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      ‘Harry & Meghan’: What People Are Saying About the Netflix Series

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      Critics on both sides of the Atlantic found common ground in negative reviews of the first three episodes of the series.These days in Britain, very little unites the right and left. “Harry & Meghan,” the intimate Netflix series released Thursday, is quickly shaping up to be the exception.The first three episodes of the docuseries, directed by Liz Garbus and produced in conjunction with the production company of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, were quickly skewered by a bipartisan group of critics, from The Sun to The Guardian. Although “skewered” may not actually capture the harshness of some of the commentary.Piers Morgan, who has been vociferously critical of the couple in the past, wastes no time laying into the series in his scathing review in The Sun, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch:Who are the world’s biggest victims right now? You might think it’s the poor people of Ukraine as they’re bombed, shot and raped by Putin’s invading barbarians. Or those whose lives have been ruined by the Covid pandemic that continues to cause widespread death and long-term illness. Or the millions battling crippling financial hardship in a devastating cost-of-living crisis that has swept the globe.But no. The world’s biggest victims are in fact Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, a pair of incredibly rich, stupendously privileged, horribly entitled narcissists.If you don’t believe me, just ask them!Later in his review, Morgan cautions viewers they may need a “sick bucket.” He was not the only one to evoke gastrointestinal distress. The headline for Lucy Mangan’s review in the left-leaning Guardian exclaims that the first three episodes were “so sickening I almost brought up my breakfast.”More on the British Royal FamilyBoston Visit: Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales recently made a whirlwind visit to Boston. Swaths of the city were unimpressed.Aide Resigns: A Buckingham Palace staff member quit after a British-born Black guest said the aide pressed her on where she was from.‘The Crown’: Months ago, the new season of the Netflix drama was shaping up as another public-relations headache for Prince Charles. But then he became king.Training Nannies: Where did the royals find Prince George’s nanny? At Norland College, where students learn how to shield strollers from paparazzi and fend off potential kidnappers.Mangan does point out that the series so far has plenty of sweet moments — particularly of Prince Harry and Meghan “being charming and funny together” — but she ultimately finds the finished product wanting:But in the end — what are we left with? Exactly the same story we always knew, told in the way we would expect to hear it from the people who are telling it. Those who don’t care won’t watch. Those who do care — which is to say are voyeuristically invested in the real-life soap opera — will still read into it anything they want to and doubtless confirm all their previous ideas. There is plenty here to start another round of tabloid frenzy, particularly in Harry’s mention of members of the royal family who consider the pressure placed on anyone “marrying in” a rite of passage and resist allowing anyone else to avoid what their own spouses went through, and who bow to internal pressure to choose a wife who “fits the mould.” Which is to say — it is hard to see who, beyond the media, the villains of the piece, will really gain from this?The Independent, a more centrist player in British media, was less savage, but not exactly admiring, calling the series both “self-aggrandizing” and “wildly entertaining.” In her review, Jessie Thompson finds the couple, at times endearing and sympathetic, and the points about racism in Britain eloquently made.But while she writes that she respects their “right to share this stuff on their own terms,” she finds the protestations of love over the top (“We believe you! You are in love! There’s no need to show us any more of your WhatsApps!”) and their inability to talk like normal people when interviewed frustrating.She also wonders at moments in the series “if the couple are naïve or disingenuous”:Did Meghan really think it was “a joke” that she had to curtsy to the Queen of England? It might be an outdated request, but it surely can’t have been an unexpected one. “Like, what’s a walkabout?” she says of her first public appearance. They also seem to have a weird pathological need to document every aspect of their lives.The Financial Times, the more sober-minded and business-focused newspaper, finds the first three episodes of the much-hyped series something of a let down. As Henry Mance writes:Does this “Netflix Global Event” match up to, say, Diana, Princess of Wales on “Panorama,” Prince Andrew on “Newsnight” or even Harry and Meghan’s own conversation with Oprah Winfrey, in which they alleged a member of the royal family speculated about their baby’s skin colour? Bluntly, no. There have been explosive royal TV shows, but so far this is not one of them. Harry and Meghan do not drop bombs; at most, they point plaintively at existing craters. They have also bought into the successful Netflix formula: never say in one hour what you can stretch out over several. This is a show that makes you grateful that the streaming platform has the option to watch at 1.25x speed.In the United States, the reviews registered a similar sense of disappointment.As Stephanie Bunbury writes for Deadline:Three hours into Netflix doc series “Harry & Meghan” and still no tell-all truths from the darkest corners of the House of Windsor. Anyone who had expected the curtain to be lifted on the deep-state machinations of The Firm to protect the brand will be feeling shortchanged by Volume I which dropped today.Daniel D’Addario echoes that sentiment for Variety, lamenting the series’s unwillingness to push past the familiar: “As with the most recent, painfully dull season of “The Crown,” there seems a sort of narrative stuckness, an inability or lack of desire to find the next thing to say that we haven’t yet heard.”But he still holds out hope that the final episodes, which will be released on Dec. 15, will move beyond “the story of their courtship, wedding, and family feuds”:What they want to do now that they’ve overcome adversity may well lie ahead in the next batch of episodes, but speaking in their own voice about issues other than their personal experience would have represented a good start. But perhaps that’s not the remit, on a show for which the pair are engaged with a major streaming corporation to dish the dirt once more. Pity them, too — even after breaking free of Buckingham Palace, they’re still someone’s subjects. More

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      Jerrod Carmichael to Host Golden Globes as Broadcast Returns From Scandal

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      The tarnished ceremony will air on NBC in January after questions were raised about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s diversity and ethics.The stand-up comedian Jerrod Carmichael will serve as host of the Golden Globes next month, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Thursday. It’s the first time the tarnished film and television awards ceremony will be broadcast since a 2021 scandal over the ethics and diversity of the H.F.P.A., the group behind the Globes.Carmichael may be best known for his critically acclaimed HBO stand-up special “Rothaniel,” in which he came out as gay. He also was the star of an NBC sitcom, “The Carmichael Show,” that ran from 2015 to 2017.The Globes are trying to re-establish themselves as a must-watch evening. While the awards were never an indication of Oscar voters’ mind-set, the ceremony did provide studios and stars a high-profile opportunity to campaign before the Academy Awards. Or at least that was the case until 2021, when investigations by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times revealed the nonprofit group’s lack of diversity (at the time it had no Black members) as well as members’ high compensation.NBC canceled the show later that year, and a much-reduced version of the ceremony was held last January. It was not broadcast; instead, at a Beverly Hilton ballroom where no stars were present, the winners were announced and then tweeted out.Since the articles appeared, the H.F.P.A. has taken steps to include more journalists of color and to tighten its ethics rules. This year, the group sold the Golden Globes to a private company, Eldridge Industries, owned by Todd Boehly, that also bought Dick Clark Productions, producer of the ceremony. In September, NBC said it would air the 2023 show in a one-year test.It remains to be seen who will show up for the ceremony, which once was known as an off-the-cuff affair. Brendan Fraser, the star of “The Whale” and a strong contender this awards season, has said he will not attend if nominated. In 2018, he said he had been groped in 2003 by a then-member of the H.F.P.A., who denied the allegation.The nominations for the Golden Globes will be announced Monday, and the telecast is set for Jan. 10. More

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      Late Night Celebrates Raphael Warnock’s Win in the Georgia Runoff

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      Stephen Colbert said he was both “gratified and terrified” after Warnock narrowly beat Herschel Walker for a Senate seat.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.Warnock For the WinLate night hosts had taped their Tuesday shows before the results from the Georgia Senate runoff were in, so they shared their reactions to Raphael Warnock’s win on Wednesday.Stephen Colbert said he felt a swing of emotions. “Gratified, because Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker, 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent, and terrified, because 48.6 percent of Georgians looked at Herschel Walker and went, ‘Yeah, that guy should be a U.S. senator.’”“Warnock has won Georgia! It’s fitting he’s a reverend, because when I hear that, all I can say is ‘Thank God.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But despite that, it was close. It was really, really close. In fact, if I was Raphael Warnock, my victory speech wouldn’t have been me smiling. I would have been a lot more different. He’s a gracious man. He was talking about democracy and America’s promise. I would have been up there like, ‘Are you people kidding me with this [expletive]? You guys are giving me a two point win over this walking vasectomy commercial? Are you kidding me?’ He is a better man.” — TREVOR NOAH“This is a tough break for Walker, though it’ll take him a couple days to understand what has happened.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Walker was so deeply unqualified that much of the time it seemed like he didn’t even know what was going on. Even Walker’s fellow Republicans warned months ago that he could lose. The only reason he was even a candidate for the Senate in the first place was that he was once on Donald Trump’s game show. Donald Trump fired him from ‘The Celebrity Apprentice,’ but thought he might do better in the United States Senate. [imitating Trump] ‘Herschel, I don’t know if you’re ready to sell corn dogs in Times Square, so let’s put you in charge of the U.S. military first.’” — SETH MEYERS“Rafael Warnock defeated Republican Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff last night, giving Democrats a 51-49 seat majority in the Senate. Experts say the key to Warnock’s victory was that he wasn’t Herschel Walker.” — JAMES CORDEN“When you take a moment, when you step away from a race, you understand how crazy this was? You had Raphael Warnock, a pastor — a pastor who is preaching at the same church as M.L.K., and Herschel Walker, a man who thinks M.L.K. is how you spell ‘milk.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Herschel, What’s Next? Edition)“With this loss, Walker is expected to return to his previous job, lying about having previous jobs. But on the bright side, it gives him more time to spend with his family, and more time to figure out who that is.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And with the election behind him, Herschel says he will now focus on his true passion, having more kids than Nick Cannon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Herschel’s already working on his next project, which is desperately trying to learn to sing ‘Baby Got Back’ while dressed like an acorn on ‘The Masked Singer.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Herschel has decided to step away from the spotlight to spend more time denying allegations from his family.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” parodied holiday rom-coms with its political parody, “The Daily Show Christmas Movie: A Vote for Love.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightOn Thursday night, Trevor Noah will sign off with his last episode as host of “The Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutIce Spice’s “Munch (Feelin’ U)” introduces a new piece of slang. The track made all three of our critics’ lists this year.Edwig HensonWith 70 different songs spanning several genres, our critics share their picks for the best songs of 2022. More

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      George Newall, a Creator of ‘Schoolhouse Rock,’ Dies at 88

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      He was the last surviving member of the team that produced the educational cartoon for ABC-TV that informed Generation X.George R. Newall, an advertising executive who was the last surviving creator of “Schoolhouse Rock,” the animated musical snippets that taught young Generation X television viewers grammar, math, civics and science for a few moments during otherwise vacuous Saturday-morning commercial programming, died on Nov. 30 at a hospital near his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 88.The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, his wife, Lisa Maxwell, said.“Schoolhouse Rock,” series, which ran from 1973 to 1984 and was revived in the 1990s, used quirky cartoons and upbeat music to furtively transform rote learning into euphonious fun during regular programming and before the government, in the 1990s, mandated that stations broadcast a modicum of educational and informative fare.The show won four Emmy Awards.The series spawned books, recordings, live singalong shows and a nostalgia cult that will mark the show’s 50th anniversary next year when the Walt Disney Company presents a prime-time television special; rereleases “The Official Schoolhouse Rock Guide,” written by Mr. Newall and Tom Yohe; and publishes an adult coloring book featuring all of the program’s characters.Among the show’s perennial favorite songs were “Three Is a Magic Number,” celebrating tripods, triangles and even a couple producing a baby; “Interjection!” which depicts a cartoon character getting stuck in the posterior with a big needle; and Mr. Newall’s “Unpack Your Adjectives.”“Schoolhouse Rock” originated in the early 1970s when David McCall, president of the McCaffrey & McCall advertising agency, complained to Mr. Newall, a creative director there, that his young sons couldn’t multiply, “but they can sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.”Could Mr. Newall put the multiplication tables to music? he asked. Mr. Newall’s search for a quirky musician who might help led him to Ben Tucker, who played bass at the Hickory House in New York, which Mr. Newall frequented regularly.“I asked Ben, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, my partner, Bob Dorough — he can put anything to music!’” Mr. Newall told The New York Times Magazine in 2018.‘He told me Bob had written a song based on the words on the mattress tag that say, ‘Do not remove under penalty of law,’” Mr. Newall recalled. “So I brought Bob in, and David gave him the assignment. He came back about two weeks later with ‘Three Is a Magic Number,’ and we were all knocked out by it.”The song inspired Mr. Yohe, the agency’s art director and a cartoonist, to start doodling. What was originally conceived as an educational phonograph record morphed into a series of three-minute films that the creative team presented to Michael Eisner, then the director of children’s programming at ABC, a client of the agency.Mr. Eisner happened to be meeting with Chuck Jones, the immortal Warner Bros. animator.“After we played the song and Tom showed them the storyboards, Eisner looked at Jones and said, ‘What do you think?’” Mr. Newall told The Times in 1994. “And Jones said, ‘I think you should buy it right away.’ It was probably the quickest deal in television history.”The first season was followed with themed series on grammar, government (to coincide with the American Bicentennial celebration), science and computer technology.In 1976, Carol Rinzler wrote in The Times, “The ‘ABC Schoolhouse Rock’ animated bits, which teach math and reading concepts and, this year, American history, are a joy. It’s worth sitting in front of your TV all morning to catch the one in which the Constitution is set to music.”Three-minute “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoons like “Conjunction Junction” tried to teach children grammar, math, civics and science.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesMr. Eisner later became chairman and chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, which acquired “Schoolhouse Rock” in 1996 (including new segments produced in the 1990s with J.J. Sedelmaier Productions) when it bought Capital Cities/ABC.Mr. Newall and Mr. Yohe were the executive producers and creative directors of the original episodes and worked with other collaborators. Mr. Newall composed 10 of the songs.In 1996, Atlantic Records released an album featuring alternative musicians like Moby (who croons a brassy version of “Verb: That’s What’s Happening”), and in 2002 the Disney Company issued a DVD of all the “Schoolhouse Rock” episodes and a timely lyrical explication by Mr. Newall of why some states in a presidential election are more equal than others.In 2013, Mr. Newall spoke about the show and Mr. Dorough performed “Schoolhouse Rock” songs at a free concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington.Mr. Yohe died in 2000, Mr. Dorough in 2018.George Robert Newall Jr. was born on June 17, 1934, in Lakewood, N.J. His father was a builder. His mother, Louise (DeNyse) Newall, worked for the school board in Brick Township.After attending Point Pleasant Beach High School and serving in the Army’s 11th Airborne Division Band at Fort Campbell, Ky., Mr. Newall graduated from Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in music composition in 1960. He moved to New York City, where, starting in a mailroom at $50 a week, he worked for a number of ad agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather and Grey.At McCaffrey & McCall, he conjured up the Hai Karate brand of men’s toiletries for Pfizer with an advertising campaign that parodied the industry’s customary romanticized appeal to raw sexual passion by including self-defense instructions to fend off libidinous women.In 1978, he and Mr. Yohe started a company to produce animated educational programming. They won another Emmy for “Drawing Power,” an animated series for NBC, and awards for cartoons that promoted nutrition, cartoons that urged young viewers to read (“When You Turn Off Your Set, Turn On a Book”) and cartoons that were praised for being neither sexist nor racist.In the 1980s, Mr. Newall joined Wells Rich Greene, where he produced TV commercials in which Alan Alda pitched Atari computers.Mr. Newall is survived by his wife, the artist and singer Lisa (Chapman) Maxwell; a stepson, Lake Wolosker; and his sisters, Jessie Newall Bissey, Kathy Newall Hogan and Anne Newall Kimmel. More

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      In ‘White Lotus,’ Beauty and Truth Are All Mixed Up

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      This season focuses on the willful delusion of the wealthy — and how easily preyed upon people who evade reality can be.Early in the second season of “The White Lotus” — Mike White’s HBO satire of the leisure class, currently set in a five-star Sicilian resort — there’s a sequence that offers an overt, shot-for-shot homage to a scene in “L’Avventura,” from 1960, the first film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Trilogy of Decadence.” Coolly removed and virtually plotless, Antonioni’s three films were intended as an indictment of the entropic passivity of wealth. All starred Monica Vitti, the glamorous Italian actress with whom Antonioni was romantically involved. In “L’Avventura,” she plays Claudia, a young woman whose best friend, Anna, disappears during a yacht trip off the coast of Sicily. As Claudia and Anna’s boyfriend, Sandro, search for the missing girl, they drift into an unconvincing relationship. When they arrive at the lone hotel in the town of Noto, Claudia, suddenly worried about facing her friend, tells Sandro to search inside without her.What we are looking at is the experience of being looked at.The scene “The White Lotus” recreates takes place outside, in the piazza, where Claudia is accosted by a horde of leering men. The aesthetics are disconcerting: Antonioni uses the town’s baroque architecture to pile men around and atop Claudia. She looks afraid, for a moment, but then has a sort of detachment from reality. Walking slowly through the crowd, she seems to give herself over to the experience, allowing herself to become a spectacle, subject to the men’s (and the audience’s) scrutinizing, consuming gaze.Welcoming You Back to ‘The White Lotus’The second season of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s incisive satire of privilege set in a luxury resort, begins on HBO on Oct. 30.Michael Imperioli: The “Sopranos” star is enjoying a professional renaissance after years of procedurals and indies. In the new season of “The White Lotus” he tries his hand at comedy.Season 1: The series scrutinized the interactions between guests and staff at a resort in Hawaii. “It’s vicious and a little sudsy and then, out of nowhere, sneakily uplifting,” our critic wroteUnaware Villain: The actor Jake Lacy plays Shane, a wealthy and entitled 30-year-old on his honeymoon, in the first season. Here is what he said about bringing to life the unsavory character.Emmys: The series scooped up five Primetime Emmys on Sept. 12, including for best TV movie, limited or anthology series, and best supporting actress for Jennifer Coolidge’s breakout performance.Even before “The White Lotus” fully replicates this image, though, we see one character — a batty gazillionaire named Tanya McQuoid, played by Jennifer Coolidge — explicitly name-check Vitti. Describing her fantasy of a day in Italy to her husband, Greg, she stays resolutely on the surface: “First, I want to look just like Monica Vitti,” she says. “And then this man in a very slim-fitting suit, he comes over and he lights my cigarette. And it tastes really good. And then he takes me for a drive on his Vespa. Then, at sunset, we go down really close to the sea, to one of those really romantic spots. And then we drink lots of aperitivos and we eat big plates of pasta with giant clams. And we’re just really chic and happy. And we’re beautiful.” Greg obligingly rents a Vespa. But Tanya is not the character who will feature in the Antonioni homage.“L’Avventura” is not the only film referenced in “The White Lotus,” which is positively haunted by movies and the fantasies they engender. As Tanya casts herself in her superficial version of an Italian film, Bert Di Grasso — a grandfather whose family trip to Sicily has been upended by the women in the family’s refusing to come — is exalting the ethos of “The Godfather,” in which he sees men who are free to do as they like. After her ill-fated Vitti cosplay leaves her alone and betrayed, Tanya takes up with Quentin, part of a group of “high-end gays,” as she calls them, who recast her as a tragic heroine. Quentin tells her about his own lost love, but it sounds like the plot of “Brokeback Mountain,” and he takes her to the opera to see “Madama Butterfly,” which, in this context, can’t help but call to mind “M. Butterfly,” and a very specific form of romantic deception. As the line blurs between stories and lies, the vibe shifts closer to “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” If the first season of “The White Lotus” was about the casual destructiveness of wealth, this one seems to be about its willful delusion — and how easily preyed upon people who evade reality can be.In Antonioni’s film, Vitti’s wealth and beauty grant her character access to a world of glamour, but they also trap her in a lie, concealing a real world of rot and corruption. “L’Avventura” means “the adventure” — ironic, since nothing much happens in the movie, and its central mystery is never solved — but an “avventura” is also a term for an illicit affair, often one entered out of boredom, for kicks. This is precisely how everyone in this season of “The White Lotus” gets into trouble. For both show and film, “love” is a dance of deception and self-delusion, in which it’s hard to tell who’s the mark.The only character who still clings to purity — the only innocent left to corrupt — is Harper Spiller, played by Aubrey Plaza. And she is the one who ends up in Noto, recreating the Monica Vitti scene in the piazza. Like Claudia, Harper has drifted here by accident — by virtue, another character observes, of being pretty. The newly rich wife of a tech founder, she has come on a luxury vacation at the invitation of his college roommate. Harper is suspicious of the whole endeavor: of getting rich quickly, of old friends who materialize suddenly after you get rich, of rich people who spend their lives disengaging from the world and drifting from one fantasy locale to the next. In Noto, she finds herself alone and surrounded by men, exactly like Vitti. Just as in the film, the scene feels over the top and surreal — part paranoid fantasy, part dissociative experience, and even stranger now that it’s 2022, not 1960, and Aubrey Plaza doesn’t cut quite so otherworldly and surprising (for Noto) a figure as the statuesque blonde Vitti did.As we watch Harper drift through the crowd, what we are looking at is the experience of being looked at. Along with Tanya — who aims to imitate Vitti but is instead brutally compared, by a tactless hotel manager, to Peppa Pig — she offers a metaphor for how thoroughly we can give ourselves over to imposture.Antonioni started working during the Italian neorealism movement, when films were shot on location, making use of nonactors, telling stories about working-class people and poverty and despair. But it was “L’Avventura,” with its focus on the alienation of the moneyed, that made him internationally famous. I know this because I took an Italian-neorealism class during a junior year abroad in Paris, and — not surprisingly, I suppose, for the kind of person who takes an Italian-neorealism class during a junior year in Paris — I, too, preferred Antonioni’s trilogy about disaffected rich people to the stuff that had come before: children stealing bicycles, Anna Magnani worrying about unpaid bills, that sort of thing. Struggle is hard to watch; it is much more pleasant to have our moral judgments projected into a world of aestheticized, escapist pleasure.We carry a desire to inhabit images we’ve seen, reified symbols of love, glamour, happiness, success. The “White Lotus” scene in Noto is a perfect representation of this recursive fakery and its nightmarish endpoint. Like so many travelers in the Instagram age, the show’s characters drift through their adventures without any real purpose other than to reproduce the pretty scenes and special moments they’ve seen elsewhere, trying to locate themselves in endless reflections. Among them, it is only Harper who remains unaffected by visual culture. Her scene in Noto feels like an inflection point. It is easier than ever to mistake beauty for truth — or pretend to. Which, the show asks, will Harper choose?Source photographs: HBO; Cino del Duca/PCE, Lyre. More

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      Stephen Colbert Thanks Santa After Trump Organization Is Found Guilty

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      Late night hosts were thrilled after the former president’s company was convicted on all 17 counts it faced, including tax fraud.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.A Christmas MiracleOn Tuesday, the Trump Organization was convicted on 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes.“Oh, Santa, you got my letter!” Stephen Colbert riffed on the news.“Trump is bragging it’s the most counts ever.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And you know what that means? Donald Trump is going to prison — to visit all the lower-ranking people that did this without his knowledge or his permission.” — TREVOR NOAH“Nothing ever happens to Donald Trump. He’ll probably try to convince us he’s never even heard of the Trump Organization.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“All the successes and Trump’s organization, they are due to the genius of Donald Trump. All the crimes, he had no idea. He’s like, [imitating Donald Trump] ‘That’s right, folks. I have zero control over the things I run, which is why you should vote for me to run the country so I can run it like one of my companies, which I don’t even run. I don’t even run.’” — TREVOR NOAH“What happened was, top execs in the organization got around paying their fair share of taxes through a series of schemes that included off-the-books perks like luxury cars and free apartments. Because nothing makes you look less guilty than giving all your execs a getaway car and a hide-out.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“There’s no word yet on how this is going to impact Trump’s re-election campaign. The reason for that is that it probably won’t.” — JAMES CORDEN“Executives in the organization received fancy apartments, Mercedes-Benzes, even private school tuition for relatives, none of which they paid tax on. I just have to ask: Are they hiring?” — JAMES CORDEN“I don’t get this — how is the organization guilty, but not Donald Trump? This is like if McDonald’s got in trouble, but the Hamburglar got off scot-free.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Herschel Walker’s Last Push Edition)“In Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker are going head-to-head injury in the Senate runoff.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Walker spent the day making one final push, which is unusual for him. Usually during the final push, he’s miles away from the hospital at a Waffle House telling a waitress she could be ‘the one.’”— JIMMY KIMMEL“Voters were out at the polls all day, and at 11:35 Eastern time, with 0 percent of precincts reporting, because we taped the show at 5:30, ‘The Late Show’ is ready to project that Herschel Walker does not belong in the Senate.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The U.S. Senate is no place for people whose brains don’t work because of football injuries; it’s a place for people whose brains don’t work because they’re 1,000 years old.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s not like Herschel didn’t try — he spent years fathering as many voters as possible.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingAmy Poehler and Maya Rudolph appeared on Tuesday’s “Late Night,” where they challenged Seth Meyers to ask them a tough question.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe Linda Lindas will perform on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This Out“Who am I?” asks Orlando, played by Emma Corrin, in a new production at Garrick Theater in London.Marc BrennerEmma Corrin straddles genders and centuries in Neil Bartlett’s breezy adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando,” now playing at the Garrick Theater in London. More

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      10 Stages and Screens Where I Saw Connection

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      For our critic-at-large, “Fat Ham,” “Severance,” “A Strange Loop” and “Sandman” were some of the places she found truth and transcendence.I never venture too far from a theater, but when I did have some time away from New York stages, I was watching TV and movies. In so many of my favorites of 2022, there’s a sense of humanity to the work, whether that means it featured people connecting or simply being honest with themselves and others. Here are the plays, musicals, shows and films that stuck with me this year.‘Cost of Living’That Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 play is written with such gut-busting empathy and humanity shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who’s read the script or seen the previous productions. And yet, “Cost of Living” was still surprising — stunning, even — thanks to the four actors (Gregg Mozgala, Katy Sullivan, Kara Young and David Zayas) and their portrayal of caregivers and patients in a story about the ways we look after one another and what that care costs us. Plays about connections can so easily turn into sentimental weep-fests that manipulate you into tears, but the script, cast and Jo Bonney’s compassionate direction made this Broadway gem feel not just tender but true. (Read our review of “Cost of Living.”)Gregg Mozgala and Kara Young in “Cost of Living.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘300 el x 50 el x 30 el’When I try to describe this epic work by the Belgian theater collective FC Bergman, I get bogged down in contradictions: Grotesque yet radiant. Chaotic but woven into coherence by theme and feeling. Depressing, yet steeped with something even more forceful than joy — utter transcendence. Transforming the Harvey Theater into a village, with live animals and a pond, “300 el” drew inspiration from the biblical story of Noah’s ark. A film crew circled the stage, providing interior views to a pigeon homicide, a deadly game of William Tell and a feast where even the furniture is devoured. When the production ends in song and dance — a tameless exaltation of noise and movement — it seemed to leave even the air in the theater tremulous with excitement. (Read our feature on “300 el x 50 el x 30 el.”)‘Fat Ham’More than anything — including James Ijames’s whip-smart writing, Saheem Ali’s vivacious direction and the cast’s delightful performances — what most stood out to me in the Public’s staging of “Fat Ham” was the joy that seemed to emanate from every person in the room. Who knew “Hamlet,” a tragedy rife with revenge and murder, could be expanded to become a work about queerness and Black masculinity — and a funny, smart work at that? Ijames, apparently, and Ali, whose gleaming production ended in what felt like a party where everyone, audience included, was welcome to attend. (Read our review of “Fat Ham.”)‘A Strange Loop’It’s been quite a year for Black queer theater, due in large part to the Broadway debut of Michael R. Jackson’s mind-bending, genre-busting musical “A Strange Loop.” The production, starring an unforgettable Jaquel Spivey, succeeds on multiple levels: It provides trenchant commentary on Black art, the Black body, religion, masculinity and queerness, while also being laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking. As for the technical elements, its structure, choreography and score coalesce into a prime example of what Broadway can do at its best. (Read our review of “A Strange Loop.”)Jaquel Spivey stars in the Broadway musical “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Oratorio for Living Things’I knew I was seeing something special when I went to Ars Nova’s production of Heather Christian’s “Oratorio,” because I was infected with a desperate urge to see it again — even before I was through seeing it the first time. Having grown up with a Catholic education and Sunday masses, I’ve never felt connected to religious institutions, but Christian’s profound work, directed by Lee Sunday Evans, created a kind of secular mass for nonbelievers and believers alike. The exquisite vocals of the cast were magnified by the miniature amphitheater-style setup of the space, which created an aural experience that — like the text itself — felt both grand and intimate. (Read our review of “Oratorio for Living Things.”)‘English’I’m a sucker for works that examine language — the politics of it, the limitations and freedoms that can be found in words. So I was already onboard for Sanaz Toossi’s play, about a class in Iran where the students are preparing to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. Under Knud Adams’s direction, the cast draws the audience into its word games, linguistic stumbles and individual struggles to learn and assimilate, whether for work or family or dreams of a life in America. (Read our review of “English.”)‘The Sandman’As a fierce fan of the author Neil Gaiman and owner of his complete “Sandman” graphic novel collection, I was so nervous about Netflix’s adaptation that I asked a friend — a fellow fan — to watch the first episode with me for emotional support. The series does justice to its characters with perfectly cast actors, including a mesmerizing Tom Sturridge, who embodies the brooding, awe-inspiring king of dreams with such finesse and gravitas that it’s as though Morpheus himself has escaped from the comics. It’s not just the characters who are well-matched; the world of “Sandman” is portrayed with sweep, imagination and such respect for the original illustrations that much of the dialogue and panels are replicated. I can’t wait for Season 2. (Read our critic’s notebook on “The Sandman.”)Gwendoline Christie and Tom Sturridge in the Netflix series “Sandman.”Netflix‘Severance’“Severance” may be my new favorite TV series. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic, still buzzed with enthusiasm even months after my second time binge-watching it. Adam Scott gives a stellar performance as an employee of a shady corporation who elects to have his consciousness split between his work and outside selves. The show has an exquisite eye and ear for terror, wit and mundane interactions, so that it manages to be both otherworldly and eerily familiar. As for the script — the dialogue’s so fantastic that it makes me want to be a better writer. (Read our review of “Severance.”)‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’I’ve often wondered, in our age of multiversal franchises, what a multiverse narrative would look like if the story were driven by the characters’ emotional development and interpersonal relationships rather than just battle scenes, Easter eggs, and routes to spinoffs and sequels. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was my answer. It contained the unpredictability and boundary-expanding possibilities of the multiverse while staying grounded in the story of a family. Every moment of the film held a new delight. (Read our review of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”)‘Oresteia’When I think back to Robert Icke’s production of “Oresteia,” Aeschylus’ trilogy of Greek tragedies about a family that eats itself from the inside out, I think of one moment. Klytemnestra is grieving after her husband Agamemnon has killed their daughter Iphigenia because of a prophecy that the act would grant his army “fair winds” in war. After the deed, the winds sweep in, the doors to the house are flung open, ethereal white light streams in, and Klytemnestra is caught in a frenzy of flying papers. But what made the production so memorable wasn’t just the special effects but Anastasia Hille’s electrifying performance as Klytemnestra, a woman who folds in to grief and lets it fuel her revenge. (Read our review of “Oresteia.”) More

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      11 Ways I Escaped Reality This Year

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      Our critic was haunted, in a good way, by the performances she saw in movies, theater and TV that offered glimpses into other worlds.In a year when so much, including our democracy, felt topsy-turvy, I was drawn to entertainment that took me out of our real world to another realm. Be it the supernatural, the surreal, the spirit world, or just a superb performance: Here’s my list of 11 otherworldly movies, TV series, actors and plays that brought me joy and centeredness amid the chaos.‘Macbeth’In Sam Gold’s take on “Macbeth,” I loved the lustful love story between Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, but is it weird to say that I also really dug the stew? When we entered the theater, the three witches, dressed in sweaters and jeans, were already onstage stirring their pot, and later they utter the lines that seal Macbeth’s fate. But at the end of the play, when everyone in the cast sits together and shares a bowl, this update, along with one of the witches (Bobbi MacKenzie) singing Gaelynn Lea’s ballad “Perfect,” enacted healing. It reminded me that despite the setbacks that befell the cast and our country, being alive and in the community of theater was something to celebrate. (Read our review of “Macbeth.”)‘The Woman King’With “The Old Guard,” the filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood proved she had the chops for a feminist superhero flick. But with the Viola Davis-led “Woman King,” she went epic in scale and story. She wove in the history of the Agojie, the all-female army in the West African kingdom of Dahomey; produced brilliant fight scenes with actors who performed their own stunts; and explored war, sexual assault and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Here, prophecy is protection, and though it is never named as such, the Dahomey religious practice of Vodun is a guide for Davis’s character, General Nanisca, as she prepares to take on enemies, foreign and domestic, and confront her own demons. (Read our review of “The Woman King.”)Viola Davis, center, stars in “The Woman King.”Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures‘P-Valley’Set at a strip club in Mississippi, the Starz series “P-Valley” is a “love letter to all women who are scrapping it out, but particularly for the Black women that I think a lot of people thumb their noses at, even Black folks,” according to its creator, Katori Hall. It is a sentiment channeled through the veteran dancer and aspiring gym owner Mercedes (Brandee Evans) and the up-and-coming Keyshawn (Shannon Thornton), who is trapped in her career and abusive marriage. But it is Hoodoo, the spiritual practice introduced to them by the club’s security guard Diamond (Tyler Lepley), that might save them. Based on the Season 2 cliffhanger, I’m hoping Diamond’s efforts worked or that he will be there to ward off evil spirits and people in the future. (Streaming on Starz.)‘Reservation Dogs’A coming-of-age tale told through four Indigenous teenagers — Elora, Bear, Cheese and Willie Jack — in the fictional town of Okern, Okla., “Reservation Dogs” masterfully pokes fun at Hollywood stereotypes and acknowledges the nuances of Native culture. While William “Spirit” Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth) is a bumbling spirit guide who gives Bear unsound advice, he is also the counterpoint to ancestral “spirits” such as Elora’s grandmother or Daniel, a friend of the four teens whose suicide prompts them to leave their reservation (or at least attempt to). In the wonderfully rich ninth episode, Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) seeks advice from her aunt and Daniel’s mother, Hokti, who is incarcerated. After Willie Jack makes an offering of Cheez-Its, Flaming Flamers chips and a Skux energy drink, Hokti (Lily Gladstone) reveals that the many spirits surrounding Willie Jack will help her in time. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘The Piano Lesson’ and ‘Death of a Salesman’Ghosts came in different forms this Broadway season. In her revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Piano Lesson,” LaTanya Richardson Jackson decided to literalize the ghost of the white slave owner, Sutter. Though we never see him, his haunting of the Charles family becomes all too real, making the family’s battles over a piano a deeper allegory of race, property and American history. Equally compelling is Miranda Cromwell’s revival of “Death of a Salesman,” whose all-Black family includes Wendell Pierce as Willy Loman and Sharon D Clarke as his wife, Linda. Willy’s older brother, Ben (André De Shields), is not just a ghost but a griot, too. Sporting a white cane, a white suit and bedazzled shoes, Ben plagues Willy with his success while his spirit beckons his younger brother to the other side. This infuses the play with a new sense of ambiguity, never justifying Willy’s final decision but adding a layer of empathy and compassion. (Read our reviews of “The Piano Lesson” and “Death of a Salesman.”)Wendell Pierce, left, as Willy Loman and Andre De Shields as Ben Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRegina HallRegina Hall showed her versatility this year with two wildly different performances. In Mariama Diallo’s horror movie “Master,” she plays Gail Bishop, who, as the first Black dean of a residence hall at the elite Ancaster College, must constantly contend with racism and its impact on her and on Black students. In Adamma Ebo’s comedy “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” she is Trinitie Childs, the wife of a disgraced Southern Baptist pastor (Sterling K. Brown) and a woman obsessed with climbing back to her former state of church glory. The way she evokes Trinitie’s pity, pettiness, petulance and pride gives this film its most memorable and haunting moments. (Read our reviews of “Master” and “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.”)‘Nope’The cinephile in me was pleasantly surprised that Jordan Peele’s “Nope” was a movie about movies. Peele not only pays homage to early film and photography technologies, and the suspense and terror brought on by Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Jaws,” but he also does so while remembering those African Americans whose early contributions to the motion picture industry have been forgotten or ignored. Thanks to Peele’s clever writing, creative directing and smart casting of his frequent collaborator Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”) as well as the magnanimous Keke Palmer, this movie about gentrification, U.F.O.s and racial discrimination ended up being just an old-fashioned, feel-good movie, the kind we still desperately need. (Read our review of “Nope.”)‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’It was a bold move to follow up on a sci-fi classic starring David Bowie as an extraterrestrial. Rather than compete with such memorable casting, Showtime’s 10-episode series “The Man Who Fell to Earth” humanized its protagonist, Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor), by doubling his outsiderness: He arrives in the United States as both an alien and a Black man. In an electrifying sixth episode on jazz music, Faraday and other characters discover a sound of their shared humanity and a possible key to salvaging both of their planets. (Streaming on Showtime.)Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in the TV series “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”Showtime‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’I can’t stop raving about this movie — the costumes, the makeup, the editing (oh, the editing!). The fight scenes, the I.R.S. scenes. The marvelous Michelle Yeoh, playing the laundromat owner and cosmic warrior Evelyn Wang, and Stephanie Hsu, playing her disenchanted daughter, Joy. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who work under the name Daniels, have said that this is mostly a film about the confusion that arises when its characters believe they are in different movie genres from one another. I also admire how this genre diversity (thriller, sci-fi, martial arts, domestic drama) perfectly captured expansive cultural identities (immigrant narratives, Asian American families, queer children) and the depth of our earliest love story (between mother and daughter) — all of which still seem to be unmined in Hollywood. (Read our review of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”)Brian Tyree HenryThe surreal TV series “Atlanta” started off focused on the Princeton dropout (Donald Glover) who became his rapper cousin’s manager, but in its final season it was mainly about the rapper, Alfred a.k.a. Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), and his journey to define himself beyond the trappings of fame, wealth or the music industry. His textured performance gave Alfred more emotional depth as his character confronted feral hogs, white privilege in hip-hop and his own mortality. Henry’s onscreen brilliance led Lila Neugebauer to rewrite and reshoot key scenes in her debut film, “Causeway,” now on Apple+, devoting more time to the friendship between his character and Jennifer Lawrence’s. The result is a moving portrait of grief and hope, in which Henry lights up the film. (Read our review of “Causeway.”) More