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      ‘Love on the Spectrum’ Delivers on the Promise of Reality TV

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      The Netflix series, which follows a group of autistic people as they search for love in their hometowns, feels good to watch, but don’t just call it feel-good TV.You know the story: A superstar surprises a fan on a talk show, and the online crowd goes wild, sending the clip viral. But when the affable actor Jack Black surprised Tanner Smith on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in April, a particularly poignant and joyful alchemy was conjured.“Jack! Jack! I’m so excited to finally meet you,” Smith exclaimed as they embrace. “You’re so handsome, you’re looking good, Jack!”“I love you on the show, and I can’t wait for the next season,” Black told Smith, referring to the Netflix reality series “Love on the Spectrum,” which recently wrapped up a memorable third season. “I’m so happy for you for having all of this success,” Black said. “To meet you in person is really amazing for me, too.”Smith is a beloved star in his own right. Online — his handle, tannerwiththe_tism, nods cleverly at his having autism — he has about 2.5 million followers. It’s a number that is not unusual among his castmates, all of whom are autistic.On the viral clip, one commenter called Smith “easily one of the most beautiful humans to walk this earth.” Another wrote, “This was a moment where humanity remembered what love, truth, and presence really looks like.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Theater to Stream: ‘Yellow Face,’ Joaquina Kalukango and More

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      Watch the Tony nominee Daniel Dae Kim in David Henry Hwang’s comedy, and take in cabaret at 54 Below, all from your living room.‘Broadway’s Best’Watch on PBS, online or on the PBS app.At this year’s Tony Awards ceremony, on June 8, the PBS series “Great Performances” will be honored for excellence in theater. Its spring slate alone should remind everybody why “Great Performances” has been a theater gateway for so many people. Already available is a 2024 recording of the London premiere of the Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt musical “Next to Normal,” starring Caissie Levy as a woman whose bipolar disorder has a ripple effect on her family. The New York Times’ review praised Michael Longhurst’s production for giving the show “a renewed sting.”Next, you can catch the Roundabout Theater Company’s recent revival of the acidic David Henry Hwang comedy “Yellow Face,” starring Daniel Dae Kim and Francis Jue — both nominated for Tonys this year. The glorious Bob Dylan jukebox musical “Girl From the North Country,” set in 1934 Duluth, Minn., arrives May 23. A week later, American audiences can discover last year’s London production of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” — a very funny twist on “The Taming of the Shrew” — with Stephanie J. Block as the fiery diva Lilli Vanessi and Adrian Dunbar (yes, Superintendent Hastings from the procedural “Line of Duty”) as her egotistical ex-husband, Fred Graham.‘The Other Place’ and ‘Vanya’Rent them on National Theater at Home.The National Theater at Home’s catalog is a veritable treasure trove, and a recent addition well worth checking out is “The Other Place” from the writer-director Alexander Zeldin (“Love”). Loosely based on the Greek tragedy “Antigone,” it is not driven by a high-concept staging like Simon Stone’s “Yerma” or Robert Icke’s “Enemy of the People,” which are also drastic reworkings of classics. Rather, Zeldin slowly builds a stifling sense of impending doom until an ending that hits as hard as it is quiet. Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) appears haunted by bottled-up pain as the disrupter at a family reunion, while Tobias Menzies portrays a seemingly even-tempered uncle.Compared with that tragedy, Andrew Scott’s solo interpretation of “Uncle Vanya” feels almost cheery. If you missed the critically acclaimed, very sold-out recent run of “Vanya” in New York, you can watch an excellent capture of the original London version here. Sam Yates’s production offers not just a modernized take on the Chekhov classic but, as Jesse Green wrote in The New York Times, “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty.”‘Friends and Romans’Stream it on Tubi.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Sirens,’ Meghann Fahy Sounds the Alarm

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      “People underestimate melon,” the actress Meghann Fahy said. ”I don’t think they give it a chance.”Fahy was speaking on a drizzly morning in April, two weeks before her 35th birthday, in an Edible Arrangements outlet on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In the first episode of “Sirens,” a Netflix limited series, Fahey’s character receives an arrangement, the deluxe Party Dipped Fruit Delight, which weighs as much as a toddler.“I dragged that arrangement around for weeks,” Fahy said. Now Fahy had come to make her own, a gesture that felt a little like homage, a little like revenge.With some help from the store’s owner, she set about crafting a more modest assemblage. She combined cut pineapple and melon balls to form daisies, then speared honeydew and cantaloupe onto plastic skewers above a kale base. “And that’s how she stabbed herself,” she said, narrating the activity. “Sad.”Meghann Fahy stars in “Sirens” as a protective sister with self-destructive tendencies and, in early scenes, an enormous fruit basket.Macall Polay/NetflixFahy knows what it’s like to be underestimated. She performed on Broadway as a teen in 2009 and then barely worked until 2016, when she landed a role on the go-getting Freeform show “The Bold Type,” the rare series that makes a career in journalism look fun. She didn’t properly break out until 2022, in an Emmy-nominated turn in the second season of HBO’s “The White Lotus.”This year, she has her first proper leads, as an imperiled single mother in the date-night thriller “Drop,” which premiered last month, and as a class-struggle chaos agent in “Sirens.” Created by Molly Smith Metzler (“Maid”), the series premieres on May 22.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stephen Colbert on the President’s Trumped-Up Birthday Plans

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      A military parade marking the anniversary of the Army’s founding will be held on the president’s birthday. “He wants overwhelming force,” Stephen Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Never Have I EverPresident Trump will soon return from his Middle East trip, and he already has big plans for June — specifically, the 14th.On Thursday, Stephen Colbert remarked that Trump might be leaving “his autocratic buddies behind, but he’s going to bring a taste of dictatorship back home when he does, ’cause he’s throwing a military parade on his birthday, featuring 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters.”“He wants overwhelming force, because this is more important than D-Day: It is his B-Day.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, so to honor the troops, soldiers will be housed in a former government warehouse, where they will receive one hot meal a day and have been told, ‘Bring your sleeping bags.’ [imitating Trump] ‘It’s my birthday slumber party! OK, fellas, let’s play Never Have I Ever. I’ll start. Never have I ever served in the military.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And before you ask, yes, there will be costumes. Service members will be wearing period uniforms from the Revolutionary War to the present. Yes. It’ll be June in one of the most humid cities in America, and they’ll be dressing them in wool pants.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Wrong Man for the Job Edition)“When asked yesterday if he would vaccinate his own children against the measles today, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said ‘Probably’ and then added, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Yeah, not what you want to hear from the Secretary of Health and Human Services. That’s like if your pilot got on the P.A. and said, ‘We’re about to hit turbulence and I’d love some suggestions!’” — SETH MEYERS“Well, guys, R.F.K. Jr. just testified before Congress, and he said, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ It’s ironic, because it’s actually some great medical advice.” — JIMMY FALLONWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Doctor Odyssey’ Wraps Up Its Sexy, Shameless First Season

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      The ABC series is only sort of a doctor show. It is better understood as a fantasy.“Doctor Odyssey” finishes its first season on Thursday at 9 p.m., on ABC, and as of press time it still hasn’t been renewed (nor has it been officially canceled). My candles are lit; my fingers are crossed. I love this stupid — so stupid, oh God, stupid, stupid — show. The season thus far is available on Hulu.Joshua Jackson stars as Dr. Max Bankman, the doctor for the luxury cruise ship the Odyssey. He works closely — extremely closely — with Avery (Phillipa Soo), a nurse practitioner who wants to go to medical school, and Tristan (Sean Teale), a nurse. “Love triangle” is too quaint a term, but “throuple” is too resolved. Both men are in love with Avery, though neither holds her full attention. In the sixth episode, prompted by a nourishing goal-setting exercise, they have a steamy, adoring and mutually enjoyable threesome. In fandom parlance, “shippers” are viewers who want the characters to get into a romantic relationship. And oh, “Doctor Odyssey” has plenty of ship.I’m old enough to remember when a time when a devil’s threesome on network television would have been on the news. But here on the high seas, everyone is so sexually liberated that the show loops back around to being wholesome. Sexy, sure. Dirty, no.“Odyssey” operates like “The Love Boat” in that each episode features new guests to both the ship and the show. Each cruise has some kind of theme, which inevitably leads to a series of medical crises, at which point our heroes take a brief break from all the sexual bliss and hobnobbing to save some lives. All the medical instruments and machinery are in a brushed gold instead of stainless steel because intravenous poles deserve glam, too.The show was created by Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Baken and Ryan Murphy, and “Odyssey” feels like a lot of other Ryan Murphy shows, most especially “Nip/Tuck,” the lush, bonkers plastic surgery drama that ran from 2003-2010. But where that show was framed by the recurring prompt “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself,” “Odyssey” is a bacchanalia of self love, of acceptance, of validation. It can feel as if “Nip” got a gentle-parenting glow-up, its luridness revised for the more empowered, enlightened standards of today.“Odyssey” is in some ways the inside-out version of “The Pitt” (streaming on Max), TV’s buzziest doctor show. Jackson’s Max and Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby are both brilliant and ethical leaders with high standards. They are both haunted by their experiences at the beginning of the pandemic, Robby by his mentor’s death and Max by the fact that he was among Covid’s earliest patients — he was hospitalized and in a coma, near death. Both Max and Robby cope admirably with a partner’s reproductive choices. Both shows indulge in a bit of medical gore, and both use a sense of “Oh no, we don’t have the resources we need” to intensify the drama. In “The Pitt,” it’s for budgetary reasons; in “Odyssey,” it’s because they’re at sea.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      ‘Rotten Legacy’ Is a Soapy Spanish Succession Story

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      The premise of this foreign Netflix drama makes it sound a lot like “Succession,” but it isn’t trying to be. It’s brighter and pulpier than that.The Spanish soap “Rotten Legacy,” on Netflix (in Spanish, with subtitles, or dubbed), follows an ailing media czar and his unhappy heirs as they take turns manipulating and sabotaging one another.“Succession”? “Succession,” you say? Oh, not quite. “Legacy” is nowhere near as tense or textured, nor as funny, but it also isn’t trying to be. It’s bright and pulpy, juicy and impatient. Plenty of fraught and twisty board meetings, though.Federico (Jose Coronado) has spent the last two years away from his home and work, receiving cancer treatment. Now that he’s back, he is dismayed by how his children have run the show in his absence, though of course he’s the kind of father who is always dismayed.Andrés (Diego Martín) has been handling the newspaper and Yolanda (Belén Cuesta) a TV station. Guadalupe (Natalia Huarte) is trying to shed her rich-girl image with a career in progressive politics. They are each mixing business with pleasure — or if not pleasure, at least sex, self-loathing and double-crossing. But the family that frauds together stays together, bound by mutually assured destruction. “Your kids are like this because you’re like this,” an associate tells Federico. It’s not a compliment.In addition to prodigal patriarch woes, Federico’s other big project is sitting for a tell-all interview that will be released upon his death. On one hand, it’s an important way to solidify his legacy and get the last word. On the other … now there’s a recording of all his dirty laundry and cruel opinions, and plenty of people would love to get their hands on it while he’s alive to face the fallout.“In order to back-stab, you don’t really need talent,” Yolanda tells her father, knife in his back. Everybody has secrets here, and secret priorities, and boy are there a lot of surreptitious recordings. That’s life in the media biz, where knowledge, leverage and receipts make the world go ’round.“Legacy” has some fun with its messy romance plots, though I could do without a sex scene set to the Sufjan Stevens song “John Wayne Gacy.” So many shows about executive strife look gray and cold, all silvery reflections and austere offices. “Legacy,” though, is bright and colorful, with secret meetings on lush, green soccer pitches and big, candied cherries on pertly iced cupcakes. More

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      in Movies

      Joe Don Baker, Actor Who Found Fame With ‘Walking Tall,’ Dies at 89

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      His performance as a crusading Southern sheriff made him a star after a decade under the radar in character parts. He went on to play a wide range of roles.Joe Don Baker, the tall, broad-shouldered character actor who found overnight fame when he starred as a crusading Southern sheriff in “Walking Tall,” a surprise hit both at the box office and with critics, and who went on to an impressive range of screen roles over the next four decades, died on May 7. He was 89.The death was announced by his family on Tuesday. The announcement did not say where he died or cite a cause.Released in the era of “Dirty Harry” and “Billy Jack,” “Walking Tall” (1973) is the story of a Tennessee man who moves back to his hometown and finds it hopelessly changed by illegal gambling, prostitution and careless moonshiners. The movie, as Dave Kehr described it almost 40 years later in The New York Times, is “a wild-eyed fantasy about an incorruptible leader who finds it necessary to subvert the law in order to save it.”A low-budget production, directed by the journeyman filmmaker Phil Karlson, it opened on Staten Island months before it arrived in Manhattan but proved to be a phenomenon. Vincent Canby, reviewing the film in The Times, called it “relentlessly violent” but also “uncommonly well acted.”It was soon noticed and praised by a wide array of prominent critics. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called it “a volcano of a movie” and saw in Mr. Baker, a 37-year-old unknown with a decade of credits, mostly on television, “the mighty stature of a classic hero.”“The picture’s crudeness and its crummy cinematography give it the illusion of honesty,” she wrote.Vanity Fair wrote in 2000 that “Walking Tall” had “a major asset in Joe Don Baker,” whom it compared to Elvis Presley.MGM, via LMPC/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seth Meyers Thinks Trump Shouldn’t Be So Set on That Jet

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      “We are, as of this taping, still a democracy with a rule of law,” Meyers said. “The president shouldn’t have a flying gold-plated party palace.”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.Size QueenPresident Donald Trump defended his choice to accept a jet from Qatar, saying that America should have the biggest, most impressive plane out of all the countries.“No, we shouldn’t,” Seth Meyers argued on Wednesday. “We are, as of this taping, still a democracy with a rule of law. The president shouldn’t have a flying gold-plated party palace.”“Stuff like that is a sign of corruption. That’s why Las Vegas looks like that — it was built by criminals.” — SETH MEYERS“The point is, they have nicer planes because they’re not democracies; they’re royal kingdoms, where they oppress people and use the public’s money to build opulent palaces for their rulers. We don’t do that here. If you ask me, the president should be forced to fly the same way the rest of us do. He should have to sit at Newark for six hours nursing a $30 Bloody Mary, and chewing on a pretzel while he waits for the one on-duty air traffic controller’s hands to stop shaking.” — SETH MEYERS“Trump should have a big plane because Trump definitely does not have a little plane. It’s definitely at least an average American male plane.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Plus, I will tell you what, a lot of countries say that a smaller plane is actually more comfortable for longer rides.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“We still talking about planes? Look where we are on the tarmac next to each other. I know you’re not supposed to just look straight ahead, but I took a little peek over there, a little peek over there. Cockpit was huge, man!” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I’m sorry, why does the president need any of this? Air Force One is supposed to be technologically advanced, not luxurious. It’s designed so the president can get national security briefings anywhere in the world, not so he can chill on leather couches and use nine different bathrooms — which, by the way, he might need to do on the way home based on the fact that the Saudis set up a custom-built mobile McDonald’s in anticipation of Trump’s visit.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Humps for Trump Edition)“When Trump landed in Qatar, he was escorted by a fleet of Cybertrucks, Arabian horses and camels. And even the horses and camels were laughing at the Cybertruck.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, Trump was welcomed by horses and camels. He was like, ‘I love the horses and the sexier horses.’” — JIMMY FALLONWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More