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      in Theater

      Timothy West, Who Portrayed Kings and Prime Ministers, Dies at 90

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      Timothy West, a versatile actor who portrayed a parade of historical and classical figures onstage and onscreen, and in between became a household name in Britain as a sitcom and soap opera regular, died on Tuesday in London. He was 90.His death was announced by his family on social media. They did not specify where he died but thanked the staffs at a London care home and a hospital for “their loving care” during Mr. West’s final days.With arched brows, narrow eyes and a strong jaw, Mr. West brought a commanding presence to historical figures like Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and King Edward VII, and to notables of classic theater like King Lear, Macbeth and Willy Loman.He was perhaps best known to American audiences for his performances in British television imports: the mini-series “Edward the King,” the movie “Churchill and the Generals” and the acclaimed mini-series “Bleak House,” an adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel that was shown on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” in 2005.Mr. West, kneeling, in 1970 in “Edward II” with Ian McKellen. He was known to bring a commanding presence to historical figures.AlamyMr. West, left, with Ian Richardson in the BBC drama “Churchill and the Generals.” It was the first of his three career portrayals of the British prime minister.RGR Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoAlthough Mr. West was a staple of British television, had dabbled in radio drama and had several small film roles, his lifelong passion was the theater.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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      in Television

      ‘Cross’ and ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Offer Different Spins on the Same Formula

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      Within the boundaries of the crime-solving genius genre, “Cross” represents the dark yin and “The Lincoln Lawyer” the bright yang.On the page, Alex Cross, the embittered psychologist created by James Patterson, leads his fellow fictional crime solver Mickey Haller, the flamboyant lawyer created by Michael Connelly, 32 novels to seven. On the small screen, the tables turn: The Haller series “The Lincoln Lawyer” debuted its third season last month on Netflix while the first season of “Cross,” announced nearly five years ago, finally arrives Thursday on Amazon Prime Video.But who’s counting? There appears to be endless space in the current marketplace for brilliant but wounded investigators, and Haller and Cross share an essential marker of the contemporary crime-drama hero. Their personal traumas — Cross’s loss of his parents and wife, Haller’s issues with his father and with addiction — generate much of the tension in their stories, reducing the need for real complexity of personality or the clever unraveling of mystery.Formulas can be executed in different ways, however, and the two shows provide radically different viewing experiences. Within the boundaries of the problematic-genius formula, “Cross” represents the dark yin and “The Lincoln Lawyer” the bright yang. “Cross” goes for self-consciously heavy, “The Lincoln Lawyer” for perilously light. Most significant, perhaps, “Cross” is out to sanctify its protagonist; “The Lincoln Lawyer,” while it provides Haller with a full allotment of anguish, never asks us to feel sorry for him.The creator of “Cross,” Ben Watkins, previously created the eccentric neo-noir “Hand of God,” also for Amazon. The penchants he demonstrated then for hair-raising imagery, and for throwing together tones and styles, carry through to the new show. Choosing not to base “Cross” on a specific Patterson novel (unlike film adaptations including “Kiss the Girls” and “Along Came a Spider”), Watkins frees himself to cook up a lurid but not very exciting stew of serial-killer horror, buddy-cop action, social-justice point-making and sentimentality.Cross, played by Aldis Hodge (“Leverage”), is a District of Columbia police detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. We meet him on the occasion of his wife’s murder, and for eight episodes the character shuttles between dour grief and bellowing anger; Hodge, usually a magnetic performer, settles on a glaring, unmediated intensity.The A plot, in which Cross investigates the murder of a defund-the-police activist, blossoms into a richly nonsensical “Silence of the Lambs”-style fantasia. Common sense is left far behind, in matters large and small; at one slap-your-forehead juncture, a cop yells, “He could be anywhere!” seconds after the killer escapes, while his car can still be heard in the near distance.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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      How Stingy Boomer Parents Became the Best TV Villains

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      Older Americans hold an outsize share of the nation’s wealth and power. Television loves watching their children scramble for a taste.Plots about inheritance and succession are not a new phenomenon. The form could hardly be more familiar: Take an empire-straddling lion-in-winter, throw in some desperately competing heirs and watch as the shifting allegiances and loyalty tests devolve into bedlam. The Gospel of Luke gives us the parable of the prodigal son, in which one child does his duty and the other squanders his inheritance. Shakespeare had King Lear go mad after disinheriting his youngest and being betrayed by his older daughters.Still, even by the accustomed standards, recent television feels utterly awash in succession-themed stories. “Empire,” “Yellowstone” and “La Maison” all hinge on the promises and prevarications of parents and their offspring. On HBO alone, we’ve had “Succession” (children vying for control of a media empire), “The Righteous Gemstones” (children vying for control of a religious empire) and “House of the Dragon” (children vying for control of the family dragons).Neither is this trend reserved for fiction. Two recent documentaries revolve around an emergent archetype in succession stories: the crusty, vainglorious old man whose megalomaniacal allegiance to his business empire supersedes his capacity for common decency.Released in September, the six-part Netflix documentary “Mr. McMahon” explores the legacy of professional wrestling’s most consequential overlord, Vince McMahon, who took over the hardscrabble World Wrestling Federation — previously owned by his father, Vince McMahon Sr. — and transformed it into a global juggernaut. By the 1990s and 2000s, World Wrestling Entertainment (having changed its name in 2002) was drawing huge ratings by dramatizing McMahon’s dueling with his two children, Stephanie and Shane, who both desired, in the W.W.E.’s story line, to compete with and succeed their autocratic father.Professional wrestling is, famously, a strange admixture of reality and fiction; its in-ring beefs are often exaggerated versions of offscreen animosities. “Mr. McMahon” reveals the extent to which the McMahons’ televised rivalries were true to life. Shane, in particular, butted heads with his father around the height of what is known in wrestling lore as the Attitude Era. The two men ended up battling each other at WrestleMania 17 in 2001, following weeks of onscreen drama regarding the future of the W.W.E. The ensuing “street fight,” as it was billed, turned nasty as the father peppered his son with actual punches, rather than the usual pulled shots. It is unpleasant to watch and hard to turn away from.The wealth hoarding of older generations may be the lurking subtext of all these plots.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Small Streamers Like Hallmark+ and BritBox See Subscribers Surge

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      Like Christmas shows? So does Hallmark+. Like horror? Dare to try Shudder. And British shows? There’s BritBox and more.Executives from the Hallmark Channel made a curious decision this fall: They started a new streaming service.It seemed like an awfully late date to do so. Most media companies entered the streaming fray years ago, and few have had success going head-to-head against titans like Netflix, Amazon and Disney.But Hallmark executives decided the timing was not an issue. Their app, Hallmark+, did not need to appeal to the whole country, they said, just their core audience — the people who regularly flock en masse to the network’s trademark holiday and feel-good programming.“We don’t have to make content that are all things to all people,” said John Matts, Hallmark Media’s chief operating officer.He might very well be onto something.For much of the past decade, conventional wisdom inside the entertainment world has been that only a small handful of megaservices would survive the streaming wars. After all, they had the stars, the budgets and the technological prowess.But numerous media executives now believe that there could be room for some more modest streaming services, too.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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      Jordan Klepper Isn’t Wild About the ‘First Buddy,’ Elon Musk

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      “Trump’s been getting something that Elon’s 11 children will never receive: his full attention,” Klepper said on “The Daily Show.”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.Buddy BuddyDonald Trump keeps making news with his appointments, choosing Kristi Noem, the governor famous for shooting her dog, to run the Department of Homeland Security. Elon Musk, who’s also been promised a post, seems to have the president-elect’s ear; on Monday, Musk posted on X, “I’m happy to be first buddy!”“Since the election, Trump’s been getting something that Elon’s 11 children will never receive: his full attention,” Jordan Klepper said on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”“Oh, good. Good! The world’s richest man is helping the president-elect run the country. I’m sure by the time Elon’s done, his businesses will be unregulated, he’ll have billions in new government contracts, and it’ll be illegal to point and laugh at a Cybertruck.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“‘First Buddy’ sounds like a sequel to ‘Air Bud’ where we elect a golden retriever to be president — which, frankly, I’d take at this point. Looks nice. It looks nice! Just keep it away from Kristi Noem, you know?” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Punchiest Punchlines (Hide Your Dogs Edition)“Kristi Noem shouldn’t be in charge of a PetSmart, let alone homeland security.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“One of his main messages during the campaign was about killing the pets: ‘They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!’ He goes out and hires the woman who shot her puppy.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“She’s supposed to get the border under control? She couldn’t even train her dog.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“This woman has no national security experience. She’s the governor of South Dakota. That isn’t even the best Dakota. It goes North, Fanning, Johnson, then the building John Lennon was shot outside of, then South Dakota.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Noem has an impressive résumé. She was a congresswoman, a governor, and during the campaign, she was Trump’s most trusted backup dancer.” — JIMMY FALLON, playing a video of Noem dancing next to Trump onstage“I know, I know — it’s important not to focus on that one time Kristi Noem shot a dog, because it’s just as important to remember that she also shot and killed her family’s goat.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingAmber Ruffin, a “Late Night” writer, struggled to get through a post-election edition of her regular segment, “Amber Says What.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe stand-up comedian Emma Willmann will appear on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutWith the Gits, who became part of Seattle’s punk scene in 1989, the singer Mia Zapata was a formidable stage presence.Charles PetersonOn Nov. 13, Sub Pop will release remastered recordings by the Gits, the Seattle punk band whose frontwoman, Mia Zapata, was murdered in 1993. More

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      in Television

      Italian City in Amanda Knox Case Wants to Move On. A New Series Won’t Let It.

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      When a show produced by Ms. Knox about the murder of Meredith Kercher was filmed in Perugia, an outcry by residents led the mayor to apologize.Seventeen years after Amanda Knox, the American exchange student, was arrested and charged with killing her roommate in Perugia, a picturesque university city in central Italy, some of its citizens are outraged that their city is once again being dragged into a tragedy that they would prefer to forget.This month, when cast and crew arrived there for a two-day shoot for a Hulu series about the case — a show for which Ms. Knox and Monica Lewinsky are executive producers — Mayor Vittoria Fernandi felt obliged to write a heartfelt letter of apology to the city for the hurt caused by their presence.One resident, honoring the memory of Meredith Kercher, the slain roommate, draped a sheet from a balcony with “Respect for Meredith” painted in bold red letters. A council member questioned on social media whether the mayor should have allowed the production to shoot in Perugia, where the crime has long overshadowed the city’s “history, art and beauty.”An editorial in the daily newspaper La Nazione wrote, “Perhaps Meredith and Perugia would have deserved more respect without having to sacrifice the dignity of a murdered student and a brutalized city to business.”It hardly mattered that after spending four years in prison, Ms. Knox was acquitted for the death of Ms. Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England who was murdered in the house they shared.People forget “that she, too, is a victim in this case,” said Luca Luparia Donati, the director of the Italy Innocence Project, who is representing Ms. Knox in a slander case.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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      in Television

      ‘Say Nothing’ Asks: What Would You Do?

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      The FX series strives to capture the complexity of its subject: the long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.The actor Anthony Boyle (“Manhunt,” “Masters of the Air”) grew up in West Belfast. On the way to school he would walk past murals of hunger strikers, of murdered children. He was a child, he said, during “the hangover” of the Troubles, the sectarian conflict between Protestant unionists, who were British loyalists, and Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland that lasted into the late 1990s.“The history is so recent,” he said. “You feel the pressure of it always.”So when the director Mike Lennox (“Derry Girls”) reached out to him about starring in the FX limited series “Say Nothing,” Boyle was hesitant. The nine-episode series is adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe’s nonfiction book “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,” which is set primarily in Belfast during and after the Troubles. Radden Keefe is American, as is Joshua Zetumer, the showrunner. FX, which produced the series, is a division of Disney Entertainment.All of this gave Boyle pause. In a recent interview, he described his thinking at the time: “When brothers have killed each other over which splinter group of the paramilitary they belong to, a show on Disney isn’t going to get this right.”But reading the scripts convinced Boyle to play Brendan Hughes, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In “Say Nothing,” which premieres Thursday on Hulu, he stars alongside Lola Petticrew, as Dolours Price; Hazel Doupe, as Marian Price; and Josh Finan, as Gerry Adams.The actors play young versions of these real-life figures, who engage in or sanction acts of violence in pursuit of a political goal. (Adams has consistently denied his involvement with the I.R.A., though Hughes, who died in 2008, and Dolours Price, who died in 2013, both disputed this.) The series captures both the youthful excitement that fighting for a cause can kindle and the devastating reverberations that come after.“It felt like a lot of the questions that were raised were questions that I, as a young adult, have about how we heal and move on from a traumatic recent past,” said Petticrew, who is also from West Belfast.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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      in Television

      Late Night Weighs in on Trump’s Cabinet Picks

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      Jimmy Kimmel called President-elect Trump’s choices thus far “a real cast of no character.”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.Trump Stocks His CabinetLess than a week after winning the election, President-elect Donald J. Trump has begun announcing members of his next cabinet.Jimmy Kimmel called them “a real cast of no character” on Monday, saying they would “soon be hired and then fired by Trump.”“President-elect Trump has named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, making her the first woman in history to ever have that role. Yeah. She’ll also make history as the first female chief of staff to quit after three weeks and write a tell-all book.” — JIMMY FALLON“Wiles has Trump’s trust because she was his 2024 campaign manager. So she was the mastermind who put Trump in a garbage man costume and had him dance to ‘Ave Maria’ — and it worked. And I don’t know what anything means anymore.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The thing is, Wiles may not be the worst choice for this job, and not just because the worst choice was elected president. Reportedly, reportedly, during the campaign, Wiles worked to keep particularly divisive fringe conservatives out of Trump’s orbit. For instance, she lured Rudy Giuliani away from Trump using a bottle of Cabernet dressed up as a sexy lady.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Former Congressman Lee Zeldin of New York is Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. According to the League of Conservation Voters, of 26 House representatives from New York, Lee Zeldin had the worst record on environmental issues by far — so he’ll be in charge of protecting the environment, of course.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In a new post to Truth Social, President-elect Trump said that he will not invite former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to join his administration. Well, he did offer her the position of secretary. That’s it — just secretary.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (POTUS Confab 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