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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Our Towns’ and ‘Beethoven in Beijing’

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      A documentary on HBO looks at small towns across America. And PBS’s “Great Performances” revisits a pivotal 1973 classical music tour.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 12-18. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). On Nov. 20, 2014, a New York City police officer, Peter Liang, shot and killed Akai Gurley, 28, who was unarmed. (Liang was convicted of manslaughter in 2016.) Gurley was Black; Liang is Chinese-American. The killing prompted a particularly complex debate over police accountability, which the filmmaker Ursula Liang (who is not related to Peter Liang) explores in this new documentary.STAR WARS: EPISODE III — REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005) 8:05 p.m. and 11:20 on TNT. The streaming series “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” one of the highest-profile new “Star Wars” projects, is supposed to start filming this month, but it’ll be a little while before it gets to Disney+. (There’s no light speed when multimillion-dollar TV shoots are involved.) The new series will reunite Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, who starred together in this “Star Wars” prequel, which charts the final chapter of young Anakin Skywalker’s transformation into Darth Vader. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called it “by far the best film in the more recent trilogy.” How significant that praise is, though, is a matter of debate.TuesdayOUR TOWNS 9 p.m. on HBO. The journalists (and married couple) Deborah Fallows and James Fallows spent several years puttering through American skies in their small, single-engine Cirrus SR-22 plane, visiting small towns across the country. The resulting book, “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” released in 2018, looks at the beauty of and the challenges faced by American towns. This documentary from the filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan is based on the Fallows’s book; it looks at how small-town life is changing around the country.WednesdayCloris Leachman and Timothy Bottoms in “The Last Picture Show.”Columbia PicturesTHE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971) 11:45 p.m. on TCM. Peter Bogdanovich’s big-screen adaptation of the 1966 Larry McMurtry novel “The Last Picture Show” is set in a small Texas town. The story follows a pair of high school seniors (Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges) as they prepare for their post-graduation lives and navigate two very different romances (Cybill Shepherd plays a high-school girlfriend; Cloris Leachman plays the wife of the school’s basketball coach, who is having an affair with one of the boys). This year is the film’s 50th anniversary — but in many ways, it feels considerably older, as Bogdanovich produced it to feel like a product of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times, the film is “a tribute to the kind of straightforward narrative filmmaking that flourished in the Hollywood of the 1930 and 1940s, when occasionally classic movies were made on the assembly lines, but it’s a tribute by a director who started out not in the cutting room, but at the Museum of Modern Art.”ThursdayFrances McDormand in “Fargo.”Michael Tackett/Gramercy PicturesFARGO (1996) 7:30 p.m. on Showtime. Frances McDormand did her best to avoid publicity for years after receiving her first Academy Award, which she won for her role as a pregnant police chief hunting down a pair of killers in this Coen brothers staple. That decision “gave me a mystery back to who I was,” she explained in a recent interview with The Times, “and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.” With McDormand up this year for her third best actress Academy Award (for her role in Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland”), this is a natural time to revisit “Fargo.”A QUIET PLACE (2018) 5:50 p.m. on FXM. After repeated delays in response to the pandemic, “A Quiet Place Part II” seems like it may actually be released next month. (The film had its world premiere event on March 8, 2020, and was slated to open shortly afterward — you know what happens next.) The original movie follows a couple (John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) who have to keep themselves and their children alive in a post-apocalyptic world that has been overtaken by monsters who can’t see, and who hunt using their ears. It’s a conveniently cinematic premise that Krasinski, who also directed, takes advantage of. “The full-on action sequences, staged with stalking tension in settings as diverse as a grain silo and a bathtub, are nervily potent,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times, even if the film as a whole is “neither intellectually deep nor even logically sound.”FridayA scene from “Great Performances: Beethoven in Beijing.”History Making ProductionsGREAT PERFORMANCES: BEETHOVEN IN BEIJING 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). When the Philadelphia Orchestra took the stage in Beijing in 1973, it became the first American symphony orchestra to perform in China since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. That tour is the subject of this documentary, which revisits the performances and looks at how they laid the groundwork for the eventual return of Western art to China. The film includes interviews with the composer Tan Dun, the pianist Lang Lang, and the conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin.SaturdayCREED (2015) 5 p.m. on VH1. The director Ryan Coogler breathed new life into the “Rocky” franchise with this sort-of sequel, sort-of spinoff. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed. Adonis is a child of Apollo Creed, the fictional onetime rival of Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), who takes Adonis under his extraordinarily toned wing.SundayTHE 56TH ANNUAL ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. This year’s Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony will be broadcast from three venues around Nashville: the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House and the Bluebird Cafe. Keith Urban and Mickey Guyton will host, with a lineup of performers that includes Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and Carrie Underwood. More

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      Last Call: ‘Shameless’ Showrunner Says Goodbye to the Gallaghers

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      John Wells discussed the impact of the pandemic and police protests on Sunday’s series finale.This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s series finale of “Shameless.”Before he created “Shameless,” the long-running family drama that ended Sunday night on Showtime, John Wells was the showrunner of “ER” and later seasons of “The West Wing,” both on NBC.Though the shows are superficially dissimilar, Wells sees all of them as examinations of function — or dysfunction. “ER” is about how medicine works. “The West Wing” is about how government works. And “Shameless”?“That’s about how the system doesn’t really work for families living near the poverty line,” Wells said. “Man, talk about that being underrepresented on television! That is a huge portion of our society that we don’t tell nearly enough stories about.”Over 11 seasons, “Shameless” conveyed the outrageous and topical stories of the Gallaghers, a sprawling family with largely absent addict parents Frank and Monica (played by William H. Macy and Chloe Webb), leaving the daughter Fiona (Emmy Rossum) to raise her younger siblings Lip (Jeremy Allen White), Ian (Cameron Monaghan), Debbie (Emma Kenney), Carl (Ethan Cutkosky) and Liam (Christian Isaiah).Based on a British TV series, the Showtime version transferred the scruffy family to the South Side of Chicago and, among other things, thoroughly modernized the British concept of “kitchen-sink drama.” The Gallagher kitchen hosted such events as Monica slicing her wrists, Fiona having impromptu sex, Debbie giving birth, Frank removing Debbie’s necrotic toes and then-toddler Liam collapsing from a cocaine overdose.“Comedy can be brutal,” Wells said. “It can reach past our reluctance of being preached to.”“Shameless,” he added, is “a show about a family trying to survive and laughing their way through it.”Wells would have been happy to continue relating the Gallaghers’ misadventures — while addressing weighty topical issues like inequality, gentrification, addiction, mental illness and sexuality — for “another 20 years.” But Showtime gave the show a final season just before the coronavirus pandemic. Then three days before shooting began, in which the mostly grown-up Gallaghers finally disperse, production was shut down for months.During the unexpected time off, Wells rethought the season and decided to incorporate the pandemic, using Frank, who was long past his sell-by date for various medical reasons, as the poster boy for anti-maskers. In Sunday’s series finale, Frank died of Covid.“We weren’t trying to do a ‘Very Special Episode,’” Wells said. “Even in comedies that are satirical, there should be real consequences.”In a phone interview from Victoria, British Columbia, where he’s working on a new series for Netflix, Wells discussed the inspiration for Frank’s death, Fiona’s near-return and the legacy of “Shameless.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Frank has so many possible comorbidities,” Wells said. “Covid is just the thing that finally pushed him over the edge.”Paul Sarkis/ShowtimeYou rewrote the entire season after the shutdown. Was Frank destined to die all along? How did you decide he would get Covid? There have been plenty of Covid-19 subplots on TV but I can’t think of another lead character who actually died from it.We didn’t want Frank to get off scot-free for all his lifestyle choices. We were always planning for him to pass away from something at the end. Originally, we were thinking he would take his own life in an overdose. What the hell — why not go out in a blaze of glory?Then I lost a close family member from Covid at Christmastime. That’s happening to lots of families. So I thought, “We should make a comment on that.” We tried to make a comment all season on the particular difficulties that the pandemic has presented in low-income communities, and still make it kind of funny. To have Frank die of something else in the midst of this pandemic, it would be a little too easy. Frank has so many possible comorbidities — Covid is just the thing that finally pushed him over the edge. There’s certainly some schadenfreude in this, Frank always thinking he can skate by everything and coming to a moment he couldn’t skate by.In his delirium, Frank mistakes a health care worker for Fiona, which is the first time that she has been mentioned since Emmy Rossum left the show two years ago. Why haven’t the Gallaghers talked about their sister? The house is in Fiona’s name, and she remains Liam’s legal guardian.We had written in various mentions of Fiona over the last two years, but Showtime asked us not to remind people of her absence. I think they were very concerned that Emmy’s absence would significantly hurt the viewership of the show.We very much wanted to try and bring back Fiona for the finale, but there was just no way to make it all work with the pandemic. I’m sure Emmy would have come back and done it, and it would have been nice to see her again. But she had some health concerns about returning, quarantining and trying to be safe. It’s hard to question anybody’s choices based on travel and safety.There was going to be a family discussion about who was going to take care of Frank. In the early ideas of the story, that was a perfect way to have Fiona return. We had some humorous versions of it, where they all got sick of Frank, put him in a box and sent him down to Florida. And then Fiona opened the box! Best laid plans.Did Showtime ever veto any other ideas or voice other concerns?It was kind of our inside joke: “You can do about anything, but you can’t steal a library book.” I think that was because [Showtime co-president of entertainment] Gary Levine didn’t want to encourage people to actually keep library books. [Laughs.] Showtime expressed concern about various things that then they ultimately supported, like Frank sending Carl to cancer camp. The idea was that every kid should be able to go to camp.In the early days, we had a lot of conversations about Frank choosing to sleep with Lip’s girlfriend Karen (Laura Slade Wiggins). Then we came up with the solution of how Frank would seek forgiveness, how Lip would urinate on Frank’s head and Frank would actually accept it, because he realized he deserved it. It was always about the balance of what’s been done and what we leave unpunished and unforgiven in the family, because the show is really just about how a family can pull itself through all different kinds of crisis.In its final season, “Shameless” sought to reflect the losses many families have experienced during the pandemic.Paul Sarkis/ShowtimeWas there ever a story that you wished you had contextualized more?Carl’s story line, becoming a cop. We could have used two more seasons to explore that. We had a lot of conversations with Showtime about how much we could say. It was a fine line, trying to ride an ongoing conversation in the country.How much did the Black Lives Matter protests and the ongoing national conversation about racial inequality influence what you had originally planned?Carl’s story line became far more topical. Not that these issues weren’t always there, but they became front and center after a number of horrific incidents of police brutality. What is proper policing? Is the purpose of the police to protect the well-off from the not-well-off? There are certainly many people who believe that. That’s an oversimplification, but we all need to understand what those fears of the police are, the lack of trust that exists in a lot of communities.We were also trying to address things about lack of housing. One thing I wish we had another year to explore was the eviction moratorium expiring, when we discover just how many people have lost their jobs and live with food insecurity. I’d love to be talking about pandemic checks, and what a huge difference affordable day care would make to Debbie and Tami (Kate Miner). We’d find the humor in these stories but these are life-and-death issues for families who live on the margin.Why do you think “Shameless” wasn’t part of a larger cultural conversation, particularly during awards seasons?I never want to complain about it, because I’ve been on the good side of that equation. But I would say that when you’re doing stories about people who are less fortunate, if you’re not providing easy answers, the shows tend to get overlooked a bit more. I don’t have any explanation for why “The Wire” was never the most decorated show in television history. We want to pretend that the country is egalitarian, that it’s a meritocracy, that everybody has the same opportunities, and it’s just not true. That’s hard for us to accept. It challenges our sense of who we are. What are our responsibilities to each other?There was some backlash. Critics did not latch onto the show at the beginning. Many people wanted to write off “Shameless” as a sex comedy. And that’s OK. We had a great, loyal audience for a long time. People would stop me on the street and tell me that Frank was like their dad. Kids would come to our Chicago set, and tell us about how they were thrown out of their homes for being gay, lesbian or trans. People would tell us how their big sister raised them, or how they reconnected with older siblings because of the show. We all search for community, and the Gallagher world was a community of kids who cared about each other.What would you want to see in a “Shameless” spinoff?I want to see the Alibi cop-bar story, and what happens with Carl and Arthur (Joshua Malina) as police officers. I love Kevin (Steve Howey) and Veronica (Shanola Hampton), and would love to see what happens to them. Lip was on the verge of actually figuring things out and succeeding. We have a massive legion of fans for Ian and Mickey (Noel Fisher), so seeing where their life goes. For many people, they represent different ideas of who gay men can be and how those relationships can be.We did what we set out to do. Hopefully people enjoyed it, saw some of their own hardships in it, or have a little more empathy for the tens of millions of people in America who live at the poverty level that the Gallaghers lived at in the show. Tip your waiter a little bit more. Leave some extra money for the maid when you stay at a hotel or motel. Be a little more understanding with the person who delivers your package. Try and walk in other people’s shoes.Having all these stories out there reminds people that the things that they might be ashamed of and feel need to be hidden, nah — we’ve got to talk about it. More

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Reacts to the Derek Chauvin Trial

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      In an episode hosted by Carey Mulligan, “S.N.L.” looked at the American justice system through the lens of a fictional midday news program.After two weeks of testimony, the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer charged in the death of George Floyd, has gripped viewers — including the hosts of a fictional news program on “Saturday Night Live,” who drew very different conclusions from what they’d seen.This weekend, “S.N.L.” began with a sendup of a local midday show, called “Eye on Minnesota” and hosted by Ego Nwodim, Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon and Alex Moffat.Reacting to the case so far, Nwodim said, “Watching this trial brought back so many bad feelings from last summer.”Moffat supportively added, “The video footage alone should tell you everything you need to know about what happened. And hopefully justice will be served.”McKinnon said, “Sounds like we all agree — there’s no way Derek Chauvin walks away from this.”With an immediate, knowing skepticism, Nwodim and Thompson both replied, “Welllllll—”Nwodim remarked that the defense’s attempt “to make a case that George Floyd’s drug use was somehow responsible is just deplorable.”Thompson added, “It was a clear act of desperation to create doubt where there is none.”“Exactly,” McKinnon said, “and there’s no way the jury’s going to fall for that.”Once again, Thompson and Nwodim did not share in this certainty.Moffat asked them, “What are you guys trying to say?”Thompson answered, “Look, y’all seem like good people.”Nwodim added, “Let’s just say we’ve seen this movie before.”McKinnon tried to offer encouragement. “I think skepticism of the legal process is valid,” she said. “Historically, police have gotten away in other cases like this.”Thompson asked Nwodim, “Historically?” Nwodim answered, “She means every single time.”Moffat tried more emphatically to elicit some optimism. “You guys can at least admit this country has made a lot of progress recently,” he said.“For who?” Thompson asked.“When?” Nwodim asked.There was agreement from the white co-hosts when Nwodim said, “There’s a glaring discrepancy in the way Black people are treated by police.” And again when Thompson said, “We need concrete solutions to fix these problems.”But Moffat balked when Nwodim added, “And we start with reparations.”“I thought I had him,” she said to Thompson.As their program moved onto other news, McKinnon said, “Unfortunately, we lost royalty yesterday.”“Yes,” Nwodim said. “The rapper DMX died.”Correcting her, McKinnon said, “The Prince.”Nwodim replied, “Girl, Prince been dead.”Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the scandals surrounding Representative Matt Gaetz and on the opposition to Georgia’s new voting law.Jost began:Well, our favorite Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz is back in the news. But this time it’s good. I’m kidding — it’s still the sex stuff. Matt Gaetz, who looks like all the dudes from “American Pie” combined, reportedly sent $900 on Venmo to an alleged sex trafficker, who then forwarded that same exact amount to three young women in payments labeled “Tuition” and “School.” Which, if true, would make him the only congressman actually helping with student loans. But at least Gaetz is taking the allegations seriously. That’s why yesterday he at spoke at the Women For America First summit. Which is a nice change to see women pay for an hour with Matt Gaetz. My favorite moment was when Gaetz pointed out how much support he’s getting from other politicians. [He played video of Gaetz saying, “This past week has been full of encouragement, from President Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan.”] Oh, no. Oh, no. Did he say those were good character references? Who was next on his list, the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein?Che continued:Senator Mitch McConnell, seen here watching a child get into a stranger’s van, denounced corporations opposing Georgia’s new voting law, saying that they should “stay out of politics” Coincidentally, “stay out of politics” is also Georgia’s new rule for Black people.Weekend Update Deskside Bit of the WeekThough it understandably did not lack for attention when it was first announced, the Spotify podcast “Renegades: Born in the USA,” which offers discussions between former President Obama and Bruce Springsteen, left some of its listeners cold.Still, in this “Weekend Update” segment, the hosts tried to make the case that they were perfectly adept at this off-the-cuff medium. Beck Bennett played an upbeat if somewhat mumbly Springsteen and Chris Redd played Obama, who is certain that he is an excellent conversationalist, holding forth on mundane topics like his discovering a box of strawberries on the sidewalk.A perplexed Che told them, “For such interesting people, it kind of sounded like just two guys talking.” Bennett replied to him, “That’s a podcast.” More

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      Chloé Zhao Becomes Second Woman to Win Top Directors Guild Award

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      The “Nomadland” filmmaker is the first woman of color to take the feature-film directing prize. She’s now the prohibitive front-runner for the Oscar.The Directors Guild of America made history Saturday night, giving the group’s top prize for feature-film directing to Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), the first woman of color to receive the award and only the second woman ever to win in the category, after Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”).Zhao was considered the heavy favorite after a dominant awards-season run for her film that has also included top honors at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and Producers Guild Awards, and she will now enter Oscar night as the prohibitive front-runner, since the DGA winner has won the best-director Oscar 13 of the last 15 times.A best-picture victory for “Nomadland” appears increasingly likely, too: Few films have gone on to take Oscar’s top prize without first winning at the DGA or PGA. Still, one of those curveballs came just last year, when “Parasite” won best picture without either of those trophies but after netting a high-profile win at the Screen Actors Guild.That may provide a path forward for “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which also pulled off a SAG victory last week. But though that film’s director, Aaron Sorkin, was nominated alongside Zhao for the DGA Award, he was snubbed for a directing nomination at the Oscars.In her acceptance speech, Zhao offered fulsome praise for Sorkin — “I can feel my heart beating with yours when I watch your film,” she said — as well as for the other nominees, Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”), Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), and David Fincher (“Mank”).And though he didn’t win, Fincher may have gotten the line of the night when he was asked to sum up his career: “Directing,” Fincher said, “is a bit like trying to paint a watercolor from four blocks away through a telescope, over a walkie-talkie, and 85 people are holding the brush.”In other news at the virtual ceremony, the award for first-time feature-film directing went to Darius Marder for “Sound of Metal,” while the documentary prize went to Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw for “The Truffle Hunters,” which was snubbed by Oscar.Here is the full list of winners:Feature: Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland”First-Time Feature: Darius Marder, “Sound of Metal”Documentary: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, “The Truffle Hunters”Television Movies and Limited Series: Scott Frank, “The Queen’s Gambit”Dramatic Series: Lesli Linka Glatter, “Homeland”Comedy Series: Susanna Fogel, “The Flight Attendant”Variety/Talk/News/Sports (Regularly Scheduled): Don Roy King, “Saturday Night Live”Variety/Talk/News/Sports (Specials): Thomas Schlamme, “A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote”Reality Programs: Joseph Guidry, “Full Bloom”Commercials: Melina Matsoukas, “You Love Me” for Beats by Dr. DreChildren’s Programs: Amy Schatz, “We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical Fest” More

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      James Hampton, Bumbling ‘F Troop’ Bugler, Dies at 84

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      A character actor, he was best known for comedic roles but also appeared in “The China Syndrome” and other dramas.James Hampton, a character actor who achieved a measure of sitcom immortality with one of his earliest roles, the inept bugler Hannibal Dobbs in the 1960s series “F Troop,” died on Wednesday at his home in Trophy Club, Texas. He was 84.Linda McAlister, his agent, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Hampton had a genial countenance well suited to comedic roles characterized by bumbling or gullibility. He had appeared in a handful of television shows, “Death Valley” and “Dr. Kildare” among them, when the director of a “Gunsmoke” episode he was in brought him to the attention of a Warner Bros. casting director. That led to the role on “F Troop,” a spunky ABC comedy about a military outpost, Fort Courage, in the 1860s.The show starred Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Melody Patterson and Ken Berry, but Mr. Hampton made an indelible impression in his secondary role as a bugler whose playing bore only a passing resemblance to music. (In the show’s opening montage, an arrow makes a direct hit into the bell end of his horn as he’s playing.) The show ran for only two seasons, but its over-the-top humor in an era of milder comedies like “The Andy Griffith Show” endeared it to a certain segment of viewers.Mr. Hampton was well known to a later generation from the 1985 movie “Teen Wolf,” in which he portrayed the father of the title character, a werewolf played by the emerging star Michael J. Fox. He was also in its sequel, “Teen Wolf Too,” which starred Jason Bateman, in 1987.Mr. Hampton played more serious roles as well, including the power company public relations man who is showing Jane Fonda’s character around a nuclear power plant when disaster strikes in “The China Syndrome” (1979).He occasionally directed, including episodes of the 1990s series “Hearts Afire,” whose cast included Billy Bob Thornton. When Mr. Thornton wrote his acclaimed film “Sling Blade” (1996), he made sure that there was a role in it for Mr. Hampton, as a hospital administrator.Burt Reynolds was another important influence in his career. They met while working together on “Gunsmoke” when Mr. Reynolds was a regular cast member. The two appeared in the 1974 football movie “The Longest Yard,” and Mr. Hampton both wrote and directed episodes of Mr. Reynolds’s 1990s series, “Evening Shade.”James Wade Hampton was born on July 9, 1936, in Oklahoma City. His father, Ivan, owned a dry cleaning business, and his mother, Edna (Gately) Hampton, worked at a millinery.He grew up in Dallas and was a speech and drama major at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas). He was drafted in the Army in 1959 and served in Europe. Returning to Texas in the early 1960s, he worked in regional theater before moving to New York in 1962.Mr. Hampton in 2012. He continued to act occasionally even after semi-retiring in 2002.Barry Brecheisen/WireImageMr. Hampton worked steadily for the next four decades and landed occasional roles even after semi-retiring and settling back in Texas in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Mary Deese Hampton, whom he married in 2002; two sons, James and Frank; a daughter, Andrea Hampton Doyle; and three grandchildren.After “F Troop,” Mr. Hampton returned to slapstick-in-uniform in the 1976 movie “Hawmps!” He played a mid-19th-century lieutenant tasked with overseeing an experiment in Texas that involved using camels in the cavalry. Mr. Hampton was a favorite of Johnny Carson in that period and was a frequent guest on his “Tonight Show,” including on the night of the Hollywood premiere of “Hawmps!”As Mr. Hampton told the story to The Community Common of Portsmouth, Ohio, in 2007, he was Mr. Carson’s first guest so that he could leave early to get to the premiere. He happened to mention to Mr. Carson that his mother was in the studio audience. Mr. Carson brought up the house lights and congratulated her on her son’s big night.His mother responded by saying: “You just go ahead to the premiere, James. I’m going to stay and watch the rest of Johnny.” More

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      Paul Ritter, British Stage, Film and TV Actor, Dies at 54

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      A familiar face to British theatergoers, he was also well known for his role as an eccentric father on the popular sitcom “Friday Night Dinner.”Paul Ritter, a versatile British actor who appeared in “Harry Potter” and James Bond movies and played a key figure behind the nuclear disaster that was the subject of the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” died on Monday at his home in Kent, England. He was 54.His agency, Markham, Froggatt & Irwin, announced the death. He had been treated for a brain tumor.Mr. Ritter was a familiar face to British theatergoers and well known for his role as Martin Goodman, the eccentric father of a London Jewish family, on the popular sitcom “Friday Night Dinner,” seen on Channel 4 since 2011.He played the ill-fated nuclear engineer Anatoly Dyatlov on the award-winning HBO drama “Chernobyl” (2019), the wizard Eldred Worple in “Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince” (2009) and a devious political operative in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace” (2008).He was also frequently seen in productions at Britain’s National Theater, including “All My Sons,” “Coram Boy” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” in which his performance as the father of a socially challenged teenager was praised as “superb” by Matt Wolf in The New York Times.He appeared in “Art” at the Old Vic in London and as Prime Minister John Major, opposite Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, in a West End production of “The Audience.”Mr. Ritter was nominated for a Tony Award in 2009 for his performance in Alan Ayckbourn’s farce “The Norman Conquests.”He was born in 1966 in Kent. He is survived by his wife, Polly, and two sons, Frank and Noah. More

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      Matt Gaetz Is ‘Almost Too Florida,’ Says Stephen Colbert

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      Allegations of “Bahamas sex trafficking with a weed-peddling hand surgeon” make the congressman a nearly too-perfect representative of his state, Colbert 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Representing FloridaThe late-night hosts had plenty to say on Thursday about the accusations against Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, as investigators examine a trip he took to the Bahamas with Jason Pirozzolo, a marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon.“Yes, marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon, which means he can cure your carpal tunnel and turn your thumb into a bong,” Stephen Colbert joked on Thursday’s “Late Show.”“By the way, if your hand surgeon is also a marijuana entrepreneur, probably a good idea to learn to write with your feet.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I know Gaetz is from Florida, but ‘Bahamas sex trafficking with weed-peddling hand surgeon’ is almost too Florida, even for him.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So good luck, Matt Gaetz. Maybe he just loves Trump so much he wants to go to jail with him, is that possible?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Gaetz is going to get screwed — and as usual, he’s going to have to pay for it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now might be a fun time to remind people of this tweet Matt Gaetz posted just before Michael Cohen testified in Congress about his former boss, Donald Trump: ‘Hey @michaelcohen212 do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful while you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot.’ Oh, karma, you old rascal, you.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pence’s Book Deal Edition)“The former vice poodle is putting Pence to paper. He signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster — I wonder if he knows they’re a gay couple.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“How does Mike Pence have enough material to write two books? I feel like I can summarize his entire life in two sentences. One, he was vice president. Two, a fly landed on his head.” — JAMES CORDEN“The first book is a pretty straightforward memoir, but I was surprised by the second one. It’s actually a steamy romance novel, called ‘Presidential Vices.’” — JAMES CORDEN“Of course the book will be written by a ghostwriter, Mike Pence.” — JIMMY FALLON“This will be the only time pages got whiter after words were printed on them.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But the book is a little different, though. There’s a blank white page in the middle with the caption ‘selfie.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, Pence is currently considering a lot of titles for his memoir. First there’s ‘Fifty Shades of White.’ There’s also ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Next there’s ‘Tuesdays with Moron.’ And finally, ‘Are you There, Mother? It’s Me, Your Husband.” — JIMMY FALLON“Pence’s publisher calls this ‘the definitive book on one of the most consequential presidencies in American history.’ Oh, it was consequential, all right.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The book will cover not just Pence’s time in the White House but his whole life, including traumatic family events like the time he saw Mother without her bonnet. He even opens up about the time in college he experimented with almond milk.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’m sure there will be a lot of talk about religion, his hopes and dreams, and then maybe a chapter about how his boss tried to murder him.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingGlenn Close talked about spending her pandemic in Montana on Thursday night’s “Desus & Mero.”Also, Check This OutFrom left, Deborah Ayorinde, Melody Hurd, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Ashley Thomas in “Them,” a new horror series from Amazon. The malevolent force at work here is racism.Amazon StudiosA Black family is faced with the terror of American racism in Amazon’s new 10-part horror series “Them.” More

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      Review: ‘The Nevers,’ From HBO and (Formerly) Joss Whedon

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      An allegorical alt-superhero series about gifted women in Victorian London makes it to the screen, but without its currently embattled creator.One of the puzzlements of “The Nevers,” the new alt-superhero show beginning Sunday on HBO, is the title. The peculiarly gifted late-Victorian Londoners, mostly women, who serve as the show’s heroes (and some of its villains) are never called “nevers”; they’re most often referred to as the Touched. In the first four of the series’s 12 episodes, nothing is called the Nevers. You can understand not calling a show “The Touched,” but it’s still a little confusing.And the confusion doesn’t end there. “The Nevers,” while handsomely produced and, from moment to moment, reasonably diverting, doesn’t catch fire in those early episodes in part because we — along with the characters — are still trying to figure out what the heck is going on.Before this goes any further, it’s time to mention that “The Nevers” — a rare case these days of a genre series not based on an existing property — was created for the screen by Joss Whedon. There are things to be explained about Whedon’s involvement with the show, but for now let’s stick to the synergism between the new series and his great creation, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”In “Buffy” Whedon worked out one of the best and most sustained metaphors American pop culture has seen: California teenage life as a constant battle against demons, aided by the small band of friends who really get you. In “The Nevers” he tries something similar but in period costume, giving X-Men-like powers to women and other devalued members of Victorian society so that they can actually raise their voices against — and physically confront — the male, colonialist, capitalist hegemony.It sounds good in theory, as if it might have “Buffy”-like potential, with the added enjoyment of a gloss on sources like “Frankenstein,” “Dracula” and “Alice in Wonderland” — a league of extraordinary Victorian women.But in practice it doesn’t take off. It may be that Whedon and his collaborators, including the “Buffy” writer and producer Jane Espenson, just didn’t have the same feel for turn-of-the-20th-century London as they did for contemporary suburban California — there’s a slightly stilted and synthetic quality to “The Nevers,” despite (or maybe reinforced by) the occasional anachronistically modern dialogue. The humor feels arch, and the action, which combines 21st-century fluidity with a rollicking period style, is mostly flat.But there’s also a problem with the overall conception. The allegory in “Buffy” felt universally human and, despite its 1990s suburban specificity, timeless; the framework of “The Nevers” feels narrower, a more self-conscious attempt to tweak a historical situation to make it relevant to the current social and political moment, with suggestions of human trafficking and medical experimentation and a literal, highly graphic depiction of the silencing of women’s voices. (The series was announced in the summer of 2018, about nine months after the first major #MeToo revelations.)And that need for the show to resonate with our present priorities ties into the frustrating vagueness, so far, of the storytelling. The main action of “The Nevers” takes place three years after an “event” whose details won’t be spoiled here. The event led to the disparate abilities, referred to as “turns,” that some Londoners now possess, from typical mutant stuff like seeing the future and physical strength to more unusual afflictions like speaking only in non-English languages or an “Alice in Wonderland”-like propensity to grow in height.Ann Skelly in “The Nevers.” The characters’ abilities originated with an event of mysterious origin and significance.Keith Bernstein/HBOBut it seems — and here it gets unclear — that either everyone has forgotten what the event was, or they have for some reason chosen not to talk about it. You can see a practical reason for this: It tilts the show away from science fiction and puts the emphasis on a mix of fantasy, mystery and period crime drama. Another, less charitable, observation is that it allowed Whedon to indulge in big-conspiracy plotting and delayed narrative gratification in ways that are, so far, more irritating than intriguing.None of this might matter if there were characters that we really cared about and performances that drew us in, but “The Nevers” is also lacking in those departments. The main characters — the action-oriented, prescient Amalia (Laura Donnelly) and the gadget-maker Penance (Ann Skelly), who lead a community of the Touched — are thinly drawn and at best moderately engaging. There are performers around the edges who generate more interest, including Ben Chaplin as a sympathetic policeman, Pip Torrens as an antagonistic aristocrat and Eleanor Tomlinson as a Touched woman gifted with a supernatural singing ability.In considering the future course of “The Nevers,” of course, it’s necessary to point out that Whedon is no longer involved with the show — he left it late last year, coincidentally or not following a round of public accusations of tyrannical and misogynistic behavior on the sets of previous projects. HBO is releasing the series in two blocks of six episodes each, and recent promotional materials have specified that Whedon’s name is attached only to the first block. (Philippa Goslett is now the showrunner; Whedon directed three of the first six episodes and wrote the pilot.)So to a far greater extent than usual, the progress of “The Nevers” through its first season is anyone’s guess, though Amalia probably knows how it all turns out. More