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      Clive Owen Takes on ‘Monsieur Spade,’ Inspired by Bogart

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      In an early scene in “Monsieur Spade,” a new six-part series from AMC, the American detective Sam Spade, played by Clive Owen, is lying on his side, grimacing as a doctor examines his nether regions. “Best prostate of the morning,” the doctor says cheerfully, snapping off his rubber gloves. Then he motions Spade his office to tell him he has emphysema and must stop smoking.Spade, the behatted and inscrutable hero of Dashiell Hammett’s novel “The Maltese Falcon,” getting a prostate check, and quitting smoking?Yes indeed. The new series, written by Scott Frank (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and Tom Fontana (“Homicide”), is set in 1963, some 20 years after the events of John Huston’s 1941 film, in which Humphrey Bogart played Spade. This time, the detective retired and living in the village of Bozouls in the South of France.When viewers meet Spade, he is living quietly in the South of France, mourning his wife.Jean-Claude Lother/AMCIn a flashback at the start of the first episode, we learn that Spade was hired to bring a girl, Teresa, to her father in Bozouls. Mission unsuccessful: Her father is missing. But Spade does meet a wealthy, glamorous widow, Gabrielle (Chiara Mastroianni), who asks him to stay and take on another job.The pair fall in love and marry, and when we meet Spade, he is a widower who has inherited Gabrielle’s beautiful house, swimming pool, vineyards and wealth. He is living quietly, still mourning Gabrielle (who we see in frequent flashbacks), speaking bad French and rather liked by the insular locals, until — naturally! — the past comes back to make trouble.“This genre has always been catnip for me,” said Frank, who also directed the show, in a recent joint interview with Fontana. But when he was approached about creating a show based on Spade, Frank said, he initially turned it down, because he had another Hammett project in mind.Then he had a thought: “What happens to these Bogart-esque guys when they get old.” He contacted Fontana, who suggested setting the series in the aftermath of the Algerian War, a conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front that ended in 1962 with Algeria, a French colony, winning independence.At that time, “there was tension and a dark cloud” over France, Frank said. “It raises the question: Who is French and who isn’t? And then we have Sam Spade wrestling with his identity, his old life, his new life.”Owen, dapper in a dark suit and crisp white shirt during a recent interview at a London hotel, said that the role of Spade felt like a gift. “I am a huge lover of noir, a huge Bogart fan,” he said. “I have an original ‘Maltese Falcon’ poster on my wall.”Owen talked to Frank, he added, “about the older Sam Spade, how he would play with the idea of the macho guy, the smoker. But in essence we are embracing the source material.” He paused. “I didn’t get to wear the hat much, though.”Owen said he prepared for the role by “reading and rereading” Dashiell Hammett’s short stories and novels.Alice Zoo for The New York TimesFrank and Fontana certainly created a convoluted plot worthy of Hammett. Six nuns are murdered at the local convent, which houses an orphanage that is home to the now-teenage Teresa (Cara Bossom), the girl who Spade brought to Bouzols. The murders seem to concern a mysterious little boy from Algeria who everyone is trying to find, and the plot is threaded with church and state conspiracies, Algerian and World War II subplots, and is populated by a memorable cast of characters: a sardonic police chief (Denis Ménochet); Teresa’s devilishly villainous father, Philippe (Jonathan Zaccaï); and the obligatory femme fatale, Marguerite (Louise Bourgoin), a chanteuse who co-owns a bar with Spade.Owen’s dryly imperturbable performance is also a homage to Bogart, whose performances he adores, he said. In preparing for the role, as well as “reading and rereading” Hammett’s short stories and novels, Owen “drowned in Bogart,” he said. He recalled telling the director, “Don’t freak out, I am not going to do a bad imitation, but I am going to do it based on Bogart’s intonations.”What is interesting, Owen added is that “you think Bogart is laconic, but he is superfast and nimble, and the key thing was to fly through these beautiful rhythmic speeches, flick them out like it’s the easiest thing.”Though he speaks French in the show, Owen said he had not previously spoken the language, and learned it phonetically (with an American accent) for the show. “I found it hard,” he said. “I have so much respect for actors who perform in another language.”Bourgoin, who plays Marguerite, said in a telephone interview that “like every French person who discovers an American writing about France, I was afraid there would be anachronisms, clichés. But not at all: It’s so credible.”The cast of “Monsieur Spade,” including Denis Ménochet, second from left, as a local police chief, Jonathan Zaccaï, third from left, as the villainous father of Teresa, and Louise Bourgoin, far right, as a femme fatale who co-owns a bar with Spade.AMCIn an obligatory nod to a love interest, Marguerite and Spade’s platonic relationship is infused with a little sexual spice. But the relationship between Spade and the adolescent Teresa, who has grown up at the convent, is the emotional heart of the tale.“She has lived a life of relative solitude, never had a familial environment and grew up in a frosty religious setting without anyone she loved,” said Bossom, who plays the character. “It has hardened her into a person who doesn’t show honest emotion, or not without great difficulty.” (Remind you of anyone?) As the show progresses, Bossom added, Teresa begins to emulate Spade’s speech patterns.“I think the more time he spends with her, the more he sees she is a bit of a chip off the old block,” Owen said with a laugh.Frank said he had been keen not “to do pretty Provence” nor to emulate “the off angles and dark shadows you have in typical film noir”; he was more influenced by the strong compositions and color palettes of 1960s and ’70s French films like “La Piscine” and “Le Cercle Rouge.” The whole idea, he said, “is that Sam is living a tranquil life.”Will there be more of Monsieur Spade in retirement? “If the show does well, I definitely have other ideas, “Frank said. Maybe Owen will get another opportunity to wear the hat. More

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      Can Taylor Tomlinson Have It All and a Life, Too?

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      In September, the night before the comic Taylor Tomlinson made her Radio City Music Hall debut, she called one of her three siblings in tears, asking: “Why do I feel like it’s not enough?”This emotional moment had long passed when she strode onstage the next day wearing a stylish black suit, sleeves rolled up, and commanded the cavernous room with an hour of cheerful, intricately woven jokes delivered at a fast clip. One theme was how professional success does not necessarily translate into personal happiness. She killed. The following afternoon, sitting outside at a Manhattan coffee shop near her hotel, Tomlinson described dispassionately how she cried before the career highlight of selling out Radio City. “There have been times when I thought I’m only good to people 40 feet away,” she said.Tomlinson, 30, who undertook her first theater tour just two years ago, has emerged as one of the most acclaimed, in-demand superstars in comedy, the rare young stand-up with mass appeal in the current fragmented landscape. After two Netflix specials produced in her 20s (and a third premiering next month), she became the only woman to make the top 10 grossing comic tours of 2023. She performed 130 shows, more than anyone else on that list, including Kevin Hart, who topped the list. And to follow that up, she is taking over the late-night TV slot vacated by James Corden on CBS, debuting Jan. 16 as the host of the comedy show “After Midnight.”I followed Tomlinson for 10 months, tracking the development of her new special, periodically seeing shows and debriefing her afterward. What I saw up close is that spending the year in and out of hotels is isolating, but so is being a rapidly ascendant comic at her level of success. “There sometimes feels like there isn’t anyone my age to talk to,” Tomlinson told me.Tomlinson with Stephen Colbert when it was announced she would be taking over the late-night spot following his show.Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images“IF YOU WANT to make yourself feel sad, compare your career to Taylor’s,” Dustin Nickerson, her good friend and the opening comic throughout her recent global tour, told me, before comparing her to a five-tool player in baseball who has all the skills to be great. “Watching her this past year has been watching someone become a celebrity.”The actor and comedian Hannah Einbinder described Tomlinson as “the voice of her, of our generation,” before calling her the Taylor Swift of comedy. “She talks about universal experiences — relationships, love — but in a new way. She’s the most evolved comic out there. She’s for everyone.” Einbinder paused, adding: “It’s hard to be for everyone.”Tomlinson is too modest (and a die-hard Swiftie) to accept the comparison to the pop star, but it’s a useful one. Just as Swift established herself in country music, Tomlinson, another blond, wholesome-seeming prodigy, began in a conservative niche: the church circuit. Both Taylors are prolific artists whose work resonates with broad swaths of people through personal stories, sometimes about ex-boyfriendsTomlinson began working on her new hour focusing on comedy about being single after many years of serial monogamy. Then she started seeing someone, so she incorporated him until they broke up, which she told me was inevitable because she was working on new material and Swift was putting out an album. “All the signs were there,” she joked. “Those are my horsemen of the apocalypse.”After the split, an uncomfortable thought immediately occurred to her: This will be good for my career, bad for my life.Around the time of the Radio City performance, she was interviewing for “After Midnight,” a show built on a rotating cast of comics joking about memes or viral stories. She got the job in November, becoming one of the few comedians hosting a nightly show on network television, the kind of plum gig that has long been a Holy Grail for entertainers. Yet when the show’s producers asked her in an interview why she wanted the job, Tomlinson said she responded: “I’m kind of lonely.”She has been open in her comedy about mental health issues, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and she has a joke where she says every one of her emotions “demands a parade.” Onstage, you might say she often leads the marching band, which, incidentally, she performed in during high school. Mixing goofy act-outs with punch-line-dense jokes filled with surprising pivots, Tomlinson makes even the heaviest subjects seem spikily funny. Her sets never go long without a laugh.Offstage, she has a more patient and coolly professional manner, impeccably grateful, remarkably free of kvetching and trash talk. She enjoys analyzing the mechanics of comedy and is at her most expansive there, in the details. But there is a certain haunted quality that periodically emerges, a past hovering over her present, one that she has been excavating in therapy.“I stopped talking to my father last year,” she said in a club in 2022, then noticed something shift in the crowd: “People get really sad when you say you don’t talk to your parents anymore because they wish they had the balls to do it.”When I first met her, backstage at a February show in Boston, that bit was gone and she said she missed some of the heavier subject matter she used to include in her set, without being more specific. Some of that would creep back in, on the margins. One funny bit refers to taking a boyfriend to meet her parents as visiting “the scene of the crime.”Raised in a conservative Methodist family north of San Diego, she has talked about the scars left by her mother’s death from cancer when Tomlinson was 8. It bonded her to her siblings, all of whom remain close. Brinn, two years younger than Taylor, the oldest, told me by phone that Taylor took the role of “surrogate parent.”When the producers of the new late-night show “After Midnight” asked Tomlinson why she wanted the hosting job, she said she told them, “I’m kind of lonely.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesMany comics come off as the reckless kid looking for attention, but part of what makes Tomlinson’s comic persona different is that she projects the image of a responsible young adult who can’t help but reveal the insecurities and bubbling emotions beneath. In the weeks before taping her special, she lost her voice, and only a few days before, her doctor told her she had mono. She took a steroid and did the show, brushing aside any possibility of postponing. “A lot of people have pushed through far worse,” she told me not long after. “Maggie Smith had cancer when she filmed ‘Harry Potter.’ Like, I’m fine.”Her father has lately been a more remote figure in her comedy specials than her mother. He was, however, critical to her stand-up origin story. He not only drove her to a comedy class that got her started on this path. He also took the class with her when she was 16. In the show at the end of the course, with an audience of 40 at a hole-in-the-wall church, she got the closing spot. When asked why her father didn’t, she said matter-of-factly: “’Cause I was better.” Sensing how this might come off, she added: “Look, he can sing and I can’t.”SINCE SHE WAS YOUNG, Tomlinson has known she wanted to do something creative, be an actor, a writer. But that first show was when, as she described it, the “real me” came out. Her best friend, Courtney Lem, was one of the audience members sitting on folding chairs that day and described the show as a revelation. “She was someone else, not nervous or shy,” Lem told me. “It was like seeing real magic for the first time.”One of the jokes Tomlinson told eventually made its way into her first late-night set on “Conan.” Its premise was that being abstinent was hard for a religious kid because “every time I miss a period, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m carrying the messiah.’”When her mother died, her father remarried 10 months later. At the time, Tomlinson didn’t think that was too soon, but as she got older, her mind-set shifted. “I’ve said to him as an adult: I wished you waited longer for us. He did not agree with me.”She described her childhood relationship with her father as rocky but felt on more solid ground after doing stand-up. “When I could do this trick, when I was a good performer, he was interested. And he was impressed. And I was somebody worth paying attention to.”In her telling, her father was a performer, a singer, who chose having a family and stable career as a teacher over pursuing his dreams. She was on the same path, she said, explaining that her entire family got married between the ages of 18 and 22. That was her plan, too. In college, she imagined marrying her religious boyfriend, having children and doing standup on the side. When her future husband broke up with her, he told her that she should keep doing comedy. It’s a conversation she describes as formative, but not as much as her next boyfriend, a comic, saying she was funny but didn’t work hard enough. “He’s very funny and talented and I have a lot of jokes about him,” she said. “Got a lot of closers out of that guy.”Her career took off soon after she left school for the college stand-up circuit, which led to a stint on “Last Comic Standing.” At 23, she was booked on “Conan” and received a network development deal. Tensions between her past and future emerged. She lost a church gig over this tweet: “I’m a wild animal in bed, way more afraid of you than you of me.” She eventually quit Twitter and stopped doing church gigs.Her first exposure on Netflix, a 15-minute set in the 2018 series “The Comedy Lineup,” was a turning point for her career and her relationship with her father and stepmother. “They liked the success but they didn’t like what I was saying,” she said. “They loved when I was clean. And when I did the 15 minutes, they were disappointed.”Over the past year, she’s examined this part of her life in therapy and locates a lot of her trouble here. “There were times when I felt my self-worth is so tied up in this job and what I could do and why is that?” she said, then added, referring to her father, “A big part of it is I felt it impressed.”Tomlinson projects the image of a responsible young adult, even pushing through mono instead of postponing a show.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesParadoxically, Tomlinson is an introvert, uncomfortable in groups of people. Dustin Nickerson said she’s the kind of person who wants to get invited to the party but won’t attend. When asked when she’s happiest, he mulled it over before saying: when she is making a connection with one person.And yet her work has often resonated most when she digs into her own personal mess. She describes herself not as a topical or political comic, but as one who finds humor that other people can relate to by drilling down into her own life. Before putting out her second special, which dealt with mental illness and her mother’s death, she showed it to her friend Lem, who was in town to help her move stuff out of a boyfriend’s place after a breakup. Lem was amazed that she could be so open, asking, “How could you talk about this stuff?” Tomlinson recalled telling her, “I can’t really help it.”She’s trying to pick her spots more now. She describes her new special as “lighter” than her last one, though it’s vulnerable in subtle ways, like how much it ingratiates or refuses to. She said she had been more sparing about what she reveals in podcasts and interviews. And the late-night show will, she hoped, provide a stabilizing force, a home base, a community where she will once again be a parental figure of sorts. Her sibling Brinn, who just recently left the restaurant business to work for their sister, describes it as a game-changer in giving her balance, saying: “I have never seen her happier to be doing something that is social.”After she got the late-night show, Tomlinson said she heard from a lot of people, including friends and family. Asked if that included her father, she paused for several long seconds, considering her next move. Then she very politely thanked me for the question but said she would rather not talk about it.Tomlinson knows she can’t appeal to everyone, but her goal is to appeal to as many people as possible — and that makes her alert to what resonates. For a comic who cares about being relatable, success can be tricky to navigate. What will not change is how she prioritizes stand-up above all else. She agreed to take the late-night job only after being assured she would just need to shoot the show three days a week, allowing her to tour over the weekend.Ever since watching and studying comics like Kathleen Madigan and Maria Bamford in high school, she has not only connected with standup but leaned on it. She said that she first lost some religious faith when her mother died (“They told me praying would work. That shook me.”) but just as important, she said, was entering stand-up. “I was raised in this environment where if you’re not Christian, you’re probably a bad person because no one’s holding you accountable,” she said. “In clubs, I found a lot of these people are more empathetic and kinder and open-minded than people I’ve been around. Far less judgmental in the stand-up world.”Even as a late-night host, what Tomlinson sounds most excited about is the community of stand-ups. And she thinks, rightly, that the show will provide a valuable new platform for young comics. She said she wished she was more social earlier in her career. When asked if Taylor Swift’s trajectory holds any lessons, she pointed to how the musician had evolved but didn’t completely reinvent herself and cited the musician’s Eras Tour charting her different phases: “She’s still her but saying, ‘This is the place I am at right now.’”You could say that Tomlinson is now entering her late-night era. She said that when she was younger, she used to dream of being a legend; she talked about that with Lem, her friend. They saw Swift in concert together last year in Los Angeles.A few eras into the show, Tomlinson said, she turned to Lem and said, “I changed my mind. I want to be a legend.” Tomlinson cracked up reflecting on this moment, then added: “Two eras later, I was like: ‘Looks too hard. Think of the amount of stalkers.’” More

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      Stephen Colbert Prays That Trump Can Deliver

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      “That is a terrible idea, and please, Jesus, let it happen,” Colbert said of the former president’s initial desire to deliver his own closing argument in his fraud trial.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Give Him a ShotFormer President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial is expected to come to a close on Thursday. Trump had intended to deliver part of the closing argument himself, but he backed down after refusing to abide by the judge’s restrictions, including that he not give “a campaign speech.”On Wednesday, Stephen Colbert noted that Trump had been saying “a lot of crazy stuff about this trial” and hoped he might “also say crazy stuff during the trial” for the late night host’s own amusement.“That is a terrible idea, and please, Jesus, let it happen.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Unfortunately, this afternoon, the judge rescinded permission for Trump to give his own closing argument. Boo! I knew Justice was blind; I didn’t know she was a buzzkill.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Don’t worry, as a comedian, I immediately filed an appeal: ‘Your honor, please, that would get us through February. I mean, come on. Think about our jobs.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Just the Two of Us Edition)“There’s nobody fun left to watch. It’s like a box of Lucky Charms without the marshmallows now.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, on Chris Christie’s dropping out of the presidential race on Wednesday“He made this tough decision after looking at the polls and realizing it was an easy decision.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Christie is not expected to make any endorsements at this time, but the timing of this decision indicates that he’s clearing the way for Nikki Haley to take all of his voter.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Of course, Chris Christie was the most high-profile and consistent critic of Trump still in the Republican primary — unlike Ron DeSantis, whose campaign slogan is ‘Ron DeSantis: Trump 2024.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yep, it all comes down to this. After tonight, it’ll become clearer who will more not be the nominee.” — JIMMY FALLONWe 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?  More

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      How a Show Forced Britain’s Devastating Post Office Scandal Into the Light

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      After years of delays, victims of one of the U.K.’s worst miscarriages of justice are finally being exonerated — thanks to a TV drama.More than 700 people convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. At least four suicides. A woman sent to jail while pregnant. Bankruptcies. Marriages broken, lives ruined.The shocking details of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history have been reported for years yet somehow stayed below the radar for most of the public, despite intense efforts by campaigners and investigative journalists.Until last week. A gripping ITV drama series, “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,” which began airing on Jan. 1, achieved something that eluded politicians for a decade, cutting through a morass of bureaucratic and legal delays and forcing government action.The show dramatizes the fate of hundreds of people who ran branches of the Post Office across Britain, and who were wrongly accused of theft after a faulty IT system called Horizon created false shortfalls in their accounting.Between 1999 and 2015, they were pursued relentlessly in the courts by the Post Office for financial losses that never occurred. Some were jailed, most were driven into financial hardship, many suffered mental health issues and some took their lives.Under pressure, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday promised a new law to exonerate and compensate all known victims, a sweeping intervention that aims to finally bring justice after years of glacial progress.And the police suddenly said last week that they would investigate whether Post Office officials — who refused for years to admit that the IT they forced managers to use was at fault — should face charges. Meanwhile one of its former bosses, Paula Vennells, has handed back an honor bestowed by the queen in 2019, after more than a million people signed a petition demanding she be stripped of it.All this has left an intriguing question: how has a TV show achieved in one week more than investigative journalists and politicians in more than a decade?“However brilliant the journalism is, it maybe appeals to your intellect, to your head,” said Gwyneth Hughes, the writer of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.” “Whereas drama is designed to appeal to your heart — that’s what it has been doing for thousands of years.”Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, in 2012. She said she would hand back an honor bestowed by the queen in 2019 after a public outcry this week.Anthony Devlin/PA Images, via Getty ImagesMattias Frey, a media professor at City, University of London, argued that the drama shows the continuing power of terrestrial TV to change public perceptions and generate “one of those old fashioned water cooler moments” that fuels broader public debate.Even the show’s executive producer, Patrick Spence, was surprised by the scale of the reaction. Before the show was broadcast, he told his team that they shouldn’t be downhearted if ratings were modest, given the competition for eyeballs.The day after the series began he was informed by a colleague that more than 3.5 million people had watched the first episode. “I thought I had misheard her,” Mr. Spence said. Nine million people have now seen the series, according to ITV.He believes the show has inadvertently become a state-of-the-nation drama, articulating “a bigger truth, which is that we don’t feel heard, and we don’t trust the people who are supposed to have our backs.”The case is all the more shocking because the Post Office is an institution woven into the fabric of British life, more used to being portrayed in a benign role as in the popular TV show for children, “Postman Pat.”An official inquiry into the scandal was established in 2020, and more than £148 million, or more than $188 million, has already been distributed to victims from compensation programs. In 2019, 555 branch managers successfully challenged the Post Office in the High Court.Despite that, of the 700 criminal convictions, only 93 have so far been overturned, a sluggish pace that fueled campaigners’ anger.Former post office branch managers celebrating outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London in 2021, after a court ruling cleared them of theft and false accounting.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSince ITV’s drama aired, more victims have come forward, but dozens of other people died before they could receive compensation. When Horizon declared branch accounts were in deficit, managers were contractually obliged to make up shortfalls.Some paid from their own savings to avoid prosecution, even though they were sure they had done nothing wrong. Others pleaded guilty to lesser crimes to avoid jail although they were innocent.One victim, Lee Castleton, whose plight was featured in the drama, told the BBC that his Horizon account would swing abruptly from profit to loss and that more than 90 calls to a help line proved useless. The Post Office, he said, was “absolutely hellbent” on not assisting him.As news of his supposed wrongdoing filtered into the community, Mr. Castleton and his family were accused of theft in the street, his daughter was bullied at school and she developed an eating disorder. Forced to travel far afield to seek work, he slept in his car.Such stories provide the beating heart of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,” which is the result of three years of work. The truth of what happened was “unbelievable,” said Ms. Hughes, the show’s writer. “If I wrote those things fictionally, nobody would believe me, people would switch off.”The heroic Mr. Bates, played by Toby Jones, is portrayed as an even tempered and indefatigable character who — like other victims — was told by the Post Office that he was the only person to report problems with Horizon.The actor Toby Jones in character as Alan Bates, a man who is “a terrier; he’s wise, he’s clever, he’s very good at forward planning,” said Gwyneth Hughes, the writer of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.”ITVHe found others, formed a group of victims, and pursued their cases with meager resources, battling a succession of setbacks to achieve an extraordinary victory in the courts.“Everyone likes an underdog, and we had underdogs in spades,” said Ms. Hughes, adding that Mr. Bates might look like a mild-mannered bearded fan of real ale but is also “a terrier; he’s wise, he’s clever, he’s very good at forward planning.”“He is, in a way, a gift as a character, he has a complexity: cometh the hour, cometh the man,” she said. “He’s led this long march of the misunderstood and unheard, and kept his sense of humor.”A few politicians were allies in the victims’ cause, notably James Arbuthnot, a Conservative lawmaker (now in the House of Lords) who fought on behalf of a constituent wrongly accused of stealing £36,000.There is also a cameo role for another Conservative lawmaker, Nadhim Zahawi, who played himself in the drama, questioning Ms. Vennells, the former Post Office boss, during a parliamentary committee hearing.To viewers Ms. Vennells emerges as the obdurate face of the Post Office, someone determined to defend its reputation rather than engage with its victims, a stance all the more surprising because she is an ordained Anglican priest (although she stepped back from any major role in the church in 2021).Fujitsu, the Japanese company that developed the Horizon system, is also under increasing pressure, with politicians hoping to recover some of the costs of compensating victims from the firm, which still has billions of pounds’ worth of contracts with the British government.Professor Frey worries viewers may have seen a “simple David and Goliath story” whereas lawyers and politicians must grapple with something more complicated. He sees a risk that “the pressure that should be brought to bear on politicians in order to clean this mess up maybe comes in a way that is undifferentiated.”Ms. Hughes has concerns about that too. “I hope they do right by all our lovely sub postmasters, but I also hope they find a way to do so that isn’t going to cause further problems down the line,” she said. “Thank God that’s not my job.” More

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      Pat McAfee’s On-Air Slams of ESPN Executive Show a Network Power Shift

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      For decades, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. That’s changing as it transitions from cable dominance to a much less certain streaming future.As it morphs from a television company into a streaming company, ESPN is undergoing rapid transformation. But if the extraordinary events of the past week are any indication, the transformation of its corporate culture is just as seismic.For decades, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. A long list of its best-known employees — like Keith Olbermann, Bill Simmons and Dan Le Batard — clashed with executives, and the story always ended the same way: Those employees left, and ESPN kept right on rolling.But last week Pat McAfee, the Indianapolis Colts punter turned new-media shock jock and ESPN star, directly criticized a powerful executive at the Disney-owned network by name, calling him a “rat.” Not only was Mr. McAfee not fired, he seemingly was not punished at all, shocking current and former ESPN executives and employees.“We know there is no more offensive crime in the universe of ESPN and Disney than host-on-host crime, or talent-on-talent crime,” Jemele Hill, a former “SportsCenter” host who left ESPN in 2018 after sparring with executives, said last week.To complicate matters even further, days earlier, Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets quarterback and a regular paid guest on Mr. McAfee’s daily afternoon talk show, said during an appearance that a lot of people, “including Jimmy Kimmel,” were hoping a court would not make public a list of the associates of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and registered sex offender.Mr. Kimmel’s late-night talk show is broadcast on ABC, which Disney also owns.It used to be that executives at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., considered publicly criticizing a colleague practically the worst thing an employee could do.Tony Kornheiser was removed from the air for two weeks for remarking on Hannah Storm’s clothing. Mr. Simmons was twice suspended from social media, once for feuding with an ESPN-owned radio station and another time for criticizing the network’s popular show “First Take.” Mr. Olbermann was suspended for going on Comedy Central and calling Bristol a “God-forsaken place.”Tony Kornheiser, left, with his ESPN co-host, Michael Wilbon, on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. ESPN once suspended Mr. Kornheiser for two weeks for remarks he made about a colleague.Randy Holmes/Disney General EntertainmentBut Mr. McAfee’s great escape has shined a light on his unusual arrangement with ESPN, which licenses but does not own his show. It also illustrates the bind that ESPN’s executives are in by empowering Mr. McAfee when the company is transitioning from the cable era it dominated into the streaming and social media era it has so far entered with less success.Mr. McAfee is both an ESPN employee who appears on some of its college football and National Football League shows, as well as a contractor who produces “The Pat McAfee Show,” which is shown for several hours on both the ESPN cable channel and the ESPN+ streaming service.Mr. McAfee previously worked for the Barstool Sports media company, the FanDuel sports betting company and World Wrestling Entertainment, and arrived at ESPN with a large and loyal audience. His show is a freewheeling shoutfest reminiscent of Don Imus or Howard Stern, with a recurring cast of characters and far more swearing than ESPN allows most shows.Last week he called Norby Williamson, who has worked at ESPN since 1985 and is officially the executive editor and head of event and studio production, a “rat.” Mr. McAfee also accused him of leaking unflattering ratings data for his show to The New York Post.“There are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN,” Mr. McAfee said on the air. “More specifically, I believe Norby Williamson is the guy attempting to sabotage our program.”In a statement over the weekend, ESPN said positive things about both men, adding that the company would “handle this matter internally and have no further comment.” Mr. McAfee and Mr. Williamson did not respond to messages requesting comment, and ESPN declined to make them or any executives available for an interview.Then there is Mr. Rodgers, whose weekly appearances on Mr. McAfee’s show sometimes feature anti-vaccine diatribes and have become increasingly unpredictable. After Mr. Kimmel — whose name was not on the Epstein list released by the court — threatened to sue Mr. Rodgers, Mr. McAfee apologized on his behalf, sort of, saying he thought Mr. Rodgers was just trying to rile up Mr. Kimmel as part of a small feud between the two. Mr. Rodgers did not offer an apology when he appeared on the show on Tuesday, instead saying ESPN executives and others in the news media misinterpreted his comments.On Wednesday, Mr. McAfee said Mr. Rodgers would not appear on the show for the rest of the N.F.L. season. He had been scheduled to appear through the playoffs, which start this weekend.While Mr. McAfee seemed somewhat uncomfortable in the middle of a clash between Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Kimmel, he did not apologize for his own criticism of Mr. Williamson. In fact, he reiterated it.“We love Burke Magnus,” Mr. McAfee said on his show on Monday, naming a parade of top ESPN and Disney executives who are more powerful than Mr. Williamson. “Love Burke Magnus. And also love Jimmy Pitaro. Love Bob Iger. But there is quite a transition era here between the old and the new. And the old don’t like what the new be doing.”Speaking about Mr. Williamson, he added that he was not taking back “anything that I said about said person,” and that there were “just some old hags” that did not understand what the future looked like.Norby Williamson, who oversees “SportsCenter,” has been a powerful figure at the network for many years.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesMr. Williamson has long been a powerful but divisive figure within ESPN. “The joke was they couldn’t get rid of him, and now he has more power than ever,” Mr. Simmons said on his podcast in 2017, comparing Mr. Williamson to Littlefinger, a power-hungry and Machiavellian character from “Game of Thrones.”Mr. Williamson’s domain has long been “SportsCenter,” which he obsessively promotes within ESPN. While other top executives focus on big-picture issues, Mr. Williamson is known to send out emails focusing on the smallest tweaks to shows, and has a reputation for liking a traditional, meat-and-potatoes version of “SportsCenter” focused on highlights.It is not clear where the dispute between Mr. Williamson and Mr. McAfee may have begun. Mr. McAfee’s arrival at the company did relegate the noon showing of “SportsCenter” to ESPN2 from ESPN, but otherwise the two operate in separate domains.It may be that the fight is part of a larger struggle regarding power within the network, and whether it should rest more squarely with on-air talent or with executives.Mr. McAfee is in the first year of a five-year agreement that reportedly pays him a total of $85 million. ESPN would not want to deal with the fallout of ending that contract prematurely, especially when Mr. McAfee is one of its star personalities and occupies hours of television time daily.One possible reason Mr. McAfee escaped punishment is that, while Mr. Williamson had never been criticized by an ESPN employee so publicly, it wasn’t the first time someone at the network clashed with him and believed he was being undermining.“These people did this to us at the end, with a series of strategic, orchestrated leaks,” Mr. Le Batard said Monday on his podcast, referring to his battles with Mr. Williamson and others, and his eventual departure from ESPN three years ago.Mr. Le Batard once had a stark warning for employees, like himself, who chafed at ESPN’s strictures. “Do not leave ESPN, man,” he said on the radio in 2016. “ESPN is a monster platform that is responsible for all of our successes.”But in 2023, at least as it relates to Mr. McAfee, his opinion has changed.“This is a guy who has got all his own power and is renting to them,” Mr. Le Batard said on his show. “He will be bigger the moment that he leaves there, because he was too hot for Disney to handle, than he was at any point before that. He has nothing to fear here, and that has to scare the hell out of them.” More

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      With ‘Echo,’ Alaqua Cox Smashes Boundaries, and Bad Guys’ Faces

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      The actress almost didn’t audition for the Marvel superhero role that now has her playing the lead of a new Disney+ series. Thank goodness for peer pressure.“I thought in the back of my head, There’s no way I’m going to get this.”Alaqua Cox was in her home office in the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, recalling the moment in early 2020 when some friends forwarded her an online link to a casting call for a deaf Indigenous woman in her 20s. At the time, Cox, now 26, had been hopping from job to job — at a nursing home, at Amazon and FedEx warehouses — and had never acted outside a couple of plays in high school.She could scarcely envision clinching any regular TV gig, let alone the role of a Marvel superhero: Maya Lopez, better known as Echo, a Marvel comic book character. But Cox did get it, and soon she found herself flipping and punching her way through the 2021 Disney+ series “Hawkeye” alongside the stars Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld.Now, just over two years after her professional acting debut, Cox is taking the lead in the five-episode spinoff miniseries, “Echo,” which premiered Tuesday night on Disney+ and Hulu. Picking up where “Hawkeye” left off, “Echo” sees Maya transform herself into a motorcycle-revving, roundhouse-kicking, one-woman army hellbent on vengeance against her former mentor, the criminal boss known as Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), for his role in her father’s murder.Cox, an Indigenous woman who is deaf, played a Marvel superhero with similar attributes in the Disney+ series “Hawkeye,” her first professional acting gig.Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel StudiosGrowing up on the Menominee Tribe reservation in Keshena, Wis., Cox, who was born deaf, couldn’t fathom the idea of seeing someone like herself onscreen. She was used to seeing deaf roles being portrayed by hearing characters — “which was such B.S.!” she said in a video call last month, aided by an American Sign Language interpreter, Ashley Change. She rarely saw Indigenous roles onscreen at all.She wasn’t particularly attuned to the superhero genre. Long before sharing scenes with a full-fledged Avenger, Cox mainly consumed Marvel movies passively, as a means of bonding with her Marvel fanatic father, William.“I remember watching with him, sitting on the couch, chilling on my phone,” she said. “My dad would be like: ‘No, no, look! Something cool is about to happen!’”It was peer pressure that ultimately got Cox to submit her audition video. She recalled lying on a raft on the lake at her parents’ house when yet another friend contacted her, forwarding a screenshot of the casting call.“I knew it was a sign for me to give it a shot,” she said. “I went: ‘Oh, fine! Let’s just try it out.’”Cox’s self-recorded video was one of hundreds that by June 2020 had landed on the desk of Sarah Finn, who has been the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s main casting director going back to the 2008 film “Iron Man.” In search of the perfect fit, she had contacted Native American and deaf schools, organizations and cultural centers across the country. Cox’s tape piqued her interest.“She has this beautiful, open, smiling face, and then she showed us her reading, which made it almost impossible to believe it was the same person,” Finn said. “She was able to switch on a dime and channel this other much more powerful and intense character.”“I know he’s looking down on me from heaven, and he’s just cheering me on,” Cox said of her father, who died on the same week that Maya’s father’s death was portrayed in “Echo.” Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesOnce Finn had narrowed down her selection to Cox and a few others, she got the studio to assign Cox an acting coach, personal trainer and A.S.L. consultant, all of whom were deaf, to help her prepare for her “Hawkeye” screen test. (“It was just so nice to be able to have those one-on-one encounters with people,” Cox said, “and everything went so smoothly.”)The investment paid off; “Hawkeye” had found its Echo — someone with, as Finn put it, the “mental emotional, physical fortitude to go through the rigors of playing a character like this.”But there was still a lot to learn — on all sides. Of all the new experiences that came flying Cox’s way, she most enjoyed stunt training, learning five days a week how to deliver a swift kick and a powerful jab. Cox is an amputee who uses a prosthetic leg, but that had never stopped her from roughhousing, she said.“I have a brother that’s a year older than me, and we were always rough with each other growing up,” she said. “I had to get him; I was very stubborn! He toughened me up a little bit, so it was easy for me to pick up those kinds of stunts.”By the time Finn was casting for “Hawkeye,” there was already talk of a potential spinoff for the character, Finn said. Cox didn’t learn a new series was in the works until she was halfway through filming her “Hawkeye” scenes. The news came as a surprise, to say the least. Filming for “Echo” began in April 2022, and Cox jumped right in.“One of the very first questions she asked when we first talked was ‘Can I do my own stunts?’” Sydney Freeland, the series showrunner, said of Cox. “I was like, ‘Yeah, go for it!’ She was down to get in there, take some lumps and take some bruises.”“Her entire filming experience before ‘Echo’ was a few days on ‘Hawkeye,’” added Freeland, who also directed episodes. “For her to go from that small sample size to being the lead of a Marvel series, that is a tremendous ask for even the most seasoned actor.”Cox did extensive stunt training to prepare for her role as Maya Lopez, better known as Echo, learning five days a week how to deliver a swift kick and a powerful jab.Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel StudiosWhether Cox was peeling out on a motorcycle or leaping from a moving freight train (while wearing a safety harness, of course), Change or another interpreter were positioned in her sightline, ready to relay the director’s next instructions.But Cox had another key preproduction request of Freeland and her team: Take A.S.L. classes.“I said, ‘Be able to communicate in basic sign language with me,’” Cox said. Many of the cast members learned, taking signing classes a few times a week, she said — several characters use A.S.L. onscreen to communicate with Maya — as did many key members of the crew, including Freeland. “It was really nice when we got on set,” Cox added. “They were able to sign ‘How are you?’ and ‘Do you need to go to the bathroom?’ — those kinds of simple things.”Freeland was reluctant to give herself too much credit: “She’s very generous to say that I learned A.S.L.,” she said. “It was probably like talking to a toddler for her. But she’s beyond gracious and beyond patient.”“Echo” was shot in and around Atlanta, far from Cox’s tight-knit community in Wisconsin. Filming took about three months, and Cox didn’t have any family or friends in the area. It helped being surrounded by a predominantly Indigenous cast, which included Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, Devery Jacobs and Cody Lightning. “It just felt so homey,” she said. “They were like cousins or sisters immediately.”Cox considers it an honor to play Marvel’s first deaf Indigenous superhero, and to provide mainstream representation for amputees. But the success has been bittersweet. Her father — the ultimate fan of both Marvel and his daughter — died in 2021, the same week her character’s father (Zahn McClarnon), who is also named William, was shown meeting his untimely demise in “Hawkeye.”“All of a sudden, these two worlds have collided,” Cox said. “And it was so heart-wrenching.”“But he was so proud of me,” she went on, speaking of her father. “I know he’s looking down on me from heaven, and he’s just cheering me on. I absolutely know it and feel it.” More

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      Late Night Recaps Donald Trump’s Latest Day in Court

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      Jimmy Fallon joked that Trump has so many trials that “at this point, the courtroom sketch artist doesn’t even draw him — she just traces the grooves in her desk.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The Violent Overthrow of the Government One’Former President Donald Trump attended a court hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, where his lawyer argued for presidential immunity for what Stephen Colbert called “the violent overthrow of the government one.”Jimmy Fallon joked that Trump has been part of so many trials that “at this point, the courtroom sketch artist doesn’t even draw him — she just traces the grooves in her desk.”“Trump spends so much time in court, the sketch artists are running out of orange pastels.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump is in court so often he enrolled in PreCheck so he can zip through security.” — JIMMY FALLON“During the hearing, Trump appeared visibly agitated and several times he abruptly became anxious and upset. Eventually, his lawyer handed him an iPad that was playing his favorite episode of ‘Bluey.’” — JIMMY FALLONOne judge pressed Trump’s lawyer on whether presidential immunity would extend to cases such as ordering special forces to kill a political rival.Jimmy Kimmel joked that Trump better lock the doors at Mar-a-Lago “because Bazooka Joe Biden has every reason to blow it to kingdom come.”“To recap: Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the president, who is currently Joe Biden, could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival, who is currently Donald Trump.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So to recap — or to re-recap — Trump and his lawyers are arguing that the president ought to be able to murder his political opponents and then cannot be prosecuted unless he gets impeached. Our commander in chief has godlike powers over life and death as long as his party controls the Senate — and I just wanna say, please vote.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Missing Bolts Edition)“A man in Portland recently found a working iPhone along the side of a road that is believed to have been onboard the Alaskan Airlines plane that had a door plug blow off mid-flight. And, honestly, I’m not sure what’s scarier: having the door blow off your plane, or losing your phone.” — SETH MEYERS“The NTSB, or ‘nut-sub,’ has released its preliminary findings on the door popping off, announcing the panel on the plane may not have been properly attached. Ya think? It reminds me of the NTSB’s groundbreaking report on the Hindenburg: ‘Kaboom.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, the good news is that the bolts that should have held the door in place may not have come loose as was previously feared, OK? The bad news is that it’s possible the bolts were never even installed. Now, I know that sounds like a major screw-up, but they were just following the instructions: Put door on plane. Wonder why you have leftover bolts. Enjoy unlimited leg room.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, in response to this fiasco, the F.A.A. has grounded all 200 Boeing Max 9 planes in the United States, saying it could take four to eight hours to inspect each plane. Well, I think I speak for all travelers when I say take your time! OK? Do not rush. Be thorough. We’ll be at the Chili’s Too, pounding Spice-A-Ritas.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers skewered his writers’ worst jokes of the new year in Tuesday night’s “Surprise Inspection” segment.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightReneé Rapp will promote her role as Regina George in the new musical movie version of “Mean Girls” on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJane Curtin, Harriet Sansom Harris, Ben Kingsley and Jade Quon in the 2023 film “Jules,” directed by Marc Turtletaub.Linda Kallerus/Bleecker StreetFrom books to movies to art shows, aliens are having yet another pop culture moment. More

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      ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 9 Recap: Cowboy Hitler

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      “The most I ever felt, I felt for that woman,” Roy confesses. It’s safe to wager Dot never felt the same.Season 5, Episode 9: ‘The Useless Hand’“You Hitler at the Reichstag or Hitler in the bunker?”You never want to get a question like that from your father-in-law, even when you’ve been using your post as the county sheriff to funnel money into their far-right militia for some imagined holy war against “the deep state.” But the question itself, posed to Roy Tillman, suggests the answer: Roy has always been Hitler in the bunker — just as Hitler himself was inevitably Hitler in the bunker — yet he has flashed enough tough-guy charisma to bring other “patriots” into his orbit. He has been cosplaying Ammon Bundy for votes, money and unchecked power, but sometimes an actor immerses himself too deeply into a role. And now he has the feds surrounding his ranch.Throughout the season, we have seen examples of Roy’s brutality and psychopathy, the ease with which he follows his impulse toward extreme violence. But Dot, in a scene where she is cornered by his current wife and trying to speak to their shared experiences, has it right: “He’s weak.” If anything, that weakness makes him more dangerous, especially as his options start to become more limited and he evokes the Masada, an ancient fortress where Jewish rebels made their last stand against the Roman Empire. (As the legend has it, the two-year siege ended in a mass suicide by the rebels.) Last week, Dot was correct in saying that Roy had no plan for what to do after bringing her back to the ranch, other than treating her like a horse that needed to be broken.Much of this week’s episode takes place during this last stand at Tillman Ranch, as federal agents roused by Danish’s disappearance and Dot’s kidnapping finally have urgent cause to hold Roy accountable. Amid the chaos that follows, the show takes full stock of Roy as a fake cowboy, driven by feeling rather than calculation, despite the power he has been able to accumulate. A rational leader would know that shooting the lawyer and right-hand of Minnesota’s billionaire debt queen would not go unanswered, but he was embarrassed and angry and wanted to put this smug slickster in his place.As for Dot, he confesses, “The most I ever felt, I felt for that woman.” That’s when he decides to kill her, too.Of all the fine casting choices this season, Jon Hamm may be the savviest, because memories of “Mad Men” have us trusting in his relative infallibility on the job, even if his Don Draper proves dramatically less certain off the clock. Hamm is such a magnetic cult of personality that comedies like “30 Rock” and the underrated “Confess, Fletch” have made a point of turning him into a grinning buffoon. “Fargo” has done likewise, but much more gradually, as Roy’s biblical authority over Stark County has loosened along with his grip over his emotions. His plea to his patriots, “After they murder me, they’re coming for you next,” has the ring of Trumpian victimization to it. And they will dutifully follow him off the cliff.Roy’s desperation raises the stakes for a thrilling penultimate episode that finds Dot scrambling for safety on the ranch, having seen where he buries the bodies. She can’t have anticipated being in the crossfire between the feds and a militia stocked with heavily armed weekend warriors, but she knows enough about Roy’s state of mind to see where things might be headed. When she works her way back into the house, which is full of little trap doors and hidden passageways that she knows enough to exploit, she gets a call in to Wayne before Karen puts a rifle on her.Given how much the season has been about adversarial women finding common cause, it’s a relief that Dot’s attempt to bond with Karen fails. The show has already gone perhaps too far in softening up Lorraine, and it risks flattening the female characters if they’re all of a similar mindset. The threat that Dot represents to Karen, who rages about how the bedroom hasn’t changed since she left (“We sleep in your filth”), suggests that Roy is bored by his current wife’s compliance. That’s why he needs her to role-play in bed.As Dot finds herself the bleakest possible hiding spot while Witt Farr and a band of agents strike out to locate her, poor Gator comes stumbling back into the picture, led along by Ole Munch, who enacts his own version of biblical justice for when Gator killed his host-of-sorts and made off with his money. Roy knows right away that his son has made a grave mistake, but shows only disappointment when Munch drags Gator back to the ranch by his neck, having carved out his eyes with a hot knife. With no mother or mother-figure left in his life, Gator had opted to please his father, and his reward is to be abandoned in the fog, unable to summon any sympathy from a hard, narrow, narcissistic idol. His childlike pleas for “daddy” are carried off into the mist.Munch does show mercy to the woman who mangled his ear, however. With Roy’s men closing in on the “grave” where she imagines no one will find her, Munch does his part to liberate her by taking them out and lifting her to freedom. “To fight a tiger in a cage is not a fair fight,” he tells her. His beef with Roy appears to be settled. Or maybe he just respects her agency. And prowess.3 Cent StampsA very small Coen reference of note in this episode: While negotiating for his life at Munch’s shack, Gator offers all sorts of illicit goods, including drugs, a flamethrower and finally prostitutes. “Sure gets lonely out here,” he says, echoing a line from a witness in “Fargo,” who remembers Steve Buscemi’s character soliciting prostitutes for himself and his cohort in their lake hide-out.“An old woman watches young men play a game. She drinks. She drinks because her own son has spit the nipple from his mouth. She bothers no one. And yet, you killed her.” Munch’s centuries-old, biblical sense of justice is also quite stilted.“What’s the point of being a billionaire if I can’t have someone killed?” Lorraine probably isn’t the first person to say a line like that.Funny advice for Dot on the phone. Lorraine: “Now put your big-girl pants on and get in the fight.” Indira, with the saner follow-up: “Dorothy, don’t get in the fight.”The Trump-era commentary comes through in Meyer’s clarifying the meaning of the term “witch hunt” to Roy: “You know what a ‘witch hunt’ is, right? Not witches hunting men, but men killing women to keep them in line.” More