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      Why There Is Talk of a Writers’ Strike in Hollywood

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      TV and movie writers want more money, but Hollywood companies say the demands ignore economic realities. The deadline to sort out those differences is approaching.Television and movie writers want raises, saying that Hollywood companies have taken unfair advantage of the shift to streaming to devalue their work and create worsening working conditions.The companies bristle at the accusation and say that, while they are willing to negotiate a new “mutually beneficial” deal with writers, the demands for an entirely new compensation structure ignore economic realities.Whether the sides can settle their differences will determine if the entertainment industry can avoid its first writers’ strike in 15 years.Unions representing more than 11,000 television and movie writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood’s nine largest studios, including Amazon and Apple, began talks on March 20 for a new three-year contract. The current agreement expires on May 1.The Writers Guild of America, West, and the Writers Guild of America, East, have the strength to bring Hollywood to a halt if they do not get a deal to their liking. Chris Keyser, a co-chair of the W.G.A. negotiating committee, said in an interview that this moment for writers was “existential.”“The industry is almost always unfair to labor,” Mr. Keyser said. “This time it’s broken — it’s actually broken.”Here is what you need to know:Will there be a strike?No outcome is certain, but little in the posturing so far suggests an easy resolution. Producers have begun to stockpile scripts by asking writers to complete as many ahead of the May 1 deadline as possible.The negotiations will likely be acrimonious given the seismic changes in the industry. The rapid transition to streaming entertainment has upended nearly every corner of Hollywood, and writers believe they have been left behind.Unlike directors and actors, writers have historically been willing to strike. The most recent strike stretched from 2007 into 2008, lasting 100 days. One in 1988 dragged on for five months. A walkout must first be authorized by union members; the W.G.A. has signaled that it could conduct a vote as early as the first week in April.Authorization gives the union leverage, but it does not mean a strike is inevitable. In 2017, writers overwhelmingly gave the go-ahead for a strike (with 96 percent of the vote). The sides ultimately reached an agreement a few hours before the first pickets hit studio sidewalks.The entrance to NBC Studios in Manhattan.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHow would a strike affect audiences?There will be a gradual halt in the production of many television shows, except for reality and news programs, which would be mostly unaffected.Viewers will notice the fallout first among entertainment talk shows, including “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” If a strike lasts several weeks, “Saturday Night Live” would not be able complete its season. Soap operas, already on viewership life support, would run out of new episodes after about a month.Plenty of high-profile TV series have coming seasons that are already finished. But premieres for fall series like “Abbott Elementary” would be delayed by a monthslong strike, and viewers would begin to notice fewer scripted TV series by the end of the year. Reality and international shows will start to run in heavy rotation.Moviegoers would not experience immediate effects; movie studios work about a year ahead, meaning that almost everything planned for 2023 has already been shot. The risk involves 2024, especially if studios rush to beat a strike by putting films into production with scripts that aren’t quite ready.The offices of the Writers Guild of America West in Los Angeles.Andrew Cullen for The New York TimesWhat are the writers’ complaints?Every three years, the writers’ union negotiates a contract with the major studios that establishes pay minimums and addresses matters such as health care and residuals (a type of royalty), which are paid out based on a maze of formulas.And though there has been a boom in television production in recent years (known within the industry as “Peak TV”), the W.G.A. said that the median weekly pay for a writer-producer had declined 4 percent over the last decade.Because of streaming, the former network norms of 22, 24 or even 26 episodes per season have mostly disappeared. Many series are now eight to 12 episodes long. At the same time, episodes are taking longer to produce, so series writers who are paid per episode often make less while working more. Some showrunners are likewise making less despite working longer hours.“The streaming model has created an environment where there’s been enormous downward pressure on writer income across the board,” David Goodman, a co-chair of the guild negotiating committee, said in an interview.Screenwriters have been hurt by a decline in theatrical releases and the collapse of the DVD market, union leaders said.Between 2012 and 2021, the number of films rated annually by the Motion Picture Association fell by 31 percent. Streaming services picked up some slack, but companies like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO Max, have been cutting back on film production to reduce costs amid slowing subscriber growth.Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesAre the companies in a position to pay more?They would argue this isn’t the best time for it.Disney said in February that it would cut $5.5 billion in costs and eliminate 7,000 jobs to address streaming losses, an atrophying cable television business and steep corporate debt. Warner Bros. Discovery has already cut thousands of jobs as part of a $4 billion retrenchment. NBCUniversal is also tightening its belt as it contends with cable cord-cutting and a troublesome advertising market.The writers are unmoved by this. Mr. Keyser noted that Netflix is already profitable (to the tune of $4.5 billion last year), and that rival companies have said their streaming services will be profitable in the next year or two. “We don’t get to negotiate again until 2026,” Mr. Keyser said. “We’re not waiting around until they’re profitable.”Who’s doing the negotiating?In a rarity for Hollywood, the chief negotiators are both women. Carol Lombardini, 68, leads the studio effort; she has worked at the producers’ alliance for 41 years. Ellen Stutzman, 40, leads the W.G.A. effort. She was appointed only about a month ago, after David Young, who has served as the ferocious negotiator for writers since 2007, stepped aside, citing an unspecified medical problem.Ms. Stutzman, who has been with the W.G.A. for 17 years, said in an interview that Mr. Young would play no part in these negotiations. She called him “a wonderful mentor.”Are the studios aligned?Absolutely, according to the producers’ alliance. “The A.M.P.T.P. companies approach this negotiation and the ones to follow with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority,” the alliance said in a statement, referring to impending contract renewal talks with directors and actors. “We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and fully committed to reaching a mutually beneficial deal.”But differences start to appear when you talk to senior executives on a company-by-company basis. In private conversations, they point out that the group is much less monolithic than in the past. It now includes tech companies like Amazon and Apple, for example, whose primary business is not entertainment.Striking members of the Writers Guild of America passed out leaflets in Rockefeller Center in 2007.Librado Romero/The New York TimesIs the W.G.A. united?For generations, ever since the end of the silent film era, Hollywood writers have complained that studios treat them as second-class citizens — that their artistic contributions are underappreciated (and undercompensated), especially compared with those of actors and directors. This sentiment runs deep among writers and has historically resulted in extraordinary unity.In 2019, when film and TV writers fired their agents in a campaign over what they saw as conflicts of interest, many agency leaders figured that the W.G.A. would eventually fracture. That never happened: After a 22-month standoff, the big agencies effectively gave writers what they wanted.What about collateral damage?Tens of thousands of entertainment workers were idled during the 2007 strike, and the action cost the Los Angeles economy more than $2 billion, according to the Milken Institute. This time around, many of the small businesses that service Hollywood (florists, caterers, chauffeurs, stylists, lumber yard workers) have only started to regain their footing after pandemic shutdowns, increasing the stakes of a strike and potentially leading to community fissures. More

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      Matthew Macfadyen Has Mixed Feelings About the End of ‘Succession’

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      Could there be a more excruciatingly awkward TV character than Tom Wambsgans in “Succession”? Played with understated comic glee by the British actor Matthew Macfadyen, Tom manages to simultaneously exist on all points of the show’s power spectrum: bullied, bullying and wafting helplessly in between.Over most of three seasons, Tom has stayed one and a half steps behind the machinations at Waystar Royco, the company run by his imperious father-in-law, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), while being treated with casual contempt by his wife, Shiv (Sarah Snook).So it came as a shock when Tom pulled himself together at the end of Season 3 to orchestrate a stunning power play, teaming with Logan against Shiv and two of her brothers in an epic battle over Waystar’s future.Not that this guarantees Tom will end up on top in the fourth and final season of “Succession,” which begins Sunday on HBO. (Whatever “on top” really means when the pole is as greasy and compromised as this one.)“Tom may be in Logan’s camp, but it’s not an easy camp to be in,” Macfadyen said on a February afternoon, sipping a bitters and soda in Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. “He still doesn’t feel particularly secure, and he’s still worrying about his relationship with Shiv. And everyone else is still maneuvering and jockeying and competing.”If Macfadyen is operatically ill at ease in “Succession,” in reality he is the opposite: relaxed, easygoing and affable, his voice deep and self-assured, with none of his character’s nervous tics or frantic efforts to read his fate in others’ eyes. While Tom is beset by inner demons and crippling insecurity, Macfadyen comes across as remarkably well adjusted, someone happy to do his job and not get too wound up about it. He uses the word “lovely” a lot.Long a familiar face to British viewers, Macfadyen had been mostly under the radar on this side of the Atlantic before “Succession.” If Americans knew him at all, it was likely in his guise as a different Tom — Tom Quinn, an arrogant yet vulnerable spy in the first two seasons of the British series “Spooks” (known in the U.S. as “MI-5”), starting in 2002. Or they might have seen him playing a brooding, tortured Mr. Darcy in Joe Wright’s “Pride and Prejudice” (2005), or a Victorian detective in the BBC series “Ripper Street.”Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg, in the new season of “Succession.” The actors have teamed in some of the show’s funniest scenes.Macall B. Polay/HBOIn “Stonehouse,” from earlier this year, Macfadyen teamed with his wife, the British actor Keeley Hawes. “It was fun to get a chance to see Keeley at work,” he said. BritBoxIt was a different role that won over Jesse Armstrong, the “Succession” creator: Macfadyen’s turn as the drunkenly bumptious Sir Felix Carbury in “The Way We Live Now” (2001), a British mini-series based on the Trollope novel.“He’s well known in the U.K. as being able to play all sorts of parts, though most people wouldn’t necessarily know him as a comic actor,” Armstrong said.While Tom began “Succession” largely on the fringes, “I knew this role would be significant and important,” Armstrong said. As the series went on, the writers played to Macfadyen’s antic comic skills and ability to show Tom’s poignant vulnerability in quieter moments.“In a show that’s about power and its manifestations, Matthew is very good at playing a character who is the crux of a number of different power relationships,” Armstrong said. “He’s good at showing Tom’s willingness to shape and adjust his personality to fit into the power structure.” (As Macfadyen explained recently on “The Tonight Show,” one way he does this is by raising and lowering the pitch of Tom’s voice depending on who else is in the scene.)Macfadyen, 48, was born in England but raised abroad, including for several years in Jakarta, Indonesia, because of his father’s job in the oil business. He went to boarding school back home, skipped college and enrolled instead at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduation, he toured internationally in the Cheek by Jowl theater ensemble, performing in plays like “The Duchess of Malfi” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”He had a breakthrough when he was cast as Hareton Earnshaw in the 1998 British TV adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” followed quickly by a two-part BBC film, “Warriors,” in which he played a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia. He has worked steadily since. “You just get a momentum,” he said.Macfadyen has a tendency, common to English actors, to downplay his own work, as if it all flows effortlessly from him. He also has a predilection for supporting roles.“I feel sometimes you can get in a rut when you play leading men,” he said. “It’s much more fun being the baddie or the clown.”Tom has stood out from the start of “Succession,” but Macfadyen has never felt compelled to demand more airtime. “I don’t feel like it’s my character,” he said. “It’s Jesse’s, and I’m the conduit for it.”Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times“Succession” is full of big names and memorable characters, including the three Roy boys: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck), each appalling and damaged in his own special way. But Tom Wambsgans — mercurial yet sensitive, diabolical yet almost constantly hapless — stood out from the beginning.There is the matter of his strange last name, its awkward B bristling aggressively in a string of consonants, defying casual pronunciation. There is his status as a Roy punching bag, a man whose wife announced on their wedding night that she wanted an open marriage and whose father-in-law dangles power before him but uses him as a scapegoat and bagman. There is his loopy relationship with Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), a sadomasochistic romp that Armstrong describes as a “homoerotic power play.”While Tom is no dummy, his awkwardness is so easy to mistake for stupidity that sometimes even Macfadyen does it. “Jesse will remind Nick and me, ‘He’s running a billion-dollar wing of this company; he’s not a total moron,’” he said.Over four seasons of filming in New York City, the “Succession” cast became particularly close, and it was not unusual to see them dining around town in various configurations in what Macfadyen called “the ‘Succession’ supper club.” He often had dinner with Snook, his fictional wife, and other cast members.“I don’t know how he’s managed to make such an obsequious and bullying character likable, but he has,” Snook said. “He’s one of those actors who’s got such love and empathy and compassion and curiosity for the world that he can really fashion a character into anything he wants.”Macfadyen seems to be that rare thing: an actor without a huge ego. (Or perhaps he is such a good actor that he can hide his egotism.) Among other things, he said, he has never felt compelled to demand more airtime or a better story arc for Tom.“I’ve seen actors get very proprietorial about their ‘journey,’” he said. “But I don’t feel like it’s my character — it’s Jesse’s, and I’m the conduit for it.”Also, he added, “You don’t want to get attached to a possible story line, because they may change their minds.”Braun said that Macfadyen has a genuine selflessness, a helpful quality in a series in which numerous actors are often in a single scene. He also praised Macfadyen’s uncanny ability to stay in the moment while performing, and to do so with an un-showy absence of vanity.“He doesn’t expend a lot of extra energy before a scene,” Braun said. “He’s not, like, ruminating or taking a lot of private time or ‘staying in the energy’ of Tom.”(In this way, Macfadyen would seem to be the opposite of his co-star Strong, whose intensity and extreme immersion into his characters have been extensively chronicled in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Macfadyen was loath to discuss this topic. “I think enough has been said about that,” he said.)Though “Succession” is carefully scripted, the actors are encouraged to improvise and play around with alternative dialogue. Braun and Macfadyen, who have shared some of the show’s funniest scenes, were famous on set for cracking each other up. “The guy is abusive in a way that isn’t super on the nose,” Braun said, of Tom.“They evidently just find each other amusing,” Armstrong said dryly.Macfadyen is married to the British actor Keeley Hawes, whom he met when both played spies in “MI-5.” They had a highly public affair — she had a husband and a baby at the time — but married in 2004, after her divorce, and had two more children together. Macfadyen said that everyone has become great friends and co-parents. “It was a bit bumpy at the time, but it’s fine now,” he said.“It was a really lovely bunch of actors,” Macfadyen said about his “Succession” colleagues. “It’s a weird thing, the grief when you finish a job.”Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesMacfadyen missed his family when he was off shooting “Succession,” and often flew home to England when he had a break in filming. But he sounded wistful about the end of the show.“It was a really lovely bunch of actors,” he said. “It’s a weird thing, the grief when you finish a job. It’s sort of awful and heartbreaking but at the same time, there’s a slight relief — a complicated mélange of feelings.”Macfadyen has worked steadily on other things between seasons. In the British series “Stonehouse,” which debuted in January, he starred as the real-life 1970s Conservative politician John Stonehouse. It was a juicy role: Stonehouse spied (badly) for Czechoslovakia, got involved in dodgy business schemes, cheated on his wife, faked his own death and turned up under a false name in Australia.Mrs. Stonehouse was played by Hawes, whose character soon gleans that her husband is not all that he seems. “It was fun to get a chance to see Keeley at work,” Macfadyen said, “especially her withering looks.”Macfadyen’s next project, with Nicole Kidman, is “Holland, Michigan,” an Amazon thriller about the secrets that lurk in a small town. He seems deeply unfussed about what comes next. Unlike Tom Wambsgans, Macfadyen is very much content with his place in the world.“The whole art of being an actor is to imagine what it’s like to be someone else with sympathy and empathy, to not make it about you,” he said. “The job is great. I like the old-fashioned thing of putting on a costume and sounding different and doing things you would never dream of doing in real life.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Celebrates ‘the Calm Before the Stormy’

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      Kimmel joked that indictments were “in the air” after former President Donald Trump said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.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.Save the DateFormer President Donald Trump published a Truth Social post on Saturday saying that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday and requested supporters to “protest, take our nation back.”During his Monday night monologue, Jimmy Kimmel joked that indictments were “in the air.”“It’s really magical,” he said. “It’s the calm before the Stormy.”“You know what, we’ve been saying for years that one of these days, we’re going to wake up, and Trump will have been arrested for one of these many crimes? Well, that day could be tomorrow.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You’ve got to give it to him. It’s not often that everyone sends out a save-the-date for their own arrest.” — JIMMY FALLON“But you never know with him. Either he’s about to actually be arrested or he’s releasing another round of digital trading cards for us to buy. We don’t know for sure.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The truth is, there’s no good reason for Trump to be in any of this trouble. If Casa-no-brain had just paid Stormy Daniels the $130,000 himself out of his Pizza Hut money or whatever, he wouldn’t be in this situation. He wouldn’t have an issue in New York. So many of his legal problems are based on him being an idiot. If President Karen hadn’t picked up the phone and called around Georgia, asking to speak to its manager to find 11,000 votes, he wouldn’t have an issue in Georgia. If he just tweeted the words ‘Calm down, go home’ four hours earlier like everyone, including his daughter, told him to, he wouldn’t have an issue on Jan. 6. And if the great white hope chest hadn’t boxed up his love letters from the Saudis and Kim Jong-un — if he hadn’t squirreled them out of the White House and into the rec room at Golf-a-logo — he wouldn’t have an issue with the F.B.I. In every case, the reason he’s in trouble is because he is the dumbest criminal in the world. He brought this all on himself. He’s Al Ca-BoneHead, is what he is.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Another Failed Business Venture Edition)“Police are going to be like, ‘You have the right to remain silent — now, but also in general. Just think about it. Just something to think about.’” — JIMMY FALLON“You know, if they want Trump’s fingerprints, they could have just looked at the Cheetos dust on his Diet Coke cans.” — JIMMY FALLON“And I’ve got to say, who would have ever thought that Donald Trump would be brought down by a porn star? All of us, right? It was pretty — pretty predictable.” — AL FRANKEN, guest host of “The Daily Show”“But, yeah, Donald Trump paid Stormy Daniels to keep this story quiet, and here we are, still talking about it seven years later, so that would be another failed Trump business venture.” — AL FRANKEN“You know it’s bad when a former president announces that he’s going to be arrested and the general response is, ‘For which crime?’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingAl Franken invited Senator Lindsey Graham to be his first interview as guest host of “The Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe comedian and television host Nicole Byer will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutTaylor Swift kicked off her Eras Tour in Glendale, Ariz.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesTaylor Swift opened her Eras Tour on Friday with a three-hour show traversing her 10-album career. More

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      ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 3 Recap: ‘King Kong’ Ding-Dong

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      Perry tries to be a better dad. Della tries a Turkish cigarette. Paul runs an interesting and inconvenient ballistics experiment.Season 2, Episode 3: ‘Chapter Eleven’Della Street has Perry Mason’s number. She has just learned of the suicide of their former client Emily Dodson, by way of a stack of desperate postcards and letters Perry that dumps on Della after keeping them secret for months. She realizes that this is the reason they switched to civil cases from criminal law — a major career shift, the rationale for which she ought to have been told.It’s the reason she’s had to “walk on eggshells” around his mercurial moods. It’s part and parcel of his overall pattern of evasive, self-isolating behavior. And worst of all, it’s behavior even he doesn’t fully understand.“Why didn’t you tell me?” Della asks Perry when she learns about Emily at long last. His reply seems to baffle even himself: “I don’t know,” he stammers, before repeating himself for emphasis. “I don’t.” Seeming to extrude the words rather than speak them, Matthew Rhys expertly conveys Perry’s confusion about his own motivations. Why didn’t he lean on his strong, capable colleague for support as Emily’s pleas started piling up? Why didn’t he come clean about the suicide?For that matter, as Della pointedly inquires, why didn’t he do anything to stop it before it happened? “When are you ever not alone in anything?” she asks, exasperated with his need to bear every burden in silence.After another hour spent in Perry’s company, I get the sense that injustice and tragedy are, to him, almost like a physical malady from which he suffers. There are times when he can simply take no more and springs into action, as he did with Emily’s case in the first place, and as he is doing with the Gallardo brothers now. It’s this almost impulsive zeal that leads him to stand up against the oil tycoon Lydell McCutcheon, whose goons strong-arm Perry into a meeting that devolves into threats. (Elsewhere in the episode, McCutcheon maims a man who comes looking to collect on a debt owed him by his dead son, Brooks, so we know he is willing to make good on those threats.)But Perry is also capable of ignoring this kind of pain until it’s too late, then wallowing in it, even exacerbating it. Yes, he is the kind of guy who can deftly, gently shame the new case’s slightly pretentious presiding judge (Tom Amandes) into having the Gallardos placed in protective custody after they report finding broken glass in their jailhouse chow. But he is also the kind of guy who’ll deliberately drive his motorcycle at unsafe speeds rather than admit to Della that he may have contributed to his former client’s sense of suicidal isolation and despair.Perhaps the sad tale of his service in the Great War — he was discharged after mercy-killing his own wounded men in the trenches — says everything you need to know about Perry. He’ll fly in the face of authority and society at large to do what he feels is right, but as that judge points out to him, he almost never does so in a way that will lead to a happy ending for anyone.This dynamic plays out in miniature when he allows his son, Teddy (Jack Eyman), who is staying with him overnight while Perry’s ex works overtime, to skip out on homework in order to catch “King Kong” at the movie theater. It’s a well-intentioned gesture, but all Teddy gets out of it is an extra day of makeup work and nightmares about dinosaurs.That said, Perry’s poor parenting gives him another opportunity to flirt gingerly with Teddy’s teacher, the fetching Miss Ames. It’s a more straightforward bit of banter than what goes down between Perry and Camilla Nygaard, Lydell McCutcheon’s rival in the oil biz. When Perry and Della approach her for information about the McCutcheons, she chats with them in a swimsuit while performing a workout that wouldn’t pass the Hays Code.Is she coming on to Perry, about whose core strength she saucily inquires? To Della, whom she invites to return to the estate? Is it all an intimidation tactic? Is it simply how she rolls? For now, her motives are a mystery — although she bristles when Perry drops the name of a medical facility called San Haven and says, inscrutably, that “the Lawson girl’s family has been through quite enough.” (See below for the apparent answer to this particular riddle.)Some other questions turn out to be a bit easier to answer. Perry and Della’s investigator Paul travels to the Hooverville where the Gallardo brothers lived, where he quickly and cleverly acquires the gun used in the Brooks McCutcheon murder and traces it to the brothers. As he tells the gun dealer, who nearly kills him before Paul backs him off, this was not the answer he wanted to find.Perry, meanwhile, traces the phone number we saw that mysterious figure place in Brooks’s wallet to a sanitarium housing a catatonic young woman named Noreen Lawson (Danielle Gross). Perry’s conversations with both Camilla and Lydell leave the strong impression that Brooks was responsible for the woman’s diminished state of cognition. This means, contrary to initial appearances, that the mystery man must have been out to make Brooks look worse, not better, when he planted that number in the police evidence locker. What’s his game? Another open question.But not all of the goons involved in the McCutcheon murder are quite so inscrutable. The episode begins with a surprisingly sympathetic look at the off-duty life of the crooked Detective Holcomb. When he isn’t busy doing the criminal bidding of Los Angeles’s rich and powerful, he comes home to a loving wife and children whom he’s anxious to remove from a city he can no longer stomach.Holcomb comes across here like one of those ancillary “Sopranos” characters who morph from “third goomba from the left” to late-season main character, however briefly — specifically Eugene Pontecorvo (Robert Funaro), the made guy who inherited a fortune and wanted to ditch New Jersey for the sunny climes of Florida. Sadly for Holcomb, I fear there are few more dangerous things to be on prestige television than a goon with dreams of bettering himself.From the case files:Last week, reporters told Perry that the prosecution had found one of Rafael Gallardo’s fingerprints on Brooks McCutcheon’s car. This week, Rafael swears this is impossible. It’s a discrepancy worth keeping an eye on, especially now that it seems the brothers were in possession of the murder weapon. It’s also worth noting that when we spend time with them alone, neither brother shows the slightest sign of having actually committed the crime.Perry’s conversations with Miss Ames and Camilla Nygaard had some spark to them, but Della’s late-night rendezvous with her new love interest, the screenwriter Anita St. Pierre, over Chinese food and Turkish cigarettes is a four-alarm fire by comparison.At least twice, the director Jessica Lowrey finds poetry in afternoon sunlight: first as beams pass through the window to be filtered through an ornate railing as Perry investigates the sanitarium, then through the trees in the little grove where Paul travels to conduct his amateur ballistics test. I’ve gone on and on about how the lively characters and cast make this show; it’s often just plain lovely to look at, too.For that matter, I adore the show’s ever-inventive end-title sequences. (Since each episode kicks off with just a title card bearing the show’s name, it falls to the closing credits to do the cool-looking stuff most shows these days like to start with.) This week, we’ve got a series of rats standing against a black background getting shot at, just like the critters the kids in the Gallardos’ Hooverville attempt to hunt and eat. It’s very “closing shot of ‘The Departed.’”Paul’s pal Morris (Jon Chaffin) listens to a rabidly xenophobic radio broadcaster in the Father Coughlin vein, who rails about the Gallardos and demands mass deportations in response to the McCutcheon murder. Mo is out of work, thanks largely to the incarceration of the relatively benevolent loan shark whom Paul inadvertently helped put away; broke, miserable people desperate for a scapegoat have always been a key demographic for demagogues of this sort.“At some point, Mr. Mason, you must find all of your righteousness just a bit exhausting.” I think the judge who tells Perry this is right. Find me a single shot in this show where Mason looks well-rested, and I’ll bankroll your baseball team. More

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      Lauren Ambrose Just Wants to Go to French Clown School

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      The actress, who is joining the cast of “Yellowjackets,” talks about British sitcoms, the “On Being” podcast and gardening at night.“What creature is that?” Lauren Ambrose asked, craning her neck during a video interview from her home in the Berkshires. “I see this, like, crazy hawk sitting on a tree outside my window. It just caught my eye.”The setting was fitting, since Ambrose is about to become bonded with, and haunted by, the natural world. Joining the cast of “Yellowjackets,” Showtime’s thriller about a girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness and pushed to the extremes, she plays the adult version of Van, short for Vanessa, one of the lucky and savvy few to make it to middle age.Ambrose, who also stars in the Apple TV+ series “Servant,” was excited by the opportunity to help create a character (played in her teenage years by Liv Hewson) and by the women she said she’s grown up watching.“I love looking at the call sheet and seeing that the top chunk is all of these incredible women who I’ve admired and whose careers I’ve followed — who’ve influenced me so much as actors,” she said.“I’ve also never had the experience of being the fan of something and then going in and joining it,” Ambrose added.Before the show kicks off its second season on Sunday, she talked about what moves and comforts her, including crying at the French circus, her love of gardening and the podcast that puts her at ease. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1‘Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment’There’s this guy Michael Lipson who’s one of the smartest men alive — a true sage. He worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and worked at Harlem Hospital in the pediatric AIDS unit. He’s a scholar and a teacher and he wrote this book “Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment,” which synthesizes his lifetime of wisdom and learning. It’s sort of this miraculous little thing. It’ll fill you.2Domi and JD BeckThey’re both young, both prodigies. My son just turned 16 and he’s a very serious jazz guitar player. We had a blast at their concert. In this attention economy, what I love about them is to see young people who have obviously logged so much practice. And that they’re making the music they want to make.3‘The Trip’This British sitcom gives me a feeling of being backstage or being at the bar after the play. I love it. It’s got everything I want. It’s got impressions and big ideas and ego. The egoism of being an actor is wonderful to laugh at. And it’s just painful and funny and sublime. There are people in my life who I speak to almost exclusively in lines from “The Trip.”4Cirque D’HiverWe were just in Paris and went to the French circus, and it was the best thing we did. The band was unbelievable, the acts were unbelievable. The clowning was, like, the greatest I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m such a nut, I was the only one there crying because I was so moved by the clowns, who are such geniuses in their silent storytelling. I’m like, I have to go to French clown school. Basically, it’s all I want to do, to be a clown in the French circus.5GardeningIt’s a big part of my life, and of my year. There were times last year while I was working on “Servant” when I was racing home and planting seeds with a headlamp at night. I was like, I’ve got to get this stuff in! It’s been a humbling venture, maybe the most humbling there is. Just watching the garden change throughout the seasons is an amazing thing. That first day when you get salad is kind of a holy day because there’s really nothing like it. It’s like a whole other food, salad from the garden.6Krista TippettI basically can’t imagine my life without “On Being.” She’s such an inspiration to me, and I love that her brand of journalism, her brand of interviewing, is a conversation. Krista holds the space and lets there be silences. For me, with traveling for work, it’s been really important. I get really carsick, and sometimes I’ll play the same episode over and over and let it drift in and out of my consciousness.7Children’s BooksOur kids are a little older now — 10 and 16 — but there are books that we’ve read thousands of times in our house. Some of them are so deeply in our DNA that sometimes we speak in children’s books, to the point where we have a game of who can guess what book that’s from? “Pippi Longstocking” by Astrid Lindgren, “Frog and Toad” by Arnold Lobel, “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak — these are essential in our family, not only the words but the imagery as well.8The Center for Humane TechnologyThe people behind this organization have an optimism that we can have a healthier relationship as a society to tech, which can be unhealthy and destructive to people’s lives and democracies. I am just so grateful for the work that they’re doing, especially as a mother of a teenager and a soon-to-be teenager.9Grateful LivingAs much as I eschew technology, there are some pretty great things out there. The top is grateful.org, which was started by an Austrian monk who purports that gratitude and noticing all of the small, tiny moments is the key to life. There are all kinds of wonderful practices and videos and blessings and mediations. A morning ritual for me, or as close to one as there is, is looking at the word for the day. It’s one of the great interweb experiences.10CatsWe’ve always had cats; they’ve taught my children and me gentleness. I love that a little tiny house cat has the exact same behaviors as a lion or tiger. I love the idea of living with a predator. And they’re just so funny. Each cat has such a distinct personality. I’m so grateful that life on earth includes the ability to inhabit the world with kitty cats. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dr. Tony Fauci’ and the Mark Twain Prize

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      An ‘American Masters’ documentary follows Dr. Fauci, and Adam Sandler receives the Kennedy Center’s annual comedy award.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Mar. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: STORMING CAESARS PALACE 10 p.m. on PBS. From the Emmy Award-winning anthology series Independent Lens comes a documentary about the activist Ruby Duncan, who led a grass-roots movement of mothers to fight for guaranteed income in the 1970s. After losing her job as a hotel worker in Las Vegas, Duncan joined a welfare rights group and, with thousands of equality activists, marched into the casino Caesar’s Palace to disrupt “business as usual.” The group challenged politicians and mob bosses, along with the beliefs of citizens through their protests and activism.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: DR. TONY FAUCI 8 p.m. on PBS. The Emmy Award-winning series “American Masters” presents a new documentary on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist. The filmmaker Mark Mannucci follows the physician over the course of two years, capturing Fauci as he confronts the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing political backlash. The documentary also gives a more intimate look into Fauci’s personal life and provides a space for him to reflect on his 50-year career.WednesdayFrom left, Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson in “Marvel’s The Avengers.”Zade Rosenthal/Marvel Studios and Paramount PicturesMARVEL’S THE AVENGERS (2012) 7 p.m. on FX. Based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, this epic film follows the heroes Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) as they are recruited to stop Thor’s brother, Loki, who has gained ability to enslave humanity. To save the world, the superheroes must set aside their differences and work together. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that “this movie revels in the individuality of its mighty, mythical characters, pinpointing insecurities that are amplified by superhuman power and catching sparks that fly when big, rough-edged egos (and alter egos) collide.”DIGMAN! 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. A new adult animated series created by Neil Campbell and Andy Samberg follows the washed-up celebrity archaeologist Rip Digman (voiced by Samberg) and his team of experts. Hoping to gain a reputation as “fearless adventurers,” Digman and his crew face constant peril on their various excavation missions.ThursdayTHEY’RE WATCHING US: INSIDE THE COMPANY SURVEILLING MILLIONS OF STUDENTS 11 p.m. on VICE. At a time when an increasing number of students are being digitally monitored, a documentary by Vice News investigates Gaggle, a company that creates software meant to detect danger in the content created on school-issued accounts and devices. The film demonstrates how Gaggle has helped schools prevent tragedies through its ability to flag kids in crisis, as well as tackles the controversy of student safety versus privacy.FridayPeter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove, a weapons expert, in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”Sony PicturesDR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) 8 p.m. on TCM. Stanley Kubrick’s Academy Award-nominated Cold War satire begins when Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) launches an unauthorized military strike against the Soviet Union — an act guaranteed to start a nuclear war. President Merkin Muffley of United States (also Sellers) alerts Soviet authorities, and both militaries work together to prevent mutually assured destruction. In a 1994 review of the film for its 30th anniversary, Eric Lefcowitz describes it as an “icon” — “the kind of movie that people can remember seeing for the first time.”I GO TO THE ROCK: THE GOSPEL MUSIC OF WHITNEY HOUSTON 8 p.m. on UPtv. This one-hour special, hosted by the Grammy Award-winning gospel singer CeCe Winans, focuses on the pop star Whitney Houston’s faith and love of gospel music, and how those two elements impacted her personal life and career. The documentary follows Houston — who died in 2012 — from her first performance to her best-selling Gospel album of all time.SaturdayAustin Butler in “Elvis.”Warner Bros.ELVIS (2022) 8 p.m. on HBO. This Academy Award-nominated biopic chronicles the life of the rock ‘n’ roll star Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) from childhood to his death at 42, with the central plot focusing on his relationship with his manager for most of his career, Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). “There was never anything pure about Elvis Presley, except maybe his voice, and hearing it in all its aching, swaggering glory, you understand how it set off an earthquake,” wrote Scott in his review for The Times, adding that “‘Elvis,’ for all its flaws and compromises, made me want to listen to him, as if for the first time.”SundayMeryl Streep and Kevin Kline in “Sophie’s Choice.”Universal PicturesMARK TWAIN PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR 8 p.m. on CNN. Named in honor of one of the world’s greatest humorists and given to those who have “had an impact on American society,” the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recognizes an individual who has shaped the world of comedy. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents the 24th Prize to Adam Sandler, who in his 30-year career has become known for his loopy, lewd sense of humor and amiable charm.SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Based on the 1979 novel of the same name by William Styron, this Academy Award-nominated film follows the increasingly intersected lives of three residents in a Brooklyn boardinghouse in 1947. The aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) meets the Polish immigrant Sophie (Meryl Streep) and her emotionally unstable lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline), and as Stingo gets to know Sophie better, he must parse fact from fiction in her stories to uncover what exactly happened to her at Auschwitz. “Though it’s far from a flawless movie, ‘Sophie’s Choice’ is a unified and deeply affecting one. Thanks in large part to Miss Streep’s bravura performance, it’s a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell,” wrote Janet Maslin in her review for The Times. More

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      In ‘Songs of Surrender’, U2 Revisits Its Past

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      With “Songs of Surrender,” an album of 40 reimagined songs, and “A Sort of Homecoming,” a documentary on Disney+, the Irish band pauses to reflect.For decades, U2 refused to rest on its catalog. A rarity among bands for having kept the same lineup since its formation in 1976 — Bono on lead vocals, the Edge on guitar and keyboards, Adam Clayton on bass and Larry Mullen Jr. on drums — U2 has headlined arenas since the early 1980s. It determinedly brought new songs to huge audiences as recently as 2018, when it mounted its Experience + Innocence Tour.The band did allow itself a 30th anniversary stadium tour to reprise its biggest release, the 1987 album “The Joshua Tree,” in 2017 and 2019. And now, in the pandemic era, U2 is looking back even further.Its new album, “Songs of Surrender,” remakes 40 U2 songs with largely acoustic arrangements. U2 has also booked a Las Vegas residency for the fall, when it will revisit its 1991 masterpiece, “Achtung Baby,” in a newly built arena, the MSG Sphere. In a startling change, the band will have a substitute drummer, Bram van den Berg, rather than Mullen, who has been dealing with injuries to his elbows, knees and neck.Bono, 62, published his memoir, “Surrender,” in fall of 2022, using 40 U2 songs as chapter headings. On St. Patrick’s Day, the (Irish) band is releasing a Disney+ documentary, “Bono & the Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman,” alongside “Songs of Surrender.”U2’s career has been one of triumphs, misfires and moving on. In the 1980s, the group was earnest and expansive, creating a chiming, marching, larger-than-life rock sound that countless bands would emulate. In the 1990s, leery of its own pretensions, U2 remade itself with electronic beats and artifice until it came to a dead end with its 1997 album, “Pop.” In the 2000s, it circled back to rock beats and sincerity, but its music was pervasively infused with the latest technology.From the beginning, U2 has worked on the largest scale: sometimes to magnificent effect, like its 2002 Super Bowl halftime show that memorialized Sept. 11, and sometimes badly backfiring, like the giveaway of its 2014 album, “Songs of Innocence,” that forced the album into iTunes libraries worldwide, often unwanted. “Songs of Surrender” is an act of renunciation, drastically scaling down songs that once strove to shake entire stadiums.Remake albums are always fraught. They offer second thoughts rather than discoveries, revisions rather than inspirations. They also remind listeners, and no doubt performers, of time slipping away.In recent years, extraordinary songwriters like Paul Simon and Natalie Merchant have made albums that revisit their old songs with decidedly different arrangements; they’re thoughtful and musicianly, but wan. Even Taylor Swift’s ongoing series of “Taylor’s Version” remakes — reclaiming her old albums by making every effort to replicate them note for note — can’t quite match her more youthful voice or the precise overtones of every mix.Among U2’s three retrospective projects, Bono’s book is by far the most vivid. “Surrender” leapfrogs through Bono’s and U2’s improbable story in vignettes that zigzag between poetic and prosaic, devout and skeptical, privileged and conscientious, mystical and political.The book’s messages about faith, friendship and family are reprised — sometimes in near-literal quotes — in “A Sort of Homecoming.” It’s an awkward project that skims through U2’s career while David Letterman serves as both modest interlocutor and celebrity star-tripper.The documentary mixes biographical interviews and bits of Ireland’s history, and it stages two performances: a concert by Bono and the Edge with a choir and strings at Dublin’s Ambassador Theater, and a singalong at a pub that’s not exactly impromptu. It just happens to include U2-influenced Irish musicians like Glen Hansard, Imelda May and Dermot Kennedy. “A Sort of Homecoming” also digresses, pointlessly, with attempts at comedy recalling Letterman’s “Late Show” shticks. A new Bono-Edge song, dedicated to Letterman, isn’t exactly prime U2.“Songs of Surrender” is the weightier project. Like all of U2’s albums, it’s anything but casual; the songs have been minutely reconsidered. Some get different lyrics: changing present tense to past tense in “Red Hill Mining Town,” clarifying that “Bad” is about drug addiction, swapping in new verses in “Beautiful Day” and “Get Out of Your Own Way,” rewriting “Walk On” to allude to the war in Ukraine.The album sets out to recast U2’s arena anthems as private conversations. Bono croons as if he’s singing quietly into your ear, and most of the arrangements rely on acoustic guitar or piano — like MTV’s old “Unplugged” shows, but by no means devoid of studio enhancements.“Unplugged” was MTV’s tribute to the recording-business cliché that a great song only needs chords and a voice to reveal its quality, as if everything else is embellishment. Yes and no. Melody, harmony and lyrics say a lot, but production can be transformative. Songs engrave themselves in fans’ memories — and lives — not just for their words and music, but for their sheer sound. We can recognize a favorite oldie from an opening guitar tone or a drumbeat. And the more we’ve taken a song to heart, the more its sonic details resonate.U2 got together in the era when punk insisted that anyone, trained or not, could make vital music. But even during that movement, musicians and producers understood how much texture matters. Recording in the analog era was a costly, intentional effort, and low-budget, lo-fi recordings could still create high intensity.One of U2’s enduring strengths has been the way its songs ennoble yearning and turbulence. Bono sings about self-questioning and contradictions with a voice that might scratch or falter but pushes ahead, unabashedly working itself up to shouts and howls. And the band’s martial drums, chiming guitars and inexorable crescendos create arena-size superstructures filled with rhythmic — and emotional — crosscurrents.The remakes on “Songs of Surrender” often strip away too much. In the original 1983 “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” a song about a terrorist bombing during Ireland’s “troubles,” the track evokes sirens and gunshots while Bono sounds both desperate and furious, right in the middle of the strife. The remake, with a lone acoustic guitar, recasts the song as something between a lullaby and lament, crooned as if it’s a learned memory.“Out of Control,” which in 1979 had jabbing, buttonholing electric guitar and bass lines, has become a cozy, cheerfully strummed self-affirmation, very much in control. And the surging, cathartic peaks of songs like “With or Without You,” “Vertigo,” and “Pride (in the Name of Love)” are far too muted in the remakes.“Songs of Surrender” does have a few clever second thoughts about U2’s catalog. A brass band lends historical gravity to “Red Hill Mining Town,” while “Two Hearts Beat as One” — with lyrics that insist, “Can’t stop to dance” — gets a wry disco makeover. The album’s subdued arrangements and upfront vocals offer a chance to focus on lyrics that were obscured in the onrush of U2’s original versions.But for most of “Songs of Surrender,” less is simply less. What comes across throughout the 40 songs is not intimacy, but distance: the inescapable fact that these songs are being rethought and revived years later, not created anew. Wild original impulses have been replaced by latter-day self-consciousness. And U2, like most artists, is better off looking ahead than looking back. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Trump’s New Lawyer

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      Kimmel joked that Joe Tacopina “seems to have been born in the ashtray of Rudy Giuliani’s Lincoln Continental.”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.‘He-Hulk: Attorney at Law’Former President Donald Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday, where he defended his client and argued that Trump was not a liar, specifically in regard to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.Jimmy Kimmel jokingly referred to Tacopina as “He-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” saying he “seems to have been born in the ashtray of Rudy Giuliani’s Lincoln Continental.”“It looks like he holds meetings in the back office at the Bada Bing!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ralph Macchio had better representation in ‘My Cousin Vinny’ than Donald Trump has with this man.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump is either going to jail for zero years, or 1,000. There’s nothing in between.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bye Bye, TikTok Edition)“The Biden administration is ordering the Chinese parent company of TikTok to either sell the app or face a possible ban. It is a bold move by Biden. If he bans TikTok, China will only be able to spy on us with literally everything else.” — JIMMY FALLON“Don’t mess with this man — he has no use for your addictive apps. Biden’s the kind of guy who can make it through a whole two-week vacation with nothing but a deck of cards and a print edition of Sports Illustrated.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingKal Penn ended his “Daily Show” run with a look into how young voters are being suppressed.Also, Check This Out“I didn’t think I was this brave, no sirree,” Dominique Fishback said about finding what it took to play a killer. “I’m from Brooklyn, I’m an Aries and all that stuff, but I’m very, very sensitive.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesDominique Fishback plays an obsessive fan of a Beyoncé-like pop star in “Swarm,” Amazon’s new series cocreated by Donald Glover. More