What We Do in the Shadows (TV Program)

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    ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Returns One Last Time

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    One of TV’s few great funny ha-ha comedies begins its sixth and final season this week on FX and Hulu.One of my absolute favorite shows, FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows,” is back for its sixth and final season, with three new episodes now streaming on Hulu. The show, set within a household of vampires on Staten Island, remains goofy and grotesque, full of warped zingers and silly asides.Only the first three episodes of the season were made available to critics, and they introduce a few new facets, including a long-dormant additional roommate, Jerry the Vampire (Mike O’Brien). His fellow vampires were supposed to wake him in 1996, and he’s peeved to discover that not only did they let him oversleep for so long, but they also haven’t achieved any of the world-conquering goals they’d all set. Elsewhere, Guillermo, the lovable familiar, has re-entered the regular human work force — first at Panera and then at a financial firm (where they keep odd hours … hmm…).In the wake of Jerry’s disapproval, Laszlo (Matt Berry) feels motivated to get back to the lab and take another crack at one of his hideous experiments. Colin (Mark Proksch) tags along, and lo, he too has a knack for freaky discoveries. “Another young scientist inspired,” Laszlo crows. “First Mr. Oppenheimer, and now Colin Robinson.”“Shadows” faces the most vexing question for both vampires and sitcoms: Does anything change? It’s the curse and comfort of immortality and comedy alike, that everything tends to — has to? — reset and reset and reset to the norm. Even when “Shadows” stretches itself with format, as in Season 4’s brilliant HGTV episode, or in season-long surprise arcs, as with Colin’s gleefully bizarre death and rebirth, everything finds its way back to how it always was.My fondest hope is that “Shadows” has a few final tricks up its sleeve, but even its waning fifth season brought me plenty of joy last year. At a time when funny ha-ha comedies are rare, losing one of our jokiest shows stings extra hard. More

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      Mark Proksch, of ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ Gets Into the Swing of It

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      As an “energy vampire,” the comic actor has been the most relatable menace in the FX comedy, which begins its final season.On a recent evening, the actor Mark Proksch watched as a pirate ghost cavorted on a video monitor. “I love their idea of what counts as haunted,” he said.Proksch, 46, a star of the FX supernatural comedy “What We Do in the Shadows,” knows a thing or two about haunting. He plays Colin Robinson, a vampire who shares a crumbling Staten Island mansion with three undead roommates and one human minion. Unlike his friends, Colin is a day walker, an energy vampire who feeds off others, mostly by droning on about zoning ordinances or car insurance. (Proksch, who has a gift for tedium, mostly improvises these speeches.) Onscreen, he plays blandness with such intensity that he makes apparent normalcy seem very, very weird.Proksch, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the TV writer Amelie Gillette, was in town to promote the comedy’s sixth and final season at New York’s Comic Con. (The first three episodes premiere Monday on FX and Tuesday on Hulu.)On a free night, he had come to the home of the pirate ghost, Shipwrecked, an ostensibly eerie mini-golf course in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. At the first hole, he hefted his club and swung at his bright green ball. A hole in one.“Well, that was thrilling,” he said dryly.Raised in a small city in Wisconsin, Proksch never planned on a career in performance. (As a child, he appeared in a community theater production of “The Music Man”; he had no lines.) Pale and unassuming, he has a way of blending into the background of any given room. “It’s that Midwestern charisma,” he joked.On the fourth hole, his ball veered around a tropical plant then was caught by a sand trap. “There’s a reason I haven’t done this in 20 years,” 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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      Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in October: ‘Shrinking,’ ‘Disclaimer’ and More

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      “Citadel: Diana,” “Disclaimer,” “The Franchise,” “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” a Springsteen documentary and others arrive.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of October’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‘Citadel: Diana’Starts streaming: Oct. 10Last year, Amazon released the first season of “Citadel,” a big-budget action series about a pair of retired spies forced back into service to thwart a dangerous international agency known as Manticore. The idea all along was for the show to anchor a sprawling franchise, which collectively would tell the story of the covert Citadel organization across multiple countries and eras. Now the first of those spinoffs is here: “Diana,” set in Italy in the year 2030, starring Matilda De Angelis as a Citadel agent who has spent so long undercover within Manticore that she has lost touch with her handlers and mission. “Diana” jumps back and forth in time, to show how and why the heroine was recruited into espionage in the first place, along with what happened to Citadel that has left her all alone, deep behind enemy lines.Also arriving:Oct. 3“House of Spoils”“The Legend of Vox Machina” Season 3Oct. 8“Killer Cakes”Oct. 15“Beyond Black Beauty”Oct. 16“Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?” Season 1Oct. 24“Like a Dragon: Yakuza”Oct. 30“Buy It Now” Season 1New to AMC+A scene from “Stork,” an episode of “V/H/S/Beyond.”Shudder‘V/H/S/Beyond’Starts streaming: Oct. 4The “V/H/S” series of horror anthologies have survived the fluctuating popularity of the “found footage” subgenre, in part because the collections have such uncomplicated yet clever organizing concepts. Each film is presented as a set of disturbing home videos, newly discovered and sharing a common theme. The latest edition is framed as an episode of a TV show about cryptids and aliens, which gives the chapters a science-fiction angle. As always with this franchise, the participating filmmakers take creative approaches to their segments, which in “Beyond” includes one about a Bollywood dance number gone awry, one set during a skydiving misadventure, and one moody U.F.O. encounter story written by the ace horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan and directed by his wife, Kate Siegel.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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      Matt Berry Is Afraid of Heights, Not Comedy

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      His performance as a debauched vampire in “What We Do in the Shadows” earned him an Emmy nod. It has also often had him dangling 50 feet off the ground.Many actors will claim to have been surprised by an Emmy nomination. Matt Berry seems to mean it. While “What We Do in the Shadows,” the gleefully grotesque FX vampire comedy, has piled up a score of Emmy nominations, none were for performance.So when Berry’s agent called in mid-July and asked to FaceTime, Berry, a prolific singer-songwriter who was busy at his drum kit recording a new folk-pop album, had no idea why.“I can honestly tell you I was not expecting an Emmy nomination,” he said. But it was — a nomination for best lead actor in a comedy series, his first in any category.Berry, 50, an English actor best known for cult comedies like “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace” and “Toast of London,” stars as Laszlo Cravensworth, a 300-year-old English aristocrat turned vampire. An avatar of decadence with a thing for orgies and cravats, he is played by Berry with a debauched joy and an accent that somehow suggests cut glass, crushed velvet and many, many quaaludes.Berry, whose gift is for making the most outlandish circumstances feel oddly plausible, recently wrapped the show’s sixth and final season. He didn’t seem to regret it. “I’m one of those that is very keen to cut loose when I’m onto a good thing,” he said. And despite the occasional wire work — he has an entirely serious fear of heights — “Shadows” had been good.Reached at his home in Bedfordshire, England, Berry discussed Victorian style, vampirism’s upsides and the most outlandish things the show has ever made him do. 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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      Haley Joel Osment, ‘Sixth Sense’ Star, Is Content 25 Years Later

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      Haley Joel Osment’s childhood memories are not like other people’s. He remembers the kindness with which Tom Hanks treated him, when he was 5 and playing Hanks’s son in “Forrest Gump.” And the time Russell Crowe adjusted his bow tie at an awards show when Osment, not yet 12, was Oscar-nominated for his breakout performance in “The Sixth Sense.” The in-depth conversations he had with Steven Spielberg about the future as they were filming “A.I.” that same year.A phalanx of Osment clones, made for that movie, are still floating around — he heard they might have ended up stockpiled in Peter Jackson’s trove of memorabilia in New Zealand. If the apocalypse happens, Osment jokes, that preteen version of him will survive.It is, in any case, the form in which many fans know him best — especially as the notably named Cole Sear, the teary-eyed center of “The Sixth Sense,” M. Night Shyamalan’s blockbuster supernatural thriller from August 1999. Osment’s indelibly whispered line, “I see dead people,” went from the trailer to the canon of cinema to pop culture infamy long before memes even existed to codify it (though they have now). It was a phrase so potent that, 25 years after its arrival, it is a Kendrick Lamar lyric — on a Drake diss track, no less.With its final-act twist, “The Sixth Sense” also, some cineastes argue, started “spoiler culture” — meaning that mass moviedom as we know it, with entire publicity campaigns and prickly fan bases fiercely safeguarding plotlines, sprang from that moment. A 10-year-old paired with an action star (Bruce Willis), playing against type as a child therapist, spooked audiences into repeat views, and today we scour the screen for Easter eggs and hope for the thrill of a shock.Osment with Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense.” When the boy auditioned, M. Night Shyamalan recalled, “I turned to the casting director and said, ‘I don’t think I want to make this without him.’”Buena Vista PicturesOsment is now 36; he has been a working actor for nearly nine-tenths of his life, in drama, comedy, fantasy, animation, period pieces, video games and oddball stuff. He has enough credits that when a cast was made of his arm for the Amazon superhero series “The Boys,” he was able to use it again, seasons later, to beat someone in the FX vampire satire “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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      Colin Hanks Finds Perfection in ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and Tacos at Every Meal

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      The actor, who moves out of his comfort zone in Peacock’s “A Friend of the Family,” talks about his love affair with soccer and the pleasure of a shaved head.When Colin Hanks learned that he was being considered for “A Friend of the Family,” he thought, “Awesome — it sounds fabulous.”Then the scripts arrived.“I went, ‘Oh, this is just the saddest show I’ve ever read, so I don’t know what to think if you’ve been thinking of me,’” he recalled. “It was one of those stories that was incredibly intimidating and my first instinct was just, ‘No, I can’t.’”But he couldn’t get the true-crime show out of his head. Debuting Oct. 6 on Peacock, Nick Antosca’s limited series is based on the real story of the Brobergs (who were also the subjects of the 2017 Netflix documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight”).Hanks plays Bob Broberg, a stalwart Mormon in bucolic Idaho whose family implodes when Robert Berchtold (Jake Lacy) — or Brother B, to his adoring neighbors — moves to town and perverts everything they thought they believed in. He also kidnaps the Brobergs’ eldest daughter, Jan. Twice.Before he took on the role, Hanks made it clear that he wasn’t interested in re-enacting a laundry list of all the bad decisions the Brobergs made while being emotionally and sexually manipulated by Berchtold, even as they questioned his growing fixation on their daughter. Rather, Hanks wanted to examine why they made these choices.The Vampire Antics of ‘What We Do in the Shadows’The FX series based on the 2015 film by the same name follows a crew of vampires and their struggles to settle down in Staten Island.The Movie: “At heart a dotty look at oldsters struggling to adapt to an unwelcoming modernity, ‘Shadows’ has the bones of an anarchic sitcom,” The Times wrote upon the film’s release.The Creators: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi wrote, directed and acted in the mockumentary. Here is why they decided to return to the vampire world with a show.Series Review: “If ‘Shadows’ doesn’t seem entirely necessary, it’s perfectly fun,” our critic wrote when the TV show debuted in 2019.Harvey Guillén: The actor plays Guillermo, a human in a house full of vampires. Though it was supposed to be a minor role, he quickly became a fan favorite.“And that was exactly what Nick was wanting to explore,” he said.It has been a hectic year for Hanks, who played an F.B.I. agent in “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and a studio executive in “The Offer,” about the making of “The Godfather.” A San Francisco Giants fan, he has also produced a documentary about Willie Mays, out November on HBO.Calling from London, where he’s shooting an independent film, Hanks ticked off 10 things that have kept him grounded during the hustle, including “What We Do in the Shadows,” his cast-iron skillet and the Atlanta BeltLine.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Baseball 100” by Joe Posnanski I’ve been slowly reading this book because I don’t want it to end. They’re really more of a character study on players from all different points in baseball’s history, as well as players from Japan and players from the Negro leagues.2. My cast-iron skillet I’m not very skilled at cooking, not yet at least. But there’s something about the idea of using this one skillet and seasoning it and being able to cook almost anything in it and that’s all you need. In a strange way, it’s also a little bit like a baseball mitt. You’ve got to break it in. You’ve got to take care of it. You’ve got to clean it properly. It’s not something that you use and then throw in the sink and don’t think twice about.3. “Sunderland ’Til I Die” on Netflix I’ve made a bunch of documentaries. That’s sort of my show business side hustle. I did one about Tower Records. I did another about Eagles of Death Metal going back to Paris, playing after the Bataclan attack. Recently, I got obsessed with this fantastic sports doc called “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” about an English football team that’s been demoted. That’s just heartbreak, the likes of which I’ve not seen in sports in quite some time.4. Shaving my head I had to have a very specific hairstyle to play Bob Broberg. So half of my head has been shaved because I had a very serious wig process that I had to go through. I had to paint my head every morning and then do four layers of makeup and then put a wig on top. I’ve been wearing a hat every day since. I’m currently doing a job in which I had to have another wig made that looks like my normal hairstyle. I’m very much looking forward to about seven days from now, being able to shave my head and start all over again.5. Tacos The perfect food. Period. Exclamation point. They can be lunch, they can be dinner and, if you’re really lucky and you’ve got a good spot, they can also be breakfast as well.6. Discovering “new” music I find something really joyful in discovering music that’s new for you but might not necessarily be new for all. I found this record by this band called Jagwar Ma from 2013, and I’ve been listening to it nonstop walking around London. Wherever I travel, I go to local record stores, and I will label what city I’ve bought the records in. And so all of my records are sort of a memory, if you will, of where I was literally, physically, but also where I was in my life and what I was doing.7. Fall Fall is one of those moments that I really enjoy — you see the leaves change and you feel the temperature drop and everyone gets excited, for a little while at least, to button up their coats. It also means that the Fall Classic is right around the corner.8. The Atlanta BeltLine I live in Los Angeles, but I had to relocate to Atlanta for “A Friend of the Family.” It’s this fantastic walkway that circles the entire city. It is just this incredible conduit to Atlanta. Since I was staying right by it, I could throw some shoes on and go for a walk and see people and have dinner someplace and walk back. It’s not too dissimilar from the High Line in New York. It made me feel like I was part of the life there.9. Soccer They call it the beautiful game for a reason. The simplicity of it — a sport that is played everywhere around the world, and all you really need is a ball. I was actually supposed to see Liverpool play and it was going to be the first time I was going to see them live in person, and the match was postponed because of the Queen’s funeral. So it was very, very sad. Hence, now a Sunday spent at a pub drinking my sorrows away.10. FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows” It’s one of those shows where you might watch the first two episodes and your instinct is to say, “OK, I get it. They’re vampires. It’s a fake documentary. Everyone is speaking in funny accents.” Pardon the pun, but that show crept up on me in such a way that I am crying laughing practically every single episode. The concept of a vampire that sucks your energy by boring you to death, I thought that was so hilarious. Oddly, you wouldn’t necessarily think that a show that broad would be able to grip you and make you fall in love with the characters. But I absolutely have. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Everything’s Trash’ and ‘The Rehearsal’

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      New shows from the idiosyncratic comedy creators Phoebe Robinson and Nathan Fielder debut on Freeform and HBO.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 11-17. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: WUHAN WUHAN (2022) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). As with “Berlin, 1945,” or “Fukushima, 2011,” the title card “February, 2020, Wuhan, China,” will forever convey more than just a time and place. This feature-length documentary from Yung Chang gives a fly-on-the-wall look at the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, and at the lives of health care workers and other Chinese citizens who lived through that period.TuesdayNatasia Demetriou and Matt Berry in “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FXWHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. The Spirit Halloween store of comedy shows — and its cast of eccentric vampires who live together on Staten Island — returns with a pair of Season 4 premiere episodes on Tuesday. Highlights of the new season include the opening of a vampire nightclub and the rearing of a supernatural child who emerged at the end of last season. (That’s “emerged” in the literal sense — the child came out of the chest cavity of another character.)WednesdayEVERYTHING’S TRASH 10 p.m. on Freeform. The comedy auteur Phoebe Robinson (“2 Dope Queens”) plays a fictionalized version of herself in this new series, which was inspired by Robinson’s 2018 essay collection, “Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay.” The Phoebe of “Everything’s Trash” is a 30-something podcast host living a proudly chaotic life in Brooklyn. But she faces pressure to rein in her lifestyle when her older brother (Jordan Carlos) runs for public office.ThursdayJOCKEY (2021) 9 p.m. on Starz. Clifton Collins Jr., long a supporting player on screens big (as in “Capote”) and small (“Westworld”), got a juicy leading role in this dramatic film. He plays Jackson Silva, an aging jockey. Jackson practices out of a track in Arizona under the eye of his longtime trainer, Ruth (Molly Parker) — despite the fact that his body strains to keep up with the pace and rigor of the sport. That potent setup is agitated by the arrival of a young jockey, Gabriel (Moises Arias), whom Jackson mentors — but whose youthful presence further highlights Jackson’s age. It’s “an enjoyable old-warrior movie with a surprising sting,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times, “even if the bones and story are creaky.”FridayNathan Fielder in “The Rehearsal.”David M. Russell/HBOTHE REHEARSAL 10 p.m. on HBO. With “Nathan For You,” a docu-comedy series that ran on Comedy Central from 2013 to 2017, Nathan Fielder became a key figure in the development of what the critic Jason Zinoman, in a 2021 column in The Times, called “a quiet revolution” in comedy: A renaissance in documentary comedy whose artists also include Sacha Baron Cohen, John Wilson and Eric André. Fielder’s new show, “The Rehearsal,” is built around a novel way of blurring reality and fiction: It follows Fielder as he meets ordinary people and offers them an opportunity to rehearse for upcoming significant moments in their lives, on sets meticulously built to mirror their own realities.SaturdayThomasin McKenzie in “Last Night in Soho.”Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. “I would say I’m ghost-curious,” the filmmaker Edgar Wright said in an interview with The Times last year. “I haven’t seen one but I’d really like to.” Wright, known for stylized, fast-moving films with quick cuts (see “Baby Driver” and “Shaun of the Dead”), uses his filmmaking trickery to conjure a ghostly spirit in “Last Night in Soho,” a creepy thriller that mixes the lives of two young women living in different eras. The story follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a fashion student who moves into a creaky old apartment in modern-day London. There, she begins having visions of a young singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who occupied some of the same spaces in the 1960s — and who increasingly comes to occupy Eloise’s consciousness.EL DORADO (1966) 8:45 on Sundance TV. The actor James Caan died last week at 82. One of his earliest meaty film roles came in this Western, in which Caan plays a young man nicknamed Mississippi, who is the associate of an older gun for hire played by John Wayne. Wayne’s character, Cole Thornton, is called to help an old friend — a drunken sheriff played by Robert Mitchum — defend a family of ranchers against a group of bad guys trying to take their land. He brings Mississippi along for the ride. The critic Howard Thompson called the film “a tough, laconic and amusing Western” in his 1967 review for The Times. “This Paramount color release is worth seeing,” Thompson added, “if only for the casual, saddle-sore expertise and ribaldry” of Wayne and Mitchum, whom he referred to as “these two leathery dudes.”SundaySPACE TITANS: MUSK, BEZOS, BRANSON 9 p.m. on Science Channel. This feature-length special looks at the ongoing ambitions of the billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to commercialize space travel through their respective companies. It is built around the reporting of the journalist Christian Davenport, who covers NASA and the space industry for The Washington Post. More

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      The Best TV Episodes of 2021

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      Among the thousands of hours of television that came out this year, episodes of “Call My Agent,” “For All Mankind,” “Mythic Quest,” “Pose” and “WandaVision,” among others, stood out.From left, “Dave,” PEN15” and “Genius: Aretha” put out some of TV’s best episodes of the year.From left: Byron Cohen/FX; Hulu; Richard DuCree/National GeographicTelevision today comes in big portions, as anyone who spent seven-plus hours with the Beatles over Thanksgiving weekend can attest. But just as a marathon jam session can yield a few tight singles, the most memorable TV is still often the well-crafted individual episode. As Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I end another year’s binge as TV critics for The New York Times, here are a few of the installments from 2021 that topped our personal hit parades. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Call My Agent!’ (Netflix)‘Sigourney’More than 30 European actors — including stars like Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno — have graciously and often mercilessly lampooned themselves in this French dramedy, playing clients or prospective clients or angry former clients of the fictional talent agency ASK. In this Season 4 episode, an American stepped in, and Sigourney Weaver, speaking more than passable French and playing herself as an utterly charming manipulator, was flawless. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘City of Ghosts’‘Bob & Nancy’Plenty of children’s shows are cute but “City of Ghosts” is also beautiful, and its poetic wistfulness about Los Angeles would be at home on a premium cable drama. Instead it’s in this plucky, naturalistic cartoon about ghost-hunting kids who have a podcast. I loved every episode of this show. But I picked “Bob & Nancy” because it’s about a marionette theater, and thus it toys with ideas of animating the inanimate — rich ground for a show in touch with the spirit realm. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSHarley Quinn Smith in the finale of “Cruel Summer,” which offered both a happy ending and a surprising twist.Freeform/Bill Matlock‘Cruel Summer’‘Hostile Witness’This teen kidnapping mystery took all the hallmarks of prestige-y crime shows — split timelines, dark lighting, tangential secrets — and repackaged them with a kicky ’90s YA flare. It was one of the juicy highlights of the summer. But shows like this are only as good as their finales, and “Cruel Summer” managed the trick of both a happy ending and a thrilling, dark twist. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Dave’ (FXX)‘Somebody Date Me’Texting can be a crutch for TV shows, a way to use pop-up bubbles to give characters phone-enabled telepathy. Not so in this playful, smart half-hour, in which Dave Burd’s up-and-coming rapper made (and lost) a date with Doja Cat. As the two musicians courted with their thumbs, “Somebody Date Me” showed how context and time can change the meaning and reading of the smallest online (mis)communication. Thumbs-up emoji! (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKThe Season 2 finale of “For All Mankind,” with Krys Marshall, revolved around multiple white-knuckle missions.Apple TV+‘For All Mankind’ (Apple TV+)‘The Grey’Each season of this space-race alternative history is a multistage booster rocket. The slow-moving early episodes expend a lot of fuel, building energy and narrative force until the show reaches escape velocity. (My aerospace engineer readers, I beg you not to fact-check my metaphors.) The white-knuckle Season 2 finale moved with the deftness of a docking maneuver, as a U.S.-Soviet conflict on the moon and a threatened war on Earth required risk and sacrifice on two celestial bodies and points in between. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Genius: Aretha’ (National Geographic)‘Amazing Grace’‘Pose’ (FX)‘Take Me to Church’The music and community of the Black church co-starred in two praiseworthy hours of TV. The Aretha Franklin bio-series peaked as it focused on the recording of the 1972 “Amazing Grace” live album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, fusing the artist’s past and present in a crucible of soul. In “Pose,” a grim diagnosis led Pray Tell (Billy Porter) back to his hometown and church community, both to confront the homophobia that drove him from it and give voice to the music that sustained him. (Stream “Genius: Aretha” on Hulu; buy “Pose” on Amazon.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKPerry Mattfeld, left, and David Webster, in the “Somewhere Over the Border” episode of “In the Dark.” CW‘In the Dark’ (CW)‘Somewhere Over the Border’This CW drama about a blind woman and her buddies, who run a rescue-dog agency and get involved in drug dealing and murder, is no more than a serviceable thriller. But the rapport among its central characters, Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), Jess (Brooke Markham) and Felix (Morgan Krantz), has developed into one of the more believable and moving portrayals of friendship on TV. When Murphy found herself stranded in a strange country, the strength of those ties was the foundation of a taut and agonizing hour. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘Line of Duty’ (BritBox)Season 6, Episode 5Tension and deception pump through the veins of this breakneck procedural about a British internal-affairs unit, and no show does cliffhangers better. You could point to just about any episode; this one, with one of the heroes following a possibly dirty cop into an abandoned industrial park because that’s what the job called for, was off the charts. (Streaming on BritBox.) MIKE HALE‘Love, Death & Robots’‘The Drowned Giant’In just 13 minutes, this elegant short about a giant’s corpse that washes up on a beach one day captures, in a perfect snapshot, humanity’s tendency to desecrate marvels, to behold a world-changing event and decide simply to carry on. Based on a short story by J.G. Ballard, “The Drowned Giant” is rendered here in mostly realistic animation, with the giant’s clean-shaven cheeks, tidy fingernails and muscular chest shown in aching detail. In an era when so many shows just blend together, this episode stands out for its light touch and sad imagination. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSIn a memorable episode of “Making It,” contestants like Jessie Lamworth, (right, with the host Amy Poehler) made Halloween costumes.Evans Vestal Ward/NBC‘Making It’‘All the Holidays at Once’Post “Great British Baking Show,” lots of reality competition series have gone away from the cutthroat in favor of the warm and fuzzy, and perhaps no show is warmer and fuzzier than the craft competition “Making It.” Each episode has its charms but “All the Holidays at Once” was especially thrilling, because unlike some of the show’s grander projects, crafting your own Halloween costume is pretty standard fare, even for layfolk. The contestants’ giddy joy in presenting their creations to the judges was matched only by my own giddy joy at seeing their silly and spectacular costumes. Jess won with her superb alien-abduction costume but when everything is this fun, don’t we all win? As a bonus, this episode also included Melañio telling a story about a bat in a toilet, a tale that will haunt me for the rest of my days. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Mythic Quest’ (Apple TV+)‘Backstory!’Having come up with one of the best pandemic-inspired episodes of 2020, this video game-industry comedy is gunning for TV’s high score in stand-alones. This installment gave the back story-obsessed game writer C.W. Longbottom (a wonderfully blustery F. Murray Abraham) his own flashback as a struggling sci-fi author in the 1970s — a funny and poignant tale of irony, professional jealousy and success at a cost. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Nuclear Family’ (HBO)Episode 3Ry Russo-Young’s three-part documentary about her lesbian mothers and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights, threatening to pull apart her family, built to a powerful and eloquent conclusion. It both affirmed the importance of the battle her mothers fought and questioned the assumptions of everyone involved. (Streaming on HBO Max.) MIKE HALEIn a March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle discussed their separation from the royal family.Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’One so rarely gets to receive or send a “turn on your TV right now” text, especially in my line of work. So for that dual thrill alone this interview earned a place in my heart. It was the kind of programming that barely exists anymore: a tell-all network special in which celebrities share genuine new information with Oprah, the patron saint of soul-baring. There were Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aglow in the California sun, decrying racism and candidly discussing mental health crises. Which would have been enough, but they also reset the royal narrative, gave Oprah eggs, fought back tears and gazed lovingly at one another — all while sitting in chairs sold by Christopher Knight from “The Brady Bunch.” Television, baby! I love you! MARGARET LYONS‘PEN15’ (Hulu)‘Yuki’Mutsuko Erskine had never acted before her daughter, Maya, cast her to play Maya’s mother in Hulu’s brutally funny teen comedy. Sometimes daughter knows best. This showpiece episode, in which a chance meeting with an ex-husband led Yuki to look down a road not taken, was a rich vignette of an immigrant’s experience and a subtle performance to cap off the role, literally, of a lifetime. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)‘The Dad-Feelings Limited’Who would have thought that the origin story of Comic Book Guy, done partly as an affectionate sendup of a Wes Anderson film, would be so lovely? (Streaming on Disney+.) MIKE HALE‘Snowfall’ (FX)‘All the Way Down’This brutal and only-as-sentimental-as-it-needs-to-be drama about a rogue C.I.A. agent and a young Black entrepreneur, partners in the crack wars in early 1980s Los Angeles, still does not get enough attention. That’s especially true of the stories written by the novelist Walter Mosley, like this chilling, tightly packed episode about rage, revenge, gentrification and wanting to go straight. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALEIn “WandaVision,” Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen channeled multiple eras of TV including, in the premiere, 1950s sitcoms.Marvel Studios‘WandaVision’ (Disney+)‘Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience’Several installments of this superhero psychodrama, set in a bizarro-world version of classic sitcom formats, could have made this list. But might as well start at the beginning, in which Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) played house on a 1950s stage set whose made-for-TV perfection turned horrifyingly (and ingeniously) wrong. (Streaming on Disney+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘What We Do in the Shadows’‘Casino’“Shadows” is one of the funniest shows on TV right now, and “Casino,” where the gang heads to Atlantic City, was my favorite episode this season. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) becomes entranced by a “Big Bang Theory” slot machine — “‘bazinga’ is the war cry of Sheldon,” he explains — and in perfect, cascading horror, this leads to the total dissolution of his understanding of the universe. “Shadows” is its best when the vampires’ grandiosity clashes with their vulnerabilities, especially their excitability, and I’ll never see another in-house ad on a hotel TV without thinking that it’s Colin Robinson’s favorite show. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, HBO, Hulu and More in September

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our favorites for September.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. 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 VideoBilly Bob Thornton in “Goliath.”Greg Lewis/Amazon Prime Video‘Goliath’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 24Billy Bob Thornton says goodbye to one of the best characters of his career with the fourth and final season of “Goliath,” a California legal drama inspired by film noir. Thornton has spent three seasons playing Billy McBride, a formerly high-powered and high-living lawyer who crashed hard and has since been trying to redeem himself, one seemingly unwinnable case at a time. For this last run of episodes, Billy finds himself in San Francisco, fighting his mental, physical and emotional frailties while helping a big-time law firm earn a potential billion-dollar settlement against some opioid-peddling pharmaceutical companies. Once again, an ace supporting cast (including the series regular Nina Arianda and the newcomers Bruce Dern, Jena Malone, J.K. Simmons and Elias Koteas) works magnificently to deliver a moody and complex mystery with juicy twists.Also arriving:Sept. 3“Cinderella”Sept. 10“LuLaRich”“Pretty Hard Cases”“The Voyeurs”Sept. 17“Do, Re & Mi”“Everyone’s Talking About Jamie”“The Mad Women’s Ball”New to Apple TV+Jared Harris in a scene from “Foundation.”Helen Sloan/Apple TV+‘Come From Away’Starts streaming: Sept. 10Two national tragedies — the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic — play a role in this recording of the Tony-winning musical “Come From Away,” shot in a Broadway theater earlier this year in front of a specially selected live audience of emergency responders, health care workers and 9/11 survivors. The show is a tuneful and impressionistic document of a true story from that day, describing the moments of kindness and connection that happened when the friendly Canadian small town of Gander, in Newfoundland, took care of over 7,000 passengers from planes diverted to its airport. Both an imaginative piece of journalism and an emotional recollection of a difficult time, “Come From Away” is a cathartic entertainment, tempering heartbreak with hope.‘Foundation’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 24One of the most influential science-fiction franchises of all time, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” is as relevant today as it was when the original trilogy of books was written in the 1940s and ’50s. The long-in-development, flashy-looking TV version embraces the modern parallels. Jared Harris plays the brilliant mathematician Hari Seldon, who has crunched the numbers and has determined that the millennia-old galactic empire is due for an irreversible collapse in a few centuries, leading to 30,000 years of chaos. But that chaos could be reduced to a mere 1,000 years if society took immediate steps to preserve its knowledge and culture. The show’s creators, David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, tell a story that spans multiple planets and decades but is ultimately about how ordinary human weaknesses and fears sometimes keep us from realizing our grandest ambitions.Also arriving:Sept. 17“The Morning Show” Season 2New to Disney+From left, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Mapuana Makia in a scene from “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.”Karen Neal/Disney‘Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 8This remake of the ’90s family dramedy “Doogie Howser, M.D.” moves the action from Los Angeles to Hawaii and changes the protagonist from a teenage boy to a teenage girl (played by the Disney Channel favorite Peyton Elizabeth Lee). But the premise remains the same: What if a child genius finished college and medical school early and became a licensed doctor by age 16? Like the original, this new “Doogie” is a coming-of-age story about a precocious kid, who discovers that knowing a lot about how to fix human bodies hasn’t wholly prepared her for the more adult problems of romantic heartbreak and workplace woes.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Dug Days” Season 1Sept. 3“Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles”Sept. 22“Star Wars: Visions” Season 1New to HBO MaxOscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in the HBO remake of the Ingmar Bergman series “Scenes From a Marriage.”Jojo Whilden/HBO‘Scenes From a Marriage’Starts streaming: Sept. 12Based on the acclaimed 1973 TV mini-series from Ingmar Bergman, “Scenes From a Marriage” stars Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as a seemingly content upper-middle-class couple whose relationship begins to splinter when the circumstances in their lives prompt them to scrutinize what they have. Written by the playwright Amy Herzog and the writer-producer-director Hagai Levi (best-known for the original Israeli version of the show that became HBO’s “In Treatment”), this new “Scenes” follows the arc of Bergman’s original story while taking into account what has changed in the past 50 years of gender dynamics. Chastain and Isaac anchor the series, playing a husband and wife who still love and appreciate each other but who have outgrown their old expectations.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Adventure Time: Distant Lands — Wizard City”Sept. 10“Malignant”Sept. 15“A la Calle”Sept. 17“Cry Macho”Sept. 23“Ahir Shah: Dots”“Doom Patrol” Season 3Sept. 26“Nuclear Family”Sept. 30“The Way Down”New to HuluKayvan Novak as Nandor in a scene from Season 3 of “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FX‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 3This hilarious horror mockumentary had a great run last year, with the cast and writers expanding on the show’s initial concept: a Staten Island version of the 2014 New Zealand movie about bickering vampire roommates. “What We Do in the Shadows” is still an episodic sitcom, with each chapter telling its own story. But the larger arc that started to develop in Season 2 continues in Season 3 as this band of slacker bloodsuckers and their shrewd human assistant Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) find themselves presented with new opportunities. Although the characters have richer back stories now — filled with bizarre, centuries-old grudges — this show’s primary asset is still its performances, as some very funny actors react with deadpan irritation at the paranormal craziness surrounding them.‘Y: The Last Man’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13For over a decade, the Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra comic book series “Y: The Last Man” has been in development for a screen adaptation — first for the movies and then for TV. There’s a good reason the project’s producers have been so persistent: “Y” has an irresistibly juicy premise, depicting a society where an apocalyptic event has killed every mammal with a Y chromosome on Earth except for one. The comics are also filled with memorable characters and thrilling plot twists. This version retains both the grabby story and the fascinatingly eclectic cast — including the title hero, Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer). But the series’s head writer, Eliza Clark, has also updated the original’s exploration of gender roles.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Trolls: TrollsTopia” Season 4Sept. 3“The D’Amelio Show” Season 1Sept. 8“Wu-Tang: An American Saga” Season 2Sept. 10“The Killing of Two Lovers”Sept. 16“The Premise” Season 1“Riders of Justice”“Stalker”Sept. 29“Minor Premise”New to PeacockFrom left, Sumalee Montano, Ashley Zukerman and Rick Gonzalez in a scene from “Dan Brown’s the Lost Symbol.”Rafy/Peacock‘Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol’Starts streaming: Sept. 16“The Lost Symbol” is the third novel in Dan Brown’s popular series of books about Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who specializes in symbology and classical art — and who often ends up using his know-how to help the authorities crack the secret codes underlying international conspiracies. Tom Hanks has played Langdon in the movie versions of Brown’s stories. Ashley Zukerman has taken on the role for a TV adaptation that is meant to serve as an entry point for newcomers. As with the books and the films, this version is a complicated tale of good versus evil, featuring a lot of scenes of smart folks solving ancient puzzles in dark and dangerous chambers.Also arriving:Sept. 2“A.P. Bio” Season 4 More