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      John Cleese to Reboot ‘Fawlty Towers’ With His Daughter Camilla Cleese

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      Mr. Cleese will write and act alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese in a revival of the renowned BBC comedy.“Fawlty Towers,” the renowned 1970s British sitcom that starred John Cleese as a surly and snobbish hotel owner, will be rebooted with Mr. Cleese returning alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese, Castle Rock Entertainment announced on Tuesday.The original show, which Radio Times declared the best British sitcom of all time in 2019 after a survey of comedy experts, ran for two seasons of six episodes each, in 1975 and 1979. Mr. Cleese, now 83, played Basil Fawlty, who was forced to contend with disasters and ludicrous situations while displaying all the kindness and hospitality of sandpaper.In the reboot, Mr. Cleese’s character will open a boutique hotel with his daughter, whom he has just discovered he had, and deal with a more modern set of problems.Mr. Cleese, an original member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, has recently been dealing with a more modern set of problems in his real life as well.On social media, he has frequently railed against “cancel culture” and what he has deemed “woke” behaviors. He has signed up to host a show on GB News, a British right-wing television network, in which “no one will be canceled — and no topic will be too controversial for discussion,” the network said.In 2020, an episode of “Fawlty Towers” was removed from some streaming services because it contained racial slurs. Mr. Cleese called the decision “stupid,” telling the newspaper The Age that “if you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of you’re not broadcasting their views, you’re making fun of them.”Some fans have also accused him of transphobia for his comments in support of J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series.As with other British series in the 1970s, the original “Fawlty Towers” was shown in the United States on PBS. Despite interest from American broadcasters, the show’s small number of episodes and half-hour run time, without commercials, made it unable to fit American TV schedules.Castle Rock Entertainment did not say where the new series would air.Mr. Cleese said in a statement that he and his daughter developed the concept for the reboot with one of its executive producers, Matthew George, a producer of the films “Wind River” and “A Private War.”“When we first met, he offered an excellent first idea, and then Matt, my daughter Camilla, and I had one of the best creative sessions I can remember,” Mr. Cleese said. “By dessert, we had an overall concept so good that, a few days later, it won the approval of Rob and Michele Reiner. Camilla and I look forward enormously to expanding it into a series.”Mr. George, the Reiners and Derrick Rossi are the executive producers of the new “Fawlty Towers” series.“John Cleese is a comedy legend,” Mr. Reiner said in a statement. “Just the idea of working with him makes me laugh.”Amanda Holpuch More

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      The Trouble With Reboot TV

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      The reboot that changes nothing will be uncanny and lifeless; the one that thinks itself more clever than its predecessor will turn out cynical and sour. In life, you rarely get a second chance to do something right — so goes the shopworn cliché. Contemporary Hollywood is a different matter. If a property was even glancingly popular in the 1980s or ’90s, it seems, it’s either in the process of being resuscitated or has been already. “Reboot” is one of those coinages that burrows into the lexicon without ever being fully explained (at least to me), but it has clearly supplanted “remake,” migrating over from the language of computing such that you now imagine the entertainment industry pulling every last item from its junk drawer and plugging it in to see if it still works. So startlingly large is the number of rebooted series that the phenomenon has even inspired an original show: Hulu’s very funny “Reboot,” about a fictional garbage ’80s sitcom being brought back to life.Hollywood’s dependence on old intellectual property has been a source of hand-wringing for at least the past two decades, but a majority of those complaints have centered on the film world and its parade of blockbusters. It’s on television and streaming services, though, that all this grasping at the familiar has really reached an apotheosis, with three recent shows yielding some of the strangest gambits yet. One of them is distinguished by the threadbare rationale for its existence. Gen Xers like me sacrificed untold I.Q. points on the shoals of ’80s television, but even I look at the new incarnation of “Night Court” — among the less-remembered of NBC’s classic Thursday sitcoms, about a Manhattan judge who was also an accomplished magician — and marvel at its pointlessness. The original, which ran between 1984 and 1992, felt like a supersize sketch show and depicted weirdos and reprobates dragged before the court after hours, a parade of old-timey jokes about winos, flashers and sex workers. Later I would have occasion to learn firsthand that there is no such magical judge to slap you on the wrist and send you on your way when you get arrested at night.The labored premise of NBC’s hit new version puts us right back where we started: The now-deceased Judge Harry Stone (played by the great Harry Anderson in the original) has been replaced on the bench by his daughter. The show strikes a sort of nonaggression pact with the audience: It won’t be funny, but neither will it challenge or rearrange any of the psychological furniture of the original. Its selling point is stasis. When Dan Fielding — John Larroquette, returning from the original — finds himself “surprised” by fake snakes exploding from a box, an old Harry Stone gag, even he seems vaguely disappointed. Whom exactly is this show for? What is the point of making it about Stone’s daughter, rather than any judge in any night court? How do you generate nostalgia for something that wasn’t especially missed? This is the reboot at its most indecipherable, a miasma of reflexive nostalgia and boardroom guesswork. HBO Max’s new “Velma” operates on the opposite logic: It interrogates and deconstructs its source material so aggressively that it often turns abrasive. The program is an animated spinoff from the “Scooby-Doo” franchise — first produced for television in 1969 and then in various forms since, with a talking Great Dane and a group of young detectives traveling around in a van solving mysteries (Arthur Conan Doyle meets “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”) and unmasking ornery criminals who curse about how they “would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” (a Watergate-era mantra). This isn’t an especially offensive premise, which makes it difficult to understand the level of contempt “Velma” seems to have for it.One simple explanation may be that “Velma” sits in a lineage of dorm-room pop-culture deconstruction that became popular, during the 1990s, among a generation seized by the misapprehension that it was the first to discover irony. (This was my generation; in my early 20s, I briefly thought I was a genius for recognizing subtext in the cartoon “He-Man” that was actually just text.) The core of this aesthetic position is condescension — a belief that you, the astute modern viewer, are equipped with a sophisticated grasp of the medium, and the world, that eluded the credulous rubes who came before you. Programs that pander to this fantasy often skew mean, and “Velma” is meaner than most. There are some funny jokes, and Mindy Kaling voices the lead role with dyspeptic panache, but the series on the whole oozes molten hostility: It is viciously satirical, festooned with disturbing imagery, full of slapdash violence and kneejerk nihilism. Within its first two episodes, the original characters Fred and Daphne appear as a possibly psychopathic man-child and a glamorous drug dealer. Scooby-Doo makes no appearance at all. There are needling remarks about television’s checkered history of minority representation, and the showrunners seem to treat their reconception of Velma — making the character South Asian and moving her to the center of the story — as an act of bold subversion, but it’s not clear “Scooby-Doo” is a cultural monument of such gravity as to make those choices particularly brave. “Velma” mostly just wants to bite the hand that feeds it.Netflix’s reboot of “That ’70s Show” makes some rational sense, at least. The original sitcom chronicled the escapades of a group of cheerfully stoned and horny Wisconsin teenagers across the Carter administration. Its reincarnation, “That ’90s Show,” follows a parallel cabal of stoned and horny Clinton-era teenagers, who through some tortured story machinations end up pursuing their indolence in the very same Wisconsin basement, under the watch of the very same authority figures. All this is tactically coherent: It revives a cozy period piece while also capitalizing on the current youth vogue for all things ’90s.Unfortunately, the subtle warping of the space-time continuum is by orders of magnitude the most interesting thing about the show. Like so many family reunions, the overarching vibe is one of obligation. The pilot features a large swath of the original cast, but no one radiates much happiness at being back. Saddest of all is the return of Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp as the roost-​ruling adults. Unlike the younger actors reprising their roles, these two never get to leave; their characters are now tasked with spending their golden years still wisecracking at a bunch of teenagers.The logic of the television industry suggests that so many reboots exist for the simple reason that they stand a high chance of being popular, using a familiar idea to cut through a glut of programming. Distant number-crunching concludes that some substantial segment of NBC’s prime-time viewers, a demographic whose median age is around 60, may sooner revisit “Night Court” than sample something more novel; excellent Nielsen ratings bear that out. Judging by Netflix’s rush to reboot everything from “Full House” to “Lost in Space,” streaming services’ internal data must say similar things.These shows face a clear creative bind. The reboot that changes nothing will be uncanny and lifeless; the one that thinks itself more clever than its predecessor will turn out cynical and sour. Either way, the market will keep serving them to us. So often, on TV as in apps, research and algorithms seem to manifest our lowest impulses as an audience, even the ones we would rather not have — say, a weakness for stupefying predictability, a smug feeling of superiority or a comforting retreat into fuzzy-blanket familiarity. They know what makes us click, even when the answer isn’t pretty.Source photographs: Patrick Wymore/Netflix; Robert Sebree/20th Century Fox Film Corp., via Everett Collection. More

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      Jimmy Fallon Sounds Off on State of the Union Applause

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      “It was a tough night for all of Biden’s staffers watching from the White House, because every time people clapped, the lights went on and off,” Fallon 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.Clap HappyPresident Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address on Tuesday night.Despite having filmed “The Tonight Show” before the address, Jimmy Fallon accurately predicted that “Democrats spent the night clapping for Biden.”“It wasn’t for anything he said, they were just trying to keep him awake.” — JIMMY FALLON“It was a tough night for all of Biden’s staffers watching from the White House, because every time people clapped, the lights went on and off.” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s the same thing every year: One side stands and claps, the other side sits still, not having any fun. It reminds me of my cousin’s wedding: [imitating a shouting relative] ‘I give it six months!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Now, Biden also talked about his achievements. He said, ‘We passed an infrastructure bill, we reduced inflation and we finally convinced Tom Brady to retire, so I think it’s a great year.’” — JIMMY FALLON“In his speech, Biden called for bipartisanship and unity. He was like, ‘As Democrats and Republicans, we have one common goal to mishandle classified documents.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Balloon Assassination Victory Lap Edition)“President Biden delivered his second State of the Union address tonight. Oh, you mean his balloon assassination victory lap?” — SETH MEYERS“Now Biden’s speech took place after we taped this show, but according to a preview from the White House, Biden used the opportunity to call for a so-called ‘billionaire tax,’ at which point, billionaires yelled ‘Good luck with that!’ and blasted off to Mars.” — JAMES CORDEN“There was wall-to-wall coverage of the State of the Union on all the major networks, like NBC, ABC and CBS. Meanwhile, Netflix is, like, ‘ka-ching!” — JIMMY FALLON“And according to reports, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy personally requested that Biden not use the phrase ‘extreme MAGA Republicans’ during the State of the Union address. He asked Biden to please use a more inclusive term, like ‘insurrectionist Americans.’” — JAMES CORDEN“That wasn’t all. McCarthy also asked Biden not to call George Santos an ‘extremely delusional Republican,’ but instead refer to him by his correct title, ‘seven-time Grand Slam winner George Santos.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe model and entrepreneur Ashley Graham stopped by “The Daily Show” to “keep it real” in a conversation about body confidence with the guest host Chelsea Handler.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe singer-songwriter Regina Spektor will perform on Wednesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutAMC said its new pricing system would not apply to tickets for discounted Tuesday screenings or screenings before 4 p.m.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesThe AMC theater chain has announced a new pricing structure that will charge moviegoers based on their seat location. More

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      Grammys 2023: Hip-Hop Wins, Beyoncé Wins (Sort of)

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe major awards at this year’s Grammys were split: Harry Styles won album of the year, Lizzo took record of the year and Bonnie Raitt received song of the year. Beyoncé, nominated in each of those categories, won none of them.Which is to say another year, another set of Grammy shrugs for Beyoncé, who despite the ongoing snubs in major categories, is now the most awarded artist in Grammy history, with a total of 32 wins.Whether Grammy respect has meaning was an ongoing theme Sunday night, underscoring Beyoncé’s wins and losses, as well as the elaborate hip-hop history segment that ran through 50 years of the genre in 15 minutes, bringing many rap legends to the Grammy stage for the first time ever.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the Grammys finally reckoning with hip-hop’s long legacy and impact, the show’s ongoing tug of war with Beyoncé and the ways it might remain relevant in the future.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The New York TimesConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      A ‘Bag of Helium’ Helps Chelsea Handler Start Her ‘Daily Show’ Guest Stint

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      Handler poked fun at the Chinese surveillance balloon that a U.S. fighter jet shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday.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.I SpyChelsea Handler kicked off her week of hosting “The Daily Show” with jokes about the Chinese balloon that a U.S. fighter jet shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday.Handler said she felt bad for President Biden: “Obama got to order the assassination of bin Laden, and all he gets to do is murder a bag of helium.”“But, hey, why not shoot it when you have a trillion-dollar defense budget and all of these rock-hard missiles lying around? Trump must be so jealous.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“And, as you heard, this balloon was the size of three buses. I love measuring things in buses. And for the rich people out there who don’t know what a bus is, they’re those big yellow vehicles that bring Matt Gaetz’s girlfriends to school.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“What I don’t get is, why does China even need to send this balloon in the first place? They’re already spying on us with TikTok. Is it possible that the Chinese spies became the first people ever to get sick of TikTok? Were they like, ‘I swear to God, if I see one more basic [expletive] make lasagna in a slow cooker.’” — CHELSEA HANDLER“And, by the way: China, if you’re listening, which you obviously are, next time, why you don’t make your balloon the color blue, so we can’t see it in the sky? Or if you’re going to make it white, at least write ‘the moon’ on it. No one here will know the difference. I certainly won’t.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“So the balloon went over Alaska, and then it went through Canada and then into U.S. airspace. And, by the way, Canada, thanks for the heads up on that.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“Canada saw the balloon, and they were like, ‘Oh, look, one of those Chinese lanterns!’” — CHELSEA HANDLERThe Punchiest Punchlines (Big Balloon Edition)“The only way this balloon could have had a higher profile is if it had its own Instagram account.” — SETH MEYERS“This balloon did more traveling than a high school senior taking a gap year before college. True story: It already has diamond medallion status on Delta.” — SETH MEYERS“Just to screw with Fox News, Biden should have announced that he was inviting the balloon to appear in this year’s Thanksgiving Day parade.” — SETH MEYERS“The balloon floated from Montana to South Carolina. Somehow it got across the country faster than someone flying Southwest.” — JIMMY FALLON“But the U.S. really didn’t have a choice. The only other option was to rub the balloon on Bernie Sanders and stick it to Canada.” — JIMMY FALLON“On the bright side, from now on when your kid’s birthday balloon pops and they’re upset, you can just go, ‘No, it was a Chinese spy balloon, Timmy. The Chinese can’t spy on us anymore, you’re a patriot!’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden shared his thoughts on Grammys fashion on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe comedian Tig Notaro, who stars in the film “Your Place or Mine,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutWith her fourth victory on Sunday, Beyoncé set the record for most Grammy wins by any artist.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesShe may not have walked away with Album of the Year, but Beyoncé broke the record for most Grammy victories ever after adding four more trophies on Sunday. More

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      Mushrooms Aren’t Here to Destroy Us — Or to Save Us

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      The fictional fungus in “The Last of Us” touched a collective nerve. When it comes to mushrooms, we just can’t keep our cool.It’s grim, but in every post-apocalyptic story line, I wait for the moment when the characters float their theories about how the world fell apart, hoping to glean something useful.In HBO’s series “The Last of Us,” survivors of a global pandemic live in harsh, government-controlled quarantine zones to evade a parasitic fungus that turns them into zombies. Joel, a smuggler in what remains of Boston, believes that the ophiocordyceps mutation was delivered through the food system — contaminated batches of globally shipped flour or sugar spread the disease too quickly and efficiently for any kind of recall. Over the course of a long weekend, humanity was wrecked.The setup sounds pretty conventional for the zombie-thriller genre, but since the series premiered in January, the response has been a bit sweaty — panicked, even. Mycologists, fungal biologists and other mushroom-world experts have been called on, over and over, to assure us that while cordyceps species that zombify insects are real, a cordyceps mutation that thrives in humans is pure fiction.What got us so rattled?The fictional cordyceps mutation in HBO’s zombie-thriller series “The Last of Us” takes fear of fungus to the extreme.Warner MediaPaul Stamets, one of the country’s best-known mycologists, enjoyed the first two episodes of the show, but posted afterward on Facebook to emphasize the fact that no, cordyceps really aren’t capable of all that. “It is natural for humans to fear that which is powerful, but mysterious and misunderstood,” he wrote, wondering if the show played on our deep-seated fear of mushrooms.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.There are around 1.5 million species of fungi, a kingdom that is neither plant nor animal, and they’re some of the strangest and most marvelous life-forms on the planet, both feared and revered. But our relationship with mushrooms, particularly in the West, can be fraught — and not just because misidentifying one might be dangerous.In nature, mushrooms happily appear under the grossest and most fractious circumstances, when little else will. They can signal death, thriving in damp, dark rot, blooming in decomposition and nimbly decaying organic matter. Nevermind that this process is vital and regenerative (and, witnessed in a time-lapse, weirdly beautiful), it really freaks us out.When the artist Jae Rhim Lee wondered if it was possible for us to make a collective cultural shift, to approach death and its rituals differently, and to make smaller environmental impacts when we die, she designed a burial suit seeded with mushrooms. Nothing could be more natural — or more horrifyingly taboo — than, instead of eating mushrooms, inviting the mushrooms to eat us.Bioluminescent mushrooms, seen here in Gangwon Province, South Korea, glow in the dark.Video by Imazins / Getty ImagesMushrooms have a way of making us consider the things we prefer to avoid. Though this hasn’t stopped us from eating them — mushrooms are an ancient food source.The “stoned ape theory,” which imagines fungus as central to our evolution, was animated in Louie Schwartzberg’s terrifically pro-mushroom documentary, “Fantastic Fungi.” One scene shows how early humans might have eaten mushrooms, including psychedelic ones, off animal dung as they tracked prey across the savanna, then collectively tripped their way toward language, weaponry, music and more.Small, round buttons are the most cozy, familiar and recognizable of our edible mushrooms now, but there are hundreds of varieties we can eat (without tripping). In the pockets of wilderness around my home in Los Angeles, you might find brownish-orange candy caps, wild, yellowish frills of chanterelles and clusters of long-gilled oyster mushrooms. After rain, in the shady nooks of my own backyard, I see shaggy parasols pop up from time to time, as if by magic.In “The Last of Us” a warming climate weaponizes mushrooms against humans — a global disaster of our own making. But in reality, if you scratch just below the surface of our fear, you’ll find quite the opposite: an almost unreasonable expectation that mushrooms will rescue us, clean up our messes, do our dirty work and reverse all of the damage we’re doing to the earth. It’s true that there are species capable of breaking down oils in saltwater, absorbing radiation and cleaning toxins from the soil, though it’s also true that they might have better things to do.A handful of shaggy parasols, a common mushroom with a tousled cap.Deagostini Picture Library / Getty ImagesMushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the mycelium, rootlike threads that connect underground in a vast mycorrhizal matrix so complex, intelligent and essential, Mr. Stamets has called it “the neurological network of nature.”That material, which also stores large amounts of carbon underground and can help plant life survive drought and other stress, is being used to develop alternatives to leathers, plastics, packaging and building materials. (Adidas made a concept shoe using a mycelium-based material last year, which led the company to discuss its “journey to create a more sustainable world.”)Lately, we expect mushrooms to save us, too. The zealous interest in adaptogenic mushrooms — fungi species used medicinally for centuries in China and other parts of Asia — has created an international market for lion’s mane, reishi, chaga and cordyceps. We turn to mushrooms to ease our anxiety, to help us focus, to make us happier and more open-minded, to make us horny, to make our skin glow, to enhance our memory, to get us to sleep.Mushrooms are magnificent. But maybe anxiety over a fictional fungus reflects a flickering awareness that we are, in fact, asking a bit too much of them.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The 7 Toughest Days on Earth’ and Super Bowl LVII

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      A new adventure series is on National Geographic, the Super Bowl airs on Fox, and President Biden delivers his second State of the Union address.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, Feb. 6-12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMartinique Lewis in “Black Travel Across America.”Victoria Donfor/National Geographic for DisneyBLACK TRAVEL ACROSS AMERICA 10 p.m. on National Geographic. Beginning in 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem-based postal worker, published an annual “Green Book” series for three decades. Serving as a travel guidebook for Black Americans in a time of segregation and racial strife (and in 2018 lending its title to the Oscar-winning movie), the book provided a list of hotels, restaurants and service stations from Connecticut to California where Black American patrons would not only be served, but be safe. In this documentary, the travel consultant Martinique Lewis embarks on a coast-to-coast road trip to visit historic “Green Book” locations and speak to local experts about the businesses that acted as safe havens.TuesdaySTATE OF THE UNION 2023 9 p.m. on ABC, CBS, Fox, HBO and NBC. President Biden’s second State of the Union speech will be his first appearance before a Republican-led House of Representatives. “He looks forward to speaking with Republicans, Democrats and the country about how we can work together to continue building an economy that works from the bottom up and the middle out, keep boosting our competitiveness in the world, keep the American people safe and bring the country together,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.THE 7 TOUGHEST DAYS ON EARTH 10 p.m. on National Geographic. This unscripted adventure series follows Dwayne Fields, an adventurer and explorer known for being the first Black British citizen to reach the North Pole, as he works to keep himself and a small film crew alive for seven days in some of the most extreme environments on earth, during their deadliest times of year. From the glaciers of Kyrgyzstan to the deserts of Oman, Fields must guide his crew through the elements to a specified extraction point. Their journey begins in Tuesday’s premiere in the forests of Gabon.WednesdayGina Rodriguez in “Not Dead Yet.”Eric McCandless/ABCNOT DEAD YET 8:30 p.m. on ABC. Adapted from the book “Confessions of a Forty-Something ____ Up” by Alexandra Potter comes a new series from the creators of “This Is Us” and “The Real O’Neals.” Starring the Golden Globe Award-winning actress Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”) as Nell Stevens, a broke obituary writer who can communicate with the dead, the series follows Nell as she works to find herself and restart the life and career she left a decade ago.ThursdayTHE KING AND I (1956) 8 p.m. on TCM. This Oscar-winning musical film tells the timeless story of an English governess named Anna (Deborah Kerr) who travels to modern-day Thailand as a tutor for the 15 children of the King of Siam (Yul Brynner). Adapted from the Tony-winning 1951 musical of the same name, based on the 1944 novel “Anna and the King of Siam” by Margaret Landon (which in turn was inspired by the memoirs written by Anna Leonowens, a teacher to the children of King Mongkut in the 1860s), the film is beloved for its award-winning score and exploration of cultural differences. In a 1996 column for The New York Times, Margo Jefferson described the story as a “seductive and spectacular artifact” that was “based on facts and fictions about the Orient and the British Empire a century earlier; an extravaganza in which East meets West, a monarchy meets a matriarchy and operatic melodrama meets ethnic vaudeville.”FridayBen Affleck and Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl.”Merrick Morton/20th Century FoxGONE GIRL (2014) 10:15 p.m. on HBOSGe. Based on the 2012 best seller by Gillian Flynn, who also wrote the screenplay, “Gone Girl” follows the alternating narratives of the husband and wife Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), as an investigation mounts once Amy is discovered missing and Nick becomes a suspect in her disappearance. The Times critic Manohla Dargis described the film as “a ghastly vision” in her review of the movie. “At its strongest,” she added, “‘Gone Girl’ plays like a queasily, at times gleefully, funny horror movie about a modern marriage.”SaturdayA SOLDIER’S STORY (1984) and SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960) 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TCM. This week’s selection for Turner Classic Movies’ Black History Month Saturdays features two films that focus on the Black experience in the Army. First is the Academy Award-nominated “A Soldier’s Story,” which Lawrence van Gelder described in his 1984 review for The Times as mixing “mystery, history, sociology and inquiry into the psychopathology of hatred and the poison of accommodation to injustice.” Based on Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Soldier’s Play,” a loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd,” the film is set in rural Louisiana during World War II and tells the story of Capt. Richard Davenport (Howard Rollins Jr.), a JAG officer who has been called in to investigate the murder of Vernon Waters (Adolph Caesar), a sergeant in an all-Black Army unit. “Sergeant Rutledge” continues this exploration of themes of racial prejudice and justice. Set in the Southwest in the post‐Civil War years, it follows Braxton Rutledge (Woody Strode), a sergeant in one of four all-Black units, as he is tried in the rape and killing of a white girl and the slaying of her father, his commanding officer. Directed by the four-time Oscar-winning director John Ford, “Sergeant Rutledge” represents a shift in the racial consciousness of Ford’s work.SundayPUPPY BOWL XIX 2 p.m. on Animal Planet. Returning for its 19th year, Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl is a call-to-adoption television event that highlights the work of a range of animal rescues and shelters while adoptable puppies “compete” in a series of games. This year’s Puppy Bowl will feature over 120 puppies from 67 shelters, some of whom viewers will learn about in more depth over the course of the three-hour special (in addition to a number of featured kittens during “Kitty Halftime”).SUPER BOWL LVII 6:30 p.m. on Fox. Fox Sports presents its live coverage from State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., as the AFC champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, play the NFC champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in a battle for the ultimate title. This year’s game is notable for being the first Super Bowl to feature two Black quarterbacks, and the first time a set of brothers will be competing against one another. The 2023 game also pits Andy Reid, the head coach for Kansas City, against Philadelphia, for which Reid was head coach from 1999 to 2012. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Truck Stop

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      This week, Joel and Ellie’s bond deepened during an unplanned stay in Kansas City. They should have tried Des Moines instead.‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Please Hold My Hand’For a long stretch of this week’s episode of “The Last of Us,” it looks as if not much is going to happen, and that maybe this week we’ll just have “The Chill Road-Trip Adventures of Joel and Ellie.” They listen to some Hank Williams. Joel teaches Ellie how to siphon gas from parked cars — though when he fumblingly tries to explain the physics behind it, she flashes a wicked smile and says, “You don’t know.”They eat some 20-year-old Chef Boyardee ravioli. (It’s good!) Ellie finds a book of puns at a gas station and torments Joel with jokes like: “What did the mermaid wear to her math class? An algae bra.”The fun can’t last, alas. About a third of the way through the episode, our heroes hit a blocked road in Kansas City, and while trying to find an alternative route through downtown, they are ambushed and then ultimately caught in the crossfire of a power struggle involving a local militia. In the initial melee, they crash Bill’s truck. All things considered, they probably should have driven through Des Moines.By the time the closing credits roll, there is a lot we still don’t know about the predicament in which Joel and Ellie find themselves. We know that the K.C. militia — which has “WE THE PEOPLE” emblazoned on its armored vehicles — is headquartered in a Quarantine Zone that FEDRA abandoned. We know its leader, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey), is so ice-cold that she executes her old family doctor. We know Kathleen is on a rampage against FEDRA “collaborators,” and that as part of that mission she is looking for someone named Henry, who is with someone named Sam: a child, apparently, who draws pictures of himself and Henry as superheroes.We know that Henry and Sam were recently hiding out in a building where the concrete foundation is breaking up and rippling, perhaps because of some cordyceps/infected activity going on underground. And we know that next week, Joel and Ellie are going to have do deal with the two guns pointing at the episode’s cliffhanger ending.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.Assuming our heroes don’t immediately die next week — a pretty safe assumption with five episodes remaining — what mattered most to the story this episode was that the trouble in Kansas City deepened Joel and Ellie’s bond, forcing them to be more honest with each other.After shooting his way out of immediate danger, Joel is surprised by an attacker who nearly chokes him to death. No longer able to keep her gun a secret, Ellie shoots and neutralizes the attacker but doesn’t kill him. That’s one cat out of the bag.When the attacker hands over his knife and pleads for his life — his name is Brian, he tells Ellie in a clear attempt to humanize himself, adding: “We can trade with you! We can be friends!” — Ellie hesitates to finish him off. But Joel has been at this survival game for a while. He snatches Elle’s gun and tells her to hide behind a wall so she won’t see how vicious he has to be with that knife.The moment forces more honesty to the surface. Joel, regretting the burden he assumes Ellie must feel for having shot someone for the first time, learns that she is not wide-eyed innocent he believed. She has, in fact, hurt somebody before. As for himself, he must be honest that he obviously needs her — and her willingness to pull a trigger — more than he wanted to.Unfortunately for both of them, that guy Brian? His dying offer to take them to his mom was probably a pretty good indication that his mother was Kathleen. (Her restrained reaction to the sight of his dead body more or less confirms it.) No way that doesn’t come back to haunt them.By the end of the episode, as they climb 33 flights of stairs in a skyscraper to find someplace safe to sleep, Joel and Ellie are exhibiting an increased level of trust that they can protect each other. So naturally, this is when they get awakened in the middle of the night by two new characters wielding guns, one who appears to be in his 20s, the other just a boy. They’re likely Henry and Sam, given that the younger one wears a painted-on superhero mask.This kind of existential threat was always there, even as Joel and Ellie were just rambling down mostly empty roads, cracking jokes. Even then they couldn’t stop to rest without wondering who or what might be lurking, ready to terminate their adventure.This is what makes Ellie — and Bella Ramsey’s multilayered performance — so pivotal to this story. She isn’t living in fear; she is embracing whatever life she has left. She is surprisingly aware of much of the pre-apocalyptic world — enough so that she can make knowing jokes about the gay porn magazine she finds in the back of Bill’s truck. But she over-romanticizes the past too. When Joel talks about how in the old days the gasoline supplies hadn’t broken down and people could drive for more than an hour on a full tank, Ellie eagerly asks, “Where did you go?” The answer: “Pretty much nowhere.”At one point, Joel says that even though he doesn’t believe this fallen world will ever rise again, he keeps surviving “for family” — while also pointedly telling Ellie that she is just “cargo.” But his attitude is clearly changing; it’s awfully hard not to find Ellie charming. Partnering with her is becoming more than just an obligation.Of course, the Kathleens of the world have family too. Things are likely to get more complicated.Side QuestsA great example of how delightfully puckish Ellie can be: While bedding down for the night in the woods, her tone turns all grave and urgent as she says to Joel, “Can I ask you a serious question?” When he says she can, she asks, “Why did the scarecrow get an award?” (Joel knows that one: “Because he was out standing in his field.”)Once again there is no pre-credits scene in this episode; and for the first time, there is no flashback. The closest we get to returning to the past is when Joel tells Ellie about Tommy, explaining that his brother — a “joiner” by nature — has spent the plague years connecting with anyone who claims to have a plan to fix the world, while sometimes dragging Joel along. Later in the episode, after Joel starts letting his guard down around Ellie, he admits that during his vagabond days with Tommy and Tess, he sometimes set up the kind of ambush traps that they met with in Kansas City.I love the contrast between Bill’s well-preserved old truck and all the rusting junk that Joel and Ellie drive past. Two weeks ago, I praised the work of the show’s digital effects artists for filling the backgrounds of shots with astonishing-looking ruins. (Example this week: a collapsed train trestle on the horizon, with railroad cars dangling.) But I must also tip a cap to the production designer John Paino, whose team built the crumbling physical spaces that Joel and Ellie move through — from the trashed gas stations to the wreckage-strewn Kansas City streets.When Ellie takes a whiff of Joel’s percolated campfire coffee, she recoils, then later asks, “That’s seriously what those Starbucks in the Q.Z. used to sell?” Good to know that even after society collapsed, Starbucks stuck around. More