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      Ken Bode, Erudite ‘Washington Week’ Host on PBS, Dies at 83

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      Beginning in 1994, he brought to the moderator’s role credentials as a political activist, an academic and a national correspondent for NBC News.Ken Bode, a bearded, bearish former political operative and television correspondent who, armed with a Ph.D. in politics, moderated the popular PBS program “Washington Week in Review” in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 83.His death, in a care center, was confirmed by his daughters, Matilda and Josie Bode, who said the cause had not been identified.Beginning in 1994, Mr. Bode (pronounced BO-dee) coupled congeniality and knowledgeability in steering a Friday night discussion among a rotating panel of reporters about the issues of the day coming out of Washington. His role, as he saw it, was to “bring in people who are really covering the news to empty their notebooks and provide perspective, not to argue with each other,” he told The Washington Post in 1999.As host of the program, now called “Washington Week,” he succeeded Paul Duke, who had helmed that roundtable of polite talking heads for two decades, and preceded Gwen Ifill, a former NBC News correspondent who died in 2016 at 61. The program, which debuted in 1967, is billed as TV’s longest-running prime time news and public affairs program. The current host is Yamiche Alcindor.The program’s loyal and generally older viewers were so brass-bound in the 1990s that when Mr. Bode took over, even his beard proved controversial. He proceeded to introduce videotaped segments and remote interviews with correspondents and bring more diversity to his panel of reporters.He also took more liberties with language than his predecessor.Mr. Bode moderating an episode of “Washington Week in Review.” He hosted the program from 1994 to 1999 while teaching politics at DePauw University in Indiana. PBSEnding an interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post about President Bill Clinton’s economic policies, Mr. Bode quoted a British newspaper’s snarky prediction that the president’s impending visit to Oxford, England, would present people with an opportunity to “focus on one of the president’s less well-publicized organs: his brain.” He described a vacancy on the Supreme Court as constituting “one-ninth of one-third of the government.”Still, Dalton Delan, then the newly-minted executive vice president of WETA in Washington, which continues to produce the program, wanted to invigorate the format. He proposed including college journalists, surprise guests and people-on-the-street interviews and replacing Mr. Bode with Ms. Ifill (she said she initially turned down the offer) — changes that prompted Mr. Bode to jump, or to be not so gently pushed, from the host’s chair in 1999.Kenneth Adlam Bode was born on March 30, 1939, in Chicago and raised in Hawarden, Iowa. His father, George, owned a dairy farm and then a dry cleaning business. His mother, June (Adlam) Bode, kept the books.Mr. Bode in his office in 1972, when he was involved in Democratic politics.George Tames/The New York TimesThe first member of his family to attend college, Mr. Bode majored in philosophy and government at the University of South Dakota, graduating in 1961. He went on to earn a doctorate in political science at the University of North Carolina, where he was active in the civil rights movement.He taught briefly at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton, and then gravitated toward liberal politics.In 1968, Mr. Bode worked in the presidential campaigns of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George S. McGovern. He became research director for a Democratic Party commission, led by Mr. McGovern and Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, that advocated for reforms in the selection process for delegates to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. He later headed a liberal-leaning organization called the Center for Political Reform.His marriage to Linda Yarrow ended in divorce. In 1975, he married Margo Hauff, a high school social studies teacher who wrote and designed educational materials for learning-disabled children. He is survived by her, in addition to their daughters, as well as by a brother and two grandsons.After working in politics, Mr. Bode began writing for The New Republic in the early 1970s and became its politics editor. He moved to NBC News in 1979, encouraged by the network’s newsman Tom Brokaw, a friend from college, and eventually became the network’s national political correspondent. In that role he hosted “Bode’s Journal,” a weekly segment of the “Today” show, on which he explored, among other issues, voting rights violations, racial discrimination and patronage abuses, as his longtime producer Jim Connor recalled in an interview.Mr. Bode left the network a decade later to teach at DePauw University in Indiana, where he founded the Center for Contemporary Media. While at DePauw, from 1989 to 1998, he commuted to Washington to host “Washington Week in Review” and wrote an Emmy-winning CNN documentary, “The Public Mind of George Bush” (1992).Beginning in 1998, he was dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for three years and remained a professor there until 2004.Mr. Bode said he retired from broadcast journalism for family reasons. “I was raising my kids from 100 airports a year,” he said. As he told The New York Times in 1999, “I knew then that my problem was, I’ve got the best job, but I’ve also got one chance to be a father, and I’m losing it.” More

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      in Music

      ‘American Song Contest’ Puts a Stateside Spin on Eurovision

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      Stars vs. hopefuls. State vs. state. Eurovision fans will recognize the format of NBC’s new original song competition. For everyone else, here’s a primer.Hosted by Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg, the eight-week reality competition “American Song Contest,” scheduled to premiere Monday on NBC, is totally new.Its format, however, will be familiar to millions of people across the Atlantic: The show emulates the Eurovision Song Contest, in which countries duke it out in a singing battle for pop supremacy. Eurovision catapulted ABBA’s career in 1974, and the most recent winner, the Italian glam-rock band Maneskin, has gone on to achieve global fame, appearing in January as the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”ABBA’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1974 catapulted the group into international stardom. Robert Dear/Associated PressThe American version will largely follow the Eurovision template, including the live broadcasts. “We are very literal,” the executive producer Ben Silverman, who helped translate “The Office” into American and pursued the Eurovision rights for years, said last week by phone.Fine, but that does not help NBC viewers much since Americans are largely unaware of Eurovision’s intricacies. The headline? “American Song Contest” is not “American Idol” or “The Voice.” It is, in many ways, more layered than those shows — and more combustible: a state-vs.-state, stars-vs.-hopefuls showdown in which group and solo artists compete for the title of Best Original Song.So those are the basics. But in this time of Red State/Blue State polarization, can America handle Jewel (Alaska) squaring off against Michael Bolton (Connecticut)? Sisqó (Maryland) against … Jake’O (Wisconsin)? Let’s dive into the fun stuff.Where are the contestants from?With 56 entries encompassing 50 states plus five territories and the District of Columbia, “American Song Contest” has even more contestants than Eurovision, whose 2022 edition, in May, will feature 40 countries ranging from tiny San Marino (pop. around 34,000) to the much larger Germany (83 million). The scope is similar here: Sabyu, from the Northern Mariana Islands (pop. 47,000), will rub elbows with Sweet Taboo, representing California (nearly 40 million people).Whereas each European country independently selects its entry, the American show’s team relied on a network of music-industry insiders. “We went through the professional community to spread the news; we spent a lot of time having conversations, making sure people really understood what this was,” the executive producer and showrunner Audrey Morrissey (a veteran of “The Voice”) said by phone. “We had a big submission process that lasted for months, with several rounds of review.”Will I know any of the songs?No, because they have to be new. Contestants don’t have to write their own material, though — this is not a singer-songwriter contest.A key criterion is that the songs cannot be longer than 2 minutes 45 seconds, which is shorter than Eurovision’s three minutes. “It’s right to the point, pow!” said Christer Björkman, one of four Swedish Eurovision experts brought in as executive producers and a former Eurovision competitor, from 1992. “The contestants really need to nail it from the beginning with energy and everything.”Wait, what are Jewel and Michael Bolton doing there?“All those people wanted to be on the show,” Silverman said of the American celebrities. “They wanted to represent their state. And they earned it with their songs,” he added, pointing out that it will be fun to watch famous people go head-to-head with up-and-comers like the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Enisa, who represents New York. Once again this is true to the Eurovision format.The singer-songwriter Jewel will represent her home state of Alaska.Duane Prokop/Getty Images Michael Bolton will represent Connecticut.Phillip Faraone/Getty ImagesCelebrities and hopefuls alike must have a strong connection to their state or territory. Bolton, for example, was born and has spent most of his life in Connecticut; Jewel grew up in famously tough conditions in Alaska. And if Oklahoma is represented by a K-pop singer, AleXa, well, that’s because she is from there.“It is different to say, ‘I’m not here to get a record contract or become a star — I’m here to represent my home and I’m proud to do that,’” said Anders Lenhoff, another member of the Swedish special-ops executive producing team, in a joint video interview with Björkman. “We see it in Eurovision all the time but there are no shows like that in the U.S.”How does the elimination process work?The first five episodes, referred to as “qualifiers,” introduce 11 of the songs per show (one busy week will have 12). Through those early rounds, the 56 entries will be progressively winnowed down to 22, which are then split into two semifinals of 11 each. Another vote sends five performers from each semi to the grand finale, on May 9.Viewers will be invited to vote, and the results will be balanced against the votes of a 56-person jury representing all the participating constituencies. Jurors are not permitted to vote for their own states or territories.Do bigger states have an advantage?“The great thing about this format,” Morrissey said, “which we remained faithful to from Eurovision, is that there is no advantage for an artist and a song coming from a more populous state.” Eliminations are made based on a complex points system in which, according to NBC, “every state and territory votes with equal power, regardless of population.”Anyway, as Morrissey noted, “There might be more people voting that know people from Texas than they do Guam, but they haven’t heard that song from Guam yet — it might steal their hearts.”In addition to the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories have also put forth competitors, including Jason J., who represents Guam.NBCThe history of Eurovision (where, admittedly, the voting rules have changed many times over the years) tends to confirm that the votes seem relatively fair: Ireland has won the contest a record seven times whereas France, with roughly 13 times Ireland’s population, has only five.Which is to say: Don’t yet rule out Wyoming.Will there be outlandish contestants?Eurovision is famous for some, er, eccentric entries — this year’s competition will include such numbers as “Give That Wolf a Banana” and “Eat Your Salad,” which live up to their titles. It is natural to wonder whether “American Song Contest” will honor that tradition as well. “We have the diversity of America and the diversity of American music represented,” Silverman said. “One person’s cliché is another person’s truth. Some of them are self-aware, some of them aren’t.”We’ll take that as a yes. More

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      in Movies

      Farrah Forke, Who Played a Helicopter Pilot on ‘Wings,’ Dies at 54

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      Forke, the namesake of a not-yet-famous family friend named Farrah Fawcett, played Alex Lambert on three seasons of the popular sitcom, a fixture of the NBC schedule in the 1990s.Farrah Forke, the actress who catapulted to fame playing a helicopter pilot on the NBC sitcom “Wings,” died at her home in Texas on Friday. She was 54.Her death was confirmed by her mother, Beverly Talmage, who said in a statement that her daughter had had cancer for several years.Forke played the alluring pilot Alex Lambert on three seasons of “Wings,” which aired from 1990 to 1997 and followed the adventures of the offbeat characters at a small airport on Nantucket.Her character’s affections were battled over by Joe and Brian Hackett (Tim Daly and Steven Weber), brothers who ran a one-plane airline.On Instagram, Weber described Forke as “every bit as tough, fun, beautiful and grounded as her character ‘Alex’ on Wings.”Farrah Rachael Forke was born on Jan. 12, 1968, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to Chuck Forke and Beverly (Mendleski) Forke. She was named after Farrah Fawcett, a family friend who wasn’t a well-known actress at the time Forke was born.“They just liked the name,” Forke told The Dallas Morning News in 1993.Forke began her acting career with a role in a Texas production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” In 1989, she moved to New York, where she studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute in Manhattan.Her acting career took off when she joined “Wings” as the smart and saucy Alex.“I don’t mind playing pretty women,” Forke told The Dallas Morning News. “But I do mind playing bimbos. Alex is definitely a sexy woman. But she’s also focused, and there’s a lot of qualities about her that people will admire.”The show, which was created by the “Cheers” and “Frasier” writers David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee, ran for 172 episodes and was a mainstay of the NBC schedule for years. The show also starred Crystal Bernard, Tony Shalhoub and Thomas Haden Church.From 1994 to 1995, Forke had a recurring role as the lawyer Mayson Drake on “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” on ABC.Her other television acting roles included “Dweebs,” “Mr. Rhodes” and “Party of Five.” After making her film debut in “Brain Twisters” in 1991, she appeared in “Disclosure” (1994), directed by Barry Levinson, and “Heat” (1995), directed by Michael Mann.Later in her career, she supplied the voice of Big Barda on the DC Animated Universe television series “Batman Beyond” and “Justice League Unlimited.”Forke had health problems related to leakage from her silicone breast implants, which she had implanted in 1989. She had them removed in 1993 and then filed a lawsuit a year later against the manufacturer and her doctor for damages, noting that neither the implant makers nor her doctor properly warned her of possible complications, according to The Associated Press.In addition to her mother, Forke is survived by her twin sons, Chuck and Wit Forke; her stepfather, Chuck Talmage; and three sisters, Paige Inglis, Jennifer Sailor and Maggie Talmage.Kirsten Noyes More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches’ and Awards Shows

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      A new documentary about Frederick Douglass debuts on HBO. And both the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards air this weekend.Between 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, Feb. 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE ENDGAME 10 p.m. on NBC. An F.B.I. agent (Ryan Michelle Bathe) and a mysterious criminal mastermind (Morena Baccarin) fight to one-up each other materially and verbally in this new thriller series. The plot revolves around a series of major bank robberies in New York City. Expect fireworks: The “Fast and Furious” director Justin Lin is an executive producer of the show and directed Monday night’s debut episode.TuesdayFANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA: AN AMERICA REFRAMED SPECIAL 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This feature-length documentary special looks at the influential civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. The program shows Hamer’s legacy as an advocate for voting and women’s rights and explains how she went from working as a sharecropper in Mississippi to organizing grass-roots campaigns.WednesdayFREDERICK DOUGLASS: IN FIVE SPEECHES (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. David W. Blight’s Pulitzer-winning 2018 book, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” is the foundation of this new documentary, which includes commentary by Blight and the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. that speaks to the abolitionist’s crucial place in American history. But the documentary also takes advantage of its own medium, emphasizing the power of Douglass’s words: It features five actors — Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Beharie, Colman Domingo, Jonathan Majors and Denzel Whitaker — performing words from five Douglass speeches from several different decades. A sixth actor, André Holland, narrates.ThursdayAIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2013) 5:15 p.m. on Showtime 2. The filmmaker David Lowery had proven himself a skilled maker of moody dramas by last year, when he released the Arthurian romance “The Green Knight.” Lowery’s reputation is due in part to this somber quasi western. In it, Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play Bob and Ruth, a couple that gets involved in a shootout. The fight leaves one man dead and a sheriff’s deputy (Ben Foster) injured. Bob goes to prison, and Ruth gives birth to their daughter. Later, Bob escapes and journeys back to Ruth. But he’s wanted, and things get complicated.FridayDaniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith in “Queen & Slim.”Universal PicturesQUEEN & SLIM (2019) 7:35 p.m. and 10:20 p.m. on FXM. Both the outlaw romance “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” (above) and Melina Matsoukas’s “Queen & Slim” feature couples whose lives are transformed, quickly, by violence. The story of Queen and Slim (played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya) opens with an awkward first date that leads into a deadly encounter with an aggressive white police officer (Sturgill Simpson). They become fugitives on the run, and “Queen & Slim” turns into a road movie and a love story. What lingers, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “are strains of anger, ardor, sorrow and sweetness, and the quiet astonishment of witnessing the birth of a legend.”SaturdayRyan Reynolds and Jodie Comer in “Free Guy.”20th Century StudiosFREE GUY (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. This action comedy was a pandemic-era box-office success story. Now it can be a watch-from-home Saturday night diversion. A sugary sci-fi romp with notes of “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix” (but filtered through the director of “Night at the Museum”), “Free Guy” casts Ryan Reynolds as Guy, an Everyman who learns that he’s a side character in a video game. When he meets a player named Millie (Jodie Comer), Guy is drawn into a mission to stop the C.E.O. of the studio that created the game (Taika Waititi) from enacting evil deeds. The movie is “perky though predictable,” Maya Phillips wrote in her review for The Times.53RD ANNUAL N.A.A.C.P. IMAGE AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET. One of the joys of the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual Image Awards show is that it allows for some matchups that you don’t see at the Oscars, Emmys or Grammys. The ceremony recognizes movies, TV shows and music. Some of the categories in this year’s edition are fairly typical: Halle Berry, Andra Day, Jennifer Hudson, Tessa Thompson and Zendaya are all up for the best actress in a film award, while “Encanto,” “Luca, “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Sing 2” and “Vivo” will compete for best animated movie. But other categories break genre boundaries: The nominees for entertainer of the year are Jennifer Hudson, Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Regina King and Tiffany Haddish.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Sam Waterston Is Still the Face of ‘Law & Order’

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      The actor originally signed on for only one season as Jack McCoy but became synonymous with the series, which returns Feb. 24. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” he said.“Law & Order” premiered on NBC in 1990. A procedural that was really two procedurals conjoined, the first half of each episode focused on the investigation of a crime, the second on the prosecution of the accused. Among the original cast members was Michael Moriarty, who played an assistant district attorney. During the fourth season, under clouded circumstances, Moriarty left.As Dick Wolf, who created “Law & Order,” tells it, Warren Littlefield, NBC’s president, questioned whether the show could continue. Wolf thought that it could. “I’ve got two words for you,” he says he told Littlefield. Those words? “Sam Waterston.”Waterston, who had just wrapped the NBC civil rights drama “I’ll Fly Away,” hadn’t been looking for a procedural. Having begun his career as a classical actor, he never really expected to work in television. Still, he agreed — in the short-term, anyway — signing a one-year contract in 1994 to play the principled assistant district attorney Jack McCoy.“I didn’t think I’d be there long,” Waterston recently told me. He stayed for 16 seasons. In those years, “Law & Order” became a cultural touchstone and an extensive franchise (back before seemingly every procedural franchised). Waterston — as his hair silvered and his face cragged — remained its dependable face.When NBC canceled the show, in 2010 — its ratings by then less than half of its early ’00s peak — he went back to classical theater and took prominent roles in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO media drama, “The Newsroom,” and in the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin Netflix comedy “Grace and Frankie.” He made a few movies. And then in a twist that even a late-season “Law & Order” writers room might have considered too much, “Law & Order” suddenly returned after a decade away, with Waterston’s McCoy along for the prosecutorial ride.Waterston, center, as District Attorney Jack McCoy, is joined by series newcomers Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi as assistant D.A.s.NBCThe first episode will premiere on Feb. 24 on NBC (and available to stream the following day on Peacock and Hulu). And on March 3, Hulu will debut “The Dropout,” a limited series based on the Theranos scandal, in which Waterston plays the former Secretary of State George Shultz. The seventh and final season of “Grace and Frankie” arrives in April, which means that Waterston will have three shows on simultaneously, showcasing his talents for drama, sophisticated impersonation and light comedy.“This is a really sweet time,” he said, as he tidily sipped a bowl of chicken soup. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things.” His motto, he told me, is a lyric from the musical “A Chorus Line” about an actor’s desire to do it all: “I can do that! I can do that!” Now he has.This was on a recent weekday afternoon. The forecast had predicted rain — correctly. But Waterston, 81, had still insisted on meeting in Central Park, armed against the wintry mix in a broad-brimmed hat, a leather jacket and an umbrella that he mostly left furled. He had brought me and a photographer to the Delacorte Theater, the longtime home of Shakespeare in the Park and the site of his early career triumphs: Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing,” the Duke in “Measure for Measure,” Hamlet in “Hamlet.”“His love of that place, you could feel it very tangibly,” Michael Greif, who directed him there in “The Tempest,” told me. It was true. Waterston strode around stage — cheeks reddening, eyes crinkling — like it was summer already, seeming to see not the slush but the work he had done over the past 60 years.“The Delacorte just got the green light to be completely rebuilt,” he said in a nearby Italian restaurant, where we had retreated, damply. “It’s simply too great.”Waterston began his career on the stage but soon branched into television and film, taking on drama and comedy. “I’ve always wanted to prove that I can do all kinds of things,” he said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesCentral Park’s Delacorte Theater, the home of Shakespeare in the Park, was the site of early career triumphs like the Duke in “Measure for Measure” and Hamlet in “Hamlet.”Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesWaterston — plain-spoken, twinkly, wistful — has never needed much in the way of renovation, though he has reinvented himself as an actor several times over. His trip to the Delacorte suggested a man trying to trace a through-line in a hectic career.“What’s cool about this age is that you can look back at all that and appreciate that it actually was worth doing,” he said.Precocious, he started early, playing a small part in a play directed by his father, who taught at a preparatory school in northwest Massachusetts. At Yale, he continued acting; he can still recall a magical night in which he played Lucky in “Waiting for Godot” and felt that he and the audience “were in this kind of incredible bubble of communication and understanding of each other.” (This was after the Yale Daily News had argued he was too smart for the part, Waterston recalled.)He couldn’t imagine a career in show business — “a crazy business,” he called it. At Yale, he studied more sensible subjects like French and history. He spent a year at the Sorbonne. But somehow he couldn’t stop himself.“It’s endless fun,” he said. “When you compare it to other kinds of work, why would you want to do anything else?”At first the roles that came to him were mostly comic, owing perhaps to his gangling figure and pilgrim looks — long face, sharp nose, superb eyebrows. He looks a lot like a handsome Abraham Lincoln. Waterston disputes the “handsome” part.Dramatic roles came a few years later. Then there were movies, then television, where he often played parts based on real people — Lincoln and others. (“People knew by then that I like to do Shakespeare. And if I liked to do Shakespeare, I must be serious,” he said.) Even as he angled to show his range, some constants remained, like a keen interest in characters in the midst of a moral quandary and a flair for the theatrical leavened by a natural gravitas.Over 20 seasons, the “Law & Order” format was far more enduring than the show’s cast. From left, Benjamin Bratt, Jerry Orbach, Waterston and Jill Hennessy in 1996.Jessica Burstein/NBC“For all his training, he has this incredible ability to be quiet onscreen,” said Elizabeth Meriwether, the showrunner of “The Dropout.” “You can tell he’s thinking onscreen, which is really rare.”And no matter the role, he seemed like a man you could trust. Stephen Colbert at one point introduced him as “the most reasonable seeming man in America.”“Law & Order” came around just as he was worrying how we would pay for four college educations. (He has one child, the actor James Waterston, with his first wife, Barbara Rutledge Johns; and three children, the actresses Elizabeth Waterston and Katherine Waterston and the filmmaker Graham Waterston, with his current wife, Lynn Louisa Woodruff.) The salary was decent and the show filmed in New York City, not too far from his Connecticut farmhouse.“It was just exactly the right moment,” he said. “And it kept me out of trouble. Kept me from doing really dumb stuff.”What dumb stuff, exactly?“Well, who knows what the dumb stuff would have been,” he said. “But we all know that there’s a lot of dumb stuff.”Of course, “Law & Order” did more than preclude Waterston’s midlife crisis. Popular, influential and respectful of its audience, it made stars of many of its cast members. Even its scene break sound effect — the gavel-like “dun-dun” — became famous.Within a decade, it had birthed a litter of spinoffs, including one show, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” that went on to displace “Gunsmoke” as the longest running television drama ever. (If there’s one thing America loves more than crime, it seems, it’s sex crime.) It helped to reestablish New York City as a viable hub for scripted series, drawing on its deep bench of theater actors. Everyone who’s anyone can list at least one “Law & Order” credit in a Playbill bio.The two-part format of “Law & Order,” which Wolf has described as a murder mystery followed by a moral mystery, proved indestructible. Every member of the original cast departed and still “Law & Order” kept going. (Even after cancellation, the original never really left. On TNT, it runs and runs in syndication.) Still, certain characters — Waterston’s McCoy, Jerry Orbach’s Lennie Briscoe (12 seasons), S. Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren (17 seasons) — became metonyms for the show itself: hardworking, upstanding, bent on justice.The format depends on fixed structures and rhythms. In the early seasons, McCoy had similar scenes in nearly every episode: cross-examinations, in-chambers meeting, closing arguments. That could have made for repetitiveness, but in Waterston’s hands, the formula rarely felt formulaic.“He makes the role and the words unendingly interesting,” Wolf told me in an all-caps email. “That takes a level of skill and humanism that not many people possess.”After 12 seasons, the pace had worn him down, and he was happy enough, in 2007, to move into the less demanding role of district attorney, leaving the trial scenes to younger actors. Sometimes, during those late seasons, Waterston regretted not leaving altogether. “I wondered if I had stayed too long at the fair,” he said. Then the show did the leaving for him.Yet, when “Law & Order” came back, so did Waterston — partly as a courtesy to Wolf, partly as a kind of victory lap. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” Waterston said. Walking through the rebuilt sets, now housed in Long Island City, felt like a waking dream, he said. (Still, as in the ’90s, he has signed only a one-year contract.)Anthony Anderson, a veteran of earlier seasons, has also returned, but otherwise the co-stars — including Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi as the assistant district attorneys — are all new. Halevi grew up watching Waterston; she used to pretend she was “the female McCoy,” she wrote in an email. When she arrived on set — excited, nervous, occasionally forgetting her lines — he reminded her that they were there to have fun.Waterston has reinvented himself as an actor several times over a 60-year career. “What’s cool about this age is that you can look back at all that and appreciate that it actually was worth doing,” he said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesFor Waterston, a lot of the fun has been in that moral mystery Wolf described, in the ways in which each episode’s crime connects to a pertinent social issue. “We’ve done three shows now,” Waterston told me happily as he finished his soup. “Every one of them is about something that’s tearing this place apart. And in the current atmosphere, I think it’s pretty darn cool.”The current atmosphere includes eroded trust in government institutions, particularly the police. While some viewers would probably argue the point, Waterston believes that a critique of the police was embedded within “Law & Order” all along.“If you go back and look at how the cops behaved in the past, there were plenty of times when the audience was invited to disapprove of how they were behaving,” he said. “Now, there’s more.”The show addresses this tension in its season premiere. Halfway through the episode, District Attorney Jack McCoy appears — his voice reedier, his hair and eyebrows more silver — telling a younger colleague, “Like it or not, the big bad police department is our partner.”After all of these years, this seems like the kind of scene Waterston could play in his sleep, or a fitful doze at the very least. But he can’t work that way.“I guess there would be a way to just put on the old suit,” he said. “But I think it’s good for you as an actor — and it’s my nature anyway — to be on the edge of uncertainty.”Besides, Waterston has changed in the intervening decade — grown older, welcomed more grandchildren — which means that Jack McCoy might have changed a little, too. Think of it as one more mystery, maybe the ultimate mystery, for this revived “Law & Order.” Waterston is already on the case.“If all the questions about how to play Jack McCoy are resolved and settled and done with,” he said, “why do it?” More

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      ‘Law & Order’ Is Having an Identity Crisis

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      The franchise has always portrayed the police as flawed but ultimately good. The latest spinoff does away with that ambivalence.If you were going to watch a police procedural — which, for the record, I don’t particularly recommend — you could do worse than NBC’s “Law & Order” franchise. Across 32 years and more than 1,200 episodes, the original series and its six American spinoffs have offered a gentle critique of law enforcement, presenting a parade of flawed individuals navigating a byzantine justice system. Detectives are stymied by bureaucrats and squabble with lunkhead patrol officers, who reliably contaminate crime scenes. Idealistic prosecutors grow disillusioned and leave for nonprofit work. And yet the franchise still hinges on a lesser-of-two-evils logic: The institutions may be imperfect, and the cops imperfect, but their vocation is, by definition, good. There are always more victims to avenge, and none better equipped to do it than the New York Police Department.This cautiously optimistic view of policing was once embodied by Elliot Stabler, the detective played by Chris Meloni since the 1999 premiere of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” A hotheaded ex-Marine, Stabler initially clashed with authority and struggled to adapt to married life, receiving reprimands from his captain and consulting a shrink. But paired with his compassionate partner, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), he proved an exemplary cop and father. He was dogged and intuitive, a man who gave more than he took, rough around the edges but heroic nonetheless.And yet the franchise’s latest spinoff, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” has done away with all that fortitude. In the pilot, Stabler’s wife is killed by a car bomb, leading him to contemplate violent retribution. He grows a goatee. He goes undercover. He has a rockin’ good time. In a scene from the second season, airing now, we find him training in a boxing gym, where he’s approached by a sultry mob wife — a suspect in a sex-trafficking sting — who presents him with a pair of carnation-pink panties and invites him to her home. Once there, Stabler spikes her drink with an incapacitating agent, and they kiss until she passes out. Stabler hustles into her bedroom and riffles for evidence, escaping through a back door when her husband arrives.Stabler’s wife is killed by a car bomb, leading him to contemplate violent retribution. He grows a goatee.Never mind how implausible this sequence feels, especially given Stabler’s background as a sex-crimes detective. The tone is sleazy, owing more to 1980s action flicks than the trademark “Law & Order” grit. It’s a far cry from the franchise’s origins: middle-aged cops and attorneys plagued with lousy diets and troubled families, a dour but lively metropolis teeming with nosy neighbors and wisecracking witnesses. Instead, “Organized Crime” depicts a backlot version of New York, its desolate cityscapes almost devoid of pedestrians. Stabler’s task force targets deep-pocketed warlords and ethnic outfits, armed traffickers who hijack shipping containers and vaccine supplies. Officers meet informants on abandoned waterfronts, and everybody drives around in a giant black S.U.V. Cruising gang-controlled neighborhoods, Stabler is anxious, adrift and thirsty for vengeance. Whatever happened to America’s dad?While Stabler busies himself with mobsters and madams, the long-running “Special Victims Unit,” whose fictional plots often riff on real-world headlines, has become a lugubrious public-service announcement on modern policing. Now a captain, Benson has been elevated to virtual sainthood, leading an understaffed unit and deflecting misogyny from her superiors. In the aftermath of George Floyd, even her pristine character is tested by institutional bias and dysfunction — and her commanding officer, a Harvard-educated Black man, is replaced by a chauvinistic white man prone to victim-blaming.Benson’s relentless drive for justice remains. An arc in the 22nd season recalls the 2020 Central Park bird-watching incident, in which a white woman filed a false report against a Black man. (The charge against her was later dismissed.) The show’s stand-in for the bird-watcher is arrested; after he’s exonerated, Benson apologizes. “We both want the department to own up to their mistakes and to make changes moving forward,” she tells him. “We can get rid of the worst cops.” Her promise echoes Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign claim that he once worked to “reform the police” from the inside, and it’s a stretch even by “Law & Order” standards. The franchise once focused on good work done by flawed people, but now even “S.V.U.” takes a more evangelistic stance. Police departments may abuse their power, it concedes, but they are redeemed by the likes of Olivia Benson.Stabler is an avenger, Benson a heart-of-gold administrator.What’s jarring about the way “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” have diverged is how thoroughly both shows sacrifice realism to preserve optimistic attitudes toward policing. The original “Law & Order,” which aired from 1990 to 2010 (a revival begins this month), took pains to establish its characters as public servants, not superheroes. On the job, the detectives and attorneys wore drab, rumpled suits and worked desk phones from cramped offices. Off the job, they drank and avoided their families, because dealing with predators makes for a harrowing day. For some of them — Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy, S.Epatha Merkerson’s Anita Van Buren — the lack of glamour suggested selflessness: Clearly they could’ve made more money elsewhere.Judging by the show’s longevity, this vision was a palatable one, a big-tent philosophy that allowed the show to celebrate the justice system while acknowledging its failures. A tone of knowing cynicism lent the writing credibility; a wariness of machismo and bureaucracy gave it tension. It maintained a certitude that New Yorkers needed protection from their neighbors, and that those who provided it merited sympathy.But in a time of skyrocketing funding and increased attention on police brutality, that big tent has collapsed. “Organized Crime” and “S.V.U.” face a new hurdle: They must demonstrate that cops are indeed the good guys. Both have cagily staked their territory. “S.V.U.” pays lip service to reform without seriously considering it; “Organized Crime” looks the other way entirely, supposing a wasteland of a city overrun by militant thugs. Stabler is an avenger, Benson a heart-of-gold administrator who could maybe be talked into some additional sensitivity training.It bears mention that another spinoff, “Law & Order: Hate Crimes,” was announced and then put on hold in 2019. Given the franchise’s expositional method and penchant for moral ambiguity, it’s unsettling to contemplate what that show might have looked like. In interviews, the franchise’s creator, Dick Wolf, has stressed that the shows maintain a nonpolitical lens on current events. But the incoherence of the new installments is a statement in itself. The shows could not ignore that millions of Americans were so shaken by police violence that they took to the streets in 2020. But it’s also true that some share of “Law & Order” fans must have thin-blue-line flags draped from their porches. Two roads diverged in a wood, and “Law & Order” pretends to take them both.Opening page: Screen grab from YouTube. Above: Virginia Sherwood/NBC; Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Heidi Gutman/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Missing in Brooks County’ and ‘Sisters With Transistors’

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      A documentary about a Texas border region plays as part of PBS’s “Independent Lens” series. And a documentary about women in electronic music airs on Showtime.Between 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. 21-Feb. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: MISSING IN BROOKS COUNTY (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Hundreds of people have died trying to migrate from Mexico to the United States through Brooks County, Tex., in the past two decades. This documentary looks at what makes the region, on the southern end of Texas, so perilous for those crossing the border, and explores work that activists and community members are doing to address the crisis. It focuses on two families who turn to Eddie Canales, the founder of the South Texas Human Rights Center, for help finding missing family members.CELEBRATING BETTY WHITE: AMERICA’S GOLDEN GIRL 10 p.m. on NBC. This hourlong special celebrates the life and career of the comic actress Betty White, who died in December at 99. Many famous people will pay tribute to White, including Drew Barrymore, Cher, Bryan Cranston, Ellen DeGeneres, Tina Fey, Goldie Hawn, Anthony Mackie, Tracy Morgan, Jean Smart and President Biden.TuesdayA scene from “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth To Power.”Greenwich EntertainmentBARBARA LEE: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER (2021) 8 p.m. on Starz. “A Super Bowl touchdown roar.” That’s how The New York Times described the reception that Representative Barbara Lee received from an audience in Oakland, Calif., at a community gathering in October 2001. The reason for the crowd’s enthusiasm: Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against invading Afghanistan in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. This documentary looks at Lee’s life both before and after that pivotal move. Interviewees include Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, the CNN commentator Van Jones and the actor Danny Glover.Remembering Betty WhiteThe actress, whose trailblazing career spanned seven decades, died on Jan. 31. She was 99. Obituary: After creating two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history,  White remained a beloved presence on television. Remembered Fondly: Hollywood stars, comedians, a president and seemingly the entire internet paid tribute after her death was announced. Final Prank: People magazine found itself in an awkward spot when a cover for White’s upcoming 100th birthday hit the newsstands right before her death.From the Archives: In a 2011 interview, White shared the memory of a relationship she held dear to her heart — with an elephant.WednesdayLUCY IN THE SKY (2019) 7:15 p.m. and 9:50 on FXM. Earlier this month, the “Fargo” and “Legion” showrunner Noah Hawley released a dark new novel, “Anthem,” that imagines teenage characters several years after the Covid-19 pandemic. For a multiformat double feature, pair the book with Hawley’s film “Lucy in the Sky,” where Natalie Portman is a lovesick astronaut.ThursdayThe composer Maryanne Amacher in a scene from “Sisters With Transistors,” a documentary that explores how women shaped electronic music.Peggy Weil/Metrograph PicturesSISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS (2021) 6:30 p.m. on Showtime. When the multimedia musician and composer Laurie Anderson mentions “radical sounds” while narrating this documentary, the phrase has a clear double meaning. Not only did synthesizers and other digital technology, a focus of the film, create never-before-heard sounds during the 20th century, but it gave opportunities for female composers like Daphne Oram, Maryanne Amacher and Clara Rockmore to innovate outside of the traditional, male-dominated music industry. The film explores the work of these women and more, arguing that their importance in shaping electronic music has been overlooked. The result, Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times, is “informative and often fascinating.”SCREAM (1996) 8 p.m. on BBC America. The shrieks came with a laugh in “Scream,” Wes Craven’s horror-parody that gave new life to the slasher genre when it hit theaters just over 25 years ago. The movie spawned a slew of sequels — the latest of which came out earlier this month — but even this first entry feels like something of a sequel, so filled is it with references and callbacks to previous, genre-defining movies, including “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th.” It introduced the character Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a suburban teenager who is stalked by a masked killer with a long face. BBC America is airing it alongside its first sequel, SCREAM 2 (1997).Friday2022 WINTER OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY 6:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. on NBC. The Winter Olympics in Beijing formally begin on Friday with an opening ceremony set to include the traditional cauldron lighting and parade of nations. (Other than athletes, American presence at the games will be subdued: The United States is among the countries whose governments have planned for a diplomatic boycott of the games, citing human rights abuses.) The ceremony will be covered live at 6:30 a.m., then rebroadcast at 8 p.m. as a more polished special.STAND AND DELIVER (1988) 10 p.m. on TCM. The actor Edward James Olmos took a break from the sheen of “Miami Vice” to play a schlubby (but deeply gifted) math teacher in this late ’80s drama. Directed by Ramón Menéndez and based on actual events, the film casts Olmos as Jaime Escalante, a teacher at a public high school in East Los Angeles whose ability to motivate his students leads to impressive test scores that were called into question by prejudiced standardized-testing authorities. Olmos plays the part to “inspiringly great effect,” Janet Maslin said in her review for The Times in 1988. (He later received an Oscar nomination for his performance.) “If ever a film made its audience want to study calculus,” Maslin wrote, “this is the one.”SaturdayWillem Dafoe, left, and Bradley Cooper in “Nightmare Alley.”Searchlight PicturesNIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. After its recent release in theaters, Guillermo del Toro’s latest haunted house of a movie hits smaller screens via HBO on Saturday night. Set primarily amid a grimy carnival, “Nightmare Alley” centers on a 1930s con man (Bradley Cooper) who finds success putting on a mentalist act. The real star, though, might be the setting: In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis praised del Toro’s textured, polished world building, but wasn’t so enthusiastic about the rest of the film. “The carnival is diverting, and del Toro’s fondness for its denizens helps put a human face on these purported freaks,” she wrote. “But once he’s finished with the preliminaries, he struggles to make the many striking parts cohere into a living, breathing whole.”SundayGUY’S CHANCE OF A LIFETIME 9 p.m. on Food Network. Some competition shows offer their winners a cash prize that they can retire on. “Guy’s Chance of a Lifetime” offers an opportunity: Contestants vie for ownership of a Guy Fieri-branded chicken joint in Nashville. A winner will be revealed on Sunday night’s season finale. More

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      6 TV Tie-In Podcasts to Enhance Your Next Binge

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      Who’ll be the last one standing in “Succession”? Is “The Good Place” heaven or hell? These are the audio companions to keep the conversation going around some of your favorite shows.For a true TV devotee, watching the latest episode is just the beginning. Depending on the show at hand, there are plot twists and character revelations to dissect, theories to discuss and historical context to plumb. Fans have been gathering online to do all this since before the turn of the century, but in recent years, shows have started producing their own post-episode debriefs.Starting in the early 2010s, the TV “after-show” became a subgenre. Immediately after a new episode aired, a host would interview the stars and creators about what just happened, in programs like AMC’s “Talking Dead” and “Talking Bad,” HBO’s “After the Thrones,” and more recently Netflix’s “The Netflix Afterparty.” But as Hollywood seems to be realizing, the format works just as well (if not better) in audio form.As a result, there’s now a huge selection of official tie-in podcasts for your favorite TV shows. Some of these offer real added value, while others are skippable puffery. These six are worth your time.‘HBO’s Succession Podcast’Since fans of HBO’s towering, dramatic family tragicomedy have had to wait a full two years for new episodes, audio stepped in to fill the void. Beginning last summer, the host Roger Bennett (best known for the soccer podcast “Men in Blazers”) conducted interviews with the “Succession” ensemble, diving into the psychology of the power-hungry, emotionally stunted Roy clan. Now that the long-awaited third season has finally debuted, the podcast has switched up its format, swapping out Bennett for the veteran Silicon Valley journalist Kara Swisher (host of The New York Times podcast “Sway”). The focus now is less on the show itself, and more on the realities of the kind of power it depicts — Episode 1 features a conversation with Jennifer Palmieri, a former White House communications director, who weighs in on a politically charged moment from the season premiere. Though it may not please every fan, this shift in focus sets it apart from other tie-in podcasts.Starter episode: “Rich Doesn’t Equal Smart (With Jennifer Palmieri)”‘The Crown: The Official Podcast’One of the great pleasures of watching Netflix’s richly drawn royal drama “The Crown” is looking up the real historical events portrayed in each episode, and identifying what’s fact versus fiction. Hosted by the Scottish broadcaster Edith Bowman, this companion podcast helps to scratch that itch, offering additional context on the research that goes into depicting figures like Princess Diana and the divisive British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Each episode features Bowman alongside a variety of guests from the cast and creative team, who share behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the vast scale of the production. Sadly for fans of Claire Foy’s era, the podcast didn’t debut until Season 3 of the show, but will continue through its already-confirmed fifth and sixth seasons.Starter episode: “Episode 1: Goldstick”‘Better Call Saul Insider Podcast’Way back in 2009, when podcasts were still niche and held no interest for TV networks, the team behind AMC’s then under-the-radar drama “Breaking Bad” started putting out a roundtable podcast called “Breaking Bad Insider Podcast.” As the series gradually snowballed to become one of the most iconic series of all time, the podcast remained charmingly unchanged — with Kelley Dixon, an editor on both dramas, and Vince Gilligan, the creator of both, hosting an affable weekly chat about every aspect of the production. This dynamic continued with the introduction of the also acclaimed prequel series “Better Call Saul.” The hosts genuine warmth and camaraderie distinguishes this from many similar roundtable-style podcasts, and their insights into the nitty-gritty of production are invaluable for fans and aspiring creatives alike.Starter episode: “101 Better Call Saul Insider”‘The Good Place: The Podcast’There are layers upon layers to peel back in Michael Schur’s existential NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” which follows a ragtag group of recently deceased characters trying to navigate a zany afterlife where the rules keep changing. So it’s not surprising that the show makes ideal fodder for a podcast, which is hosted by the actor Marc Evan Jackson (best known to fans for playing a mysterious demon named Shawn). Offering episode-by-episode conversations spanning the entire series, the podcast features a revolving door of actors, writers and producers, as well as set decorators, props masters, and costume and production designers.Starter episode: “Ch. 1: Michael Schur”‘Late Night With Seth Meyers Podcast’Late-night talk shows aren’t generally first in line to get the podcast treatment, but this is less of a companion show than an alternative way to enjoy Meyers’s incarnation of “Late Night,” on NBC. New episodes typically drop two or three times a week, and feature highlights from the satirical nightly show, including Meyers’s opening monologues, interviews and signature recurring segments like “A Closer Look.” Guests run the cultural gamut — interviews from the last few weeks include Senator Elizabeth Warren, the cast of “Ted Lasso,” and Meyers’s onetime “SNL” colleague Colin Jost. Some episodes of the program are devoted to a sub-podcast, “Late Night Lit,” which features the “Late Night” producer Sarah Jenks-Daly discussing books and interviewing authors. Throw in the odd behind-the-scenes segment with Meyers and the producer Mike Shoemaker, and there’s something here to entertain just about anyone.Starter episode: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren | Southwest Contradicts Fox News, Says Chaos Not Caused by Vaccine Mandate: A Closer Look”‘The Chernobyl Podcast’If you devoured HBO’s riveting 2019 mini-series “Chernobyl” but skipped the tie-in podcast, you’re missing out on the full experience. Peter Sagal, best known as the host of NPR’s beloved quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” led this five-part conversation with the “Chernobyl” writer Craig Mazin, who co-hosts the long-running screenwriting podcast “Scriptnotes.” Their combined audio experience is evident in their effortless back-and-forth, which blends behind-the-scenes anecdotes with fascinating historical insights into the 1986 nuclear disaster and its fallout. Mazin’s enthusiasm for the subject matter is palpable, and the episode-by-episode discussion allows for a detailed breakdown of key moments. If you’re the kind of die-hard TV fan who pines for DVD audio commentaries, this is the next best thing.Starter episode: “1:23:45” More