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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Grotesquerie’ and Halloween Movies

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      FX airs the finale of Ryan Murphy’s latest show. And various channels celebrate the spooky frights and delights of the holiday.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Oct. 28-Nov. 3 Details and times are subject to change.MondaySMILE (2022) 8 p.m. on MTV. If you plan to catch “Smile 2” in theaters, it might be good to refresh your memory with the original. This film follows Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) and her patient (Caitlin Stasey), who believes she is being followed by an evil entity that forces people to smile. Leave it to a psychological thriller to make something that is usually joyful into something terrifying.A still from “American Dad.”Courtesy of Fox.AMERICAN DAD 10 p.m. on TBS. This show, which began in 2005, is back with guest stars such as Kevin Bacon, Michael Imperioli and Leslie Jones. The story will focus on the fictional town of Langley Falls and its boardwalk reopening.TuesdayCITIZEN NATION 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary series shadows teenagers across the United States who are taking part in a civics competition. The cameras follows the Gen Zers as they make their way through regional and state competitions in the form of congressional hearings, with the ultimate goal of a championship win in Washington.WednesdayGROTESQUERIE 10 p.m. on FX. For the last month, the majority of my TikTok page has consisted of edits of Nicholas Alexander Chavez in two different Ryan Murphy shows — either as Lyle Menendez in “Monsters” on Netflix or as Father Charlie Mayhew in “Grotesquerie.,” and it’s easy to see why. The twisty series follows Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash), a detective, as she works with Megan Duval (Micaela Diamond), a nun and journalist, to solve the horrible crimes happening in the community.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

      Mimi Hines, a Replacement Star in ‘Funny Girl,’ Dies at 91

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      She was best known as half of a comedy team with her husband, Phil Ford, until her hall-filling voice earned her raves in a role made famous by Barbra Streisand.Mimi Hines, a powerful singer and live-wire comedian who etched her name in Broadway lore as the replacement for Barbra Streisand in the original production of “Funny Girl,” died on Oct. 21 at her home in Las Vegas. She was 91.Her death was confirmed by her lawyer and friend Mark Sendroff.A “mischievous sprite,” as The New York Times once called her, the diminutive Ms. Hines brought an outsize energy to her work, whether she was dishing out one-liners in nightclubs as half of a comedy-and-song duo, Ford & Hines, with her husband, Phil Ford, or delivering showstopping numbers to packed houses on Broadway.During her peak in the 1950s and ’60s, journalists often noted her elfin quality and her distinctive facial features — cleft chin, deep dimples and wide, toothy grin — which she was not shy about using as a comic prop.When Mike Wallace interviewed her and Mr. Ford in 1961, he informed her that a newspaper writer had recently described her as “two buck teeth and a carload of talent.”“That’s not true,” she responded. “My whole mouth is buck.”Ms. Hines and Mr. Ford got their first big break in 1958 on “The Tonight Show,” which at the time was hosted by Jack Paar. It was the first of several “Tonight” appearances they would make over the years. Her rendition of the song “Till There Was You” from “The Music Man” moved Mr. Paar to tears.“It was a magic night on TV,” Ms. Hines said in a 1963 interview with The Prince Herald Daily Tribune of Saskatchewan. “They say 12 million people saw it.” They also appeared on several episodes of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” as well as on many other variety and talk shows.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 Movies

      California Governor Proposes $750 Million in Annual Film Tax Credits

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      Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to more than double the amount the state offers in incentives, which would make its program one of the nation’s most generous.Responding to pleas from California’s film industry, which has struggled to rebound from labor unrest and industry disruption, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday announced a proposal to more than double the size of the state’s film tax incentive program to $750 million annually.If the proposal is approved by the State Legislature, California would offer more money to entice film productions than any state except Georgia, which provides unlimited tax credits. California’s existing program is capped at $330 million annually. The increase would go into effect on July 1, 2025.“California is the entertainment capital of the world, rooted in decades of creativity, innovation and unparalleled talent,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “Expanding this program will help keep production here at home, generate thousands of good-paying jobs, and strengthen the vital link between our communities and the state’s iconic film and TV industry.”In recent weeks, state economic development officials and entertainment executives in Los Angeles have publicly expressed concern over the persistent slump in film production, begging officials to do more to keep film shoots in the state.Over the past 20 years, states have aggressively wooed Hollywood, offering movie and television productions more than $25 billion in filming incentives, according to a survey by The New York Times. Thirty-eight states offer some form of incentive, including Georgia, which has extended more than $5 billion in film tax credits since 2015, and New York, which has provided at least $7 billion in credits. More

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      in Television

      ‘Hysteria!,’ ‘Stranger Things’ and the Satanic Panic That Never Goes Away

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      Five years ago, the television writer Matthew Scott Kane sold “Hysteria!,” a scripted drama that takes place in the late 1980s. The series was inspired in part by the tumult of misinformation he found online and in the media of the late 2010s. Shows like these take time to make, and Kane worried the idea would pass its best-by date.“I kept thinking, man, I don’t know if this is going to feel relevant,” he said in a recent interview.“Hysteria!” which premiered on Peacock on Oct. 18, is set in a small Michigan town in the grip of the so-called satanic panic of the 1980s and early 1990s, an episode of mass hysteria which imagined that a cross-country network of satanic cults was engaged in ritual abuse, animal sacrifice and infanticide. In the pilot, a high school football star is discovered dead. Suspicion turns to several of his classmates, members of a heavy metal band that exploits satanic imagery.The aesthetics of “Hysteria!” — the wallpaper, the jeans, the popular music — are distinctly ’80s. But the impulse to displace social anxieties onto perceived groups of outsiders is as American as apple pie. (Are those apples poisoned? Do they have razor blades inside?) And in a culture of heightened political rhetoric and pervasive misinformation, as apparent now as it was five years ago, the distance between the satanic panic and current conspiracy theories — QAnon, say, or the supposed grooming of children by queer people — is a short one, barely the length of a suburban lawn.Recent works of fiction — “Hysteria!”; the novel “Rainbow Black”; the fourth season of “Stranger Things”; the film “Late Night With the Devil” — all treat the satanic panic as a discrete historical event. But they also suggest how the panic’s concerns resonate in the present. As it turns out, Americans are still panicking. We may always be panicking.“Hysteria!,” a new Peacock show set during the satanic panic, features an attempted exorcism. Mark Hill/PeacockWe 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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      Without Another Debate, the Campaign Became a Duel of TV Scenes

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      As the candidates raced to claim different corners of the national screen this week, it was “Undercover Boss” vs. “Roll the clip.”In a typical election season — remember those? — right about now we would be preparing for, or recovering from, the final presidential debate. But Oct. 23, the date of a proposed CNN showdown that Kamala Harris accepted and Donald J. Trump declined, came and went without one.Instead, as Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump raced to claim different corners of the national screen, they were essentially staging a virtual debate, presenting competing versions of themselves on strikingly different stages.Mr. Trump substituted the debate podium with a takeout window, performing a shift on the fry cooker at a closed McDonald’s franchise and violating the occasional job protocol. It was a familiar kind of reality-TV stunt for a reality-TV candidate.This time, however, he was not emulating “The Apprentice” but staging a political version of “Undercover Boss.”On the CBS reality series, which aired 11 seasons from 2010 to 2022, company executives went incognito to work low-level jobs at their companies. The premise was to show bigwigs how the grunts lived. But it also served, in the years after the financial collapse and Great Recession, as a form of prime-time crisis P.R. Chief executives were people too, it told us; they shared common purpose and mutual respect with the rank and file.Mr. Trump’s shift, which lasted less time than a single “Undercover Boss” episode, had different aims. Most overtly, it was a way of using virality — what news producer can resist footage of Donald Trump shoveling fries into a container? — to spread his unsubstantiated claim that Ms. Harris had lied about working at McDonald’s while in college. (As with his birtherism campaign against Barack Obama, media coverage generally noted that his charges were baseless, but the dust still got kicked up, the doubts potentially sown.)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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      ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Is Going Out on a Bittersweet Note

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      Ahead of the final season, the creators discuss Midwestern humor, queer communities of faith and why they made a show “about people who aren’t very equipped to talk about their feelings.”Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen met at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where they bonded over being displaced Midwesterners and began writing plays together. A few years later, in early-2000s Manhattan, they met a bawdy, big-voiced cabaret performer named Bridget Everett.“I played harp in a two-girl ukulele band, and we were often on the same bill as Bridget,” Thureen said recently. “Which kind of makes sense.”As the three became fast friends, Bos and Thureen came to believe there was more to Everett than her outsize stage personality, which is perhaps best exemplified by her tendency to rub her breasts in an unsuspecting audience member’s face. They saw a quieter, more vulnerable side, and they wanted to write something that honored both that and her rollicking stage persona.The series the three of them came up with (along with the executive producer Carolyn Strauss), “Somebody Somewhere,” premiered in 2022. Its third and final season debuts Sunday on HBO and Max.“We would keep on doing this show as long as we could, if it was up to us,” Thureen said. “But we also know that it’s not up to us and that in this landscape, more than three seasons of a show our size would be unlikely.”Set in Everett’s hometown, Manhattan, Kan., the series finds quiet drama and humor in a pocket of open-minded Midwestern tolerance, where Everett’s character Sam and her friends, including her best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller), deal with loneliness by creating a sort of found family. They’re all trying to have a good time and create meaningful relationships in their small town. “Somebody Somewhere” also, unassumingly, remains one of the most L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly series on television, a place where church, beers and queerness coexist with barely a shrug.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

      Jimmy Fallon Rallies for Queen Bey

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      The “Tonight Show” host was excited about Beyoncé’s plans to appear with the vice president: “What a night — the most powerful woman in the world and Kamala Harris.”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.Texas Hold ’emThe pop superstar Beyoncé will join Vice President Kamala Harris onstage at a campaign rally in Houston on Friday.“What a night — the most powerful woman in the world and Kamala Harris,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday.“Woo, baby. Talk about a get! The last time Beyoncé appeared onstage with a presidential candidate was Hillary in 2016, so things are looking good.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Yeah, Beyoncé will sing ‘Irreplaceable,’ and Biden will be like, ‘Too soon!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Harris is rallying with Beyoncé while Trump will be onstage claiming migrants are eating Snoop Dogg and Doja Cat.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Daddy Issues Edition)“At a Trump campaign rally yesterday in Georgia, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson compared former President Trump returning to office to a father who comes home to give a ‘bad little girl’ a ‘vigorous spanking’ for being disobedient. Wow. I guess for my part, I’m just glad he’s standing behind a podium.” — SETH MEYERS“OK, so this might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“You know, most people just clear their browser history, they don’t put it in their speeches.” — SETH MEYERS“Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy’s the one who likes to get spanked.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You see, America? These Trump people — they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff. I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy: ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingColbert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus shared their earliest memories during “The Colbert Questionert” on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutBridget Everett in a scene from Season 3 of “Somebody Somewhere.”Sandy Morris/HBOBridget Everett’s small-town dramedy series “Somebody Somewhere” returns to HBO on Sunday for its third and final season. More

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      in Music

      Jack Jones, a Suave, Hit-Making and Enduring Crooner, Dies at 86

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      With his smooth voice, he drew crowds to cabarets and music halls for six decades. He also sang the themes for films and TV shows, including “The Love Boat.”Jack Jones, a crooner who beguiled concert fans and stage, screen and television audiences for decades with romantic ballads and gentle jazz tunes that even in large venues often achieved the intimacy of his celebrated nightclub performances, died on Wednesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 86. His wife, Eleonora Jones, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was leukemia.While his popularity peaked in the 1960s, Mr. Jones found a new audience in later years singing the theme to the hit television show “The Love Boat.” But even then he seemed always to have stepped out of an earlier generation, one that dressed in tuxedos for the songs of Tin Pan Alley and reminded America of its love affairs with the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.He won two Grammy Awards and recorded numerous albums of American Songbook favorites that hit the upper reaches of Billboard’s charts on the strength of his smooth vocal interpretations. He performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House and the London Palladium, and for more than 60 years drew crowds to cabarets and nightclubs around the world.At the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan in 2010, marking his 52nd year in show business, Mr. Jones opened and closed a two-hour retrospective of his songs with Paul Williams’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” He sang to a packed house of longtime fans:Friends are like warm clothesIn the night air.Best when they’re oldAnd we miss them the most when they’re gone.“Those lyrics evoked the vanishing breed of pop-jazz crooner, of which Mr. Jones and Tony Bennett remain the great survivors,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Jones, now 72, draws the same kind of well-dressed sophisticated audiences that used to attend the annual appearances at the defunct Michael’s Pub of his friend Mel Tormé, who died 11 years ago at 73.”Mr. Jones with his fellow vocalist Tony Bennett in 1972.Central Press/Hulton Archive/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