Television

This column contains significant spoilers for the first two episodes of And Just Like That…, which are streaming now on HBO Max, as well as more general thoughts on the next two episodes, which will begin streaming over the next two Thursdays. “We can’t just stay who we were, right?” Miranda Hobbes asks in the opening minutes of And Just Like That…, HBO Max’s sequel series to Sex and the City. When SATC began, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) were all in their early...

HBO Max has dropped the first teaser for Winning Time, an upcoming original series about the legendary “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers and their owner Jim Buss, played by John C. Reilly. “There are two things in this world that make me believe in God: Sex and basketball,” Buss says in the preview of the Adam McKay-directed Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Buss’ dreams of turning the game of basketball into an entertainment empire is quickly realized when, with the first pick in the 1979 draft, the team...

A review of this week’s Hawkeye, “Partners, Am I Right?” coming up just as soon as absence makes the heart grow older… Last week’s episode was a significant step up from the premiere, in terms of both action and deepening our understanding of and appreciation for both of our main characters. “Partners, Am I Right?” goes back to staging its main action set piece at night, albeit in a way that’s still easier to follow than anything in the opening installments. But as this week’s title suggests, the main focus...

Kristen Bell questions her reality in the teaser for the upcoming black comedy The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, which will premiere on Jan. 28. In the Netflix series, which sends up psychological thrillers, Bell plays Anna, a woman who likes her glasses of wine filled up to the top and spying on her neighbors. When a new neighbor (actor Tom Riley) moves into the house across the street with his daughter, Anna can’t help but watch them. But when she reports...

The entire TV business has been focused on streaming for a while now, but 2021 felt like the year the industry began treating its streaming platforms as the alpha and omega, with traditional broadcast and cable networks viewed as content suppliers for series’ eventual streaming homes, at best. Of the 20 wonderful shows we picked for our list of the year’s best television, 15 of them debuted exclusively on a streamer, and the other five came from places like HBO and FX, where the line between the linear channels and,...

At this point, it’s a given that we’re living in the “golden age” of television; somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 new scripted series drop each year. With so much to choose from, that means TV can get daring, specific, and sometimes, weird as hell. Superheroes trapped inside an I Love Lucy pastiche? A creepy animatronic doll calling a murderous game of Red Light, Green Light? In the era of peak TV, grade-A oddity is only a mouse-click away. But no show in 2021 is more weirdly specific — and...

Will Forte’s patriotic hero is back in the new trailer for Peacock series MacGruber, set to premiere Dec. 16. The series, based on Forte’s Saturday Night Live character and the 2010 film of the same name, will feature an all-star cast of Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Laurence Fishburne, Mickey Rourke, and Billy Zane. The clip shows MacGruber being released from prison, this time with a mission of taking down a villain named Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth, played by Rourke. The official synopsis notes, “With the entire world in the crosshairs,...

Michael Imperioli won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in 2004 for his iconic role as Christopher Motlisanti on The Sopranos. But despite the honor, his statue ended up in a hotel room trash bin by the end of the night — or so he says on Rolling Stone‘s The First Time. “We were up all night, because like I said, we won best show,” explains Imperioli. (The Sopranos also took home Outstanding Drama Series that year, a first for a cable show.) “By five in the morning, we were...

The timing of HBO Max’s Station Eleven is either unfortunate or spectacular, depending how you look at it. The 10-part adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s acclaimed novel, about the aftermath of a flu pandemic that wipes out most of humanity, arrives while we are still fretting about the impact each new Covid variant will have on our lives. Many viewers may simply not have the tolerance for scenes where people cough in public spaces, hoard supplies, or debate the efficacy of masks against an airborne plague. But the majority...

It’s been two years since we last saw Midge get the opportunity of a lifetime before potentially blowing it onstage at the Apollo. Now, fans of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — who last saw the show in a pre-pandemic world that feels like 30 years ago — will finally get a resolution to Midge’s gaffe when the show returns in February on Amazon Prime. In a new teaser for the show, though, we’re left to wait a little bit longer and focus on Susie Meyerson’s attempt to rebuild and expand...

“I don’t usually go for younger girls, but you’re different,” a high-school boy tells Anna Kone in the next new episode of Pen15. On one level, this is a wink at the central gimmick of the Hulu comedy: that Anna (Anna Konkle) and her best friend Maya Ishii-Peters (Maya Erskine) are 13 years old, but played by women in their early thirties, while all the other kids on the show are played by age-appropriate actors. But by this point in the series’ lifespan, it barely even feels like a joke....

In the first trailer for season four of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) is done with downplaying her comedy act for opening gigs — for now on, she’s saying what she wants and if the business has to change to make her a headliner, then so be it. The Prime Video series returns on Feb. 18 with a new release strategy. Rather than the usual all-at-once binge drop, season four will be released in ​​two episode increments every Friday for two weeks. Brosnahan returns alongside Alex Borstein, who...

A review of this week’s Hawkeye episode, “Echoes,” coming up just as soon as I don’t have to see Imagine Dragons… Last week’s two-part Hawkeye premiere had its pluses, particularly Hailee Steinfeld’s energetic and funny performance as Kate Bishop. And it had pieces that didn’t really work, from visually muddled action sequences to an odd conclusion for the second episode that was meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know 21st century Marvel comics, and/or who hasn’t been reading every news story about casting for this show. “Echoes” — written by Katrina...