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    What to Watch This Weekend: An Experiment from Comedy Weirdos

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    Perhaps you would enjoy “Knuckles,” a Sonic the Hedgehog spinoff that outpaces its origin story.Wendy Whipple (Stockard Channing) and Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) in “Knuckles.”Paramount Pictures/Sega, via Paramount+What if I told you that midway through “Knuckles,” the new Paramount+ limited series based on the character from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, there’s a mini rock opera featuring vocals from Michael Bolton? If that piques your interest, then you will find many things to enjoy in this show, which frequently feels less like an exercise in I.P. expansion and more like an experiment from comedy weirdos. There’s some strange sauce at work in “Knuckles,” which makes it overcome its crassly commercial origins to feel like a worthwhile watch for those in need of a quick and zany distraction.At its core, “Knuckles” is a spinoff of the two “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies about a blue alien who can go fast. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (2022) introduced Knuckles, a bright red echidna, sometimes called a spiny anteater, voiced by Idris Elba, who starts out as Sonic’s foe but turns out to be an ally. You don’t actually really need to know much of anything about the “Sonic” movies or Sega video games to enjoy “Knuckles,” however. There’s occasionally mention of Sonic lore, but it just serves as a backdrop to a bizarre buddy comedy.“Knuckles” finds the titular character teaming up with Wade Whipple (Adam Pally), a lowly deputy sheriff of the town where Sonic and his pals reside. Wade wants to win a bowling tournament. The deadpan Knuckles believes his quest worthy and promises to turn Wade into a “warrior.” (The theme song is Scandal’s very catchy “The Warrior” from 1984.)So, yes, “Knuckles” is mostly about a man and an animated egg-laying mammal with super strength venturing from Montana to Reno in order to bowl. Along the way they are pursued by some bad guys (Scott Mescudi, a.k.a. the rapper Kid Cudi, and Ellie Taylor) who want to trap Knuckles, but they also stop to have Shabbat dinner at Wade’s childhood home. There, Wade’s mother, played by Stockard Channing, teaches Knuckles about Judaism and the filmography of Julia Roberts.And then there’s the “low-budget rock opera,” directed by Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, in which Wade enters a musical dream sequence dressed as Knuckles in a fuzzy mascot suit. He is accompanied by a chorus of dancing owls led by Julian Barratt of the British comedy group the Mighty Boosh. It’s a deeply absurd episode that feels right in line with the rest of Taccone’s work, especially the underrated film “Hot Rod” (2007).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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      Disney Scrapped ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles.’ Roku Saved It.

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      Canceled by Disney before it even aired, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” found a new home at Roku and has so far “delivered results beyond expectations,” its creator said.Last summer, the writer and producer Aron Eli Coleite was on holiday in Las Vegas with his wife when he received an urgent call from Nicole Clemens, the president of Paramount Television.Coleite was the showrunner on “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” a fantasy series Paramount was producing for Disney+. The show had recently finished production on its first season, but Clemens was calling with bad news: Disney had decided to pull the plug, effectively canceling the series before it made it to air.Without warning, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” was “being turned into one of those tax write-offs that I’d heard so much about,” Coleite said in an interview. Christine McCarthy, the chief financial officer for Disney, had said on an earnings call in May 2023 that Disney was in the process of a strategic shift that would lead to downsizing and cost-cutting across the board, beginning with the removal and cancellation of some shows on their streaming platforms. “Spiderwick” was a casualty of these cuts, and “there was no fighting against it,” Coleite said. (Disney declined to comment.)Clemens said in an interview that she was shocked by the move. “We’d started a second season, and there was a lot of love and excitement for the project,” she said. “It was like, whoa.”But after facing certain extinction, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” was rescued by an unlikely savior: The Roku Channel, the ad-supported streaming platform built into the company’s smart TV interfaces and stand-alone streaming devices. All eight episodes of “The Spiderwick Chronicles” debuted on Roku last week, joining the platform’s modest but growing library of original content, including the movie “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” and its reboot of “The Great American Baking Show.”So far the move has paid off: Roku announced on Tuesday that “Spiderwick” had the best first weekend of any on-demand title on the Roku Channel, in terms of total hours streamed. (The streamer also offers live channels and sports.) Roku declined to give specific numbers, saying only that “Spiderwick” was watched by “millions of streamers” in its first three days on the platform.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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      Howie Schwab, ESPN Researcher and Trivia Star, Dies at 63

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      He stepped out of his behind-the-scenes role in 2004 when he was cast as the ultimate sports know-it-all on the game show “Stump the Schwab.”Howie Schwab, a sports nerd who parlayed his love of statistics into a long stint at ESPN that was most notable for his starring role as the ultimate trivia expert on the game show “Stump the Schwab,” died on Saturday in Aventura, Fla. He was 63.His death was announced on social media by his wife, Suzie Davie-Schwab. His mother, Dona (Bressner) Schwab, said he was in a hospital being treated for an infection when he died, apparently of a heart attack.Mr. Schwab had been at ESPN for 17 years in behind-the-scenes roles as a researcher and producer when he was tapped in 2004 to star in his own show.On “Stump the Schwab,” three challengers vied to outdo Mr. Schwab in answering questions posed by the host, Stuart Scott, in the opening rounds. In the final round — called the Schwab Showdown — the best of the three went head to head against him for a $25,000 grand prize. Mr. Schwab almost always won.In the episode that decided the 2005 season’s champion, Mr. Schwab entered the studio at the start of the show wearing a red boxing robe, with a woman on each arm; he then doffed the robe, revealing a Derek Jeter jersey, and shadowboxed.“I am ready to rumble,” he told Mr. Scott.Mr. Schwab did not look like a typical television star: He was overweight, wore glasses and sported a goatee.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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      Terry Carter, Barrier-Breaking Actor and Documentarian, Dies at 95

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      He was the only Black actor on “Combat!” and “The Phil Silvers Show,” then made well regarded documentaries on luminaries like Duke Ellington and Katherine Dunham.Terry Carter, who broke color barriers onstage and on television in the 1950s and ’60s and later produced multicultural documentaries on the jazz luminary Duke Ellington and the dancer-choreographer Katherine Dunham, died on Tuesday at his home in Midtown Manhattan. He was 95. His death was confirmed by his son, Miguel Carter DeCoste.Mr. Carter was raised in a bilingual home next door to a synagogue in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. His best friend was the future jazz great Cecil Taylor. In his first stage role, at 9, Mr. Carter played the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on a voyage of discovery.And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”While he acted in some 30 television series and movies, Mr. Carter was best known to viewers as Sgt. Joe Broadhurst, the sidekick to Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud (Dennis Weaver) on NBC’s “McCloud” series from 1970 to 1977, and in 21 episodes of “Battlestar Galactica,” as Colonel Tigh, second-in-command of the starship fleet in ABC’s original science-fiction series in 1978-79. (The series was revived for a second run from 2004 to 2009.)Mr. Carter, right, on “McCloud” as the sidekick to Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud, played by Dennis Weaver, left. Mr. Carter appeared on the series from 1970 to 1977.via Everett CollectionWe 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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      ‘Baby Reindeer,’ Netflix’s New Stalker Drama, Is Based on a True Story

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      The Netflix series is based on the real-life experience of its creator, Richard Gadd, who also stars in the show.Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning in “Baby Reindeer.”Ed Miller/NetflixRichard Gadd created and stars in the mesmerizing, complex drama “Baby Reindeer” (on Netflix), which is based on his experience of being stalked. Here he plays Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian and miserable bartender, living with his ex-girlfriend’s mother and stewing in regret.So one day when Martha (Jessica Gunning) sits at his bar, he feels bad for her — he sees a fellow wounded bird who deserves a moment of compassion. But Martha isn’t just a sad sack; she is a convicted stalker. Soon she is emailing Donny hundreds of times a day, harassing his family and his exes, showing up at gigs and outside his house. It’s relentless, it’s terrifying, it’s … flattering?“Reindeer” is candid and disturbing, but not lurid. On lesser shows, nuance can play like a lack of conviction, but here it is the conviction, a rebuttal to pat victimhood narratives. It delves into the absolute pits of human experience not with a sage, well-adjusted perspective but with the mischievous bravado of a prop comic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. (“Baby Reindeer” is adapted from Gadd’s solo show of the same title, which premiered at the festival.)We see Donny’s act bomb and bomb and bomb; to be a comedian is often one big indignity. Donny recognizes and articulates the dangers of wanting fame, how it warps his judgment but also could solve his problems. (One person knowing your darkest secret is unbearable, but a million people knowing it is stardom.) Agony and attention are bound together here — Look at me! No, not like that! — twin snakes choking the life out of their prey. The show is relentlessly, fascinatingly compassionate, answering the questions of “why would you …” and “why didn’t he just …” with probing clarity. Everyone is shaped by suffering, their choices and identities carved by humiliations large and small.The show is seven half-hour(ish) episodes, and they are the good kind of heavy.SIDE QUESTSIf you want something autobiographical and introspective about masculinity but without the horrors of stalking, all three seasons of “Ladhood” are on Hulu and the Roku Channel.If you actually love the horrors of stalking and want to add in serial murder and sultry whispers, all four seasons of “You” are on Netflix. (Only the first three are good.)If you want another fabulous show that started out at Edinburgh, it is always a good time to watch “Fleabag.” Both perfect seasons are on Amazon. More

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      ‘Shogun’ Finale Recap: Mask Off

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      Lord Toranaga’s true plan is finally revealed.Season 1, Episode 10: ‘A Dream of a Dream’Take a look at any of FX’s promotional material for “Shogun,” and one image will stare back: Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), in full samurai armor, his sword drawn as he charges into battle on a white horse. Tattered red banners and a cavalry provide the backdrop. It doesn’t require close reading to determine that he has cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war.It’s also false advertising. There is no culminating battle in the final episode of “Shogun.” Toranaga does not charge into the fray on a white horse, his katana dealing death on all sides. The regents’ armies do not fight among themselves. Lord Ishido is not beaten down in defeat. John Blackthorne does not prove his battlefield mettle to earn his samurai sword. Instead, the episode mimics the leafless branch in the poem Lady Mariko dictated before her death.By now, you may be shouting that the book upon which the show is based doesn’t include a final battle, either. But just as James Clavell, the author of “Shogun,” altered, edited and exaggerated real-world people and events from Japanese history to suit the needs of his novel, the creators of the 2024 television version also altered, edited and exaggerated in turn. They’ve changed character names, shifted points of emphasis from Blackthorne to Japanese characters and so on. For this episode they cut the book’s epilogue, in which Toranaga executes Ishido by burying him up to his neck and leaving him to die of exposure. (Toranaga is a tough cookie, but that act seems a bridge too far for the TV version.) The showrunners don’t mind taking advantage of adaptational freedom when it suits them.Much as I think both the marketing and the writing have deliberately steered audiences to expect an all out action-horror spectacle — in the mode for which the pioneering “Game of Thrones” set a still-unmatched standard on television — the show’s creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, as well as the writers Maegan Houang and Emily Yoshida (not to mention Clavell himself), turn out not to be telling that kind of story.If there’s a through line for how “Shogun” depicts violence, it’s that it’s almost always dirty pool. A Christian lord’s army ambushing another lord’s forces under cover of darkness. A cannon fusillade launched at men given no warning. A nephew attempting to murder his uncle in a brothel. A squad of palace guards, slowly driving an outnumbered woman warrior to exhaustion and defeat. Ninja assassins slaughtering their way through a sleepy household, not once but twice. The entire plot is driven by Blackthorne’s revelation that even the Christian lords’ European allies are secretly building an army with which they intend to take all of Japan unawares.When it comes to violence, nobody here moves out in the open. “Shogun” is consistent in that respect, at least if you ignore the picture on the promos.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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      Book Review: ‘The Rulebreaker,’ by Susan Page

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      In “The Rulebreaker,” Susan Page pays tribute to a pioneering journalist who survived being both a punchline and an icon.THE RULEBREAKER: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, by Susan PageMuch of the material in “The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters” has been told before, with persuasive narrative control, by the late television journalist herself in her dishy 2008 memoir, “Audition.” Don’t let that stop the reader of this thorough, compassionate biography by Susan Page: It’s a valuable document, sobering where “Audition” aimed for sassy.If anything, the 16 long years between autobiography and biography endow the two books, taken together, with a memento mori gravitas for any student of Walters, or of television journalism, or of the past, present and future of women in the TV workplace — or, for that matter, of Monica Lewinsky. More on her in a moment.Walters called her autobiography “Audition” to emphasize the need she always felt to prove herself, pushing her way to professional success in a world that never made it easy for her. Nearly 80 then and still in the game, she acknowledged that personal contentment — love, marriage, meaningful family connections — lagged far behind. She wrote of being the daughter of an erratic father, who bounced — sometimes suicidally — between flush times and financial failure as a nightclub owner and impresario.She told of her fearful mother, and of the mentally disabled older sister to whose welfare she felt yoked. She wrote of the three unsatisfying marriages, and of her strained relationship with the daughter she adopted as an infant.She breezily acknowledged the ease she felt throughout her life with complicated men of elastic ethics like Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. She leaned into her reputation as a “pushy cookie.”Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, who has also written books about Barbara Bush and Nancy Pelosi, tells many of the same stories. (“Audition” is an outsize presence in the endnotes.) But in placing the emphasis on all the rule-breaking Barbara Jill Walters had to do over her long life — she died in 2022 at 93 — the biographer pays respect to a toughness easy to undervalue today, when the collective memory may see only the well-connected woman with the instantly recognizable (thanks to Gilda Radner’s “SNL” impression) speech impediment.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’s on TV This Week: N.F.L. Draft and ‘Bridget Jones’ Marathon

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      Football players get their chance to play in the national league. HBO airs all three movies staring Renée Zellweger.For TV viewers who still haven’t cut the cord, here is a selection of cable and network shows, movies and specials broadcasting Monday through Sunday, April 22-28. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE SYNANON FIX 9 p.m. on HBO. In 1958, Synanon opened their doors in California as drug rehabilitation center. But the center started using a kind of attack therapy, in which patients are verbally abused and degraded in front of a group, and several members were later charged with child abuse, assault and attempted murder. This documentary series, which had its premiere at Sundance this year, is airing its fourth and final episode this week.TuesdayTHE EXPRESS WAY WITH DULÉ HILL 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In each of the four episodes of this documentary series, the actor Dulé Hill speaks to people across the country who are making art in nontraditional ways. In the first episode, Hill heads to California to meet a deaf dancer, a gay Mariachi and a cabaret group of senior citizens. The other episodes take place in Appalachia, Texas and Chicago.Anna Sawai in “Shogun.”Katie Yu/FXSHOGUN 10 p.m. on FX. This mini series, based on the 1980s NBC show and book of the same name, is wrapping up. In an interview with The New York Times, Anna Sawai, who plays Lady Mariko on the show, said that the “the last two episodes are very special” and that “the men have been physically fighting. The women are fighting their own battles.”WednesdayAMERICAN HORROR STORY: DELICATE 10 p.m. on FX. The last few episodes of the 12th season of this Ryan Murphy anthology has followed the fallout of Anna (Emma Roberts) losing a Golden Globe and Siobhan (Kim Kardashian) perhaps killing off her competition. Will Anna get all she has dreamed about? Will Siobhan face any consequences to her actions? This season finale will bring answers.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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      Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In.

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      The philanthropist Kathryn Murdoch has prioritized donations to environmental causes for more than a decade. She has, she said, a deep understanding of how inhospitable the planet will become if climate change is not addressed. And she and her colleagues have spent years trying to communicate that.“We have been screaming,” she said. “But screaming only gets you so far.”This was on a morning in early spring. Murdoch and Ari Wallach, an author, producer and self-proclaimed futurist, had just released their new PBS docuseries, “A Brief History of the Future,” and had hopped onto a video call to promote it — politely, no screaming required. Shot cinematically, in some never-ending golden hour, the six-episode show follows Wallach around the world as he meets with scientists, activists and the occasional artist and athlete, all of whom are optimistic about the future. An episode might include a visit to a floating village or a conversation about artificial intelligence with the musician Grimes. In one sequence, marine biologists lovingly restore a rehabbed coral polyp to a reef. The mood throughout is mellow, hopeful, even dreamy. Which is deliberate.“There’s room for screaming,” Wallach said. “And there’s room for dreaming.”“A Brief History of the Future” joins some recent books and shows that offer a rosier vision of what a world in the throes — or just past the throes — of global catastrophe might look like. Climate optimism as opposed to climate fatalism.Hannah Ritchie’s “Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” argues that many markers of disaster are less bad than the public imagines (deforestation, overfishing) or easily solvable (plastics in the oceans). In “Fallout,” the television adaptation of the popular video game that recently debuted on Amazon Prime Video, the apocalypse (nuclear, not climate-related) makes for a devastated earth, sundry mutants and plenty of goofy, kitschy fun — apocalypse lite.“Life as We Know It (Can Be),” a book by Bill Weir, CNN’s chief climate correspondent, that is structured as a series of letters to his son, centers on human potential and resilience. And Dana R. Fisher’s “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action” contends that the disruptions of climate change may finally create a mass movement that will lead to better global outcomes. Fisher, a sociologist, coined the term “apocalyptic optimism” to describe a belief that humans can still avoid the worst ravages of climate change.In confronting the apocalypse, these works all insist that hope matters. They believe that optimism, however qualified or hard-won, may be what finally moves us to action. While Americans are less likely than their counterparts in the developed world to appreciate the threats that climate change poses, recent polls show that a significant majority of Americans now agree that climate change is real and a smaller majority agree that it is human-caused and harmful. And yet almost no expert believes that we are doing enough — in terms of technology, legislation or political pressure — to alleviate those harms.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