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      James Corden Says He’ll Leave His CBS Show Next Year

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      The British-born host, who was a successful actor and comedian before joining the network’s late-night lineup, has been signaling for some time that he was considering leaving.James Corden, the British theater actor and comedian turned late-night TV host in the United States, said on Thursday that he would leave his 12:30 a.m. nightly show on CBS next year. Mr. Corden made the announcement during a taping of his talk show in Los Angeles.Mr. Corden, the host of “The Late Late Show” since 2015, has been signaling for some time that he was strongly considering leaving the show.Five months ago, Mr. Corden told Variety that he never saw his late-night perch as “a final destination.” In a previous interview with The Sun, Mr. Corden said he and his family were “homesick.”Mr. Corden’s contract was set to expire in August, but he signed an extension that will keep him on CBS through next spring.“We wish he could stay longer, but we are very proud he made CBS his American home and that this partnership will extend one more season on ‘The Late Late Show,’” George Cheeks, the president of CBS, said in a statement.James Corden’s Run on ‘The Late Late Show’The British actor and comedian turned late-night TV host, announced he would leave his CBS show in 2023.His Debut: James Corden was “amiable and cheerfully self-assured, but not particularly special,” our critic wrote of the comedian’s first night as host in 2015.A Bit of Controversy: In a recurring gag on the show, Corden portrayed foods from cultures around the world as disgusting. The segment drew the ires of some viewers. On Stage: Corden started out as an aspiring stage performer. Here is what he said about his long love affair with theater.Mr. Corden’s impending departure is one of the most significant changes for the late-night comedy lineup since 2014 and 2015, when veteran hosts like David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart left their shows, and a new generation of stars, including Mr. Corden, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah and HBO’s John Oliver, went on the air.There is a feeling of uncertainty in late night beyond Mr. Corden’s departure. Jimmy Kimmel, the longtime ABC host, has a contract that will end soon and has said publicly that he was unsure if he would renew. Stephen Colbert, whose show precedes Mr. Corden’s on CBS, also has a contract that expires next year. Chris Licht, the longtime executive producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” left last month to become the chairman of CNN. And Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” recently went through yet another showrunner change, the fourth in four years.There are questions throughout the entertainment industry over the longtime viability of the late-night talk show genre. Over the last few years, as viewing habits have rapidly changed, ratings for the shows have nose-dived. Five years ago, roughly 2.8 million people were tuning into Mr. Corden’s show as well as NBC’s 12:30 a.m. show, “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” By 2022, that figure had dropped to about 1.9 million, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data.Talk shows — which depend on topical relevance and audiences who make it a daily habit to tune in — have also not fared well on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.Mr. Corden entered the late-night fray in a big way when his show debuted in 2015. Mr. Corden, who had a successful theater career but was still relatively unknown in the United States, became an overnight star. “Carpool Karaoke,” a signature of his show, featured him singing along with stars like Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama and Adele, and clips routinely went viral.“Seven years ago, James Corden came to the U.S. and took television by storm, with huge creative and comedic swings that resonated in a big way with viewers on-air and online,” Mr. Cheeks said.But Mr. Corden’s brand of comedy — focused on games and musical sketches — soon found itself out of step with the zeitgeist.The landscape changed considerably after Donald J. Trump entered the White House. Late-night audiences began devouring biting political humor. Within weeks of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Fallon’s fun-and-games approach at “The Tonight Show” fell steeply in the ratings, and Mr. Colbert became the No. 1 late-night host, thanks to his more topical approach. He has held that lead for more than five years. Like Mr. Fallon, Mr. Corden favored a lighter show.Mr. Corden parlayed his late-night perch into other high-profile ventures, including hosting the Tony Awards and Grammy Awards. He has also appeared in several movies, including the critically gnawed-on “Cinderella” and “Cats.”Seated behind his “Late Late Show” desk, Mr. Corden called his decision to leave the hardest “he ever had to make.”“I never want this show to overstay its welcome in any way,” he said. “I always want to love making it. And I really think in a year from now that will be a good time to move on and see what else might be out there.” More

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      A Look at ‘Ten Percent,’ a British ‘Call My Agent!’ Remake

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      The remake of the French show “Call My Agent!” is far more preoccupied with American influences and unspoken emotion than the original.LONDON — About five minutes into the first episode of “Ten Percent,” the British remake of the hit French show “Call My Agent!,” the partners and their assistants at the fictional talent agency Nightingale Hart are debating how to tell a famous actor that she has been deemed too old for a movie role.“I can’t lie to her, obviously,” Dan (Prasanna Puwanarajah) says. “No, no, no,” the other agents chime in. “But obviously I can’t tell her the truth,” he continues, prompting another horrified chorus of “nooo.”“That’s the narrow edge along which agents must inch every day of their lives,” said John Morton, an executive producer and scriptwriter who developed the series, which premieres on Amazon’s Prime Video on April 28 in Britain and on Sundance Now and AMC+ on April 29 in the United States. “The relationship with the truth is a fascinating juggling act in this world,” he said. “It’s a problem not much understood outside the industry — and not even by clients inside it — and a really interesting area to have fun with.”The very British style of understatement and indirection that pervades the dialogue is a notable tonal difference from the French series.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowThe connections, dependencies and emotional ties between four agents and their clients are at the comic heart of “Ten Percent,” just as they were at the fictional Parisian agency in “Call My Agent!” (“Dix Pour Cent” in French).That series was a hit in France after its 2015 debut there, but it received little international attention until the coronavirus pandemic hit, when the show became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. (Turkish and Indian versions have been released, and South Korea, Italy, Malaysia and Poland all have adaptations in development.)Prasanna Puwanarajah plays the slightly bumbling, likable Dan.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesLydia Leonard is Rebecca, a tough career woman.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesMaggie Steed’s Stella is an old-guard patrician.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesJack Davenport plays the self-deceiving Jonathan.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesWhen Morton — the award-winning writer and director of the British shows “Twenty Twelve” and “W1A” — had his first meeting about “Ten Percent” in 2019, the French series was still “a cult hit with a number of very loyal followers,” he said. “I was a huge fan, and my first thought was, ‘the bar is already so high, how do you not mess this up?’ Then the bar got higher.”Morton has retained much of the structural framework of “Call My Agent!,” with four central characters who are at least superficially similar to their French counterparts. There is the tough career woman Rebecca (Lydia Leonard); the slightly bumbling, likable Dan; the old-guard patrician Stella (Maggie Steed); and the controlling, self-deceiving Jonathan (Jack Davenport), who in this rendition is the son of Richard Nightingale (Jim Broadbent), a founder of the agency.There is also Misha (Hiftu Quasem), the daughter Jonathan is keeping a secret, who bags a job as Rebecca’s assistant early in the first episode. And the catnip factor of the original series remains: a plethora of big-name actors (Kelly MacDonald, Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West, Phoebe Dynevor, David and Jessica Oyelowo among them) playing themselves in story lines that touch on ageism, stage fright, pay parity and the cost (for actresses) of having children.Helena Bonham Carter, left, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in the show in story lines that touch on ageism, pay parity and the cost of having children.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowSo far, so familiar. But after a first episode that closely follows the opening of the French series, the show’s plotlines gradually begin to differ, and to cater more closely to the specific preoccupations of the British cultural industry, with its greater ties to — and anxieties about — American partnerships and influences.Unlike the British cultural industry, and partly because of the language factor, Morton said: “the French entertainment and creative world does not feel secondary or beholden to Hollywood, and in fact celebrates that it isn’t. But if you are British and in this industry, whatever you think about it, you feel that the mother ship, the big factories, are over there. To fold that into the show felt true.”After Richard’s unexpected death, Jonathan sells a majority share to a large American agency, which promptly sends an executive, Kirsten (Chelsey Crisp), to London to oversee Nightingale Hart. “She might be nice,” Dan says hopefully. “I’ve met some perfectly normal Americans.”There is plenty of humor to be had through the clash of cultures, a perfect vehicle for Morton’s trademark brand of dry humor, as the British team mutter “yes,” “no” or “right,” while the Americans tell them repeatedly how excited they are about the new relationship.The very British style of understatement and indirection that pervades the dialogue is a notable tonal difference from the French series. This is taken to a masterly height in the character of Julia (Rebecca Humphries), Jonathan’s assistant, who rarely utters more than “yes” or “no” but manages to infuse the words with a repressed intensity that conveys her obsession with her boss.“We all adored the French series, but weirdly it never came on set with us because every scene was a John Morton scene,” Puwanarajah, far right, said of the British show and a producer.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York Times“The French do everything stylishly and passionately and articulately,” Davenport said. “And our characters have to be hyper-articulate, professionally. But personally, they are as inarticulate as the average Brit. We are not a culture which is encouraged to say what we think or feel.”Morton’s writing, said Puwanarajah, reveals how fast the characters’s “legs are paddling under the surface under ‘yes, yes, I mean, maybe, carry on.’ It’s funny and real and dissonant in a Chekhovian way. We all adored the French series, but weirdly it never came on set with us because every scene was a John Morton scene.”Like the French series, the show uses its guest stars to evoke the realities and vulnerabilities of those who seem most successful. When MacDonald’s real-life agent called to tell the actress about her character being informed that she was too old for a role, the agent “was struggling a bit to find the right words,” MacDonald said. “I realized that it was a bit awkward for her to say that, just like in the show, which was quite funny.”In an episode featuring the married actors Jessica and David Oyelowo, the relevant issue of pay parity and its accompanying complexities are evoked: “Your market rate is higher,” Jonathan tells David; but “Jess has given me her life!” David replies — a line he suggested, he said in a joint video interview with his wife.Jessica Oyelowo and David Oyelowo play versions of themselves in the show.Rob Youngson/Sundance Now“It made me cry when I read the script,” Jessica said. “Because if you are an actress and you have babies, you feel that career loss. It was lovely that they added those personal tweaks.”Playing yourself isn’t easy, David said humorously. “I tried to think of myself as a character, but every time someone said ‘David and Jess’ on set, my brain short-circuited. There was a moment when the director asked me to play ‘him’ as more pathetic, and I was like, is David Oyelowo pathetic, or is the character pathetic?” When Jessica said she found it easier to separate the real and onscreen self, her husband nodded. “She was never asked to be pathetic,” he said.The show gives time to these issues in the cultural workplace, but Morton said this wasn’t his primary intention. “The French did something which I admire them for, something kinder and more nuanced, which I hope we captured,” he said. “There is a kind of dysfunctional family here, who we care about.”As Simon (Tim McInnerny), an aging, alcoholic actor, puts it to a politely smiling Bonham Carter: “However tragic one’s own life might seem, in the end it does become funny.” More

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      A French Hit on Netflix Changes Its Language and Streaming Service

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      “Call My Agent!,” set at a Parisian talent agency, was a cult favorite during the pandemic. But the English-language adaptation will be on Sundance Now and AMC+.Four bumbling talent agents at risk of losing their business because of poor financial planning. A secret daughter interested in a career in the entertainment industry. Cameos by famous actors playing themselves. One spoiled dog. This is the formula that made the French show “Call My Agent!,” about a Parisian talent agency, into a global hit once it began appearing on Netflix in 2016.On Friday, the British version of the show, titled “Ten Percent” and set at a London talent agency, will debut. But instead of airing on Netflix, the eight-episode series will premiere on Sundance Now and AMC+ in the United States, and Amazon U.K. in Britain, Canada and six other English-speaking territories.Basing an English-language TV show on a popular hit from another country is a tried-and-true convention in the U.S. entertainment industry. Think “Homeland” and “Euphoria” — or even “The Office,” which began life with Ricky Gervais in England before being adapted into the long-running American version starring Steve Carell.“Ten Percent” was conceived in much the same way. David Davoli, who heads the television division for Bron Studios, negotiated, along with London’s Headline Pictures, for the English rights to “Call My Agent!” in 2017, after the show debuted on Netflix but before it truly caught on with English-speaking audiences. According to Mr. Davoli, it was already doing “bonkers numbers on French television,” where it debuted in 2015. Yet it was before “the dawn of international television where people were more comfortable ingesting foreign language stuff,” he said.What makes “Ten Percent” unique is that usually the English-language version is adapted from a show not widely seen in the United States. Not so with “Call My Agent!,” which became a cult favorite with American audiences during the pandemic. The show has run for four seasons on Netflix — with talk of a possible fifth to come — and inspired a film and adaptations in India and Turkey. Its star, Camille Cottin, could be seen in the films “House of Gucci” and “Stillwater” last year.“Call My Agent!” became available on Netflix in 2016.Christophe Brachet/NetflixNetflix won’t give details on the show’s viewership numbers, but the company’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos referred to the series in his January earnings call as proof that Netflix’s investment in international programming was paying off. It, along with “Money Heist” and “Squid Game,” proved to streaming companies that if a show is good enough, subtitles and cultural specificity are not a deterrent for viewers. And if that’s the case, why spend money on an English-language version? The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors are continuing to expand.A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.In contrast, “Ten Percent” will appear on a much smaller platform, one with nine million subscribers, just 12 percent of Netflix’s 74.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada. (It stars Jack Davenport as the de facto head of the agency and will feature cameos from well-known British actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and David Oyelowo.)Netflix had the opportunity to buy “Ten Percent,” as did every other streaming service in the United States, but passed. It declined to comment on its decision. Instead, Sundance Now came up with an attractive offer and licensed the show.“We’re very happy to be there,” Mr. Davoli said of his relationship with AMC Networks, which owns Sundance Now. “I like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I think we’re going to get way more attention there. Marketing is half the battle, and on some of the bigger streamers they’re up on Friday and gone on Monday.”AMC Networks, which owns a handful of niche streaming options including AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AllBlk, will also air the show weekly on its BBC America channel, two days after the episodes become available through streaming.“We jumped at the chance to make Sundance Now the U.S. home of the British remake,” said Shannon Cooper, vice president of programming for Sundance Now. “This is such a fun watch, whether you’ve seen the original or not.”This is a rocky moment for streaming, with Netflix’s stock plummeting after last week’s announcement that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year and expected to lose two million beyond that in the second. Despite the deluge of content arriving weekly on the various services, consumers are happy to end a subscription if the latest offerings aren’t striking their fancy.Helena Bonham Carter, right, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in “Ten Percent.” Lydia Leonard is one of the show’s stars.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowAccording to a recent survey by Deloitte, 37 percent of consumers in the United States added or canceled a streaming subscription in the last six months, a churn figure that has been consistent since 2020. The primary reasons they cited were price concerns and lack of new content. The return of a favorite show, according to Deloitte’s survey, is a key reason customers would subscribe to a service, or resubscribe to one they recently abandoned. That’s why a show like “Ten Percent,” which has the potential to lure viewers who enjoyed “Call My Agent!,” is an attractive purchase for an upstart streaming service.“It’s an appealing proposition for any of these distributors,” said Dan Erlij, partner at United Talent Agency and co-head of the television literary department. “There’s so much stuff that’s constantly premiering. How do you make sure that people are aware of it? Bus ads and billboards only take you so far. And it’s expensive. So if you know that there’s a word of mouth built in already, I think that can be really helpful.”The executive producer of “Ten Percent” is John Morton, best known for his comedy “W1A,” which satirizes the BBC. In a recent interview, he said he was cognizant of the high stakes he was facing when he took the job of adapting the beloved series. Attracted to the show’s “warm heart” and its ability to connect its audience to its fallible main characters, Mr. Morton said, he was intimidated by the idea of “starting again with something that’s already so good.”His strategy was to go back and rewatch the first season of “Call My Agent!” in its entirety but then never refer to it again. As of the interview, he had yet to finish the third season and hadn’t watched the fourth.The ultimate goal was to take the essence of “Call My Agent!” and make it specifically British, capturing the diversity of London, from its architecture to its people.“London is chaotic — architecturally, logistically, creatively — and that throws up wonderful things and also terrible things,” Mr. Morton said, adding that, as in “Call My Agent!,” the talent agency has a rooftop. But rather than looking out over a pristine Parisian night sky, this roof “looks out over a certain sort of unconnected chimneys.”The cast of the British version is also more diverse, with the secret daughter from the original now played by the British actress Hiftu Quasem, who is of Bengali descent, and the bumbling agent, Dan, portrayed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, a British actor of Sri Lankan descent. Yet the archetypes from the original prevail. For example, Ms. Cottin’s character, a hard-charging lesbian agent, is now played by Lydia Leonard, and her character’s frenetic love life is also complicated by her career ambitions.Mr. Davoli — who since becoming the head of Bron TV has sold three other co-productions to streaming companies, including “The Defeated” to Netflix and “Kin” to AMC — admits that the market for format deals has become more challenged in recent years.“The thing that’s most important that I’ve learned over the last four years is the quality bar cannot be messed with,” he said. “The only way to protect the investment is to ensure that you’re creatively making content that can sell into the U.S., because our audiences are so sophisticated now. They won’t stick around for stuff that’s not rising above a certain bar.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: Truth Social Versus Twitter

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      “They will delete your account if you use the platform as a ‘tool for a crime or any unlawful activity,’ like, I don’t know, starting a riot at the Capitol maybe?” Kimmel said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Empty PromisesDonald Trump released a statement this week, praising the success of his app, Truth Social.On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel pointed out that while Trump promotes his app as a free-speech alternative to Twitter, Truth Social’s community guidelines aren’t so different.“And the biggest no-no, the one they actually call ‘Truth #1,’ they will delete your account if you use the platform as a ‘tool for a crime or any unlawful activity,’ like, I don’t know, starting a riot at the Capitol maybe?” Kimmel said. “Now what I’m wondering is maybe this is why Trump hasn’t been posting on Truth Social — he’s banned from that one, too.”“Truth Social is getting a boost from the news that Elon Musk is buying Twitter. Their app is now No. 1 on the Apple Store free app chart. We know this because Trump released a statement that said, ‘Truth Social is No. 1 in the Apple App store,’ a statement he did not bother to post on Truth Social, by the way, because no one would see it there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He still hasn’t posted on his own Truth Social app since the day it launched back in February. The last time he ignored something this much it was named Eric.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The truth about Truth Social is, of course, it’s No. 1. The reason no one’s downloading the Twitter app is because everybody already has Twitter.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Just a Phase Edition)“Finally, let’s talk about Covid-19, the only one of us that has seen Kamala Harris in like three months.” — TREVOR NOAH“As we all know, a little over two years ago a bat in China didn’t cover its mouth when it sneezed in a lab after visiting a food market, and that started a pandemic, and the world has never been the same.” — TREVOR NOAH“I don’t know if I believe it, seeing as how I know about 20 people who have Covid or have had it this month, but Dr. Fauci says we are no longer in the pandemic phase. We are transitioning from the pandemic phase to the awkward teenage phase. So instead of your hands, wash your face.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But Fauci warned the virus cannot be stamped out completely. The country may be totally over it, but it’s somehow still hanging around. Basically it’s like ‘American Idol.’” — JAMES CORDEN“Yeah, a phase, sort of like wide-leg jeans — they disappeared for 20 years and now suddenly everyone looks like they have to borrow a pair of jeans from Shaq, you know?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingAs Black Karen, “Daily Show” correspondent Dulcé Sloan called the cops on white people for their heinous crimes like eating bad barbecue and kissing their dogs on the mouth.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Yellowjackets” star Christina Ricci will pop by Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutSarah Silverman during a break from rehearsals of “The Bedwetter,” which centers on a 10-year-old Silverman who suffered from the embarrassing condition of the title.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesSarah Silverman promises vulnerability and jokes in her new musical comedy “The Bedwetter.” More

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      ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ Has the Most Exciting Comics (and the Silliest)

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      Robin Thede and her castmates bring a light, joyful touch and a comedy-nerd sensibility to this HBO series that often, delightfully, descends into the absurd.In this Friday’s episode of “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Robin Thede, its charismatic showrunner and star, plays the world’s worst thief. She picks fights with conspirators during a heist, wears a glittery silver wig that isn’t exactly inconspicuous, and, before stealing a diamond, takes a selfie and posts it to social media.It’s a stylishly executed genre spoof, with a solid premise and slick split-screen editing. And yet, its polish merely supports what really makes you laugh: the flamboyant goofiness of Thede, who commits to preposterousness with deadly seriousness. Her physical comedy, kinetic and rubbery, constantly shifting and shameless, italicizes everything. When she maneuvers across the room like a member of the Ministry of Silly Walks, the whole expensive-looking production becomes part of the joke.The truth of sketch comedy is right there in the name. Quick and broad strokes are at the core of the fun, and that can’t be entirely manufactured in a writers’ room. Take it from no less an authority than Bob Odenkirk (“Mr. Show,” “Saturday Night Live”). In his new memoir, “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama,” he writes about his considerable experience brainstorming, acting and producing sketches, concluding that ultimately “performance matters more than writing and ideas, loony behavior trumps clever constructions.”“A Black Lady Sketch Show” on HBO has all these elements, but now in its third season, the balance has shifted and it’s grown into, above all else, a spectacular showcase for Thede, the most influential and exciting figure in sketch at the moment. She leads a strong cast, including stalwarts Ashley Nicole Black and Gabrielle Dennis as well as the more recent addition Skye Townsend. It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t that long ago that the title sequence of this show included as many Black women as could be found in the casts of four decades of “Saturday Night Live.”Townsend, left, and Dennis are part of the show’s strong cast.Tina Thorpe/HBOCreated in 2019, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” announced its point of view about representation in its title and also in who it hired, becoming the first sketch series with a cast and writing staff exclusively made up of Black female talent. But this only gets at a small piece of the show’s impact. Its first season, still its best, featured the writer Amber Ruffin before she started her talk show, and the cast member Quinta Brunson before she left to create the hit sitcom “Abbott Elementary.”What marks the sketches are formal pivots (in a common twist, a scene is often revealed to be an ad or documentary); a light, joyful touch; and a comedy-nerd sensibility deeply versed in the history of television. You see this not just in the obscure references to “A Different World” or the meticulousness of a “227” parody, with Thede as a deliriously spot-on version of Jackée Harry’s Sandra, but also in the nudge-nudge casting. (Garrett Morris! David Alan Grier!)The comedy here usually offers new spins on classic territory: sportscasters providing color commentary on mundane events, or spoofs of vampires, zombies and marginal figures from the time of Christ. In these familiar premises, Thede, whose parents named her after Robin Williams, foregrounds character and improvisations, allowing room to riff and improvise, never letting seconds go by without a joke. Tying the sketches together are scenes with the cast in a story line that involves an apocalypse you never truly believe is real. This show can veer toward darkness, but horror is a tool rather than the point. In my favorite sketch this season, Thede plays a Midwestern-nice woman with a “Fargo” accent whose affection for stitched inspirational quotes and cutesy mottos shifts from benign to twisted. It might change the way you look at small-town antique stores.Thede has talked about her love for the wildly popular if far too forgotten 1990s sketch show “In Living Color,” which featured a talent-rich, mostly Black cast and a constantly changing writers’ room often filled with white staff members. It was more topical, celebrity-obsessed and wavering in its comic voice than “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” But what both series share is a delight in oversize personalities like Hadassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman (Thede), a political radical whose overly enunciated delivery is a cousin to Damon Wayans’s Oswald Bates from “In Living Color.”“I will never be enslaved,” she says with conviction, before counting the ways. “Mentally, physically, spiritually, metaphysically, biologically, specifically, pacifically, Michael Ealy, Robert E. Lee, none of the Lees.”Ashley Nicole Black specializes in understated character types.Tina Thorpe/HBOPerhaps because of the lasting influence of Tim and Eric, the trend in sketch comedy has been for scenes to get absurd quickly. The second season of “Three Busy Debras,” which just began on Adult Swim, is one example. On “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Thede builds her jokes with patience, taking time to establish the world of her character before spiraling into the surreal. On last week’s episode, Thede played a croaking spelling-bee host, a chirpy morning-show meteorologist and a peacocking art-school student. Each of these are tightly drawn and fully realized before descending into total nonsense. Sometimes it comes in an aside. (“Whoever can help me find my keys outside Domino’s will immediately be crowned the winner,” the spelling-bee host says.) What they share is an outsize confidence and clueless bravado that remains, against all odds, endearing.Even when she plays herself, Thede displays this quality. In an interstitial scene, she asks her castmates, wine glass in hand: “You know what I like about me?” After a self-important pause, she spoofs showbiz self-deprecation: “Even though I’m evolved, I’m not perfect, you know?”Her co-stars can match her comic energy, especially Dennis, whose cartoonish characters have a mischievous eccentricity. Black provides an appealing contrast, generally playing closer to earth, satirizing more subtle character types, like an understated spy and an overly positive friend praising you for sleeping on the job. As the show has matured, it’s become less interested in lampooning the world than in creating its own.One of its most biting sketches imagined a focus group where the wildly contradictory negative feedback about a show involved prescriptive demands. The artists returned with a new attempt that was a video of the critics. They still hated it. It’s a nice shot at the caution of showbiz today, one that comes with a hard-earned lesson: Sometimes, for a comic to find what works, you have to tune out the audience. More

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      Trevor Noah Backs Trump’s Returning to Twitter for One Reason Only

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      Noah joked that he just “really wants to see” the former president’s Wordle scores.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.More Hot TakesLate night continued to weigh in on Tuesday night on Elon Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter.Trevor Noah joked that the news set off “a wave of takes so hot, they burned off my eyebrows and I had to draw them back on.”“But one of the biggest takes came from former Twitter C.E.O. Jack Dorsey, who gave Musk his stamp of approval saying, ‘I trust his mission to extend the lights of consciousness.’ And I’ll be honest, people, I have no idea what that means, but Jack’s clearly on that billionaire speak.” — TREVOR NOAH“Well, I feel a lot better knowing that Twitter wasn’t in great hands before.” — SETH MEYERS“All jokes aside, Jack Dorsey is a great guy, and I wish him a safe journey back to his home planet.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yep, Musk says he’s going to bring back free speech to Twitter. It’s a big deal, because if it’s true, it means we’ll finally be able to talk about Bruno.” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, some people are worried that Musk will have a negative impact on Twitter. Yes, compared to the absolute paradise it’s been all along.” — JIMMY FALLONHosts wondered if Donald Trump might rejoin the app now that Musk will be at the helm, despite the former president’s claim he’ll instead remain on his own platform, Truth Social.“You know, he claims he won’t go back on Twitter, but he 100 percent will go back on Twitter, and then this dumb new company he conned everybody out of their money for will become, I guess, the social media equivalent of a Radio Shack — a Radio Shack that is run by Devin Nunes.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, so Truth Social is competition for Twitter the same way that guy on the plane was competition for Mike Tyson.” — TREVOR NOAH“Also, it doesn’t bode well that Trump himself has only posted on Truth Social one time ever. Yeah, and that was two months ago. Think about how crazy that is, people — when he was on Twitter, Trump would send out, what, like 50 tweets every time he went to the bathroom? Now he hasn’t posted for two months. Somebody needs to get this guy prune juice fast!” — TREVOR NOAH“I’ll be honest, though, the only reason I would want Trump back on Twitter, the only reason, because — I know, yes, it would probably lead to another term and it would destroy the country — but I just, I just really want to see his Wordle scores.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Keep Them Separated Edition)“Today, it was announced that Vice President Kamala Harris has tested positive for Covid-19. Yeah, President Biden told her to take her time recovering. He was like, ‘When I was V.P., I was gone for two years and nobody even noticed.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Thankfully, Harris is feeling good and will remain isolated just like she has since taking office.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, the White House said that Harris has been nowhere near Biden for over a week, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about that relationship.” — JIMMY FALLON“I don’t know, did they have a fight over a jelly bean? Why haven’t they seen each other in eight days?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers tackled Tucker Carlson and Tom Brady in Tuesday’s “Back in My Day” segment on “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe B-52’s will perform on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” ahead of the band’s farewell tour.Also, Check This Out“I wanted to go out with a beautiful bang,” said Pamela Adlon, who co-created the FX series “Better Things.” The show draws heavily from her own life.OK McCausland for The New York TimesPamela Adlon bids a bittersweet adieu to her semi-autobiographical show, “Better Things.” More

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      Brownface in Hong Kong TV Show Draws Outrage and Shrugs

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      The TV show “Barrack O’Karma 1968” fueled debate online. To many Filipinos, it was about racism and classism. Other viewers jumped to the actress’s defense.HONG KONG — The Hong Kong supernatural anthology TV series has an eye-catching name, “Barrack O’Karma 1968,” and an eyebrow-raising plot.A Filipino domestic worker, navigating deceit, discrimination and accusations of voodoo, is transformed by her seemingly well-intentioned employers into a Cantonese-speaking surrogate daughter.The TVB series not only chose a Chinese Canadian actress, Franchesca Wong, as the main character for a two-episode subplot. It also cast her in brownface. On the show, her skin grows lighter and she gains a new fluency in the dominant language of the city.After the first episode aired on April 12 and backstage footage emerged of Ms. Wong affecting a singsong accent — presumably meant to be Filipino — as she brushed dark makeup onto her legs, some viewers said they could not believe their 21st-century eyes.“I was really shocked,” said Izzy Jose, 27, a Filipino performer and educator in Hong Kong. “That morphed into feeling really angry and morphed further into feeling disappointed.”The footage quickly became a flash point of debate. To many Filipinos in Hong Kong, it was a twinned mockery — racism and classism. To some actors, it was an all-too-familiar dehumanizing and undignified representation, a reminder that minority performers are often locked out of roles that purport to portray people like them. To others, the brownface portrayal was another example of colorism rearing its ugly head.But another strain of reaction began bubbling up. Many viewers of the show — which first aired in 2019 and which also has elements of romance and drama — jumped to its defense. Chinese-language news media lauded Ms. Wong’s performance and her efforts at a Filipino accent. Others declared it a matter of creative autonomy. Some accused critics of crying racism without understanding the full context of the plot, which, they argued, portrays Ms. Wong’s character as a victim.It all boiled down to a clapback that asked: What’s the big deal?TVB defended Ms. Wong in a statement saying she had “successfully portrayed her character” with “professional performing techniques and sophisticated handling of role-playing.” Franchesca Wong, who wore brownface in the TVB show, apologized on social media last week.TVBEric Tsang, an actor and general manager of TVB, further denied that racism played any part in the show and insisted that brownface was crucial to the plot.“Actually the main character is Filipino, and then she turns pale,” Mr. Tsang told reporters at a TVB event last week. “That’s the tricky part,” he added. “You can’t find a Filipino to paint white, so you can only paint an artist black first, so that she can turn pale again. If we’re making movies about aliens, and we can’t find an alien to the play the part, are we discriminating against aliens? This is what the plot calls for.” TVB’s publicists said that Mr. Tsang was unavailable for comment.Using brownface in this way for a plotline and assuming that all Filipinos are a certain color perpetuate odious stereotypes, critics say.“It essentially is an exercise of privilege,” Christine Vicera, a Filipino filmmaker and researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview. “Franchesca, at the end of the filming, is able to remove the brown skin. Whereas, Filipinos or Southeast Asians or South Asians in Hong Kong, we don’t have that privilege of removing our skin color.”Jan Gube, an assistant professor at the Education University of Hong Kong who studies multicultural education and diversity, said that many local viewers lacked the historical context to understand why brownface is offensive. Professor Gube said that most students in Hong Kong’s public schools do not grow up interacting with peers who look different from them. Local schools did not teach cultural respect — let alone the context for brownface — in an in-depth way, he said.“You’ll see a lot of comments from social media and local media saying that the actress is being faithful to her role,” he said. “Not a lot of people are looking at it from a cultural point of view, which means they may not necessarily be aware that donning that kind of makeup means something else to other people,” he added.Brownface (and yellowface — imitations of brown and Asian people by light-skinned performers) evolved from the racist vaudeville tradition of blackface, a staple of American minstrel shows in the early 1800s. Mostly white actors applied dark makeup to play mocking caricatures of Black people. With few other representations of Black people onstage — and later onscreen — blackface performances helped reinforce dehumanizing tropes.Asian countries have had a history of perpetuating colorism, in which the preference for lighter skin is imbued in cultural and social mores. Cosmetic companies have been criticized for selling skin-lightening creams. In Pakistan, the TV series “Parizaad,” about the struggles of a dark-skinned laborer, the lead actor appeared to have darkened his face to play the role, drawing criticism from some social media users. But the show was a big hit when it debuted last year.“Brownface is always wrong because it constructs a racist stereotype. The underlying racist premise of brownface is that the essence of a person is embedded in their physical features, not in their character or actions,” said Jason Petrulis, an assistant professor of global history at the Education University of Hong Kong who studies race and politics in U.S.-Asia relations.“An actor who performs in brownface is suggesting that she can portray the inner character of a Filipina domestic worker by embodying her, by mimicking her skin color or speech patterns or hair texture,” he added.About 203,000 Filipinos live in Hong Kong, forming the largest non-Chinese ethnic group in the city, according to a 2021 census. About 190,000 are domestic workers. In the past two years, as Hong Kong has doubled down on Covid restrictions, the domestic workers have been singled out for mass testing and have been slapped with fines for violating social distancing rules that often exceed their entire monthly salary.For Filipinos who find work as actors in the city, the roles are often limited to clumsy maids, gangsters or bit players in ads for cleaning products.“I’ve always felt that our ethnicity and skin color is used as props to add creative value on set,” said Ray Yumul, a 29-year-old Filipino actor and headhunter. “It’s something that needs to stop and change.”Mr. Yumul said he once responded to calls seeking a Filipino actor in a commercial, only to learn that he would be playing a germ.Ricky Chu, who leads Hong Kong’s anti-discrimination watchdog, the Equal Opportunities Commission, said brownface cannot be the sole measure in determining discriminatory behavior. The watchdog would also have to consider whether the makeup is “very exaggerated” with accompanying “speech and gestures,” he said in an interview.As for whether Ms. Wong’s affected accent in the behind-the-scenes footage constitutes offensive behavior, he said a formal complaint would have to be filed before the commission could judge. (The commission, citing confidentiality, declined to say whether it had received complaints.)Mr. Chu did say that as a viewer of the TVB show, he was more concerned by dialogue that used phrases like “all you domestic helpers” that reinforced “negative stereotypes.”TVB, a 55-year-old broadcaster known for variety shows and serial dramas, has faced boycotts from pro-democracy protesters who accuse it of a pro-China bias. It has also drawn complaints for using racial epithets in a historical drama.The latest controversy intensified after the two episodes in which Ms. Wong appeared in brownface. The broadcaster has since removed those episodes from its streaming site, saying it would review their content.Ms. Wong, who did not respond to a request for comment, apologized on social media last week, saying that she had learned that trying to “analyze, interpret and act” was only part of the job.Many of her supporters responded that she had nothing to be sorry for. More

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      Late Night Muses on Elon Musk’s Deal to Buy Twitter

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      Trevor Noah joked that owning Twitter would give Musk “more power than the drugstore employee with the key to the deodorant shelf.”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.Elon Musk Is VerifiableAfter initially being denied, Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter on Monday for roughly $44 billion.“It’s the hottest and messiest relationship drama this side of ‘Riverdale,’ and it looks like after weeks of flirtation and fighting, the new couple has officially done the deed,” Trevor Noah joked on Monday’s “Daily Show.”“That’s right, people. Twitter said it would never sell to Elon Musk, and then he produced the cash and they’re like, ‘All right, we’ll sell.’ Yeah, I guess they found that edit button after all.” — TREVOR NOAH“I honestly don’t know why Elon would want to own Twitter, all right? It just doesn’t feel like a fun place to supervise. It’s like buying Jurassic Park after the power went down and the cages are open.” — TREVOR NOAH“So you see, by buying Twitter, Elon Music gets to own one of the most culturally influential publishing platforms in the world. I mean, remember this; think about it: Twitter is how the Arab Spring took off, all right? Black Lives Matter blew up on Twitter, the Me Too movement started on Twitter, Trump used Twitter to turn himself from a reality show joke into the 45th president of the United States and a joke. So owning Twitter gives you more power than the drugstore employee with the key to the deodorant shelf.” — TREVOR NOAH“He said he wants to transform Twitter as a platform for free speech around the globe. Yeah, that’s the problem with Twitter — no one can say what they think. They’re holding back.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Twitter’s an odd thing to buy, you know? It’s like buying YouTube and saying, ‘Forget the videos — I’m just here for the mean comments.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, the richest man in the world bought Twitter. Right now Bernie Sanders is so mad he just turned into the Hulk.” — JIMMY FALLON“Imagine having so much money that you think it’s a good idea to buy hell.” — JAMES CORDEN“Yeah, everything that happens on Twitter from now on is up to him — and also whatever strain his weed guy gives him that day. I’m just saying: He gets the wrong Sativa, there could be a race war, people; prepare yourselves.” — TREVOR NOAH“He sees something impossible and he makes it happen: building the most sought-after electric car, blasting off into outer space and, now, somehow making Twitter even worse.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Whose Truth? Edition)“Yeah, Musk has said that he’s pro-free speech, so a lot of people think that he’ll let former President Trump back on the platform. Yeah, not exactly what we meant when we asked for a return to prepandemic vibes.” — JIMMY FALLON“The caps lock key on Trump’s phone was like, ‘I’m back, baby.’” — JIMMY FALLON“But listen to this, today Trump told Fox News that he will not return to Twitter and will instead join his own platform, Truth Social. Wait, so not even Trump is on Truth Social yet?” — JIMMY FALLON“He’s not on his own app? If you’re keeping track, Twitter and Truth Social are like the Four Seasons and Four Seasons Total Landscaping.” — JIMMY FALLON“That is the name of his latest failure. Trump lies so much he can’t even say the word ‘truth.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBill Hader, star of “Barry,” told Jimmy Kimmel how his young daughter pranked him in public in front of Chris Pratt.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightElisabeth Moss will talk about her new Apple TV+ series, “Shining Girls,” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutAlice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet, with her dog, Ede, at her home in Litho, Calif., on April 4. Marissa Leshnov for The New York TimesThe celebrated author Alice Walker opens up to readers with “Gathering Blossoms Under Fire,” a collection of her diaries spanning 1965 to 2000. More