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      Review: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

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      The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo (“The Terror: Infamy”), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators on Their New Show, ‘3 Body Problem’

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      In an interview, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo discuss their latest fantastical epic, the alien space saga “3 Body Problem” for Netflix.The “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were finishing off their hit HBO series after an eight-season run and wondering what was next. That was when the Netflix executive Peter Friedlander approached them with a trilogy of science-fiction books by the Chinese novelist Liu Cixin called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.”“We knew that it won the Hugo Award, which is a big deal for us since we grew up as nerds,” Benioff said of the literary prize for science fiction. Barack Obama was also on record as a fan.Benioff and Weiss dipped in and were intrigued by what they found: a sweeping space invasion saga that begins in 1960s China, amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and involves a superior alien race that has built a rabid cultlike following on Earth. A heady mix of science and skulduggery, featuring investigations both scientific and criminal, it felt utterly unique. “So much content right now feels like, ‘Oh, here’s another forensic show, here’s another legal thriller,’ it just feels like it’s a version of something you’ve seen,” Benioff said. “This universe is a different one.”Or, as Weiss added, “This is the universe.”Those novels are now the core of “3 Body Problem,” a new series that Benioff and Weiss created with Alexander Woo (“True Blood”). It premiered on opening night at the South by Southwest Film Festival and arrives Thursday on Netflix. The setting has changed along the way, with most of the action unfolding in London rather than China (although the Cultural Revolution is still a key element), and the characters, most of them young and pretty, now represent several countries. But the central themes remain the same: belief, fear, discovery and an Earth imperiled by superior beings. Among the heroes are the gruff intelligence chief Thomas Wade, played by the “Thrones” veteran Liam Cunningham, and a team of five young, reluctant, Oxford-trained physicists played by John Bradley — another “Thrones” star — Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzáles, Jess Hong and Alex Sharp. Can they save the world for their descendants?In an interview in Austin the day of the SXSW premiere, the series creators discussed life after “Thrones,” their personal ties to “3 Body Problem” and the trick to making physics sexy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The series is quite different from the books, particularly the settings and characters, both of which are a lot less Chinese. How did this come about?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Irish Wish’ Review: Beware of Getting What You Want

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      Lindsay Lohan plays a book editor whose romantic dream comes true in this Netflix rom-com. But then Ed Speleers shows up in a red sports car.Lindsay Lohan’s well-loved early comedies involve her playing characters pretending to be someone else: think of the chaotic swaps of “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday,” or the social climbing of “Mean Girls.”In “Irish Wish,” Lohan takes up another character who’s role-playing in her own life: Maddie, a diligent book editor who suddenly finds herself in another version of the world, where she’s marrying the handsome author she handles.The story doesn’t start that way. The guy, Paul (Alexander Vlahos), originally falls for Maddie’s friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan). Paul and Emma prepare to marry at his family’s manor in County Mayo, Ireland (cue extremely green touristic panoramas). Attending as a guest, Maddie takes a fateful walk and voices her wish that she were the bride instead. Presto — thanks to Saint Brigid, apparently — she wakes up at the manor, engaged to Paul.The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged. Maybe that’s another way of expressing that the match was never going to be a great fit. Paul is a bit of cad, and not even entertainingly awful. But hark, an alternative to this alternate reality appears with James (Ed Speleers of “You”), a photographer she meets by chance who’s forthright, sensitive and the owner of a sweet red sports car.Maddie warms to James’s wisdom, and her wedding plans with Paul begin to unravel. There’s also a worthy subplot about Maddie’s growing independence from her phone-clingy mother (Jane Seymour), but mostly the movie is a determinedly mild addition to the Lindsay Lohan “what-if” universe.Irish WishNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Paula Pell Is a Comic Scene-Stealer in ‘Girls5eva’

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      Breastchester, the rustic upstate New York residence that is home to the “Girls5eva” star Paula Pell, is a two-hour drive from Manhattan, at the end of a long stretch of road where occasional yoga studios and art galleries eventually give way to a tranquil countryside. It is secluded, but its proprietor is hardly in need of companionship.Pell’s coterie here includes her wife, Janine Brito, the comedy writer and actor who gave their mini-estate its body-positive nickname. Then there is the congregation of rescue dogs that had overtaken the living room of the main house one recent Friday morning, all scratching and barking for attention. Eloise and Verbena, Pell’s horses, were in a stable on a hill above the house.“There’s two old mares up there and one old mare down here,” Pell said theatrically, running a hand through her long silver locks.Pell has been known to nurse stunned birds back to health. She volunteered at a nearby sanctuary, where she took care of neglected pets and farm animals. “I was called the pig whisperer,” she said. “I have pictures of me sleeping on the pigs. I’d lay there and sing to them.”Her love of animals is sincere and integral to her personality, as much a part of Pell as the brassy, oblivious characters she dreamed up on “Saturday Night Live,” where she spent 18 years as a writer, and which she continues to play in movies and on TV.“Humans, always, will be imperfect,” Pell said. “They will still say I love you when they don’t. Animals, to me, are the only ones that when they love you, you totally believe it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Watch This Weekend: A Surreal Family Comedy

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      The Turkish series “A Round of Applause” offers a fresh and surprising vision of anxiety and alienation.Cihat Suvarioglu in a scene from “A Round of Applause.”NetflixThe Turkish series “A Round of Applause” (in Turkish, with subtitles, or dubbed) is a vivid, imaginative depiction of family neuroses. The concept of sublimated despair is a pillar of contemporary television, but the show’s surrealism is fresh and surprising — made even more so by the sense of creeping sameness of so many other shows right now.“Applause,” on Netflix, follows Zeynep (Aslihan Gurbuz), her husband, Mehmet (Fatih Artman), and her son, Metin (played at various ages by Rezdar Tastan, Eyup Mert Ilkis and Cihat Suvarioglu), though the show begins before his conception. First, Zeynep and Mehmet have some friends over for dinner, but the guests’ behavior becomes stranger and more childlike during the visit — they’re too scared to sleep in their own bed during a thunderstorm, they say. They behave petulantly at the breakfast table and eventually go so far as to call Zeynep and Mehmet “mom” and “dad.” The show’s surrealism gains momentum from there, and the warped perspective becomes more central — more grotesque, more exciting, funnier — as the show goes on.When we meet Metin, he’s in utero, portrayed as grown man, bearded and smoking and ranting like a political prisoner. He has already absorbed all of his mother’s unhappiness, he wails, yanking on a massive umbilical cord for emphasis. He lacks purpose; he feels oppressed; he doesn’t want to be born, not yet at least, not until he’s ready. Metin’s mournful skepticism of life itself plays out through his hyper-articulate childhood and adrift adulthood, first as a boy whose playground girlfriend dumps him for being “suffocating,” then as a 13-year-old who writes his mother a rap called “The Funeral of Meaning on Earth,” and later as a grandiose, depressed DJ. On the one hand, this despondence has been with Metin since before he even existed. On the other, it is nurtured throughout his life by his mother’s blind praise and his father’s emotional detachment.There are six half-hour episodes of “Applause,” and they left me in a glorious daze, both delighted by its absurdist humor and fascinated by its dreamlike vision of anxiety and alienation. The show is an unflattering portrait, but it’s not a caricature; its exaggerations become truer than true, more like a myth than a joke. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in March

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      An Adam Sandler drama and a new series from the creators of “Game of Thrones” highlight the new offerings this month.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of March’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.)‘Spaceman’Starts streaming: March 1The comedian Adam Sandler tends to pick good material whenever plays dramatic roles; and that is certainly the case with this cerebral science-fiction film. Sandler plays a Czech astronaut named Jakub, whose vital deep-space exploratory mission is suffering because of his crushing loneliness and the possible disintegration of his marriage to his pregnant wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Paul Dano provides the voice of a kindly spider-like alien creature named Hanuš, who provides Jakub with some much-needed company and advice. “Spaceman” was adapted from a Jaroslav Kalfař novel by the screenwriter Colby Day; and it wad directed by Johan Renck, an Emmy-winner for the mini-series “Chernobyl.” The film is cosmically trippy yet also sensitive to the human need for connection.‘The Gentlemen’ Season 1Starts streaming: March 7Guy Ritchie’s 2019 film “The Gentlemen” was a rollicking throwback to the kind of violent, foul-mouthed, blackly comic crime stories that established the British writer-director’s bona fides in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ritchie’s TV series “The Gentleman” re-enters the world of the movie from a different angle. Theo James plays Eddie, a fading aristocrat’s estranged son, who unexpectedly inherits his dad’s estate along with its crushing debts and obligations. When he discovers that some of his land has been secretly leased to a marijuana kingpin, Eddie decides to lean into criminality to save the family fortune. As with the original, this new version approaches the outlaw life from the perspective of the filthy rich bosses, trying to manage a business staffed by unreliable hoodlums.‘Damsel’Starts streaming: March 8Millie Bobby Brown stars in this fantasy adventure film, playing Princess Elodie, a smart and independent young woman, representing a kingdom that has fallen on hard times. Persuaded by her father (Ray Winstone) and stepmother (Angela Bassett) to marry a wealthy prince (Nick Robinson), Elodie arrives at her new home only to discover that her in-laws aren’t very nice and that their land has been plagued for generations by a ravenous dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo). The director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and the screenwriter Dan Mazeau aim to subvert fairy-tale stereotypes with “Damsel,” making a movie that eschews the romantic swoon of “once upon a time” in favor of the raw action of royalty versus beast.‘Girls5eva’ Seasons 1-3Starts streaming: March 14After failing to find the audience it deserved on Peacock, the funny and tuneful sitcom “Girls5eva” brings its first two seasons and an all-new third to Netflix. A sharp-eyed satire of the modern music business, the series follows four middle-aged singers — formerly a chart-topping girl-group — as they attempt a comeback in an era where almost nobody remembers their five minutes of MTV fame. In Season 3, the ladies embark on a low-budget concert tour and learn more about what it takes to make a living in 2020s pop. The creator Meredith Scardino and her writing staff fill each episode with rapid-fire jokes, catchy songs and savvy pop culture references, while always honoring the dignity and the dreams of these four friends, played by the talented and funny Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell and Renée Elise Goldsberry.‘3 Body Problem’ Season 1Starts streaming: March 21The “Game of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss return to television with an adaptation of Liu Cixin’s award-winning science-fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem,” created with Alexander Woo. An ensemble piece set across multiple eras, the show is partly about a woman (Zine Tseng) making some difficult choices to survive China’s Cultural Revolution, partly about an eclectic group of young scientists in England dubbed “the Oxford Five,” and partly about a government agent (Benedict Wong) investigating a string of mysterious deaths in the academic community. The story touches on global politics, virtual reality and extraterrestrial contact, while exploring those moments in time when one phase of human existence seems poised to give way to another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Watch This Weekend: TV’s Juiciest, Glitziest Sports Show

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      The new season of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which has spawned a legion of imitators, is available now on Netflix.Lewis Hamilton, as seen in “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.”Dan Vojtech/NetflixSeason 6 of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” is now on Netflix, and in many ways it remains as fun and juicy as ever — full of petty immaturity, glamorous lifestyles and alluring European impishness. In the show’s hands, a race for 10th place is as compelling and high-stakes as the one for first — partly because that’s how the sport can work but also because Max Verstappen, the driver who came in first in 19 of the 22 races, didn’t participate in the show this season.The enormous success of “Drive to Survive” spawned, and continues to spawn, an entire league of imitators. “Tour de France: Unchained” and “Make or Break,” about surfing, come the closest to “Drive” in capturing athletic intensity, general charisma and dazzling locations. The raw brutality of cycling and the sanguine individuality of surfing are fascinating in their own rights, but the glitz factor, a pillar of “Drive,” is largely absent.“Break Point,” about tennis, is plenty exciting but more diffuse; because it includes both male and female pros and because of the nature of tennis tournaments, its athletes are not all in competition with one another. “Full Swing,” about golf, is an unlovable spectacle of cowardice and greed. “Six Nations: Full Contact,” about rugby, has plenty of scrappy charm, moment to moment, but doesn’t gel overall. The drivers on “NASCAR: Full Speed” all blend together.Series that follow a sport for a whole season are the clearest descendants of “Drive.” But other access shows like “Quarterback,” “Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team,” “Angel City” and “Race: Bubba Wallace” are adjacent, too. All claim to offer an insider perspective but are too superficial and uncritical to have any real purchase — and they don’t compensate for that superficiality with sheer volume of story lines the way “Drive” does.“Drive” will not reign forever, particularly because it continues to list toward reality show. And not a nutritious reality show; a Bravo one. A big episode this season centers on Lewis Hamilton re-signing a contract with Mercedes, and it plays out as a tale of commitment and integrity for all parties. He would never race for Ferrari, we’re told. But the first few seasons of “Drive” got me motor-pilled enough that now I follow the sport’s comings and goings, and I know that Hamilton has indeed signed with Ferrari for the 2025 season, much in the way “Vanderpump Rules” fans all knew the ins and outs of Scandoval eons before it made its way into the show.“Drive” already has to contend with the fact that, like all sports shows, it is straightforwardly spoilable, so additional contrivances just add more drag. Luckily there’s still plenty of easy pleasure within the series, at least another few seasons of gas in its tank. More

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      Stream These 8 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in March

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      Star-led titles including Jerry Seinfeld’s animated feature, a James Brown biopic and a Steve Martin-Meryl Streep rom-com are leaving the streaming service. Watch them while you can.There’s a fascinatingly wide array of big titles leaving Netflix in the United States in March — everything from kiddie cartoons to star-heavy dramas to action extravaganzas. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Bee Movie’ (March 1)Stream it here.You can’t accuse Jerry Seinfeld of embarking on a traditional career in the years since his eponymous sitcom concluded in 1998. He remains one of the most reliably excellent stand-up comedians in the game, but he has resisted the surely tempting follow-ups: doing another conventional television series (he created and hosts the laid-back shoptalk talk show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”) or making a “Seinfeld”-style movie.Instead, he co-wrote, produced and voiced the lead role in this animated family comedy, starring as Barry B. Benson, a honeybee who mounts a lawsuit against the entire human race. Little kids will love it, adults will get a kick out of the celebrity voice actors (including Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Rip Torn, Patrick Warburton, Oprah Winfrey and Renée Zellweger) and everyone in between will enjoy it ironically.‘This Is Where I Leave You’ (March 1)Stream it here.This adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s best seller boasts one of the most impressive ensemble casts of the mid-aughts: Jason Bateman stars as a beleaguered yuppie whose father has just died; Adam Driver, Tina Fey and Corey Stoll are his siblings; Jane Fonda is their mother; and Connie Britton, Rose Byrne, Kathryn Hahn and Timothy Olyphant turn up as romantic interests past and present. All are brought together, at the deceased patriarch’s request, to sit shiva for a backbreaking seven days. Hilarity and high tension ensue. The director Shawn Levy has some trouble keeping a consistent pace and tone, but the skill of the cast pulls the film through the rougher spots, and the familial dynamics are relatable to the point of occasional discomfort.‘Get On Up’ (March 16)Stream it here.The current vogue of jukebox biopics shows no sign of slowing, thanks to the impressive grosses of films like “Bob Marley: One Love,” even though most of these dramas are still trafficking in tropes that should have been decimated by the pitch-perfect satire of “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” a decade and a half ago. But credit where due: Tate Taylor’s biopic about the “Godfather of Soul,” the hardest-working man in show business, the one and only James Brown, zigs where most of these movies would zag. The inventive screenplay by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth hopscotches through his life, eschewing the cradle-to-grave march of so many biopics for a more stream-of-consciousness approach, with Brown frequently breaking the fourth wall to address his audience (and comment on the action) directly. There are some telling erasures, personally and politically, but the picture moves fast, and is loaded with great songs (Mick Jagger is a producer of both the film and its music). Also top-notch is its ensemble cast, including Dan Aykroyd, Nelsan Ellis, Craig Robinson, Jill Scott and Tate’s “The Help” stars Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, and Chadwick Boseman convincingly fills Brown’s (big, tall) shoes.‘Savages’ (March 16)Stream it here.After a rough run in the early 2000s, the director Oliver Stone took a shot at recapturing some of his “Natural Born Killers” juju with this 2012 adaptation of Don Winslow’s crime novel. It’s not altogether successful — mostly because of the severe lack of charisma and danger from its stars, Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson — but Stone keeps things moving at a brisk pace, and gets excellent late-period performances out of three key supporting players: John Travolta, as a cheerfully corrupt D.E.A. agent; Benicio Del Toro, as an utterly amoral enforcer for a Mexican drug cartel; and best of all, Salma Hayek as the head of the cartel, turning her customary purring sexiness into eye-opening menace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More