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      HBO Says “The Idol” Is Sleazy. You Be the Judge.

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      At Cannes, the sex-filled show is drawing plenty of controversy. That just means “we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer,” Sam Levinson says.In March, Rolling Stone published an article detailing the trouble-plagued production of “The Idol,” a new HBO drama from the “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson. According to the magazine, nearly 80 percent of the show, about a pop singer (Lily-Rose Depp) who falls under the spell of a Svengali figure (the Weeknd), had been filmed with the director Amy Seimetz before Levinson stepped in to rewrite and reshoot the entire thing. As a result, said one crew member, it had transformed from a music-industry satire into a “rape fantasy” in which Depp’s character must endure a series of demeaning sex acts.At the Cannes Film Festival, where two episodes premiered this week, Levinson was asked what he made of the report.“When my wife read me the article,” Levinson said, “I looked at her and said, ‘I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.’”When it comes to controversy, Levinson and his collaborators have clearly decided to lean in: Even HBO’s marketing for “The Idol” calls it the “sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.” At times, the show seems reverse-engineered to generate think-pieces and indignant tweet-storms; if attention is oxygen, Levinson seems to have calculated that “The Idol” will burn brighter as long as people keep talking about it. Reviews from Cannes have been poor, but as long as they mention the outrageous scenarios and envelope-pushing sex scenes, won’t you be tempted to tune in?Is “The Idol” really as sleazy as has been promised/warned? Let me try to summarize the first two episodes, and you be the judge.The show begins with Depp’s pop star, Jocelyn, posing for a photo shoot, naked but for a barely cinched robe and a hospital wristband. The latter is a wink at rumors that Jocelyn experienced a nervous breakdown after her mother’s death, but it’s also meant to be a come-on, explains Nikki (Jane Adams), a cynical record executive: If men think Jocelyn is a little crazy, they might imagine they have the chance to bed her.Almost immediately, Jocelyn’s team is hit with twin crises. The first seems tailor-made to get the internet’s goat: Jocelyn’s robe keeps falling away to reveal her nipples, and a buzzkill intimacy coordinator keeps trying to halt the session, no matter how often Jocelyn and her team explain they’re fine with it. Eventually, Jocelyn’s manager, Chaim (Hank Azaria), locks the intimacy coordinator in a bathroom.As all of that is going on, a photo is leaked online that shows Jocelyn with sexual fluids on her face. But she seems utterly unbothered. Is this because she is so sexually self-possessed that she can’t be shamed? Given that she takes sensual showers while wearing false eyelashes and full makeup, it may owe more to Levinson’s depiction of the character as an always-on male fantasy.That night, freewheeling Jocelyn heads to a nightclub, where she meets Tedros, the establishment’s mysterious owner, played by the Weeknd (the series co-creator, born Abel Tesfaye, who is so flatteringly lit that he often looks more like an A.I. rendering). There is an instant connection between the two for reasons not depicted onscreen, and it isn’t long before they get together in a stairwell, an encounter she later thinks of at home while engaging in a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation.Jocelyn’s assistant (Rachel Sennott) is not a fan of this blossoming union: “He’s so rapey,” she tells Jocelyn. “I kind of like it,” replies the star, who invites Tedros to her mansion to hear her next single. He expertly negs Jocelyn, telling her the song isn’t sung with any sexual authority, but he has a plan for that: After running a tumbler of ice down Jocelyn’s frequently bare sternum, he pulls her robe over her head, chokes her with its belt, uses a switchblade to cut a mouth-hole in the material (the things this poor robe has been through in only one episode!) and orders Jocelyn to sing.In the second episode, Jocelyn proudly presents this orgasmic remix to her horrified team. Told it’s too late to make changes, Jocelyn is dismayed but still manages to add a cold tumbler to her usual afternoon solo sex session. A girl has needs, after all.But when Jocelyn shows up for a video shoot, makeup artists have to cover the cuts and bruises on her inner thighs that remain from that session. This makes her late to set, where she eventually dissolves into a crying mess. This also means that she’s particularly vulnerable to the machinations of Tedros, who kindly leaves a shock-collar orgy to move his entourage into Jocelyn’s mansion and engage in more kinky sex with her. There’s a lot of dirty talk so grossly delivered by the Weeknd that you may need to mute and switch to closed captioning when the show premieres on June 4.Is it all a little too much? Of course, and that’s the point. At the news conference for “The Idol,” Levinson was asked how he calibrated the sex scenes and near-constant nudity without going too far. For a second, he looked confused.“Sometimes, things that might be revolutionary are taken too far,” Levinson replied. More

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      ‘Ted Lasso,’ Season 3, Episode 11 Recap: Home

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      Jamie, Nate and Ted find their paths forward.Season 3, Episode 11: ‘Mom City’Just as last season’s eighth episode, “Man City,” was an exploration of the wounds inflicted by poor fathering, this week’s focuses on the healing power of maternal love. It was in that earlier episode that we first learned that Ted’s dad had killed himself; this time, he and his mom find at least a modicum of long-belated closure. And Ted has what appears to be the long-simmering revelation that … But I get ahead of myself.I noted last week that with so many story lines and just a couple of episodes to go, “Ted Lasso” would need — in a strategy adopted by fourth graders since time immemorial — to write the remaining words smaller and smaller to get them all to fit on the page. What I overlooked, of course, is that streaming television now offers the alternative of simply making the pages bigger.When “Man City” came out last season, it was the longest “Lasso” episode to date, at 45 minutes. “Mom City” puts that number to shame, clocking in at one hour and nine minutes (the show’s latest longest run time). Yet in contrast to several episodes this season, the extended length is spent not hopping among unrelated subplots but developing a relatively uniform theme. In keeping with that mood, this week I will abandon my own typical subplot-by-subplot format as well.We open with a typical Ted morning, in which he ambles down his street exchanging pleasantries with everyone he passes, even the longstanding semi-antagonist who insists on referring to him as “wanker.” And then the morning suddenly turns atypical: On a bench at the end of the street is none other than his mom, Dottie Lasso (Becky Ann Baker).When we return to the two of them after the title sequence, Dottie explains that she’d decided on a trip to England as a “Mother’s Day gift to myself.” She is staying in a hostel filled with backpacking Australians who engage in “so much sex,” and she has already been in town a week. This is obviously no typical maternal visit, and Dottie and Ted will spend the episode circling one another, with mother, like son, deflecting every question about what’s wrong with some variant of “Don’t you worry about me.” (Mae sees right through it in the pub, reciting Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse” to Ted over the pinball machine.)In the meantime, Dottie will regale the team, the pub and pretty much anyone else within earshot with substantially exaggerated tales of Ted’s youth. (No, that was not him dancing onstage with Bruce Springsteen in the “Dancing in the Dark” video.) She will also demonstrate where Ted got his resolutely chipper demeanor, as the two of them trade lyrics from “The Sunny Side of the Street” on the way out the door to his apartment. Perhaps most importantly, she will at last speak for all of us when she informs Trent Crimm that his hair is “fabulous.”Nate and Jamie, meanwhile, have both fallen into ruts of self-doubt. For Nate, this consists of leaving his wunderkind coaching persona behind in favor of a job waiting tables at A Taste of Athens and refusing an invitation from Colin, Will and Isaac to rejoin Richmond as an assistant coach. “It didn’t really end for me too well there,” he explains to Jade guiltily.Jamie is a still greater mess, declining kudos for winning Premier League player of the month and apologizing for a goal he scored accidentally while trying to pass to a teammate. With the team on a 15-game winning streak and an upcoming match against their nemesis Manchester City standing between them and a shot at the league championship, this wilting flower is not what the team needs, as Roy explains in typically salty fashion.But Jamie merely blubbers in response. He can’t eat, he can’t sleep, he’s even given up on using conditioner when he showers. He’s like the fellow from the Red Bull ad, but with his wings plucked off. Roy, sensing that Jamie needs greater emotional I.Q. than he can provide, quickly enlists Keeley to help. Her first effort is a flop, reminding Jamie how brutally he’ll be booed back in his hometown, Manchester, where he also played. (His description of a suitcase as “a drawer without a home” underscores the point.) Things go from bad to worse when she tells him his hair is being mocked on social media.So after a team viewing of “You’ve Got Mail” at which Dani says how nice it is to see them together again — I’ll have more to say about the movie and the couple below — Keeley and Roy surreptitiously follow Jamie across Manchester to the home his mother (Leanne Best) shares with her partner. In her maternal embrace, he explains that his drive has all been a product of his rage toward his father, whom we got to know all too well in the aforementioned “Man City” episode.The visit with mom gets Jamie partway back, but it falls to Ted to complete the recovery. After Jamie injures himself in the midst of a brilliant game against Man City, Ted refuses to sub him out. If hating his dad — who, surprisingly, is nowhere to be seen in the stands — no longer inspires Jamie, Ted suggests he instead try forgiveness: “When you choose to do that, you’re giving that to yourself.” Needless to say, it works, with Jamie sprinting his way to a solo goal to ensure the win. (And, yes, that’s James Tartt Sr. whom we see watching the game appreciatively from a rehab facility.)Wingless in Richmond: Brett Goldstein, left, and Phil Dunster in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+For Nate, a bid at redemption comes not from his mother but from Jade, who blackmails the A Taste of Athens manager, Derek into firing him. But like Jamie, Nate too needs a second intervention. Beard had been violently opposed to Nate rejoining Richmond, until Ted showed him video proving that even at his black-clad, Rupert-influenced worst, Nate was still a wounded innocent. So Beard relents, telling Nate the story of the “Les Mis”-like second chance Ted once gave him. (Careful viewers will note that this is the second vehicular theft we learn of from Ted and Beard’s past, following the former’s joyride in the family car as a 12-year-old.) And so, with the gentlest of head butts — a clear callback to Roy and Jamie’s hug in “Man City” — Nate is welcomed back into the Richmond fold.Which finally brings us back to Ted himself. Tired of waiting for Dottie to spill why she has come to England, he erupts in a litany of “Thank you”s and “[Expletive] you”s that echo Jamie’s words on the pitch. Like Ted, she masked her grief at his father’s death beneath a facade of perpetual cheeriness; like him, she “pretended I was OK.” (As the Larkin poem Mae quoted earlier goes, parents “fill you with the faults they had.”) The ice finally broken, Dottie tells Ted what she has crossed an ocean to say: “Your son needs you.”We knew this, and Ted knew this. But like Nate and Jamie, Ted needed to hear it. He needed to let go of his pain — the divorce, the jealousy — to see his path clearly.The episode closes with Rebecca and Ted alone in his office. In a charming inside joke, she tells him that this is the time for her big revelation. (In Season 1, it was that she had been deliberately undermining him; in Season 2, it was that she was sleeping with Sam.) Alas, she has nothing, “no truth bomb this year.” “Well, that’s OK,” Ted responds. “I have one.”The end credits roll before he can declare it. But for anyone uncertain of Ted’s revelation, the credits are accompanied by a Brandi Carlile cover of “Home,” from the 1978 movie “The Wiz.” And we all know where it was that Dorothy needed to get back to.Odds and endsSo perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that Roy and Keeley were back together after the former showed up conspicuously underdressed in the latter’s apartment following his “stuck” revelation and subsequent letter. At the “You’ve Got Mail” viewing, they tell Dani that they are merely there as friends. At first, this seems like it could just be a taking-it-slow maneuver. But later, alone in Jamie’s childhood bedroom — where a prescient Jamie had long ago placed posters of the two of them on the wall nearly side by side — Roy tells Keeley he doesn’t want to be “just friends.” She’s interrupted before she can reply. And, unlike Ted, it’s far from clear what she intends to say.Speaking of “You’ve Got Mail,” someone in the “Ted Lasso” brain trust is awfully fond of the movie. This is at least the third reference I’ve noticed, following Sam and Rebecca’s Bantr handles back in Season 2, Episode 5 (LDN152 and Bossgirl, respectively) and the choice of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” to score the opening scene of Episode 7 this season. And given the closing-credits song this week is it a coincidence that we see the team watch the “Over the Rainbow” scene? No, it definitely is not.Also at the “You’ve Got Mail” screening, there’s a significant glance between Sam and Rebecca to follow up their hallway encounter last week. Should our Dutch houseboater be worried? I think I’m probably worried enough for both of us.But enough “You’ve Got Mail.” I’m with Ted: “Sleepless in Seattle” is a far superior film.The idea that Freddie Mercury once owned Richmond AFC and tried to make the team theme song “Fat Bottomed Girls” (played later in the episode) was amusing. But better was the gag that back in art school Mercury considered his greatest talent to be “flipping straights.” And no, that’s not a poker strategy.How great is it that Jamie’s hair color is Walnut Mist? I say pretty great.And speaking of great, I don’t know what Rebecca, Bex and Ms. Kakes will be up to in next week’s season finale. But I can’t wait to find out. More

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      Ray Stevenson, Actor in ‘Thor’ and Other Films, Dies at 58

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      His wide-ranging roles included fantasy characters, a knight, a Roman soldier and a Punisher.Ray Stevenson, who in a 30-year career played a wide range of roles in television and films, among them a talkative soldier in the HBO historical drama “Rome,” the pirate Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails” and the Asgardian warrior Volstagg in the “Thor” fantasy movies, died on Sunday. He was 58.His publicist, Nicki Fioravante, confirmed his death but provided no further details. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said Mr. Stevenson died on the Italian island of Ischia, where he had been filming a movie.Mr. Stevenson was born on May 25, 1964, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, according to the Internet Movie Database. He had begun a career in interior design when, in his mid-20s, he decided to try acting. Seeing John Malkovich in the Lanford Wilson play “Burn This” in London’s West End in the early 1990s was the catalyst.“I was dumbstruck by John’s performance,” he told the California newspaper The Fresno Bee in 2008. “Everybody else disappeared. I knew at that moment there was something very valid about being an actor.”He studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in England, where in 1993 he played the title role in a production of “Macbeth.” Before the year was over he had landed a recurring role in a British mini-series, “The Dwelling Place.” He had worked more or less steadily ever since.In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Stevenson appeared on various British TV series, including the crime drama “Band of Gold.” He landed his first significant film role in 2004, playing the knight Dagonet in “King Arthur,” with Clive Owen in the title role.Then came “Rome,” a breakthrough role in a big-budget HBO series about ancient Rome that was the network’s attempt to create the next buzz-generating series after “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos.”Mr. Stevenson’s character, Titus Pullo, was, as Alessandra Stanley put it in a 2005 review in The New York Times, “a drunken, womanizing lout — a soccer hooligan in sandals.” Titus Pullo’s friendship with another Roman soldier, played by James Purefoy, was among the show’s most appealing subplots, and Mr. Stevenson, a large man at 6-foot-4, seemed on the verge of something big.“He’s kind of George Clooney on steroids,” Chase Squires of The St. Petersburg Times of Florida wrote in 2005. “By the time ‘Rome’ completes its run, the Irish-born English actor will probably be a star, and a very real candidate to replace Russell Crowe when Hollywood gets tired of that actor’s notoriously bad behavior.”But “Rome” flamed out after two seasons, and Mr. Stevenson never quite achieved Clooneyesque stature. He did, however, land a number of meaty roles in lavish projects, including three movies from the Marvel Comics universe: “Thor” (2011), “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) and “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). All three were box-office smashes.He often referred to the “Thor” stories as “Vikings in space,” and in 2020 he got a taste of the earthbound version of that life when he joined the cast of the long-running History channel series “Vikings.” He appeared throughout its sixth season.His other roles included a gangster in the 2011 movie “Kill the Irishman” and a British colonial official in the Indian film “RRR” (2022). He also played the vigilante Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, another character based on a comic book. He took on that role in 2008 in “Punisher: War Zone,” after Dolph Lundgren had played Castle in a 1989 movie and Thomas Jane had taken his turn in 2004.The 2008 movie was an orgy of violence, as A.O. Scott noted in his review in The Times.“Guys get their heads blown off, or severed, or pierced with chair legs, or pulverized with fists,” he wrote, “because that’s what they have coming and that’s what the fan base will pay money to see.”His character, Mr. Stevenson told The Oklahoman, was supposed to be not a hero but an antihero.“He really is on a one-way path and in his own hell,” he said. “You don’t want to be Frank Castle.”Mr. Stevenson’s marriage to the actress Ruth Gemmell ended in divorce. He and his partner, Elisabetta Caraccia, had three children. More

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      When TV Becomes a Window Into Women’s Rage

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      Over the last few years, TV has offered portraits of female rage that are striking within a culture that still prefers women to carry their anger calmly and silently.In art, the image of the enraged woman often represents an ugly, almost talismanic evil: In Adolphe-William Bouguereau’s 1862 painting “Orestes Pursued by the Furies,” the women sneer, brandishing weapons at Orestes. In Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” Judith furrows her brow, half of her face cloaked in shadow, and clutches a fistful of Holofernes’s hair as she plunges a sword into his neck. And Caravaggio’s Medusa, a wronged woman transformed into a monster, is just a severed head, and yet her face is animated with fury, mouth open in a scream, brows creased.Over the last few years, TV has offered similar portraits of female rage — striking scenes within a culture that still mostly prefers women either to carry their anger calmly and silently or to express it within a misogynistic framing (the manic or hysterical woman).It’s empowering to watch a woman rage indelicately, like the recent divorcée Rachel Fleishman, played by Claire Danes, in the FX series “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” During a therapy treatment in the penultimate episode, Rachel lets loose a sharp, achy howl that overtakes her whole body. It takes several attempts for her to fully release this deep-seated scream. The first few are abbreviated and strained but then she seems to unload everything, her mouth opened wide, her face contracting so hard it takes on an all around rosy hue. Who said rage couldn’t be beautiful?In fact, it’s an asset to Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), a.k.a. She-Hulk, who got her own slice-of-life action court drama on Disney+ last year. Her hero-training journey is truncated because she takes to being the hulk much easier than did her cousin Bruce Banner, the original Hulk.“I’m great at controlling my anger; I do it all the time,” Jennifer tells Bruce in the first episode. “When I’m catcalled in the street, when incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me. I do it pretty much every day because if I don’t, I will get called emotional or difficult or might just literally get murdered.”The series isn’t about her tempering her rage but rather about living with a manifestation of the power her rage has given her: She-Hulk is strong and intelligent, a celebrity and a popular right-swipe on the dating apps.The same is true for Retsuko, the star of the popular animated Netflix series “Aggretsuko,” about a 25-year-old red panda who hates her job, where she is taken advantage of and disrespected by many of her colleagues. She handles the stress and frustration by doing karaoke — death metal karaoke, specifically.The show’s glossy 2D sticker-style artwork, full of heavy lines, loud graphics, straightforward color and bare-bones animation style, recalls other, explicitly kid-targeted brands from Sanrio, like Hello Kitty. Retsuko appears like a critical counterpoint to Hello Kitty, an icon of femininity and softness who famously has no mouth. She’s a blank slate, emotionless, while Retsuko comes alive through her anger, which physically transforms her, her claws bared, her facial fur changing into a Gene Simmons-esque death-metal mask pattern.Feminine rage can be deliciously performative, as with Retsuko’s throaty growl in the karaoke room or with the rap delivered by Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones), a hotel concierge in the Starz series “Blindspotting,” as she trashes a detestable couple’s room.Women who show rage in domestic spaces, like Ali Wong’s character Amy in the hilarious and bruising Netflix series “Beef,” disrupt the stereotype of women who are permitted to rage only in relationship to their roles as caretakers. Amy’s anger, even when warranted, is destructive, and everything in her life crumbles because of it, including her relationship with her family.Well-worn characters like the mother who does whatever it takes to save her children or the faithful wife who gets roped into crime to save or avenge her husband are more digestible, women granted the appearance of being multidimensional and emotionally complex when they are just following a formula.But even when female characters are developed outside of these reductive tropes, often the writing eventually flattens and diminishes them again. Take, for example, the rich emotional complexity that the Disney+ series “WandaVision” uncovered within Wanda Maximoff, which was absent from her next Marvel assignment. In the series, Wanda is caught in a sitcom-style delusion spurred by her anger, sorrow and grief. But in the film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” she is reduced to fury and nothing else, as fierce maternal protectiveness transforms her into a killing machine. Her personhood is no longer relevant because being an angry mother has become her whole character.In other examples of women raging in a domestic space, there is sometimes comical collateral damage. In Season 1 of “Dead to Me,” Jen, a widowed mother with an attitude problem, takes out her rage about her mother-in-law by punching the cake she got for Jen’s late husband’s memorial. In “Mad Men,” Betty Draper, a 1960s housewife caught in a marriage of spite and deception, stands in her yard in her peach nightgown, holding a rifle pointed toward the sky. With every flex of a manicured pink-nail-polished finger, she shoots at birds as a horrified neighbor looks on, calling to her in horror; she keeps shooting as a cigarette dangles from her mouth.A woman’s rage can be heroic — whether you’re a hulk or Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), bashing in walls at an anger management class. It can be a barometer of what’s gone horrendously wrong in a world that has taken women for granted. Think the irate faces of Elisabeth Moss as Offred in the misogynistic dystopia of “The Handmaid’s Tale”; or the rage of the ill-fated soccer players in “Yellowjackets”; or the magically endowed young women in “The Power,” who sometimes use their abilities for self-defense or revenge.A woman can rage over privilege, as does Renata Klein (Laura Dern), the reputation- and money-obsessed mom in “Big Little Lies,” or over violent passion, as does Dre (Dominique Fishback), the killer stan of “Swarm.” In many cases, rage may be a last resort, a way for a woman to finally get what she desperately desires — catharsis, vengeance, justice, peace. Whether or not that satisfaction lasts, however, is a very different story.These scenes and storylines are not about the anger itself but rather what has led a woman to speak, to act, to defend herself and others, to have the autonomy to express an unpalatable emotion. To be unattractive and merciless. Because sometimes, in order to change her world — for good or for bad — all a woman needs to do is open her mouth and let out a vicious, unbridled scream.Image credits: “Fleishman Is in Trouble” (FX); “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (Marvel Studios/Disney+); “Aggretsuko” (Netflix); “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Medusa,” 1597 (Caravaggio, Ufizzi Gallery, Florence); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Beef” (Netflix); “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Marvel Studios); “Jessica Jones” (Netflix); “Blindspotting” (Starz); “Dead to Me” (Netflix); “The Power” (Amazon Prime Video); “Swarm” (Amazon Prime Video); “Big Little Lies” (HBO); “Mad Men” (AMC). More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Succession’ Finale and Starry Rom-Coms

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      The HBO hit wraps up its series run, and Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck” airs.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, May 22-28. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU (2009) 8:30 p.m. on E! This movie, adapted from a book with the same title by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, has an extremely star-studded cast: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck and Scarlett Johansson, to name a few. The movie follows a group of friends and couples in their 20s and 30s who are all trying to navigate the trials and tribulations that come with relationships.TuesdayAmy Schumer and Bill Hader in “Trainwreck.”Universal PicturesTRAINWRECK (2015) 7:30 p.m. on Freeform. The comedian Amy Schumer wrote and stars in this film about a woman who is (as the title suggests) an emotional train wreck when she meets the super successful and put-together sports doctor Aaron Conners, played by Bill Hader. While the movie has its hilarious moments, the heartfelt love story that revolves around Schumer’s character’s commitment to taking care of her sick father is the part worth investing in. “Schumer is at her strongest when she insists that women aren’t distressed damsels but — as they toddle, walk and race in the highest of heels, the tightest of skirts, the sexiest, mightiest of poses — the absolute agents of their lives and desires,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times.WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. The stakes are especially high as the accelerated, 26-day version of this longstanding reality show is wrapping up its season this week. One of the final three contestants left standing will compete to be crowned as the “Sole Survivor,” which will be followed by an after show, hosted by Jeff Probst.VANDERPUMP RULES 9 p.m. on Bravo. In case you’ve missed the drama surrounding the latest season of this Los Angeles reality show, the tl;dr version is that two of its stars, Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, split after Sandoval had an affair with another co-star Raquel Leviss. Madix has already spilled lots of tea about her situation on Bravo and even in The Times, but the reunion airing this week will get even more in depth on the scandal and other drama from the season.ThursdayTHE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) 8 p.m. on TCM. In this classic, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) ships his wife and son away to Maine for the summer. Meanwhile in Manhattan, a woman (played by Marilyn Monroe) moves in upstairs from Richard, and he feels tempted to act on his feelings of desire.FridayOrna Guralnik, center, in “Couples Therapy.”ShowtimeCOUPLES THERAPY 8 p.m. on Showtime. On the season finale of this docu-series following the therapist Orna Guralnik and her clients, some couples reach their breaking point while others use the skills they’ve learned all season to improve the quality of their relationships.GREAT PERFORMANCES: ANYTHING GOES 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The Tony Award winners Sutton Foster and Robert Lindsay perform in this recorded performance of the Cole Porter musical “Anything Goes” in London’s West End. The show is about a romance aboard the SS American, with the mood set by sailors singing and dancing on the deck.THE SECRETS OF HILLSONG 10 p.m. on FX. This four-part docu-series (which wraps up on Friday) is an investigation by Vanity Fair reporters Alex French and Dan Adler as they reveal the scandals that have plagued the now infamous megachurch as well as the people involved in it. The show features interviews with former pastors Carl and Laura Lentz who were publicly ousted from the church as well as congregants who still support the church.SaturdayPatrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing.”Lionsgate Home entertainment, via Associated PressDIRTY DANCING (1987) 9:30 p.m. on CMT. It’s been decades since this film came out, and still nobody puts Baby in the corner! The story follows Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman (played by Jennifer Grey) while she vacations with her family at a Catskills resort during the summer of 1963. There, Baby meets Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), who enlists her as his dance partner — and naturally, they fall in love. Come for the romance, stay for the iconic lift during “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.”SARAH SILVERMAN: SOMEONE YOU LOVE 10 p.m. on HBO. In her first filmed HBO special since 2013, the comedian Sarah Silverman performs live from the Wilbur Theater in Boston, with plenty of jokes centered around her being a New England native.SundaySUCCESSION 9 p.m. on HBO. Every episode this season since the patriarch Logan Roy died has been its own flavor of chaos — there has been back stabbing, party crashing and plenty of wordy threatening, but it is as uncertain as ever who will take over Waystar Royco. As its creator, Jesse Armstrong, said in an interview with The New Yorker, the title of the show is a promise. So this finale will answer the question: Who is going to be the person in charge? It could be Kendall, Roman or Shiv — or a dark horse like Tom or Greg (or an even darker one, Connor).BARRY 10:30 p.m. on HBO. This is the fourth and final installment of this show starring Bill Hader as Barry, a contract killer. This season has focused on Barry behind bars, reflecting on everything he has done and facing the consequences of his actions. All that we really know about the ending is that it probably won’t be as happy as the characters wish it would be. More

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      ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 9 Recap: Dearly Departed

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      This week, Logan Roy’s family and associates gather for his funeral, pausing all grudges so they can pay conflicted respects to the man.‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 9: ‘Church and State’When people talk about TV or movies as visual medium, they’re usually referring to pretty pictures or striking compositions. But you know what’s also an important part of visual storytelling? The simple reaction shot.It wouldn’t take much retooling to turn any given “Succession” episode into a radio play, since most of the show’s “action,” so to speak, is in the dialogue. But boy would we ever miss those reaction shots. What these actors can do just with their faces — and what the directors and the editors can do with how and where they use them — is sublime.This week, Logan Roy’s family and associates gather for his funeral, temporarily putting aside all grudges so they can pay their respects to a giant of a man. Kendall insists, “Today is just about today” (a phrase that should be etched into the family crest for the eternally capricious and opportunistic Roys). Throughout the day, these folks talk a lot — especially during the service, as one Roy after another rises to say a few words. And again, a lot of what’s really happening in the story is in the reactions.Before the funeral even begins, the whole vibe surrounding the event is unsettled because of the postelection unrest in the New York streets (described by Tom as “a bit Tiananmen-y”). Kendall is furious when his ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold) takes their kids out of the city for their safety. He is nearly as irritated when he learns his assistant Jess (Juliana Canfield) intends to resign, because of the potential violence that Jeryd Mencken and ATN have unleashed. “You have no idea how things will turn out and it’s very juvenile,” Kendall grumbles.But once everyone’s inside the church, the mood softens. The tone is set by the Roy siblings’ mother, Lady Caroline Collingwood (Harriet Walter), who takes it upon herself to ask Kerry — who brought an attorney, just in case anyone tried to bar her from the funeral — to sit with her, Marcia, and the fabled Sally Ann. (Caroline introduces Sally Ann as “my Kerry.”) These ladies share the bond of having loved a very difficult man; and when Marcia reaches out for Kerry’s hand, Kerry sobs.Then the service begins, with a surprise. Logan’s fiery liberal brother, Ewan (James Cromwell), ignores his grandson Greg’s attempt to stop him from taking the pulpit. Ewan first shares some touching stories about Logan: about how they comforted each other as boys when they crossed the Atlantic during World War II; and about how Logan blamed himself for their sister dying of polio, which he was convinced he brought home from the boarding school he hated. With that out of the way, Ewan finishes by torching Logan’s legacy, saying his brother fed “a certain kind of meagerness in men.” (The ever-sycophantic Greg, after his grandfather sits back down: “That was a good hard take that you gave.”)Here is where the reaction shots really start to become a factor. During Ewan’s takedown, we see Roman looking stricken. He came into this day feeling creepily upbeat, planning to follow his election night coup with a real grown-up eulogy for his father, in front of some of America’s most important people. But Ewan’s commanding, authoritative words shake him. Roman has never had this kind of spotlight; and now his siblings expect him to “say the other side” of the Logan Roy story.He can’t. Roman starts to give his generic “great, great man” speech, but then freezes and asks his family to bail him out. He breaks down in front of everyone, gesturing at the coffin containing his father and whimpering, “Get him out.” It’s another shattering performance from Kieran Culkin. (The face to watch during Roman’s meltdown is Gerri’s. She looks genuinely pained for her former protégé.)So Kendall fills in; and because he has lots of experience with throwing together sentences that his social peers can understand, he does a fine job. He acknowledges the pain his father could cause but he also celebrates how Logan made “bloody, complicated life” happen. “If we can’t match his vim, then God knows the future will be sluggish and gray,” he says, as both Mencken and Lukas Matsson look on with what appears to be grudging admiration. For all the gossip about how Jeremy Strong’s intensity on-set can frustrate his castmates, the results are on the screen in scenes like this one, so riveting and real.Shiv follows with her own impromptu eulogy, mostly focused on how terrifying Logan could be when she and her siblings were little kids. Like Culkin and Armstrong, Sarah Snook nails her big moment, playing this speech so that it sits right between “here’s a funny story about a grumpy old man” and an accusation of abuse. Shiv calls her father “hard on women” — and the shot of Kendall that follows is a reminder of his own issues with Rava and Jess.It is interesting to hear Shiv give such a harsh assessment of Logan’s parenting after what she had said to Matsson before the funeral. Readjusting their strategy for a looming Mencken presidency, they have decided to show they can play ball with a neo-fascist. Step 1: Promise that GoJo-Waystar will have an American CEO … like maybe Shiv. But when Matsson mentions that he heard a rumor about her being pregnant, she concocts a version of motherhood where she is “emailing through her vanity cesarean” and her kid “will never see her.” It’s positively Logan-esque.Post-funeral negotiations: Strong and Justin Kirk in “Succession.”Macall Polay/HBOAfter the funeral, the scramble for Waystar begins. Kendall capitalizes on his eulogy momentum by authorizing Hugo to start leaking to the media about Matsson’s shaky standing with the Waystar board. (“You’ll be my dog, but the scraps from the table will be millions,” he tells Hugo about the state of their business relationship. “Woof woof,” Hugo replies.) He also coaxes his father’s former bodyguard/confessor Colin to come work for him. He too is becoming more Logan-y by the minute.But as it turns out, Shiv’s play has juice. Kendall realizes he may have miscalculated when he corners Mencken at the post-funeral reception and the presumptive President-elect intimates that ATN may need him more than vice versa. “I thought you were the sound system,” Mencken says to Kendall. “Now you want to choose the track?” It doesn’t help that Kendall is interrupted by a succession of embarrassing family members: first Greg, then Roman (Mencken: “It’s the Grim Weeper!”), then Connor.It’s no wonder that Mencken seems relieved to talk with Shiv and Matsson, who seem … well, cooler. They both encourage him to broaden his thinking, with Shiv reminding him that Logan was more about “money, winning and gossip” than ideological purity and Matsson talking up the potential advantages (including “fun”) of allying with a “thought leader” tech bro. So as we head into the “Succession” finale next week, Kendall and Shiv both, seen in the right light, seem to have an edge in the fight to become the new Waystar CEO.So where does that leave Roman? Still reeling from his funeral disaster. As Kendall asks for his brother’s help in the coming board battle against Shiv, he chastises Roman bluntly for screwing everything up. Roman then leaves the reception to crash one of the protest marches happening outside, where he yells at and gets smacked around by the angry leftists.This suits him just fine. When it comes to reactions, Roman would always rather people look at him with anger than with pity — or, worse, with indifference.Due diligenceHere’s another one for the “Kendall can’t stand to see his family get bullied” file: When Mencken makes fun of Roman’s crying jag, Kendall immediately shuts that joke down.And here’s another brilliant reaction shot: When Kendall speaks at the funeral about how Logan “made” him and his siblings, the editors cut to Lady Caroline, looking a bit peeved.There is not a lot of gut-busting comedy this week, though the Roy kids do get in some good riffs while gawking at Logan’s tomb, an ornate shrine he bought from a dot-com pet supply guy. Shiv calls the seller “cat food Ozymandias,” asks whether her dad was “in a bidding war with Stalin and Liberace,” then suggests the grave could be a tax write-off because, “It’s technically a residence.”The tomb has plenty of room for more family members, should any of Logan’s children want to spend eternity with their problematic patriarch. Connor pipes up and says he wouldn’t mind a top bunk. Kendall hesitates, saying, “I had trouble finishing a scotch with him.” And Roman? “He made me breathe funny,” he says.Shiv, bothered by how little she really knew — or perhaps wanted to know — about her father’s character, asks Frank and Karl, “How bad was Dad?” They reassure her that he was “a salty dog but a good egg,” adding, “What you saw was what you got.” Then after she leaves, Karl half-shrugs, looks at Frank and asks, “Right?” Frank, halfheartedly: “Right.”Shiv, as the funeral ends and the cemetery prepares to inter her father: “I’m intrigued to see how he gets out of this one.” More

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      In ‘Platonic,’ the Sex Part Doesn’t Get in the Way. No, Really.

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      About 20 years ago, the husband-and-wife writing and directing team of Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanco went to a joint bachelor-bachelorette party in Las Vegas. Delbanco knew the bride-to-be a little, but the bachelor had been a close friend since college.The parties peeled off — the men to a steakhouse, the women to get sushi. Delbanco found herself rolling almost involuntarily with the bachelorette group.“I went with her, but I was there not because I had known her — I was there because I was a friend of his,” Delbanco recalled in a recent video interview. “I remember thinking, ‘Why does it have to be that way?’”The incident gnawed at her over the years, until she finally decided to address it in her work. “Platonic,” the new Apple TV+ limited series created by Delbanco and Stoller and starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen (who are also executive producers), playfully asks a timeless question: Why is it so difficult for people — especially married people — to maintain friendships with members of the opposite sex?“Platonic,” which premieres on May 24, isn’t a “will they or won’t they” romantic comedy like “When Harry Met Sally,” which is less about staying friends than about falling in love. It’s the story of Sylvia (Byrne), a happily married but slightly bored woman, who tries to rekindle a friendship with Will (Rogen), a middle-aged man-child going through a painful divorce. Sylvia and Will used to hang out, partying and laughing but never sleeping together. They eventually went their separate ways, largely because Sylvia didn’t care for Will’s wife. Now Will is back, lonely and a bit needy.He is ready to resume the party. He is also passively dismissive of Sylvia’s family life, with her extremely nice, extremely handsome husband (Luke Macfarlane) and their three kids.Sylvia, meanwhile, has a hard time taking Will seriously. He is a hipster brewery owner with a young girlfriend and an aversion to selling out and settling down. But Will’s footloose ways also make Sylvia look back and wonder where the years have gone. “Platonic” isn’t just a tale of friendship; it’s also a front-row seat to dueling, colliding midlife crises.The series reunites Byrne and Rogen, stars of the 2014 comedy “Neighbors,” directed by Stoller, about a young married couple living next door to a bunch of raucous frat boys. This time, however, their characters are in conflicting places in their lives.“I think my character is self-destructive in a lot of ways and immature in a lot of ways, and really trying to live a life that is just not the life someone his age should be living anymore,” Rogen said in a joint video interview with Byrne. “In his perspective, he’s just not shackled by this thing that she’s shackled by. So her judgment of him is confusing because he’s like: ‘Well, who cares? I don’t have a kid and a spouse.’”The series follows Sylvia (Byrne), a happily married but slightly bored woman, who tries to rekindle a friendship with Will (Rogen), a man-child going through a painful divorce.Apple TV+For her part, Sylvia is “a responsible and extremely high-functioning achiever,” as Byrne described it, “one of those sorts of characters who can do it all.”“Those people are intimidating,” she continued. “And then on the flip side of it, she can really party.”In one episode, Sylvia throws Will a divorce party, inviting all of his friends to a swanky dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. The guys want to go to a strip club after dinner; Sylvia is resistant, which annoys Will.“Fun has changed for me,” she tells Will. “It has evolved into something else.” Will’s rebuttal: “Your fun has evolved into something called ‘not fun.’” Then they end up doing CK, a mix of cocaine and ketamine, giving Byrne a chance to show off her physical comedy chops as she stumbles through the rest of the evening.The episode illustrates a big part of Sylvia’s dilemma. Part of her wants to be irresponsible, to shuck off her outwardly ideal life, her mom and wife duties, if only for a moment.“It’s a constant push and pull,” said Byrne, who has two children with the actor Bobby Cannavale. Sylvia was once a promising lawyer, but she gave up her career to have a family. “You do feel a sense of loss and grief and weird disorientation if you have been the primary caregiver for so long, and that is where she’s at,” Byrne added. “Then she’s at this crossroad when she reunites with Will, and it sends her off on a little spiral.”Both parties have confidants and protectors. Sylvia’s best friend is Katie (Carla Gallo, who also worked with Byrne in “Neighbors”). Katie is a bit more forgiving than Will’s younger friend and business partner, Andy (Tre Hale), who is both frustrated with Will’s pious attitude and suspicious of Sylvia’s sudden re-emergence in Will’s life.“There’s a beef there, with Andy wanting to make sure Sylvia is not coming in and messing with my dude’s head because he already has a bunch of stuff on his plate,” said Hale, a formidable former U.C.L.A. football player. “He is annoyed that he has to be the big brother in the situation, especially as it pertains to the bar and the business.”The first time audiences saw Rogen and Byrne together onscreen, in “Neighbors,” their characters were having furious, comical sex as their infant child sneaked a peek. In “Platonic,” however, the sexual chemistry is nil by design; you never really ask yourself if Will and Sylvia will fall into bed together. She has issues with Charlie, her lawyer husband, who is the opposite of a wild and crazy guy, but she isn’t about to cheat on him.Byrne and Rogen played a married couple in the 2014 big-screen comedy “Neighbors.”Glen Wilson/Universal PicturesAs Stoller put it, “Everything’s either sex or murder in TV and movies, and we don’t have either.”There is, however, jealousy. Sylvia is a little jealous of Will’s freedom. Will is a little jealous of Sylvia’s loving, supportive home life. And Charlie is a little jealous of this wisecracking arrested-development case partying with his wife — Charlie’s work friends start referring to Will as “your wife’s boyfriend” — which sets up some rich comic possibilities.“The central joke there is that Luke is so good-looking,” Stoller said of Macfarlane. “He looks like a god, you know?”Delbanco added: “And Will is a wreck. His life is in shambles, and he’s got this crazy midlife crisis, and he’s bleaching his hair. There’s something so great about the most solid, handsome, upstanding man in the world being somehow undone by what he perceives as this threat to his marriage.”It all circles back to the main question: Can a woman and a man — a straight woman and man, anyway — maintain a close friendship?Delbanco recalled another Las Vegas story, this one more recent. Shortly before the pandemic, she spent a weekend there with two straight, married guy friends. “It was really fun, and I don’t think Nick was thinking, ‘Why are you in Las Vegas with those friends?’” she said. “We just had a great time, but a lot of people were like, ‘Wait, where is your husband?’”Stoller recalled the weekend from his end. “My friends kept asking, ‘Where’s your wife?’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s in Vegas with two of her guy friends.’” The near-universal response: “‘What? Really?’”“It is a constant source of amusement and fascination for me,” Byrne said of her friends’ incredulity at her ability to have friendships (that don’t involve sex) with straight men.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe common expectation for such friendships is that the parties have either had sex or will have sex (or that one of them was relegated to the Friend Zone). Byrne has a close male friend, an old roommate with whom she still likes to socialize, and many of her friends can’t believe they never slept together. “It is a constant source of amusement and fascination for me,” Byrne said of her friends’ incredulity. “That was one of the reasons I was drawn to the series.”In the end, perhaps the friendship issue boils down to the question of what it means to be a grown-up. The roads can narrow when you start a family, or immerse yourself in a career, or both. What once seemed like a routine social relationship starts to draw raised eyebrows. There were fewer rules when Will and Sylvia were tearing it up as 20-somethings.Years later, they have embraced different versions of adulthood. There’s a wistful quality to their rekindled friendship, something that represents times both wilder and more innocent.“They used to go out really late and get into all kinds of adventures and crazy shenanigans that are less and less available to you when you’re in your 40s and parents and that kind of stuff,” Delbanco said. “That’s some of the pleasure that they take in each other.“The question becomes, is there a way to incorporate that into your adult life without messing up the rest of it?” More

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      ‘Happy Valley’ Review: The End of the Hero’s Journey

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      Sarah Lancashire returns in the long-delayed final season of one of the best, and most human, crime dramas on TV.Each season of the great British series “Happy Valley” begins the same way, with the rock-solid cop Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) facing the everyday bizarrerie of policing in a tired, depressed, grimly beautiful pocket of West Yorkshire: teenage sheep rustlers, a jilted boyfriend threatening to set himself on fire, unseen agitators heaving kitchen appliances out of upper-story windows onto patrol cars. Compassionate but impatient and prone to anger, smarter than the detectives who condescend to her, Cawood wears her black uniform and neon vest like a bulky suit of armor. She’s a contemporary knight errant, upholding a code of decency against the terrors of modern life.“Happy Valley,” whose final season premieres on Monday (streaming on Acorn TV and AMC+, broadcast on BBC America), is a pocket-size, prosaic saga — a hero’s tale contained in three six-episode seasons and embedded in a family drama. The emotions that buffet the characters are epic in scale, but the action, though it has occasional flashes of brutal violence, tends to be of the everyday, walking-and-talking variety. Like all mythical heroes, Cawood has an antagonist, the psychopathic rapist and killer Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), who is the father of her grandson. But for long stretches of the show, he is in prison, and he and Cawood spend much more time stewing about each other than actually facing off.The second season was shown in 2016, and that seven-year gap is reflected onscreen. Season 3 begins with Cawood counting the days to her retirement and enjoying atypically peaceful relations with her sister, the recovering alcoholic Clare (Siobhan Finneran), and with her now teenage grandson, Ryan (Rhys Connah). The center quickly fails to hold, however, as both the emergence of a body in a drained reservoir and Cawood’s discovery of a profound betrayal by someone close to her raise the specter of Royce, even though he is in prison for life.In its structure, “Happy Valley” is very much a traditional British crime series, with seemingly unconnected plot strands and investigations that wind themselves together against a backdrop of cop-shop politics. But in the hands of the accomplished writer and producer Sally Wainwright (“Gentleman Jack,” “Scott & Bailey), who has written every episode, it is also a powerful social drama that focuses unflinchingly on male violence against women without sliding into speechmaking or heavy-handed symbolism. In the new season’s major subplot, a less-than-sympathetic female character is caught between two seemingly more capable men whose weaknesses run deeper than hers.Overall, the final season is, as any faithful viewer could guess, the culmination of Cawood’s extended battle to the (at least figurative) death with Royce. In order to set up a satisfyingly visceral conclusion, Wainwright forces the action and pushes at plausibility a little harder than those viewers will be used to. The story’s focus also is diluted by her indulgence of characters from the first two seasons who are brought back but not given much to do.Those offenses are minor, though. And the mechanics of the plot fade in the face of the prodigious performances by Lancashire and Norton, both of whom calmly straddle the allegorical and the mundane: the stoic warrior who is a grouchy grandmother, the indestructible horror-movie monster who is a sad victim of his own sociopathy. Also wonderful to watch are Finneran — the relationship between Cawood, for whom weakness is anathema, and the softhearted Clare has been the show’s backbone — and Connah; a child of 10 when the previous season was filmed, he is excellent as the now nearly adult Ryan.Cawood’s mission in the final season has a new, even more personal dimension: She must protect Ryan from his father while also, grudgingly and tardily, acknowledging Ryan’s right to learn about the man for himself. In a time when television and film are playing catch-up with female superheros and action figures, “Happy Valley” has quietly provided a paradigm of local, human heroism. More