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      ‘Milli Vanilli’ Review: Blame It on the Fame

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      Luke Korem’s documentary retraces the manufactured pop duo’s rise and fall, while asking pertinent questions about the price of stardom.The performers Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus earn your empathy in the documentary “Milli Vanilli,” a jolting, eye-opening investigation on how fame destroyed them. The war-of-words film, directed by Luke Korem, unfolds like a whodunit.The film retraces the bonkers events of Morvan and Pilatus’s naïve rise to the top in the late 1980s as Milli Vanilli, the image-forward pop duo who secretly lip-synced prerecorded songs to live audiences. Their hits included “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Baby Don’t Forget My Number.”At first, the duo needed money to escape poverty, but their celebrity status kept them hooked, and their German producer, Frank Farian, held the bait.And then, the documentary revisits their fall: During a live performance on MTV in 1989, the song started to skip, exposing them as frauds. In 1998, Pilatus died of an overdose. “I lost my sobriety and every sense of reality,” we hear him say in the film.Impressively, Korem gets those who ran the business side of Milli Vanilli, including officials at Arista Records, to spill the juicy details on what actually happened to the duo: Morvan and Pilatus became Farian and the label’s scapegoats. As presented here, it’s easy to see how this could be the basis for a horror film by Jordan Peele.Morvan is the heart of the documentary; he reflects on the group’s past treatment (he thinks they deserved that revoked Grammy) and raises still-relevant questions about the way the music industry exploits vulnerable performers. Charles Shaw, one of the real singers behind Milli Vanilli, says that Farian, who also worked with the group Boney M., “made most of his money on Black artists, and it worked.”Milli VanilliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      To Make ‘Fellow Travelers,’ Ron Nyswaner Had to Fall in Love

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      The new drama, which follows a gay romance over several decades, is the first TV series created by the Oscar-winning writer of “Philadelphia.”Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated screenwriter, can still recall a chance meeting on a beach more than 50 years ago. Then a teenager and a self-described “Jesus freak,” he’d come to Ocean City, N.J., to attend a Youth for Christ conference. Late one night, he said, while walking alone, he saw “a gorgeous, muscular guy” across the sand.That young man asked him to speak in tongues — it was an invitation to religious ecstasy and nothing more. Nyswaner complied. He told me this story over lunch in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, on a stormy afternoon in September, as a way to explain that, for him, “sex and the sacred have always been united.”He wanted that same union for “Fellow Travelers,” a new series that premieres Friday on Paramount+ and then on Showtime on Sunday.Moving back and forth from the early 1950s to the late ’80s, “Fellow Travelers,” based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, is a précis of 20th-century queer history viewed through a turbulent relationship between two men. Matt Bomer (“White Collar,” “Magic Mike”) stars as Hawkins Fuller, Hawk to his intimates, a State Department employee. Jonathan Bailey (“Bridgerton”) plays Tim Laughlin, a milk-drinking, God-loving naïf who dreams of working for Senator Joseph McCarthy.As they tumble through the decades — in and out of bed, in and out of love — the lavender scare, the gay liberation movement and the AIDS crisis happen around and through them.In “Fellow Travelers,” Jonathan Bailey, left, and Matt Bomer play men who move in and out of one another’s lives as history unfolds around them.Ben Mark Holzberg/ShowtimeNyswaner, who was dressed in all black save for a tan raincoat, claims to dislike love stories. “Yuck!” he said. (The two chunky rings he wore, mementos of former relationships, may have belied this.) But his genius resides in making the political feel shockingly intimate. Despite its many congressional hearings, “Fellow Travelers” is a love story, one illustrated with some of television’s most screen-fogging queer sex scenes. The first time Nyswaner read the novel, he fell in love with Tim and Hawk. It was that love — sexual, sacred — that inspired him to make the series, the first he has created for television.Nyswaner, 67, grew up in small-town Pennsylvania. Gay and closeted, he was an outsider as a child, an observer. That, he believes, is what made him a writer. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he enrolled in Columbia’s film school. While still a student there, he slipped a script to the director Jonathan Demme. Demme optioned it, and Nyswaner has supported himself as a writer ever since.His first major success came in 1993 with “Philadelphia,” directed by Demme, the story of Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a lawyer who believes he has been wrongfully terminated by his firm because of his AIDS diagnosis. (Nyswaner, whose script earned him an Oscar nomination, makes a cameo in a party scene dressed as a priest.)By that time, Nyswaner was in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction. In the five years after the film’s release, newly flush with fame and cash, his addiction worsened.“I dedicated myself to cocaine and alcohol and sex, with tragic results,” he said. (He details this tragedy, which involves the suicide of a sex worker, in his 2004 memoir, “Blue Days, Black Nights.”)There was heat on him in Hollywood then. But he showed up to more than one meeting high on methamphetamines, and the heat dissipated. Which didn’t especially bother him. Having found success early, he has rarely been swayed by the demands of the market.“I always just wanted to write what I wanted,” he said.“The best thing you can do with any marginalized character is to make them as fully human and complicated as every other straight character that’s out there in the world,” Nyswaner said.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesNewly sober, he proved this. He scripted the 2003 true-crime Showtime film “Soldier’s Girl,” about an Army private’s relationship with a transgender cabaret performer, and followed that with the 2006 adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s doomed romance, “The Painted Veil.” Neither was intended for mainstream success, but these works had the heartbreak he loved, the passionate intensity.In 2012, his management team asked him what he wanted to do next. “Get me out of my house,” he told them. He had spent two decades living in upstate New York. Now, he found himself craving the crush of a big city and the camaraderie of a writers’ room. Though he had already optioned “Fellow Travelers,” he back-burnered it in favor of moving to Los Angeles and joining two Showtime series: first the punchy noir “Ray Donovan,” and then “Homeland,” the fervid espionage thriller. In 2018, when his time on “Homeland” ended, he felt ready to turn to “Fellow Travelers.”In “Fellow Travelers,” Nyswaner expands on the themes that define much of his film work — the ways in which longing, sex and secrets intersect with the law. In the series, the historical characters and events are meticulously researched. (There are perhaps a few aesthetic lapses — did men really work out this much in the 1950s?) But Nyswaner wanted to offer something more than a history lesson. Hawk and Tim and the show’s other queer characters are intimately involved in this history, and they are not mere bystanders and victims. Occasionally, they are aggressors.“The best thing you can do with any marginalized character is to make them as fully human and complicated as every other straight character that’s out there in the world,” he said.Many of those complications are revealed in the sex scenes. Thirty years ago, “Philadelphia” received criticism for shying away from gay sexuality. “Fellow Travelers” is not so shy. “Perhaps I overcompensated,” he said, laughing.Nyswaner said each sex scene was intended to move the story forward and dramatize a power exchange.ShowtimeNyswaner, who has something of the provocateur in him, described a scene late in the series, a threesome that leads to a nervous breakdown, as “very much me” and “one of my proudest achievements.” (For that scene he educated the director on the uses of amyl nitrate.)If these scenes are not especially graphic, they are unusually specific in their mapping of power and desire. Nyswaner had rules for these scenes, which were carefully choreographed and scripted. Each had to move the story forward. Each had to dramatize a power exchange. And no act could be repeated, which invited creativity in the later episodes.The queer characters are all played by actors who openly identify as queer. “It wasn’t a requirement, but it was certainly a strong motivator for us,” Nyswaner said. He believes the casting may have contributed to the veracity and intensity of these scenes.“I do think it might have really made a difference and made everybody more comfortable,” he said.Nyswaner isn’t sure if writing about gay characters is a path that he chose for himself or one that the success of “Philadelphia” forged for him. Either way he is glad to walk it.“I so love, love, love being a gay man,” he told me over lunch. “I enjoy being slightly to the side of everything.” He worries, of course, for the state of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but he has always enjoyed this feeling of being an outsider. “Outlaw” was another term he used.He isn’t dating anyone just now. His preference, he said, is for “unsuitable men, some of them are quite delicious.” Colleagues keep encouraging him to download a dating app, but so far he has resisted. These past few years, his primary relationship has been with Tim and Hawk, the characters he fell for a decade ago.“I wanted to live within that relationship,” he said. “And I have.” More

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      Review: ‘Frasier’ Returns, Tossed, Scrambled and Eggscruciating

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      One of TV’s longest-lived characters gets revived, in an anticlimactic museum reproduction of the original.“Frasier” always saw itself as something more than a mere plebeian sitcom. It delighted in Noel Coward-esque banter. Its protagonist, the radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), closed his final broadcast reciting Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”So let me begin my thoughts on “Frasier,” the Paramount+ revival of the long-running “Cheers” sequel, with words that its leading man of letters might attend to, from the poem “Terminus,” by his fellow Harvard man Ralph Waldo Emerson:It is time to be old,To take in sail:—The god of bounds,Who sets to seas a shore,Came to me in his fatal rounds,And said: “No more!”Alas, “No more!” is not a phrase in the streaming TV industry’s vocabulary. On Thursday, Frasier Crane becomes the latest classic character to set sail for a mediocre, anticlimactic return, the god of bounds be damned.When last we saw Frasier, he had passed up a chance at TV stardom and left Seattle for Chicago to be with his new love, Charlotte (Laura Linney). The new “Frasier,” developed by Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli, dispenses with that inconvenient narrative closure in about ten seconds of exposition. Frasier landed a TV show after all — he recently quit it after many years — and Charlotte has dumped him. (At least the premiere doesn’t Etch-a-Sketch the no-longer-a-finale quite as brazenly as the “Will and Grace” and “Roseanne” revivals.)Single again, loaded with TV money and having just buried his father, Martin (John Mahoney, who died in 2018), he’s off for a sojourn in Paris. But he makes a pit stop in Boston to reconnect with his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who disappointed Frasier by dropping out of Harvard and becoming a firefighter. (His choice may also surprise the audience, who might recall him as an awkward chess nerd going through a goth phase, but hey, people change.)Freddy, who resents Frasier’s dismissal of his work, isn’t eager for the reunion, but the inexorable logic of sitcom revivals kicks in. While Paramount+ has declared some twists of the first episode — none of them surprising — to be spoilers, suffice it to say that Frasier cancels his Paris plans, has a Harvard teaching gig fall into his lap and ends up spending a lot of quality time with his estranged son.If you are scanning this review for familiar names besides Grammer’s, I have some bad news. Beyond some reportedly upcoming guest appearances, the new “Frasier” joins “Night Court” as a revival that surrounds one returning lead with new sidekicks who, if you squint, might pass for versions of the old gang.So Freddy is Freddy, but he’s also a version of Martin, the down-to-earth ex-police officer who took the air out of Frasier’s swelled head. As David, the son of Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and his wife Daphne (Jane Leeves), Anders Keith channels the absent Hyde Pierce, right down to pronouncing the word “Sahara” the way Sting does.Well, he’s half a Niles; Nicholas Lyndhurst, as Frasier’s old college chum and new faculty colleague Alan, supplies the other half, playing Frasier’s erudite contemporary. Freddy’s roommate Eve (Jess Salgueiro) is sort of a Daphne. Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), the department head who recruits Frasier to teach, is sort of a Roz.And “Frasier” is … sort of “Frasier.” It is also, returning to Boston, sort of “Cheers.” The callbacks flow like drafts at happy hour. Frasier says that the last time he lived in the city, “I may have spent too much time at a certain bar.” And his run-in with a firehouse Dalmatian sets up a callback to his canine frenemy, Eddie: “I outlasted that little mongrel. I’ll outlast you.”The result is something that feels less like Season 12 of “Frasier” or Season 1 of a new series than a sort of museum of itself — be sure to visit the gift shop! — weighed down with knickknacks and nostalgia.The people orbiting Frasier in the new sitcom, including his boss (Toks Olagundoye) and a professor colleague (Nicholas Lyndhurst), resemble characters from the original.Chris Haston/Paramount+Frasier Crane, of course, has a lot of history even by sitcom-revival standards. He first appeared on TV nearly four decades ago, as the stuffed-shirt romantic rival to Sam Malone (Ted Danson) on “Cheers.” The 1993 premiere of “Frasier” mellowed him out and put him in his own element. The lead-character version of Frasier was haughty but soulful.You can’t say Grammer doesn’t know Frasier after all these years. He falls into the old bluster as if he’d time-traveled straight from 2004, and his new staff writes in the character’s voice well enough. (It did stop me in the first episode when he references “the hoi polloi”; surely the purist polymath Frasier would hold that “the” is redundant since “hoi” is a definite article.) The show even returns the formidable sitcom director James Burrows to shoot the first two episodes, which both premiere on Thursday.But it has the purgatorial feel of a sitcom that returned without a purpose beyond “More of that guy I like, please.” The central father-son dynamic feels forced rather than rooted in history, and Freddy is a nonentity, undefined as a character except in relation to his meddling dad.You could forgive the lack of ideas if there were at least a few laughs. But this reproduction has the predictable beats of a mothballed 20th-century sitcom. If there is a baby seat that plays “Baby Shark” when someone bumps into it, you know that someone will bump into it again. And again.The third episode, the best of the five screened for critics, at least gives Frasier a new conflict while meta-commenting on the revival. As he prepares to teach his first class, he realizes that his students, and his colleagues, are looking not for a professor but a celebrity, wanting him to re-create his shtick from his talk show. But he’s embarrassed of those years; in a series of clips, we see that he went from giving sober advice in the first season to, by Season 13, wearing a football-referee uniform and doing ax-throwing stunts.Now that I would watch! No, not the cheesy advice program that Frasier sold himself out to do. But a show about Frasier Crane making that show, lowering himself to win the love of hoi polloi, moving outside his comfort zone, finding out that success is a kind of prison — I would hit “play all” on that. It might be great, it might be terrible, but it would be interesting. But the revival industry is not in the business of interesting.As I’ve written before, there’s an inherent sadness to bringing back a sitcom after years or decades, the twinge of time passing. You can treat that melancholy in different ways, even get laughs out of it, but to ignore it just rings false. While this “Frasier” has the occasional sentimental moment, it’s too busy re-creating the past to engage with the past. It re-tosses the salads, it re-scrambles the eggs. But it has no desire to hear the blues a-callin’. More

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      ‘Frasier’ Returns With a Sitcom Veteran in the Director’s Chair

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      Over nearly five decades, Burrows has directed a thousand sitcom episodes. Next up: the new Paramount+ series, which follows Frasier Crane’s return to Boston.“You can’t learn how to be funny,” James Burrows said. “That has to be instinctual in you.”Burrows, 82, a celebrated director of the multicamera sitcom, has more of that instinct than most. The son of the playwright and director Abe Burrows (“Guys and Dolls,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”), he never intended a career in show business. But to defer his draft eligibility, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. Yale taught him that he wasn’t a playwright. Or an actor. But he became curious about directing.After graduation he worked as a stage manager, once assisting Mary Tyler Moore on a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” (“It was a horrible experience,” he said. “Mary would come offstage and collapse in my arms and start crying.”) He segued into directing, eventually running a theater in San Diego. One night, while watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he realized that directing a sitcom in front of a live studio audience wasn’t so different from his theater work. He wrote to Moore. Her husband, the producer Grant Tinker, invited him to the set.In 1974, he directed his first episode of the show. Over nearly five decades, he would go on to help create “Cheers” and direct a thousand more sitcom episodes, including the pilots for “Taxi,” “NewsRadio,” “Friends,” “Third Rock From the Sun” and “Will & Grace.” In 1993, he directed the pilot of “Frasier,” a “Cheers” spinoff that followed Kelsey Grammer’s psychiatrist character, Frasier Crane, as he relocated to Seattle from Boston. That show ended in 2004. But Burrows has kept on. In February, he directed another pilot, a “Frasier” reboot (though Burrows doesn’t like to think of it that way) that begins Oct. 12 on Paramount+. The show finds Frasier back in Boston, trying to reconnect with his son. Besides Grammer, none of the other original cast star, but several make guest appearances.In the new Paramount+ series, Kelsey Grammer, left, reprises his role as Frasier Crane, trying to reconnect with his son, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott, in red. Chris Haston/Paramount+On a recent Monday (morning in Los Angeles, where Burrows lives, afternoon in New York), Burrows appeared on a video call screen, spiffy in a New York Giants jersey. A practiced entertainer, he kept the jokes and the Yiddish — naches, mishpachah, kop — coming as he discussed the decline of the sitcom and the pleasure of getting behind the camera again. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you learn to direct for television?I observed on “The Bob Newhart Show.” I knew how to talk to actors. I knew what was funny. But I didn’t know the situation with the cameras. Then I watched my dear mentor, Jay Sandrich, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And after about four months, they gave me a show to do.You say that you knew what was funny? How?How do you know when something’s hot?You touch it and it burns you?It’s an instinctual reaction. I know what’s the best way to say a joke or what’s the best position onstage. I also have a multitude of ideas of what’s wrong with the script and what’s not wrong.I’m staggered by the list of shows that you’ve brought into being. How do you know if a show is for you?I try to only do multicamera sitcoms. For me, the camera is not a character. I don’t think of it that way. If there’s two people talking, I want you laughing at what they’re saying, not admiring the beautiful cinematic camera moves. When I first started, I did anything anybody would throw my way. “Taxi,” that was my first big break. Then there was “Cheers,” which I created with Glen and Les Charles. I look at those scripts. “Cheers” was a workplace comedy. “Taxi” was a workplace comedy. But they were about families. In “Taxi,” it’s a family that wants to get out. In “Cheers,” it’s a family that wants to come in. I guess I have a gift for creating families. My job is to mold a disparate group of actors into a family that likes one another.“Cheers,” in 1986, from left: Woody Harrelson, John Ratzenberger, Grammer and George Wendt.Ron Tom/NBC, via Getty ImagesHow do you know if a show is going to work?Well, it comes in pieces. The first thing I do is read the script. Then I’ll meet the writers. There has to be this compromise between writer and director, that’s the second thing. The third thing is the casting. You have to get lucky. You have to have the right actor available.I do my work in rehearsal. I don’t have any preconceptions. I take the best bolts of electricity and stick with that. And if there is no electricity, my job is to try to make electricity, change the batteries. Then I put in pieces of business that make the scene funnier. When the audience comes in on the fifth day, we do the first scene. And if a couple of jokes don’t work, we change the jokes, because the audience is the ultimate barometer.Frasier Crane was first introduced on “Cheers.” Who was he?Glen and Les created the character. He was a device to get Diane Chambers [the waitress played by Shelley Long] back into the bar. She was in a loony bin. Her doctor there was Dr. Frasier Crane, and he recommended that she go back and confront her demons. We hired Kelsey Grammer for four shows. In the first show, he was sitting at the bar, and he opened his mouth and the audience laughed. The three of us looked at one another and went, “Oh my God, this guy’s great.” We hired him for the rest of the series. If you watch Frasier on “Cheers,” you can see he’s a buffoon, but you love him. He’s pretentious, but you love him. Kelsey played him with such vulnerability.What made this character worthy of a spinoff?David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee [the creators and executive producers, who were then writers on “Cheers”] came to us and said they wanted to spin off the character of Frasier. They were smart enough to know that Kelsey was a skilled enough actor to go from playing a buffoon on “Cheers” to playing a leading man on “Frasier.” So that was their genius and also Kelsey’s genius.Where did the inspiration come from to do a revival?I was not involved in that. I don’t even call it a revival. I call it a continuation, because it’s not really a reboot. It’s a character moving on, and he’s surrounded by a whole new set of characters, so it’s not really a reboot.Are there maybe too many revivals, reboots, continuations these days?I have no idea. I don’t like them. But I enjoyed going back with Kelsey and revisiting the character.Grammer, with David Hyde Pierce as his brother Niles Crane, in the original “Frasier,” which premiered in 1993.Gale M. Adler/NBC, via Getty ImagesIf the magic of the original “Frasier” was the interaction among the characters and the actors playing them, is it enough to do it with just Kelsey?Well, the audience will be the judge of that. I know that. When Kelsey called me and said, “Would you do it?” I said, “I’ll read a script.” I read the script. I liked the script. And I agreed to do it just to make sure we protect the character.Has Frasier changed? Can characters change in a multi-cam format?Frasier is dealing with new emotions with his kid that weren’t emotions he dealt with before. He’s still a pompous ass. He always is and will always be. That’s what makes him funny. But I think there is growth.This “Frasier” is on a streamer. It doesn’t need to adhere to a 21-minute time limit or pause for commercial breaks. Does that change anything?You can go up to 30 minutes with a comedy. After that, it gets taxing. I do love a joke a page. Sometimes two jokes. That doesn’t happen often now.Why is that?There are a lot of single-camera comedies that get chuckles. They don’t get guffaws. I have friends at CBS and they say [of multicamera sitcoms], “Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re going to come back.” I’ve been hearing that for years.How have you seen sitcoms evolve during your career?The one evolution I’ve seen is that a lot of them aren’t funny anymore. The prime requirement of a multicamera sitcom is you’d better be funny.When a great pilot script comes your way, do you still enjoy the process?I had a ball on this, with my dear friend. That laughter behind me is so rewarding for my soul. If somebody sent me a great script, I would almost do it for free. It’s better than sitting around in the house, reading novels and watching sports. And it’s nice to be able to go back to what happened to me 50 years ago and still have this feeling of creativity. When pilot season comes this year, I hope there is a pilot that I like. More

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      How ‘Survivor’ and “Amazing Race’ Adapt to Climate Change

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      The CBS hit, along with fellow staple “The Amazing Race,” is learning to deal with climate change, globalization and other seismic shifts.Since its premiere in 2000, the hit CBS reality game show “Survivor” has taken place across the globe, with each season set in an exotic island locale: Pulau Tiga in Malaysia, Ko Tarutao in Thailand, Efate in Vanuatu and many, many more.But around a decade ago, the longtime host and executive producer Jeff Probst had an alarming realization. A growing population was making it harder to find remote islands without anybody on them. Extreme weather, including rising heat and more intense storms, was making it more dangerous to film. And burgeoning political unrest was making it more difficult to work with certain governments or in countries that no longer felt safe.“When we started in 2000, there were lots of places in the world we could go,” Probst said last week in a phone interview. “But over the years, starting in about 2012, 2013, it became clear that we were running out of places to shoot.”Both “Survivor” and its sister series, the globe-trotting adventure competition “The Amazing Race,” have been stalwart hits on CBS for nearly two decades. Both continue to draw sizable audiences: Last week’s Season 45 premiere of “Survivor” and Season 35 premiere of “The Amazing Race,” which screened back-to-back on Wednesday evening, were the most-streamed shows on Paramount+ that night, according to the network, with “Survivor” also topping NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” to win the night in broadcast ratings. But while the popularity of these shows has endured, producing them has continued to be a unique challenge — particularly as the world around them keeps changing.“Our show is really a time capsule of 20-plus years of seeing the world grow,” said Elise Doganieri, one of the creators and executive producers of “The Amazing Race” alongside her husband, Bertram van Munster. “The Amazing Race” challenges teams of American contestants to chart sprawling international courses that take them from one far-flung locale to another, and many of the cities that appeared in the series when it debuted in 2001 have been transformed over the intervening years. “We go back to places that we’ve been to before, but the world has evolved and grown so much, and the landscape has really changed.”Remote landscapes where the crew could shoot with little interference have since been built up, while locals in even the most out-of-the-way regions are more connected to the rest of the world. When “The Amazing Race” paid a visit to Dubai in the early 2000s, Doganieri remembered, the city was by and large still a sprawling desert landscape where “everything was old, with wooden boats and dhows.” Today, of course, “it’s the complete opposite: a futuristic ultramodern city.”“The Amazing Race” started its 35th season at the Hollywood sign. Nicolas Axelrod/CBSIn some ways, Doganieri said, making a show like “The Amazing Race” has gotten easier over time: advancing camera and cellphone technology has streamlined aspects of the production, and location scouting, which used to be done using still photography, can now be done using video.Other changes are more challenging. As with “Survivor,” climate change has begun to affect the way that “The Amazing Race” is made, with extreme heat and tropical storms sometimes interfering with the production. “Weather has made a big change in how we travel,” Doganieri said. “There’s more storms, especially over Asia, and we have flight delays and cancellations that push into the schedule.” Soaring temperatures in the summer have made filming the competition elements more demanding for both the contestants and crew. “We scouted in Asia for the first several episodes. It was hot when we scouted in April. When we filmed, it was 90, 95 degrees.”Although Doganiei said production is prepared for when it’s “unbearably hot” with “electrolyte drinks, snacks, water, anything to keep hydration up,” she admits that “it’s tough” in the midst of more and more grueling summers. “Most of our show is shot outside, so it really does affect you,” she said. “You have to really be aware of it.”“Survivor” solved its location problem by settling on one setting: the show has been set on the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji since its 33rd season. Earlier seasons were distinguished primarily by their location, with subtitles like “Survivor: Panama” and “Survivor: China” luring an audience in with the appeal of an intriguing new place. Shooting in Fiji again and again has removed that novelty, but Probst insists that it was a negligible feature to begin with. “It doesn’t really matter where you do it as long as it’s a real jungle,” he said.“You don’t see Fiji,” said Drea Wheeler, a former contestant. “You’re just on an island. You’re miserable. It’s hot. It rains. It still sucks.”In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits.Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS“The real challenge,” said Rob Cesternino, a two-time “Survivor” contestant who competed in Panama and Brazil, “is keeping the show interesting with new ideas every season without changing locations.” In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits, such as “David vs. Goliath,” in which “underdogs” compete against “overachievers,” and “Winners at War,” which featured the return of 10 previous “Survivor” victors. Although not all of these concepts have been considered successful, Probst said that he would “much rather the show burn out due to a bad idea than fade away due to boredom.”Probst also said that filming in Fiji has freed the producers up to spend more time working on such ideas, simply because the static setting has “made everything more streamlined.” The show’s 300-person international crew, which also commands a vast infrastructure including 40 boats and a helicopter, now knows what to expect from the setting season over season, removing some of the environmental unpredictability that could make producing “Survivor” such a risky endeavor. The number of possible options for the production would only continue to dwindle as time went on and the climate continued to change. Nor could they easily reuse old locales after departing them.“A lot of the places we visited in the past became popular because of ‘Survivor,’ and after we left they might have erected a resort on that island,” Probst said. “It was harder to find remote islands simply because there are more people on the planet. Storms were more intense, and there was no denying it — we had been out in these waters before and it was never like that. And it became less desirable to visit places where things were happening politically that made us feel unsafe, or that we didn’t want to be part of.” Given those considerations, sticking to Fiji just made sense.“I think in many ways this was the answer to a problem that was always fast approaching,” he said.“The Amazing Race” in Lijiang, China, in 2011. Shifting geopolitical concerns have restricted the scope of where the crew can now go.Robert Voets/CBSThat problem has continued to vex the producers of “The Amazing Race,” which still involves dozens of international settings per season. Shifting geopolitical concerns, a delicate matter for American productions abroad, have restricted the scope of where the crew can go, making it harder to find new and interesting places to shoot. “The world has gotten a little smaller,” said van Munster. “We’re not going to Russia right now. We’re not going to China. There are a lot of places in West Africa where I would love to go but where we can’t go. Senegal. Logistically, maybe we can figure it out. But is it safe? We don’t want to get ourselves in trouble in another country. The world is a tricky place.”Nor is this the only way in which the world seems to be getting smaller. Phil Keoghan, the host of “The Amazing Race” since its inception, said in a recent video interview that people are more aware of the world around them than every before — that globalization, in short, has changed the function of the show. “It used to be that we were almost opening up another universe for the audience, these unknown worlds that existed out there, these exotic places,” he said. “Some of that innocence has been lost. Now we’re watching Korean TV and Indian movies. We’re seeing the influence of the rest of world across social media. People who live in these places are sharing their homes with us in an intimate way.”Part of the reason that “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” have endured throughout these many changes is precisely because they are so good at capturing them. As fly on the wall, cinéma vérité exercises, they are not only contending with the realities of an ever-shifting world, but they are also documenting them. What’s evolving, in the environment and in the landscape, is evolving before the eyes of the audience. “The genre we operate in, we go with the flow, and whatever happens in front of the camera we go with it,” van Munster said.“The world is changing so rapidly that what was fun 20 years ago is different fun 20 years later. But whatever it looks like, it’s always fascinating.” More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in October: ‘Loki,’ ‘Goosebumps’ and More

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      Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of October’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Totally Killer’Starts streaming: Oct. 6The offbeat horror-comedy “Totally Killer” is a 1980s-style slasher film with a science-fiction twist. Kiernan Shipka stars as Jamie, a rebellious teenager who has lived her whole life in a small town that was the site of an infamous string of unsolved murders in 1987. When the masked killer — or perhaps a copycat — reappears and slays Jamie’s mother, Pam (Julie Bowen), Jamie travels back in time to 1987 to stop the original spree. While trying to figure out the identity of a knife-wielding maniac, the heroine handles the culture-clash of being a 2020s high school kid stranded in a clique-dominated, politically incorrect era.Also arriving:Oct. 3“Make Me Scream”Oct. 6“Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe”Oct. 10“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe”Oct. 11“Awareness”“The Greatest Show Never Made”Oct. 13“The Burial”“Everybody Loves Diamonds”Oct. 20“Bosch: Legacy” Season 2“Upload” Season 3Oct. 24“Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles”“Zainab Johnson: Hijabs Off”Oct. 26“Sebastian Fitzek’s Therapy”Oct. 27“The Girl Who Killed Her Parents: The Confession”Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Lessons in Chemistry’Starts streaming: Oct. 13Based on a Bonnie Garmus novel, this mini-series stars Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, a talented chemist who struggles to be taken seriously in the sexist 1950s scientific community. When her brazen defiance of her lab’s rules — coupled with an unwillingness to be subservient and girlie — gets her fired, Elizabeth reinvents herself as the host of a science-focused TV cooking show. “Lessons in Chemistry” covers a decade in the heroine’s life, balancing her rise to fame with her early struggles, while also following her brilliant, eccentric colleague and love interest Calvin Evans (Lewis Pullman). A combination of “Mad Men” and “Julia” — with a little bit of “Oppenheimer” mixed in — the series is a portrait of smart, independent people bucking the conformity of their times.Also arriving:Oct. 20“The Pigeon Tunnel”“Shape Island: Creepy Cave Crawl”Oct. 27“The Enfield Poltergeist”“Curses!” Season 1New to Disney+‘Loki’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 5The Marvel Cinematic Universe has lately been all about the multiverse, with movies and TV series offering alternate versions of the classic Marvel characters living in parallel realities. Season 1 of “Loki” got that ball rolling, with a creative and mind-bending story about the roguish Norse deity running afoul of the timeline watchdogs in the Time Variance Authority. For Season 2, Tom Hiddleston returns as Loki and Owen Wilson is back as the frequently flustered TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius. Because of the proliferation of new multiverses unleashed in the Season 1 finale, many of the show’s characters find themselves subtly altered and stuck in other worlds, necessitating another trip through time, space and dimensions for these unlikely heroes.Also arriving:Oct. 2“Mickey and Friends Trick or Treats”Oct. 11“4EVER”Oct. 13“Goosebumps” Season 1Oct. 25“Primal Survivor: Extreme African Safari”Oct. 27“LEGO Marvel Avengers: Code Red”Zack Morris in “Goosebumps.”David Astorga/DisneyNew to Hulu‘Goosebumps’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 13R.L. Stine’s perennially popular “Goosebumps” young adult horror novels get a new television adaptation, although unlike the original 1990s anthology TV series, this latest version (available on Hulu and Disney+) features concepts from Stine’s books inserted into a larger serialized story, with a single cast. Justin Long plays Nathan Bratt, the new high school English teacher in a quaint small town, as well as the new owner of a spooky old house that the local teenagers like to use for their parties. Before Mr. Bratt chases the kids away from their annual Halloween bash, five of them encounter haunted objects that change their lives and put the community in danger.Also arriving:Oct. 1“Ash vs. Evil Dead” Season 1-3“Crazy Fun Park”“Stephen King’s Rose Red”Oct. 2“Appendage”“Fright Crewe” Season 1Oct. 5“The Boogeyman”Oct. 6“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”“Undead Unlock”Oct. 9“The Mill”Oct. 10“Moonlighting” Seasons 1-5Oct. 11“Nada” Season 1Oct. 12“Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House”Oct. 13“Nocebo”Oct. 14“Empire of Light”Oct. 15“Slotherhouse”Oct. 18“Living for the Dead” Season 1Oct. 20“Cobweb”Oct. 26“American Horror Stories” Season 3Oct. 27“Explorer: Lake of Fire”“Shoresy” Season 2Rhys Darby in Season 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.”HBO MaxNew to Max‘Our Flag Means Death’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 5The first season of “Our Flag Means Death” arrived without a lot of fanfare. Initially, the show looked to be just a mild-mannered pirate parody, about a ship full of misfit outlaws led by the inept captain Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby). But as the season rolled on — and as Stede’s rivalry and romance with the notorious Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) became more central to the plot — the series’ creator David Jenkins began focusing more on piracy as a haven for people who yearn to live outside the mainstream. Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, with Stede’s crew stranded on a deserted island and Blackbeard determined to get back to being mean. Fans have been eager ever since to learn how these twists will affect one of TV’s sweetest love stories.‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 29The “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes brings his uncommon knack for energetic historical melodrama to “The Gilded Age,” a lavishly decorated and irresistibly entertaining look at high society in 1880s New York City. Carrie Coon is superb as a shrewd social climber, married to a nouveau-riche tycoon (Morgan Spector) whose ruthless business tactics irritate the old money types. The rest of the cast includes Louisa Jacobson as a restless young woman living with her eccentric, judgmental aunts (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon) and Denée Benton as an aspiring writer defying the era’s racist biases. Season 2 will continue Fellowes’s fascination with a pivotal era in American culture, when the upper-crust considered whether an ascendant democracy should still be following Europe’s unwritten rules of etiquette.Also arriving:Oct. 1“The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring”Oct. 8“Last Stop Larrimah”Oct. 12“Doom Patrol” Season 4Oct. 19“Peter and the Wolf”“Scavengers Reign”Oct. 22“AKA Mr. Chow”Oct. 23“30 Coins” Season 2Jack Cutmore-Scott, left, as Freddy Crane and Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane in “Frasier.”Paramount+New to Paramount+ with Showtime‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’Starts streaming: Oct. 6The final film from William Friedkin is both an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s provocative 1953 play “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” (updated to modern times by Friedkin, who wrote the screenplay) and a summation of the director’s career-long fascination with the line between legal authority and raw power, as seen in his classic films “The French Connection” and “To Live and Die in L.A.” Jason Clarke plays Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a Navy lawyer defending Lt. Stephen Maryk, who defied orders and relieved his commanding officer Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) of duty during a storm. Though mostly confined to one courtroom set, the movie is a thrilling actors’ showcase; and as with the play, it toys with the audience’s sympathies, raising questions about how justice is properly served in a case involving the rigid military chain of command.‘Frasier’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 12Kelsey Grammer returns to his most famous role, in a sequel series that surrounds the fussy psychiatrist Frasier Crane with a mostly new cast of characters. Crane moves back to Boston from Seattle and gets involved in the lives of his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), and his nephew, David (Anders Keith). Freddy has turned out a lot like Frasier’s father, Martin — rugged and unpretentious — while David has the same dry wit and nervous energy as Frasier’s brother, Niles. Like the old “Frasier,” this new one traffics in farce, with the comedy driven by misunderstandings and personality clashes.‘Fellow Travelers’Starts streaming: Oct. 27This historical romance tells a story that stretches from the 1950s to the ’80s, tracing a love affair between two political consultants whose lives are affected by the changing times. Matt Bomer plays Hawkins Fuller, a savvy, politically flexible congressional aide who has a fling with Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), a right-wing speechwriter who admires Joseph McCarthy. Their relationship stretches across decades, through the more permissive ’60s and ’70s and into the conservative revival of the Reagan era. Adapted by the Oscar-nominated “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner from a Thomas Mallon novel, “Fellow Travelers” is dotted with real-life historical figures and explicitly erotic sex scenes, illustrating how basic human needs can be undone by political expediency.Also arriving:Oct. 5“Bargain”“Monster High 2”Oct. 6“Pet Sematary: Bloodlines”Oct. 10“Painkiller: The Tylenol Murders”Oct. 16“Vindicta”Oct. 17“Crush”Oct. 24“Milli Vanilli”New to Peacock‘John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams’Starts streaming: Oct. 13The influential genre filmmaker and composer John Carpenter lends his name, his music and — for one episode — his directing talents to this hybrid anthology series, which combines true crime and horror. Each episode is anchored by interviews with ordinary people who experienced something extraordinary, encountering real evil in the form of the creeps, the killers and the unexplained phenomena in their seemingly placid neighborhoods. The interviews provide the basic details for these tales; and then the bulk of each “Suburban Screams” episode consists of lengthy re-enactments that have the look and feel of an ’80s slasher movie, as though Carpenter’s “Halloween” were a documentary.Also arriving:Oct. 12“Superbuns” Season 1Oct. 19“Wolf Like Me” Season 2Oct. 20“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken”Oct. 24“Krishnas: Gurus. Karma. Murder.”Oct. 27“Five Nights at Freddy’s”“L’il Stompers” Season 1 More

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      Sex, Thugs and Kidneys: ‘Bargain’ Bids to Be the Next ‘Squid Game’

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      A new Paramount+ thriller depicts a fight for survival amid sex scams, organ auctions and earthquakes. Like other Korean dramas, it is really about class.In “Bargain,” a new dystopian South Korean series on Paramount+, a man shows up at a hotel far from the city to consummate a deal. He is to pay a young woman for sex; the price is steep because she claims to be a virgin. But wait: It turns out she actually works for a criminal organ-auctioning operation, and the guy is about to unwillingly give up a kidney.Then an earthquake levels the hotel, initiating a desperate scramble for survival. And that’s just the first 30 minutes or so.There’s an almost comical amount of calamity in “Bargain,” the latest offering in the push from Paramount+ into a robust South Korean streaming market that exploded with the popularity of Netflix’s “Squid Game” in 2021. Like that show, which depicted debt-ridden citizens competing in a series of deadly, Darwinian children’s games for the amusement of wealthy overlords, “Bargain” deals in dystopian extremes. (All six episodes begin streaming on Thursday.)But these shows aren’t serving up shock for its own sake. They use dark fantasy to confront issues that plague contemporary South Korean society, particularly the economic inequality fostered by capitalism run amok; social isolation in a frenzied tech boom; and a widespread distrust of government authority.In a paradox of the South Korean streaming boom, shows that often dramatize desperate efforts to get a piece of the economic pie are proving to be big business. (Netflix, the world’s biggest streaming service, reported that 60 percent of its subscribers worldwide had watched a Korean-language show or movie in 2022; the company plans to invest $2.5 billion in South Korean content over the next four years.)Jin Sun Kyu plays a man lured into a trap set by a woman posing as a prostitute. Next thing he knows, a roomful of people are bidding on his organs. Then comes the earthquake.TVING Co/Paramount+“We’ve seen a lot of demand for international content across the globe, and Korean content particularly is a phenomenon in itself,” Marco Nobili, the executive vice president and international general manager of Paramount+, said in a video interview. “Globalization has really brought that to light. So certainly Korea was a top market for us.”Paramount+ entered the arena through a film and television partnership between its parent company, Paramount Global, and the South Korean media conglomerate CJ ENM. As part of that deal, Paramount+ and the Korean streaming giant TVing, which CJ ENM controls, committed to co-producing seven original Korean series, of which “Bargain” is the second. The first, “Yonder,” about a man who reconnects with his dead wife, debuted on Paramount+ in April. (Both premiered in South Korea, on TVing, in October 2022.)At the same time, Paramount+ has begun building its K-drama library with hit shows from the CJ ENM vaults, including the 2016 procedural “Signal” and a 2017 thriller about a religious cult, “Save Me,” both of which also arrived in April.A dark, competitive thread runs through much of it; and just as the characters in Korea’s many dystopian offerings must fight for survival, there seems to be a kind of “can you top this?” contest happening among the shows themselves. The premise of “Bargain” is a little more extreme than that of “Squid Game.” Paramount+’s coming series “Pyramid Game,” in which a bullied high school girl must become a sniper in order to survive a brutal game, looks to be yet another nightmare blood sport.For Byun Seungmin, the creator of “Bargain,” the idea of toxic competition is crucial.“In South Korea, the issue of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is severe,” Byun said in a video interview last month through an interpreter. “There’s a prevailing sense of defeat that if one isn’t born into a good background, it’s difficult to have a fair opportunity to achieve something.”In “Bargain,” you can either afford to buy a kidney for your dying father (freshly carved from a captive), or you can’t. You either run a criminal empire, or what’s left of your body is fed to the fish. Near the end of the series, as the female and male lead characters (played by Jun Jong Seo and Jin Sun Kyu) try to escape the collapsing structure, one says to the other: “If we die here, we die for nothing.” The response: “People like us always die for nothing.”The hit Netflix series “Squid Game,” whose premise put contestants in a series of deadly children’s games, initiated the boom in the South Korean streaming market. Noh Juhan/Netflix“Bargain,” like “Squid Game,” offers the spectacle of millions in cash literally dangling above those who can grab it. Such images are laden with meaning, said the journalist Elise Hu, whose book “Flawless” is a deep examination of South Korea’s booming beauty industry.“You have this story in which body parts are actually getting fragmented, and organs sold and then harvested, so that you can put a price on a body,” she said last month in a phone interview. “It all flows from this moment that South Korea is in with consumption, where you can buy all the things that you want and it’s all money, money, money.”As Byun put it, “The younger generation in Korea now believes unless the system collapses, or a disaster occurs where everyone becomes truly equal, there is no opportunity for the future.”“Bargain” unfolds in a series of carefully choreographed long takes, the camera darting and gliding among the wreckage and creating a sense that, even in this dog-eat-dog world, everyone’s fate is connected. The dearth of editing made it essential that everyone hit their marks and stay on the same page.“It felt like a theater piece, or like I was playing a game of chess or Go,” Jun, the female lead, said through an interpreter. “The series is quite experimental in terms of the scenario and also the structure.”From left, Chang Ryul, Park Hyung-Soo and Jun in “Bargain.” Their characters must battle in an postapocalyptic-like environment after an earthquake collapses much of the building they are in.TVING Co/Paramount+The past few years have seen seismic change and even scandal in South Korean television and film. In 2017 the conservative president Park Geun-hye was removed from office and later convicted on charges of bribery, extortion and abusing her power, including the maintenance of a government blacklist that denied state funding to thousands of artists deemed unfriendly to her administration or insufficiently patriotic. During the Park administration, more filmmakers subsequently sought funding and distribution from streamers — especially Netflix, Hu said.Now the streaming frontier is wide open, and Paramount+ is staking its claim. Nobili, the Paramount+ executive, is particularly excited about the coming series “A Bloody Lucky Day,” about a taxi driver and a serial killer — shades of Michael Mann’s hit man/cabby movie “Collateral.”Business, in other words, is promising. But if “Bargain” stands to provide some wild entertainment for American audiences — and the promise of big revenue for its American streamer — Byun, its creator, seemed more focused on the culturally specific ways he hopes the series will speak about South Korea today. He described a country in which birthrates are plummeting and “people tend to avoid communication with others.”“They express anger about many things, claiming the value of fairness,” he continued. The characters in “Bargain,” he added, “reflect the masses in modern South Korea who seem to have lost hope, and even among them there is a rift.”And yet where there is collapse — of a building, an entertainment industry, a society — there is also the hope for renewal.“Collapse is not the end but a new beginning,” Byun said. “After going through the collapse, the characters inadvertently gain an opportunity to start over in a more primitive era where equality prevails.“I believe this also reflects the psyche of the public, desiring the end of the period they’re living in so that a new one can arise.” More

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

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