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      With Aldis Hodge, ‘Cross’ Seeks Justice … for Its Title Character

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      If your idea of Alex Cross is Morgan Freeman from the movies “Kiss the Girls” (1997) and “Along Came a Spider” (2001), the Amazon series “Cross,” based on a best-selling series of novels by James Patterson, might come as a surprise.With his bulging biceps encased in sprayed-on sweaters, Aldis Hodge, who plays the title character in the series, cuts a rather different figure indeed.“They always had me in mediums,” Hodge said, laughing, in a recent video chat. “Actually, the only thing I really had for wardrobe was like, ‘Yo, I need these sweaters to be a little thicker because we are shooting in Canada in the winter.’”Fans of Patterson’s long-running franchise shouldn’t fret, though: The new series, which premiered Thursday on Prime Video, was only shot in Toronto — it is still set in Washington, D.C., like the books. But productions do that all the time. Perhaps more important, Hodge’s Cross lands closer than ever to the way the character is described on the page: tall, 38 in the first novel (like Hodge) and strong enough that, as described in “Kiss the Girls,” he can still pounce after being shot in the heart with a stun gun.Hodge’s character in “Cross” is a widower; one of the show’s central relationships is between Alex Cross and colleague and longtime best friend, Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa). Keri Anderson/Prime VideoObviously this is a helpful quality for a forensic psychologist.“I did tell the casting teams at Paramount and Amazon that as we started to search for our Alex Cross, I’d like to use Aldis Hodge as sort of the blueprint for that,” the series’s showrunner, Ben Watkins, said by phone.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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      Review: ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Is Still Looking for Its Voice

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      A long-gestating prequel, about the women who seek to guide a galaxy, is splashy, somber and insufficiently spicy.“Dune,” the multi-novel, multi-movie saga, is in part about the battle for a precious commodity hoovered up from a desert planet to enrich the rapacious nobility. It’s called spice.“Dune: Prophecy,” the six-episode prequel series beginning Sunday on HBO, also concerns a valuable resource hoarded by empires and processed through machinery. It’s called intellectual property.Spice is a dangerous substance, controlled through violence, but at least the universe gets something out of it. Its mind-expanding properties make hyperspace travel possible and can induce prescience in the user.I.P., on the other hand, tends to simply give us lavish, lesser copies of things we already have. “House of the Dragon” is “Game of Thrones: Blonder and Blander”; “The Rings of Power” substitutes the mystic wonder of “The Lord of the Rings” with C.G.I. and metalsmithing.“Dune: Prophecy” is set 10,000 years before Timothée and Zendaya strode the sands. Its action unfolds shortly after an uprising against “thinking machines” that enslaved humanity. But the series itself is securely in the control of the I.P. machine.Its focus is the Sisterhood, the precursor to the Bene Gesserit of the films, now overseen by the ruthless and subtle-minded Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). A combination of deep-state apparatus and deadly yoga colony, this secretive society of female mentalists provides “truthsayers” (human lie detectors) to the ruling nobles while guiding history with a genetics program designed to breed ideal rulers. (Humankind may have faster-than-light spaceships, but the galaxy remains a patriarchy that women can influence only by stealth.)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

      Late Night Chides Biden for Keeping His Cool With Trump

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      “I’m not saying booby-trap the place, but you don’t have to be overly helpful,” Seth Meyers said after the president welcomed Donald Trump to the White House.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.Smooth OperatorsOn Wednesday, President Biden hosted President-elect Donald J. Trump at the White House, where they exchanged pleasantries and promised a “smooth transition.”Seth Meyers called Biden’s accommodation “just a little confusing.”“You correctly called him a criminal fascist and threat to democracy. I’m not saying booby-trap the place, but you don’t have to be overly helpful. I mean, how are you going to accommodate him anyway — upgrade all the toilets so they can handle more classified documents?” — SETH MEYERS“Trump said they had a ‘really good’ meeting. He said that Biden was ‘gracious’ and that they ‘really enjoyed seeing each other.’ Last week, Joe Biden was an evil force who weaponized the justice system to put Trump in prison for the rest of his life; today, they had fun.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Joe complimented Trump on overcoming many obstacles that he has also faced, like stairs.” — GREG GUTFELD“Now that’s a man who appreciates a smooth transition of power, as long as it’s transitioning toward him. If it’s transitioning away from him, there’s going to be some Jan. 6-ing, but if it’s toward him, smooth.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“I mean, they did both try to hang Mike Pence, just out of tradition, but other than that, it was very cordial.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Punchiest Punchlines (New Low Edition)“During the campaign, I thought if Trump won, he would do the worst things I could imagine. Turns out, I don’t have much of an imagination.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Matt Gaetz as attorney general — this is a new low. I mean, not as low as our age-of-consent laws are about to be, but pretty low.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Quick question: the Department of Justice isn’t within 100 feet of a school, is it?” — JORDAN KLEPPERWe 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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      Amazon Is Phasing Out Its Freevee Streaming Service

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      Its shows have moved to Amazon Prime, where they will remain free.Amazon is folding Freevee, its ad-supported streaming service, into Prime Video, where its shows will remain free to viewers who don’t subscribe to Prime.The move had been expected, after Amazon started including advertisements this year on Prime Video, which already hosts free original programs and movies. All Freevee programming will be available on Prime Video for free, the company said.Freevee began in 2019 as IMDb TV, an offshoot of Amazon’s IMDb film site. Some of its original shows were hits, including the social media sensation “Jury Duty,” “Bosch: Legacy” and “Judy Justice.” The service will be phased out within weeks.Amazon already has a streaming behemoth in Prime Video, and the company decided to put all of its entertainment content on one platform “to deliver a simpler viewing experience for customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said Wednesday.An ad-supported version of Prime Video is included with Amazon’s delivery service, which costs $14.99 per month, or $139 per year. An ad-free version of Prime Video is also available for an additional $2.99 per month. A stand-alone streaming subscription costs $8.99 per month.Like most streamers, Amazon mostly declines to give viewing numbers, but Freevee had built up its audience to about 65 million monthly active users in the United States in the first half of 2022. Amazon Prime has at least 180 million users, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.“Judy Justice,” starring Judge Judith Sheindlin, known as Judge Judy, quickly became Freevee’s No. 1 original show when it debuted in 2021. Viewers watched more than 150 million hours of it over its first two years, according to Amazon data. Judge Sheindlin’s success in her first streaming show allowed her to spin off additional shows on Freevee.Freevee’s most unexpected hit, however, was “Jury Duty,” a hybrid documentary-sitcom in which an ordinary man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors. It became Freevee’s most-watched show after it premiered in 2023 and earned four Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding comedy series.“Bosch: Legacy,” which premiered in 2022, was based on the popular police detective book series by Michael Connelly. It became a New York Times Critic’s Pick, with the reviewer Mike Hale writing that the series came with “cleverly interlocking story lines and the general lack of pretense and contrivance.”Other free, ad-supported streaming platforms, like Pluto TV, Tubi, and Roku Channel, have enjoyed significant growth. Viewers have flocked to them as many other subscription-based streaming services raised their prices. While the free services are built on a stable of older TV programs and movies, many consumers are seeking cost savings, nostalgia and even terrible movies.There are at least 170 million ad-supported subscriptions in the United States, up from at least 93 million at the end of last year, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. More

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      in Theater

      Timothy West, Who Portrayed Kings and Prime Ministers, Dies at 90

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      Timothy West, a versatile actor who portrayed a parade of historical and classical figures onstage and onscreen, and in between became a household name in Britain as a sitcom and soap opera regular, died on Tuesday in London. He was 90.His death was announced by his family on social media. They did not specify where he died but thanked the staffs at a London care home and a hospital for “their loving care” during Mr. West’s final days.With arched brows, narrow eyes and a strong jaw, Mr. West brought a commanding presence to historical figures like Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and King Edward VII, and to notables of classic theater like King Lear, Macbeth and Willy Loman.He was perhaps best known to American audiences for his performances in British television imports: the mini-series “Edward the King,” the movie “Churchill and the Generals” and the acclaimed mini-series “Bleak House,” an adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel that was shown on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” in 2005.Mr. West, kneeling, in 1970 in “Edward II” with Ian McKellen. He was known to bring a commanding presence to historical figures.AlamyMr. West, left, with Ian Richardson in the BBC drama “Churchill and the Generals.” It was the first of his three career portrayals of the British prime minister.RGR Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoAlthough Mr. West was a staple of British television, had dabbled in radio drama and had several small film roles, his lifelong passion was the theater.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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      ‘Cross’ and ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Offer Different Spins on the Same Formula

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      Within the boundaries of the crime-solving genius genre, “Cross” represents the dark yin and “The Lincoln Lawyer” the bright yang.On the page, Alex Cross, the embittered psychologist created by James Patterson, leads his fellow fictional crime solver Mickey Haller, the flamboyant lawyer created by Michael Connelly, 32 novels to seven. On the small screen, the tables turn: The Haller series “The Lincoln Lawyer” debuted its third season last month on Netflix while the first season of “Cross,” announced nearly five years ago, finally arrives Thursday on Amazon Prime Video.But who’s counting? There appears to be endless space in the current marketplace for brilliant but wounded investigators, and Haller and Cross share an essential marker of the contemporary crime-drama hero. Their personal traumas — Cross’s loss of his parents and wife, Haller’s issues with his father and with addiction — generate much of the tension in their stories, reducing the need for real complexity of personality or the clever unraveling of mystery.Formulas can be executed in different ways, however, and the two shows provide radically different viewing experiences. Within the boundaries of the problematic-genius formula, “Cross” represents the dark yin and “The Lincoln Lawyer” the bright yang. “Cross” goes for self-consciously heavy, “The Lincoln Lawyer” for perilously light. Most significant, perhaps, “Cross” is out to sanctify its protagonist; “The Lincoln Lawyer,” while it provides Haller with a full allotment of anguish, never asks us to feel sorry for him.The creator of “Cross,” Ben Watkins, previously created the eccentric neo-noir “Hand of God,” also for Amazon. The penchants he demonstrated then for hair-raising imagery, and for throwing together tones and styles, carry through to the new show. Choosing not to base “Cross” on a specific Patterson novel (unlike film adaptations including “Kiss the Girls” and “Along Came a Spider”), Watkins frees himself to cook up a lurid but not very exciting stew of serial-killer horror, buddy-cop action, social-justice point-making and sentimentality.Cross, played by Aldis Hodge (“Leverage”), is a District of Columbia police detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. We meet him on the occasion of his wife’s murder, and for eight episodes the character shuttles between dour grief and bellowing anger; Hodge, usually a magnetic performer, settles on a glaring, unmediated intensity.The A plot, in which Cross investigates the murder of a defund-the-police activist, blossoms into a richly nonsensical “Silence of the Lambs”-style fantasia. Common sense is left far behind, in matters large and small; at one slap-your-forehead juncture, a cop yells, “He could be anywhere!” seconds after the killer escapes, while his car can still be heard in the near distance.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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      How Stingy Boomer Parents Became the Best TV Villains

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      Older Americans hold an outsize share of the nation’s wealth and power. Television loves watching their children scramble for a taste.Plots about inheritance and succession are not a new phenomenon. The form could hardly be more familiar: Take an empire-straddling lion-in-winter, throw in some desperately competing heirs and watch as the shifting allegiances and loyalty tests devolve into bedlam. The Gospel of Luke gives us the parable of the prodigal son, in which one child does his duty and the other squanders his inheritance. Shakespeare had King Lear go mad after disinheriting his youngest and being betrayed by his older daughters.Still, even by the accustomed standards, recent television feels utterly awash in succession-themed stories. “Empire,” “Yellowstone” and “La Maison” all hinge on the promises and prevarications of parents and their offspring. On HBO alone, we’ve had “Succession” (children vying for control of a media empire), “The Righteous Gemstones” (children vying for control of a religious empire) and “House of the Dragon” (children vying for control of the family dragons).Neither is this trend reserved for fiction. Two recent documentaries revolve around an emergent archetype in succession stories: the crusty, vainglorious old man whose megalomaniacal allegiance to his business empire supersedes his capacity for common decency.Released in September, the six-part Netflix documentary “Mr. McMahon” explores the legacy of professional wrestling’s most consequential overlord, Vince McMahon, who took over the hardscrabble World Wrestling Federation — previously owned by his father, Vince McMahon Sr. — and transformed it into a global juggernaut. By the 1990s and 2000s, World Wrestling Entertainment (having changed its name in 2002) was drawing huge ratings by dramatizing McMahon’s dueling with his two children, Stephanie and Shane, who both desired, in the W.W.E.’s story line, to compete with and succeed their autocratic father.Professional wrestling is, famously, a strange admixture of reality and fiction; its in-ring beefs are often exaggerated versions of offscreen animosities. “Mr. McMahon” reveals the extent to which the McMahons’ televised rivalries were true to life. Shane, in particular, butted heads with his father around the height of what is known in wrestling lore as the Attitude Era. The two men ended up battling each other at WrestleMania 17 in 2001, following weeks of onscreen drama regarding the future of the W.W.E. The ensuing “street fight,” as it was billed, turned nasty as the father peppered his son with actual punches, rather than the usual pulled shots. It is unpleasant to watch and hard to turn away from.The wealth hoarding of older generations may be the lurking subtext of all these plots.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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      Small Streamers Like Hallmark+ and BritBox See Subscribers Surge

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      Like Christmas shows? So does Hallmark+. Like horror? Dare to try Shudder. And British shows? There’s BritBox and more.Executives from the Hallmark Channel made a curious decision this fall: They started a new streaming service.It seemed like an awfully late date to do so. Most media companies entered the streaming fray years ago, and few have had success going head-to-head against titans like Netflix, Amazon and Disney.But Hallmark executives decided the timing was not an issue. Their app, Hallmark+, did not need to appeal to the whole country, they said, just their core audience — the people who regularly flock en masse to the network’s trademark holiday and feel-good programming.“We don’t have to make content that are all things to all people,” said John Matts, Hallmark Media’s chief operating officer.He might very well be onto something.For much of the past decade, conventional wisdom inside the entertainment world has been that only a small handful of megaservices would survive the streaming wars. After all, they had the stars, the budgets and the technological prowess.But numerous media executives now believe that there could be room for some more modest streaming services, too.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