Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘Babylon Berlin’ Review: Dancing While the World Begins to Burn

      by

      The long-awaited fourth season of the cult-favorite German thriller takes place in 1931, with the Nazis not quite in power.Far from the eyes of Emmy voters or the digital gremlins compiling streaming Top 10 lists, there is a series — a German period drama, of all things — that a small core of aficionados would argue is the world’s best television show.Some of their fondness may have to do with absence. It has been more than four years since a new season of “Babylon Berlin” became available in the United States. And the first three seasons, which resided formerly on Netflix, moved this year to MHz Choice, a boutique streamer of international series and films whose (unreported) subscription figures would probably constitute a good morning’s uptick for Netflix.So if you are part of the cult — tracking the right subreddit, commiserating with a Facebook friend group of the requisite sophistication — it is a very big deal that the 12-episode fourth season of “Babylon Berlin,” shown in Germany in 2022, is finally premiering on MHz Choice in the United States on Tuesday. (To answer the immediate questions: $7.99 a month, seven-day free trial, and the full season will be up by July 30.)Based on historical mystery novels by the German writer Volker Kutscher, the show is a sleek, louchely sexy blend of police procedural, love story, Freudian melodrama and expensively rendered costume epic. All of the elements (with the occasional exception of the heavy psychological symbolism) are juggled with finesse by the show’s creator-writer-directors, Achim von Borries, Henk Handloegten and Tom Tykwer. (Bettine von Borries and Khyana el Bitar are also credited as writers in Season 4.)The balls stay in the air with the mesmerizing rhythm of one of the cabaret acts at the show’s fictional nightclub, Moka Efti; the effect can be, to use the favorite descriptor among “Babylon Berlin” fans, addictive. The series — and the fourth season in particular, which has a story line involving the gathering of Berlin’s criminal gangs — has been compared to “M,” the great 1931 thriller by the German director Fritz Lang. But a better comparison would be to Lang silents like “Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler” and “Spies,” intricately assembled thrillers that are some of the most deluxe entertainments ever put on film.It helps, of course, that the place and time the show inhabits are Berlin in the Weimar era of the 1920s and early ’30s, a ready-made backdrop of artistic, cultural and sexual ferment in a city headed toward political and social catastrophe. The action hopscotches from police labs to the soundstages of expressionist films, from munitions factories to beer halls, from baronial manors to squalid tenements, with a studious devotion to the quality and evocativeness of costumes, sets and locations.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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘Babylon Berlin’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.

      by

      Season 4 of the epic crime drama has finally come to streaming in the United States, via MHz Choice. Here’s a refresher on where we left off.Over the years, the lavish German noir detective series “Babylon Berlin” has required patience from its American viewers.First, fans had to untangle dense story lines — set across the late 1920s and early 1930s — along with an abundance of compulsively watchable characters, most of them harboring secrets. Then they had to wait years for new episodes. Netflix initially carried the first three seasons, but they were removed from the platform this year. Season 4 aired in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in 2022, but these newer episodes have only now become available to stream in the United States, arriving on MHz Choice, a platform specializing in European titles, on Tuesday.This fourth season is “more music, more crime, more sex, more politics than ever before,” said Henk Handloegten, who created “Babylon Berlin” along with Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer. It also features more Nazis.The characters, now in 1930s Germany, will have to contend with the rise of Nazism in their country.via MHz ChoiceSeason 4 opens on New Year’s Eve 1930, and German politics is kicking into a higher, scarier gear. “Suddenly, our heroes are confronted with a completely new and profoundly disturbing and menacing energy: the rise of fascism and the far-right,” Tykwer said in a joint video interview with his two colleagues.Based on a series of books by Volker Kutscher, “Babylon Berlin” sets fictional characters against a backdrop of real events, so we know that Hitler’s rise to power will end the democratic Weimar Republic. The season’s suspense lies in discovering “how these characters we’re getting to know are reacting to the upcoming Nazi period,” von Borries said. “Will they be on the right side or the wrong side?”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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘Doctor Who’ Season Recap: Where Does It Go From Here?

      by

      Ncuti Gatwa shined as the 15th Doctor. But the long-running show feels at a crossroads as it concludes its latest season.“Doctor Who” is a show of paradoxes. At its best, it’s a show about a time-traveling, space-venturing alien who ceaselessly untangles the mysteries of the universe, and often invites his own. At its worst, it’s plagued by its contradictions — incoherent or unintelligible narrative logic, inconsistent writing, uneven tone.This isn’t particularly surprising for a show with a decades-long history spanning the classic series (1963-89) and the reboot (2005-present). But now with Disney+ onboard as a co-producer, the series is caught between past and present, between pushing its boundaries and fitting into a more generic, brand-friendly mold. This played out in the latest season, which just released its finale, “Empire of Death,” on Friday.Stacked with effervescent charms and staggering emotional range, Ncuti Gatwa, as the 15th Doctor, is the perfect representation of this new era of “Doctor Who.” He’s the show’s first Black, gay Doctor, bringing diversity to a show that has severely lacked it. In just one season Gatwa has delivered perhaps the strongest acting of the character, certainly in recent years. His performance is more tactile than those of his predecessors; the 15th Doctor fully inhabits his body, dancing, gesturing and throwing every bit of his physical presence into his line deliveries. The 15th is also more sensual and openly flirtatious than any previous incarnation; he exudes chemistry with every scene partner, including Rogue, a space bounty hunter played by Jonathan Groff in Episode 6. The kiss the two share is the first same-sex kiss of the series.The kiss was a remarkable leap for the show, especially happening in the first season under Disney, a brand that has historically been hesitant to depict queer relationships. How far the show will actually push this relationship, however, remains to be seen. The flirtation between the Doctor and Rogue builds rapidly just to be abruptly halted when Rogue is lost to another dimension, undercutting the moment.And despite the show’s fresh attention to diversity, this Doctor’s race has been barely even alluded to. The episode “Dot and Bubble” implies that one of the very rich, very white inhabitants of a planet under attack rejects the Doctor’s help because of his race, but the implications are so subtle that some may miss the racial undertones completely. And the episode “Rogue” takes place in a “Bridgerton”-inspired alternative version of 1813 as a flimsy workaround for placing a Black Doctor in the middle of Regency-era England without needing to deal with such sticky topics as slavery.The new “Doctor Who” is a lighter, brighter affair in several other respects as well. For all of the sparkling humanity Gatwa has introduced into a typically more emotionally guarded (read: alien) hero, his Doctor also lacks the ruthlessness and darkness that occasionally surfaces in the character, who has been scarred from witnessing every kind of genocide and war. There’s a risk that this tonal shift is a harbinger of a larger, more permanent change: Disney may be in the early phases of transforming the BBC show much as it has done with other I.P., like Star Wars, which grew into an ever-expanding franchise at the expense of the original product.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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Is Debuting Friday. Will Audiences Follow?

      by

      To make “Horizon,” he put his own money on the line and left “Yellowstone,” the series that revived his career — all with little Hollywood support.Oh, to have the self-confidence of Kevin Costner.There are few actors in the final chapter of their career who would turn down a consistent $1 million-an-episode payday to pursue the vagaries of the Wild West. Yet there are few actors who are as single-minded as Costner.For the 69-year old star and director, who has made a career of taking the road less traveled, has embarked on what many would call a foolhardy quest to turn his long-percolating story of the settling of the West post-Civil War into four theatrical films. It’s an endeavor he’s undertaking without the true support of Hollywood: No legacy studio wanted to finance his sprawling epic. And it’s one that comes at great personal cost, both financially, with Costner investing $38 million of his own money, and professionally, with his commitment to the films causing a schism with the producers of “Yellowstone,” the television franchise that revitalized his career.There is no guarantee his grand experiment will succeed. “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is set to debut Friday. And in an unprecedented move, “Chapter 2” will hit theaters less than two months later, on Aug. 16. Both features cost in the $100 million range. Warner Bros. is releasing the films in the United States, Canada and some international territories in a service deal calling for Costner to pay for the marketing costs while collaborating with the studio on the creation of the marketing materials. (Warner Bros., according to a representative who was not permitted to speak on the record, has a small financial stake in the production of the first two films.) The deal’s structure means that should the movies backfire, there will be little financial downside for the studio but much risk for Costner himself.Abbey Lee, left, with Costner, in the first of four films envisioned by the star-director.Richard Foreman/Warner Bros.But as he has put it, letting go was never an option. He first commissioned the script back in 1988. He almost made it with Disney, but the two parties couldn’t agree on a budget and the movie didn’t go forward. Then, instead of retooling one movie to fit the parameters of potential buyers, he and the screenwriter Jon Baird turned it into four. To partly finance the films, he mortgaged a 10-acre piece of undeveloped coastline in Santa Barbara that he’s owned since 2006.“It’s hard to fall out of love for me. I don’t do that,” he told journalists during the online debut of his teaser trailer in February, and added, “There’s a lot of people out there that know I’m a little bit of a hard-head or something. When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four. So I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” (Costner declined to be interviewed for this story.)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

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Lion King’ at 30: Jason Weaver Sang for Simba but Few Knew It

      by

      The actor was playing a young Michael Jackson when Elton John spotted him. Three decades later, the new attention to his legacy is “gratifying.”When Jason Weaver arrived at his middle school in Chicago wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with “The Lion King” logo in 1993, his classmates sneered. The apparel had been a gift from Disney when Weaver recorded the singing voice of young Simba, but the blockbuster animated film had yet to be released.“They were like, ‘What the hell is ‘The Lion King’?” Weaver, 44, recalled in a recent video interview. “They didn’t believe in any way shape or form I would be involved with a Disney film — not a kid from the South Side.”Until then, Weaver had mostly done print and commercial work in Chicago. He’d landed a small role in the civil rights drama “The Long Walk Home” and played a young Michael Jackson in the ABC mini-series “The Jacksons: An American Dream.” But for kids, a Disney theatrical movie was on another level.During an hour-and-a-half “Lion King” recording session in 1992, Weaver, who was turning 13, had sung the lead vocals for “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” the braggadocious anthem belted by the lion cub Simba as he fantasizes about inheriting the pridelands from his father, Mufasa.Opening in June 1994, “The Lion King” would go on to become the highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time. Its soundtrack eventually sold more than 7 million copies, and “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” was certified double platinum.According to Weaver, his mother, Marilyn “Kitty” Haywood — a former jingle singer and recording artist who worked with Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield — turned down Disney’s initial offer and negotiated a fee of $100,000 plus lucrative royalties for her son.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

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      ‘House of the Dragon’: Elliott and Luke Tittensor on That Brutal Duel

      by

      Episode 2 pit brother against brother, in more ways than one. The two actors, identical twins, talked about the intensity of that climactic fight scene.This interview contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of “House of the Dragon.”“One soul in two bodies.” That’s how Ser Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittensor), sworn member of the Kingsguard of Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), refers to himself and his identical twin, Erryk (Elliott Tittensor). But Ser Erryk is now a member of the Queensguard, knights dedicated to the service of Aegon’s half sister and rival for the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). With this week’s episode, their lifelong unity comes to a bloody end.In Episode 2 of “House of the Dragon” Season 2, Arryk is dispatched by his vindictive commander, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), to infiltrate Rhaenyra’s stronghold, Dragonstone, and assassinate her while posing as his own twin, one of her personal protectors. The ruse is exposed in horrific fashion when brother attacks brother; Erryk triumphs and saves his queen but kills himself rather than live with the pain of the act. As an allegory for the senseless squandering of human life in Rhaenyra and Aegon’s so-called Dance of the Dragons, it is a hard one to miss.Yet, when it comes time to thank the actors for a chance to pick their brains about their brutal final duel for the fate of Queen Rhaenyra, I catch myself referring to their brain, singular. It speaks to the effectiveness of the Tittensor twins’ work as the doomed knights that their “one soul in two bodies” mentality is catching.The brothers are self-effacing about having landed these pivotal roles, though. “I’m not sure how big the pool of identical twins that they had to look in was, but when our agents came knocking about the job, we already had the long hair and the beards,” Elliott said in a joint video call on Thursday. “In their eyes, we were pretty much ready to step into it.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.I’m never quite sure whether to offer my congratulations or my condolences in interviews like these.LUKE TITTENSOR We’re happy about it! To be involved with a project of this kind, and then to be able to portray a twins relationship in such an amazing world, a world that we’re fans of … These sorts of jobs in this industry are few and far between.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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: The Presidential Debate and CMA Fest

      by

      President Joe Biden and former President Donald J. Trump debate for the first time this campaign cycle. Country artists perform their hit songs.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, June 24-30. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBEAT BOBBY FLAY starting at 9 p.m. on Food. There is truly every type of cooking show you could imagine on television these days. But in rarely any of them does a world famous chef flex his cooking muscle alongside contestants. That is exactly what Bobby Flay does here. Each episode features two chefs going head-to-head cooking something of Flay’s choosing. Whichever chef wins that round then gets to compete against Flay himself, this time with the competitor’s signature dish.TuesdayCMA FEST 8 p.m. on ABC. This year’s country music extravaganza took place in early June, and now it is coming to the small screen. Jelly Roll and Ashley McBryde are set to host the special, showcasing performances from Kelsea Ballerini, Big & Rich, Clint Black, Brothers Osborne, Luke Bryan, Post Malone and others.A still from “One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit.”Courtesy of HBOONE SOUTH: PORTRAIT OF PSYCH UNIT 9 p.m. on HBO. The 2020 Netflix documentary series “Lenox Hill” brought viewers into the neurosurgery unit of that hospital. This HBO series might be even more intimate, this time bringing viewers into a hospital where college students are receiving treatment for serious mental health issues. This series spotlights the experience, from intake to discharge, in one of these hospitals and frustrating limitations of the U.S. health care system.WednesdayREAL CSI: MIAMI 10 p.m. on CBS. If you ever dreamed that any of the “CSI” franchise shows were more realistic, you’re in luck. This new series is a reality show, inspired by the Crime Scene Investigation unit featured on countless dramas. The cameras follow investigators at true crime scenes and then outline the forensic process of finding suspects.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

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Sleep With One Eye Open

      by

      Aemond knows those assassins got the wrong prince. He says he feels flattered. He had also better watch his back.Season 2, Episode 2Not even Rhaenyra Targaryen can believe what she’s seeing.This woman has flown through the sky on the back of a dragon. She has seen lords kneel at her feet, only to rise against her years later. She has lost a child in her fight for the Iron Throne and recoiled to learn that another was killed in her child’s name. But watching Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Elliott and Luke Tittensor), two identical twin knights, locked in a battle to the death in her own bedroom, with the outcome to decide whether she lives or dies? You can see it on the face of the actor Emma D’Arcy: Not even in Rhaenyra’s wildest dreams did she see this one coming.This ability to shock — not in the gross-out sense, although this is often the case as well, but rather in the sense of a sudden, severe surprise — is the greatest strength “House of the Dragon” possesses. Civil wars are often said to be battles of brother against brother; fantasy can make the metaphorical literal. What better way to illustrate the senseless brutality of warfare than by having two men who look and sound exactly alike, who love each other, who say they are one soul in two bodies, perish in a brutal murder-suicide that achieves exactly nothing?The entire affair is a sordid one, something Ser Arryk never should have been asked by Ser Criston, his lord commander, to carry out. Indeed, Criston did so only as a maladaptive way of venting his sexual frustrations during a moment when his on-again-off-again relationship with Queen Alicent was dialed to off-again. By episode’s end they’re back together and having rough sex — an altogether healthier way of channeling these frustrations, if still an ill-advised coupling overall.Despite the clandestine nature of their relationship, Alicent and Criston are still faring better romantically than Rhaenyra and Daemon. When the Black Queen learns that the young Prince Jaehaerys was murdered and beheaded in his bed, she is outraged that anyone could think she had anything to do with it. She is even angrier when she finds out that she did have something to do with it, despite herself: It was Daemon who, in a reckless attempt to make good on her request for vengeance against Prince Aemond, claimed another child’s life instead.You can’t trust someone like that, Rhaenyra determines — accurately. She dismisses him as “pathetic”; he dismisses himself from her company.Back in King’s Landing, Daemon’s deeds continue to pay gruesome dividends. Both of the men involved in the murder of Jaehaerys are captured and killed, along with a score of innocent men whose only crime was to serve as palace rat catchers alongside one of the assassins. When his grandfather Otto upbraids him for this public-relations blunder, King Aegon — who for all his faults is genuinely devastated by the death of his young son — fires him as the king’s hand and replaces him with Ser Criston — a man of action compared with the scheming but restrained Otto but also the most tightly wound man in Westeros. There are literal dragons who would make better hands.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