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      Late Night Gives Trump’s Education Agency Shutdown a Failing Grade

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      “Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday.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.This Wasn’t on the SyllabusOn Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order gutting the Department of Education.“They say ignorance is bliss,” Jimmy Kimmel remarked during that night’s monologue.“I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated, and now he will have so many more people to love.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump signed the order during an event at the White House they invited a group of children to attend. They’re like ‘Hey, kids, who hates school?’ And they’re like ‘Well, we do!’ and they said, ‘Well, good news, it’s over.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The idea behind this is to let the states come up with their own educational standards. For instance, from here on, in order to receive a high school diploma in Florida, all you have to do is complete the maze on the back of the kids’ menu at Fuddruckers.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Today, President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. It’s a historic move that years from now kids will not read about in history textbooks.” — JIMMY FALLON“President Trump signed an order today to dismantle the Department of Education. Yep. Soon employees will be reading their pink slips at a third-grade level.” — GREG GUTFELD“Meanwhile, one angry ex-employee claims it was the worst thing to happen since Nazis won the Civil War.” — GREG GUTFELDThe Punchiest Punchlines (D.E.I. Takedown Edition)“Yesterday, the Department of Defense, as part of their war against woke, removed a page about Jackie Robinson’s distinguished military career. They pulled it down. A spokesperson for the Pentagon said, ‘We do not view or highlight them’ — not sure what he means by them, but — ‘through the prism of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnicity or sex.’ Right, Jackie Robinson was just a baseball player; nothing special about him. Rosa Parks just loved to ride the bus. She was a commuter.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Imagine how racist you have to be to be racist against Jackie Robinson today.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Don’t blame us — blame our racist software. We should have never used ChatKKK. Classic mistake.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I don’t get it: How can something like this happen under the president who’s done more for Black people than Abraham Lincoln?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBob Mould performed his new single on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutFlannery O’Connor’s caricature of an aristocratic couple. The darkly comic Southern writer Flannery O’Connor was (quietly) a visual artist, too. A new exhibition in Georgia showcases 70 of her pieces. More

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      ‘Shared Custody’ Is a Prickly Spanish Divorce Drama

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      And as with many European series, this one, on Hulu, features plenty of cool sweaters and hot tempers.“Shared Custody” is a light divorce drama, though it is perhaps better seen as a cellphone drama: the buzzing, the ringing, the texting, the “just one second,” the deleted messages, the accidental photo uploads, the app notifications. Is everyone disconnected, or is everyone too connected?The show, on Hulu (in Spanish, with subtitles, or dubbed), follows Cris (Lorena López) and Diego (Ricard Farré) through the early stages of their divorce. They each tell their parents that they’re going to do things amicably, without lawyers, and that figuring out custody of their little girl won’t be that big of a headache.“You can’t do that,” Diego’s father grumbles. “And if you had gone to law school, you’d know that.”Episodes themselves have a sort of split custody. We see Cris at work, where she is told to keep her child and her separation a secret, lest she be pushed aside. Diego’s client, on the other hand, declares that fathers are inherently trustworthy and that she is impressed by his family life.We see each parent on a too-boozy night with friends and how each set of abuelos is both the cause of and solution to some of the issues at hand. Cris is too rigid and selfish — or wait, Diego is too lazy and has mooched off his family and wife forever. (“I’ve taken two degrees worth of digital marketing courses!” he brags to a friend.)As with many shows that cattily dissect the bougie, “Custody” includes a party held at the richest friend’s ostentatiously artsy house, where all the kids are screaming and running around, and all the grow-ups are forming hostile cliques. Things boil over! As with many European shows, this one features interesting sweaters and fabulous bathroom tiles. And as with many contemporary domestic dramas, it captures the misery of being around other people’s poorly behaved children.“Custody” is not dark or brutalizing, but neither does it shy away from how quickly Cris and Diego can take a whisper of disagreement and turn it into an opera of “you are in fact just like your parents, specifically in the ways you most fear and resent.” You know what, maybe we should get lawyers after all. More

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      Lenny Schultz, Comedian Who Made a Lot of Noise, Dies at 91

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      A highly physical performer, he said he couldn’t tell jokes. But he became well known for a wild act that fellow comedians didn’t want to follow.Lenny Schultz, a wild-eyed comedian who became known in the 1970s and ’80s for high-energy performances that he delivered with a mouthful of sound effects and a table full of silly props, died on Sunday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 91.His son and only immediate survivor, Mark, confirmed the death.“I can’t tell a joke,” Mr. Schultz told The Orlando Sentinel in 1972, but that didn’t matter. “The guys I like and the guys I identify with,” he added, “are Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Guy Marks — the zanies. I like the zanies. I am a zany!”With his expressive face, his physicality and the rapid pace of his act, Mr. Schultz exuded a loony intensity. He began his comedy career in the late 1960s while keeping his day job as a high school gym teacher.Onstage, he described the start of life on Earth, punctuating his narrative with explosions and other noises; bowed a banana as if it were a violin (while taking bites out of it); played the Lone Ranger, wearing a mask and a tiny cowboy hat while riding a small toy horse on a stick and flinging Froot Loops from a box; rendered a cockfight between game fowl of different ethnicities; and admonished the baby doll in his backpack to stop crying because William Morris agents were in the audience.Mr. Schultz in 1977 on the first episode of the rebooted “Laugh-In.” The original show had revolutionized TV comedy, but the new version was canceled after six episodes.NBCUniversal Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Lenny has a special place in the hearts and memories of everybody in his peer group,” David Letterman, who met Mr. Schultz when they were performing in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview. “He is talked about more often, randomly, than any single person we spent time with at the Comedy Store in the 1970s.”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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      ‘The Residence’ Review: Murder and Mystery in the White House

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      The Netflix series, executive produced by Shonda Rimes, is the latest lighthearted murder mystery on streaming TV.At a certain point, we have to start feeling bad for the last five famous actors who have not yet appeared on a lighthearted streaming murder show. They didn’t get to be the detective, or the murderer, or the one with the biggest secret, but not even being cast as themselves in a winky, self-aware cameo? Yeesh.As with many current show in its pitch and timbre, “The Residence” is a conveyor belt of famous faces, including Uzo Aduba, Eliza Coupe, Jane Curtin, Giancarlo Esposito, Al Franken, Taran Killam, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Randall Park, Bronson Pinchot, Susan Kelechi Watson and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Kylie Minogue makes a winky, self-aware cameo as herself.) It is certainly one way to thwart viewers’ “Law and Order”-honed skill of identifying the famous guest star as the central criminal.“The Residence,” on Netflix, is a boppy little murder mystery set in the White House. Paul William Davies is the show’s creator and the writer of every episode, with Davies, Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as executive producers; it is based on the nonfiction book “The Residence,” by Kate Andersen Brower.Davies’s previous work includes “Scandal,” and the shows share a similar vague relationship to presidential history, but there is no screen-melting romance here. “The Residence” does not have the sizzle or sudsiness of other Shondaland titles, nor is it particularly provocative; its big innovation is that the president (Paul Fitzgerald) is a white gay man who lives in the White House with his husband (Barrett Foa), brother (Lee) and mother-in-law (Curtin).That’s not to say it isn’t fun. It is, with ample Agatha Christie references, a whooshing momentum and plenty of intrigue.It’s the night of a chaotic state dinner, and the White House chief usher, A.B. Wynter (Esposito), turns up dead. (Andre Braugher, who died in December, was originally cast in the role.) Everyone’s a suspect: the guests, the staff, the first family. This calls for a genius investigator, and not just any genius. A quirky genius! Enter Cordelia Cupp (Aduba), an avid birder and obsessive observer of details. The game is afoot.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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      The Sudden Weirdness of TV Presidents

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      Today’s political dramas have conspiracy, murder and supervolcanoes. But their conventional White House protocols and procedures might be the most disorienting aspects.You can’t say that TV’s fictional presidencies lack for drama today.In “Zero Day,” the former President George Mullen (Robert DeNiro) sleuths out the source of a debilitating cyberattack. In “Paradise,” the feckless nepo baby President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) shoulders responsibility for humankind after an extinction-level volcanic eruption (and, no spoiler, gets murdered in his postapocalyptic underground shelter). In “The Residence,” a White House state dinner becomes a crime scene.Yet watching these political series lately, I am now struck by the same nagging feeling. This is all wrong, I think. It feels too normal — even the series that takes place in an enormous subterranean city.It’s not just that TV dramas can’t compete with the show we’re watching unfold on the news. Increasingly, they seem to operate in a parallel universe.Historically, TV’s presidents — Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing,” David Palmer on “24,” Fitzgerald Grant on “Scandal” — tend to share certain familiar traits. They are concerned with the appearance of stability and normalcy. They treat federal enforcement and intelligence agencies as part of a system to manage, not as internal enemies to be conquered. They make measured statements. They scold, even explode, but behind closed doors. They even have an aesthetic: a cool formality that speaks of quiet power without ostentation.Compare them with our reality. President Trump erupts into a shouting match with Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, a nominal ally, in front of live cameras, ending the altercation by saying, “This is going to be great television.” He renames the Gulf of Mexico, goes on the attack against Canada — a literal plot element from the movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut”— and stages a Tesla ad on the White House grounds.To watch presidential fiction today is to feel how the polarity has suddenly flipped. The base line assumptions about how power works and presidents behave — about what America is in the world — have changed. And the details that TV series relied on to seem politically realistic suddenly make them feel like transmissions from an alternative timeline.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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      ‘Peep Show’ Still Proves That ‘Self-Loathing Is Pretty Universal’

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      Over two decades ago, two British shows reinvented television comedy with mortifyingly funny alternatives to regular sitcoms. One of them might immediately come to mind: “The Office,” a cringe-comedy landmark that revived the mockumentary format and inspired an American version that became its own institution.The other never achieved such widespread renown, at least not on these shores. But “Peep Show,” which chronicled two spiraling roommates in a grotty London flat, was highly influential in Britain and beyond.The sitcom aired on Channel 4 for nine seasons, from 2003-15, and it was beloved enough for the British Film Institute to hold a 20th anniversary tribute in 2023. Its stars, David Mitchell and Robert Webb, continue to be fixtures of British comedy. (Mitchell’s latest show, a mystery series called “Ludwig,” arrives on BritBox on Thursday.) A young Olivia Colman, now an Oscar-winning actor, was part of the cast. One of the creators, Jesse Armstrong, later earned international acclaim as the mastermind of the HBO hit “Succession.”Channel 4But “Peep Show” remains a cult item or secret handshake for American audiences. “It’s kind of the hipster’s choice,” Armstrong, who created the show with Sam Bain, said in an interview. “Occasionally, somebody on set would come and say, ‘Hey, I like your other work, especially ‘Peep Show.’”“Peep Show,” which now streams on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, among other services, is filmed in a first-person style, complete with internal monologues. It puts audiences into the minds of two friends who invariably do exactly the wrong thing, in different ways. Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) is a strait-laced insurance adjuster who flails around women, and people generally. Jeremy (Webb), also known as Jez, is a perpetually unemployed techno musician who exhibits the self-control of a puppy.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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      Late Night Tackles the Attacks on Tesla

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      Jordan Klepper said no one should be blowing up Elon Musk’s cars, “especially because if you just wait a few minutes, they’ll probably do it by themselves.”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.Where There’s SmokeIn recent weeks, Tesla has been targeted by vandals, who have set the company’s cars on fire and defaced dealership storefronts with messages criticizing Elon Musk, its owner. On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Jordan Klepper said no one should be blowing up Teslas — “especially because if you just wait a few minutes, they’ll probably do it by themselves.”On Fox News this week, Musk spoke with Sean Hannity and, Klepper said, “made the case for his victimhood.”“I shouldn’t have to explain this to Elon, but it’s not about the Teslas. Teslas are actually pretty cool as a car. It’s got that all-glass thing going on, kind of like a popemobile that [expletive]. It’s got door handles that are hard to find, which is what everybody wants in a door handle. Everything in the car is electronic, so if it malfunctions, you just drown in it, you know? It’s like a free coffin. It’s cool!” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I don’t think people, though, are mad at you because of the Teslas, Elon. If I were to hazard a guess about why they’d be mad, it might be because, in the last several weeks, you fired tens of thousands of federal workers, you made cuts to veterans’ care, lifesaving foreign aid and food banks.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Or, here — here’s another guess: Maybe people are mad at you because you don’t seem to know what the [expletive] you’re doing!” — JORDAN KLEPPER“And here’s the thing: I get that people are upset. Burning a car might not be great for the environment. I don’t think that’s what they had in mind when they invented the electric car.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Let me see if I can explain it for you: When you pull out a chain saw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (J.F.K. Files Edition)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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      This Charming British Detective Show Is an Escape From Uncertain Times

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      “Ludwig,” streaming on BritBox, stars David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle setter who solves mysteries. And then the world makes sense again.In the opening scene of the detective show “Ludwig,” the camera pans up and down the floors of a glass office building while jaunty music plays on the soundtrack. Employees chat as they pack up and leave for the day, and then we reach an upper level, where a man in a button-down shirt and slacks is sprawled on the floor, an ornate knife sticking out of his chest.When the comedian David Mitchell read this first page of the show’s script last year, he immediately thought, “This aesthetic is exactly what I want,” he said in a recent interview. “It just felt — which is weird to say when it involves someone being murdered — but it felt fun.”When “Ludwig,” starring Mitchell in the lead role, aired in Britain late last year, viewers seemed to agree: Nearly 10 million people tuned in, making it the BBC’s most popular new scripted program in years.In the show, which comes to BritBox in the United States on Thursday, Mitchell plays the kind of endearingly unworldly, fiercely intelligent character that has made him a household name in Britain.Mitchell’s character, John, is a reclusive genius who lives alone, setting crosswords and other brain teasers under the pen name Ludwig.Colin Hutton/Big TalkHis character, John, is a reclusive genius who lives alone, setting crosswords and other brain teasers under the pen name Ludwig. His identical twin brother, James, got married, had a son and is working as a police detective — but then James disappears, leaving his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) a cryptic note.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