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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Claim to Fame’

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      Jenn Tran hands out roses on ABC. Kevin and Franklin Jonas host a show with the relatives of stars.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, July 8-14. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELORETTE 8 p.m. on ABC. Though “Bachelor in Paradise” is noticeably missing from ABC’s roster this year, there is still plenty of the franchise to go around this summer. First up is the 21st season of the “Bachelorette,” with Jenn Tran being the show’s first Asian lead. Despite the show’s attempt at diversity, Tran noted in a recent interview with Glamour that she was disappointed by the lack of Asian men cast as potential suitors. Only time will tell to whom Tran gives her final rose and if she leaves the show engaged. Later this summer, viewers can watch the first season of “The Golden Bachelorette.”TuesdayCELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD 9 p.m. on ABC. To begin the 10th season of this game show hosted by Steve Harvey, Megan Thee Stallion and Ne-Yo face off in the first round. Then N.F.L. players compete against Olympians in the second round.A still from “Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order.”Sarah Koury/DisneySASHA REID AND THE MIDNIGHT ORDER 10 p.m. on Freeform. Sasha Reid, a developmental psychologist with an interest in true crime, has worked to create a database of missing people in Canada. Now, in this documentary series, she teams up with a group of women from different backgrounds to help solve cold cases.WednesdayCLAIM TO FAME 9 p.m. on ABC. Kevin and Franklin Jonas are back to host this show, now with a new roster of 11 contestants who all have familial ties to someone famous. The past two seasons were won by Jason Aldean’s cousin Logan Crosby and Nick Cannon’s brother Gabriel Ezra Cannon. The show mixes elements of other competition shows, like “Traitors” or “Big Brother,” in which social alliances are important. And similar to “Love Island” or “Survivor,” there’s immunity and information for the winners.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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      ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Fire in the Sky

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      This week brings all-out warfare and the death of a key character.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘A Dance of Dragons’From its sobriquet on down, George R.R. Martin’s World of Ice and Fire is largely a bipolar one. Blacks fight Greens. Starks fight Lannisters. And in the prophetic Song of Ice and Fire itself, death wars against life.The dragons flown by the Targaryen dynasty are an exception to this rule. In the source novels, various maesters and royals speculate that dragons are neither male nor female, capable of switching sexes as needed. True, they are the fire that helps turn back the ice of the Night King and his undead minions in “Game of Thrones,” and the most magnificent and awe-inspiring living creatures in the Westerosi bestiary. But they are also death incarnate, capable of inflicting carnage amid soldiers and civilians alike at an industrial scale.And if need be, they can be called upon to kill one another, in battles as brutal as they are beautiful. There is a reason scholars within Martin’s fictional universe refer to the Targaryen civil war as the Dance of the Dragons: The conflict is as rapturous to behold as it is repugnant, often in the same scene.This episode’s three-way battle between Princess Rhaenys and her red dragon Meleys, King Aegon II and his gloriously golden Sunfyre, and Prince Aemond One-Eye and the colossal beast Vhagar is a case study in the dragons’ duality. The script, by the co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal, contains a lengthy lead-up to the climactic Battle at Rook’s Rest — a trap set by the Hand of the King, Ser Criston Cole, and his primary ally, Prince Aemond, to lure Black dragons and their riders to their doom — featuring glory shots of Meleys and Sunfyre on their way to war. The director, Alan Taylor, a signature talent on “Game of Thrones,” makes it clear what kind of splendor the world will lose if these animals should die.He also makes it clear what kind of horrors the world will see if they live. Rook’s Rest is a nightmare of burning men, crushed men, men fleeing for their lives from what are effectively flying nuclear dinosaurs. The riders try their best, for the most part, but neither dragon fire nor dragon feet are particular about who they snuff out.Indeed, the episode’s most shocking moment comes when Aemond, who delayed his own assault when his detested brother Aegon crashed the battle uninvited so as not to appear weak, turns Vhagar against not only their enemy Rhaenys, but Aegon too. Only the timely intervention of Ser Criston prevents Aemond from striding across the broken body of Sunfyre and putting his fallen, burned brother out of his misery at the battle’s end.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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      Jane Lynch Loves Being the ‘Weakest Link’ Host and Not a Contestant

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      The former “Glee” star turned a childhood fascination with game shows into a TV gig. “I could do it forever,” she says.Growing up, Jane Lynch used to pretend to be sick so she could stay home from school and watch game shows like “Tattletales,” “Password” and her favorite, “Match Game.”As an adult, she had the good luck of her guilty pleasure became something of a vocation. For seven years, she was the host of NBC’s “Hollywood Game Night.” And since 2020, she has hosted “Weakest Link,” a remake of the British series overseen, terrifyingly, by Anne Robinson. Season 3 is now streaming on Peacock.“I love the game, I love trivia, I love that I’m not playing it,” said Lynch, who instilled her own brand of fear as the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester in “Glee.”“I could do it forever,” she added in a video interview from Manhattan, where she was filming Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” before talking about the neighborhood rambles, cultural outings and do-it-yourself projects by which she and her spouse, Jennifer Cheyne, try to live magnificently in Montecito, Calif.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Long Walks Close to HomeOne of the things that Jennifer and I said when we moved here is we want to be close to Coast Village Road, which is the main drag. It has all the restaurants and cute little shops. I walk up and down the neighborhood streets, and then I stop for a cup of coffee, and then I continue walking and I’m at the ocean, and then I just walk back.2About That CoffeeThe Montesano Market & Deli has really good, strong Italian coffee. I know all the regulars that come there. It’s a wonderful thing to go where everyone knows your name and you know theirs.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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      ‘Prosper’ Is a Juicy Megachurch Drama

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      This Australian series has enough tawdry scandals to qualify as a soap and enough Shakespearean power lust to qualify as a fancy drama.Richard Roxburgh stars as a megachurch leader in “Prosper.”StanThe Australian drama “Prosper,” on the Roku channel, follows the Quinn family and their megachurch franchise. Dad Cal (Richard Roxburgh) is the slick, energetic leader, the kind of pastor who does not turn the other cheek but instead punches the guy right back, harder. Mom Abi (Rebecca Gibney) is the tough power player, willing though not always happy to cover up her family’s transgressions — a task that takes up nearly all of her time.The eldest son, Dion (Ewen Leslie), might be too milquetoast to take over. “If you want to inherit the earth, Dion, you’re going to have to be a little less meek,” says one attaché. Dion’s wife, Taz (Ming-Zhu Hii), is more than happy to push him, though. God helps those who help their spouses, right? Issy (Hayley McCarthy) is the pop singer with a showbiz-Jesus husband (Jordi Webber) who would love his own chance to preach, while Jed (Jacob Collins-Levy) is the prodigal son who ditched the megachurch in favor of a soup kitchen but now finds himself sucked back into the fold. And the baby of the family, the adopted, teenage Moses (Alexander D’Souza), is trying to contact his birth parents amid a self-destructive spiral.“Nobody does church like us,” Cal brags. One hopes! His plan to plant a church in Los Angeles sends his children scrambling for top position, trying to prove both their spiritual and commercial mettle. They compete to baptize a famous young D.J. the way the “Succession” kids tried to close deals. Jesus is lord, but cash is king, and those sprawling buildings, rock-concert stages, private helicopters and image consultants don’t pay for themselves.“Prosper” has enough tawdry scandals to qualify as a soap and enough Shakespearean power lust to qualify as a fancy drama. Unlike some of its more prestige-chasing brethren, “Prosper” moves; it almost feels distilled. Episodes zip along, and characters tend to announce their schemes and allegiances, and what the show lacks in nuance it makes up for in momentum. Many of its juiciest arcs are ripped from tabloid headlines, but the series avoids tinny caricature and instead finds the real light and longing in its characters, the sincerity of the search within the hypocrisy of the outcomes. More

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      3 Sharp Stand-Up Specials to Entertain You This Holiday Weekend

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      Hannah Einbinder, Raanan Hershberg and Mo Welch all take tricky approaches in their quests for laughs.Hannah Einbinder, ‘Everything Must Go’(Stream it on Max)Bathed in moody lighting beneath three grand chandeliers, the comic Hannah Einbinder performs her jokes the way models strike poses: with dramatic pauses and flirtatious flourishes, always alert to the camera. Whereas the fictional comedy writer she plays in “Hacks” feels palpably real, her stand-up persona sparkles with artifice.Einbinder tells us a lot about herself in “Everything Must Go,” her debut special (she’s bisexual, has ADHD, is an ex-cheerleader), but her larky comedy doesn’t feel confessional. It’s not primarily about setups and punchlines either. Her oddball show comes off as a spoof of Hollywood glamour and over-the-top confidence. Directed by Sandy Honig with a visual vocabulary that evokes David Lynch as much as any special, the hour moves between tight close-ups and a long shot that makes the comic look like the inhabitant of a dollhouse. You hear the audience, but don’t see it as anything other than an undifferentiated mass. Continually breaking the fourth wall, Einbinder at one point looks away from the crowd, toward the camera, and makes a face as if to say directly to us: “Can you believe what’s going on?” Her idea of a transition from one joke to another is asking: “Would you believe that reminded me of something totally unrelated?”There’s a self-indulgence in this knowing style that will alienate those looking for quick and familiar laughs. And her dramatic pauses can adopt the rigid pacing of a movie trailer. But there’s something exciting about a young performer operating at her own comic frequency. While some bits need her charisma to put them over, she has a couple of standout jokes, including one that presents humanity as a toxic husband and climate change as planet Earth “recognizing her worth and filing for a divorce.”Einbinder has a shape-shifter’s gift for voices and illustrates the climate change metaphor through the movie “My Cousin Vinny”; her impression of Marisa Tomei shows off her actorly range. Like the whole special, the humor comes from how unexpected it is. There’s nothing dark about her presentation until the end, when the curtains close and Einbinder, standing alone backstage, collapses in a heap as the credits roll.Raanan Hershberg, ‘Brave’(Stream it on YouTube)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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      Saudi Arabia Sentences Producer to 13 Years in Prison Over Netflix Show

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      In a video plea for help, Abdulaziz Almuzaini — a dual Saudi-American citizen — described how the authorities had accused him of promoting extremism through a cartoon franchise.From the outside, the past few years looked like the peak of Abdulaziz Almuzaini’s career.As the head of an animation studio in Saudi Arabia, he signed a five-year deal with Netflix in 2020. A sardonic cartoon franchise that he helped create, “Masameer,” likened to a Saudi version of “South Park,” was soon streaming to audiences around the world. And as the conservative Islamic kingdom loosened up, Mr. Almuzaini was being publicly celebrated — as recently as a few months ago — as one of the homegrown talents shaping its nascent entertainment industry.Behind the scenes, though, he was on trial in an opaque national security court, as Saudi prosecutors — who accused him of promoting extremism through the cartoon series and social media posts — sought to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life in prison or under a travel ban.Mr. Almuzaini, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen and father of three, recently described his plight in a video pleading for the Saudi leadership to intervene, saying that he was awaiting a final ruling from the kingdom’s Supreme Court.“I might bear the consequences of what happens after this, and I’m ready,” he said in the 18-minute video, which he said he was filming at his home in the Saudi capital.The video was published on his social media accounts late last month and deleted the same day. In it, Mr. Almuzaini, sporting a black beard graying around the edges, spoke in front of a wall covered with colorful sticky notes.A screen shot from a video posted on Mr. Almuzaini’s social media accounts late last month that was later deleted.via XWe 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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      Did You Find These Easter Eggs in ‘The Bear’ Season 3?

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      Subtle, and not so subtle, culinary references are sprinkled throughout the show’s third season.In its third season, “The Bear,” a television show known for its dedicated hyperrealism, did not disappoint fans looking for real-world culinary references. As Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and their team of former sandwich professionals hustled for a Michelin star or two at their newly opened fine-dining spot, Easter eggs dotted the show. We’ve compiled a short list, with help from restaurant industry professionals, of the most true-to-life nods and hidden surprises:In certain corners of Reddit, it is rumored that the entire show is loosely based on the life of the chef Curtis Duffy, an owner of Ever restaurant in Chicago. But, while the creators have dined at his restaurant, “If they were studying me, I didn’t know it,” he said.The photos of the restaurant critics posted in the Bear office are of actual people, including the New Yorker writer Naomi Fry, the “How Long Gone” podcaster Chris Black and Sue Chan, who runs the culinary events and marketing agency Care by Chan. On the show, Marcus, the pastry chef played by Lionel Boyce, makes a “caviar sundae.” A similar dish was served at the renowned, now-closed restaurant 108 in Copenhagen, a culinary hotbed to which “The Bear” has referred numerous times.In flashbacks to Carmy’s time at the French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s restaurant in the Napa Valley, a sign beneath the clock reads, “Sense of Urgency.” “That sign sits under every clock in every restaurant Thomas Keller has,” said Nick Fitch, a co-owner of Alston Hospitality Group who spent 12 years working the dining room at the French Laundry and Per Se.The Pilot G2 Gel Roller Pen, with a .07-millimeter tip that Carmy uses to furiously scribble throughout the season (and to write his list of “non-negotiables”) caught the eye of Greg Ryan, a co-owner of Bell’s in Los Alamos, Calif. who worked in the dining rooms at Per Se and the French Laundry for more than five years. “When I was an expediter, those were just the pens you had,” he said. “They work well on receipt paper, don’t smudge, have a fine tip and write super-smoothly.”Much has been made of Mr. Keller’s chicken-trussing demonstration — “If you ask him his favorite dish, he’ll say roast chicken,” said Mr. Fitch — but a photo of his handprint cast in concrete also makes an appearance in the season’s first episode. According to Mr. Fitch, the handprint was initially in the kitchen at the French Laundry but was extracted during an extensive renovation and moved outside, along with handprints from Corey Lee, a former French Laundry chef de cuisine, and Claire Clark, a former pastry chef at the restaurant.Joel McHale, who plays Chef David, said on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” that he was “portraying” Mr. Keller. “I don’t think he’s as awful as I was, but he does whisper at his employees,” Mr. McHale said. Others have speculated that the character is based on Daniel Humm, the chef at Eleven Madison Park. Will Guidara, a producer on “The Bear,” was a business partner of Mr. Humm’s until the two had a tense public split. Mr. McHale said in a GQ interview this week that “David is apparently based on Thomas Keller and Daniel Humm,” and added, “There wasn’t any material. I’ve never met them.”In Episode 2, Carmy calls a dish of sea bass topped with potato chips a “Boulud nod,” as in Daniel Boulud, the renowned chef who created crisp paupiettes of sea bass in Barolo sauce. That dish uses thinly sliced potatoes as a crust for a skinless fillet, and Mr. Boulud has in turn credited a mullet dish made by Paul Bocuse as his inspiration.The tip-versus-service-charge conversation among the Bear’s staff touches on a hot-button issue that’s playing out all over the country. Many restaurateurs, most famously Danny Meyer, have tried to create a better system, with mixed results. In California, a recently passed law seemed to make restaurant service charges illegal (as part of a bid to reduce hidden fees), but then a second bill was passed, allowing restaurants to keep those fees if they are presented clearly.In Episode 7, Chef Marcus asks Carmy about a photo of Mr. Keller with Mr. Boulud and the chef Nobu Matsuhisa as much younger men. All three went on to become world-renowned chefs. Mr. Matsuhisa has opened restaurants on five continents, and popularized the now-famous dish of miso black cod at Nobu, his restaurant in TriBeCa.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