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    The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Max, Hulu and More in September

    “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” “A Very Royal Scandal,” a “Walking Dead” spinoff and “Agatha All Along” arrive.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘A Very Royal Scandal’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Earlier this year, Netflix debuted a movie called “Scoop,” about the complicated negotiations that led to Prince Andrew’s headline-making 2019 interview with BBC Two’s “Newsnight,” covering his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The three-part mini-series “A Very Royal Scandal” tells the same story in a little more detail, with a screenplay from Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of “The Last King of Scotland”). Michael Sheen plays Prince Andrew, while Ruth Wilson plays Emily Maitlis, the interviewer, who kept pressuring the prince with follow-up questions, asking him to account for all the time he had spent with Epstein over the years.Also arriving:Sept. 10“The Money Game”Sept. 24“Evolution of the Black Quarterback”Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 29When this spinoff of “The Walking Dead” was first announced, it was supposed to be the story of the soulful hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his hard-edge pal Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) venturing into new territories together in a zombie-ravaged world. But when that territory turned out to be Europe, McBride had to drop out for what was described as logistical reasons. Her Carol made a cameo at the end of Season 1 though; and she is now on board for Season 2 (as well as an already announced Season 3). This new season will find Carol searching for her friend in France, while Daryl reluctantly gets more involved with the twisted political situation overseas, trying to help some good people make things better.Also arriving:Sept. 6“The Demon Disorder”Sept. 7“All You Need Is Death”Sept. 12“The Tailor of Sin City”Sept. 13“In a Violent Nature”Sept. 16“Candice Renoir” Season 10Sept. 20“Dandelion”Sept. 26“Wisting” Season 5Sept. 27“Oddity”Sept. 30“The Bench” Seasons 1-2We 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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    How ‘The Boys’ Imagines Fascism Coming to America

    “The Boys” and other TV series imagine fascism coming to America, whether wrapped in the flag or in a superhero’s tights.What would fascism look like in America? A quote long misattributed to Sinclair Lewis says that it would come “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” The comedian George Carlin said that it would come not “with jackboots” but “Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.”“The Boys,” Amazon Prime Video’s blood-spattered, dystopian superhero satire, has another proposal: It would be handsome, jut-jawed and blond. It would wear a cape. And it would shoot lasers out of its eyes.Homelander (Antony Starr) is the star-spangled, nihilistic and enormously popular leader of the Seven, a for-profit league of superheroes produced through bioengineering and drug injections by Vought, a corporation founded by a Nazi scientist. To the public, he is the chiseled personification of national virtue. Behind the scenes, he is a bully, a murderer, a rapist — and, as of the new season, possibly America’s imminent overlord.In Season 4, Homelander goes on trial for murdering an anti-supe protester. He runs ads asking for help against “his toughest opponent yet: Our corrupt legal system.” Amazon StudiosIn the bizarro America of “The Boys,” “supes” are only incidentally crime fighters. They’re valuable corporate I.P., pitching products, starring in movies and reality shows and lending their images to puppet shows and holiday ice pageants. They’re the world’s biggest celebrities, towering on billboards and omnipresent on Vought’s media platforms, and this gives the Seven a power greater than any super-speed or heat vision.When the series begins, however, Homelander is limited, by politics — the government has resisted using supes in the military — and by his deep-seated need for love and approval. Power breeds suspicion (“The Boys” takes its title from an anti-supe vigilante group whose exploits it follows), and Vought is constantly monitoring the Seven’s approval ratings and guarding against backlash. Homelander may be invincible, but he still has to answer to corporate.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 Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’: What to Know

    The new “Walking Dead” spinoff, premiering Sunday on AMC and AMC+, builds on more than a decade of back story. We’re here to help.The new six-part mini-series “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” the latest installment in the sprawling “Walking Dead” universe, premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+. It finds Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira reprising their longtime roles as Rick Grimes and Michonne, the weathered survivors of a postapocalyptic wasteland populated by flesh-devouring zombies.Rick, the former sheriff turned heroic leader, and Michonne, the katana-wielding warrior with a heart of gold, were two of the show’s longest-tenured and most beloved characters. When they paired off late in the show’s run, it added a warm central love story to somewhat offset the show’s litany of bloodshed and gore — until Rick left the series in Season 9 and Michonne in Season 10.“The Ones Who Live” picks their story up where it left off in the original series, revealing what happened to the couple after they exited the show. But it also involves other characters, settings and organizations that have either appeared or been mentioned in “The Walking Dead” and its spinoffs, including the dystopian city the Civic Republic, its high-tech military the C.R.M., and the slippery villain Jadis, played by Pollyanna McIntosh. There’s also 12 years and 11 seasons of back story to keep in mind — and a ton of lore, including flash-forward child births and complex double-crosses.If any of that sounds only vaguely familiar — or if you, like millions of viewers, stopped watching “The Walking Dead” some time before it wrapped its 11th and final season in November 2022 — you might need a bit of a refresher to keep up with “The Ones Who Live,” which dives into its propulsive story without many flashbacks or expository monologues to bring viewers up to speed. (For their part, Lincoln and Gurira have said that they didn’t keep up with the whole series either, so you’re in good company.) Here’s everything you’ll need to know before the series kicks off on Sunday.What happened to Rick?After it was announced that Lincoln would be leaving “The Walking Dead” sometime during its ninth season, many fans assumed Rick would be killed off as many other characters had been before. Lincoln’s final episode, “What Comes After,” certainly set up that expectation, placing Rick in seemingly insurmountable jeopardy, gravely wounded and surrounded by a horde of walkers. As they close in on him, he has visions of friends and family he’s lost over the years, including Shane (Jon Bernthal), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and his first wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), driving home the impression that these are Rick’s final moments on earth.Instead, Rick is saved at the last moment by Jadis, his antagonist and sometime-ally, who whisks him to safety in a mysterious helicopter with cryptic promises that things will be OK. (Using a radio to communicate with the pilot, she refers to “As” and “Bs,” insisting that Rick is an A, which is sure to figure into “The Ones Who Live.”) Badly banged up, he is placed on a stretcher and given an intravenous drip, and he drifts off to sleep as Jadis consoles him. It’s the last time we see Rick until the final minutes of the series finale, when we catch a glimpse of his life six years later under the iron rule of the heavily militarized city the Civic Republic, still dreaming of reuniting with his family.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 Walking Dead’: Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira Are Back. Will Audiences Follow?

    When Rick Grimes, the rugged, righteous former sheriff played by Andrew Lincoln in AMC’s zombie horror series “The Walking Dead,” was written out of the series at Lincoln’s request in its ninth season, the show seemed to lose its hero, its heart and its hopeful moral center. A well-weathered and much brutalized leader, Rick was part of an ever-expanding ensemble but always felt like the main character.Rick’s departure created a vacuum that the show — which concluded in November 2022 after more than 150 episodes and 11 seasons — could never quite fill, even as a six-year time jump moved the story ahead into the future. Audiences seemed to lose interest, too: Ratings plummeted toward the end of the show’s run to a fraction of what they were during its mid-2010s peak popularity.Rick was never actually killed off: He left “The Walking Dead” under mysterious (and somewhat contentious) circumstances, whisked away by an unexplained helicopter with the promise of one day returning in a planned series of movies. Those movies instead morphed into a new six-part mini-series that reveals what happened to Rick after his sudden departure. “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” premiering Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+, finds Lincoln reprising his signature role in a new setting: a dystopian metropolis called the Civic Republic ruled by a military police force called the Civic Republic Military, or C.R.M.“The Ones Who Live” reunites Rick with his wife, Michonne, the katana-wielding firebrand played by Danai Gurira, who left “The Walking Dead” early in the show’s 10th season. Gurira and Lincoln have stepped up to serve as executive producers on “The Ones Who Live,” with Gurira also credited as a creator alongside Scott M. Gimple, the former “Walking Dead” showrunner and current chief content officer for the “Walking Dead” universe.Lincoln and Gurira starred together for many years in “The Walking Dead” until Lincoln left in Season 9, and Gurira in Season 10.Jackson Lee Davis/AMCIn a video interview from Los Angeles just before the premiere screening of “The Ones Who Live,” Lincoln and Gurira were chatty and playful, with the air of old friends who are totally at ease together. Lincoln, blithe and funny, kept insisting that Gurira answer questions first, while Gurira, trying to hastily scarf down a salad, mimicked him back: “You go ahead.” “No, you go ahead!” “No, YOU go ahead!” They eventually managed to discuss why they left “The Walking Dead,” why they came back and how “The Ones Who Live” differs from the original. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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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    Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in February: ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith,’ ‘Shogun,’ More

    “Genius:MLK/X,” a “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” series, a remake of “Shogun” and “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” are among the new arrivals.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of February’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ Season 1Starts streaming: Feb. 2Based on the 2005 blockbuster film of the same name, the spy thriller series “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” stars Donald Glover (who also cocreated the show with Francesca Sloane) as a spy code-named John who gets paired with a spy code-named Jane (Maya Erskine) in an operation that has them posing as a married couple. While trying to get a handle on their assignment, the fake spouses also have to get to know each other, and to figure out whether it’s helpful or detrimental to their mission to have actual romantic chemistry. Though there are chase scenes and explosions sprinkled throughout, this take on the “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” premise is more grounded. It’s about two attractive single people in New York City, balancing a relationship and a very, very strange job.Also arriving:Feb. 8“The Silent Service”Feb. 9“Upgraded”Feb. 13“Five Blind Dates”Feb. 16“This Is Me … Now: A Love Story”Feb. 19“Giannis: The Marvelous Journey”Feb. 23“Jenny Slate: Seasoned Professional”“Poacher”“The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” Season 1Feb. 29“Red Queen”Dario Argento in the documentary “Dario Argento Panico.”ShudderNew to AMC+‘Dario Argento Panico’Starts streaming: Feb. 2The Italian filmmaker Dario Argento has been a favorite of genre fans and cinephiles since the 1970s, when his stylish, blood-soaked thrillers like “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage” and “Suspiria” introduced a unique cinematic language, halfway between Hitchcockian suspense and Grand Guignol theater. In the Shudder documentary “Dario Argento Panico,” Argento and some of his collaborators and admirers (including the directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn) look back across his long career, discussing his unique vision as well as the controversies surrounding the violence in his movies and the intensity of his working methods. The film is a comprehensive introduction to an artist whose work and personality can come off as aloof and demanding, but who has long appealed to people who don’t mind a challenge.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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    Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film

    The format was initially a boon to amateurs. Now, with moviemaking gone digital, it’s the choice of auteurs like Darren Aronofsky and Kelly Reichardt.One hundred years ago, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced a shiny new camera that promised to revolutionize moviemaking. The company had been selling filming devices for more than two decades by then, but this novel contraption — the Ciné-Kodak camera, sold with the Kodascope projector — offered a new thrill: the ability to make and screen movies at home, with no special expertise.The technical marvel, however, wasn’t just the camera but also the film inside. Until 1923, the film used most commonly in motion pictures was 35 millimeters wide. That year, Kodak produced a new format that was only 16 millimeters. The image wasn’t as sharp when you blew it up on the big screen, but it allowed for smaller, cheaper and more portable cameras.16 millimeter ushered in a new era of movies made outside the Hollywood system. Regular folks could now record their own lives, journalists and soldiers could film in the midst of war, and activists could shoot political documentaries in the street. Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.Last week, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which holds thousands of 16-millimeter reels in its collection, the film archivist Elena Rossi-Snook projected some shorts for a group of undergraduates from Marymount Manhattan College. As the projector whirred, a beam of light cut through the darkened room, painting the screen with scenes from the 1946 animated “Boundary Lines,” a stirring movie by Philip Stapp about social integrity in the wake of World War II. That was followed by “The End,” an antiwar stoner comedy directed by a teenager, Alfonso Sanchez, in 1968. The third film, “Black Faces” from 1970, was an ebullient, one-minute montage of portraits of Harlem residents.These productions, precious documents of the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans, have endured, Rossi-Snook explained, because their makers had relatively cheap and convenient access to film, a medium that can last hundreds of years if stored properly.Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” another Aronofsky film shot on 16 millimeter.Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight PicturesToday, 16 millimeter is no longer optimal for the amateur filmmaker. Analog film is increasingly expensive, fewer and fewer labs can process it, and the format doesn’t allow the nearly unlimited shooting and instant playback that video does. But even as it turns 100, 16 millimeter still has a unique look that neither 35-millimeter film nor video can rival.When projected on the screen, analog film has a three-dimensional, pointillist texture called “grain,” a product of its synthetic makeup. There is more grain in 16 millimeter than in 35 millimeter, resulting in a fuzzier, flickering picture. In the 20th century, that was a drawback for professional filmmakers seeking crisp, theatrical images. But today, as high-definition media saturate our lives, some directors choose 16 millimeter precisely for its rougher look. It reminds us that what we’re watching is not the world as is, but filtered and transformed, with great creativity, through a chemical process.The filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has shot several movies on 16-millimeter film, including “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Mother!” (2017). But when he was making his debut feature, “Pi” (1998), 16 millimeter was a necessity, not a choice. The resolution of available digital cameras wasn’t good enough for feature filmmaking at the time, and Aronofsky couldn’t afford 35 millimeter. But he and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, soon realized that 16 millimeter — especially the high-contrast stock they used called reversal film — emphasized the hallucinatory style of “Pi,” a black-and-white psychological thriller that delves into the obsessions of a paranoid number theorist.“We decided to really lean into 16 millimeter,” Aronofsky said in a phone interview. “I wanted the big grain and the contrast-y look. It’s funny, because we just had the 25th anniversary of the film, and we blew it up for IMAX. And the IMAX people were nervous because of how grainy it was. They wanted to know if I wanted to clear out some of the grain with computer technology. And we said, absolutely not. We loved the look of it.”Several TV shows from the late ’90s and early 2000s, including “The O.C.” and “Sex and the City,” used Super 16, a variation of 16 millimeter with a larger picture area that gave them a sense of real-time immediacy. The first 10 seasons of “The Walking Dead” were also largely shot on 16 millimeter to capture the grimy, crumbling feel of classic horror cinema.The cinematographer John Inwood, who filmed 150 episodes of the comedy “Scrubs,” recalled that 16-millimeter cameras, which are smaller and lighter than their 35-millimeter counterparts (and even many contemporary professional video cameras), were crucial in developing the series’s frenetic mockumentary style.“It was good for ‘Scrubs’ because we moved the cameras a lot, and we were sometimes in tight spaces,” he told me. “We shot in an actual hospital, the former North Hollywood hospital, and we shot in every square inch of it, even down to the morgue.”Chadwick Boseman in a flashback to the Vietnam War in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” The director wanted those scenes to look as if they were archival newsreel footage.NetflixAs digital cameras have become sharper and more versatile, many filmmakers have turned to 16 millimeter to evoke the analog past and the blurry, precarious nature of memory. In an interview with Gold Derby, Newton Thomas Sigel, who filmed Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” (2020), said the director had insisted to Netflix that they use 16-millimeter reversal film for the sequences set amid the Vietnam War, despite the costs and logistical challenges. The film had to be shipped from Vietnam to an American lab for processing, and by the time the crew members could see what they had shot, Chadwick Boseman’s acting schedule had already ended. But Lee was adamant that the scenes look authentic, like archival newsreels filmed in the field in the 1970s.The veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman used Super 16 on two of his collaborations with the director Todd Haynes, both of them period dramas: the mini-series “Mildred Pierce” (2011), and “Carol” (2015), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination.On both projects, the format was chosen to mimic photographic images from the 1940s and ’50s, and the grittiness of postwar America. But Lachman realized that the grain also brought “tension to the surface of the image,” paralleling the repressive qualities of the characters in both “Mildred Pierce” and “Carol.”For Lachman, the appeal of 16 millimeter transcends nostalgia. It comes down to cinema’s status as an art, meant to stylize rather than simply reproduce reality. He likened film to painting, and grain to brushstrokes. “The grain changes in each frame with exposure,” he said. “It’s like breathing, almost like an anthropomorphic quality.”Kelly Reichardt turned to 16 millimeter after video shots of the snow looked too flat.Sony Pictures ClassicsThe filmmaker Kelly Reichardt recalled that when she started shooting her 2016 feature, “Certain Women,” she didn’t have the budget for 16 millimeter. But when she and her cameraman, Christopher Blauvelt, did test shoots in Montana, where the film is set, Reichardt was horrified at how “flat” the snow looked on video.“With film stocks, things weren’t so real looking,” Reichardt said. “A lot of it is grain, and 16 has more grain than 35. So when you blow it up, you don’t get the hard lines that you get in HD, which is what you see in sports.”A grant ultimately allowed Reichardt to shoot “Certain Women” on 16 millimeter. It made the production more laborious, but the results — soft, textured images of wide roads, snowy mountains and grassy plains, all shimmering with light, dust and shadow — made it worth it.“I guess it’s about beauty, in a way,” Reichardt said. “I remember on ‘30 Rock’ they did a little thing where Lemon walks in front of the HD camera, and it’s like, she’s a skeleton hag. You know? You see every single thing. It’s very unforgiving. For nature, too.” More

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    ‘Fall TV’ Is Dead. But Buzz Will Always Be With Us.

    Two television critics ponder what fall TV even means in the streaming era and discuss the series they’re most looking forward to this season.Each fall brings an onslaught of new television shows, but now so does every other season of the year. As another autumn approaches, James Poniewozik and Margaret Lyons, television critics at The New York Times, discussed what “fall TV” even means in the streaming era, along with the new and returning series they’re most looking forward to.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Remember fall TV? I do!I am old enough to remember when there was not just fall TV season, but fall-TV-season season. Come summer’s end, the big networks would roll out splashy prime-time TV preview specials that had the fresh, promising smell of new school supplies. My pop-cultural Christmas was the Saturday-morning preview special, when Kristy McNichol or Kaptain Kool and the Kongs would unveil the latest junk food for preteen eyeballs.Now, what even is fall? This year, big premieres like HBO’s “House of the Dragon” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” on Amazon, will have landed before Labor Day. I’m not even talking about the eternal “death of broadcast TV” here — it’s still around and even has a few decent shows — but just the general shift in how and when people watch new TV. In the streaming era, premiere season (which really is all year round) is less about what you’re going to watch immediately, and more about adding to your to-do list of shows to watch eventually.I mean, it still feels like fall, by the rhythm of the sidereal calendar I had imprinted in me by Sid and Marty Krofft. But if fall falls in a forest of year-round content, does it make a sound?Sheryl Lee Ralph, left, and Janelle James in “Abbot Elementary.” The acclaimed ABC sitcom returns in September for its second season.Gilles Mingasson/ABCMARGARET LYONS In addition to the year-round scheduling and overall increase in the number of new shows each year, new series aren’t just competing against one another — they’re up against the entire streaming catalog. The buffet has gotten bigger and more elaborate, but also the kitchen is open and the pantry is stocked, and you know how to cook.Do we lose anything when we “lose” “fall TV”? Pour one out for the people who for some reason relish being marketed to en masse, but from where I sit (on the couch), year-round scheduling is good! I want to be delighted by a show that comes out the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day; I want intense summer fare for muggy nights. Buzz knows no season, and schedule diffusion enables smaller shows that might have been buried during glut times to break through during more fallow weeks.Reboot culture has given us the end of endings. I wonder if streaming and year-round scheduling contribute to the end of beginnings.PONIEWOZIK Yes, chef! (Sorry. Kitchen metaphor = obligatory “The Bear” reference. I don’t make the rules.)The networks’ traditional approach of premiering dang near everything on TV the week after the Emmys was not great either for TV watchers or TV makers. So much material at once! So many cancellations! And then vast periods of nothing. Now there is always TV. But also, There. Is. Always. TV. If I’m nostalgic for anything, it’s that rare seasonal sugar rush of “My shows are coming back!”Yet I still feel a tiny bit of that. “Abbott Elementary” — a straight-up, joke-packed broadcast sitcom that makes a bunch of episodes a year and is actually good — is coming back on ABC in September, just as the framers of the Constitution intended. I’m glad we now have cable and streaming shows of all lengths and styles (again, I watched “The Bear”), but it’s nice to see the old machine can still occasionally work.Anything you’re looking forward to? Or is “forward” meaningless in the eternal present of streaming?A new season of “The White Lotus,” premiering in October, is set in Italy. With, from left, Michael Imperioli, Adam DiMarco and F. Murray Abraham.Fabio Lovino/HBOLYONS I think “Abbott Elementary” is a good example of an ambiguous beginning: ABC aired a preview of “Abbott Elementary” in December, after which the episode was available on Hulu, and then the pilot re-aired in January — a one-off on a Monday before the show moved to its Tuesday time slot for the remainder of its run. Now it’s getting a well-deserved fancier rollout, segueing from sleeper hit to crown jewel; a reintroduction of sorts.In terms of looking forward, I’m counting the days for the returns of Apple TV+’s “Mythic Quest,” IFC’s “Sherman’s Showcase” and “Los Espookys” on HBO. The final seasons of “Atlanta” on FX and “The Good Fight” on Paramount+ are nigh.I’m also wondering if we’re about to go through another vampire moment, with “Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire,” on AMC, and Showtime’s series adaptation of “Let the Right One In” both coming out this fall. And I am curious about Susan Sarandon and Hilary Swank both starring in network dramas, of all things (Fox’s “Monarch” and ABC’s “Alaska Daily,” respectively). My guess is our tastes overlap pretty heavily here.PONIEWOZIK Indeed, “Atlanta” and “The Good Fight” are two of the shows I’m most anticipating this season. Both captured, in very different ways, the surrealness of life in America this past six years or so.I’m hoping “The White Lotus,” on HBO, can be as strong as an ongoing anthology as it was when I thought it would be a one-off limited series. And as a former ’80s fantasy nerd, I’m at least … curious about the Disney+ series version of “Willow.” The Ron Howard movie, which opened in theaters in 1988, was not the blockbuster its producers hoped it would be. (Its current TV legacy is lending a name to a character, Elora Danan, on FX’s “Reservation Dogs.”) Now that fantasy is almost as ubiquitous a genre as cop shows, maybe its time has finally come.As always, I also just want to laugh. So I agree about “Sherman’s Showcase” — welcome back, it has been too long!Warwick Davis returns for a series version of “Willow,” premiering in November on Disney+. (With Graham Hughes, right.)Lucasfilm/Disney+LYONS Yes, “Willow” is very high on my “hmmm” list, as well. Is this a title people have been clamoring for? Perhaps!Another thing I wonder about is whether the diminished primacy of the fall season is part of television becoming less standardized in general. How many episodes are in a “season”? How long do shows go between seasons? How many seasons do we consider a good run? Are there still prestigious time slots or needle-moving lead-ins? What are the rules?PONIEWOZIK Things were simpler when the rule was, “You make TV from September to May, and you keep doing it until the ratings give out.” It’s better, in theory, that shows can now be the length that a story requires. In practice, TV isn’t always sure what size it should be anymore.Some invisible standards committee recently decided that eight to 10 episodes is the optimal length for a streaming series. Often, it is! (I was one of those critics who used to praise British TV for making two six-episode, no-filler seasons and calling it a day.) But sometimes a show feels compressed. I really liked Jason Katims’s “As We See It” for eight episodes on Amazon, but it felt like it once would have been a 22-episode Jason Katims dramedy on NBC.On the more-is-not-always-more front, this fall we’ll get the finale of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” which began in the first Obama administration, when Netflix was somewhere you watched old movies. I don’t know how many marathon runs like that we’ll see again.Christine Baranski in “The Good Fight,” back for its final season in September.Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+LYONS And of course “The Walking Dead” can’t actually die: There are already two current spinoffs and a few more in the works.I doubt we will see another show with that kind of ratings success. But I think the long-running series is a hallmark of network and cable now, which both sometimes feel like they’re mostly forever shows. “The Simpsons” is going into its 34th season, “Law & Order: SVU” into its 24th, “NCIS” into its 20th and “Grey’s Anatomy” into its 19th. “The Challenge” debuted in 1998 and was recently renewed for a 38th and 39th season.“South Park” is in its 25th season. “Bob’s Burgers” is going into its 13th and “The Goldbergs” into its 10th. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has been airing on and off since 2000. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” started in 2005. “The Real Housewives of Orange County” started in 2006 and “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” in 2007. These are all still prime-time mainstays!Streaming platforms haven’t been around long enough to have any truly long-running shows, but I wonder if their models are designed to ever generate or support one. Is “Love Is Blind” going to follow a “Bachelor”/“Bachelorette” model and outlive us all? Stranger things have happened … but also, “Stranger Things” has happened, and it’s hard to picture that show running for 10 seasons.PONIEWOZIK I don’t know, those last “Stranger Things” episodes sure felt 10 seasons long.But yeah, there’s a divide between your deathless animated sitcoms, procedurals and game/reality shows — I’ll be there for “Survivor” Season 43 — and highly serial shows, which have started to tend toward shorter runs or one-season limited series. Maybe “L.O.T.R.” could bring back the long-running serial. Elves are immortal!And then there’s … well, whatever Disney’s Marvel and “Star Wars” shows are. They’re sort of anthological, often running a single season each. But they’re also chapters in these interconnected, multiplatform, decades-spanning intellectual-property blobs, which are both sprawling and static. You know what to expect from the brand, and that’s what they give you. I had hoped these mega franchises might be freer to be weird and experimental on TV, but now “WandaVision” seems like the exception.Film critics wonder whether movies in the streaming era are becoming TV. Maybe — at least when it comes to recycling big-ticket I.P. — TV is becoming the movies. More