The Season 2 road trip that the HBO Max comedy embarks on "makes Deborah’s interior struggles real," says Alex Abad-Santos. But it also shows what life is like for somebody for whom working is all that matters. "The way Deborah interprets the world around her — its ills, its tragedy, its happiness — is through comedy, a notoriously fickle artform," says Abad-Santos. "If Deborah’s life flashed before her eyes, it would consist of standup, her late-night show, her missed opportunities, her Vegas residency. The montage wouldn’t include her husband, her child, her sister’s betrayal, or her husband’s death. To Deborah, nothing really matters if it isn’t related to comedy. Hacks works this season because you slowly realize that this road trip is a total gamble for Deborah. There is no backup plan. Who she is, the way she needs the world to see her, her understanding of joy and pain — it’s all on the line. This comedy tour is a matter of her own survival. But is that all too ghoulish, too narcissistic to admit?"

ALSO:

• Would Hannah Einbender be starring on Hacks if she wasn't the daughter of SNL legend Laraine Newman?: Einbender, who barely had any acting credits before landing her Emmy-nominated Hacks role, can't escape what Vulture calls the "Hannah Horvath dilemma.": "If we eliminated nepotism in Hollywood, we wouldn’t have Hollywood," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "But I think particularly for creative fields, it’s not like, This is my terrible nephew, let’s stick him in the mail room. Particularly when somebody has to actually stand on a stage and make people laugh — there’s an immediacy to the response to whether or not they’re succeeding. You’re probably pretty good because you have a nepotistic relationship with this thing you grew up around. That you’ve had a lot more exposure to. Is that not fair? Of course it isn’t fair, but it doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job. It just means you had a lot more opportunities to get good at it. That plus the ability to have access to like, What kinda moves do I need to make?"
• Hacks' return offers a "satiating fuel for joy-parched souls": "I have come to learn that few images spark more joy than that of Jean Smart in a leopard print glamour kaftan swanning through the Nevada desert," says Kevin Fallon. "Hacks premiered last year like a ray of light piercing through storm clouds. The world feels pretty terrible right now. It felt pretty terrible then, too! What’s more fun than years of static misery? What a time to be alive! But if things don’t seem to have really changed, other than the specifics of what exactly is making the act of existence so particularly crushing at any given moment, at least this hasn’t changed either. If the simple pleasures we get, the fleeting distractions that uplift, are fun things to watch on TV, then Hacks is still the serotonin blast, the satiating fuel for joy-parched souls, that it was."
• Hacks and I Love That for You explore the intergenerational bonds between women at the fringes of the entertainment industry: "Together, the two shows explore what these women provide for their audience, and what they’ve trained that audience to expect from them," says Alison Herman. "Like her real-life inspiration Joan Rivers, Deborah is a tireless worker, taking every gig and endorsement deal she can. One of those many hustles is a show on QVC, a job she’s less passionate about than Jackie, but she still gives her all. Both Hacks and I Love That for You are acutely aware of home shopping as the ugly stepchild of mainstream retail and television alike. It’s a status the shows exploit for comic effect, but also thematic resonance. Neither Jackie nor Deborah is taken seriously by some of their peers. They gain a following by catering to a demographic that feels similarly unseen."

Thieriot is the star, co-creator and executive producer of CBS' new inmate firefighter drama. But those busy jobs won't keep him from leaving SEAL Team. According to Deadline's Nellie Andreeva, "Thieriot has closed a deal for Season 6 of SEAL Team, which is slated to begin production soon. After wrapping the military drama, Thieriot is expected to segue to Fire Country as it starts filming its first season. The one-year arrangement applies to the upcoming sixth season of SEAL Team; it is unclear yet what will happen beyond that with him and the rest of the cast whose contracts are up then. The new SEAL Team deal eliminates the uncertainty, which prompted the Season 5 finale to end in a cliffhanger for Thieriot’s character Clay Spense."

"To understand what’s happening now at The CW, it’s best to look back to why the network was launched in the first place," explains The Hollywood Reporter's Lesley Goldberg of The CW axing more series (10) than it renewed (eight). "Warners and CBS Studios saw the network as a cash cow: both studios would supply low-cost scripted series to the network and cash in with lucrative international rights. Then, in 2011, Warners and CBS Studios added revenue from a $1 billion Netflix streaming deal as shows like (Julie) Plec’s The Vampire Diaries spinoffs The Originals and the unceremoniously canceled Legacies added a secondary revenue stream. It didn’t matter that The CW was never profitable because both studios — then part of Viacom and Time Warner, respectively — made money hand over fist via foreign sales and the Netflix output deal. The business model was so lucrative that The CW expanded to original programming on Fridays and Sundays and largely stopped canceling much of anything. The CW canceled (or gave a proper farewell) to an average of only 3.3 shows during the past decade — a far cry from this season’s 10. In the same time frame, The CW renewed an average of 10.3 shows annually (vs. eight this year), while new show volume (three) is a bit below the norm (3.9)." So why did shows like Dynasty stop being viable? "Blame streaming. And mergers. And The CW’s impending sale," says Goldberg. She adds that those factors have combined in a loss of billions of dollars in revenue, making Dynasty and its low-rated ilk no longer profitable. ALSO: Broadcasting had a great year, so why end the season with a "Red Wedding's" cancelation dump?

Stefani, who last starred on the NBC reality competition in fall 2020, will return this fall to coach alongside husband Blake Shelton.

Lee Daniels and Karin Gist's Our Kind of People, which aired its final episode in January, was one of Fox's first series given a straight-to-series order, skipping the pilot process. Pivoting had a decent debut after an NFL game in January, but averaged 1.85 million viewers over its 10-episode run.

Following the cancelations of Our Kind of People and Pivoting, "no announcement has been made yet on Fox’s two other bubble shows, comedies Call Me Kat and Welcome to Flatch," reports Nellie Andreeva. "I hear both are being renewed, the latter after strong Season 2 pitch, including cast additions plan, as well as some creative dealmaking from Lionsgate TV." According to Variety, freshman comedy Welcome to Flatch tied for the lowest-rated scripted show of the 2021-2022 season. Andreeva adds: "Surprisingly, Fox also has not announced yet formal renewals for some of its strongest series, dramas 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star and The Resident. I hear all three are still in pickup negotiations with 20th Television, along with the studio’s contingent of animated Fox veterans, The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers."

The Wall Street Journal reports fired staffers were “mistakenly” mailed items such as ink pens, headphones, popcorn makers and other items for food and drinks bearing the CNN+ logo. Some of the swag contained a "welcome" message, telling the ex-staffers: "This is an incredible time to be part of CNN."

What many of Brown's fans may not realize is that him joining Netflix's Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is also him leaving Food Network, which he has called home for the past two decades. "You know what? I don't think goodbye," he tells EW. "Goodbye is really final. Perhaps au revoir or adieu for now. I don't really think of myself as having left a place as much as I simply crossed the street to join one of my first loves. I had 20 pretty spectacular years at Food Network. I built a brand there. I became part of Iron Chef America there. But to be honest, if Netflix had taken a shot at Iron Chef without me, that would have broken my heart. (Laughs) So I had to follow that franchise, which has been such a big part of my life and a really big part of my career. And as it evolves into something new and spectacular, I just had to be a part of it." Brown adds: "I simply knew that if Netflix was going to have a go at rebooting Iron Chef — and they have in a magnificent way — if I was going to be invited to the party, I was going to the party, and there was nothing that would have kept me from doing that. It is such an incredibly vital franchise to me. I've learned through many, many years of doing hundreds of episodes of that show, to have a chance of being part of this new reimagining which is amazingly brilliant, it's just not something that I could not do. So no, it was a very easy decision."

"Winning Time mostly works because it’s willing to push back on the notion of a shared 'official' history, break from the usual hymns of nostalgic sports lore, and dig into the messy subjectivity that gets smoothed over in the construction of a legacy," says Nicholas Quah. "Which is why the season finale ultimately felt so inert. As we barrel through the finals and zero in on the Lakers’ eventual triumph, the show becomes increasingly conventional, doubling back way too hard toward the underdog-sports-flick component of its DNA. The interesting work the show had been doing with its characters is pushed to the side in order to give this fictional iteration of the Showtime Lakers the glory that syncs them up with the image held by their real-world counterparts. Winning forgives everything, as they say, but watching a preordained win is unforgiving in its insipidity. This may well prove to be a fundamental storytelling problem for the show as it continues: Because the Showtime Lakers won so much, as a fictionalized story 'based on true events,' it seems like Winning Time can only lose."

Carmichael, who recently came out and who last visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2016, told DeGeneres, according to The Hollywood Reporter: “You faced coming out at a time when, I mean, it just was impossible. There was no precedent. There was no Ellen DeGeneres to come out to show you what it’s like. I watched it with my mom. I watched all of it. I watched your sitcom. I watched you talk to Oprah. I watched the interpretive dance in the special. My mom watched you and she laughed at you and you were welcome in the home. It’s no small thing. I don’t want to discount that, because it’s really huge. Being Southern and Christian and these things — the idea of having a gay person welcome in my mother’s home — it seemed impossible. And you did it.” DeGeneres responded by calling Carmichael "my hero" and revealing she texted him soon after watching his recent Rothaniel special.

While Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner, who is Travis Scott's girlfriend, were watching him perform at Astroworld last fall, the rest of the Karadashian family were celebrating Kris Jenner's birthday on the same night. "But, of course, Kendall and Kylie were notably absent that evening, and viewers were horrified by the way that the show handled the reason why," says Stephanie Soteriou. "Not only was the festival completely ignored, a storyline involving Kendall was seemingly faked to avoid mentioning Astroworld." ALSO: Why The Kardashians is a better show than Keeping Up with the Kardashians ever was.

"As much as we may have been looking forward to the return of Law & Order after a 10-year hiatus, this season of the long-running series has been a failure," says Dustin Rowles. "The series has forgotten what we loved about it — the staid predictability, the novel legal theories, the detached characters — and instead leaned too hard into the 'ripped from the headlines' aspect. That element of the series went off the deep end in this week’s episode, which somehow managed to combine Anna Delvey and the goddamn Sackler family into one episode. How, you might ask? By arresting a murderer in the first half and then trying a completely separate murder case in the latter half."

"RuPaul has made it clear time and time again that he’ll do just about anything for a check. It’s why there are no less than 17,000 Drag Race spinoff franchises airing at any one time in RuPaul’s Multiverse of Mama’dness," says Coleman Spilde. "It’s why he’ll cut the worst Charli XCX knockoff you could ever imagine. It’s why he’ll lease his Wyoming ranch to become America’s Next Frack Superstar. Your name does not become synonymous with an art form in 2022 unless you’re willing to sign it on a dotted line without hesitation. But in his quest to build his global empire, RuPaul has continually allowed the legacy of his subversive landmark reality show to be slowly chipped away at. The commercialization of drag under RuPaul’s guide is a sticky thing. On one hand, it’s a critical part of bringing empowering inclusivity to the forefront of mainstream culture, where it can be accessible to all who may need it. On the other, it invites the ire of its own ever-growing toxic fanbase and contributes to multimillion-dollar companies revving the engines of their Pride parade floats for an exhausting show of rainbow capitalism every summer. Maybe that’s the nature of the beast: one can’t exist without the other."

The comedy that James Corden co-created and co-starred in with Ruth Jones about an Essex boy (Matthew Horne) and a Welsh girl (Joanna Page) "whose long-distance relationship quickly turns into an engagement and then a marriage — blending their eccentric families in a culture clash equal parts charming and hilarious," says Tom Smyth. "As a testament to just how beloved this series still is, when the cast reunited for a 2019 Christmas special, it garnered 18.49 million viewers — half of all the people watching television in the U.K. at the time. Despite that incredible success in Britain, Gavin & Stacey has never found a strong American audience. That’s ironic considering that one of its creators and stars, James Corden, has found fame in the States completely separate from the show that made him a star back home. But that cultural gap in the series’ success isn’t for lack of trying. There were three failed attempts to adapt the show in America: first in 2008 by NBC, then in 2009 by ABC, and lastly a 2013 Fox attempt that made it the furthest. Titled Us & Them, the Fox remake starred Jason Ritter and Alexis Bledel and shot seven episodes, none of which made it to air."

"If we’re all currently leaning into the pile-on phase against Netflix, the true-crime doc remains perhaps the only untouchable bread and butter for the content giant," says Brandon Yu. "While profits are down, it’s still a boom-time for programs that take you down the rabbit hole of serial killers, scammers, scandals, and the like (and that probably won’t change, considering how cheap they likely are for Netflix and how reliably well they do). Most of these series and films are not exceptionally well-made, but the material tends to be juicy, if morally ambivalent, enough. Few, though, have covered the kind of unique horror that is at the center of the new Netflix doc Our Father."

"Under the Banner of Heaven is in some ways a milestone for Mormon representation: though none of the main cast members are active or former Mormons, creator Dustin Lance Black was raised in the church and became an industry name as the only writer of Mormon experience in the writer’s room for Big Love, HBO’s notorious series about a polygamous family in Salt Lake City," says Nadine Smith. "Both Big Love and the original Jon Krakauer book about the real-life murder of a Mormon mother and her daughter on which Under the Banner of Heaven is based were highly controversial flashpoints for Mormons around the same point in the mid-2000s. While Under the Banner of Heaven attracted ire for unveiling violent incidents in Mormonism’s past, Big Love caught heat for its focus on polygamy and scenes recreating sacred temple ceremonies. Big Love often strove for cultural fidelity and verisimilitude, but it was ultimately about Mormonism in the same way The Sopranos was about the mafia: a rich setting and context for a larger thematic portrait of tragic masculinity. But the TV adaptation of Under the Banner of Heaven takes the faith of Black’s youth as its direct subject in a way Big Love never did."

Amazon's Josh Brolin-led sci-fi western seems, at first, like a knockoff of Taylor Sheridan’s brand of western mythmaking. But then it takes a turn for the weird. "The modern American West is deeply weird," says Nicholas Quah. "It’s a place where religious fundamentalists buy up whole towns, billionaires colonize to cosplay as cowboys, and the vast expanse of land can hide all sorts of strange and worrisome things. That weirdness is alive in Outer Range, and in that sense, the show feels as true, if not truer, to the modern American West than anything on Paramount Network right now."

With its viewers binging network shows like Friends, The Office and Grey's Anatomy, Netflix executives became obsessed with having bingeable full seasons, says Jake Ures. In 2022, as he points out, Netflix will release over 120 seasons of television. "Initially Netflix’s model for original content was a slate of decent marquee shows like Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, and David Fincher’s House of Cards," says Ures. "Known for his visual exactitude, Fincher’s show starred an A-list cast and was able to tell a slower-paced story. This was the promise of the streamer-studio exemplified: Netflix would offer auteurs freedom and money to tell stories no other network would allow. First-look deals with filmmakers and showrunners with fan bases seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement, especially when it seemed like independent filmmaking and mid-tier budget films were getting harder to come by. The problem is that this tenuous arrangement was dependent on a model that HBO had fine-tuned and that Netflix chose to reject. HBO’s model of weekly Sunday night premium programming had allowed it to focus on fewer shows with much stricter quality assurance. HBO shows thus stayed on the air longer and stayed relevant for longer, which allowed the network to keep quality high and be more discerning with which shows it green-lit. But Netflix needed full seasons, it needed a lot of them, and it needed them now. To make content at the desired speed and volume, the company took advantage of its status as 'new media,' which meant that its union contracts could be negotiated with much lower rates and less costly penalties for making crews work substandard hours. The streamer-studio was supposed to be an incubator for creator creativity. Instead, it increasingly resembled a sweatshop."

“I had to ask myself, ‘How do you create characters that are going to stand up over time?’” costume designer Heather Pain tells Indiewire. “You have to tell the story, but you’re also thinking ahead in terms of the different scenarios the writers might come up with later. What if the characters go outside? How can we replicate the costumes if they have stunts?”

"Plenty of shows and movies have been faced with this dilemma: how do you convey the same caliber of emotional scenes when they’re happening in written words – sometimes even shorthand?" says Lauren Waters. "So much power and detail is lost this way. Yet, removing important dialogue that happens in text message conversations makes it impossible to tell so many important stories. The Girl From Plainville is a perfect example of this. The series’ main characters, Coco and Michelle, communicate almost entirely via text message. This means that this is how many of the important moments, conflict, and relationship-building between the two characters happens. From texts scrawled across the screen to closeups of characters' phones or message bubbles popping up in the middle of scenes to voiceovers, viewers have seen many attempts at conveying text conversations in an engaging way to television audiences. The Girl From Plainville had its work cut out for it in this way, but in the end, the decision was both risky and smart. Rather than trying to convey layers of emotion through the text messages, the text messages were brought to life."

The former Paramount Studios executive, who has voiced his displeasure with the Paramount+ series before, explains in a Deadline conversation: "I’m not mad about anything, but am greatly concerned about the legacy of The Godfather. Those who admire the movie, including film students and cinema scholars, deserve accurate insight into the problems surrounding its creation. Paramount has done a disservice in supporting a project like The Offer that distorts the roles of its principals and suggests that its producing team was essentially under the control of the mob during key sections of the shooting schedule. First, a note about the filmmaking team: The Offer portrays a sort of 'buddy' relationship between the principals. In reality, Al Ruddy and Francis Coppola were not on speaking terms during most of the shooting schedule and Bob Evans looked upon Ruddy with both distrust and disdain. In The Offer, the three hug each other at the end of the shoot and vow to join forces on its sequel. In reality, the contracts for The Godfather Part II specified that Ruddy would have no connection with the project, and that Coppola would not be required to communicate with Evans on any issue. The sequel would be Coppola’s show this time, with no arguments about casting or editing."

"The idea of a revived Kids in the Hall series, like so many other revivals of the past decade, comes packaged with intense trepidation," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "What if that nervy, surreal absurdism is blunted by nostalgic fondness? Is it possible to look back in celebration, without undercutting the past or, worse, being smugly self-congratulatory? Let’s also be honest: Who can truly feel confident that their male comedic heroes of the past are not at any moment about to reveal themselves to be anti-cancel-culture prophets, railing against political correctness and censorship?" VanArendonk adds: "After the treacherously high expectations of reviving a beloved comedy series plus a swooning documentary, the cumulative experience of the new Kids in the Hall feels nearly miraculous. It’s wonderful to have so many things to dread, and to instead be greeted with strange, goofy, self-referential, yet self-deprecating sketches. The Kids, now around 60 years old, are still obsessed with absurdity and the inevitability of endings. If anything, they’re even sillier and darker than before."

ALSO:

• The Kids in the Hall revival is an adventure in aging -- with the same old bite: "Not all reunions are made the same," says Robert Lloyd. "Often, it’s for a payday, and even when the impulse isn’t merely financial, performers, bands or comedy teams — they are the same in so many ways — might remain content to recycle the old hits rather than knuckle down to do new creative work. Sometimes it’s a matter of personal history and creative connection and knowing how it all works — or, like muscle memory, not having to know how it works — and because there is a special joy in getting the band together. Well-written, expertly performed, unashamedly odd and full of beans, this would seem to be the latter sort of enterprise. An adventure, if you will."
• A revival works for The Kids in the Hall because their comedy has so often attuned to life’s darker, sadder absurdities: "This comes through especially clear as multiple new Kids sketch premises ruminate on changing times and finality," says Jesse Hassenger. "In another revival of older characters, longtime coworkers Kath (McCulloch) and Cath (Thompson) preside over their company’s final fax-machine transmission. Thompson’s adored monologuist Buddy Love turns up to commune with the world’s last glory hole. There are also some surprisingly topical points, like a Zoom call taking hilariously explicit inspiration from disgraced pundit Jeffrey Toobin. More often, though, the Kids are happy to poke fun at their new demographic, as when McDonald plays an older lady who wants to photograph her trendy restaurant food for 'social media.'"
• The Kids prove they are still fearless: "Not all of the sketches work—there’s no show where they all work—but the batting average is still so much higher than most programs that the Kids inspired into existence," says Brian Tallerico. "They’re back to show the generations that followed them how it’s done."
• The Kids in the Hall wasn't just one of the best ’90s comedy groups, but one of the most enlightened -- especially about feminism: "As a millennial misfit, I was drawn to the Kids’ offbeat sense of humor, but what really hooked me was the troupe’s feminist sensibilities," says Tabitha Vidaurri. "It was these five Canadian men in drag who opened my adolescent eyes to concepts like sexism, toxic masculinity, and gender inequality. I have many feminist heroes who are women, but as a teenager surrounded by Girls Gone Wild and The Man Show’s girls on trampolines, I actually learned about objectifying women from Bruce McCulloch’s character, Tammy the teen pop star. When an older male record executive attempts to seduce her with a bouquet of flowers, Tammy sings, “I’m not gonna spread for no roses … Laura Secord never did. Gloria Steinem did once, and then she felt sad.” No one else on TV seemed to be talking about Gloria Steinem, much less making a joke about fetishizing young girls."
• The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks documentary provides enough showbiz insight and interpersonal drama to entertain newbies
• Dave Foley, whose been working on the revival since 2018, explains what has changed: "We complain more about young people than we used to. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same," he says. "Yeah, it’s very creepy, really, how little any of us have matured or progressed. Yeah, as artists or as human beings. So it felt very much like the old days of just getting together and throwing ideas at each other and, you know, occasionally fighting about what’s the best way to do things. And just being in tears laughing a lot of the time. Because, yeah, that’s one of the nice things about working with the Kids is we spent all those years together."

"One day at work, a 28-year-old librarian meets the 20-year-old woman who will become his wife," says Judy Berman. "The thing is, she already knows him—knows that they will fall in love, marry, spend many happy years together—because he is a time traveler. Ever since she was a little girl, an older version of the man has been periodically journeying back through the decades to spend time with her. So she already adores him. And now, he’s younger and more attractive than she’s ever known him to be. Unfortunately, because he’s just now meeting her, he has yet to experience the true love that eased his various youthful traumas and is still a total mess of a human being. This is the premise of HBO’s latest epic drama, The Time Traveler’s Wife. If you find it extremely confusing as described above, that’s because it is indeed extremely confusing. If, however, the summary makes even a lick of sense to you, chances are you’ve already encountered the story of Clare and her time-traveling soulmate Henry, in the form of the megahit 2003 novel by Audrey Niffenegger or the major motion picture starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, from 2009. The plot has always been absurd. But after nearly two decades and one widely seen, remarkably bad adaptation, it has also aged poorly and grown redundant. It would, at this point, take a truly inspired interpretation to make a Time Traveler’s Wife series work. Sadly, this ain’t it."

ALSO:

• The weaknesses of HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife are the weaknesses that have dogged Steven Moffat throughout his career: "Tonal inconsistencies that sometimes render glib what should be harrowing; a complicated story structure that occasionally obscures character, rather than reveal it; and, especially, the inescapable sense that the lines coming from its characters’ mouths are the result, not of human emotion, but of an insufficiently invisible screenwriter attempting to simulate it," says William Hughes. "Where the show succeeds—which it does, slightly more often than not, and with more confidence as its six-episode run proceeds—is in drilling in to all the stranger emotional consequences of Niffenegger’s 2003 novel. It is, for example, to the credit of both Moffat and stars Rose Leslie and Theo James that the series manages to successfully sell its central love triangle, eventually revealed to be between Leslie, James, and…well, James again."
• The Time Traveler's Wife can’t completely escape the book’s maudlin pull, but it offers both a more lighthearted and a tougher take than the film: "It capitalizes on the possibilities for slapstick offered by Henry’s constant buck-naked, <i>Terminator-style tumbles into unexpected times and places," says Mike Hale. "And it restores the testiness and jealousy (and copious sex) between Clare and Henry that was muffled in the movie’s gauzy telling. Moffat’s involvement was the reason to have some hope for, or at least be curious about, this new adaptation. The love of puzzles and sleight of hand and general narrative complexity that he has demonstrated, often with considerable ingenuity, in Doctor Who and Sherlock seemed to make him a good match for the nerdy science-fiction side of Niffenegger’s book. And the best moments in Moffat’s series are ones that get into the details of how time travel works, or that show the tricks Henry uses to communicate with himself or manipulate events across time."
• The Time Traveler's Wife is unwatchable: "From the jump, Theo James (Sanditon) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) are odd choices for Henry and Clare," says Linda Maleh. "They both inject their characters with a rough, aggressive quality, subverting what should feel like a sweet love story. This is in contrast to the ill-received 2009 film, which, however you feel about it, nailed the casting with Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, who fully embody the characters’ demure and bookish personas. Whereas James and Leslie spend most of their screen-time screaming at each other. The couple who love poetry, opera, punk music, and can talk for hours while playing chess are gone. In their place are two people who have nothing in common, and have no reason to be together other than fate (aka time travel) pushing them together."
• This is a series that struggles at times to find a new way into its story: "One might think that a story hinging on time travel would be open and wildly free-ranging, but The Time Traveler’s Wife has, in all its incarnations, had a sourness to it," says Daniel D'Addario. "This show depicts someone who is not merely able to move through the eras of his life, but is compelled to do so against his will."
• The Time Traveler's Wife is funny: "One thing that makes this show work is that there are parts I openly laughed out loud at," says Rachel Leishman. "It’s not funny in the sense that this is a comedy; it’s still a story about a man who is forced to live his life out of order and the woman who wants to be there for him, but it is also just the characters using their humor as a way to deflect from their own pain, and in that comes the reason this show is relatable despite, you know, no one actually knowing what it feels like to just suddenly time travel."
• Steven Moffat addresses grooming concerns since adult Henry repeatedly visits Clare when she is a child: “That’s not what the story is in the book or the film or the TV show. He’s married to her,” says Moffat. “He meets her as an adult, he falls in love with her, he gets married to her and then he’s flung back in time, through no fault of his own, and is confronted with the childhood version of the woman he already loves. Even more so in the TV show version, he absolutely makes it clear that he’s just a friend.” Additionally, the Henry who visits young Clare is “a responsible man, so he has tremendously strict rules about this,” like that he will never reveal who he is to her in the future.

"How much you enjoy The Essex Serpent, an Apple TV Plus adaptation of Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel, might depend on how much you enjoy seeing Tom Hiddleston brooding in a misty field while wearing cozy wool sweaters," says Andrew Webster of the limited series starring Hiddleston and Claire Danes. "For a lot of people, that will probably be enough of a hook. (It was for me.) But thankfully, the six-episode series offers a lot more than great hair blowing in the wind — it’s a tense and heartfelt exploration of grief and belief and how much those two things can mess with you. The great sweaters are just a bonus." Webster adds: "Much of the show hinges on watching the three of them navigate this awkward dynamic while being too British and polite to just come out and say how they feel. This is balanced with all of the aforementioned struggles like finding a mythical sea serpent or perfecting a radical kind of surgery. It’s a slow burn of a show, which doesn’t reveal its true intentions until a few episodes in. But once it finds its footing, The Essex Serpent becomes a drama that treats its subjects with a refreshing kind of honesty that makes them all the more interesting. Falling in and out of love is always messy, but especially when the world around you is also a complete mess. The Essex Serpent captures that perfectly. And at six episodes long, it does so without overstaying its welcome."

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• Claire Danes is brilliant, Tom Hiddleston isn't: "Perhaps this is down to a lack of chemistry between the leads, or perhaps the miscasting of Hiddleston, who never manages to shed his innate air of suave confidence," says Lucy Mangan. "It works well when playing a god of mischief amidst a plethora of equally towering egos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; less so when playing a Victorian vicar humble enough to admit doubts and wrestle with his conscience. Let alone fall in love with a woman cleverer than him, and spend time offering explanations that he is too honest to dismiss out of hand, however much they pain him. It gives his exchanges with Cora a condescending edge that is the death knell to the love and profound yearning that animated their relationship in the novel. Danes, on the other hand, is magnificent as Cora – brusque, athletic, undisguisably intelligent and every inch a woman gradually being restored to life and self in the wake of her husband’s brutality."
• There is something missing at the heart of The Essex Serpent – that 1% of magic that every good TV show demands: "It’s hard to put your finger exactly on what’s wrong: one thing is that the central fear the village is experiencing, the ancient horror of the mythological Essex Serpent, is never really set up enough for you to get why everyone’s hysterical. Maybe it’s because Hiddleston and Danes’s theological squabbling, the dynamite that explodes the entire story, feels less like two intellectual titans locking horns and more like a nervous University Challenge team trying to diplomatically figure out what order they’ll sit in," says Joel Golby. "Maybe it’s too obsessed with being legacy TV to actually be good legacy TV: everyone’s always giving each other very poignant weird gifts, or gazing at one thing while crying about another, or heroically saving a life. And some of the dialogue – Claire Danes wakes up from a traumatic nightmare to be hugged instantly by a maid, who instantly says: 'It’s OK. Michael can’t hurt you any more' – I mean, come on. Subtlety exists, Apple! I am begging you to use it!"
• The Essex Serpent feels a bit like PBS' Masterpiece: "We hesitate to praise the show with a Masterpiece Theatre tag, but there is a bit of tea-and-biscuit coziness in The Essex Serpent’s earnest patience and restraint," says David Cote. "(Even a spontaneous shag on the moors is handled discreetly). 'Love is not finite; it’s not confined to marriage; there are so many ways to love,' Cora tells Will, explaining how friendship and Eros can snake around each other like inlets and isles. For those needing a break from Bridgerton’s smoldering looks or The Great’s cynicism, try wading into this humanely gothic tale. The water’s cold but refreshing."
• The Essex Serpent never quite takes off in the way it should: Although it is generally handsome, literate and quite well acted, The Essex Serpent suffers from the same problems of a lot of Prestige TV fare, says Mike Hale. "In common with a lot of contemporary prestige-TV productions, it seems to have worked so hard and so carefully to achieve the right surface patina that it forgot about being exciting — there are surprises in the plot, but you rarely feel the shock of real surprise, or of vision, in the filmmaking," says Hale. "It’s a tasteful and static enterprise that deserves attention because it comes to life whenever Danes is onscreen." 
• The longer that The Essex Serpent goes, the more that it’s not only its characters that feel adrift, floating from one tenuous bit of connection to the other: "Despite all it evokes, The Essex Serpent tells a story where faith rarely manifests in ways other than preachers shouting about sin and love is rarely felt without being laid bare in plain terms," says Steve Greene. "Regardless of what it is that Cora is destined to find out in the water, it’s hard not to want a little more from this show than what’s floating on the surface."
• Despite its flaws, The Essex Serpent succeeds as a gothic meditation on the magic and wonder of the natural world: "Dialogue that’s meant to be thought-provoking sometimes just drags," says Julia Glassman, adding that it suffers from clichés. "Those flaws aside, though, The Essex Serpent succeeds as a gothic meditation on the magic and wonder of the natural world, whether it’s seen through the lens of science or the supernatural. But it’s also a moving story about human connection," says Glassman. "'Love is not finite,' Cora muses at one point. 'It’s not confined to marriage. There are so many ways to love.' Cora, Will, and everyone else caught up in the serpent’s wake feel their way through all those different kinds of love, sometimes stumbling, sometimes finding each other in moments of tenderness and awe."
• The Essex Serpent delivers for fans of period dramas: "Before entering into my first watch-through of Apple TV+'s upcoming series The Essex Serpent, my instincts were that its premise was perfectly suited to my personal interests," says Carly Lane. "Not only am I always somewhat drawn to the period drama as a general rule, but I couldn't help but be intrigued based on the names that were attached. Given that I'm not personally familiar with the book by Sarah Perry on which the series is based, I can only judge the final small-screen product, adapted by Anna Symon and directed by Clio Barnard, on its own merits — and fortunately, The Essex Serpent delivers in just about every facet. From performances by Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes that are infused with a delicious note of inward yearning that slowly displays itself on the outside to the fog-blanketed marshes of the Essex village in which the bulk of the story is set, the resulting product is an atmospheric, Gothic romance that doesn't retreat from indulging in its overall foreboding while it ultimately looks toward the possibility of an optimistic ending."
• The Essex Serpent falls prey to more clichés in telling the story of Will and Cora’s blossoming, forbidden love: "Danes acquits herself well in the moments when Cora has to reckon with her overwhelming feelings, and there’s hardly anyone better in the tortured romance game than Hiddleston," says Caroline Framke. "But after briefly exploring so many other tantalizing avenues — the serpent’s grip on an increasingly fanatical town, Cora’s love of science bumping up against her subconscious instincts, Martha’s boldness belying her secret desires — that it becomes a disappointment to see this romance subsume all else."
• Why Tom Hiddleston went from Loki to The Essex Serpent: The actor was looking for a change of pace after playing an agent of chaos. “I guess maybe that’s why I was really drawn to it,” he says. “I was drawn to him. He’s so finely drawn by Sarah Perry and Anna Symon. He seems to be kind of similar to a literary archetype – very grounded, very solid, very rational container for other people’s anxieties, someone that people lean on and depend on. But of course, he doesn’t have all the answers, and there are things he hasn’t folded into his theology and his worldview.”

"The 10-part Netflix original series The Lincoln Lawyer is set in the present day and the title character is indeed an attorney, but it has the comfort-viewing vibe of the classic hourlong cop and private-eye dramas of the 1970s and 1980s, e.g., The Rockford Files, McCloud, Magnum, P.I. and Baretta,” says Richard Roeper. "It contains many of the familiar elements and characters from those shows, including a likable anti-hero, the traditional authority figures who are always throwing up obstacles, the rogue sidekick and a rotating gallery of colorful suspects. It’s Netflix, but it feels like old-fashioned network TV—and that’s probably no coincidence, given the showrunner is the prolific David E. Kelley, whose credits include Boston Public, Ally McBeal, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Big Sky and we’re just getting warmed up. Based on the second of Michael Connelly’s five Lincoln Lawyer novels (the first was made it into a 2011 feature film starring Matthew McConaughey), this is a slick, easily digested and well-acted legal thriller featuring an outstanding ensemble cast and a juicy, lurid murder mystery that keeps us guessing throughout—not that we can’t see some of the twists coming a mile down the road."

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• The Lincoln Lawyer feels incredibly dated: "Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer will scratch the itch for anyone unexplainably hankering for a tedious, low-stakes legal drama. Created by David E. Kelley, who plans to wring out his affinity for the genre to no end, it’s meant to be reminiscent of his early work like The Practice or Ally McBeal," says Saloni Gajjar. "Except in 2022, it just feels incredibly dated, like it should’ve aired on network TV in the aughts. The show’s diverse main lead aside, it offers nothing fresh or incisive. It’s not Boston Legal-level fun or entertaining, nor does it boast a seriously spectacular performance like Billy Bob Thornton in Goliath. To confirm: Those examples above are also Kelley-helmed legal dramas. And you can only beat that drum so many times before it comes crashing down with a thud."
• The Lincoln Lawyer is a CBS series on Netflix: "The Lincoln Lawyer‘s roots as a CBS procedural are very much evident, particularly in the first half of the season," says Ron Hogan. "Haller bounces around from case to case while digging in where he can on the show’s central issue and his very important client. The focus on case-of-the-week fades as the show’s main plot starts to gel together, and by the end of the season, the series seems to have found a nice balance between season-long story arc case drama and the solid episodic lawyer shows that bought David Kelley a solid-gold typewriter. The show benefits greatly from the landscape of Los Angeles in those early episodes, and that dramatic landscape only heightens the tension in the latter half of the season. The Lincoln Lawyer isn’t going to break any new ground. It’s not going to be an edgy critical darling. It’s not trying to be. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to hold up a cart. The Lincoln Lawyer is an easy-to-watch binge-streamer with solid characters inhabiting an interesting world."
• The Lincoln Lawyer combines the best of network and streaming: "It’s even guided by an old network TV pro: David E. Kelley, known for his work on legal shows like L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, and The Practice, among others," says Jesse Hassenger. None of this is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, a lot of Netflix shows could use the discipline of old-fashioned network programming, and in that sense The Lincoln Lawyer combines the best of both worlds: a shorter season (a cable-and-streaming standard 10 episodes, rather than a network-friendly 13-to-20) with crisp, network-friendly runtimes (closer to 45 minutes than 60). But in its passable, uninspired watchability, the show hews closer to the middle of the pack, if that."
• The Lincoln Lawyer is at least somewhat entertaining for a show with a bland central character: "It’s Netflix’s version of the sort of retro TNT drama that I only know exists because I left my television on after an NBA game; the kind of USA drama that USA stopped making when it bailed on scripted programming; a lesser incarnation of the type of algorithmic book-to-screen Amazon pipeline that brought us Reacher and Jack Ryan and Bosch — except that if The Lincoln Lawyer were on Amazon, it could have actually been the Bosch semi-spinoff," says Daniel Fienberg. "Then again, if The Lincoln Lawyer had aired on Amazon, everybody would have just compared it to creator David E. Kelley’s Goliath, a murkier, more nuanced series covering similar terrain." Fienberg adds: "If you don’t think too hard about any of it, there are some acceptable twists that push you through the second half of The Lincoln Lawyer, while the first half is dominated by a varied and photogenic use of Los Angeles locations. None of that is a substitute for a compelling title character or a consistently propulsive narrative, which happen to be key things Connelly’s fans will be hoping for."
• The Lincoln Lawyer is the perfect average show that TV needs right now: "The meat-and-potatoes legal drama, long a stalwart of broadcast television with series like Law & Order, The Practice and How to Get Away with Murder, has come to Netflix with The Lincoln Lawyer.... a new adaptation of Michael Connelly's books created by David E. Kelley and Ted Humphrey. There's a comfort to the series, which exists in a universe with well-defined morals and beautiful people," says Kelly Lawler. "It's a slickly-acted, fast-moving, winning series that isn't overly ambitious and doesn't need to be. Its appeal comes from being something familiar done very well, and it's the kind of series Netflix should be making all the time."
• Kelley-ready components make this iteration of The Lincoln Lawyer a bingeable, highly enthralling piece of entertainment: "Nearly every component of this legal drama—including its lovable characters, fascinating cases, gleeful fourth-wall breaks by Haller explains his strategy, whiz-bang pacing, and bright, clean cinematography—makes for easily digestible episodes, especially as Gorham and Campbell play larger roles," says Robert Daniels. "The two add dependable, workmanlike melodramatic beats to otherwise subdued characters, while the series cleverly maneuvers for an anti-police (Haller doesn’t trust them at all) bent, and openly talks about addiction and recovery. The show also has enough backstories—Lorna’s desire to return to law school, Angus’ debt to his former gang, and a case, from long ago, that continues to gnaw at Haller—to not only create a sturdy standalone season, but leave enough breadcrumbs for a possible second season."
• The Lincoln Lawyer is warmed-over David E. Kelley: "Kelley’s belief in the inherent intrigue of the legal process helps him along; one can sense enthusiasm undergirding, say, an episode built around the jury-selection process," says Daniel D'Addario. "But others of the creator’s tricks fail him, like a tendency to lean hard on the quirkiness of bit players studded through the story, seemingly intended as a sort of comic relief that doesn’t consistently land. (Would you believe, for instance, that one of Mickey’s clients is a college student who can’t stop nude sunbathing and thinks Americans are uptight?) There’s a seeming attempt to graft on some of the zany zing of the Ally McBeal days here. And that show, as with other Kelley properties, had a dynamic lead; Garcia-Rulfo is an appealing performer, but he’s surprisingly low-key."
• It's a modern-day Knight Rider: "Micky Haller is the Lincoln Lawyer. Why? Because he likes to work while being driven round in his Lincoln town car rather than at a desk," says Lucy Mangan. "How come? Because he hates the restrictions of an office and because characteristics are easier than character, that’s why. Did you mind when Bergerac did it? Were you ever this picky about Knight Rider? No? Well, you can get behind this car-led David E Kelley adaptation of Michael Connelly’s 2008 novel The Brass Verdict without any more questions then, can’t you?"
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo recalled struggling with the ethics of a defense attorney: “That was one of the things I was battling with,” he says. “I’d chat a lot with defense lawyers, and that was my model question, because I wanted to understand why you would defend somebody that you are pretty sure is guilty.”
• Garcia-Rulfo wanted to ensure that Los Angeles' Latino life was represented: The Lincoln Lawyer role wasn't written for a specific ethnicity, so when the Mexican actor was happy "that they bet on a guy that has an accent portraying Mickey Haller." But was there cultural specificity in the scripts? "There were some, but I pushed for more," says Garcia-Rulfo. "There are some scenes where I’m eating, and sometimes the script would say, 'He’s eating at a famous hamburger place.' I said, 'Let’s have him eat some tacos instead.' Or if it said, 'He orders a bourbon,' I would say, 'No, let’s order a mezcal or a tequila.' With the language as well, I was like, 'I think he would say this line in Spanish, you know?' Everyone in the production was cool with letting me do that. They would say, 'As long as you’re not saying something bad in Spanish." (Laughs.)

Sally Rooney's "Conversations With Friends — her great first novel, about a college student whose relationship with a married man becomes all-consuming — bears similarities to her second (Normal People)," says Caroline Framke. "Nevertheless, it tells an entirely different kind of story that should require a more tailored approach from an adaptation. Without that, or the crackling chemistry that pulsed throughout Normal People, this show’s 12 episodes... meander hesitantly along until it finally just runs out of steam." Framke adds that, quickly, "the real problem presents itself and never truly goes away: (Alison) Oliver and (Joe) Alwyn simply don’t have the chemistry, sexual or otherwise, to pull off Frances and Nick’s supposedly overwhelming attraction to each other. While Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones made it all too easy to understand just how thick the tension was between their characters, Oliver and Alwyn can’t summon half the same intensity, which only makes Nick and Frances’ dynamic that much harder to believe."

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• Conversations with Friends is a gripping tale of sex, love and betrayal: "I found myself completely drawn into the romance of Nick and Frances and when I wasn't sitting glued to my laptop screen watching their torrid affair unfold, I found myself thinking about them when I attempted to tear myself away from the screen," says Rachel Thompson. "I think that's the measure of a really great TV show or movie — thinking about the characters and their story when you're chopping vegetables in silence on a weeknight. These four friends got under my skin and I suspect they'll get under yours, too. You'll find yourself urgently needing to know what happens, how these relationships (plural!) turn out, whether people's feelings get hurt, whether they're all OK in the end."
• Conversations with Friends is muted, frustrating and bloodless: "On the page, this setup has all the trappings of a sensational melodrama, but in practice, it plays out like a drippily sad, muted story," says Valerie Ettenhofer. "Rooney’s works are quite internal and on-screen, which translates mostly to characters reading texts or sharing wordless glances. At different points, we learn that both Frances and Nick have often been defined by those around them by their passivity. Both also worry that they don’t emote enough, while they feel plenty of big feelings on the inside. None of these traits, it probably goes without saying, make for particularly compelling television."
• Conversations with Friends should've been a movie: "Despite the strong work by all in front of and behind the camera... the extreme focus on Frances feels better suited to a feature film version of this material, or at least to something substantially shorter than the six hours that Hulu is releasing at once," says Alan Sepinwall. "There are wonderful moments throughout, particularly in a finale that makes Frances reckon with the hurt she has caused everyone else. But those moments are sprinkled in among a lot of narrative flab. The same lingering quality that served Normal People so well here just makes everything seem slow and padded — perhaps because there is one central character rather than two, and her inner problems ultimately play as more straightforward than what Marianne and Connell were each wrestling with."
• Conversations with Friends hews close to its source material, yet shifts it to suggest a different meaning: "Director Lenny Abrahamson and co-writer Alice Birch—the creative team behind 2020’s acclaimed Hulu adaptation of Rooney’s novel Normal People—have mounted a similarly exquisite production, all young people talking about their feelings in the subdued, blue of Irish sunlight washing through windows against a background of delicate room noise," says Laura Miller. "But Conversations with Friends is more of a condensed ensemble piece than the long chronicle of an on-again, off-again love affair at the center of Normal People. It revolves around Oliver’s consummate performance as Frances, a young woman who not only doesn’t know what she’s doing, but also has trouble figuring out what she wants and feels. The other characters in the series’ ménage à quatre are nearly as vivid."
• Conversations with Friends challenges our perceptions of friendships, romantic relationships, sexuality, and how they all relate: "Conversations with Friends asks more questions than it answers, and it may very well rip out your heart and run it over with one of those mopeds you see on the streets of Dublin," says Ellen Johnson. "But despite the less-than-clean endings, Rooney’s stories offer more than just repressed horny Irish people who lack basic communication skills. She crafts brilliant observations on human relationships and personality, and while Hulu’s second stab at her work doesn’t always fully capture the melancholy nuance in Rooney’s written word (how could it?), it comes mighty close."
• Conversations becomes remarkable through its details: "Unlike Marianne and Connell in Normal People—lovers too purposely crafted as yin and yang, in a contrivance that felt even more conspicuous when interpreted on screen—each of the four main characters comes across as a complete, internally consistent person whose relationship with every other character is unique," says Judy Berman. "Alienated from a body that goes haywire monthly, Frances sees herself as plain; in bed with Nick, a handsome celebrity who somehow finds her attractive enough to warrant cheating, she can let go of that hangup. Melissa represents one possible future Frances might work toward if she, 'a communist' according to Bobbi, decides she can stomach writing for money. For Melissa, the girls’ youth offers relevance and vitality. Nick romanticizes Frances’ innocence. Frances and Bobbi care so deeply about each other that they can’t stop hurting each other."
• Newcomer Alison Oliver runs away with the show: "This falls right in line with one of Normal People’s finest accomplishments: introducing us to promising young actors to swoon and obsess over," says Fletcher Peters. "Frances would be easy to hate. She’s brooding, disconnected, can’t find her way in life, and has initiated an affair with a married man. On top of that, Frances treats her dear friend Bobbi like a dusty old ragdoll. But Oliver portrays Frances with such purpose. It’s a performance similar to Daisy Edgar-Jones in Normal People, another hushed, moody role that could lead audiences to recoil. With another actress, Frances could be considered selfish, boring, or dull. That’s not the case here. Oliver recently graduated from college, so she really translates Frances’ youthful confusion in a way that an older, more experienced actress wouldn’t be able to manage."
• There's something about Conversations with Friends that's not quite as emotionally vivid as Normal People: "The challenge of serving all these relationships is a little too much for the script, and Frances' point of view, as portrayed on screen, isn't quite enough to illuminate all these other characters and make them feel fully realized," says Linda Holmes. "It's the less successful of these two related projects, but if you like your dramas understated, you won't be disappointed."
• Conversations with Friends paints a sophisticated psychological portrait of when youthful ambitions and adult realities come to a head: “Conversations with Friends is as eager to embrace these kind of genre conventions as it is delighted to upend them," says Ben Travers. "For the most part, it pulls off both. The dense text still provides plenty of simple pleasures, be it the efficiency of 30-minute episodes or the notable inclusion of another music cue from The O.C. There’s a wry wit to much of the courtship, and the filmmakers maintain their uncanny ability to capture lots of texting in an artful, informative, and compelling manner. While the six hours can get bumpy in plotting (and frustrating when the story’s perceptiveness clashes with its lead’s innocence), Conversations with Friends paints a sophisticated psychological portrait of when youthful ambitions and adult realities come to a head. The ideas we strive for and the ideas we have of ourselves can’t always gel with what the world demands of us or how others interpret our actions. And when such disparities involve matters of the heart, well, sometimes the riddle requires more than one answer."
• There's something hypnotic about Conversations with Friends: "Visually, the show is unexpectedly cozy, awash in gloomy greens and grays," says Nina Metz. "Often it’s raining outside. A summer retreat to Croatia offers a brief respite with blue skies, but the story’s thematic undertow remains anything but sunny; sneaking around may generate an erotic charge, but it also stirs up anxieties and jealousies."
• Like the novel it’s based on, Conversations is initially intriguing but ultimately frustrating: "Conversations is dutifully faithful to Rooney’s prose, as Normal People was, but that means it suffers from the same flaws, too," says Dave Nemetz. "It’s still a notch or two above your average romantic drama and offers some smart emotional insight along the way, but in the end, it’s a fleeting dalliance that fades too quickly."
• Conversations with Friends' pacing is a little too bucolic to handle what’s, at its core, hardly groundbreaking material: "We’ve seen the mechanics and rhythms of these kinds of stories before: the lying, the cheating, the narcissism involved in believing that their story will be different from all the other affairs throughout history. Furtive text conversations lay out the terms of their relationship; the two meet up, sleep together, worry what their friends/spouses might think; rinse, repeat. Where Normal People charts the devastating impact of first monogamous love, Conversations with Friends' juggles a power dynamic—wealthier, married man in a fling with a young college student—we’ve seen before, and not in a way that opens up many new layers."
• Conversations with Friends is elegant and restrained, to a fault: "Conversations With Friends charts Frances’ halting journey toward bridging the disconnect between theory and practice, head and heart, with patience and a perceptive eye for detail," says Angie Han. "But it too often tilts toward the same sense of reserve that its heroine does, resulting in a series that’s elegant and sensitive, but perhaps too cool for its own good."
• Executive producer and director Lenny Abrahamson praises today's TV audiences for being “much more progressive than distributors, filmmakers and producers think they are": “Had we done Normal People or Conversations With Friends as a long feature it would have had a tiny audience," he says. "It’s really hard to get those films to stay in cinemas and audiences tend to mainly go out to see bigger tentpoles now.”
• Alison Oliver’s portrayal of Frances may feel surprising to some fans of the book: The 24-year-old Oliver, with scant acting credits, went into her audition as "such a massive fan" of Sally Rooney's work. “I think she’s such an incredible writer.," she says. As The New York Times' Desiree Ibekwe explains: "The Frances of the screen seems more sympathetic — less cold and arch than she appears on the page, and perhaps more insecure and quietly overwhelmed." As Meadhbh McHugh, an Irish playwright who adapted five episodes, put it: “I think her archness can be a type of defense mechanism, but onscreen we are not getting access to Frances’ interior thoughts as in the novel, and so you want to see the vulnerability from which she’s operating.” It's Oseman's vulnerability that led to her casting. As director Lenny Abrahamson says: “She made so much sense of the character,” and “not in the obvious way.”

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the acclaimed 2004 true-crime documentary series The Staircase, is listed as a co-executive producer on HBO Max's scripted adaptation. He shared footage, notes and tips on an unused video with Antonio Campos, the creator of the scripted The Staircase. Yet while de Lestrade was paid for the HBO Max series, he was hands off with regard to its content. “Because I trust Antonio, I didn’t ask him to read the script. I was respecting his liberty as an author, as a creator, as a filmmaker. And I never asked to watch the episodes before they were shown because I was quite confident,” de Lestrade explains to Vanity Fair. So de Lestrade was surprised that HBO Max's The Staircase portrays him and his team in what he considers a negative and inaccurate light. De Lestrade, who is portrayed by Vincent Vermignon on the series, says he knew that he and his crew would be part of the story. But as Vanity Fair's Julie Miller explains, "HBO Max’s dramatized The Staircase undermines the very documentary it purports to pay tribute to, the filmmakers allege, by suggesting that they purposefully tipped the scales to manipulate audiences." De Lestrade also alleges the HBO Max series inaccurately portrays a relationship one of his editors, Sophie Brunet (played by Juliette Binoche), had with Michael Peterson. “I understand if you dramatize. But when you attack the credibility of my work, that’s really not acceptable to me,” says de Lestrade. “It’s alleged that we cut the documentary series in a way to help Peterson’s appeal, which is not true.” Meanwhile, De Lestrade insists he hasn’t made up his mind about Peterson: “I can’t tell you if he had something to do with the death of Kathleen, because I don’t know.”

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• Toni Collette and Colin Firth kept changing their minds on Michael Peterson's guilt throughout filming: "I mean, during the shoot, we changed our minds every second day, and that’s part of the retelling of it," says Collette. "That’s part of why it’s so compelling. We’ll never actually have an answer. I don’t know." Firth adds: "It’s interesting. Earlier today, somebody said she watched it looking for clues in my interpretation as to what I thought: 'There’s this expression, or that moment. Does that deliberately mean that Colin thinks that?' I think it would be a shame to answer that, because I think this thing is specializing in making you question, and being honest with the fact that we can only speculate. We can only guess. You can gravitate towards whatever certainty. But I think that this is playing with varying possibilities. And I think it would be a pity having gone to all that trouble to have the actor say, 'I think this happened.' Get back to me in a few years when everyone’s seen it."
• The Staircase team went to the real-life Peterson home to re-create three exact crime scene replicas
• Patrick Schwarzenegger shares screenshots of tweets of The Staircase viewers shocked that he can act
• The Staircase's portrayal of Kathleen Peterson's death, as portrayed by Toni Collette, has been hard to shake
• Kathleen Peterson's violent death will scar you for life 

Nash's The Rookie FBI spinoff will join Spotlight Oscar winner Tom McCarthy's journalism-themed drama Alaska and comedy Not Dead Yet starring Rodriguez on ABC's 2022-2023 schedule.

The network is not moving forward with the L.A. Law reboot led by original stars Blair Underwood and Corbin Bernsen and comedian Jo Koy's semi-autobiographical comedy Josep.

The streamer "plans to roll out the capability, which Netflix confirmed was in the early stages of development, for its swathe of unscripted shows and stand-up specials," reports Deadline's Peter White. "It would mean that Netflix would be able to use it for live voting for competition series and talent contests such as its upcoming dance competition series Dance 100 from The Circle producer Studio Lambert. Similarly, it could use it if it decides to bring back its Netflix Is A Joke festival."

Hulu has opted not to move forward with The Affair co-creator Sarah Treem's adaptation of Curtis Sittenfeld's novel that has been in the works since 2020. But 20th Television is shopping the project to other streamers now that Danes and Fanning have signed on to play Clinton at different points in her life. Rodham imagines what would've happened if Hillary never married Bill Clinton and ends up running for president in 2016 anyway.

The 95th Academy Awards have been scheduled for March 12, 2023, two weeks earlier than this year's March 27 ceremony. Before the pandemic, the Oscars aired in February. But last year's Oscars were moved to April 25, while this year's ceremony was pushed back to late March.

The Wonder Years has been picked up for Season 2, Home Economics and Big Sky are each returning for Season 3 and A Million Little Things and The Conners are each returning for a fifth season.

Che, Saturday Night Live's co-head writer and second-longest serving "Weekend Update" anchor, was asked in a New York Times profile about his comments reported in March that this is his last season. “Who doesn’t say they’re going to quit their job when they’re at their other job?” he said, continuing to play his comments as a joke. “I’m sure Biden says that twice a week.” In a more sincere tone, Che said: “My head has been at leaving for the past five seasons.” Che added: "I do think that I’ve been here longer than I’ll be here. This show is built for younger voices and, at some point, there’ll be something more exciting to watch at the halfway mark of the show than me and dumb Jost.” Meanwhile, SNL boss Lorne Michaels, who produces Che's HBO Max sketch comedy show That Damn Michael Che, said he hopes Che stays. “If I had my way, he’ll be here,” says Michaels. “And I don’t always get my way. But when you have someone who’s the real thing, you want to hold on as long as you can.”

The Bachelor has been renewed for Season 27, while Idol will be return for its sixth season on ABC and 21st season overall. America’s Funniest Home Videos was renewed for Season 33, Shark Tank for Season 14 and Celebrity Wheel of Fortune for Season 3.

Ackles, who will guest on the Season 2 finale as a temporary sheriff, and Sigler, who has recurred as a waitress, will become series regulars for Season 3 of the ABC drama.

Beatriz will star on the Sony PlayStation game-based series as Quiet, a ferocious, bada** car thief who acts purely on instinct.

Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi offered a first look at Season of their Apple TV+ alternative history series to EW. "When we premiered, this idea of a Cold War was very foreign to our younger viewers, and the idea that by season 3 it's become almost more relevant than ever is fascinating — also when it comes to the space race, the reignited interest in missions to the moon that NASA is doing, the private space industry, to Mars, and even some of the locations on the moon and Mars that we've looked at in terms of where to land, where to go," says Wolpert. "We find ourselves many times interacting with real research that's happening in real time right now. We're seeing footage that's coming back from Mars — the colors and the feel, the texture, the rocks — and we're incorporating that into the show through the visual effects and everything in real time. We're telling the story of an alternate history, but we speak to what's actually happening in the present more and more as the show gets further and further into this alternate future."

The Patton Oswalt-led stop-motion animated series premiered has been canceled a year after its premiere.

The Amber Ruffin Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers colleagues will develop and produce series for the studio under their new deal. They are also launching their own production company called Straight to Cards.

What We Do in the Shadows returns to FX for Season 4 on July 12, while Reservation Dogs kicks off its second season on Hulu on Aug. 3. Jeff Bridges' The Old Man debuts on FX on June 16. Aubrey Plaza's Little Demon premieres Aug. 25 with two episodes on FXX. Steve Carell's The Patient debuts Aug. 30 on Hulu. Jeremy Allen White's The Bear premieres on Hulu on June 23. American Horror Stories returns for Season 2 on July 21 on FX. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney's docuseries Welcome to Wrexham debuts with two episodes on FX on Aug. 24. 

"I couldn't believe he was still sitting there, like an a**hole," the 94th Academy Awards co-host said during a standup performance in Orlando last night, according to People. "Shouldn't you be sitting there with a lawyer or LAPD, motherf*cker?" Sykes added: "I hope he gets his sh*t together. Until then, f*ck him."

Snake in the Grass is a social experiment that will drop four strangers in the wild with the chance to win $100,000. The catch is one of them is a saboteur called the "snake." The previously announced Barmageddon will feature bar games from Blake Shelton and Carson Daly. Rust Hunters follows a family business that restores old cars and antiques. Winter Watchman follows four pairs of amateur survivalists become real winter watchman, who defend properties against man, beast and the elements in remote wilds. And The Chain: Alaska is an outdoor competition series that sees adventure racers and survival experts clash in high-stakes challenges while navigating through some of the most remote islands in the world. 

From Lucy’s School to The Snoopy Show to classic Peanuts movies, Apple TV+ has scheduled a full summer lineup of Peanuts content.

A reboot of James Cameron's 1994 action comedy film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis has been finally ordered to series, completing a six-year journey for McG. "Bringing True Lies to television has been a longtime passion for McG," says Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. "He started pursuing the idea in 2016, shortly after he signed an overall deal with 20th TV, whose sister feature studio produced the movie. The following year, a TV series reboot with Marc Guggenheim as a writer sold to Fox with a put pilot commitment. It did not go beyond the script stage but McG continued his efforts. In a 2019 interview, he indicated that a True Lies TV series could still happen, possibly at Disney+."

Sunday's live Naomi Judd: A River of Time Celebration on CMT will include a special message from the late singer's daughters, Wynonna and Ashley Judd, appearances by Salma Hayek, Morgan Freeman, Martina McBride and Bono. Brandi Carlile, Ashley McBryde, Emmylou Harris and Allison Russell, Little Big Town and the Gaithers will perform, while Carly Pearce and Cody Alan will provide commentary for CMT.

Katey Sagal, Ed O’Neill, Christina Applegate and David Faustino are poised to make an animated comeback reprising the Fox characters they played for 11 seasons between 1987 and 1997. Sony Pictures Television is shopping the animated revival to networks and streamers after closing deals with the four actors. Family Guy executive producer Alex Carter has been developing the animated Married… with Children for more than a year. Deadline's Nellie Andreeva reports Fox, Hulu and Peacock are considered logical destinations. "Married… with Children, which aired from 1987-97 on Fox, is a signature series for the network. Considered one of the most influential TV shows in pop culture, it was one of the very first original scripted series on the then-fledgeling network which helped put it on the map and establish its edgy comedy brand," says Andreeva. "What’s more, adult animation is in Fox’s DNA, and. the network has several animated family comedies, most notably juggernauts The Simpsons and Family Guy." But Hulu and Peacock also make sense because they carry the original series.

The original Teen Wolf star is back and ready to reprise his Derek Hale role after negotiating for his return for the past few months.

Inspired by the life of series creator Tracy McMillan, the eight-episode Unprisoned the show follows a messy but perfectionist relationship therapist and single mom (Washington) who has her life turned right-side-up when her dad (Lindo) gets out of prison and moves in with her and her teenage son. Unprisoned is Onyx Collective's first comedy. “From the moment Tracy McMillan brought this project to Simpson Street, we knew that it had the potential to be provocative, groundbreaking and life-affirming,” says Washington. “I love this show. I love these characters and the stories that they inspire. And I’m extremely excited to be working, once again, with both Onyx collective and ABC signature, and honored to be collaborating with this talented group of creative partners.”

The Russian Doll star will host the May 21 Season 47 finale of Saturday Night Live. She and Japanese Breakfast will perform on the show for the first time.

Hulu has opted to enter the star-studded David E. Kelley-created miniseries set at a health-and-wellness resort as an ongoing series for this year's Primetime Emmys. "Details on season two are still being firmed up ahead of an expected formal renewal announcement," reports The Hollywood Reporter's Lesley Goldberg. "Kelley co-wrote the first season alongside John Henry Butterworth and Samantha Strauss. Kelley, who has multiple other shows for a range of other platforms, is not expected to return as showrunner. It’s also unclear if Nine Perfect Strangers will become an anthology with a new cast every season or if it’ll follow Big Little Lies and feature the same group of characters."

He'll play a character named Ulysses on the wedding-set Season 2 of the Apple TV+ mystery comedy from Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

Business Insider recently reported on internal documents that Netflix would love to greenlight a New Girl-esque comedy, plus a "high-concept replacement” for Grace and Frankie. The streamer wants “big, broad stories that can be told on a budget” that also contain a “hook” and distinct perspective—series that emulate Netflix originals Emily in Paris and Never Have I Ever. "But perhaps more tellingly, the documents also cite New Girl—a broadcast show whose seven seasons all now stream exclusively on Netflix," says Savannah Walsh. "Many of the popular sitcoms that once drew subscribers to Netflix’s library have since left for other platforms: Friends for HBO Max, The Office for Peacock, and—this fall—Schitt’s Creek for Hulu. But New Girl, the quintessential hangout show with a quirky edge, has been a tried-and-true title for the streamer since 2013. The series stars Zooey Deschanel as Jess, who rebounds from a breakup by moving into a loft with a group of male roommates she met on Craigslist. What sounds like the start of a true-crime plot is made charming by the charisma of said roommates—fumbling Nick (Jake Johnson), nerdy Winston (Lamorne Morris), and womanizing Schmidt (Max Greenfield), who will eventually fall for Jess’s elusive friend, Cece (Hannah Simone). Damon Wayans Jr.’s Coach, who left after the show’s first episode for the short-lived but adored ABC sitcom Happy Endings before returning to the loft in season three, rounds out the cast. After wrapping its 146-episode run in 2018, New Girl’s legacy was established as a comfort show for younger millennials and members of Gen-Z. But what was once a well-regarded sitcom morphed into an essential rewatch in March 2020. At the pandemic’s onset, a flurry of essays about New Girl’s bingeability circulated online. Viewers celebrated Jess and Nick’s well-executed will they, won’t they romance, the gang’s rowdy drinking game True American, and the nontoxic male friendships at the show’s center. In a time when many classic shows are being reconsidered for their problematic themes, it seems New Girl has aged remarkably well."

During a performance Thursday in London, Rock said of Smith's Oscars slap, according to the Times of London: “I’m OK, if anybody was wondering. I got most of my hearing back...People expect me to talk about the bullsh*t, I’m not going to talk about it right now, I’ll get to it eventually, on Netflix."

This week's episode featured Kevin Samuels, the controversial YouTube star who died last Thursday at age 57. "To call his appearance untimely would suggest that there was ever an appropriate time to cast the personal stylist who spent the latter part of his career dishing out blatantly misogynistic relationship advice on YouTube," says Kyndall Cunningham. "But the fact that his behavior is currently being discussed online is unfortunate when the show is already fielding allegations of misogynoir—so much so that it needs to be pointlessly addressed in the episode description. Likewise, this season has been strangely preoccupied with featuring famously problematic men, maybe for intentional trolling purposes or what the show believes is insightful social commentary that just isn’t landing (probably a mixture of both)." Samuels' appearance on Atlanta comes one week after Liam Neesons's surprise appearance to discuss his racism controversy and two weeks after Chet Hanks.

Since the living room-shot special, titled Nothing Special, is premiering May 30, it'll make the May 31 cutoff for next year's Primetime Emmys. The late Macdonald was never nominated for an Emmy.

The Trebek Center, funded in part by a $500,000 donation from the Trebek family and featuring a mural of the late Jeopardy! host on the outside, opened at a former ice skating rink in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley on Thursday. The shelter contains 107 beds and will provide help for people to find permanent housing, supplying services, a library and outreach.

In a memo to staff titled "Netflix Culture — Seeking Excellence," the streaming service tells employees: "As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values." The memo, which comes after last year's Dave Chappelle trans controversy led to an employee walkout, adds: “Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

Bernardeau and Mexican actress Renata Notni will lead what will be the third Zorro series in the works. Wilmer Valderrama is starring in a Disney+ Zorro series, while Robert Rodriguez is developing a female-led Zorro for The CW. The Amazon Zorro, from director Javier Quintas, "will be shaped by relationships from his youth, love and disappointment  in love which will forge his development as a character and reflect a kind of masculinity far from stereotypes," per Variety. "His battle also takes in discovering who murdered his father, a personal mission which leads him to discover family secrets that will change for ever his destiny."

Bibb will play a lovely, but vulnerable member of the high society, joining Wiig and Allison Janney in the comedy set in 1970s Palm Beach high society.

While promoting their new book Office BFFs: Tales of The Office From Two Best Friends Who Were There, the Office Ladies podcast co-hosts recalled that the cast thinking that The Office wouldn't work with so many key people exiting for other projects. "As soon as we collectively made that decision, then we could start — the writers in particular — could start developing an end and having a story and having all the characters have their arc towards the same goal," says Kinsey. She adds that Greg Daniels invited the cast to pitch storylines for their characters for the final season. "He invited us all in to meet with him, to talk about, 'What is something we always had hoped for our character?' or what we always hoped for the show, and we got to share with him. I mean, that was just such a gracious thing that he did." 

Thursday's Star Wars premiere featured some great photos that could inspire fan fiction.

They'll become series regulars after recurring as guest-stars in Season 1 of the NBC action drama series.

According to EW, Cattrall and Lewis "lean into their camp icon credentials as two very different mothers to two very different kids who find themselves suddenly drawn together."

Ward, best known for his movie roles in The Right Stuff and Tremors, recurred on three episodes of ER as the father of Maura Tierney's Abby Lockhart. On Grey's Anatomy, he appeared in one episode as Denny Duquette, Sr. And he appeared on two episodes of the second season of True Detective as the father of Colin Farrell's character.

When Love, Victor returns next month for its third and final season, it will finally get to what co-showrunner Brian Tanen calls "the fun part" about the journey of a gay teenager. "The fun part being teenagehood, of course—that of first crushes, first kisses, first flings—the kind of swoon-worthy milestones that straight characters have enjoyed without the baggage of having to define their sexuality," says Shirley Li. "Reframing the queer coming-of-age experience as, simply, coming-of-age may seem like a subtle shift, but it helps illuminate how the emphasis on coming out has perhaps limited queer storytelling." As Li notes of Netflix's Heartstopper, based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, "mainstream coming-of-age stories about LGBTQ teenagers don’t normally look like Charlie's. These works tend to treat coming out as the core emotional conflict, portraying the experience as an internal crisis rife with secret keeping and anxiety. But Netflix’s popular adaptation of Heartstopper shifts the focus, prioritizing the depiction of celebration over that of repression—and it’s not the only recent, widely accessible project to do so." Li notes that past coming-out stories have been told with straight audiences in mind. Crucially on Heartstopper, Li adds, "the story of Nick and Charlie is sweet but not saccharine—the pair stumble on the way to becoming a couple, because adolescence is a minefield of heady emotions and dating mishaps—and Nick’s coming out is characterized less by fear than by curiosity. In a sly bit of meta commentary, he searches on the internet for films he could watch about the LGBTQ experience as he begins to feel attracted to Charlie. The list he lands on recommends Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, but rather than watching either, Nick indulges in an old favorite, Pirates of the Caribbean."

ALSO:

• Heartstopper is pure high school romantic fantasy, a story in which the L, G, B, and T are not only represented but joyfully so: "Unlike the queer stories of yore in which LGBTQ+ characters were marginalized—either never named as such, leaving hungry audiences to squint in search of queer subtext, or openly identified as queer, only to meet a grisly and untimely demise (everywhere from The Children’s Hour to Buffy the Vampire Slayer)—Heartstopper sets queerness at the center," says Tamar Westphal. "Across social media and a wide range of reviews, Heartstopper has been hailed for its unbridled joy, an unusual tone among queer narratives for any age, let alone youthful coming out stories. However, more unique than that is its overwhelming focus on tender romance with minimal sexual content. The series wraps us in safety and reassurance that can be hard to find for queer folks, especially in our early forays into coming out. These characters are neither alone nor just out for themselves—neither their own sexual gratification nor zero-sum ascension in the high school pecking order. They crave community and, amazingly, they find it. The path from 'I’ve only ever met one openly gay person before' to planning a triple date is swift."
• Heartstopper is a reflection of the true queer experience: coming out never ends: "Charlie Spring has been out of the closet for a year by the time we meet him," says Emily Kavanagh. "He’s gay and everyone knows it. His coming out narrative focuses on him grappling with being bullied for his sexuality and coming to grips with a new crush. Charlie’s narrative highlights how coming out is not the end of his hardships and the strength it takes to be true to yourself in the face of cruelty. It reflects the experience being out and how that changes others' perception of a person."
• What one Heartstopper fan used the show to come out to her parents
• Joe Locke and Kit Connor did their chemistry read via Zoom months before meeting in person: Locke says "we hit it off straight on," while Connor adds: "When we were actually able to meet each other and have a little chat and get to know each other, I think they could tell quite quickly that we were going to have very good on-screen chemistry." As for the reaction their getting, Connor says: "To have a show where you see queer people being happy and being together and united as a group, I think there’s something really beautiful about that. I think that shows like Euphoria that are very queer are still very much sort of adult in many ways because they are very dark and gritty. I think it’s really important to have a show that is just portraying queer love and queer beauty."
• Locke on how Heartstopper has impacted how he falls in love in his own life: "Overall, I've learned to appreciate the people in my life a lot more through playing Charlie," he says. "Charlie is just the most loving person, and I fear that in the relationships in my life, I've not always been that. I always try and take that on now and become more like Charlie. He's just nice and I want the people in my life to think that about me too. I don't know how Alice writes about love and relationships so well, but she has this amazing ability to encapsulate the queer teen experience. It also helps that we're all still teenagers, so we're acting these feelings that feel really real and recent for all of us. She writes about growing up and falling in love for the first time like no one else, which is especially impressive considering she's not a teenager anymore. I think it's hard to remember the intensity of those emotions once you grow up."

After years of expansion, The CW went down to 11 new and returning shows on Thursday with Legacies, Charmed, Dynasty, Roswell, New Mexico, In the Dark, 4400 and Naomi joining the recently canceled Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman. The cancelations are a result of the pending sale to Nexstar and a change in the fundamental way The CW operates and makes decisions, as Deadline's Nellie Andreeva explains. "Having functioned as an extension of its parent companies’ studios, Warner Bros. TV and CBS TV Studios, the CW’s role had been to help launch series which the two studios can exploit in streaming and international," says Andreeva. "A number of renewals over the years were dictated by the shows’ value to the studios, not the network, which explained why the low-rated Dynasty ran for five seasons on the CW. The show, which was canceled today, was the subject of a rich deal between CBS Studios and Netflix and making money for the studio regardless of its performance on the CW. After the CW’s sale, while Warner Bros. and Paramount are expected to retain minority stakes and continue to supply programming for it, their interests will no longer be above those of the network. The 2019 end of WBTV and CBS Studios’ Netflix output deal for the CW programming also played a role in some of the cancellations as newer series go to HBO Max/Paramount+ and do not bring in external streaming revenue, putting more pressure on them to deliver for the studios. (The end of the Netflix pact has been beneficial for the CW, which can now monetize its shows with a full-season stack for all of but The Flash, Riverdale and All American.)" ALSO: Julie Plec, who saw the cancelations of two of her CW shows and one NBC show on Thursday, compared the axings to Red Wedding.

According to The Wrap, the Twitter polls allowing regular people to vote for their favorite movies "appear to have been rigged by automated online bot accounts backing the work of Justice League filmmaker Zack Snyder."

Woodruff, who has been anchoring NewsHour solo since her co-anchor Gwen Ifill's death in 2016, is expected to leave the PBS news show after the midterms, according to Puck News. Nawaz and Bennett are expected to become the new co-anchors if all goes to plan. PBS won't confirm or deny the news, but Woodruff is expected to stay at PBS in some capacity.

"Finally I can admit it,” Moffat told The Telegraph. “I’ve seen the new Doctor in action. Russell (T Davies) showed me the audition tape a while back. He is magnificent: all at once a brand new hero and the same wonderful mad old Doctor we’ve always known. Trust me, we are all in for a treat."

ALSO:

• Ncuti Gatwa always had fate in his charisma after moving to Scotland at age 2 from Rwanda: In a 2020 interview, he told The Independent that his family were one of “like three black families in the whole of Edinburgh”, adding: “I was quite an easy target in a state Scottish high school. I grew up in a working-class area, and I stood out – for my voice, my appearance, I did dance and things like that. But I always had faith in my charm. I always had faith in my charisma.” 
• Former Doctor Matt Smith says of Gatwa: “There’s a warmth and wit and real depth to his talent. He’s an inspired choice and I’m really excited for the show"
• Gatwa thanks predecessors Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant for their support

Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington went ahead with their livestreamed stunt for Hulu last month, in which they attempted to trade planes mid-air, despite FAA rejecting their waiver. One of the planes crashed, but both pilots weren't injured. The Federal Aviation Administration has revoked the licenses of pilots Luke Aikins and Farrington, calling their actions “reckless” and “egregious.” The FAA also fined Aikins, whom the agency called the lead pilot, $4,932 for abandoning his pilot seat and operating his plane in a “careless and reckless." 

"At first glance, as the show is well aware and leans into every chance it gets, Gloria is the most unlikely member of Girls5Eva," says Caroline Framke of Pell's character. "With her gray hair and omnipresent frown, and standing a good several inches shorter than everyone else, she immediately goes against the visual grain of the group. Dawn, Wickie, and Summer haven’t changed so much from their younger selves that they’ve become unrecognizable. Gloria, though, has not just aged, but settled into herself as the straight-talking lesbian she always was underneath all the painfully heterosexual girl group glam. She’s evolved so much from her 2000s era self, in fact, that when an episode includes her in a flashback, Gloria’s played not by Pell, but by another actor entirely (Erika Henningsen, making the most of it). As far as character journeys go, Gloria’s is simply the most varied and compelling — though it helps, of course, to have someone like Pell playing her, too."

"CBS is responsible for 17 of the top 30 titles on sibling streamer Paramount+," says Josef Adalian. "Given the emphasis all streamers, including Paramount+, put on their own ever-lengthening rosters of pricey originals, it might seem surprising that more than half of the most popular programs on Paramount Global’s signature streamer come from the decidedly unsexy world of network TV. And yet, when you think about it, it’s actually not that much of a shock. Nielsen’s weekly lists of top SVOD shows regularly include multiple network TV staples, both current (NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy) and past (Seinfeld, Criminal Minds). During Netflix’s formative years as a streaming platform, network comedies such as Friends, The Office, and Parks and Recreation consistently tallied more viewing hours than many of the company’s own early slate of originals, which is why those shows are are now being used to build the subscriber base for NBCUniversal’s Peacock and WB Discovery’s HBO Max. And some of the biggest streaming success stories in recent years have been series that were either aired on (or were originally developed for) broadcast and basic cable platforms, including You (Lifetime), Emily in Paris (Paramount Network), Lucifer (Fox), and Manifest (NBC.)" Adalian adds: "Instead of green-lighting fancy period dramas or Emmy-bait anthology series in a bid to compete with the premium fare on streaming, it opted to keep evolving its proven formula of procedural dramas and big-laugh comedies."

"I don’t know why the first game of the Yankees doubleheader Sunday disappeared behind a nascent Amazon Prime streaming pay wall after last Friday’s originally scheduled streaming game was rained out, and I don’t know why tonight’s Yanks-White Sox audience will be similarly minimized," says Phil Mushnick. "Beyond short-term greed and long-term continuing neglect, I have no answers. The best team in baseball again lost from greatest-access TV on a Friday night? Exclusive deals with coming added-subscription Apple TV+, Peacock and Amazon Prime, made on the very quiet as if to duck the shame, deals made before these services, in the throes of record inflation, have been established and prior to knowing if they’re even sustainable? MLB has allowed itself to become a lab rat, baseball fans used as rat bait. That’s all I’ve got."

"Whoever gets to decide? Certainly not in this industry," Corden told E.T. of ending his show next year. "Who ever gets to make their own decisions? Never. And you'll never find out (what is waiting for you) unless you just take a run and jump."

The Chargers, known for having one of the best NFL social media teams, released a two-minute anime skewering everybody from ESPN's Adam Schefter to Mina Kimes and Grey's Anatomy dead characters Denny Duquette, George O'Malley, Lexie Grey, McSteamy and McDreamy. ALSO: Check out the NFL's 2022 schedule, including a Christmas triple-header.

"I’d honestly like to know how Survivor’s producers justify twists that completely nullify actual game play," says Andy Dehnart. "I understand Probst’s boner for forcing the cast to make choices (even though that happens without his intervention, but I digress). But why allow those choices to obliterate organic choices? Clearly, they sometimes create a good moment of television, and that’s all that matters, I guess?"

Creator Sarah Streicher and fellow showrunner Amy B. Harris explains what the Season 2 cliffhanger means for a potential Season 3, which they already have mapped out.

"Sonos Voice Control understands the nuance of human communication and will respond to natural commands like 'turn it up!" the speaker company said in a press release. "After a careful search, Sonos chose award-winning actor Giancarlo Esposito - best known for his roles in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and The Mandalorian - to deliver a familiar voice for US customers. With careful recording, advanced processing and mastering, the voice is natural, unobtrusive, yet confident and engaging. Sonos’ first voice will be joined by others over time as Sonos continues to expand the experience to new people and places."

The Only Murders in the Building star takes offense to being referred to as a pop-star for her Saturday Night Live debut.

Hacks creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky's acclaimed comedy's Season 1 finale left some trepidation that it would undermine Deborah and Ava's dynamic in Season 2. But the events of the Season 1 finale instead makes their relationship richer and even more complicated, says Alan Sepinwall. "If anything, Season Two leans even more into the series’ strengths," says Sepinwall. "Having lost her casino residency, Deborah is eager to hit the road immediately to try out the new, more confessional material she and Ava have worked on together. So after a quick pit stop in Vegas — which allows Jean Smart to deliver a classic sports-movie speech at an MMA fight featuring the new husband of her daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson) — Deborah and Ava begin traveling the country together, first in Deborah’s car, and then on her tricked-out tour bus. There is no getting away for Ava, or for Deborah, and the close quarters force them to keep working through their issues. It’s a smart embrace of the core concept, even if it comes at the expense of the show’s supporting cast."

ALSO:

• Hacks Season 2 starts out like a series that lost its keys and can’t remember where it left them: "The show and its central creative team, creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, slowly get their rhythm back as each episode progresses, and (Jean) Smart and (Hannah) Einbinder still have an energetic rapport that’s fun to watch," says Jen Chaney. "But especially in the first couple of installments — HBO provided six out of the eight that will roll out two per week starting today — there’s a fair amount of trying too hard, and it is indeed awkward. Some scenes last a beat longer than they should, as if they’re holding for more laughs than they’ve earned. Others, particularly those involving secondary characters like Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), the CEO of Deborah’s business, and Jimmy (Downs), Deborah’s and Ava’s agent, have little reason to exist at all. Where narrative focus and sharp dialogue were hallmarks of season one, season two sometimes feels aimless and unsure of the underlying points it’s trying to make. If season one hadn’t set such a high bar, these issues might not be quite as striking. But it did, and they are."
• Hacks is firing on all cylinders in Season 2: "The Emmy-winning Smart carried the show’s first season with her slippery charisma, coiled-and-ready-to-strike pain and delightfully unpredictable line readings," says Inkoo Kang. "It’s a joy to see the rest of the series catch up with her munificent excellence in its sophomore year. The writing is funnier and more poignant, the ensemble has gelled and the tonal jaggedness that plagued the previous season has been smoothed out. With Smart never better, the first six episodes (of eight total) find the show firing on all cylinders. It’s exactly what you’d hope from any sophomore season. Its success is in no small part due to the road-trip setup, which puts Deborah and Ava in ever-new situations and forces them to reveal hidden facets of themselves — at rest stops, yard sales and punishingly beige psychic offices."
• Hacks is a reminder that all comedies should be meaner: "Some comedies are better off being mean. Hacks, the HBO Max series about aging comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her unlikely partnership with Ava (Hannah Einbinder), her reluctant millennial joke writer, is a prime example of this; a comedy about two women who strongly dislike each other yet are forced by circumstance to work together," says Joshua Rivera. "This resulted in a steady stream of jokes: Deborah would effortlessly roast Ava, and Ava would sputter and flail while trying to update Deborah’s outdated feminism in vain. In locking horns, the pair would individually ponder ideas of progress, and how their culture has continued to fail women in much the same ways Deborah was familiar with, in spite of Ava’s wider feminist lexicon. This tension made Hacks compelling, and it’s always in danger of collapsing for a very simple and understandable reason: It all falls apart if the two leads start to like each other too much. 'Meanness' in this context is a source of tension, which all comedies need to survive."
• Season 2 is still as cutting and engaging as ever, building steam throughout: "Smart and Einbinder's onscreen dynamic was unquestionably the highlight of Season 1, and it's no surprise that it remains compelling in Season 2," says Belen Edwards. "By the end of Hacks' first season, Deborah and Ava figured out that they can work well together. Now the root of their conflict shifts, focusing more on the threat of Deborah discovering Ava's betrayal. It's not quite as powerful as the clash of personalities that made Hacks' first season such fun, but Aniello, Downs, and Statsky continue to mine Deborah and Ava's differences — and similarities — for gold. Some things haven't changed: Deborah still roasts Ava's fashion and hands, while Ava takes every chance she gets to grandstand in the name of social causes. However, these moments now feel less hostile and more like good-natured ribbing."
• Season 2 underwhelms a little: "The show still attempts to critique the fame machine, but both seasons continue to revel too much in the material pleasures that come from making it, so that rather than offer commentary on the industry it merely offers insider knowledge," says Marya E. Gates. "Like Ava’s surface-level feminism throughout the series and her inability to follow through on her Gen-Z idealism, Hacks aims to examine the brutal side of the entertainment world it inhabits but fails to fully commit to a deeper criticism of it."
• Season 2 aims higher and deeper, expanding the dynamic between Ava and Deborah while keeping both the wit and pathos largely intact: "In taking Deborah and Ava out on the road, series creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky offer the characters a change of scenery—and a recalibration," says Jessica Derschowitz. "Their rapport is the show’s central, electric nerve, but in the six episodes available for review, the playing field they’re on is shifting. Deborah, now firmly outside her Vegas comfort zone and the stand-up style she’d relied on for decades, has to confront her comedy and herself in a way she couldn’t (or wasn’t willing to) before, while Ava is grappling with the aftermath of her recklessness. Barbs are still their love language of choice, but there’s also a growing respect for one another, measures of friendship and mutual understanding coloring their professional and personal relationships."
• Hacks remains just on the edge of something truly great in Season 2: In Season 1, "the concentration on Smart’s indisputable greatness became a minor distraction from more holistic analyses of Hacks that could acknowledge that, for probably the first few episodes, the series was decent but maybe not completely at Smart’s level — and that after the midway point in the season, Hacks became a better show overall for being more of an ensemble, albeit one with Smart as first among not-quite-equals," says Daniel Fienberg. "The second Hacks season finds the show qualitatively picking up where it left off, now fully aware of all of the exceptional moving pieces at its disposal — but still not necessarily fully prepared to get value out of all of those pieces. This comic examination of female friendship and mentorship remains just on the edge of something truly great." He adds: "One thing Hacks has already established its ability to do interestingly, if not always smoothly, is set itself up for contrived drama and then avoid dragging out the contrivance."
• Hacks avoids typical Season 2 stumbles: "Hacks really puts Ava through the wringer; the third episode sees her run an emotional gauntlet that would devastate most people, and Einbinder is riveting the whole time," says Danette Chavez. "The tension dissipates as quickly as it builds, often unexpectedly, and always to hilarious or affecting results. Aniello, Downs, and Statsky show a masterful grasp of their series’ rhythms, its cadences — not just timing or pacing or leavening a moment with humor, but in sometimes just letting their characters and actors be. (That might sound like TV Producing 101, but just consider all the shows out there that lose steam before the halfway point, or that give the sense of five simultaneous conversations that no one’s actually paying attention to.) They understand their series as a whole, and in their hands, Hacks almost becomes a living, breathing thing."
• Hacks has done it again: "Season 2 leans into its established strengths — the relationship between Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) grows deeper, the performances are more lived in, the dialogue remains as clever as it is unexpected — while recognizing new opportunities," says Ben Travers. "As promised in the waning moments of Season 1, the majority of Season 2 hits the road for a nationwide comedy tour. The team’s deluxe RV (emblazoned with a bright pink 'DV' and sporting an elegant interior that lives up to its brand as Deborah’s Vehicle) bottles the cast’s electric chemistry in the same room, while life on the road opens the story to fresh settings, exciting guest pop-ins (Laurie Metcalf!), and genuine spontaneity. The show’s follow-up entry literally covers fresh ground, not only by cruising over it, but by embracing the most enticing aspects of a long haul: big laughs with close friends, meaningful self-reflection, and a trusty leader in the captain’s chair — well, two trusty leaders, really."
• The focus of Hacks Season 2, as always, is on the push and pull of Deborah and Ava’s relationship: "The duo still prefers to communicate via scathing punchlines, but now there is less an air of competition between them than a measure of respect," says Meghan O'Keefe. "Deborah has to confront her demons on the road, while Ava is grappling with grief and shame. Hacks cleverly lets the women flit between cruelty and kindness is a way that continues to ring true. The show’s second season is also refreshingly more interested in how much Ava and Deborah are alike, as opposed to different (which is where Season 1 started)."
• Hacks' most enduring strength is its directing: "Honed so brilliantly by Aniello, from some of the best Broad City episodes until her Hacks Emmy win, it finds surreal and beautiful moments no matter the circumstance," says Caroline Framke. "And looking back, it’s the show’s finely framed images that stand out most. From Ava dancing on the deck of a lesbian cruise and Marcus rocking on his heels at the veterinarian, to Deborah screaming in triumph while covered in (someone else’s) blood, the camera always keeps a steady focus on the crux of Hacks, a comedy truly unto itself."
• Season 2 is about the journey, not the destination: "The first six episodes of Hacks’ second season are very much a middle act, with plenty going on, but no concrete resolutions," says Clare Martin. "And that’s perfectly okay; these characters are well-established and enjoyable enough that it’s fun to simply hit the road with Deborah, Ava, and Marcus."
• Hacks launches The Official Hacks Podcast hosted by creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky
• How did Hacks approach Season 2 differently from Season 1?: "We knew that we were going on the road and that Deborah was going to be taken out of her bubble and her fortress that she’s created for herself in the desert," says Lucia Aniello. "And the reason she’s lived in Vegas is that she was a bit walled off from the rest of the world and their criticisms. But we knew innately by putting her on the road and keeping her away from her creature comforts that it would give us a different Deborah to write. For Ava, we knew that she would be so worried about this email, and we wanted it to be more than just a plot device about an email. We really want to get to put Ava’s story and her character on this path of redeeming herself to Deborah. That was also very fresh for us." Paul W. Downs adds: They’ve obviously developed an intimacy over the course of the season, but they also have this dynamic of love-hate, dark mentorship. We wanted to be able to reset the dynamic. Having something like this [email] allowed us to give Deborah a bit of real estate to rib Ava and something to hold over her head so that they could have that dynamic again without it just being buddy-buddy. Also, we hope that putting them on the road together in this confined space in the middle of nowhere, allowed us to deepen the relationship. What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger by the end of Season 2."
• How did Ava's large hands become a running joke?: "We cast Hannah after the show had been written, and that joke was written early on as part of the nightmare boss, Deborah, torturing this employee," says Jen Statsky. "We were like, 'She should make fun of her hands for being huge.' We did at a certain point say to Hannah like, 'Just so you know, this was before you signed on, this isn’t something we noticed.'" Downs adds: "Well, Hannah being like, 'Did you write this because of my hand size?' We were like, 'No, you have big hands?' And she was like, 'I have notoriously big hands, and also here’s a photo of me as a teen.' And there’s a photo we use in the (Season 1) finale where her hand is comically large looking, but it’s not Photoshop, it’s truly just alien. It’s like that awkward phase when parts of you are growing, and her hands grew first. And we actually ended up using it in the show."
• Hacks' attention to detail helps give the showrunners more ways to squeeze the maximum amount of comedy out of any given scene: “We’re just always trying to, whether it’s even in production design or costumes or a prop, any time we can add another layer to it, we always do,” says Aniello. “That’s part of why we are very exacting in the prep part of it, because you never know when you’re going to get one more layer of comedy, or, honestly, a moment that says something about a character, from their hat, or their purse, or the prop they pick up, or the kind of car they drive. All of these things add up to a person. For us, we’re always looking to try to say something with any little moment we can on screen.”
• Jean Smart calls Season 2's crop of big-name guest-stars "an embarrassment of riches": “It was really nice because apparently people are asking to be on the show,” says Smart. “It’s not like they had to go beg people, which is always a really nice feeling. I’ve worked with Laurie (Metcalf) before. In fact, we have the same agent. I love her. She’s fantastic. She’s a brilliant actress.”
• Hannah Einbinder admits feeling "a tremendous amount of pressure" heading into Season 2: "Since it came out, season one, there has been this whirlwind of this world that is, like, very new to me," she explains. "And all of these various elements of the business that are separate from the work itself. And so, all of that swirling around my head before the second season, I was like, 'Whoa, whoa!'"