The Studio (TV Program)

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    With ‘The Studio,’ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Grow Up. Sort of.

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    Amoeba Records, on Hollywood Boulevard, isn’t the best place for someone of Seth Rogen’s visibility to shop hassle-free. Located just blocks from the Chinese Theater, right by Dr. Phil’s and Dr. Oz’s stars on the Walk of Fame, there may be few places worse.But when Rogen wasn’t being interrupted by his admiring bro-fans, who were legion — one wore toe shoes and a Lil Dicky shirt; another cried — Amoeba was, however, a perfect place to dig through hundreds of vinyl soundtracks. It was the Tuesday before the Oscars, and we were there with Rogen’s longtime creative partner, Evan Goldberg, to browse records and talk about their latest creation: “The Studio,” an ambitious, celebrity-stuffed industry satire for Apple TV+ that premiered on Wednesday.“The Studio” features many celebrity cameos and guest roles, including one by Martin Scorsese, right (with Ike Barinholtz, left, and Seth Rogen).Apple TV+Rogen had been tasked by his wife to stock more jazz — appropriate given the new show’s jazzy score and improvisational feel, shot mostly in long single takes. But as Goldberg and Rogen, who have been friends since they were teenagers, noted, their taste in music had really been formed by their love for movies.So we found ourselves first among the soundtracks, where highlights included a reissue of “The Three Amigos” — “One of my favorite movies of all time,” Rogen said — and two copies of the soundtrack for “Soul Man,” the 1986 comedy about a young white guy who pretends to be Black in order to get a Harvard scholarship. (Different times, as they say.)“Dude, I was just telling some people at work about this yesterday!” Goldberg said.“It has a good soundtrack,” Rogen ventured.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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      ‘The Studio’ Review: Seth Rogen Is Way Too Late for His Close-Up

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      Seth Rogen plays a stressed-out movie bigwig in a satire of an industry in decline.Midway through the first season of “The Studio,” Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), a big wheel in the movie industry, finds himself at a dinner table of civilians. Though he’s used to impressing people with his job, his companions are unmoved. “If you want art, you watch TV,” one says. “Have you seen ‘The Bear’?”To borrow a line from “The Sopranos,” one of the first big series to muscle in on the movies’ territory, Matt is feeling like a guy who came in at the end of something. When the 10-episode satire begins on Apple TV+, he gets his dream job, as he is tapped to head the fictional Continental Studios when its storied leader (Catherine O’Hara) is defenestrated after a string of flops.Matt, a movie guy’s movie guy whose vintage-car collection embodies his love for an earlier showbiz era, is ready to live his Hollywood fantasy. He will lavish money on auteurs and let them shoot on actual film. He will be known as a “talent-friendly” executive. He will make art.Or maybe he won’t. Seconds into his welcome-aboard talk with the company’s C.E.O., Griffin Mill (a deliciously batty Bryan Cranston), he gets his first mandate: Continental has landed the rights to the Kool-Aid Man, a crass ploy to copy the success of “Barbie,” and Matt is expected to turn the I.P. into a billion-dollar hit. He dreamed of a life in the pictures; now he’s breathing life into a pitcher.“The Studio,” which premieres on Wednesday, is its own kind of formula project, another in that long-lived monster-movie franchise “Art vs. Commerce.” But the series is timely enough to be a little distinctive, and it knows its business well enough to be blisteringly entertaining.Past Hollywood stories have cast the industry as a culturally powerful meat grinder (Cranston’s character name is an allusion to “The Player,” one of many classic-film references in the series), or as affluent but brainless, as in “Entourage.” But in “The Studio,” Hollywood is in deep decline.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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      ‘Mid Century Modern,’ Plus 8 Things to Watch on TV this Week

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      A new comedy starring Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer comes to Hulu, and this season of “The Bachelor” wraps up.Dive into dating.“The Bachelor” franchise has had a couple of explosive seasons in recent years, but for better or worse, Grant Ellis’s journey to find love has been pretty uneventful. With two women left vying for his attention, the three-hour finale will reveal who receives the final rose, if he gives one at all. Afterward, ABC often debuts its next female lead of “The Bachelorette,” but earlier this year the network announced that it would be skipping this season. Instead, we’ll have the more fun, raunchy and relatable “Bachelor in Paradise” coming back sometime this spring or summer. Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC.After writing a book of essays entitled “Survival of the Thickest,” Michelle Buteau created a Netflix series in which she stars as Mavis Beaumont, and it is returning for a second season. The first installment saw Mavis catch her partner in bed with another woman and deal with that fallout while receiving support from her crew of besties. Season 2 will continue to follow Mavis’s dating journey as a plus-size woman of color. In an interview, Buteau also noted that the show is her love letter to New York City, where it’s set. Streaming on Thursday on Netflix.Some international favorites.The third season of the British comedy “Big Boys” is coming stateside this week. The series, loosely inspired by the creator Jack Rooke’s university days, follows Jack (Dylan Llewellyn), a gay student who’s closeted and mourning the death of his father. He forms an unexpected bond with his roommate Danny (Jon Pointing), who is most often found chatting up girls but is also hiding his mental health struggles. The third season got rave reviews when it premiered in Britain in February — The Independent called it “one of the finest British comedies of the past decade.” Streaming on Tuesday on Hulu.The French show “Bref” started out as a YouTube series in 2011, with its one- to two-minute episodes amassing 131 million views. Now they have lengthened to 30 minutes, which allows the protagonist, played by Kyan Khojandi, to explore different facets of all his relationships. Streaming on Wednesday on Hulu.In “Caught,” a new Argentine series based on a book of the same name by Harlan Coben, Soledad Villamil plays an investigative journalist with a knack for exposing criminals who are often able to avoid justice. She’s faced with a dilemma when the prime suspect involved in the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl is someone she knows. Streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.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