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      Flowers and Fake Marble: How TV Production Designers Create the Past

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      The people who designed the look of “The Buccaneers,” “The Gilded Age,” “Lessons in Chemistry” and “The Continental” discuss the importance of gilding, sledgehammers and eBay.“I always say that if there were a marble Olympics, our team would definitely take the gold,” Bob Shaw bragged.Shaw, the Emmy-winning production designer of the HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” was discussing the painstaking effort and maddening attention to detail that goes into painting a wooden column so that the camera can’t help but read it as stone. The scenic artists of “The Gilded Age” can paint a half-dozen distinct marble varieties. To pause at nearly any frame of the show is to marvel at the meticulous mix of authentic materials and brilliant fakes. Look closely at the candelabras, for example: They are fitted with fire-safe LEDs hooked to wavering filaments that substitute for open flame.Though production design is often seen as a mere backdrop to the action, the scenery, furnishings, finishes and props have their own stories to tell. And these stories are often especially intricate in period dramas, in which a need for accuracy must accommodate narrative demands and the constraints of a show’s budget.The New York Times spoke to the production designers of four shows that collectively span a century this fall: Amy Maguire of “The Buccaneers,” set in the 1870s; Shaw of “The Gilded Age,” set in the 1880s; Cat Smith of “Lessons in Chemistry,” set in the 1950s; and Drew Boughton of “The Continental: From the World of John Wick,” set in the 1970s. Focusing on one exemplary set each, from a castle’s reception rooms to a dream garden to a kitchen nightmare to a hotel lobby, the designers discussed the challenges and rewards of stepping back in time with high-definition cameras watching.Hemmed in by historyDesigners for “The Buccaneers” sought to highlight the contrast between the staid rooms of the English aristocracy, like this one, and the flashy interiors of the New York girls.Apple TV+Based on Edith Wharton’s posthumously published novel “The Buccaneers,” premiering on Apple TV+ on Nov. 8, follows five nouveau riche American girls who travel to England in search of titled husbands. In designing the show, which was shot in Scotland, Maguire had to highlight the contrast between the exuberant, flashy interiors of the girls’ New York homes and the more staid spaces inhabited and inherited by the English aristocracy.The most significant of these is Tintagel Castle, the home of Theo, Duke of Tintagel (Guy Remmers), the show’s most eligible bachelor. A real Tintagel Castle exists, but it is inconveniently a ruin; the filmed one needed to have rather more solidity. “That feeling of ancestral weight and inherited status,” Maguire said.So she and the locations team found a substitute in Drumlanrig Castle, in Dumfriesshire. Exteriors were borrowed from other places, chiefly Culzean Castle, which is situated on cliffs above the sea, lending the place a feeling of the sublime.For the castle’s interiors, Maguire chose rich, deep tones for the upholstery and silk paneling, often coordinating them with Drumlanrig’s real art collection. “The private art collections in these buildings are just obscene,” she said. “So it really felt like you were surrounded, almost hemmed in, by the history.” That worked for the story, showing how out of place these boisterous heiresses feel in these weighty, formal spaces.The rooms built in the studio near Edinburgh had to match the real ones, mirroring every wood grain type, every shade of gilded paint. Maguire joked that the production used every stick of antique furniture in London’s prop houses.For the American spaces, Maguire used other historic homes, including Manderston House and Gosford House, as well as some of Glasgow’s cityscape. These spaces were designed to be lighter, more modern, more femme. Wharton’s girls have all the money in the world, and these spaces had to show it, in marble and silver and extravagant floral display. The bright colors and clashing patterns are meant to a suggest what a teenage girl with no limit to her budget or imagination might choose.“It’s kind of toeing the line between gaudy and just enough taste,” Maguire said.A slightly less gilded ageFor one sequence in the new season of “The Gilded Age,” designers turned a staircase into an approximation of scenery from the opera “Faust.”Barbara Nitke/HBOFlowers were not enough.In the first season of “The Gilded Age,” the home of Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), the wife of a railroad magnate (Morgan Spector), was garlanded with fields of flowers for each social event. So even though the script for the first episode of Season 2, which premieres on HBO on Oct. 29, described the Russell home as resplendent with flowers, Shaw knew he had to do more.In a scene at the close of the episode, Bertha, a patron of the nascent Metropolitan Opera, arranges a surprise performance of a song from Gounod’s “Faust” by the Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson. While her guests are dining, her sumptuous staircase is transformed into Marguerite’s garden. There are flowers, yes, a mix of real and artificial ones, garlanding the railings. But above the staircase are several panels of hand-painted Italian scenery, as would have been seen in the opera houses of the day.“It was a challenge to have it be beautiful and evocative and tasteful and not be cute,” Shaw said. “It conveys that Bertha goes to extremes beyond what anyone could imagine to get what she wants.”The result is ostentatious but still gorgeous. This is a line that Shaw and his team often walk, on lush carpeting. “The Gilded Age” dramatizes the conflict between new money, like the Russells, and old money, like their near neighbors, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon). The excesses of the new money crowd gave the Gilded Age its name, but whether in the studio or filming on location in various historic homes, Shaw balances lavishness with restraint.“In all of the houses that we did, we had to back off a little bit from the 100 percent period look,” Shaw said. “Because it’s too much visual information for modern eyes.” He is careful to avoid using the set decoration, a combination of period furniture and scenic art, to judge or insult the characters.“They’re more complex,” he said. “They’re not simply out to say, ‘Anything you can have I can have bigger.’”Sexist sceneryBrie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry.” The pink kitchen set is designed to reflect what 1950s TV executives assumed women would want.Apple TV+Smith designed the perfect kitchen for “Lessons in Chemistry,” immersing herself in the most technologically advanced appliances and finishes the late 1950s could offer. Then she showed her findings to Brie Larson, an executive producer and a star of the series, premiering on Oct. 13 on Apple TV+. Larson plays Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist who finds herself hosting “Supper at Six,” a popular cooking show.Larson loved Smith’s ideas for the “Supper at Six” kitchen, Smith recalled, saying it was just what Elizabeth would have chosen. But that was a problem: Throughout the series, based on the best seller by Bonnie Garmus, Elizabeth is stymied in her career by men who resent her, distrust her, believe they know better. The show set, Larson reasoned, would be dictated not by Elizabeth’s taste but by what the station executives assumed women would want. That’s how the kitchen became so frilly and so worryingly pink.Having studied both “I Love Lucy” and Julia Child’s “The French Chef,” Smith settled on a lightened version of Benjamin Moore’s Cat’s Meow, which resembles the interior of a particularly girlie seashell. The kitchen island and lower cabinets have turquoise detailing, meant to provide some contrast, particularly in the black-and-white shots. The appliances are all period-appropriate — they don’t actually work, but water or propane can be piped through when necessary.“We were very specific about what was available and what wasn’t,” Smith said. “Strangely enough, you can find most of these things on eBay.”The wallpaper, a nightmare of stripes and cherries, came courtesy of a Los Angeles company that scans and prints retro patterns. The linoleum tile was tougher to find, but it was eventually sourced, too. There are lacy curtains on the windows, and knickknacks — figurines, wax fruit, cozies — on every flat surface. During her first broadcast, Elizabeth orders these tchotchkes removed. Later, she brings in scientific equipment.The set illustrates a tension between form and function, which the series mirrors. Because Elizabeth looks a certain way, the men in power expect her to conform to certain behaviors. In a lab coat and pedal pushers, she defies those expectations.This show kitchen isn’t practical or comfortable, and it seems too pink a space for fomenting liberation. But in Elizabeth’s hands, that’s what it becomes.Creative destructionMishel Prada, left, and Sallay Garnett in “The Continental.” The lobby set was first meticulously crafted and then destroyed.Katalin Vermes/StarzThe Continental Hotel, a luxury property with an all-assassin clientele, is a staple of the John Wick films. Those movies used the facade of Lower Manhattan’s Beaver Building to represent the hotel. But for “The Continental: From the World of John Wick,” a three-part prequel mini-series debuting on Peacock on Sept. 22, the owners of the building declined to grant the rights to its image.Boughton described this denial as “an obstacle with an opportunity inside.” He designed a new facade — more rococo, more redolent of a secret society — and he took a similarly expansive approach to the Continental’s lobby.Even in the earlier films, the lobby had undergone different iterations. “So many films have deep concerns about being consistent and making sure this is just so, and the Wick world doesn’t do that,” he said. “They just do art. So in many ways, it was one of the most liberating things.”The series was shot in Budapest, and for this version of the lobby, meant to represent the Continental in 1970s New York, the production filmed in the British embassy, which boasts a dazzling skylight. Because the series takes place in a moment of violent transition for the hotel, Boughton and his team filled that space with nods to the 1970s — a cigarette vending machine, a bank of phone booths, upholstery in shades of avocado and rust — along with details that look backward to the beaux arts period.“It’s a Frankenstein of styles,” Boughton said.Boughton created a new version of the guest services desk, staffed by Charon (Lance Reddick in the films, Ayomide Aden here). While Boughton confessed that he had saved on the upholstery — those sofas are not upholstered in real leather — the bar is real walnut, which gave it the necessary heft on camera before and after its destruction.If you have seen a John Wick movie, it isn’t a spoiler to suggest that the lobby may sustain some collateral damage. Which means that Boughton had to design it twice: once in pristine form and once post-catastrophe. (That catastrophe is achieved by a crew armed with sledgehammers and drills.)“There is some sadness when you see a beautifully manufactured walnut bar just smashed to bits,” Boughton admitted. But he also said that what he called the “aftermath” scenes were about as much fun as a production designer could have on set, taking all of that hard work and, for the good of the story, savaging it.“It’s quite a kick,” he said. More

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      ‘My Hero Academia’: The Anime Coco Gauff Watches Prematch

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      “I watched like four or five episodes of ‘My Hero Academia’ before I played,” she said after advancing to the U.S. Open final.What do the best athletes do in their downtime? Perhaps stretch, strategize on their game, sure. But those really looking to level up take a different approach: watching anime.Or at least that’s what the 19-year-old American tennis sensation Coco Gauff does. Gauff, who qualified for her first U.S. Open singles final on Thursday night by defeating Karolina Muchova, said that her postmatch plans would include watching anime. In particular, Gauff said, she’s a fan of “My Hero Academia.” When asked how she would be spending the rest of her evening, Gauff responded: “Press. Treatment. Watch some anime. No, literally today I watched like four or five episodes of ‘My Hero Academia’ before I played.”“My Hero Academia” is an adaptation of a popular superhero manga series that started in 2014 and takes place in a world where almost everyone has a “quirk,” or superpower. Quirks range from something of the Marvel variety (like the ability to throw fiery blasts) to the more outlandish (like the power to manipulate denim). Izuku Midoriya, a young superhero fanboy, is one of the rare “quirkless” individuals, though he still dreams of somehow becoming the top hero. When Midoriya is finally gifted with powers, he enrolls in a prestigious academy where the students learn how to become part of the next generation of superheroes.“My Hero Academia” is an adaptation of a popular superhero manga series that takes place in a world where almost everyone has a “quirk,” or superpower. FunimationA buoyant yet tender action-comedy, “M.H.A.” is one of today’s more mainstream anime, with a following that includes both hard-core fans of the genre and the occasional dabblers. (The show’s seventh season is scheduled to drop next year.) Its success isn’t hard to explain: the massive, colorful cast of heroes and the dubious, fantastically powered villains offer a playful new take on the superhero craze. The escalating arcs, and the themes of ambition, friendship and justice, also place “M.H.A.” among the ranks of beloved anime franchises such as “Naruto,” “Bleach” and “One Piece,” all of which have had crossover appeal with American audiences.“My Hero Academia” is available to stream on Hulu, Crunchyroll and Funimation. The best way to get into this superpowered coming-of-age series is to start from the beginning and follow Midoriya from his muggle days through his development to an exemplary hero-in-training (and even a hero intern).Midoriya’s journey in particular — in which he must train himself physically, mentally and emotionally to master his new abilities and then face off against villains and his peers on top of classes and exams — may most appeal to those looking to achieve their own heroic feats. After all, the show’s inspirational, if redundant, catchphrase is “Go beyond! Plus ultra.” For “M.H.A.” fans, whether they’re going for a jog around the block or preparing for the biggest matches of their career, going beyond means not just being good, but being extraordinary. More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 5 Recap: A Plan Starts to Form

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      Half the traders at Prince Cap became involved in a plot against their boss. They just didn’t know it.Season 7, Episode 5: ‘The Gulag Archipelago’Let’s do a little narrative reverse engineering, shall we?Imagine, if you will, that you are a both a trader and a traitor — a high-powered executive at a major investment fund, looking to fatally undermine your own boss in order to stop him from becoming the president of the United States.Your Plan A, recruiting your even more dangerous old boss to stop him, has failed. You’re tired of waiting around for your performance-coach colleague, the ringleader of your band of mutineers, to generate a Plan B. It becomes clear that coming up with Plan C is up to you.So you generate some short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for this plan. In the short term, you need something that will cost your hated boss enough money to rattle his cage. In the medium term, you’d like to generate doubt and dissension among his key employees, as well as elsewhere on the Street. In the long term, you want to increase the power available to a member of your own inner circle to make mischief — enough power, you hope, to engineer the fatal mistake that will take your boss down for good.It isn’t revealed until the closing moments of this week’s episode of “Billions,” but this is precisely the action driving most of this week’s financial activity on the Prince Cap side of the story. It all looks innocent enough: Pivoting off a birthday balloon-inspired brainstorm by Dollar Bill, Taylor uncovers the opportunity to invest big in a helium processing start-up. The price of admission, however, exceeds that which Taylor and Philip are authorized to spend in the absence of their target — ahem, boss — Mike Prince, and his lieutenant, Scooter. Even after the formidable Victor somehow secures an extension of the investment window, it’s all a matter of sitting around, waiting for Mike and Scooter to answer their phones.And where are those phones? In a secure bag at a remote church where the rapper Killer Mike is previewing his new album. Mike and Scooter are determined to secure the artist-slash-activist’s endorsement, even though Mike’s campaign manager, Bradford, told them to steer clear of this thorny territory.Prince does wind up earning Killer Mike’s loyalty with a pledge to invest in several Atlanta-area, Black-owned banks, and Bradford is forced to give it up for his client’s sense of initiative. But Bradford should have stuck to his guns. In the time required to line up the Killer Mike’s support, Prince could have signed off on that big Helium start-up investment and reap over $1 billion in rewards. Indeed, the episode’s funniest moment comes when Scooter and Prince stroll happily out of that church, grab their phones and watch as dozens of notifications fill their home screens.Mike’s response to all this strikes me as the worst one possible. He admits that the structure he put in place isn’t tenable while he is out running for office, then grants Wags — a member of the conspiracy against him — the same sign-off power previously reserved for himself and Scooter. Beyond that, though, he refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever, telling his crestfallen employees that if he had been in their shoes, he would have found a workaround — so why didn’t they? He even condescendingly tells them to treat this as a chance to learn from what it feels like to lose, as if he weren’t a loser right along with them, as if he weren’t the reason they lost.Which brings us back to those final moments. Turns out all of this, from the moment Dollar Bill divulged the original helium play, was a scheme on Taylor’s part. Taylor engineered the entire situation for this precise outcome: Wags gains power, and Prince loses prestige. Even though Wags and Wendy were kept out of the loop, they figured out what was going on — again, Taylor anticipated this — and kept quiet, allowing the plan to come to fruition.The idea that people who abuse their power might be brought low by those they trust is a deeply appealing, even cathartic one. We can’t stand people like Prince who have granted themselves the right to run our lives; surely, we think, neither can those whom they’ve trusted to help. It’s a fun and instantly recognizable note for “Billions” to play.But the show’s fingers are running all up and down the proverbial keyboard, bringing back long-forgotten leitmotifs. The actor Toby Leonard Moore, nearly unrecognizable beneath a beard, shaggy hair and a chef’s uniform, returns as Bryan Connerty, Chuck’s disgraced underling. Bryan’s ex-colleague and ex-girlfriend Kate dines at the hibachi restaurant where he has been working since his release from prison — a release accelerated thanks to Kate — in order to ensure he won’t be a liability when she runs for Congress. Connerty suggests that rather than cow him with threats, she should cajole him with incentives to play along, namely the restoration of his law license.One final old friend plays a major role in this episode: Ira, Chuck’s college bestie turned deputy at the Southern District. When a mugger steals his phone, Ira turns to Chuck to recover it — ostensibly because he has some sensitive documents and emails on it, but in actuality because he has been filming intimate videos with his wife, Taiga (Comfort Clinton), and doesn’t want them leaking.Recovering them takes some doing. It forces Chuck to tip his hand to two frenemies, the incoming New York police commissioner, Raul Gomez (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), and Attorney General Dave Mahar, that the phone is valuable. While Gomez chuckles about its contents with his buddies, Dave parlays this opportunity into a guarantee of playing first chair in any future legal action against Prince. It’s a huge concession on Chuck’s part, so huge that it gives Ira pause. In the past, Chuck has showed little compunction when it comes to messing with Ira’s life when there’s some greater good to be achieved. Why change now?“Because you’re my friend,” Chuck says, “and that’s my big picture now.” The two men then eat sweet potato pie together — a grace note, I hope, for their entire relationship, as “Billions” begins tying off its plot threads one by one.Loose changeI don’t know if it was the actor Comfort Clinton, the writer Amadou Diallo or some other party, but whoever decided to turn Taiga’s hug goodbye for Chuck into a borderline collapse onto his shoulders out of pure relief deserves serious kudos. That one little moment took a minor character who could be seen as the butt of one of the episode’s running jokes and turned her into a real person, experiencing real, relatable emotions. (Oh come on, like you’ve never been put in a compromising digital position before.)As far as depictions of the moral bankruptcy of power go, showing the incoming police commissioner screening someone’s private sex tapes for the amusement of his cop buddies at a soiree in honor of his swearing-in is going to be tough for “Billions” to top.I’m not sure how I feel about the composer Brendan Angelides’s decision to score the revelation of Ira’s sex tapes with boom-chikka-bowwow porn music, but I’m leaning toward “It’s funny, so it’s allowed.”I’m all for the episode’s tertiary plotline, the budding romance between Wendy and Bradford, but it reminds me that Wendy and Chuck’s sadomasochistic relationship is, at this point, the show’s biggest dropped ball. Other than using Chuck’s kink to write off Juliana Margulies’s character post-pandemic, this once-central aspect of the series — the show’s opening shot showed us Chuck in flagrante, remember — has completely fallen by the wayside.For having Dollar Bill, Victor, and Taylor talk with Chipmunk-esque helium voices, I salute this episode. That’s a bit that always works, or at least so I tell myself at parties. More

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      Fall TV 2023: New and Returning Shows to Watch

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      Even with much of Hollywood on strike, there will be plenty of notable new and returning shows arriving in the next few months.We’ve been here before. In 2020, to be exact, when it was the pandemic that played havoc with fall network television schedules.The effects of the writers’ and actors’ strikes this year are a little less drastic — they took hold later in the production cycle than the pandemic did, and they only affect American series. But once again we are looking at lineups full of reality programs and game shows. Fox will still have its animation lineup (their long lead times mean more episodes were completed); CBS will repurpose and recycle (“Yellowstone,” the original British “Ghosts”); CW will offer a Canadian smorgasbord. On cable, streaming and PBS, meanwhile, with shorter seasons and more flexible scheduling, the effects are not so noticeable.Here is a roundup of strike-proof shows on fall schedules. Dates are subject to change.September‘THE SUPER MODELS’ Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington Burns are executive producers of this documentary series about their ’90s heyday, which promises to be as luxurious as the goods they modeled. (Apple+, Sept. 20 )‘SEX EDUCATION’ With Moordale Secondary closed, everyone has to get used to a new school in the fourth and final season of this popular, award-winning, sex-positive soap opera. (Netflix, Sept. 21)‘YOUNG LOVE’ “Hair Love,” the Oscar-winning animated short film from 2019 about a Black father learning to style his daughter’s hair, has been expanded into an animated series about a Chicago family. (Max, Sept. 21)‘THE CONTINENTAL: FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK’ Mel Gibson headlines this three-episode extension of the John Wick universe, a prequel focused on a private hotel for assassins called the Continental. Colin Woodell (“The Flight Attendant”), as the future proprietor Winston Scott, has the unenviable task of convincing us that he’s a younger version of Ian McShane. (Peacock, Sept. 22)‘DEADLOCKED: HOW AMERICA SHAPED THE SUPREME COURT’ Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) directed this four-part documentary about the modern history of the Supreme Court. (Showtime, Sept. 22)‘KRAPOPOLIS’ Dan Harmon, creator of “Community” and “Rick and Morty,” joins Fox’s Sunday-night lineup with a comedy about a young king (Richard Ayoade) trying to foster civilization in a brightly animated ancient Greece. Fox has ordered three seasons of the show, which if nothing else will provide ample opportunity for the inimitable Matt Berry to voice the king’s father, a debauched half-centaur, half-manticore. (Fox, Sept. 24)Created by Dan Harmon, “Krapopolis” joins Fox’s Sunday night animation lineup.Fox‘THE IRRATIONAL’ Jesse L. Martin, a star of “Rent” on Broadway and a “Law & Order” mainstay for nine seasons, gets his own show for the first time in a three-decade TV career. In mainstream TV’s long tradition of offbeat crime solvers, he plays a behavioral scientist whose quirky team tackles “illogical puzzles and perplexing mysteries.” (NBC, Sept. 25)‘FRIEREN: BEYOND JOURNEY’S END’ This anime series begins after its heroes have completed their ultimate mission; one of the group, the elf Frieren, will outlive her human companions by hundreds of years and come to regret not having known them better. In a genre that gives a lot of space to melancholia, “Frieren” is particularly wistful. (Crunchyroll, Sept. 29)‘GEN V’ Amazon expands the world of its buzziest show, “The Boys,” with a spinoff set in a college for superheroes. (Amazon Prime Video, Sept. 29)October‘BOB’S BURGERS’ Fourteen seasons in (with No. 15 already ordered), Loren Bouchard’s animated comedy remains the sweetest, truest series about family love and dysfunction. With the recent revitalization of “The Simpsons,” it makes Sunday night on Fox the closest thing left to a destination on terrestrial TV. (Fox, Oct. 1)‘FOUND’ Shanola Hampton of “Shameless” stars as a public-relations expert who looks for missing persons of color in NBC’s second new series about an unconventional crime-solving team (after “The Irrational”). (NBC, Oct. 3)Shanola Hampton and Bill Kelly in “Found,” coming to NBC in October.Steve Swisher/NBC‘THE SPENCER SISTERS’ Lea Thompson, starring in a live-action series for the first time since ABC Family’s “Switched at Birth” ended in 2017, plays a Canadian mystery writer who solves crimes with her ex-cop daughter. The joke is that the vain, libidinous mom and the no-nonsense daughter get mistaken for sisters, or so the mother would believe; call it “Murder, She Flirted.” (CW, Oct. 4)‘BARGAIN’ The story line of this Korean series involving an organ auction, a remote location and an earthquake carries some “Squid Game” vibes. (Paramount+, Oct. 5)‘LUPIN’ Netflix’s contemporary take on a classic French character, the turn-of-the-previous-century master thief Arsène Lupin, resurfaces more than two years after its last appearance. Omar Sy returns as the Lupin aficionado Assane Diop, who spent the show’s first two seasons clearing the name of his unjustly imprisoned father. (Netflix, Oct. 5)‘OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH’ David Jenkins’s singular concoction — a queer romance and office sitcom set aboard an 18th-century pirate ship — returns for a second season. (Max, Oct. 5)‘TRANSPLANT’ A pre-strike Canadian import, this conventionally well-made medical drama about a Syrian refugee (Hamza Haq) who becomes a surgeon at a Toronto hospital enters its third season, with Rekha Sharma replacing John Hannah as the chief of the emergency room. (NBC, Oct. 5)‘LOKI’ The most multiverse-y of the Disney+ Marvel series returns for a second season, with Tom Hiddleston as a variant of the shifty Norse god Loki who is reluctantly attached to a timeline-policing authority. The Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan joins the cast. (Disney+, Oct. 6)From left, Tom Hiddleston, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson in “Loki.”Gareth Gatrell/Marvel, via Disney+‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER’ Having adapted Shirley Jackson (“The Haunting of Hill House”) and Henry James (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”) for Netflix, Mike Flanagan tackles Edgar Allan Poe in a story that reimagines the Ushers as a big-pharma family. Flanagan regulars like Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas and Michael Trucco return. (Netflix, Oct. 12)‘FRASIER’ Intellectual property that deserves the name. The sparkling sitcom returns with Kelsey Grammer’s sniffy psychiatrist, Frasier Crane, having relocated to Boston (scene of the character’s original incarnation in “Cheers”) after his 1993-2004 run in Seattle. Not making the trip, unfortunately, is David Hyde Pierce as Frasier’s brother, Niles, nor, apparently, any of the other original cast members. (Paramount+, Oct. 12)‘GOOSEBUMPS’ R.L. Stine’s series of comic horror books for teenagers, already the basis of a popular series on Fox Kids in the 1990s, gets a new adaptation created by Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and Rob Letterman (the 2015 “Goosebumps” feature film). (Disney+, Oct. 13)‘LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY’ Apple has shown a taste for shows with a nostalgic flavor, whether or not they are set in the past — “Hello Tomorrow!,” “Physical,” “The Morning Show.” (Remember when morning shows mattered?) Brie Larson stars in this one as a woman in the 1950s who channels her skills as a scientist into hosting a cooking show. (Apple+, Oct. 13)Brie Larson stars in “Lessons in Chemistry” as a scientist turned cooking show host.Apple TV+‘SHINING VALE’ Courteney Cox, as a blocked writer who moves to the suburbs, and Mira Sorvino, as the jealous ghost haunting the writer’s new house, return in a comic take on “The Shining” whose first season was cleverly macabre. (Starz, Oct. 13)‘ANNIKA’ The second season of this under-the-radar British cop show will be American viewers’ only ration of the wonderful actress Nicola Walker this fall, now that “The Split” and her run in “Unforgotten” have ended. Walker plays the leader of a “marine homicide unit” based in Glasgow. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘BILLY THE KID’ It’s not obvious why this workmanlike western with the British actor Tom Blyth in the title role got a second season, but it may have something to do with the track record of its creator, the British writer Michael Hirst, who was also responsible for “The Tudors” and “Vikings.” (MGM+, Oct. 15)‘RICK AND MORTY’ The seventh season of the celebrated sci-fi cartoon will be the first without Justin Roiland, who created the show with Dan Harmon and voiced both of the title characters. (Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland after his 2020 arrest on domestic abuse charges was publicized; the charges have since been dropped.) (Adult Swim, Oct. 15)‘WORLD ON FIRE’ The first season of this British series about ordinary people proving their mettle, or failing to prove it, in the various theaters of World War II was not the most sophisticated of melodramas. The return of Lesley Manville (after a four-year gap between seasons), as a bigoted Manchester woman coping with her son’s sudden acquisition of a Polish wife, makes up for a lot, though. (PBS, Oct. 15)‘THE AMERICAN BUFFALO’ For the first time, Ken Burns directs a documentary that is not about man or man’s accomplishments. (Well, the second time if you count “Not for Ourselves Alone,” the one among his three dozen projects as a director that focuses specifically on women.) But the four-hour series is equal parts human history and natural history, as it traces the intertwined fates of the bison and the tribes that depended on them. (PBS, Oct. 16)‘EVERYONE ELSE BURNS’ The CW slips a British comedy onto its menu of mostly Canadian series. Simon Bird of “The Inbetweeners” and Kate O’Flynn of “Landscapers” play the parents in a family that struggles with the strictures of their Christian sect, whose many no-nos include drinking coffee and celebrating birthdays. (CW, Oct. 16)Simon Bird and Kate O’Flynn star in “Everyone Else Burns,” a British import coming to the CW.James Stack/CW‘NEON’ Three friends portrayed by Tyler Dean Flores (who plays the singer), Emma Ferreira (the overbearing manager) and Jordan Mendoza (the social media geek) move to Miami in search of reggaeton stardom in a comedy whose executive producers include the Taylor Swift antagonist Scooter Braun. (Netflix, Oct. 19)‘WOLF LIKE ME’ This Australian dark comedy is a mix of rom-com and broken-family drama in which one character’s being a werewolf is both the classic impediment to true love and an all-purpose allegory of the need for safety in relationships. Its first season was slight, amusing and often moving. (Peacock, Oct. 19)‘30 COINS’ The Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia’s entertainingly lurid thriller about a demonic conspiracy focused on a small village gets a second season and a substantial new cast member, Paul Giamatti, who plays a mysterious American tech billionaire. (HBO, Oct. 23)‘LIFE ON OUR PLANET’ The creators of British series like “Planet Earth” and “Our Planet” join forces with Industrial Light and Magic and Steven Spielberg for a natural-history series about the ebb and flow of life across the eons, which provides copious opportunities for animating the 99 percent of earth’s species that have gone extinct. (Netflix, Oct. 25)‘FELLOW TRAVELERS’ Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey star as clandestine lovers in a nostalgic march-of-history mini-series — McCarthyism, Vietnam, disco, AIDS — written by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”), based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon. (Paramount+, Oct. 27; Showtime, Oct. 29)‘THIS ENGLAND’ Hamlet and Hercule Poirot are all well and good, but here’s a real challenge for Kenneth Branagh: playing the Brexit-boosting, Covid-partying former prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, in a six-episode mini-series written by Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke. (BritBox, Nov. 1)‘ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE’ Steven Knight, creator of “Peaky Blinders,” developed this mini-series from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning World War II romantic thriller about a brave, blind French girl and a German boy whose technical skills pull him into the Nazi army. Marie-Laure, the blind heroine, is played by Aria Mia Loberti, a Fulbright scholar, disability advocate and first-time actor; Marie-Laure’s father and great-uncle are played by the more seasoned Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. (Netflix, Nov. 2)Aria Mia Loberti, a first-time actor, stars in an adaptation of the novel “All the Light We Cannot See.”Katalin Vermes/Netflix‘LAWMEN: BASS REEVES’ Originally billed as yet another spinoff of “Yellowstone,” the latest show from the executive producer Taylor Sheridan is now an anthology series that will feature various real-life old-west lawmen. The first season stars David Oyelowo as Reeves, a formerly enslaved man who developed a formidable reputation as a deputy U.S. marshal. Lauren E. Banks plays Reeves’s wife and the cast includes Dennis Quaid, Donald Sutherland and Shea Whigham. (Paramount+, Nov. 5)‘THE BUCCANEERS’ “A group of fun-loving young American girls explode into the tightly corseted London season of the 1870s,” according to the press release, which sounds like a cross between “Downton Abbey” and a reality dating competition (never mind that it’s based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel). (Apple TV+, Nov. 8)‘FOR ALL MANKIND’ Equal parts soap opera and engaging alt-history of the space race — you didn’t see the North Korean thing coming, did you? — “Mankind” jumps ahead another decade for its fourth season, with international partners uneasily working together to mine asteroids in 2003. (Apple TV+, Nov. 10)‘BELGRAVIA: THE NEXT CHAPTER’ Written by Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) and starring redoubtable British performers like Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter, the mini-series “Belgravia,” about 1840s London society, was a distinct pleasure. This sequel jumps ahead 30 years and has a new cast and a new writer, Helen Edmundson (“Dalgliesh”). (MGM+, Nov. 12)‘PARIS POLICE 1905’ The first season of this historical police procedural — titled “Paris Police 1900” and set when the procedures we’re used to seeing were being invented — was handsomely produced, crazily plotted and consistently entertaining. The new season returns most of the cast (with the regrettable exception of Valérie Dashwood’s laudanum-sniffing, steel-nerved Mme. Lépine) and adds automobiles. (MHz Choice, Nov. 14)‘MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS’ Kurt Russell’s last regular role in a series was nearly 50 years ago, in the 1976 western “The Quest,” so kudos to Legendary Pictures and Apple for talking him into starring in their Godzilla-adjacent MonsterVerse mystery. It’s a package deal: Russell and his son Wyatt both play the central character, an Army officer somehow connected to kaiju research and development. That would seem to prevent them from appearing onscreen together, but we can always hope for a time warp. (Apple TV+, Nov. 17)‘SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF’ Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels about a mopey Toronto bassist who is also, accidentally, a video-game warrior — already made into a 2010 film starring Michael Cera, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” — are now adapted into an anime series produced by the Japanese studio Science SARU. O’Malley is on board as a writer and showrunner. (Netflix, Nov. 17)‘FARGO’ After an underwhelming sojourn in 1950s Kansas City in its fourth season, Noah Hawley’s arch rural noir heads back north to Minnesota and North Dakota for a story starring Jon Hamm as a sheriff and Juno Temple as the woman he’s hunting for. The typically eclectic cast includes Dave Foley, Lamorne Morris and Jennifer Jason Leigh. (FX, Nov. 21)‘ECHO’ Like alien invaders sending out spores, Marvel series multiply on Disney+. This one — starring Alaqua Cox as the Native American hero who can perfectly mimic movement and Zahn McClarnon as her father — is an offshoot of “Hawkeye,” from 2021. But it lies closer to “Daredevil” in the Marvel narrative architecture, so Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are also in the cast as Daredevil and the Kingpin. (Disney+, Nov. 29)December‘PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS’ Ten years after the second and, so far, final Percy Jackson film, Walker Scobell (he played Ryan Reynolds’s younger self in “The Adam Project”) takes on the role of the 12-year-old demigod in a new series. (Disney+, Dec. 20)Other returning shows: “American Horror Story” (FX, Sept. 20); “Starstruck” (Max, Sept. 28); “The Simpsons” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Family Guy” (Fox, Oct. 1); “Magnum P.I.” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Quantum Leap” (NBC, Oct. 4); “Creepshow” (Shudder, Oct. 13); “Hotel Portofino” (PBS, Oct. 15); “Bosch: Legacy” (Freevee, Oct. 20); “Upload” (Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 20); “Native America” (PBS, Oct. 24); “American Horror Stories” (FX on Hulu, Oct. 26); “Shoresy” (Hulu, Oct. 27); “The Gilded Age” (HBO, Oct. 29); “Invincible” (Amazon Prime Video, Nov. 3); “Rap Sh!t” (Max, Nov. 9); “Julia” (Max, Nov. 16); “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” (Starz, Dec. 1) More

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      Arleen Sorkin, Soap Opera Star With a Claim to Batman Fame, Dies at 67

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      Her “Days of Our Lives” character provided a rare burst of daytime-drama comedy. She was later the voice of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s henchwoman.Arleen Sorkin, an actress and comedian who created memorable characters in two decidedly different universes — the soap opera one of “Days of Our Lives” and the crime-fighting one of Batman, where her Harley Quinn became a fan favorite after she first gave her a voice in 1992 on “Batman: The Animated Series” — died on Aug. 24 in Los Angeles. She was 67.Her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, said the cause was pneumonia coupled with multiple sclerosis, which she had dealt with for many years.Early in her career Ms. Sorkin was best known as part of a female comedy troupe called the High-Heeled Women, which formed in 1978 and performed all over the country, mixing jokes and comic songs. One number in their repertory was a rap called “For White Girls Who Have Considered Analysis When Electrolysis Is Enuf,” a riff on the Ntozake Shange play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”By some accounts, Lilly Tartikoff, the wife of the NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff, saw Ms. Sorkin in a High-Heeled Women show and told her husband to look into signing her. In any case, in 1984 Ms. Sorkin made her debut on “Days of Our Lives,” the long-running NBC soap, as Calliope Jones (later Calliope Jones Bradford), an offbeat fashion designer who brought a rare burst of humor to the often overly earnest world of daytime drama.In an oral history recorded in 2006 for the Television Academy, Ken Corday, one of the show’s producers, said that the character was inspired by the stage persona of the singer Cyndi Lauper. In her audition, Ms. Sorkin nailed the character’s kookiness.“It was one of those things where we don’t need to read any more, we don’t need a screen test; she’s got the role,” Mr. Corday said.Calliope quickly established herself as the quirkiest thing in Soap Land.Ms. Sorkin as the outlandish fashion designer Calliope Jones Bradford in a 1986 episode of “Days of Our Lives.” “What I lack in talent,” she said, “I make up for in accessories.”Joseph Del Valle/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“The sacrosanct dramatic aura of daytime soaps has never tolerated a giggle, much less a full-out belly laugh, in plots dealing with drug abuse, child molestation, abortion, murder, wife-swapping and worse,” Vernon Scott, who covered Hollywood for United Press International, wrote in 1985. “Then along comes Calliope Jones, a ding-a-ling character in ‘Days of Our Lives,’ who actually pokes fun at soap operas themselves. This revolutionary development is akin to electing Eddie Murphy to the Politburo or appointing Johnny Carson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”Viewers loved it; the fan mail began pouring in. The producers let Ms. Sorkin ad-lib some of her lines, adding a spontaneity to the usually glum proceedings. Calliope’s outlandish wardrobe augmented the comedy.“What I lack in talent, I make up for in accessories,” Ms. Sorkin told Mr. Scott.Ms. Sorkin appeared in more than 400 episodes of “Days of Our Lives,” most recently in 2010. Throughout her appearances, she sought to make viewers pay attention.“I imagine women doing housework while they watch our show, things like ironing,” she said. “It’s my job to make them scorch something.”The Calliope character helped bring about Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sidekick, who has an inexplicable romantic attachment to that archvillain even though he is abusive toward her.When the character Harley Quinn first appeared on “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992, Ms. Sorkin provided the voice. “Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” said Paul Dini, a writer for the show. Courtesy of DCHarley was introduced in a 1992 episode of “Batman: The Animated Series” called “Joker’s Favor.” Paul Dini, a writer for the show, told Entertainment Weekly in 2017 that he had been toying with creating a funny, snappy henchwoman for the Joker. Ms. Sorkin, an old friend from their days as students at Emerson College in Massachusetts, had appeared in a fantasy sequence on “Days of Our Lives” where Calliope was dressed as a sort of court jester. She had given Mr. Dini a videotape of her favorite “Days of Our Lives” moments, and the sequence was on it. Mr. Dini happened to watch the tape one day when he was sick and something clicked.“I was like, Well, there she is,” Mr. Dini said. “She should run around with the Joker dressed like that.”He and the animator Bruce Timm came up with Harley, a sidekick clad in red and black, and Ms. Sorkin provided the distinctive voice: “high-nasal, sing-song-y and filled with Brooklyn-ish inflections,” as Vulture put it in a 2015 article.“Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” Mr. Dini told Entertainment Weekly.Harley wasn’t originally intended as a regular, but she became one, and then, later in the decade, made the transition to DC comic books, a rare case of a character going from TV to the page rather than the reverse. Ms. Sorkin provided her voice not only in “Batman: The Animated Series” but also in assorted video games and subsequent TV series, including “The New Batman Adventures” and “Justice League.” Among the other actresses who have taken up the role in animated or live-action productions is Margot Robbie (“Birds of Prey” and “The Suicide Squad”), who has most recently owned the box office as the title character in “Barbie.”Mr. Lloyd, in a phone interview, was asked whether Ms. Sorkin would have described herself as a comedian, an actress or what. He said her choice might have been “clown.”That, though, he said, would have been misleading, as she also had credits as a writer, including on the 1997 Jennifer Aniston movie “Picture Perfect,” and as a creator of the 1990s sitcom “Fired Up.” She was also involved in various humanitarian causes.“These are not the typical achievements of a clown,” he said. “I think that’s how she would describe herself, but she went on to do quite a bit more than that.”Arleen Frances Sorkin was born on Oct. 14, 1955, in Washington to Joyce and Irving Sorkin. Her mother held various jobs, including real estate agent. Her father was a dentist with a longtime dream of having one of his film ideas adapted into a movie. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2007 on the occasion of his death, Ms. Sorkin recalled that when she was hired as an extra in the 1979 movie “And Justice for All,” when she left the family’s home in Washington headed for the assignment, he handed her a movie treatment he had written and asked her to give it to Al Pacino, the film’s star. (Dr. Sorkin’s dream was finally realized in 2004 when he received a producing credit on “Something the Lord Made,” an HBO film drawn from an idea he had long championed.)Ms. Sorkin with her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, at an awards show in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2004. Asked how he thought his wife, who was a writer as well as a performer, would have described herself, he said her choice might have been “clown.”Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMr. Lloyd, whom Ms. Sorkin married in the mid-1990s, said she pursued an education degree at Emerson, anticipating a career in teaching, but was also involved in theater there. She played Lola in a production of “Damn Yankees,” and a cast mate urged her to hold off on teaching and instead give performing a try.Lisa Pessaro, another Emerson alumna, was among the original members of High-Heeled Women and remembered her comic colleague in an interview with Emerson Today shortly after Ms. Sorkin’s death.“She was just simply an unharnessed gem,” Ms. Pessaro said. “She had incredible wit and was oozing with personality.”In addition to her husband, Ms. Sorkin is survived by her mother; two sons, Eli and Owen Lloyd; and two brothers, Arthur and Robert Sorkin. More

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      Warner Bros. Suspends Deals With Top Show Creators

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      The move, which affected star writers like Mindy Kaling and J.J. Abrams, is an escalation of the standoff between Hollywood studios and the Writers Guild of America.When television and movie writers went on strike in May, studios quickly suspended certain first-look deals — mostly those for lesser-established writers. Star show creators like Mindy Kaling and J.J. Abrams were kept on the payroll. Worried about keeping them happy, even during a walkout, studios left their multimillion-dollar deals alone, shielding them from the pain of the strike.No more.In an escalation of the standoff between studios and the Writers Guild of America — it has entered its fifth month, with no end in sight — Warner Bros. moved late Wednesday to suspend deals with the 1 percent of television writers. That includes Ms. Kaling, a creator of the Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” and Mr. Abrams, whose recent television efforts include “Duster,” a coming thriller set in the 1970s, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private suspension notices.Warner Bros. also suspended deals with Greg Berlanti (“Superman & Lois”) and Bill Lawrence (“Ted Lasso”), among others, the people said.A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. declined to comment. Representatives for the writers either declined to comment or did not return calls. A spokesman for the Writers Guild of America had no immediate response.Top writers have contractual protections that will ultimately enable them to receive all the compensation promised in their original deals. Warner Bros. is doing what is known as “suspend and extend,” according to the people briefed on the matter, meaning that the studio will halt payments for the duration of the strike — and then, when work resumes, extend the contracts by the amount of time they were suspended.The suspension of the A-lister deals suggests that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, expects the strike to continue into the fall. (A representative for the studio alliance declined to comment.) Studio executives had signaled that Labor Day was an inflection point; the industry’s sitting idle beyond that date would have a severe impact on the 2024 release calendar, particularly for movies.J.J. Abrams’s deal was also suspended. The move can exert more pressure on the striking writers guild.Jerod Harris/Getty ImagesWarner Bros. Discovery said in a securities filing on Tuesday that the Hollywood strikes — tens of thousands of actors joined writers on picket lines in mid-July, the first time both unions have been on strike at the same time since 1960 — would negatively affect its 2023 earnings by up to $500 million.“We are trying to get this resolved in a way that’s really fair and everyone feels fairly treated,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, said at a Goldman Sachs event on Wednesday. “Having said that, in our guidance, we said that this would be resolved by September. And here we are in September. This is really a very unusual event — the last time it happened was 1960.”Suspending the deals of prominent writers is one way for the studios to try to put pressure on the Writers Guild. During the last writers’ strike, in 2007, a small group of showrunners agitated for union leadership to settle with the studios as the stalemate wore on. That strike lasted 100 days; the current strike is now at the 128-day mark.Studio officials and Writers Guild negotiators have not met formally since Aug. 23, when talks broke off for the second time and the companies publicly released their latest offer in an appeal to rank-and-file members. Studios were hoping the offer would look good enough for members to pressure their leaders to make a deal.But the move seemed to have the opposite effect, instilling the 11,500-member Writers Guild with renewed resolve to keep fighting. “The companies’ counteroffer is neither nothing, nor nearly enough,” guild leaders said in a note to members on Aug. 24. “We will continue to advocate for proposals that fully address our issues rather than accept half measures.”The studios defended their proposal as offering the highest wage increase to writers in more than three decades. The studios also said that they had offered “landmark protections” against artificial intelligence, and that they vowed to offer some degree of streaming viewership data to the guild, information that had previously been held under lock and key.Both the writers and the actors have called this moment “existential,” arguing that the streaming era has deteriorated their working conditions as well as their compensation levels.Nicole Sperling More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in September

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      Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Wrestlers’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Greg Whiteley, the co-creator and director of the popular Netflix docu-series “Last Chance U” and “Cheer,” tells another story of small-time athletes fighting to keep their dreams alive in “Wrestlers.” Set in and around a Louisville, Ky., gym, the series follows the veteran star Al Snow and the die-hard performers of Ohio Valley Wrestling, who are working to boost business after their new bosses have given them just a few months to increase revenue. As with Whiteley’s other shows, “Wrestlers” features up-close and exciting sports footage alongside intimate slice-of-life scenes and confessional interviews, as these people who love the history and traditions of regional professional wrestling share their hopes and dreams.‘El Conde’Starts streaming: Sept. 15The daring Chilean writer-director Pablo Larrain — best-known for his offbeat 2016 biopics “Neruda” and “Jackie” — puts his own peculiar spin on the life of Augusto Pinochet in “El Conde,” a black-and-white gothic horror film that reimagines the dictator as a depressed vampire, enduring an audit of his crumbling estate. Jaime Vadell plays Pinochet, who in this movie has been alive since the time of the French Revolution and has kept hanging around long after everyone has assumed he died. Larrain fits some actual history into this picture, but for the most part he uses satire to critique the lingering vitality-sapping effects of Pinochet’s tyrannical reign.‘Love at First Sight’Starts streaming: Sept. 15Based on the Jennifer E. Smith novel “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight,” this romantic dramedy stars the vibrant young actress Haley Lu Richardson as Hadley Sullivan, who is reluctantly on her way to London to attend her father’s wedding when she gets seated on the plane next to Oliver (Ben Hardy), a charming math whiz heading home for his mother’s memorial service. When the two are separated after landing, they have an eventful and emotional day of meeting family obligations while also trying to find each other again. Jameela Jamil plays multiple characters and also narrates the film, using Oliver’s nerdy number-crunching as a prompt to keep the audience updated on the ever-shifting odds that these two likable kids will be happy together.‘The Saint of Second Chances’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Bill Veeck was one of Major League Baseball’s maverick innovators, spending much of his life coming up with creative and sometimes controversial ballpark promotions to draw fans and make money. The documentary “The Saint of Second Chances” — co-directed by Jeff Malmberg and the Oscar-winning Morgan Neville — is about Bill’s son Mike, whose initial attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps were derailed by his part in the Chicago White Sox’s notorious 1979 “Disco Demolition Night,” which ended in a riot. Narrated by Jeff Daniels — with re-enactments that have the actor-comedian Charlie Day playing Mike — the film covers the younger Veeck’s big comeback in the ’90s, when he found ways to bring fun back to baseball and to his own life by running the independent minor league team the St. Paul Saints.‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’Starts streaming: Sept. 27Fresh off the critical and commercial success of his film “Asteroid City,” the writer-director Wes Anderson makes his Netflix debut with “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story. Clocking in at around 40 minutes — a bit too long to be a short film and not long enough to be a feature — the movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a smug gambler who become fascinated with the rumors he has heard about a man who can see without using his eyes. As always, Anderson has enlisted an impressive supporting cast, including Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade and — as Dahl himself — Ralph Fiennes. This project also reportedly relies even more than usual on Anderson’s penchant for overtly theatrical effects, as the characters tell stories within stories while often remaining on a single stage.Also arriving:Sept. 7“Dear Child”“Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight” Season 3“Top Boy” Season 3“Virgin River” Season 5, Part 1Sept. 8“Burning Body” Season 1“Rosa Peral’s Tapes”“Selling the OC” Season 2“Spy Ops” Season 1“A Time Called You” Season 1Sept. 12“Michelle Wolf: It’s Great To Be Here”Sept. 13“Class Act” Season 1Sept. 15“Surviving Summer” Season 2Sept. 21“Sex Education” Season 4Sept. 22“Song of the Bandits”“Spy Kids: Armageddon”Sept. 26“The Devil’s Plan” Season 1“Who Killed Jill Dando?”Sept. 27“Encounters” Season 1“Forgotten Love”“Street Flow 2”Sept. 28“Castlevania: Nocturne” Season 1“The Darkness within La Luz del Mundo”Sept. 29“Nowhere” More

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      TV Shows and Movies Streaming in September 2023: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ ‘Gen V’ and More

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      Spinoffs and chillers abound in a month filled with tons of new television. Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others. Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 2Started streaming: Sept. 1Season 1 of this handsome-looking fantasy series introduced some of the major characters and concepts from the first book of the novelist Robert Jordan’s hefty “The Wheel of Time” saga. Season 2 adapts parts of the second and third books — “The Great Hunt” and “The Dragon Reborn” — and continues moving the pieces into place for the grand apocalyptic battle prophesied at the start of the story. Rosamund Pike returns as the mystic Moiraine, who is helping a group of young people escape the shadowy forces pursuing them. Josha Stradowski plays Rand al’Thor, who may be his land’s last best hope to stand up against the Dark One and his minions — or may be the one to usher in a new age of chaos.‘Neighbours: A New Chapter’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 18The original run of the soap opera “Neighbours” began in 1985 and concluded in 2022 after 38 seasons and nearly 9,000 22-minute episodes. During that time, the show’s melodramatic tales of suburban Melbourne life were seen around the world and introduced viewers to future stars like Natalie Imbruglia, Kylie Minogue, Radha Mitchell, Guy Pearce and Margot Robbie. Now Amazon Studios and Fremantle Australia are bringing the series back, along with some of the old cast (including Pearce), who join an array of new characters. Plans are to run 200 episodes a year for the next two years on Amazon’s ad-supported, free-to-stream Freevee service, where viewers can also watch the older episodes, giving Americans a chance to immerse themselves in these Australians’ love affairs and personal crises.‘Gen V’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 29A spinoff of the adults-only superhero satire “The Boys,” this action-dramedy series is set at a special school for young crime fighters, where the students engage in the same kinds of cliques, rivalries and romances that happen in any normal school but with the constant threat that super powers make every conflict more dangerous. A few of the adult characters from “The Boys” will drop in on the new show (which has a creative team drawn from some of that show’s writers and producers); but the focus here is on the kids, who have a lot in common with classic comic book super teams like the X-Men and the Teen Titans. Expect plenty of irreverence and dark humor, along with some sly takedowns of familiar superhero mythology.Also arriving:Sept. 1“God. Family. Football.”Sept. 5“One Shot: Overtime Elite”Sept. 8“Sitting in Bars with Cake”Sept. 12“Kelce”Sept. 15“A Million Miles Away”“Wilderness” Season 1“Written in the Stars” Season 1Sept. 22“Cassandro”Sept. 22“The Fake Sheikh”Norman Reedus in the latest “Walking Dead” spinoff, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 10Like “The Walking Dead: Dead City” earlier this year, the latest entry in the long-running, ever-expanding “Walking Dead” franchise takes one of the most popular characters from the show’s original run and plops him in another part of the world. Norman Reedus reprises his role as Daryl Dixon, a talented marksman and tracker who had to overcome his loner tendencies to become a vital part of an embattled postapocalyptic community in the American southeast. In this new series, Daryl takes his talents to France, where he allies with a tough nun (Clémence Poésy) who shows him the unique ways that continental Europe handled the zombie outbreak and helps him to figure out who he can trust.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Perpetrator”Sept. 8“Blood Flower”Sept. 10“Ride With Norman Reedus” Season 6Sept. 15“Elevator Game”Sept. 20“Thick Skin”Sept. 22“The Angry Black Girl and Her Mother”Sept. 29“Nightmare”LaKeith Stanfield in a scene from “The Changeling,” based on the Victor LaValle novel.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Changeling’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Like the Victor LaValle novel that inspired it, the supernatural horror series “The Changeling” combines everyday drama with terrifying nightmares, in a story that sprawls across multiple generations. LaKeith Stanfield plays Apollo, a shy book dealer who is haunted by memories of the father he barely knew. He is also attracted to a vibrant but eccentric woman named Emmy (Clark Backo), whom he eventually marries. The show’s creator and writer, Kelly Marcel, shifts the narrative focus freely among different characters and different eras, as a crisis with Emmy and their newborn child drives Apollo to confront his troubled family history. In doing so, he finds that his past is shrouded in the kind of wondrous darkness common to fairy tales, and he is challenged to untangle fantasy from fact in an enchanted version of New York City.‘The Morning Show’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 13One of Apple TV+’s flagship series returns for a third season of punchy boardroom drama, set in the modern TV news business. The show is still powered by its two charismatic leads: Jennifer Aniston as the veteran morning show anchor Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson, a feisty hard news reporter who has become Alex’s co-host. Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass play two of the behind-the-camera bosses who sometimes make morally questionable choices. This season they are joined by Jon Hamm as a cocky tech billionaire who might be able improve their network’s cash-flow. Although “The Morning Show” started as a ripped-from-the-headlines look at how the #MeToo era has upended the male-dominated media, the series has since opened to encompass other hot-button contemporary issues, which in Season 3 include cyberattacks and corporate blackmail.Also arriving:Sept. 20“The Super Models”Sept. 22“Still Up”Sept. 29“Flora and Son”Sinclair Daniel, left, and Ashleigh Murray in a scene from “The Other Black Girl.”HuluNew to Hulu‘The Other Black Girl’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Part wry social commentary and part intense mystery-thriller, “The Other Black Girl” examines the racial and gender dynamics of the New York publishing industry. Sinclair Daniel plays Nella, an aspiring assistant editor who befriends Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), her publishing house’s latest hire and the only other Black person in her department. When Hazel’s collegial advice starts derailing Nella’s career — around the same time that Nella starts experiencing some unnerving paranormal activity around the office — she begins looking into her new friend’s past and the history of their employers. Adapted from a best-selling Zakiya Dalila Harris novel, this show finds the humor and the anxiety inherent in the life of a woman who is struggling to stand out in a tough business without losing her identity.Also arriving:Sept. 6“Never Let Him Go”Sept. 13“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2Sept. 14“Dragons: The Nine Realms” Season 7Sept. 20“American Horror Story: Delicate” Part 1Sept. 22“No One Will Save You”Sept. 27“Love in Fairhope” Season 1Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in scene from Season 3 of the Max series “Starstruck.”Mark Johnson/MaxNew to Max‘Starstruck’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28This charming romantic comedy is one of the streaming era’s hidden gems, and it is ripe for discovery now that the fall TV schedule has been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Through its first two seasons, “Starstruck” followed the unlikely on-again/off-again love affair between Jessie (Rose Matafeo), a young New Zealander struggling to make ends meet in London, and Tom (Nikesh Patel), an A-list movie star who is smitten with her. Season 3 has the couple going their separate ways but still frequently and awkwardly crossing paths. The show’s short, breezy episodes capture how the “getting to know you” phase of romance can be equal parts exciting and difficult, especially when one of the people involved is rich and famous.Also arriving:Sept. 2“The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart”Sept. 13“Donyale Luna: Supermodel”Sept. 21“Young Love” Season 1A scene from the Season 4 premiere of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” which centers on the underlings of a starship.Paramount+New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 7“Star Trek” fans who are still buzzing from the excellent, recently completed second season of “Strange New Worlds” should roll those warm feelings over to the fourth season of the animated “Lower Decks,” which has established its place as one of the best of the modern “Star Trek” shows. Like “Strange New Worlds,” “Lower Decks” balances old-fashioned “interstellar adventure of the week” stories with involved subplots and rich character development. This cute-looking cartoon is fundamentally comic — following the goofy mishaps of a bunch of Starfleet’s least vital employees — but its writers and animators respect the franchise’s lore enough to deliver cleverly plotted, action-packed episodes, season after season.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Dreaming Whilst Black”Sept. 12“Football Must Go On”Sept. 17“The Gold”Sept. 18“Superpower”Sept. 22“Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court”Sept. 26“72 Seconds”Colin Woodell as Winston Scott in a scene from “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”Katalin Vermes/Starz EntertainmentNew to Peacock‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’Starts streaming: Sept. 22Fans of the first “John Wick” movie will always remember the moment when its weary hit man hero walked into a strange, assassin-friendly hotel called the Continental and was reminded of its arcane codes of behavior. Suddenly a movie that had previously seemed like a low-stakes underworld revenge thriller opened up into something more fantastical and globe spanning, with a dense mythology. The TV mini-series “The Continental: From the World of John Wick” is set in the 1970s and stars Mel Gibson as Cormac, the hotel’s New York manager at that time. Colin Woodell plays a young version of the franchise’s Winston Scott, who is tasked by Cormac to solve a family problem that may threaten the viability of this super secret criminal hideaway.Also arriving:Sept. 4“Chucky” Season 2Sept. 28“Dino Pops” Season 1 More