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      James Darren, Actor, Singer and ‘Gidget’ Heartthrob, Dies at 88

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      His role as a surfer in that trendsetting hit movie led to success on television shows like “The Time Tunnel” and “T.J. Hooker,” and on the pop charts.James Darren, an actor and singer whose starring role as a California surfer in the “Gidget” movies made him one of the most popular heartthrobs of the late 1950s and early ’60s, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 88.His son Jim Moret said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.Mr. Darren, a Philadelphia native who didn’t surf and wasn’t even a particularly strong swimmer, had been a contract player with Columbia Pictures when he was cast as an aspiring surf bum in “Gidget,” which also starred Sandra Dee in the title role and Cliff Robertson as the Big Kahuna, the leader of a surfing gang.Released in 1959, the movie told the story of a high school girl who befriends that gang in Malibu and develops a crush on Mr. Darren’s character, Moondoggie. It was a hit, and it became one of the first signs of the surfing craze that would soon include the music of the Beach Boys and the “Beach Party” films.Mr. Darren and Sandra Dee in a scene from “Gidget,” the 1959 movie that made him a star.Columbia Pictures, via Getty ImagesMr. Darren went on to play the character in two more “Gidget” films, “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” (with Deborah Walley in the title role) and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (with Cindy Carol); land a role in the acclaimed 1961 World War II drama “The Guns of Navarone”; carve out a long career in prime-time television, including a starring role on the 1966-67 time-travel series “The Time Tunnel”; and release a number of singles and albums, first as a purveyor of lightweight pop tunes and later as a lounge singer whose repertoire consisted mostly of standards.Before he was cast as Moondoggie, a character with a prominent singing role, Mr. Darren had never sung professionally. At first the studio considered having him lip-sync to someone else’s voice.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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      New Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in September: ‘The Perfect Couple’ and More

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      A glitzy mystery starring Nicole Kidman arrives early this month; later, a new true-crime series tells the troubling tale of Lyle and Erik Menendez.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘The Perfect Couple’Starts streaming: Sept. 5Reminiscent of both “The White Lotus” and “Big Little Lies,” this adaptation of an Elin Hilderbrand novel is part murder mystery and part social satire, covering the secrets and prejudices of two families at a Nantucket wedding. Eve Hewson plays Amelia, a middle-class gal about to marry into a rich and famous clan, led by the pot-smoking patriarch Tag Winbury (Liev Schreiber) and his hyper-judgmental wife, Greer (Nicole Kidman), a best-selling author. When a member of the wedding party turns up dead on the beach, the police interrogate the guests, gradually piecing together a story that involves deceit and old grudges. Directed by the veteran art-house filmmaker Susanne Bier (who also directed the Netflix hit “Bird Box”), “The Perfect Couple” is less about the crime than it is about the delusions and pretensions it exposes.‘Rebel Ridge’Starts streaming: Sept. 6After making a foray into literary adaptation with “Hold the Dark” (2018), the writer-director Jeremy Saulnier gets back to the lean pulp thrills of his critically acclaimed “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room” with his latest movie. “Rebel Ridge” features an original Saulnier script about a military veteran named Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), who has a run in with some swaggering rural southern cops. The officers seize his money, then conspire to punish him further when Terry pushes back. AnnaSophia Robb plays a court clerk who helps Terry dig into the rot spilling downward from the corrupt local police chief (Don Johnson). Although the film deals with the serious contemporary social issue of civil asset forfeiture, in spirit it has a lot in common with the likes of “Walking Tall,” “First Blood” and other old-school action pictures in which one man takes on a whole town.‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’Starts streaming: Sept. 19In 2022, the producer Ryan Murphy and his frequent creative partner Ian Brennan delivered one of Netflix’s most-watched mini-series with the Emmy-nominated “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” a dramatization of the life and crimes of a notorious serial killer. The next season of their ripped-from-yesterday’s-headlines anthology series pluralizes the title — from “Monster” to “Monsters” — and covers the brothers Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) Menendez, who murdered their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny), in 1989. The cast also includes Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson, the attorney who attempted to paint the brothers in court as the victims of an abusive father, and Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne, the Vanity Fair columnist whose reporting on the trial was filled with gossipy detail about the Menendezes’ upscale Los Angeles lives.‘Twilight of the Gods’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 19Zack Snyder’s latest Netflix project is this adult-oriented animated series, set in the lusty, violent milieu of Norse mythology. When Thor (Pilou Asbaek) disrupts a mortal wedding and instigates a devastating massacre, the bride and groom — the warrior Sigrid (Sylvia Hoeks) and a king named Leif (Stuart Martin) — set out on a mission of revenge. Soon, they and their soldiers find themselves caught up in ancient rivalries, involving the likes of Loki (Paterson Joseph) and Odin (John Noble). Snyder and his “Twilight of the Gods” fellow creators, Eric Carrasco and Jay Oliva, don’t spare the gore or the nudity as they tell a tale that stretches from the underworld to the land of giants, with a Hans Zimmer score to help set a grand, epic tone.‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 26Based loosely on the personal experiences of its creator, Erin Foster, the romantic comedy “Nobody Wants This” stars Kristen Bell as Joanne, a popular podcaster who riffs on sex and dating alongside her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). Then Joanne meets Noah (Adam Brody), a sweet and funny rabbi who recently broke up with his longtime girlfriend and has since been fending off a steady stream of his congregants’ daughters and nieces. The show is partly about how an agnostic exhibitionist and an emotionally reserved, deeply religious guy overcome their differences and form bonds, with each other and with their respective sets of friends and family. But it’s also about two middle-aged people searching for some grounding and direction in their hectic lives.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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      The Spies of ‘Slow Horses’ Are ‘as Useless as Everyone Else’

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      Will Smith, the showrunner, discusses the comic spy thriller, which returns for its fourth season on Wednesday and is up for nine Emmy Awards later this month.The British spies at the center of the Apple TV+ series “Slow Horses” aren’t particularly handsome, or efficient, or disciplined. They’re rejects from MI5, consigned to a dark, dingy London office run by Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a slovenly, scotch-swilling, flatulent burnout. Early in Season 4, which premieres Wednesday, Lamb objects when a new no-nonsense MI5 officer (Ruth Bradley) handcuffs him during an investigation.“I’d rather not take any chances with a man who looks like he gropes people on buses,” she tells him.“You’re being hurtful about my appearance,” Lamb mutters. “I might have to call H.R.”Will Smith, the showrunner, knew he had been handed a gift when he was enlisted to ride “Slow Horses.” Based on the series of Slough House novels by Mick Herron, the TV adaptation has the kind of biting humor and dysfunctional, high-stakes office politics of two shows Smith wrote for under Armando Iannucci, “The Thick of It” and “Veep.” It also has Oldman, sinking his teeth into his first starring TV role, and Jonathan Pryce, who takes center stage in the new season as an old spy descending into dementia (which creates complications in the espionage world).Then there’s the short, bluesy theme song, performed by some bloke named Mick Jagger. Already a fan of Herron’s books, Jagger was happy to join the party.In July “Slow Horses” received nine Emmy nominations, including nods for best drama, lead actor in a drama (Oldman) and writing in a drama (Smith).Each season of the series unfolds in a quick, six-episode burst. The latest follows Pryce’s David Cartwright and his cocksure, generally overmatched Slow Horse grandson, River (Jack Lowden), as they try to keep a rogue ex-C.I.A. agent (Hugo Weaving) from unleashing hell.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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      Eve Hewson Was Born Into Fame. She Could Soon Have Her Own.

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      The daughter of a rock star, Eve Hewson is not yet a household name herself, but that could change in the coming months.Eve Hewson keeps getting discovered.The Irish actress, whose credits date back to 2008, started generating heat in 2014 for her performance as a reserved young nurse in Steven Soderbergh’s period drama “The Knick.” Her turn as the eerie, emotionally unstable wife in the Netflix mini-series “Behind Her Eyes,” in 2021, had fans stopping her on the street.It happened again with “Bad Sisters,” the darkly comic Irish drama. Released in 2022 on Apple TV+, the show became a phenomenon in Dublin, Hewson’s hometown, where weekly watch parties in pubs turned her into a local sensation. And in 2023, she was the talk of Sundance, when the film “Flora and Son,” where she plays the titular role, sold for a record-breaking $20 million to Apple TV.Yet, partly because streaming services have dramatically increased the volume of television while atomizing viewing habits, Hewson, 33, is not quite a household name.That may change in the coming months. The actress is starring opposite Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber in the buzzy Netflix adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s “The Perfect Couple,” premiering Sept. 5, and she will be back for the second season of “Bad Sisters” on Nov. 13, reprising her role as the youngest and wildest sister, Becka Garvey. She just finished filming a part in Noah Baumbach’s new movie, which stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler, and is about to start a television pilot from Alec Berg (“Barry”) set in the world of Formula 1 racing.Hewson stars in “The Perfect Couple” as a woman of modest means marrying into a wealthy family.NetflixHewson has long had a complicated relationship with fame — understandable given that her father is Bono, the U2 frontman and global activist. It’s easy to feel invisible when your dad is gobbling up all the attention.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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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘English Teacher’ and ‘Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos’

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      FX airs a new comedy series and ‘The Sopranos’ creator talks about the show in a documentary series.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, Sept. 2-8. Details and times are subject to change.MondayENGLISH TEACHER 10 p.m. on FX. Since “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” are long off the air, maybe this brand-new series can fill the workplace sitcom hole in our collective hearts. It follows Evan Marquez (played by Brian Jordan Alvarez, who also created the show), a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, who tries to prioritize his conduct and is trying to figure out if he can be fully himself in his job. Things start to go awry when Evan is investigated over a previous incident where students caught him and his boyfriend, Malcolm, a former teacher at the high school, kissing.TuesdayFrom left, Devin Strader and Jenn Tran, on “The Bachelorette.”John Fleenor/DisneyTHE BACHELORETTE 8 p.m. on ABC. On last week’s episodes, Jenn Tran surprised viewers by telling Devin Strader she loved him and giving him a rose. The problem? She also told Marcus Shoberg the same thing — and he didn’t say it back. Despite this, she also gave him a rose, so now Marcus and Devin are the only two men left. The host, Jesse Palmer, keeps teasing that “no Bachelorette has ever ended her journey like this.” (Joey Graziadei’s finale did live up to that type of hype, so maybe Jenn’s will as well.) Don’t worry about postseason blues though, because we only have three weeks before the first season of “The Golden Bachelorette” begins. (And though I am excited, I really miss “Paradise.”)WednesdayN.F.L. KICKOFF EVENT 9 p.m. on NBC. Time to dust off your jerseys, perfect your Buffalo chicken dip and crack open a cold one because football season is back, baby! The season is starting off with its annual kickoff game and events — this time with the reigning champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, up against the Baltimore Ravens. NBC Sports’s Sunday Night Football team, Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth and Melissa Stark are back for their third year to give you their thoughts.ThursdayFrom left: Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in “Twister.”Warner Bros.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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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Max, Hulu and More in September

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      “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” “A Very Royal Scandal,” a “Walking Dead” spinoff and “Agatha All Along” arrive.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘A Very Royal Scandal’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Earlier this year, Netflix debuted a movie called “Scoop,” about the complicated negotiations that led to Prince Andrew’s headline-making 2019 interview with BBC Two’s “Newsnight,” covering his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The three-part mini-series “A Very Royal Scandal” tells the same story in a little more detail, with a screenplay from Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of “The Last King of Scotland”). Michael Sheen plays Prince Andrew, while Ruth Wilson plays Emily Maitlis, the interviewer, who kept pressuring the prince with follow-up questions, asking him to account for all the time he had spent with Epstein over the years.Also arriving:Sept. 10“The Money Game”Sept. 24“Evolution of the Black Quarterback”Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 29When this spinoff of “The Walking Dead” was first announced, it was supposed to be the story of the soulful hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his hard-edge pal Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) venturing into new territories together in a zombie-ravaged world. But when that territory turned out to be Europe, McBride had to drop out for what was described as logistical reasons. Her Carol made a cameo at the end of Season 1 though; and she is now on board for Season 2 (as well as an already announced Season 3). This new season will find Carol searching for her friend in France, while Daryl reluctantly gets more involved with the twisted political situation overseas, trying to help some good people make things better.Also arriving:Sept. 6“The Demon Disorder”Sept. 7“All You Need Is Death”Sept. 12“The Tailor of Sin City”Sept. 13“In a Violent Nature”Sept. 16“Candice Renoir” Season 10Sept. 20“Dandelion”Sept. 26“Wisting” Season 5Sept. 27“Oddity”Sept. 30“The Bench” Seasons 1-2We 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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      Review: On ‘English Teacher,’ School Is a Battlefield

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      A new FX sitcom handles the educational culture wars with a light touch.The culture war often doesn’t have a physical frontline; it’s fought in op-ed columns, through social-media memes and inside people’s heads.Public schools are an exception. There, the state infantry of teachers, enlisted to handle potentially explosive ideas, face wave after wave of challenging students, backed by air support from helicopter parents.“English Teacher,” which begins Monday on FX, is a deft, brutal trench comedy of this battle. Brian Jordan Alvarez, the creator and viral-video comic, stars as Evan Marquez, a high school teacher in suburban Austin, Texas, struggling to get through each day with his ideals intact and his shirts unstained.His students are wily shape-shifters, a tech-enabled alien species whose ways and attitudes keep their handlers off-balance. “The kids this year, I feel like they’re less woke,” Evan tells his best friend, the history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig), who concurs. One student, she said, told her she needed to teach “both sides” of the Spanish Inquisition.Evan’s real troubles begin, however, when he learns that he’s under “investigation” after a rich, influential parent reported him for having kissed his ex-boyfriend (Jordan Firstman) in front of students.His principal, Grant Moretti — a walking anxiety attack played wonderfully by Enrico Colantoni — admits that Evan shouldn’t have to deal with this, but he’s too beaten and besieged to do anything but plead with Evan to help him make the problem go away. One of Evan’s students suggests he claim discrimination as a gay Hispanic, but another says, “Gay doesn’t count anymore, and he talks like a straight white guy.”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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      Sagar Radia Balances His Alpha-Male Energy on ‘Industry’ With Some Alone Time

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      “I think there’s this common misconception that actors are these big extroverts, and I couldn’t disagree more. Most actors I know don’t need to be the center of attention.”Sagar Radia calls Rishi Ramdani, the take-no-prisoners market maker he plays on the HBO finance drama “Industry,” a walking red flag.“He’s an alpha male, he leads with his chest out,” Radia said. “And he’s the epitome of bravado, which is so fascinating, because for someone like myself who comes from a British South Asian background as an actor, we don’t get the chance to play those types of roles.”He added: “Unless your name is Riz Ahmed or Dev Patel, everything in between is so limited.”So when Radia, 37, was told that he would be getting a stand-alone episode in Season 3, which started last month, he thought it was a lovely idea but didn’t expect it to happen. And yet it did.He recalled reading the script for the fourth episode, in which Rishi’s life spirals into chaos as he tries to extract himself from snowballing debt, and thinking, “I need to do everything I can to make them feel like they made the right choice.”In a video call from London, Radia talked about the pleasures of a “Suits” rewatch, working in retail as a struggling actor and the crepes he’ll happily stand in a 45-minute queue for.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1CarsMy first car was a Rover 500, a very, very basic car that my mom was lucky enough to let me drive. It was hers. She insured me on it. And my second car was this Vauxhall that we had. It was a step up for me. And now, without sounding too bougie about it, I drive a Mercedes GLA. I’m an incredibly independent person. And I just really love driving.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