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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Run the Burbs’ and ‘The Trial’

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      A Canadian sitcom debuts on the CW. And a hard-to-find Orson Welles movie airs on TCM.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 31 — Aug. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayRUN THE BURBS 8:30 p.m. on the CW. Is it redundant to have a set of those cute family-member bumper stickers on the back of a blue Toyota minivan, that icon of suburban soccer-practice shuttling? Is that not a bit like sticking a “baby on board” sign to the handlebars of an infant’s carriage? Don’t tell that to the Phams, the family at the center of “Run the Burbs,” who have a set on their shiny van. A Canadian sitcom cocreated by Andrew Phung (a star of “Kim’s Convenience”) and Scott Townend, the program follows the Phams — a mother, Camille (Rakhee Morzaria), and father, Andrew (Phung), and their two children (played by Zoriah Wong and Roman Pesino) — as they navigate contemporary suburban life. The debut episode, which airs Monday, is built around preparations for a neighborhood block party.BREEDERS 10 p.m. on FX. The yin to the “Run the Burbs” yang, this dark and bold British comedy was encapsulated by a line that Paul, a father played by Martin Freeman, said to Ally (Daisy Haggard), his wife, in the very first episode: “I would die for those kids, but often I also want to kill them.” Since its debut in 2020, the show has mined humor from the least glamorous sides of family life. Major themes of its fourth and final season, which picks up five years after the previous season and is set to debut Monday night, include divorce, aging and teen pregnancy. In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Freeman (who is also a creator of the series) explained that the show was interested in giving a frank look at less-discussed parts of parenting. “In nice sort of lefty, liberal circles,” he said, “you don’t really talk about how you want to throw your kids out of the [expletive] window.”TuesdayICONIC AMERICA: OUR SYMBOLS AND STORIES WITH DAVID RUBENSTEIN 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary series, hosted by the philanthropist David Rubenstein, has been loose with what constitutes an “iconic” part of America’s identity: Previous episodes have been dedicated to the history of both physical sites (including the Statue of Liberty and the Hollywood sign) and shared imagery (cowboys, bald eagles). Tuesday’s episode looks at the Golden Gate Bridge.WednesdayAnthony Perkins in “The Trial.”Rialto Pictures/StudioCanalTHE TRIAL (1963) 5:45 p.m. on TCM. Orson Welles once declared that “The Trial” was the best movie he’d ever made, but it has been out of print in the United States for years. A new restoration, which played in theaters around the end of 2022, is set to be released for at-home viewing by the Criterion Collection in September, but for now this TCM broadcast remains a relatively rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to see the movie easily. Adapted from a Franz Kafka novel, the film stars Anthony Perkins as Josef K., a man living in an anonymous city who is charged with a crime that is kept unclear to both him and the audience. His journey to find out more brings him across an array of oddball characters, including a legal advocate (Welles) and an artist (William Chappell), but little light is shed. TCM will show the movie alongside several other films with Perkins, including PSYCHO (1960), at 8 p.m., and FEAR STRIKES OUT (1957), at 10 p.m.ThursdayJAWS (1975) 8 p.m. on AMC. In the same way as fast cars, secret agents and creepy dolls, there’s something about sharks that makes Hollywood salivate — like a beast of prey drawn to the scent of past box-office successes. (“Meg 2: The Trench,” in theaters everywhere Aug. 4.) Few attempts at big-screen shark tales have come close to matching Steven Spielberg’s original “Jaws” movie, though — or the one-two bite of John Williams’s score.FridayOlivia Colman in “Empire of Light.”Searchlight Pictures/20th Century StudiosEMPIRE OF LIGHT (2022) 6:05 p.m. on HBO 2 and 1917 (2019) at 9 p.m. on Showtime 2. Here’s an interesting do-it-yourself double feature: A pair of collaborations between the filmmaker Sam Mendes and the cinematographer Roger Deakins. First up is “Empire of Light,” a period drama that stars Olivia Colman as the duty manager of a cinema in a British seaside town in the 1980s. As she struggles with her mental health, she develops a relationship with Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new employee. Their story is a far cry from the one told in “1917,” a WWI drama about two British soldiers (played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) sent on an exceedingly treacherous mission behind enemy lines.SaturdayTHE WILD SIDES 8 p.m. on BBC America. The first entry in this new, three-part documentary series picks up during a drought in the Botswana wilderness. It introduces a slate of animals — elephants, cheetahs, leopards, jackals and baboons — whose lives are connected in some surprising ways.SundayQuincy Isaiah in “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”Warrick Page/HBOWINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY 9 p.m. on HBO. The 1979-1980 season of the Los Angeles Lakers — and that era’s stars, including Magic Johnson (played by Quincy Isaiah) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) — got a ritzy coat of HBO paint in the first season of this drama, which debuted last year. The plot of the new, second season, which begins Sunday, runs through the 1984 finals, when the Lakers and the Celtics landed in a rematch. In a trailer, the Lakers owner Jerry Buss (as played by John C. Reilly), sets up the rivalry as a classic underdog story: “They’re the dynasty,” he says. “We’re the flash in the pan.” More

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      ‘We Are a Romantic Country’: On the Set of a Steamy Hit in Italy

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      Italy falls for “Mare Fuori,” a television melodrama about the inmates of a juvenile detention center who pass the time making out — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Before dawn, the teenage girls convened outside the Naples Navy base where the wildly popular Italian television show “Mare Fuori” is filmed.“We want to show them all of our love,” said Federica Montuori, 16, who with her fellow fans unfurled white sheets with spray-painted messages expressing how the lead actors, who play star-crossed — and mobbed-up — lovers in a juvenile prison, “belong in our hearts.”On the wall beside her, the scrawls on the bricks are love letters to “the most beautiful series in the world” and its main characters. “Ti Amo Carmine,” read one rectangle. “Ti Amo Rosa,” read another.Other fans have dived from nearby piers and swum to the back of the set, vexing gate guards charged with keeping them at bay. During the day, their screams have ruined takes.“We had to stop shooting,” said Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director. “They won’t listen. It’s pretty unbearable, but what can you do?”Maria Esposito, who plays Rosa Ricci in the series, and Mr. Caiazzo, who plays Carmine, filming a scene for the fourth season.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesItaly has fallen for “Mare Fuori,” or “The Sea Beyond,” an often gritty but always soapy melodrama about the inmates of a coed juvenile detention center who pass the time stealing kisses — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Entering its fourth season, the show, set and steeped in Naples street life, is “Saved by the Bell” meets “Scared Straight” meets “Gomorrah” meets Skinemax. It has been a smash hit on Italian television and is a fixture on Netflix Italy’s most-watched list. During Carnevale, children dressed up as the precocious gangsters, with leather hot pants and jackets, tank tops, lots of chains and toy guns.Its hypnotic theme song, recorded by an actor who plays an inmate on the show and who is also an increasingly popular singer in Italy, has been streamed 35 million times and gone platinum. Some fans have kept vigil singing the chorus outside the set.The series tells the intertwining stories of a hodgepodge of attractive delinquents, in a fictitious juvenile hall inspired by a real one — where the sexes are separated — on an island off Naples. Most of the characters are hardened thugs from competing Naples mob families, but there is also a rich Milanese piano prodigy jailed after a night out in Naples goes terribly awry, and a manipulative goth goddess who licks faces, cuts herself and kills for fun.The cast of mostly unknowns keeps the budget low, but the ensemble approach is also creating stars to supply Italy’s insatiable and often schlocky television-cinema complex.The show has turned Ms. Esposito and Mr. Caiazzo into celebrities. Fans can often be found surrounding the Navy base where the show is filmed, and even diving off nearby piers to swim to the back of the set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe producers market the show as a dialect-heavy portrayal of Naples reality with a redemption message. But following on other Italian hits, like “Baby,” about underage prostitutes, the show has also underscored Italy’s infatuation with steamy young adult programming.“We have realized that these stories of young lovers, people like a lot,” said Roberto Sessa, one of the show’s producers. “In the end, we are a romantic country.”The plot revolves around Carmine Di Salvo, the reluctant and seemingly meek scion of a crime family who really just wants to be a barber, but who lands behind bars after stabbing a would-be rapist of his girlfriend in the neck with scissors. Incarcerated, he finds a nemesis in Ciro, the prince of the competing crime family, who eventually tries to kill Carmine and his piano-playing cellmate but who ends up getting stabbed with a screwdriver.Things really took off in the third season, this year, when Rosa Ricci, the late Ciro’s sister, shoots a guy to get into jail so she can settle scores with Carmine. In classic Montague and Capulet style, she falls for Carmine instead.A scene from the third season of “Mare Fuori,” whose costume director said “skin, skin, skin” is an important part of the show’s look.Fosforo PressOn a street in Naples, a fan of the show, Domenico Marino, 18, and his girlfriend considered taking home a souvenir pillow — displayed next to similar shirts, mugs and key chains — of the scantily clad Rosa featuring her catchphrase (“I am Rosa Ricci, and who the [expletive] are you to tell me what I need to do”). He decided on a cushion of her late brother Ciro instead.On Naples’s Via San Gregorio Armeno, famous for its Christmas nativity scenes, a crowd gathered to admire terra cotta figurines of the cast standing in front of the juvenile prison, displayed next to a manger.“We keep making them as long as there is demand, even for the ones who get killed,” said Elio Cassano, 60. “They don’t look at the soccer players or the Holy Family in the crèche, they form crowds around ‘Mare Fuori.’”One of the admirers, Chiara D’Amico, 18, a Sicilian with a crush on Carmine, said the juvenile prison reminded her of high school. Her mother, Santina Santonocito, 40, said she liked the show because it taught children “not to make errors — life inside is not so easy.”Pillows with photographs of the show’s characters on sale in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesElio Cassano arranging figurines of the show’s characters outside a shop in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThey were visiting Naples, with plans to see its castles and eat pizza. “But the first thing on the list,” Ms. D’Amico said, was a pilgrimage to the set.Shortly before noon, a black van carrying Maria Esposito, 19, who plays Rosa, rolled up to the gate. She blew kisses from the passenger seat, sending the fans into a tizzy.On the set — which looked like a seaside high school with a soccer court, a foosball table and a black piano that had hearts traced in its dust — she stopped in hair and makeup with Massimiliano Caiazzo, who plays Carmine.“The theme of a forbidden love touches adults just as it touches adolescents,” said Mr. Caiazzo, 26, as Ms. Esposito, puffing on an e-cigarette, had her lashes doused in mascara.She had worked as an aesthetician before she joined at the end of the second season, which had made her “weep perennially, every day, with joy.”But for a young woman who loves going out (“I love living”), it was not easy being the face of Naples, she said. “I’m walking around the streets with my face on the pillows,” she said. “It’s a little creepy.”Rossella Aprea, the show’s costume designer, holding one of Rosa’s outfits.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe costume designer, Rossella Aprea, said that since there was no uniform in a real Italian juvenile prison, she could use her imagination. At a rack dedicated to Rosa, she held up a skimpy leotard decorated with dragons.“A lot of black, super tight, crop tops,” she said. “Skin, skin, skin.”Outside, the director struggled with a scene about the arrival of a new inmate, who held a leather satchel and looked as if he had either returned from safari or robbed a Banana Republic.“Tell him to come out of the car and look towards the girls,” Mr. Silvestrini instructed with frustration. He said he understood sex appeal was vital to the show’s success and required the suspension of disbelief about love in the detention center through the creation of imaginary circumstances for hooking up, what he called “room for romance.”“We created a pizza lab, a place where the boys and girls can be together,” he said. “And they can be promiscuous.”Ms. Esposito on the way to her dressing room. In the show’s third season, her character shoots someone to get into jail so she could settle scores with another character.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesAfter lunch, the director ordered the activation of a smoke machine for atmosphere, then walked a 40-something actor who played a crooked guard and a 20-something actress who played an inmate through their scene.“Then, at a certain point,” he instructed. “The kiss moment.”Their moment extended to a full-on make out session, lasting so long that the crew gave each other awkward looks.Soon after, Ms. Esposito walked on set for the day’s final scene.“She’s my star,” Mr. Silvestrini said.Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director, seated in front of a screen, along with other members of the cast and crew, reviewing a scene.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMs. Esposito, rail thin and with long straight black hair, wore bell-bottomed tight leather pants and a leather halter top. “These pants have gotten loose on me,” she said, laughing. “I’ve lost weight from the stress!”She said everywhere she went, she was mobbed by teenagers, “but also the adults.”“It’s in the hearts of all, this series,” Ms. Esposito said.She and Mr. Caiazzo acted an intense face-to-face scene on a staircase, the director called it a wrap and the crew blasted the “Mare Fuori” song. Soon after, the stars departed in separate vans, and the fans screamed and ran after them.Ms. Esposito made a heart sign with her hands.“Rosa Ricci,” they bellowed. “Bellissima.”Mr. Caiazzo greeting fans as he left the Naples set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times More

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      They Put the Heart in ‘Heartstopper’

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      Kit Connor and Joe Locke discuss the pressure of expectations and how the global success of their Netflix hit, returning Aug. 3, has changed their lives.Kit Connor and Joe Locke sat on a plump bordello-red couch at the Manhattan headquarters of Netflix. It was June, and they were in town to talk about their roles as the leading sweeties on “Heartstopper,” Alice Oseman’s romantic dramedy series about queer British high schoolers that begins its sophomore season on Netflix on Aug. 3.When “Heartstopper” debuted in April 2022, its fate was anybody’s guess. “Euphoria,” “Elite” and other shows with teen queer characters lured eyeballs with sex and bad behavior. “Heartstopper” offered its audience mellow dramatics and an understanding that puppy love is universal. “Just queer people being,” as Connor put it.It paid off. “Heartstopper” made the Netflix Top 10 — a list of the service’s most-watched shows in a given week — in 54 countries, and its first-season numbers were good enough to get the show renewed for two more. To date on TikTok, #heartstopper has 10.7 billion views and counting. Readers also gobbled up the source material: Oseman’s best-selling graphic novels and original webcomic, which now has over 124 million views. In April, Oseman announced that a fifth graphic novel was set to publish in November, with a sixth in the works.So my first question was: How has the “Heartstopper” phenomenon changed the lives of the two actors at its center?“The easier question is how hasn’t this changed our life?” Locke said.He wore a cream-colored cardigan with elegant vertical caviar beading plus skinny jeans and black sneakers, looking a lot like how his character, the misfit naïf Charlie, might dress if he were on a class trip to New York. Connor wore a blousy turquoise top and wide-legged black pants over what looked like flamenco heels — an elegant ensemble that his character, Nick, who is Charlie’s anxious jock boyfriend, would be aghast to find in his closet.Now 19, as is Connor, Locke said he’s had to grow up fast but in exchange got a platform to “normalize queerness.” Example: Days after our interview, Locke posted on Instagram a photo of himself wearing a “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” T-shirt on a float in D.C.’s Pride parade, an image that his 3.5 million followers have showered with over a million likes.In the new season, Charlie and Nick go to Paris together on a class trip.Teddy Cavendish/Netflix“There’s a big push in our world at the moment to take away young queer people’s autonomy,” Locke said. “It’s beautiful to be part of a show that really pushes and loves that young queer people can be in charge of their own fates.”And Connor?“I’m a bit more confident in myself in a very open sense, about who I am, what I can do, the way that I hold myself and the people I spend my time with,” he said. “I have a lot more pride.”But then we started talking about coming out, and the mood in the room shifted, fast. Last year, Connor came out on Twitter as bisexual, saying he felt forced to do so after some fans accused him of queer-baiting.“Telling someone you’re gay or bi or part of the queer community, there’s a thing where you feel like they might see you differently or think that it would change who you are,” he said. “For me, it’s just who I am. Coming out didn’t change me.”He’s cool with being called queer, he said, explaining that it is “more freeing in a way, less about labels.”Locke, who also identifies as queer, jumped in: “I think coming out is stupid, that it’s still a thing that people have to do.” He said he briefly came out at 12 on Instagram before reconsidering.“I had just told my mum, and I was on top of the world,” he said. “I quickly realized I was ready to tell my mum but I was not ready to tell the world. So I quickly deleted it and said my Instagram had been hacked. I went back in the closet for three years. I retold all my friends and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you told us two years ago.’”And now that he’s out-out and playing gay on “Heartstopper”? Locke glanced down and fingered his rings.“Twelve-year-old me would be very proud, and terrified,” he said.He paused to let tears collect in his eyes. “I’m getting emotional,” he whispered. Connor watched him. The room was still. “I’ve never thought about it in that sense before,” Locke continued, “which is weird because I’ve thought about the show a lot.”After a few seconds, he said softly: “It’s great.” He wore a teeny grin.“They’re meant for each other,” Connor said of his and Locke’s characters.Victoria Will for The New York TimesQueer pride, quick-fire emotions, happy tears, supportive mums: It’s like these guys are on “Heartstopper” or something. Thea Glassman, the author of “Freaks, Gleeks and Dawson’s Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed Television,” said the series is rich in a rare commodity for contemporary teen television: “unapologetic sweetness.”“It’s about kindness and positivity and acceptance, and as teens, that’s all you’re looking for,” she told me. “As adults, that’s all you’re looking for.”The new season focuses on Nick and Charlie’s couple stuff: sharing a bed during a class trip to Paris, navigating hickey shame, coming out about their relationship. There is still no sex or even under the shirt stuff, though — there is no second base in “Heartstopper.”There is also a character who is asexual (as is Oseman) and new transgender characters that Locke said he hopes will help transgender kids understand “that there are still people in the world who have their backs.”Locke and Connor were very aware that expectations from fans, Netflix and industry watchers are considerable now that the show is a global hit. The pressure, Locke said, is “terrifying.”But if they were antsy about it, it didn’t show in their relaxed rapport and modest demeanors. Connor, who grew up in Croydon in South London, comes across as grounded and affable, and he speaks with considered thoughtfulness, like he actually took notes during media training.Locke has Charlie’s gentle deportment but with the soft edge of a cool-kid wise guy. As our conversation turned to their own education, Connor mentioned that he “wasn’t one of those people who thrived at school,” and sheepishly said he got a B in drama. When he finished, Locke leaned over, cracked himself up and said into my recorder: “You don’t need school, kids. He got a B in drama.”Locke said a sharp tongue is one way he protected himself while growing up on the Isle of Man. “People knew not to give me [expletive],” he said.”I think coming out is stupid, that it’s still a thing that people have to do,” Locke said.Victoria Will for The New York TimesAs for what’s next, Connor is set to star in a new horror-thriller, “One of Us,” and Locke recently shot “Agatha: Coven of Chaos,” Marvel’s “WandaVision” spinoff. The stage beckons: Locke wants to be in a Broadway musical, Connor would do Shakespeare in London. If they had free time, Connor would hang with friends in a park. Locke wants someone to make him brunch.As our conversation ended, I asked both men where they’d like their characters to be in 20 years.“The hope would certainly be that they’re still together,” Connor said softly, looking at Locke as if to get approval.“I think they would be,” Locke replied, glancing back.“They’re meant for each other,” Connor said.“They’d have some children, a family,” Locke said.“Happy would be nice,” Connor said.“Yeah,” Locke said, again with that grin. “Just happy.” More

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      Despite Acquittal, Kevin Spacey Faces Uphill Battle for Hollywood Roles

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      The actor, who was cleared of sexual assault charges in Britain this week, has parts in two small upcoming films. Yet his tarnished public perception makes starry roles unlikely.The two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey said last month that he was ready to return to acting after years in the wilderness following sexual assault allegations.“I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Mr. Spacey told a German magazine, referring to accusations that he had assaulted four men. “The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”Mr. Spacey was right in several ways: A British jury found him not guilty of nine counts of sexual assault this week, nearly a year after a federal jury in Manhattan cleared him of battery in a civil case filed by the actor Anthony Rapp. And he has two small projects awaiting release, with directors who could not be more publicly supportive.But the starry Hollywood roles, like Mr. Spacey’s conniving politician in “House of Cards” and droll advertising executive in “American Beauty,” may not come back anytime soon, if at all.Despite Mr. Spacey’s legal successes, his public perception is tarnished and a turnoff to studios and streaming services desperate to avoid controversy, said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.“He’s in real trouble,” said Mr. Galloway, who previously served as executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “On the 0-to-10 scale, this is like a minus one.”During Mr. Spacey’s trial in Britain, he testified about the damage to his career after the public accusations began to emerge in 2017. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered, I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything,” he said.Within months of the initial allegation, Mr. Spacey’s character was killed off in the final season of “House of Cards,” his scenes as J. Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World” were reshot with a different actor, and Netflix scrapped the film “Gore,” in which he played the writer Gore Vidal.Beyond two recently filmed parts listed on IMDb, a movie database, it is unclear whether Mr. Spacey is attached to any new projects. His team did not respond to a request for comment, and Mr. Spacey did not provide career insight after being acquitted this week. “I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process,” he said from the courthouse steps.Mike Paul, a public relations expert who specializes in reputation and crisis management, said that considering the nature of the accusations Mr. Spacey faced, he must avoid “pouring gasoline back on issues that you don’t want gasoline on.” Hollywood, he said, wants to see a time of reflection and quiet analysis.The best bet, Mr. Galloway said, is for Mr. Spacey to develop projects for his production company, Trigger Street, or to pursue indie projects that value his acting prowess or consider the publicity a boon.Mr. Spacey’s two known upcoming roles are in minor movies: “Control,” a British film in which he plays a hacker who takes over a politician’s smart car (his part is voice only), and “Peter Five Eight,” a comedic thriller in which he plays a shadowy stranger who arrives in a small mountainside community.Spacey plays a shadowy stranger in the upcoming comedic thriller “Peter Five Eight.”Ascent Films Forever Safe ProductionsMichael Zaiko Hall, the writer and director of “Peter Five Eight,” said in an email that the film, which does not have an official release date, represented a return to the smaller independent films with which Mr. Spacey started his career.“We have here a double Oscar winner with legendary screen presence whose name has just been cleared,” Mr. Hall said. “I imagine there will be a thaw period, followed by a re-emergence into the culture.”Gene Fallaize, the writer and director of “Control,” said that he approached Mr. Spacey for the voice role last fall, and that the recent verdict showed “our gamble had paid off.” Before the jury’s decision, his movie had distribution deals in Germany, Russia and the Middle East. Now, Mr. Fallaize said, it was negotiating with American and British distributors.Mr. Fallaize added that Mr. Spacey might need to do independent movies for a year or two, showing he could generate commercial returns, before major studios would be prepared to work with him. Those movies might have to be in countries that have a more “lenient” view to allegations made against stars, Mr. Fallaize added.“It’s more likely for Europe to be receptive,” agreed Dominik Sedlar, a Croatian-born director and friend of Mr. Spacey’s whose father made a movie this year in which the actor played the country’s first president.Mr. Sedlar said that although Mr. Spacey had twice been vindicated by juries, Hollywood studios might keep shunning the actor “rather than admit they were wrong.”In recent years, both the Venice and Cannes film festivals have been happy to showcase work by directors and actors whose reputation has been stained in the United States, including Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp. On Thursday, spokeswomen for both festivals said their artistic directors were unavailable to comment on Mr. Spacey.Comebacks have always been hard in Hollywood, which may be politically liberal but is artistically and financially conservative.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was similar reluctance from members of the London theater world, where Mr. Spacey was a regular star in the 1990s and 2000s and served as the artistic director of the Old Vic theater from 2004 to 2015. Representatives for 15 producers, West End theater owners and artistic directors either turned down or did not respond to interview requests to discuss Mr. Spacey’s future.Alistair Smith, editor of The Stage, Britain’s major theater newspaper, said in an email that Mr. Spacey’s return was “highly unlikely.” In 2017 the Old Vic published the findings of an independent investigation into Mr. Spacey’s tenure that revealed that 20 unnamed people accused him of unstated inappropriate behavior.“Those allegations have never been satisfactorily addressed by Spacey,” Mr. Smith said. “Unless they are, I can’t see him working in London theater again.”Comebacks have always been hard in Hollywood, which may be politically liberal but is artistically and financially conservative. For those who have succeeded, such as Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr., the road was long.“You need to completely reset your reputation,” Mr. Galloway said. In “fortress Hollywood, the drawbridge is pulled up, and it’s a dangerous moat to swim across.” More

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      2023 Emmy Awards Will Be Postponed Because of Actors’ and Writers’ Strikes

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      The ceremony, originally planned for Sept. 18, may be pushed into January in hopes that the labor disputes will be settled.The fallout from the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes continues.The 75th Emmy Awards will be postponed because of the strikes, according to a person briefed on the plans. The ceremony, originally planned for Sept. 18, does not yet have a new date but will most likely be moved to January, the person said.Emmy organizers are hopeful that would give the Hollywood studios enough time to settle the labor disputes. A new date will be finalized in the next few weeks.Fox, which is broadcasting this year’s event, and the Television Academy, which administers the Emmys, had concluded last month that it would have to postpone the event if the writers’ strike continued to linger until the end of July, The New York Times reported last month. The writers have now been on strike for 88 days and have not returned to the bargaining table with the major Hollywood studios since negotiations broke down in early May.By the time tens of thousands of actors joined the writers on picket lines and went on strike on July 14, it all but put a nail in the coffin for an Emmys ceremony in September.The postponement marks one of the biggest events that will get rescheduled because of the labor conflicts. The Emmys, which traditionally take place in August or September, were last postponed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. That year, the event ultimately took place in November.Organizing the Emmys is a significant undertaking, one of the reasons that the Television Academy and Fox set a late July deadline to make a decision on a postponement. Variety reported earlier that the Emmys would be rescheduled.Nominations for the Emmy Awards were announced this month. HBO, which led all networks in total nominations, became the first network in 31 years to earn four nominations in the best drama category — “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “House of the Dragon.” In the comedy categories, two-time winner “Ted Lasso” will compete against shows including “Abbott Elementary” and “The Bear.” More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: Reunited

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      Valentine’s Day drama abounds in this week’s episode, but the most important involves a major figure from Carrie’s past.Season 2, Episode 7At least one aspect of “the old Miranda” is still very much intact. She told us back in Season 2 of “Sex and the City” that when a romance ends, she “would love to be one of those people who’s all: ‘We loved, thank you. You enriched my life. Now, go, prosper.’” But that’s just not her vibe. In her own words, she is much more: “We didn’t work out, you need to not exist.”And so things go with Che.In last week’s episode, Che somewhat abruptly (in my opinion, anyway) ended things with Miranda, and Miranda, self-sufficient and headstrong as ever, is done. She will not be taking Che’s calls, thank you very much, nor will she be having any further emotions about the breakup. She is on to whatever, and whoever, might be next.No one is more impatient for Miranda to move on than Charlotte, the ever-enthusiastic cheerleader for coupledom, who tells Miranda she had better hurry up and figure out if she is gay or straight so that she can find a new person to love, as if that were something anyone could just do on a tight deadline. After all, Miranda rebuts, she was drawn to Che as a person, and that doesn’t necessarily mean she is a full-on lesbian, especially considering Che is nonbinary. Sexuality is complex! Labels shouldn’t define us! Gender is a construct!Except that, in one impromptu shopping trip, Miranda figures out pretty darn fast that sexy sapphic ladies are her thing.At a cosplay-laden reading in the curtained-off back room of Books Are Magic, Miranda comes upon Amelia (Miriam Shor), a woman she has heard read Jane Austen audiobooks many times over. Miranda has always been entranced by that voice, and immediately, she is entranced by Amelia. That’s that. It’s figured out. Hot women get Miranda hot, and she is very down to heed that siren call.Unfortunately, Miranda’s fantasy of how much better dating women will be doesn’t quite live up to the reality. She shows up to Amelia’s apartment for their first date — which just so happens to be on Valentine’s Day — and finds it is grungier than a frat house bunk room. While Miranda is decked out in a tight dress cut just so to expose the tiniest amount of underboob, Amelia is in sweats and caked in cat litter.Miranda sits on the unmade bed waiting for Amelia to return from the bodega when an emergency phone call with Carrie helps her realize that 50-something lesbian Miranda doesn’t have to put up with the same baloney she tolerated in her 30s, so she ghosts. It stands to reason that Miranda will soon be ghosting all the Austen audiobooks in her queue as well.That’s not the only Valentine’s Day chaos ripping through this crew. The holiday is especially taxing for the moms and dads in the group, whose kids are kicking them out of their own homes on the big night. Lisa, who can’t stand her son’s handsy girlfriend, Baxter (Lucie McKenzie), puts the kibosh on his going to the suite Baxter’s parents booked for them, but agrees to let them stay in while she and Herbert go out.The worst fate Lisa can imagine is coming home to discover Herbert Jr. (Elijah Jacob) and his girlfriend have had sex in her bed. She doesn’t anticipate the far worse outcome of returning to discover the kids in her walk-in closet, taking photos with her prized fashions for Instagram. Turns out, that’s a far more egregious invasion of space.Charlotte and Harry are also asked by Lily to excuse themselves, as she is throwing a lonely hearts party of sorts for a crew of “cool girls” from school. Charlotte throws her full support behind her heartbroken daughter (last episode’s condom run was all for naught, apparently) and grabs a homemade brownie on the way to her Early Bird Special date with Harry.It turns out, though, that the little confection was a pot brownie, and Charlotte ends up in the back of an ambulance, full-on freaking out, convinced that she can “feel her blood.”Surprisingly, that little whoopsie with a space cake was the best thing that could have happened to Charlotte. As she comes to in the emergency room, she tells Harry that her life flashed before her eyes, and she wasn’t a fan. Charlotte realizes she has poured her entire self into serving her family and hasn’t left anything for herself. To my personal delight, she announces she is going to take a job in the art world. Boss Lady Charlotte is back.The most important Valentine’s Day date of the episode, of course, is the one Carrie almost doesn’t have with Aidan (John Corbett). The ellipses-laden email she sent last week worked, and Aidan asks to meet Carrie for dinner when he is in town for a meeting.Somehow they both end up at different restaurants right next door to each other, and both spend the better part of an hour thinking the other has stood them up.Honestly, I was sick during this entire scene. It had the feel of the whole Il Cantinori/El Cantinoro fiasco from Carrie’s 35th birthday from “Sex and the City” Season 4, in which everyone did, in fact, stand Carrie up, and I feared the teased appearance of Aidan was nothing more than a hoax yet again.Eventually, finally, Aidan texts Carrie. (What in the world was he waiting for? Much like Charlotte, I thought I was having a stroke.) Soon they find each other on the street. Dinner is lovely, and Carrie invites Aidan back to her place.Standing outside her door, beneath an apartment that was briefly theirs, Aidan momentarily becomes unglued, feeling that he can’t relive all that pain. It once again looks as if it might be over for them before it begins, and the Aidan stan in me once again died a tiny death. Thankfully he remembers there are plenty of hotels in New York, and he and Carrie can simply go knock boots there.Carrie and Aidan are back on, and at least for me, this has made both movies and every cringey scene of this latest series entirely worth it. Let’s go.Things still taking up space in my brain:As roomies, Miranda and Nya are the modern-day “Golden Girls” we need, especially considering Miranda is in her Blanche era. I hope Miranda never moves out.Of the oodles of wordplay this franchise has cranked out over the years, “Mevening” is by far the most usable example, and I’m stealing it. More

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      in Television

      What ‘The Bear’ Gets Right About Chicago

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      The show celebrates a kind of ambition — humane and independent — that’s often neglected by Hollywood. Maybe that’s why the setting is so important.FX’s “The Bear,” now in its second season, is about grief and family and food, but there’s something else there, too. Its protagonist, Carmen Berzatto, is an accomplished chef who has worked in the vaunted kitchens of restaurants like Noma, the French Laundry and Eleven Madison Park. When the show began, he had come home to Chicago after the death of his brother, who left him a struggling shop selling a local staple, Italian beef sandwiches. Carmy could have run the place like any of the hundreds of modest lunch counters in the city, or else he could have sold it and angled to return to the world of fine dining. Instead, we watched him attempt a third thing, turning the business into a new, forward-thinking restaurant. This is the other stuff the show is about: ambition, and Chicago, and the freedom the nation’s third-largest city can offer to follow your ambitions on your own terms.“The Bear” is among relatively few TV shows that truly lean into a Chicago setting: In addition to copious shots of elevated trains and city skylines, there are nods to local culture hallmarks ranging from the obvious (Scottie Pippen, Bill Murray, Vienna Beef hot dogs) to the deeper cuts (Harold Ramis, Pequod’s Pizza, Margie’s Candies). Some of network television’s most popular procedural shows are set here — “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago P.D.” — but like so many Chicago stories on TV, they use the city for its unmarked, adaptable qualities: It is a metropolis big enough to accommodate any type of person or story, big enough that viewers do not expect to be offered quaint local color, and yet not culturally defined in the American mind in the ways New York City and Los Angeles are. Chicago is in the sweet spot, asking for no explanation, happy to serve as a kind of median city. Insofar as it does have a national reputation, it is as an unpretentious workhorse of a place: the “City of the Big Shoulders,” the city Nelson Algren compared to loving a woman with a broken nose. (“You may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”) The sort of place a restless, plucky Midwesterner like Carmy would leave in order to pursue his ambitions, hoping to prove something to everyone back home — and the sort of place he would return to, stoic and remote, to dole out unglamorous sandwiches from a broken-nosed kind of shop.Their ambitions revolve around the excellence of the work itself.Leave it to a Chicagoan like me to note that there are, in fact, more than 20 restaurants in the city with at least one Michelin star. But “The Bear” captures something real about the city’s dining culture — and, more broadly, what you might call the geography of ambition. In one scene in the second season, Sydney Adamu, the woman who is now chef de cuisine for the new restaurant Carmy hopes to start, is discussing the menu with him when she notices his old chef’s uniform from New York, embroidered with his initials. He sees her looking at it. “New York — lame, right?” he says. Sydney replies: “I want to hate it. Like, don’t get me wrong, I do. But it looks sick, and I bet it felt really good wearing it.” It did, Carmy acknowledges; nobody here is going to deny New York’s cultural domination. But he goes on to talk about having earned Michelin stars, saying that his brain raced right past the joy of it to dread — that it felt imperative to keep them at all costs. “New York,” here, signifies a heightened awareness of status and image, stress and precarity, ruthlessness dressed as sophistication.And Chicago, for “The Bear,” is depicted — accurately — as a place where the goal is not necessarily to win status or acclaim so much as to create something great and original, ambitious without pretense, committed to excellence for its own sake rather than prestige or fame. This is the kind of chef we see Carmy transforming into, and the kind of chef we’re shown surrounding him. When Sydney, planning for the new business, visits other restaurants seeking guidance, she finds people glad to assist; at the well-regarded eatery Avec, she gets crucial advice from the real-life restaurateur Donnie Madia, playing himself. The show casts the city’s restaurant culture as sophisticated but warm, human. It continually suggests that once you abandon the ladder-climbing it associates with the coasts, ambition can be more about playing the game on your own terms or not playing it at all — pursuing your ambition without the brutal expense or atomizing ultracompetitiveness of places closer to the cultural spotlight.Chicago is in the sweet spot, asking for no explanation.In another second-season scene, Sydney has a video chat with the pastry chef Marcus, who has gone to Copenhagen to hone his skills. She has been reading “Leading With the Heart,” a book by the former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski — a gift from her father. Her offhand summary of its lessons is a little dismissive, but Marcus, a former athlete, gets it: The team “kept drilling,” he says, grinding slowly toward excellence. Marcus receives his own lesson about ambition when he asks Luca, the chef he’s studying under, how he got so good. Luca replies that after working with a superior cook, he realized he wasn’t the best and wasn’t ever going to be the best. He came to see this as a good thing: “I could take that pressure off myself. And the only logical thing to do was to try and keep up with him.” At some point, he says, doing great things is less about skill and more about being open “to the world, to yourself, to other people.”This kind of ambition — humane and independent — is often neglected in Hollywood portrayals of driven people, but “The Bear” nails it. It’s something you encounter in the real Chicago, too. This really is a city where people are able to do unique and forward-looking things with food; where comic actors are funny in person long before they are (or aren’t) pulled to the coasts to be funny on camera; where large and underrecognized shares of Black and Latino cultural and business leaders have done their work; where there are rich and idiosyncratic scenes in theater and music and art and literature that seem to thrive regardless of whether any national spotlight will ever tilt in their direction.In “The Bear,” even in the tense run-up to the restaurant’s opening, you don’t see Sydney or Marcus burnishing their egos or waiting for people to recognize how special they are. Their moments of triumph come not from critics or crowds but from the people around them: Marcus’s presenting a dish named in memory of Carmy’s brother, or Sydney’s lovingly preparing an omelet for Carmy’s beleaguered sister, Natalie, and then lingering, vulnerable, to see how it goes over. Their ambitions revolve around the work itself and the people with whom they do it. Carmy struggles his way toward the same sensibility, even when it scares him. Cooking, he admits by the season’s end, has, for him, been about routine and concentration, about single-mindedly pursuing a goal — an approach that helped him avoid the messiness of human connection, hiding his vulnerability behind the armor of his own accomplishments.Carmy went back to Chicago because he had to. He stays because he wants to. For him, and for Sydney, and for Marcus, the point is to do a great thing, for its own sake, alongside people you care about, without much concern for image or status. “The Bear” seems to see this as a very Chicago thing. Resilient but vulnerable, ambitious but sincere, sophisticated but real, somehow too subtly original to be easily defined in the American mind — that feels like my city to me, too.Opening illustration: Source photographs by Chuck Hodes/FXNicholas Cannariato is a writer living in Chicago. He last wrote about celebrity travel shows. More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Strike Leaves Influencers Sidelined and Confused

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      Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike.Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show “Only Murders in the Building.”But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu.The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent. “I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. “People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”That difference comes at a cost. In addition to the Hulu deal, Ms. Giulietti recently declined a $5,000 offer from the app TodayTix to promote the Searchlight Pictures movie “Theater Camp.” (Disney also owns Searchlight.) She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income.Representatives for Searchlight and TodayTix did not respond to requests for comment. Hulu and Influential declined to comment.The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. The actors’ union began admitting content creators in 2021 and still has only a small number of them, but questions have quickly emerged around how the union’s dispute with the major Hollywood studios will affect popular internet personalities.The union’s message that content creators will be blocked from membership if they provide work or services for struck companies has sent many scrambling. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 movie and television actors, approved a strike on July 13. The division with the studios is driven largely by concerns about compensation in the streaming era and artificial intelligence. They joined screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, the first dual shutdown since 1960. During the strike, actors are not able to engage in publicity efforts for their projects or appear at film festivals or events like Comic-Con.Influencers have become crucial to the entertainment industry in recent years, especially during the pandemic, building buzz and promoting products. They post videos to hype new TV shows and movies, appear on red carpets and at events like the MTV Video Music Awards, and unbox products tied to film and television characters. Typically, as in the case with Ms. Giulietti, outside agencies hire creators on behalf of the studios.“If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future,” said Mario Mirante, a comedian with 3.6 million followers on TikTok.Marshall Scheuttle for The New York TimesNow those activities, besides limiting their career ambitions, could lead to internet backlash, with one nonunion influencer already posting an apology video for appearing at a recent Disney movie premiere. Others have posted promotional videos anyway, without backtracking or pulling the content. At least one creator posting from a recent premiere opted to turn off their TikTok comments, possibly to avoid potential criticism. On the flip side, videos from creators about jobs and events that they rejected in solidarity with actors have racked up praise and views on TikTok.“We don’t have power to make decisions for the talent, but we will in this moment recommend not engaging with struck work or struck companies on paid or organic projects,” said Victoria Bachan, president of Whalar Talent, a unit of a creator commerce company that works with more than 200 content creators. She added that young creators were also more apt to be supportive of unions and organized labor.Still, Whitney Singleton, a 27-year-old with 1.2 million TikTok followers, has been frustrated by what is being asked of her. She had never heard of SAG-AFTRA until the past couple of weeks. Ms. Singleton, using the moniker @KeepUpRadio, has attracted fans by singing and rapping about her favorite video games like Fortnite and streaming herself playing video games. It has been her full-time job for three years. She has collaborated with struck companies like Amazon in the past.“I really do value creators, and I want them to get what they deserve,” Ms. Singleton said. “But it’s really hard for me to just be finding out about an organization and being expected to fall in line with their initiative when I feel like it’s new to me and the influencer space.”She said some influencers were being asked to turn down five-figure deals, and that “the majority of creators I’ve talked to about it feel it’s unfair that as nonunion members, they’re being included in this conversation.”Ms. Singleton was invited to an early screening of the “Barbie” movie and said that while it wasn’t a paid promotion, the union’s guidelines for promoting the movie were “what I would deem murky.” Ultimately, she decided to post about the event, for which she dyed her hair pink.“I actually got no negative feedback, it was all positive,” she said. “For a moment, I felt a bit scared and put in a corner with these requirements because I respect creators in all industries, but I wouldn’t be being true to my heart if I had let those things stop me from living my life and sharing the content.”The union did not respond to questions about the criticism or about how many influencers are included in its membership. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the biggest studios, has said its offers to the writers and the actors were “historic” improvements on their previous contracts.The reality for many creators is that they dream of someday achieving a level of fame beyond the smartphone screen, making the threat of blacklisting by Hollywood’s most powerful union an ominous one.Mario Mirante, a 28-year-old comedian on TikTok with 3.6 million followers, recently posted a popular video about turning down a deal to promote a show based on his support for actors and writers and his long-term ambitions. Mr. Mirante has hoped to work in Hollywood since childhood, and even has a tattoo of Jim Carrey as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” on his arm.“That’s a lot of influencers’ goal and aspiration and why they do it,” said Mr. Mirante, who lives in Las Vegas. “We love to entertain and express ourselves, and that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the ultimate, being in a movie or a TV show.”Mr. Mirante has previously been paid to promote the movie “Champions” starring Woody Harrelson and a product tied to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. “If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future, if that makes any sense,” he said. “Of course I’m not a part of it right now, but they’re fighting for basic rights, livable wages, not to have their A.I. likeness taken.”Krishna Subramanian, a founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, said studios might need to pivot away from creators during the strike and get agencies to make more traditional display ads to place on Facebook and other sites.Simone Umba is a TikTok creator with more than 300,000 followers who primarily posts about TV shows and movies but has paused making such videos. She said that many influencers felt that they were “stuck in the middle,” but that most were opting to side with the union even as invitations and deals piled up.“We knew we were going to get approached, and it’s like we’re in a really messy family feud,” Ms. Umba, 26, said.She added, “Regardless of if you want to join the union or not, you don’t want to be one of those people that was willing to take a check instead of standing in support of people fighting for actual livable wages.”Ms. Umba said that it had been painful to miss out on posting about the star-studded “Barbie” movie after this summer’s marketing bonanza and that she had declined to attend an early screening of the film in Atlanta. She and a friend were messaging recently after trailers for “The Marvels” dropped, agonizing over their inability to post.“We were texting each other back and forth, like, this is so hard,” she said. She said she was prepared to hold out for months but was already thinking of holiday releases. She crossed her fingers, held them up and said, “Please, please, don’t let it get to Christmas.” More