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      If A.I. Is Coming for Comedy Writers, Simon Rich Is Ready

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      The author of humorous short stories finds emotional connections in tales that engage with tech. But he’s more interested in the ties between humans.The author Simon Rich believes it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence will be able to outwrite any human. Specifically, four years. So, what’s the twist?That’s what you wait for in a Simon Rich story, one of pop culture’s most consistently funny genres, with a foundation built like a classic joke: a tight premise developed in clear language, some misdirection, and then a pivot, delivered as quickly as possible.Rich, whose 10th collection of short stories, “Glory Days,” was released this week, said his dark view of the future was informed by a longtime friendship with an A.I. scientist, who recently showed him a chatbot the public hasn’t seen. It’s more raw, unpredictable, creative.“Even though I don’t know anything about A.I. really, I’ve been processing it emotionally for several years longer than everyone,” he told me in his Los Angeles home office one afternoon in May.He considered the implications of artificial intelligence displacing human creativity in “I Am Code,” a book he helped edit last year that featured A.I.-crafted poetry. The theme is also deeply woven into his new collection, his most mature effort yet, which includes some regular obsessions like “Back to the Future”-style encounters between generations, dystopia and the inner life of video game characters.“The whole book is basically about different types of obsolescence,” he said of “Glory Days,” whose other organizing theme is early midlife crisis. There’s a story about Super Mario turning 40 (Rich just did, too) and a spiky rant from the perspective of New York City itself. It’s about “the great migration when an entire generation discovers they are too old to live in New York,” he said.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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      Late Night Breaks Down ‘Kamala Is Brat’

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      The Harris campaign’s embrace of the Gen Z term puzzled cable news analysts of a certain age, but Stephen Colbert was glad to clear things up.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.New BratitudeSocial media has been ablaze with Kamala Harris memes since her candidacy for president was announced. The pop star Charli XCX proclaimed that “Kamala is brat,” and the Harris campaign embraced the label, leading to some puzzlement on cable news channels.“If you’re a little confused about this brat thing, you’re not as confused as CNN,” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday, cutting to a clip of Jake Tapper, Kaitlan Collins and other panelists earnestly discussing the Gen Z concept.“Because nothing says ‘I am hep to what’s hip’ like printing out a meme and putting on your reading glasses.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“All of their kids are watching like, ‘If you want to know what the definition of cringe is, this is it.’” — JIMMY FALLONColbert triumphantly pointed to an article declaring that he, himself, is brat. “It is my certified bratitude that empowers me to do this,” he said, launching into a TikTok dance routine to Charli XCX’s “Apple” as his audience cheered him on.“Your move, Tapper.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Tyler Perry Edition)“That’s right, Kamala raised $81 million in 24 hours. She would have raised even more, but Melania hit her daily withdrawal limit.” — JIMMY FALLON“Now there’s only one other Black woman who’s made that much money in a weekend, and that woman’s name is Tyler Perry.” — LAMORNE MORRIS, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“She became the presumptive nominee in 48 hours. To put that in perspective, it’s been more than three years, and we still don’t have a new James Bond. By the way, Joe is available.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, Kamala is a hit, and I think I know why — she’s way younger than Trump and wears less eyeliner than JD Vance.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Nigerian singer-songwriter Ayra Starr performed a medley of two tracks from her new album, “The Year I Turned 21,” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightRyan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, the stars of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” will co-guest-host “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This Out“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” has been woefully neglected. Maybe it was the culottes?Cate Cameron/LionsgateThe overlooked 2021 comedy from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” deserves a second chance this summer. More

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      Reality Show Contestant Apologizes After Eating Protected Bird in New Zealand

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      A contestant on the reality show “Race to Survive: New Zealand” killed and ate a weka during filming. The contestant, who said he was hungry, has apologized for “disrespecting New Zealand.”Hunger was part of the challenge for contestants on the reality television show “Race to Survive: New Zealand.” As nine teams trekked, climbed and paddled their way through some of the country’s harshest terrain, they also had to forage and hunt for their own food.New Zealand officials have now issued warnings to the show’s producers, they said, after one contestant killed and ate a bird from a protected species during filming last October.The weka, a flightless bird known for its bold curiosity, is endemic to New Zealand and is considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which evaluates threatened species. They often roam around campsites and picnic areas and will sometimes steal crops, food and other small objects.The show, which began airing its second season on USA Network in May, follows nine pairs of adventurers, survivalists and athletes as they navigate around New Zealand’s South Island to compete for a $500,000 prize.The teams are allowed to bring only what they can carry, and the slowest to reach each camp is eliminated. They are not given food but can take detours to find food caches left for them on the island.Two contestants, Spencer Jones and Oliver Dev, were disqualified in the eighth episode. Producers appeared after they completed a leg and said that they broke a rule.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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      ‘Veep’ Comparisons Dominate Social Media as Biden Endorses Kamala Harris

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      After news broke that President Biden would endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, the internet was rife with clips and memes from the show.Kamala Harris hits the campaign trail after President Biden exits. Follow live updates.“Veep,” HBO’s merciless satire of Washington politics, went out with a gleeful whimper in 2019, a casualty of the Trump presidency.“We felt we couldn’t keep up with that,” Frank Rich, an executive producer of the series, said on Monday.Maybe they could — the final months of the Biden presidency seem to have revived interest in “Veep.” When news broke on Sunday that President Biden would not seek re-election and would instead endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, the politics-obsessed who were searching for a pop-culture allegory found an obvious one in the show. The internet was suddenly rife with “Veep” clips, GIFs and fancams. Max played along, featuring the show prominently on its homepage. On social media platforms, it dominated the discourse, with comments in Russian, Portuguese, French, Italian and Dutch.“Was the HBO show ‘Veep’ just a documentary filmed in the past about the future?” one post read. “Now we know what HBO’s ‘Veep’ writers were doing during the strike,” read another.This barbed spike in cultural relevance is owed mostly to the Season 2 finale, in which the show’s venal vice president, Selina Meyer (an exuberant, oblivious Julia Louis-Dreyfus), learned that the president would not seek re-election. “I’m not leaving — POTUS is leaving,” she tells her staff in one widely circulated clip. “I’m going to run. I’m going to run for president.”“Veep” ran on HBO from 2012 to 2019. Nominated for 68 Emmys, it won 17, including three awards for outstanding comedy series and six consecutive best-actress awards for Ms. Louis-Dreyfus. When Ms. Louis-Dreyfus accepted her award in 2016, she used her speech to apologize for the current political climate.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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      ‘Time Bandits’ Review: A Flatter Adventure

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      An adaptation of the 1981 film on Apple TV+ gives us time-traveling bandits of greater height and lesser amusement.When the bandits of the title burst into the bedroom of Kevin, an 11-year-old history buff, in the new Apple TV+ series “Time Bandits,” among the first things you are likely to notice is: no dwarfs.The show’s source, Terry Gilliam’s 1981 movie of the same title, was all about the dwarfs. There were six of them, who pilfered a map that identifies time portals and used it to try to steal whatever historical loot they could get their hands on. Along the way, they picked up Kevin, who came to serve as both the brains and the conscience of the operation.The bandits in Jemaine Clement, Iain Morris and Taika Waititi’s “Time Bandits,” which premieres on Wednesday with two of its 10 episodes, are a fully heighted bunch; their more-or-less leader, Penelope, is played by Lisa Kudrow, who towered over her female co-stars on “Friends.”Changing things up after 43 years is unremarkable, and perhaps the film’s less than nuanced presentation of the dwarf characters as a rollicking, bickering, slapstick bunch marked by physical abandon and short tempers gave the TV show’s creators pause. (On the other hand, the change in those central roles has been criticized as anti-inclusive by advocates for little people, including descendants of the actors who played the original bandits.)Among the next things you notice about this new “Time Bandits,” though, is that nothing has replaced the energy that Jack Purvis, Kenny Baker and the other actors with dwarfism brought to the film. And while Clement, Morris and Waititi share some of the anarchic sensibility of Gilliam and his co-writer, Michael Palin, they present it here in a domesticated, flattened-out form.As it follows the peripatetic adventures of the bandits — from visits to the Maya empire and plague-ravaged medieval Europe to battles with dinosaurs and demons to confrontations with Pure Evil and the Supreme Being, the Mutt-and-Jeff deities of the “Time Bandits” universe — the show is unfailingly clever, visually interesting and at least mildly amusing. It is wan, though, compared to other series that Clement, Morris and Waititi have collaborated on, like “Flight of the Conchords” and the riotous “What We Do in the Shadows.”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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      Stephen Colbert Retires His Joe Biden Sunglasses

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      The “Late Show” host is putting his aviators on a shelf, now that the president has ended his re-election campaign.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.Biden’s Retirement PartyPresident Biden bowed out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.“It’s shocking, but this makes sense,” Stephen Colbert said. “It’ll give him time to rest up for 2028.”“He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic, he saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated, he brought the economy back, he rallied our allies, he reasserted America’s place in the world stage, and most inspiring of all, at no time was he Donald Trump.” — STEPHEN COLBERTColbert officially retired his Joe Biden aviator sunglasses on Monday, saying they had done “the hardest job of all:They made it seem like I had a Joe Biden impression.”“But I do not have a Kamala Harris impression, so she’s wearing aviators, too.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I am officially retiring all of my ‘Joe Biden is old’ jokes, OK? They were starting to get tired anyway. Just like Joe Biden. That was the last one! I swear. Now I’m going to unretire them to use on Donald Trump.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bye Bye, Biden Edition)“Typically, on Sundays, everyone thinks about quitting their job, but Biden is the first person to actually go through with it.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, it was one of the rare times every cable news graphic said ‘Breaking news’ and it was breaking news.” — JIMMY FALLON“Well, he didn’t, like, drop out so much as he kind of just, like, wandered off, you know what I’m saying?” — LAMORNE MORRIS, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“Biden is now getting credit for guiding us through the pandemic, creating millions of jobs, rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and eliminating billions in student loans. Democrats heard that and were like, ‘Hey, this guy should run for president!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Following the big news, Biden supporters gathered around the White House to thank him for dropping out of the race. Biden’s not quite sure how to feel, you know? I mean, ‘thanks for leaving’ is not really a compliment, you know?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Kimmel’s guest host, Lamorne Morris, offered a few helpful tips for being “Caucasian at the Cookout.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightHugh Jackman, star of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJames Earl Jones, left, and Andre Braugher in “Homicide: Life on the Street.” The series begins streaming on Peacock on Aug. 19.Michael Ginsburg/NBC, via Getty ImagesAll seven seasons of the acclaimed 1990s police procedural “Homicide: Life on the Street” will finally be available for streaming next month. More

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      ‘Two American Families’ Is a Knockout Documentary

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      This latest installment in a long-term Frontline series is an intimate look at two American families, who work hard but struggle to make ends meet.The Frontline documentary “Two American Families: 1991-2024,” arriving on Tuesday, follows two Milwaukee families, one Black, one white, over the last 30-odd years. “Families” is intimate and dignified, unwavering but gentle. At a time when so much documentary television feels generic, disposable and even straightforwardly pointless, this is both a master work unto itself and a glaring reminder of what is largely absent in television narrative nonfiction.“Families” is the fifth installment in the tales of the Stanley and Neumann families, a long-term portrait series produced and directed by Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes, with interviews and narration by Bill Moyers. The specials began with “Minimum Wages: The New Economy” in 1992, after the breadwinners of each family were laid off from union manufacturing jobs. (This newest entry covers the full timeline and does not require previous familiarity.) Since then, neither family has ever truly recovered, despite ceaseless — ceaseless — hard work, as the parents, and eventually their children, all struggle to find their way into the middle class.Faith is a huge theme here, with each family turning to religious practice as a respite from suffering and as reservoir of hope. In one scene, the white family, the Neumanns, stand on the altar as their priest thanks God for providing the dad with an $8-per-hour nonunion job with no benefits. Even that job doesn’t last. Prayers and preaching weave through the decades, gratitude for the riches ostensibly to come.“Families” intercuts moments of everyday strain with Inaugural Addresses going back to Bill Clinton, in which each president promises jobs, jobs and more jobs, and each declares the American economy to be growing and glorious. And yet. “Despite all the hard work, these two American families had barely survived one of the most prosperous decades in our history,” Moyers narrates. And that’s barely at the halfway point in the story.The latest installment is available Tuesday on the PBS app and website and airs on PBS that night at 10 p.m. (Check local listings.)SIDE QUEST“Two American Families” reminds me a lot of the 1998 series “The Farmer’s Wife,” also a Frontline documentary. That’s available on the PBS Documentaries app, and it’s one of the most memorable and powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen. More

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      ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ Will Finally Be Available to Stream

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      The celebrated 1990s police procedural is coming to Peacock in August.The critically acclaimed 1990s police procedural “Homicide: Life on the Street” will soon be available to stream in its entirety.All seven seasons of the crime drama, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 1999, as well as the 2000 film “Homicide: The Movie,” which served as the series finale, will arrive on Peacock on Aug. 19. The show has been syndicated over the years and has been released on DVD, but its absence from streaming services — thanks largely to the challenge of securing music rights, a frequent sticking point in streaming deals — has long been lamented by fans.“Homicide” was based on a book by David Simon — then a Baltimore Sun reporter who had spent a year shadowing the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit. The series — along with “NYPD Blue,” which also premiered in 1993 — infused the cop genre with more grit and moral ambiguity, setting the stage for hard-edge cable dramas like “The Shield” and Simon’s own “The Wire,” one of the most celebrated series of all time.“Homicide” was created by Paul Attanasio and executive produced by Barry Levinson, among others. (Simon was a producer.) Tom Fontana, who would go on to create the prison drama “Oz,” was the showrunner. “Homicide” had a devoted core following during its run but was never a ratings darling. It stayed on the air for seven seasons, winning four Emmy Awards out of 17 nominations and three Peabody Awards. It also boasted a memorable cast that included Andre Braugher, who won an Emmy for his role as Detective Frank Pembleton; Melissa Leo; Richard Belzer; and Giancarlo Esposito.As the streaming boom resurfaced beloved titles from throughout TV history, “Homicide” regularly appeared on lists of shows fans most wanted to see come to a service. Simon previewed its arrival in a June post on X.“Word is that NBC has managed to finally secure the music rights necessary to sell ‘Homicide: Life On The Streets’ to a streaming platform,” he wrote, adding later in a reply: “I did nothing. Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and [the producer] Gail Mutrux undertook the lobbying effort.” More