot book “If Only They Could Talk.” The show follows a trio of veterinarians working in rural England in the 1930s.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More