Television

Once per episode, Gangs of London will grab you by the scruff of the neck, hurl you against a wall, and remind you with repeated blunt force that the show comes from Gareth Evans, one of the great action directors alive. (If you haven’t seen them yet, put The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2 in your queue now.) Evans created the series with Matt Flannery, and co-writes and directs several of the early episodes. But whether he’s credited or not, each hour of the crime drama features a fight...

A virus-themed episode of Nickelodeon’s animated series SpongeBob SquarePants has been pulled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, as NBC News reports. The episode, “Kwarantined Crab,” will not air “due to sensitivities surrounding the global, real world pandemic,” Nickelodeon’s executive vice president of communications David Bittler told NBC News. In the Season 12 episode, a health inspector visits SpongeBob’s workplace, Krusty Krab, and informs workers and customers that there is a case of the “Clam Flu” present. They are subjected to quarantine inside the restaurant, which gives rise to...

The true crime classic The Staircase, Netflix’s docuseries about novelist Michael Peterson and the suspicious death of his wife Kathleen, is set to become an HBO Max limited series, with Colin Firth cast as Peterson. The streaming service and Annapurna Television announced the upcoming series Wednesday, with The Devil All the Time director Antonio Campos and co-showrunner Maggie Cohn leading the project “This has been a project I have been working on in one way or another since 2008,” Campos, who will helm six of the limited series’ eight episodes,...

Adult Swim has released a new trailer for Rick and Morty, which will return for its fifth season on June 20th. The clip doesn’t offer much in the way of plotlines — unsurprisingly — but it does boast a barrage of one-liners and a montage of clips from this next batch of bonkers sci-fi mayhem. The madness includes flying bug robots, more Rick clones, interdimensional portals, strange ocean men, and some sort of surreal post-apocalyptic/Mad Max adventure in which Rick wears a skimpy leather outfit with a swordfish inexplicably piercing...

There is typecasting, and then there is Cristin Milioti’s career the last few years, where she has repeatedly been hired to play strong-willed women trapped by some useless dude in a science-fiction nightmare. First there was “U.S.S. Callister,” her fantastic episode of Black Mirror, where she found herself uploaded into Jesse Plemons’ Star Trek fantasy. Then there was last year’s delightful movie Palm Springs, where Andy Samberg’s Nyles thoughtlessly dragged her into the time loop that had already snared him. Now, she’s the star of HBO Max’s Made for Love...

Products featured are independently selected by our editorial team and we may earn a commission from purchases made from our links; the retailer may also receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Monster titans will battle it out in Godzilla vs. Kong, streaming now on HBO Max. This thrilling blockbuster is the fourth installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse, following 2014’s Godzilla, 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which have all lead up to this epic clash of two monster legends. Directed by Adam Wingard, this battle...

Former Saturday Night Live cast member and guest host Maya Rudolph revived her Beyoncé impersonation in a sketch based on the popular hot wings-eating YouTube series Hot Ones. “I still can’t tell if this beneath me, but my sister Solange loves this show, so I said I’d do it,” Rudolph’s Beyoncé said, grabbing at a hot wing while wearing the same gloves as the real Beyoncé wore to the Grammys. Host Sean Evans (Mikey Day) attempts to interview his guest between bites, but Rudolph’s Beyoncé is immediately stunned by the...

Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris — alongside the first Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, played by Martin Short — hosted a “Unity Seder” to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover on the Rudolph-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live. “This has been a difficult year for all of us, but I really do feel we’re about to see some light, and what better night to celebrate new beginnings than on Passover, or as my adopted people call it, Pesach,” the vice president said. For the dinner, Harris invited politicians from both sides of...

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update returned from its monthlong hiatus to a week marred with mass shootings, with co-anchor Colin Jost focusing on renewed calls to pass gun control measures. “In the wake of the Colorado and Atlanta shootings, President Biden called for universal background checks for gun purchases, and background checks are a great start but shouldn’t we also do current checks? Like, what are these guys up to now?” Jost asked. “How much Call of Duty are they playing? Have they recently DM’d a girl ‘Hey’ 30 times?...

Sharon Osbourne has left her position on the daytime talk show The Talk following a heated on-air conversation about race as well as accusations of racist comments that led to an internal investigation by CBS. “Sharon Osbourne has decided to leave The Talk,” CBS said in a statement Friday (via The Hollywood Reporter). “The events of the March 10 broadcast were upsetting to everyone involved, including the audience watching at home. As part of our review, we concluded that Sharon’s behavior toward her co-hosts during the March 10 episode did not...

George R. R. Martin has inked a new deal with HBO that will allow the author to develop more series for the network and its HBO Max streaming service, including multiple Game of Thrones spinoffs. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Martin’s new pact with HBO spans five years and is worth mid-eight figures. The news comes just weeks after HBO revealed that at least five Game of Thrones spinoffs and prequels are in the works, and ensures Martin’s continued input on the in-development series. Of the many Game of Thrones-related...

A review of this week’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, “The Star-Spangled Man,” coming up just as soon as I’m fighting Gandalf… In Captain America: The First Avenger, you may recall, Stanley Tucci has a small but memorable role as Dr. Abraham Erskine, the immigrant scientist who created the formula that turns Steve Rogers from scrawny dreamer into brawny supersoldier. He overhears tales of Steve trying and failing to enlist multiple times, gets a glimpse of this tiny kid’s huge heart, and pushes again and again for him to...

The remote seems to hang in the air for a moment, its infrared sensor mixing with the light coming in through the window to create a pixellated rainbow before the device crashes into the screen of my television. I lean back, satisfied that my rage has found a therapeutic outlet, then turn and look for other things to break. You’re probably wondering how I got here. So let’s flash back a few weeks earlier to explain. Or would it be better if I told my tale of TV-critic woe in...

Products featured are independently selected by our editorial team and we may earn a commission from purchases made from our links; the retailer may also receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. One of the most buzzed-about documentaries of the year is finally premiering this weekend on HBO. First teased almost three years ago, and officially announced in February, the Tina Turner doc, Tina, hits the small screen this Saturday on HBO and HBO Max. The documentary promises an intimate and revealing look into the life and career of the...