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      Michael Emerson Still Reigns as TV’s King of Creepy

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      The actor has played unsettling men on shows like “Lost” and “Fallout.” In the new season of “Evil,” he might be raising the Antichrist.On one wall of the actor Michael Emerson’s Manhattan apartment hangs a large self portrait he drew about 40 years ago. In the intentionally distorted image, Emerson peers out menacingly from behind his circular glasses. His wife, the actor Carrie Preston, thinks it serves as a fitting summation of his career.“You know, Carrie brought this up recently saying, ‘There’s the template for so much of what you have done as an actor,’” he said. “For me it was just a laugh. It’s still the same mix of having fun and yet being a little, what’s the word, terrifying.”It’s true: If you want someone to be creepy on television, you call Michael Emerson. The 69-year-old actor had his breakout role in 2000 playing a serial killer in “The Practice,” a performance so memorably distressing it won him a guest actor Emmy. He went on to unsettle viewers for years as the unpredictable Ben Linus in “Lost,” and as the computer wizard Harold Finch on “Person of Interest.” This year he showed up for one episode of the Prime Video series “Fallout,” from the “Person of Interest” creator Jonathan Nolan, as a quietly menacing scientist. They aren’t all bad guys, but you’re never quite sure.Emerson is currently inhabiting his most ghoulish role yet, in the aptly named Paramount+ show “Evil,” returning for its fourth and final season on May 23. Emerson plays Leland Townsend, a demonic emissary who constantly torments the heroes, a group of investigators played by Mike Colter, Katja Herbers and Aasif Mandvi. This trio works for the Roman Catholic Church to determine whether various strange goings-on are the result of satanic forces or more mundane phenomena. Leland’s main goal is to promote the forces of darkness by any means possible.In Emerson’s hands, Leland is a captivating, often frightening agent of chaos who is surprisingly goofy for someone who is OK with child murder. In the new season, he is raising his biological son — he nefariously arranged the baby’s conception earlier in the series — and believes the child is the Antichrist.“I don’t know anyone that does unsettling better than Michael Emerson,” Michelle King, who created “Evil” with her husband, Robert, said in a video interview.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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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘The Good Doctor’

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      The ABC comedy wraps up its third season. The medical show airs its series finale.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, May 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondaySTAX: SOULSVILLE, U.S.A. 9 p.m. on HBO. Satellite Records in Memphis (now Stax Records), which opened its doors in 1957, helped start the careers of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave and more. This documentary series uses archival footage and interviews to look back on the relationships shared by musicians, songwriters and producers and highlights the work they all did in pushing the racial barriers of the time.SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE 9 p.m. on Fox. All season the judges Allison Holker, Maksim Chmerkovskiy and JoJo Siwa have been sharing feedback with the dancers in this competition show with episode themes including Broadway, music videos and movies — and now it is time to crown a winner.TuesdayTHE ROOKIE 9 p.m. on ABC. This show, staring Nathan Fillion as the oldest rookie in the Los Angeles Police Department, is wrapping up its 6th season this week. The penultimate episode left things on a cliffhanger, with Dr. London on the run, potentially endangering her immunity deal. Will we have to wait a year for loose ends to be tied up?Freddie Highmore in “The Good Doctor.”Disney/Jeff WeddellTHE GOOD DOCTOR 10 p.m. on ABC. Over the seven seasons of this show, we have really seen Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) go on a full journey. He started as a nervous young surgeon and has blossomed into a top guy in his field, a husband and a father. Highmore told Deadline that he hadn’t expected the show to run seven seasons, “but one of the things that I have always appreciated about the show — and saw as potential from the very beginning — is the opportunity for Shaun to evolve and learn and grow and change,” 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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      Dolores Rosedale, Sidekick on ‘Beat the Clock,’ Dies at 95

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      The model and actress, who went by Roxanne, had a modest role on the game show, appeared on numerous magazine covers and inspired the creation of a doll.Dolores Rosedale, a model known as Roxanne whose burst of fame in the early 1950s as the hostess of the wacky game show “Beat the Clock” led to the creation of a doll in her image and to appearances on the covers of magazines like Life and TV Guide, died on May 2 in Spring Park, Minn., near Minneapolis. She was 95.Her daughter Ann Roddy confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.Roxanne joined “Beat the Clock” in 1950 when it made its transition to television from radio. Bud Collyer, the host, presided over the weekly program, in which contestants raced to finish stunts against time limits.Roxanne’s role didn’t require her to say much at first. She posed with the prizes and took pictures of contestants as they carried out their stunts. She later gave introductions of the contestants.Ms. Rosedale, second from left, with Bud Collyer, left, the host of “Beat the Clock.” On the show, she posed with prizes, took pictures of contestants and gave introductions.CBS, via Everett CollectionBut her poise and glamour — and, perhaps, the polka-dot ballet costume she sometimes wore — helped her break out.In 1951, she donned a costume for a Life magazine cover story about chorus girls. Inside, a photograph that identified her as the show’s “stunt mistress” showed her guiding a blindfolded Boy Scout as he tried to identify an elephant.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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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Signs Off for the Season With Jake Gyllenhaal as Host

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      Jake Gyllenhaal hosted the final episode of the show’s 49th season. Sabrina Carpenter was the musical guest.In its final episode of the season, just before its cast members pack up their fright wigs and false teeth to head out on their summer vacations, “Saturday Night Live” gave its viewers what they presumably wanted: an opening sketch featuring James Austin Johnson as former President Donald J. Trump.This weekend’s broadcast, which was hosted by Jake Gyllenhaal and featured the musical guest Sabrina Carpenter, began with Johnson recreating one of the many public statements that Trump has made during his criminal hush-money trial.“I don’t like being in court because they say very mean things about me while I am trying to sleep,” Johnson said. “But I love being out here, in the hallway outside court, daring judge to imprison me. He gave me a gag order. I said, ‘That sounds like a challenge on RuPaul.’”Describing the trial as “very eye-closening,” Johnson said it would likely end with him “being sent to a horrible place I do not want to go to — the White House.”He added, “For me, much better to not win and say it was rigged and then get very rich raising money to stop the steal, and you never have to do president again. I like that a lot.”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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      Alice Stewart, a CNN Political Commentator, Dies at 58

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      She had appeared onscreen as a conservative voice since the 2016 presidential race. A political strategist, she had worked for Republican presidential candidates.Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist and political commentator on CNN, has died. She was 58.Her death was announced by CNN. The company said the police found Ms. Stewart’s body outdoors in Northern Virginia early Saturday morning. The authorities said they believe that she had a medical emergency but did not provide a cause.Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, described her in an email to staff members as “a political veteran and an Emmy Award-winning journalist who brought an incomparable spark to CNN’s coverage.”Ms. Stewart had appeared on the cable news outlet as a conservative commentator since the 2016 presidential race. Before then, she had worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.She was the communications director for the 2008 presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, and went on to serve in similar roles for Republican candidates in two following elections, including those of Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz.Ms. Stewart was the deputy secretary of state in Arkansas and was a fellow in 2020 at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. She had also done work for the Republican Party and conservative organizations.At CNN, Ms. Stewart viewed herself as a faithful promoter of conservatism while the Republican Party reshaped itself under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump.“I don’t think everything that he does is great, and I don’t think everything that he does is bad,” Ms. Stewart said of Mr. Trump in a 2020 interview with Harvard Political Review. “My position at CNN is to be a conservative voice yet an independent thinker.”In an opinion piece published on CNN last year, Ms. Stewart asked Republican voters to reconsider their unconditional support for Mr. Trump’s 2024 election bid given the various criminal charges he faced.“This is a campaign about self-preservation, not selfless public service,” she wrote. “I’m not convinced that’s how you Make America Great Again.”Before transitioning to politics in 2005 with a job as press secretary in the administration of Mr. Huckabee, Ms. Stewart was a news anchor and reporter for seven years at an NBC television affiliate in Little Rock, Ark.“I loved covering politics. I loved courts. I loved breaking news,” Ms. Stewart said in a 2020 interview with Harvard International Review. “But, several years ago, I just realized that there might be something different for me to do.”She was born on March 11, 1966, in Atlanta and earned a degree in broadcast news and political science from the University of Georgia.Ms. Stewart last appeared on CNN on Friday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” Information on her survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Dabney Coleman: Where to Stream His Best Movies and TV Shows

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      Coleman’s characters frequently displayed the kind of antagonistic demeanor familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with a bad boss or a disgruntled customer.The veteran character actor Dabney Coleman died Thursday at 92. Coleman began appearing in movies and TV series in the 1960s, when he was in his early 30s, and from the beginning, he had the look and the attitude of a grumpy middle-aged man.For most of his career — except on those rare occasions when he got to play a lead role — Coleman’s job was to pop in for a scene or two to growl and grumble in a manner that was generally both humorous and more than a little scary. He reliably brought the kind of antagonistic energy familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with a bad boss or a disgruntled customer.Much of Coleman’s best TV work — like the short-lived sitcoms “Buffalo Bill” and “The Slap Maxwell Story,” and the soap opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” — aren’t available to stream. And while he had roles in dozens of very good films and TV shows, he was often low in the billing. The seven Coleman performances below, though, are both outstanding and substantial, showcasing his imposing screen presence and ace comic timing.Coleman’s breakout role came as a chauvinistic boss in the 1980 hit “9 to 5.” (With Dolly Parton.)20th Century Fox‘9 to 5’ (1980)After nearly 20 years in the business, Coleman’s career really took off in the 1980s, when producers started casting him in parts that let him hang around onscreen a little longer. He had his breakout performance in this hit comedy, which stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as secretaries who try to overcome corporate sexism by imprisoning their boss. Coleman plays that piggish executive, whose disrespect for women in general (and these three employees in particular) is so infuriating to watch that audiences couldn’t wait to see him get his comeuppance.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV or YouTube.‘On Golden Pond’ (1981)Coleman teamed again with Jane Fonda a year later for an Oscar-winning big-screen adaptation of Ernest Thompson’s play “On Golden Pond,” a passion project for the actress, who wanted to work with her aging father, Henry Fonda. Coleman only has a small part in the film, playing Bill, the fiancé of Jane Fonda’s character Chelsea, the estranged daughter of Henry Fonda’s prickly Norman. Coleman gets to hit some of his usual sour notes when Bill stands up to Norman’s passive-aggressive bullying, but he’s not the villain of the story this time. He’s a decent man who just won’t be pushed too far, a Coleman character shown in a somewhat more flattering light.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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      ‘Doctor Who’ Episode 4 Recap: Scenes of Destruction

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      In an episode simmering with tension, the Doctor and Ruby discover an army of religious soldiers on a largely deserted planet.Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Boom’After an opening double episode featuring talking babies and a jazzy villain, the latest “Doctor Who” installment is a clear attempt by Russell T Davies, the showrunner, to convey a more serious side.To write the show’s latest installment “Boom,” Davies recruited Steven Moffat, a former “Doctor Who” showrunner, who is best remembered for a dramatic 2007 episode called “Blink” that fans revered.With that episode, Moffat struck fear in a generation of British kids (myself included) by inventing the Weeping Angels, terrifying stone statues that only move when you look away. Seventeen years later, the episode remains a master class in small-screen tension building.Moffat evokes the same simmering tension with “Boom,” right down to the onomatopoeic episode title. Here, though, it’s a land mine, activated when the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on it and ticking closer to detonation, that causes the stress.It’s a compelling setup that gives Gatwa the chance to show new emotional depths for the Doctor. But the script and effects are bombastic, and I found myself wishing for something to be stripped back. In this first season with Disney dollars, “Doctor Who” is clearly not doing anything by halves, but the lavish “Mad Max”-esque scenes of destruction threaten to overshadow Gatwa’s pitch-perfect performance.The episode opens with two soldiers — both deeply religious, one of them blind — hobbling through dense, flame-flecked smoke. The place? Kastarian 3, a planet ravaged by war. The year? 5087. Carson (Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy) has heard that his army’s enemies are lurking in the fog, but John (Joe Anderson), a devoted father with bandaged eyes, insists this isn’t the case.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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      Dabney Coleman, Actor Audiences Loved to Hate, Is Dead at 92

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      In movies like “9 to 5” and “Tootsie” and on TV shows like “Buffalo Bill,” he turned the portrayal of egomaniacal louts into a fine art.Dabney Coleman, an award-winning television and movie actor best known for his over-the-top portrayals of garrulous, egomaniacal characters, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 92.His daughter Quincy Coleman confirmed the death to The New York Times but did not cite the cause.Mr. Coleman was equally adept at comedy and drama, but he received his greatest acclaim for his comic work — notably in the 1980 movie “9 to 5,” in which he played a thoroughly despicable boss, and the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he starred as the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.At a time when antiheroic leads, with the outsize exception of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, were a rarity on television comedies, Mr. Coleman’s distinctly unlikable Bill Bittinger on “Buffalo Bill” was an exception. A profile of Mr. Coleman in Rolling Stone called Bill “a rapscallion for our times, a playfully wicked combination of G. Gordon Liddy and Groucho Marx.” (“He has to do something terrible,” Bill’s station manager said of him in one episode. “It’s in his blood.”)Mr. Coleman’s manically acerbic performance was widely praised and gained him Emmy Award nominations as best actor in a comedy in 1983 and 1984. Reviewing “Buffalo Bill” in The Times, John J. O’Connor said Mr. Coleman “manages to bring an array of unexpected colors to his performance” and called him “the kind of gifted actor who always seems to be teetering on the verge of becoming a star.” But the ratings were disappointing, and “Buffalo Bill” ran for only 26 episodes.Mr. Coleman with his co-star Geena Davis in a scene from the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he played the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.Frank Connor/Stampede Productions, via Everett CollectionMr. Coleman revisited the formula in 1987 with the ABC sitcom “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story,” in which he played a similar character, this time an outspoken sportswriter for a struggling newspaper. He garnered another Emmy nomination for his performance and won a Golden Globe. But low ratings, this time combined with friction between Mr. Coleman and the producer Jay Tarses (who, with Tom Patchett, had created “Buffalo Bill”), led to its demise after just one season.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