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      Late Night Mocks House Dysfunction and George Santos

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      Jimmy Kimmel said that Republicans will be successful only if they can “accept the results of an election, and that’s really not their thing.”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.‘One Step Closer to the Worst Job in the World’House Republicans “took a break from fake-impeaching Joe Biden” on Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel said, to nominate Steve Scalise of Louisiana as their next speaker.“Scalise beat out Jim Jordan in a closed-door session and will now spend a night in the fantasy suite with Matt Gaetz to see how they hit it off,” Kimmel joked.“House Republicans today nominated majority leader Steve Scalise to be the next speaker, while next week’s speaker is still anyone’s guess!” — SETH MEYERS“The House majority chose Scalise by a vote of 113-99. It’s still unclear, though, if he has enough votes to win the speakership because that would require Republicans to accept the results of an election, and that’s really not their thing.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Congratulations, Steve. You are one step closer to having the worst job in the world. It’s just one rung below emptying the Porta-Potties at a chili cook-off.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So if you see white smoke coming from the Capitol Rotunda, it means they’ve either picked a new speaker or Lauren Boebert is vaping again.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Running Mate or Cell Mate Edition)“Federal prosecutors accused Republican Congressman George Santos yesterday of stealing campaign donors’ identities. But if you donated money to George Santos, you’re probably looking for a new identity anyway.” — SETH MEYERS“The latest round of charges brings the total number of counts against him to 23. Congratulations, George, 68 more and you can run for president.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Just to give that some perspective, the BTK killer only had 10 charges against him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Santos has been indicted on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, falsifying records, and the most Photoshop ever used on a single headshot.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In one instance, Santos allegedly stole a donor’s credit card number to transfer more than $11,000 to his own bank account. Zoinkers! Though people should’ve been tipped off by his slogan ‘Santos 2022: That’s my PIN number, what’s yours?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Congressman George Santos was just hit with 10 more criminal charges that accuse him of stealing his donors’ identities and credit cards. Santos was like, ‘Wait, am I not Henrietta Ellenberg from Youngstown, Ohio?’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s wild. Santos is either going to wind up as Trump’s running mate or Trump’s cell mate.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth Watching“The Late Show” writer Felipe Torres Medina popped by Wednesday’s show for a quick game of “Hispanic or Latino!”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang will appear ahead of the show’s 49th season premiere on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutFrom left, J.J. Wynder, Mallori Taylor Johnson, Ngozi Anyanwu (standing) and Nicole Ari Parker in “The Refuge Plays,” at Laura Pels Theater.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesNicole Ari Parker stars in Nathan Alan Davis’s new Off Broadway production of “The Refuge Plays.” More

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      Michael Chiarello, Chef and Food Network Star, Dies at 61

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      His culinary empire included several restaurants, an olive oil company, a winery and a retail business with a robust catalog.Michael Chiarello, a hard-working, TV-ready chef from California’s Central Valley whose culinary prowess and intuitive knack for marketing helped define a chapter of Italian-influenced Northern California cuisine and the rural escapism of the Napa Valley lifestyle, died on Friday in Napa. He was 61.His death, in a hospital, resulted from an acute allergic reaction that led to anaphylactic shock, said Giana O’Shaughnessy, his youngest daughter. The cause of the allergic reaction has not been identified.Mr. Chiarello was a member of a generation of Northern California chefs who by the 1980s had freed themselves from the conventions of continental cuisine. They swapped olive oil for butter when they served bread, and they used seasonal produce and locally made cheese and wine long before the term “farm to table” became a menu cliché.He would later get caught in the #MeToo movement, when two servers filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in 2016 against him and his restaurant company, Gruppo Chiarello. The case was settled out of court, but his reputation was tarnished and television opportunities dried up.Michael Dominic Chiarello was born on Jan. 26, 1962, in Red Bluff, Calif., in the Sacramento Valley, and raised surrounded by almond trees and melon fields 200 miles south in Turlock, a farming town built on the rich soil not far from Modesto.He was the youngest child of a couple with roots in the Calabria region of Italy. He credited his mother, Antoinette (Aiello) Chiarello, for his earliest culinary lessons. His father, Harry, was a banker who suffered a debilitating stroke when he was in his 40s.“We never had much money and always had to scrape by,” Mr. Chiarello told The St. Helena Star in 2006. “We foraged for our food. The kitchen table was our entertainment. If we had pasta with porcini mushrooms, we’d talk about how we picked them. How wet and rainy it was that day, or how the truck broke down. There was a story to all the food we brought home, and it made everything taste even better.”By 14, he was working in a restaurant in between wrestling practice and classes at Turlock High School. By 22, he had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and Florida International University in Miami, where he earned a degree in hotel and restaurant management.Even though he was starting to receive national attention for his cooking — he opened his first restaurant in Miami in 1984 and was named Food & Wine magazine’s chef of the year in 1985 — his father wasn’t pleased.“When I decided to be a chef, it wasn’t what it is today. It was just a trade, not sexy like today,” he said in the 2006 interview. “I remember my father was concerned about me. One of my brothers is a Ph.D., one an attorney. I was a cook. He’d say, ‘The family came all this way from Italy. He could have done that over there.’”Mr. Chiarello in 2005 after his Food Network show “Easy Entertaining With Michael Chiarello” won a Daytime Emmy Award.Mathew Imaging/FilmMagicMr. Chiarello caught the attention of Cindy Pawlcyn, who had recently been on the cover of Bon Appétit magazine for her restaurant Mustards Grill, a pioneering Yountville roadhouse with a giant wine list where the great winemakers of the era would walk in covered in farm dirt. She was looking for someone to run a new restaurant in St. Helena called Tra Vigne.Mr. Chiarello arrived for an interview wearing a chef’s neckerchief and brimming with ambition.“Michael was a very driven man; there was no doubt about that,” Ms. Pawlcyn said in a phone interview. “Tra Vigne was a good place to start, because Michael was outgoing and exuberant and could be charming on the spot. He met a lot of people there.”Indeed, Robert Mondavi and other top winemakers would become regulars, and guests often included culinary and Hollywood elite, from Julia Child to Danny DeVito.The restaurant was a jumping-off point for Mr. Chiarello’s empire, which would eventually include several restaurants, an olive oil company, a winery and a retail business with a robust catalog.Mr. Chiarello ran the Tra Vigne restaurant in St. Helena, Calif., until 2001. Robert Mondavi and other top winemakers would become regulars, and guests often included members of the culinary and Hollywood elite.Peter DaSilvaHe left Tra Vigne in 2001 to pursue a career in media and merchandise. His first TV show, “Season by Season,” debuted that year on PBS. And he opened NapaStyle, a website and a small chain of retail stores where he sold panini, flavored olive oil and other specialty foods, as well as cookware, table décor and wine from his own vineyard.He jumped to Food Network in 2003 with “Easy Entertaining With Michael Chiarello,” which landed him a Daytime Emmy Award. He would go on to compete on “Top Chef Masters” and was a judge on “Top Chef.”Mr. Chiarello wrote eight books, one of which, “The Tra Vigne Cookbook” (1999), was at one point as popular in Bay Area bookstores as Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential,” which came out shortly after.He was one of the first to see Napa Valley as a lifestyle and a brand, said the Northern California food writer and cheese expert Janet Fletcher, who wrote two books with him.“He really was a very good cook but also an amazing marketer and merchandiser,” she said, adding that “they didn’t come more charming or handsome.”“Walking through the dining room at Tra Vigne, you could just see the star power,” Ms. Fletcher said, “but there was substance, too. You wanted to eat every dish on his menu.”Mr. Chiarello was one of the first to see Napa Valley as a lifestyle and a brand, said the Northern California food writer and cheese expert Janet Fletcher, who wrote two books with him, including “The Tra Vigne Cookbook.”Chronicle BooksMr. Chiarello jumped back into the restaurant world in 2008, opening the casually elegant Bottega in Yountville. Five years later, he added Coqueta, a Spanish-focused restaurant on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and in 2019 he expanded it to Napa.Sexual harassment claims dogged him. Two servers at Coqueta named him in a lawsuit in 2016, claiming that he presided over a sexually charged atmosphere, touched employees inappropriately and, among other things, made lewd gestures with a baguette.Mr. Chiarello vigorously denied the charges and vowed to fight them. The parties eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.In addition to Ms. O’Shaughnessy, his daughter from his marriage to Ines Bartel, which ended in divorce, Mr. Chiarello is survived by two other daughters from that marriage, Margaux Comalrena and Felicia Chiarello; a son, Aidan Chiarello, from his second marriage, to Eileen Gordon; two brothers, Ron and Kevin Chiarello; and two grandchildren. A company spokesman said that Mr. Chiarello and Ms. Gordon were legally separated and in the process of divorcing when he died.Despite his outsize career, Ms. O’Shaughnessy said, Mr. Chiarello was a family man at heart who wanted to keep his family’s stories alive. He made a point of teaching his children how to make the gnocchi his mother taught him to make when he was 7, and he named various bottlings of wine from Chiarello Family Vineyards after his children.“In the restaurant business I lost a lot of time with my girls,” he said in 2006. “I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want to be saying anymore that I should have spent more time with my children, more time with my wife. If I get hit by a bus, I don’t want my last thought to be about a wine deal I was doing with Walmart.” More

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      Review: ‘Frasier’ Returns, Tossed, Scrambled and Eggscruciating

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      One of TV’s longest-lived characters gets revived, in an anticlimactic museum reproduction of the original.“Frasier” always saw itself as something more than a mere plebeian sitcom. It delighted in Noel Coward-esque banter. Its protagonist, the radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), closed his final broadcast reciting Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”So let me begin my thoughts on “Frasier,” the Paramount+ revival of the long-running “Cheers” sequel, with words that its leading man of letters might attend to, from the poem “Terminus,” by his fellow Harvard man Ralph Waldo Emerson:It is time to be old,To take in sail:—The god of bounds,Who sets to seas a shore,Came to me in his fatal rounds,And said: “No more!”Alas, “No more!” is not a phrase in the streaming TV industry’s vocabulary. On Thursday, Frasier Crane becomes the latest classic character to set sail for a mediocre, anticlimactic return, the god of bounds be damned.When last we saw Frasier, he had passed up a chance at TV stardom and left Seattle for Chicago to be with his new love, Charlotte (Laura Linney). The new “Frasier,” developed by Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli, dispenses with that inconvenient narrative closure in about ten seconds of exposition. Frasier landed a TV show after all — he recently quit it after many years — and Charlotte has dumped him. (At least the premiere doesn’t Etch-a-Sketch the no-longer-a-finale quite as brazenly as the “Will and Grace” and “Roseanne” revivals.)Single again, loaded with TV money and having just buried his father, Martin (John Mahoney, who died in 2018), he’s off for a sojourn in Paris. But he makes a pit stop in Boston to reconnect with his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who disappointed Frasier by dropping out of Harvard and becoming a firefighter. (His choice may also surprise the audience, who might recall him as an awkward chess nerd going through a goth phase, but hey, people change.)Freddy, who resents Frasier’s dismissal of his work, isn’t eager for the reunion, but the inexorable logic of sitcom revivals kicks in. While Paramount+ has declared some twists of the first episode — none of them surprising — to be spoilers, suffice it to say that Frasier cancels his Paris plans, has a Harvard teaching gig fall into his lap and ends up spending a lot of quality time with his estranged son.If you are scanning this review for familiar names besides Grammer’s, I have some bad news. Beyond some reportedly upcoming guest appearances, the new “Frasier” joins “Night Court” as a revival that surrounds one returning lead with new sidekicks who, if you squint, might pass for versions of the old gang.So Freddy is Freddy, but he’s also a version of Martin, the down-to-earth ex-police officer who took the air out of Frasier’s swelled head. As David, the son of Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and his wife Daphne (Jane Leeves), Anders Keith channels the absent Hyde Pierce, right down to pronouncing the word “Sahara” the way Sting does.Well, he’s half a Niles; Nicholas Lyndhurst, as Frasier’s old college chum and new faculty colleague Alan, supplies the other half, playing Frasier’s erudite contemporary. Freddy’s roommate Eve (Jess Salgueiro) is sort of a Daphne. Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), the department head who recruits Frasier to teach, is sort of a Roz.And “Frasier” is … sort of “Frasier.” It is also, returning to Boston, sort of “Cheers.” The callbacks flow like drafts at happy hour. Frasier says that the last time he lived in the city, “I may have spent too much time at a certain bar.” And his run-in with a firehouse Dalmatian sets up a callback to his canine frenemy, Eddie: “I outlasted that little mongrel. I’ll outlast you.”The result is something that feels less like Season 12 of “Frasier” or Season 1 of a new series than a sort of museum of itself — be sure to visit the gift shop! — weighed down with knickknacks and nostalgia.The people orbiting Frasier in the new sitcom, including his boss (Toks Olagundoye) and a professor colleague (Nicholas Lyndhurst), resemble characters from the original.Chris Haston/Paramount+Frasier Crane, of course, has a lot of history even by sitcom-revival standards. He first appeared on TV nearly four decades ago, as the stuffed-shirt romantic rival to Sam Malone (Ted Danson) on “Cheers.” The 1993 premiere of “Frasier” mellowed him out and put him in his own element. The lead-character version of Frasier was haughty but soulful.You can’t say Grammer doesn’t know Frasier after all these years. He falls into the old bluster as if he’d time-traveled straight from 2004, and his new staff writes in the character’s voice well enough. (It did stop me in the first episode when he references “the hoi polloi”; surely the purist polymath Frasier would hold that “the” is redundant since “hoi” is a definite article.) The show even returns the formidable sitcom director James Burrows to shoot the first two episodes, which both premiere on Thursday.But it has the purgatorial feel of a sitcom that returned without a purpose beyond “More of that guy I like, please.” The central father-son dynamic feels forced rather than rooted in history, and Freddy is a nonentity, undefined as a character except in relation to his meddling dad.You could forgive the lack of ideas if there were at least a few laughs. But this reproduction has the predictable beats of a mothballed 20th-century sitcom. If there is a baby seat that plays “Baby Shark” when someone bumps into it, you know that someone will bump into it again. And again.The third episode, the best of the five screened for critics, at least gives Frasier a new conflict while meta-commenting on the revival. As he prepares to teach his first class, he realizes that his students, and his colleagues, are looking not for a professor but a celebrity, wanting him to re-create his shtick from his talk show. But he’s embarrassed of those years; in a series of clips, we see that he went from giving sober advice in the first season to, by Season 13, wearing a football-referee uniform and doing ax-throwing stunts.Now that I would watch! No, not the cheesy advice program that Frasier sold himself out to do. But a show about Frasier Crane making that show, lowering himself to win the love of hoi polloi, moving outside his comfort zone, finding out that success is a kind of prison — I would hit “play all” on that. It might be great, it might be terrible, but it would be interesting. But the revival industry is not in the business of interesting.As I’ve written before, there’s an inherent sadness to bringing back a sitcom after years or decades, the twinge of time passing. You can treat that melancholy in different ways, even get laughs out of it, but to ignore it just rings false. While this “Frasier” has the occasional sentimental moment, it’s too busy re-creating the past to engage with the past. It re-tosses the salads, it re-scrambles the eggs. But it has no desire to hear the blues a-callin’. More

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      Seth Meyers Is Unsure About a House Republican ‘Therapy Session’

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      “If being locked in a room with those people for two hours feels like therapy, you need to find a new therapist,” Meyers said.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.Family TherapyDivided House Republicans have been holding closed-door meetings to discuss electing a new speaker. One lawmaker referred to an intense two-hour discussion on Monday as a “therapy session.”“If being locked in a room with those people for two hours feels like therapy, you need to find a new therapist,” Seth Meyers said on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”“I would hate to be a therapist for the House Republicans: [imitating a therapist] ‘Um, OK. Normally I don’t say this to a patient, but you are all responsible for your parents’ divorce.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, they may have some competition for Kevin McCarthy’s old job, and it’s Kevin McCarthy.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Republicans will try to elect a new speaker of the House, and apparently Kevin McCarthy said that he would be willing to return as speaker. That’s right, Kevin McCarthy might run to replace Kevin McCarthy.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Prime Time Edition)“It’s October Prime Day on Amazon. It’s exclusively for Prime members, which is everyone in the world.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s that special day that only comes 12 times a year.” — JIMMY FALLON“They’ve got some great deals on some must-have items, like a pickle that yodels, a cat scratcher shaped like a tongue, a banana goose, a piece of plastic pork and a delicious can of Spam, maple flavored.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Joe Biden spent his October Prime Day trying to figure out where the hell this woman Alexa who keeps yelling at him is hiding.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Roots free-styled songs from audience-supplied topics, like Taylor Swift fans and Halloween candy, on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe country music star Reba McEntire will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This Out“I try to only do multicamera sitcoms,” James Burrows said. “If there’s two people talking, I want you laughing at what they’re saying, not admiring the beautiful cinematic camera moves.”Alex Welsh for The New York TimesJames Burrows, one of the creators of “Cheers,” is bringing Frasier Crane back to Boston with the new Paramount+ reboot of “Frasier.” More

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      ‘Frasier’ Returns With a Sitcom Veteran in the Director’s Chair

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      Over nearly five decades, Burrows has directed a thousand sitcom episodes. Next up: the new Paramount+ series, which follows Frasier Crane’s return to Boston.“You can’t learn how to be funny,” James Burrows said. “That has to be instinctual in you.”Burrows, 82, a celebrated director of the multicamera sitcom, has more of that instinct than most. The son of the playwright and director Abe Burrows (“Guys and Dolls,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”), he never intended a career in show business. But to defer his draft eligibility, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. Yale taught him that he wasn’t a playwright. Or an actor. But he became curious about directing.After graduation he worked as a stage manager, once assisting Mary Tyler Moore on a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” (“It was a horrible experience,” he said. “Mary would come offstage and collapse in my arms and start crying.”) He segued into directing, eventually running a theater in San Diego. One night, while watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he realized that directing a sitcom in front of a live studio audience wasn’t so different from his theater work. He wrote to Moore. Her husband, the producer Grant Tinker, invited him to the set.In 1974, he directed his first episode of the show. Over nearly five decades, he would go on to help create “Cheers” and direct a thousand more sitcom episodes, including the pilots for “Taxi,” “NewsRadio,” “Friends,” “Third Rock From the Sun” and “Will & Grace.” In 1993, he directed the pilot of “Frasier,” a “Cheers” spinoff that followed Kelsey Grammer’s psychiatrist character, Frasier Crane, as he relocated to Seattle from Boston. That show ended in 2004. But Burrows has kept on. In February, he directed another pilot, a “Frasier” reboot (though Burrows doesn’t like to think of it that way) that begins Oct. 12 on Paramount+. The show finds Frasier back in Boston, trying to reconnect with his son. Besides Grammer, none of the other original cast star, but several make guest appearances.In the new Paramount+ series, Kelsey Grammer, left, reprises his role as Frasier Crane, trying to reconnect with his son, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott, in red. Chris Haston/Paramount+On a recent Monday (morning in Los Angeles, where Burrows lives, afternoon in New York), Burrows appeared on a video call screen, spiffy in a New York Giants jersey. A practiced entertainer, he kept the jokes and the Yiddish — naches, mishpachah, kop — coming as he discussed the decline of the sitcom and the pleasure of getting behind the camera again. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you learn to direct for television?I observed on “The Bob Newhart Show.” I knew how to talk to actors. I knew what was funny. But I didn’t know the situation with the cameras. Then I watched my dear mentor, Jay Sandrich, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And after about four months, they gave me a show to do.You say that you knew what was funny? How?How do you know when something’s hot?You touch it and it burns you?It’s an instinctual reaction. I know what’s the best way to say a joke or what’s the best position onstage. I also have a multitude of ideas of what’s wrong with the script and what’s not wrong.I’m staggered by the list of shows that you’ve brought into being. How do you know if a show is for you?I try to only do multicamera sitcoms. For me, the camera is not a character. I don’t think of it that way. If there’s two people talking, I want you laughing at what they’re saying, not admiring the beautiful cinematic camera moves. When I first started, I did anything anybody would throw my way. “Taxi,” that was my first big break. Then there was “Cheers,” which I created with Glen and Les Charles. I look at those scripts. “Cheers” was a workplace comedy. “Taxi” was a workplace comedy. But they were about families. In “Taxi,” it’s a family that wants to get out. In “Cheers,” it’s a family that wants to come in. I guess I have a gift for creating families. My job is to mold a disparate group of actors into a family that likes one another.“Cheers,” in 1986, from left: Woody Harrelson, John Ratzenberger, Grammer and George Wendt.Ron Tom/NBC, via Getty ImagesHow do you know if a show is going to work?Well, it comes in pieces. The first thing I do is read the script. Then I’ll meet the writers. There has to be this compromise between writer and director, that’s the second thing. The third thing is the casting. You have to get lucky. You have to have the right actor available.I do my work in rehearsal. I don’t have any preconceptions. I take the best bolts of electricity and stick with that. And if there is no electricity, my job is to try to make electricity, change the batteries. Then I put in pieces of business that make the scene funnier. When the audience comes in on the fifth day, we do the first scene. And if a couple of jokes don’t work, we change the jokes, because the audience is the ultimate barometer.Frasier Crane was first introduced on “Cheers.” Who was he?Glen and Les created the character. He was a device to get Diane Chambers [the waitress played by Shelley Long] back into the bar. She was in a loony bin. Her doctor there was Dr. Frasier Crane, and he recommended that she go back and confront her demons. We hired Kelsey Grammer for four shows. In the first show, he was sitting at the bar, and he opened his mouth and the audience laughed. The three of us looked at one another and went, “Oh my God, this guy’s great.” We hired him for the rest of the series. If you watch Frasier on “Cheers,” you can see he’s a buffoon, but you love him. He’s pretentious, but you love him. Kelsey played him with such vulnerability.What made this character worthy of a spinoff?David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee [the creators and executive producers, who were then writers on “Cheers”] came to us and said they wanted to spin off the character of Frasier. They were smart enough to know that Kelsey was a skilled enough actor to go from playing a buffoon on “Cheers” to playing a leading man on “Frasier.” So that was their genius and also Kelsey’s genius.Where did the inspiration come from to do a revival?I was not involved in that. I don’t even call it a revival. I call it a continuation, because it’s not really a reboot. It’s a character moving on, and he’s surrounded by a whole new set of characters, so it’s not really a reboot.Are there maybe too many revivals, reboots, continuations these days?I have no idea. I don’t like them. But I enjoyed going back with Kelsey and revisiting the character.Grammer, with David Hyde Pierce as his brother Niles Crane, in the original “Frasier,” which premiered in 1993.Gale M. Adler/NBC, via Getty ImagesIf the magic of the original “Frasier” was the interaction among the characters and the actors playing them, is it enough to do it with just Kelsey?Well, the audience will be the judge of that. I know that. When Kelsey called me and said, “Would you do it?” I said, “I’ll read a script.” I read the script. I liked the script. And I agreed to do it just to make sure we protect the character.Has Frasier changed? Can characters change in a multi-cam format?Frasier is dealing with new emotions with his kid that weren’t emotions he dealt with before. He’s still a pompous ass. He always is and will always be. That’s what makes him funny. But I think there is growth.This “Frasier” is on a streamer. It doesn’t need to adhere to a 21-minute time limit or pause for commercial breaks. Does that change anything?You can go up to 30 minutes with a comedy. After that, it gets taxing. I do love a joke a page. Sometimes two jokes. That doesn’t happen often now.Why is that?There are a lot of single-camera comedies that get chuckles. They don’t get guffaws. I have friends at CBS and they say [of multicamera sitcoms], “Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re going to come back.” I’ve been hearing that for years.How have you seen sitcoms evolve during your career?The one evolution I’ve seen is that a lot of them aren’t funny anymore. The prime requirement of a multicamera sitcom is you’d better be funny.When a great pilot script comes your way, do you still enjoy the process?I had a ball on this, with my dear friend. That laughter behind me is so rewarding for my soul. If somebody sent me a great script, I would almost do it for free. It’s better than sitting around in the house, reading novels and watching sports. And it’s nice to be able to go back to what happened to me 50 years ago and still have this feeling of creativity. When pilot season comes this year, I hope there is a pilot that I like. More

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      Late Night Hosts Address the Hamas Attacks on Israel

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      Seth Meyers kept things serious, while Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel tried a touch of levity around a tough subject.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.Sensitive MaterialLate night hosts addressed the Hamas attacks on Israel during Monday night’s monologues. On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert said his writers “didn’t even attempt to write jokes about this.”“The human mind simply refuses to do it. Even A.I. refused to do it,” Colbert said, adding that ChatGPT responded to a request by stating that “making jokes about such matters can easily be seen as insensitive, disrespectful, or offensive to those who are suffering as a result.’”“I, for one, want to commend our future robot overlords. That is a rare show of humanity from something that can’t identify which photos contain a traffic light.” — STEPHEN COLBERTSeth Meyers kept things serious but vague, saying that he wouldn’t “pretend to have any answers as to how to respond to a crisis like this.”“I will only say that in the moments when we are confronted with such evil, inhumane acts, we are most at risk of losing our own humanity. When we are justifiably blind with rage and sadness, we can make choices that will have massive, irrevocable impacts on the lives of our fellow man. It requires the absolute best of us, to think clearly in times like this. And I hope with all my heart the best of us can emerge in this time of unthinkable loss.” — SETH MEYERSJimmy Kimmel called it a “nightmare situation” earning condemnation from world leaders, including “our super-duper, pro-Israel former President Donald Trump,” who, Kimmel said, “immediately found a way to make it about himself.”“He wrote, ‘The horrible attack on Israel, much like the attack on Ukraine, would never have happened if I were president. Zero chance!’ That’s right, if he was president, we’d all be blissfully downing jiggers of bleach. There’d be no war anywhere.” — JIMMY KIMMELKimmel recapped statements Trump made at a Saturday rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he compared his physical prowess to President Biden’s.“On the day one of our closest allies is hit by a devastating terrorist attack, Trump is onstage talking about how much better his body is than Joe Biden’s.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Maybe instead of an election next year, we just have a wet T-shirt contest and end it.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Subpar Edition)“After leaving the White House, former President Trump reportedly shared details about the capabilities of U.S. nuclear submarines with an Australian billionaire, including how close they can sail to Russian vessels without being detected. Said Trump, ‘Oh, come on, I’m not an idiot — I told Putin first.’” — SETH MEYERS“Yes, he heard that the guy came from down under and he thought, ‘Well, that’s where the submarines are, down under. He should know. If anyone should know, I should tell the down under guy.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Trump was just sealing the deal, OK? Following the old sales mantra: A.B.C. — always be compromising national security.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“OK, that’s not right. You can’t just give away our classified secrets without trading for some of Australia’s classified secrets, like how they make the Bloomin’ Onion.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Canadian indie rock band Metric performed their song “Just the Once” on Monday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightTroye Sivan, whose new album, “Something To Give Each Other,” will be released this week, will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutMadonna, here on her Blond Ambition tour, isn’t interviewed in “Madonna: A Rebel Life,” but thanks to voluminous media coverage over her career, she has lots to say in the book.Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesMary Gabriel’s new, three-pound biography, “Madonna: A Rebel Life,” is as thorough as the author could make it without interviewing her superstar subject. More

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      Do You Know These Science Fiction Novels That Became TV Shows?

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s monthly quiz about books that have been made into television shows, movies, theatrical productions and more. This month’s challenge is about science fiction novels from the past 60 years that were adapted into television shows. Tap or click your answers to the five questions below.New literary quizzes appear on the Book Review page every week and you can find previous installments in the Book Review Quiz Bowl archive online. More

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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Shining Vale’

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      The NBC skit show starts its 49th season, and the Starz show returns.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, Oct. 9-15. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) 8 p.m. on HBO. As the leaves start changing and pumpkin-flavored items hit grocery shelves, it is clear that spooky season has arrived. And what better way to get into the spirit than with one of the most revered psychological thrillers? Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a top student at the F.B.I. academy, is sent in as bait to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), in prison for murder and cannibalistic acts. Meanwhile, another serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill is on the loose and has a penchant for skinning his victims.TuesdayBET HIP-HOP AWARDS 9 p.m. on BET and VH1. Hosted by the Grammy-nominated artist Fat Joe, BET’S Hip-Hop Awards, which happened live on Oct. 3 are being broadcast this week, with performances by DaBaby, Fivio Foreign and Glorilla, to name a few, in honor of 50 years of hip-hop. There will also be a celebration for the 30th anniversary of the record label So So Def. In terms of awards, 21 Savage and Cardi B are tied for the most nominations with 12 each; Drake is right behind with nine.NO ACCIDENT 9 p.m. on HBO. In August 2017, hundreds of white nationalists rallied against the removal of a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va. When they marched into town and were met by counter protesters, a brawl ensued, leading to the death of one person and dozens injured. In 2021, a civil trial began to determine if the far-right organizers had plotted for violence at the rally. This documentary looks at the stories of plaintiffs and their injuries as well as an examination into the intentions of organizers.WednesdayFrom left: Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Woody Harrelson in “Zombieland.”Glen Wilson/Colombia PicturesZOMBIELAND (2009) 11:05 p.m. on Syfy. As someone who can’t stomach much gore but loves Jesse Eisenberg, this is the ideal movie for me. Though this movie takes place in a postapocalyptic, zombie-infested world, the story focuses instead on Columbus (Eisenberg) who teams up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) as they head West where there are apparently no zombies. This would be a good time to note that the characters are all named after their locations when the zombie apocalypse began. There’s a little bit of romance, lots of funny moments, an amazing cameo and a scene at an amusement park, where Eisenberg’s characters often find themselves (see: “Adventureland”).ThursdayHOUSE OF VILLAINS 10 p.m. on E! The reality villain queen herself, Omarosa Manigault Newman, is back on small screens this week alongside a whole slew of other familiar “we love to hate them” TV personalities, including Jax Taylor from “Vanderpump Rules,” Corinne Olympios from “The Bachelor” and Johnny Bananas from “The Challenge.” On this show, hosted by Joel McHale, the villains will have to form alliances and compete against one another for a $200,000 prize.FridaySHINING VALE 9 p.m. on Starz. Last season, this show started out with Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) moving with her family to a small town for a fresh start after she cheated on her husband, Terry Phelps (Greg Kinnear), but Pat could immediately sense something demonic happening in her new home. The new season starts off with Pat returning home after a breakdown, and there she finds out her daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney) doesn’t want to spend time with her and Terry cannot remember her after suffering a brain injury.A still from season one of “Creepshow.”Boris Martin/AMC, via ShudderCREEPSHOW 10 p.m. on AMC. Serving as a de facto continuation of the 1982 film of the same name, this anthology series is back for a fourth season. Each episode features two horror stories vignettes with all things supernatural, gruesome, terrifying and haunting.SaturdaySATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 11:30 p.m. on NBC. As another fall season rolls around, on Saturday night this show is going to be live from New York! Coming back for its 49th season, Studio 8H will be busy again, even amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. Pete Davidson is making his hosting debut after being a cast member on the show from 2014 to 2022. Ice Spice will be the musical guest, and on the following week’s episode Bad Bunny will serve as the host and musical guest.SundayNatascha McElhone and Mark Umbers in “Hotel Portofino.”Courtesy of Eagle Eye Drama LtdHOTEL PORTOFINO 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The first season of this show took place after World War I, as British travelers began vacationing in Italy. The second season, which begins this week, takes place in Portofino in the summer of 1927, with the Roaring ’20s are in full swing and Bella Ainsworth (Natascha McElhone) making sure that the Hotel Portofino is a success. More