Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      Seth Meyers Is Starting to Wonder About Trump and Putin

      by

      A book says Donald Trump sent Covid testing equipment to the Russian leader. Meyers suspects he threw in “some snacks, a bath bomb and a CD.”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.Testing, TestingFormer President Donald Trump has denied a report in a new book that he sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin for his personal use during the pandemic, but Seth Meyers wasn’t buying it on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”“How did Trump send them? Was it part of a care package with some snacks, a bath bomb and a CD that said ‘Mixtape for Vlad from Don: My heart is loyal only to you’?”— SETH MEYERS“People were quarantining, contact tracing, seeking medical care. I know you weren’t doing that since you were basically a Typhoid Gary who would hold superspreader events at the White House, and then when you yourself got Covid, took a joyride in an S.U.V. like you were an off-brand pope.” — SETH MEYERS, addressing Trump“Trump was telling Americans that Covid testing was overrated on the exact same day he was telling Vladimir Putin he was sending him his best Covid tests — his [expletive] Glengarry Covid tests.” — SETH MEYERS“To be fair, lots of people in Putin’s circle were suddenly dying: [imitating Putin] ‘Falling from balcony is very common Covid symptom.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Kamala’s Media Blitz Edition)“So with less than a month to go, both campaigns are going all out — starting with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, who has been everywhere recently: news shows, daytime talk shows, satellite radio, podcasts, your kid’s piano recital — she applauded, but seriously, ‘Chopsticks’? I mean, you can do better, Arlo.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Meanwhile, today, Trump complained that CBS edited Kamala Harris’s interview on ‘60 Minutes’ to make her look better. Trump said, ‘It was clearly edited. She didn’t say one thing about people eating pets in Ohio. Not one. Didn’t even mention it.’” — JIMMY FALLON“In a new interview with radio host Howard Stern, Vice President Kamala Harris said that she doesn’t really take naps, setting up a clear contrast with President Biden, who took one mid-debate.” — SETH MEYERS“During the same interview with Howard Stern, Vice President Kamala Harris said that she usually eats a bowl of Raisin Bran or Special K for breakfast, whereas her opponent, as we all know, is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingQuinta Brunson, the “Abbott Elementary” creator and star, dished on her series’ crossover episode with “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJordan Peele will promote his revival of the horror-themed hidden-camera reality series “Scare Tactics” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“Unknown American” is a portrait from the 1940s to 1950s.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Photography FundThe Met Gala’s 2025 theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” is the museum’s first fashion exhibition to focus solely on the work of designers of color. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Bachelor’ Is Shattering Its Own Fairy Tale

      by

      Recent revelations about contestants’ troubling backgrounds have punctured the franchise’s fantasy — that reality TV is a secure place to look for love.Just three years ago, the “Bachelor” franchise was in serious need of a revival. The longtime host, Chris Harrison, had left the show and ratings sagged. Instead of 10 million viewers, premieres now brought in closer to 2 or 3 million.In 2023, ABC pumped new life into the franchise with “The Golden Bachelor,” a version of the dating contest that followed Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old widower who proudly wore a hearing aid and spoke of finding love after the death of his wife. The premiere brought in over 4 million live viewers (and totaled over 7 million including streaming), making it the franchise’s most-watched debut since 2020.But the show’s honeymoon has not lasted. “The Bachelor” and its various iterations have long promised viewers some semblance of a fairy-tale romance, providing charmed but closed environments where the leads can suss out the suitors’ intentions through extravagant dates, like hot air balloon rides and castle visits. Recent revelations about the show have punctured this fantasy.Just before Turner handed out his final rose, The Hollywood Reporter published details about his past (a spotty work résumé, a trail of scorned lovers) that challenged his image as a sympathetic figure, as put forth on the show. (Turner declined to comment for the article.) His subsequent marriage to Theresa Nist, the season’s “winner,” ended after three months.The most recent season of “The Bachelorette,” which debuted in summer 2024, cast Jenn Tran as the series’s first Asian American lead, a role she hoped would bring positive visibility. “Anytime Asians were in the media, it was to fill a supporting character role, to fulfill some sort of stereotype,” Tran said in an interview with The New York Times before the show’s premiere. “I always felt boxed in by that, because I was like, I don’t see myself onscreen. I don’t see myself as a main character.”But her quest for love ended in public humiliation. On the live special “After the Final Rose,” she revealed through tears that Devin Strader — the contestant she proposed to in the series finale — had broken off their engagement over the phone. Seeing him for the first time since the breakup, Tran sobbed uncontrollably on the show as producers made her watch the proposal in front of a national audience.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

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      No Lie: George Washington Is Funny Now

      by

      The first president is usually at the margins of popular culture. As a recurring character on “Saturday Night Live” and a trend on TikTok, is he finally having a moment?Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were immortalized in “Hamilton.” John Adams had his own HBO mini-series, and Samuel Adams is a beer. Ben Franklin often appears experimenting with his kite when characters travel back in time to Colonial America.And then there’s George Washington.He might be the first president, but the stoic general who led the Americans to an unlikely Revolutionary War victory doesn’t exactly lend himself to memes and caricatures in popular culture. Other founders immersed in drama and scandal (Hamilton, Jefferson) or at least more quotable (Franklin, Adams) have gotten more attention.But Washington — “a marble man of impossible virtue and perfection,” as the New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani once called him — might finally be having his moment.Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live” brought back “Washington’s Dream,” one of its biggest hits last season. The comedian Nate Bargatze, known for his deadpan delivery, plays a subdued, earnest Washington who is trying to inspire his soldiers with his peculiar vision of a free America. In the original version, at camp, he dwells on a new, confusing system of weights and measurements (while consigning the metric system to “only certain unpopular sports, like track and swimming”).In the latest, Washington leads his soldiers across the Delaware River as he yearns to Americanize the English language, proclaiming: “I dream that one day our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it a ‘dozen.’”A soldier asks what other numbers would have their own words: “None,” Bargatze replied. “Only 12 shall have its own word, because we are free men.”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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      How ‘Nobody Wants This’ Became Netflix’s Latest Hit

      by

      The Netflix rom-com checks every genre box, but it became a megahit by offering versions of everything you already like on TV.Two leads with nostalgia power. A meet cute. A series of fish-out-of-water mishaps, some of which rely on an almost alarming level of ignorance or ineptitude. A party that goes awry — probably from too much stress. (Probably a wealthy, maybe even icy woman has caused this stress.) Her: Frazzled, into her phone. Him: Safe, sensitive, sage.Make it about Christmas, and you have a Hallmark Channel original. Make it about interfaith romance, and it’s Netflix’s latest hit “Nobody Wants This.”A romantic comedy that checks every genre box, “Nobody” is about the star-crossed attraction between Joanne, a Los Angeles podcast host played by Kristen Bell, and Noah, a soulful rabbi played by Adam Brody. Since arriving on Netflix late last month, it has remained at or near the top of the service’s most-watched chart, sharing space with a show from the darker end of the replication factory, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”“Nobody” has generated as much coverage as that grisly docudrama, thanks partly to its charms and partly to its shortcomings, namely its depictions of Jewish women that rely on hoary stereotypes.The draw of “Nobody,” though, is not that the show is so distinctive, it’s that it is so familiar. Rom-coms have thrived on streaming as they have mostly fallen out of fashion in theaters, and for this particular genre “formulaic” is no great diss — it is perhaps the opposite. (“Nobody” isn’t even the best opposites-attract rom-com to arrive on TV recently — that would be Season 2 of “Colin From Accounts,” on Paramount+.) Beyond the show’s ample joys and persistent irritants — “What about our podcast?” is this show’s “can MomTok survive this?” — there’s a Goldilocks ease to the endeavor that one can see as either finely honed or algorithmically precooked; simply reheat and enjoy.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 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      For ‘Disclaimer,’ Alfonso Cuarón Updates His Terms and Conditions

      by

      Cate Blanchett stars in the acclaimed director’s new TV series, a thriller about a woman whose life is upended by a mysterious novel.About a decade ago, the writer-director Alfonso Cuarón was sent an advance copy of Renée Knight’s book “Disclaimer,” a thriller about a woman whose life is upended when she receives a novel by an unknown author that seems to lay bare her secrets. That novel begins with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”As Cuarón (“Children of Men,” “Y Tu Mamá También”) read, he could picture each scene in his head. This book, he thought, should be a film. There was just one problem.“I didn’t see how the film that I wanted to do could fit into an hour and 45 minutes,” he said.So Cuarón immersed himself in other projects, like “Roma” (2018), which won him a second Oscar for directing. But a few years later, he began to think about “Disclaimer” again, in the context of more expansive films like Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” or Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” works that clocked in at four or five hours.The market for marathon films is small. But Cuarón knew of an alternative: television. And he was mindful that other auteurs, like David Lynch with “Twin Peaks” and Lars Von Trier with “The Kingdom,” had explored that medium before him.Which is how, after a three-decade film career and five Oscars, Cuarón came to make “Disclaimer,” a seven-episode limited series starring Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline. The first two episodes premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, with the rest rolling out weekly afterward.In “Disclaimer,” Blanchett plays an acclaimed journalist and documentarian, and Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband.Apple TV+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

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel: Putin Is Trump’s ‘KGBFF’

      by

      Kimmel shared tidbits from Bob Woodward’s new book, including that Donald Trump had spoken with Vladimir Putin seven times since leaving office — “which is less than Ivanka, but more than Tiffany.”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.KGBFF 4-EverIn his new book, “War,” the journalist Bob Woodward reported that former President Donald Trump had spoken to Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving office. Woodward also wrote that Trump sent the Russian president Covid-19 testing equipment in 2020, at a time it was hard to find, for personal use.“You wouldn’t want one of the most villainous murderers on the planet to get a cough, would you?” Jimmy Kimmel joked of Trump’s “KGBFF” on Tuesday.“I mean, nurses, doctors, American hospitals couldn’t get these machines — he’s sending them to the devil himself.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The book says Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin seven times since he left office, which is less than Ivanka, but more than Tiffany. It’s right in that daughter sweet spot.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s how you know they’re tight. Adult men never call each other. I haven’t called my best friend seven times total.” — SETH MEYERS“Trump once made a senior aide leave the room so he could have a ‘private’ call with Putin, which: [imitating Putin] ‘Hello, Donald, what are you wearing? I’m shirtless on my horse again.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“So, Trump was secretly giving sound medical advice to a foreign adversary while publicly convincing Americans to poison themselves with bleach. I’ve got to say, most presidents would do that the other way around, but hey, you do you, Trump.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Punchiest Punchlines (Category 5 Edition)“Wow, Donald, you’ve never heard of a Category 5 hurricane hitting land? That’s weird, because I remember one happening while you were president.” — JORDAN KLEPPER, on Trump’s spotty recollection“He was probably busy with Kanye during that one.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He did get his meteorologist degree from Trump University.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“For all you people who think he is in mental decline, it turns out he’s been the same level of stupidity for years.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Bits Worth WatchingVice President Kamala Harris cracked open a beer during her sit-down with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightRiley Keough will promote the new posthumous memoir by her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutLyle Menendez in a scene from the documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”NetflixDespite promising exclusive new interviews, Netflix’s new documentary “The Menendez Brothers” relies on the tabloid appeal surrounding renewed interest in the 1989 murder. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Jenna Fischer, ‘The Office’ Star, Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis

      by

      “I am now cancer free,’’ the actress announced on Instagram, noting that she was diagnosed with Stage 1 cancer in December and that early detection had played a key role in her successful treatment.Jenna Fischer, the actress best known for her role as Pam Beesly in the popular television series “The Office,” said on Tuesday that she was diagnosed with Stage 1 triple-positive breast cancer in December but that she was now cancer free after successful treatment.“I am now cancer free,’’ Ms. Fischer, 50, of Los Angeles, said in her announcement, imploring her nearly four million Instagram followers to consult with their doctors and schedule annual mammogram appointments.“If I had waited six months longer, things could have been much worse,” Ms. Fischer said. “It could have spread.”She said that she had surgery in January to remove the tumor that doctors had found. That was followed by “12 rounds of weekly chemotherapy” and “three weeks of radiation,” her post said.“I’m happy to say I’m feeling great,” said Ms. Fischer, who is also an author and the co-host of a popular podcast about “The Office” with Angela Kinsey, a former co-star from the show. Ms. Fischer said she was continuing a treatment plan that includes infusions of targeted therapy.A representative for Ms. Fischer declined a request for an additional comment from the actress on Tuesday.In addition to her role in “The Office,” a television show that ran on NBC for eight years and is among the most popular shows in television history, Ms. Fischer has also acted in popular comedic films, including “Blades of Glory” and the movie musical version of “Mean Girls,” playing the main character’s mother.Sprinkled within her post were jokes and references to her character on “The Office.”“‘Take care of your ticking time bags,’” Ms. Fischer wrote, referencing a quote from Michael Scott, the boss of the paper company Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pa., where “The Office” takes place.News of Ms. Fischer’s cancer diagnosis shocked fans, who wrote thousands of supportive messages in the comment section of her Instagram post. Ms. Fischer said she wore wigs to hide her hair loss so that she could keep her diagnosis private until she was ready to share the news.Dr. Cesar Santa-Maria, a medical oncologist and associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins, reviewed Ms. Fischer’s post and said she had been diagnosed with an “aggressive subtype of breast cancer.”“But because of the treatments we have now,” Dr. Santa-Maria continued, “it’s the most curable. Twenty years ago? Not the case.”Catching the tumor early on, when it was in Stage 1, was critical for her to have a successful treatment, Dr. Santa-Maria said. Women at average risk for breast cancer should talk to their doctors about getting their annual mammograms beginning at age 40, he added.“Again, don’t skip your mammogram,” Ms. Fischer wrote, reminding her followers that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She said that Michael Scott “was right. Get ’em checked ladies.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      ‘La Máquina’ Is a Starry Mexican Boxing Drama

      by

      The Spanish-language Hulu drama, starring Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, skews more loopy and mysterious than gritty.Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal star in the Mexican boxing drama “La Máquina” (in Spanish, with subtitles, on Hulu) as a promoter and his boxer bestie. Andy (Luna), who copes with stress by giving himself facial injections, has been friends with Esteban (García Bernal), the popular boxer known as La Máquina (Spanish for “the machine”), since they were kids. He tends to Esteban’s every need — including fixing a fight or two along the way, without Esteban’s knowledge.Now Esteban is nearing the end of his career in the ring, and he oscillates between avoiding and confronting what boxing has taken from him: his marriage, time with his kids, his physical and psychological well-being.Rather than dig into a gritty realism, “La Máquina” leans toward the loopy and mysterious. Andy is in deep with a bloody, lurking criminal element, though he refers to them only in the vaguest of terms, and he himself does not seem to understand how they operate. Esteban has sustained multiple brain injuries over his career, and now he is hallucinating — which is exacerbated by years of drug and alcohol abuse.There is also a warped strangeness instead of the predictable mobster moves. Evil messages are conveyed through karaoke tracks and spa disasters. Andy and his mother have a bizarre and erotic bond (“Only two men have known how to touch me: You and your father,” she purrs while he rubs her feet), and he has among the most tragic conversations of his life while his face is bubbling in a nasty reaction to his injections. Why have an argument in a bar when you can have it on a slow-turning carousel?Everyone throws a few unexpected punches in “La Máquina,” both in the ring and in harsh disagreements. Andy and Esteban bicker often, and the show is most exciting when the two are ripping into each other, as if the show’s own heart were beating faster, too. Rhythm is a big factor: It’s a boxing show, after all. In one climactic scene, Esteban’s trainer, Sixto (Jorge Perugorría), pushes Esteban toward an emotional breakthrough by asking him rapid-fire questions to the beat of the speed bag. Sixto even sets out a metronome to keep time.Only five of the six episodes were made available to critics for review. The whole series arrives on Wednesday. More