Sunday

“E60” (ESPN, 11 a.m. ET): The rise of pro hockey’s Mighty Ducks is recalled in the new doc “Once Upon a Time in Anaheim.”

Raquel Welch tribute (TCM, 5 and 7 p.m.): The glamorous star, who died in February, is featured in the 1973 romp “The Three Musketeers” and the 1966 adventure “One Million Years B.C.”

“The Tony Awards” (CBS, 8 p.m.): Broadway gives its regards to itself at the annual ceremony. “West Side Story” Oscar winner Ariana DeBose returns as host.

Monday

“Buffalo Soldiers: Fighting on Two Fronts — A Local, USA Special” (PBS, 10 p.m.): This 2022 doc salutes the Black Americans who served in segregated units in the U.S. Army after the Civil War.

Tuesday

“Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact” (Netflix): How’s married life treating her? The comic has thoughts in her latest stand-up special.

Wednesday

“The Full Monty” (FX on Hulu): Those unemployed blokes turned male strippers from the hit 1997 comedy are back in this new series. With Mark Addy.

“Small Town Potential” (HGTV, 9 p.m.): Folks looking to relocate to the scenic Hudson River Valley get an assist in this new renovation series.

“The Big D” (USA, 10 p.m.): Divorced couples are forced to cohabitate with their exes while each searches for someone new in this new series.

Thursday

“Black Mirror” (Netflix): It probably won’t seem nearly as unnerving as it once did when the dystopian anthology series returns with its first new episodes since 2019.

“Can’t Cancel Pride 2023 — The Future Starts Now” (Roku, iHeartRadio’s YouTube, 8 p.m.): Dolly Parton and Elton John are among the celebs taking part in this celebration.

“Jagged Mind” (Hulu): It’s like deja vu all over again for a young Brit in this imported 2023 thriller. With Maisie Richardson-Sellers.

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (Paramount+): The sci-fi franchise’s latest entry launches a second season. Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn star.

“Pretty Freekin Scary” (Disney, 9 and 9:30 p.m.): Be afraid, be sort of afraid of this new sitcom based on the children’s books.

Friday

“Chevalier” (Hulu): This 2023 historical drama tells the tale of a trailblazing Black composer, violinist and swordsman in 18th-century France. Kelvin Harrison Jr. stars.

“Extraction 2” (Netflix): “Thor’s” Chris Hemsworth goes commando — again! — in this 2023 sequel to the 2021 action thriller.

“The Lost King” (AMC+): An amateur historian’s hunch about Richard III’s final resting place pays off in Stephen Frears’ fact-based 2023 drama. Sally Hawkins stars.

“Stan Lee” (Disney+): The comic book artist who helped lay the foundations for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is remembered in this new special.

Pike was the original Captain of the USS Enterprise in the 1965 ‘Star Trek’ pilot. “He’s what’s supposed to represent the Starfleet captain in (creator) Gene Roddenberry’s mind,” Mount, 50, said in a Zoom interview.

“That’s a really high bar to meet. Yet at the same time, I’m freed from that because I feel like Jeffrey Hunter” – the star of “The Searchers” who was Jesus in “King of Kings” – “was playing a different Pike in a different part of his life. That was the first act Pike. I get to flesh out the second act Pike.

“Hopefully,” he added with a smile, “we’ll get to the correct Pike. I’d like to. But you have to have an equal sense of respect and the ability to put that aside and do your job every day.”

It’s nearly 60 years since “Star Trek” first boldly went into space, what is key to that continued appeal?

“When science fiction is at its best,” Mount answered, “and where TV is at its best is when they function as a metaphorical platform to talk about what’s going on right now. Gene Roddenberry was smart enough to use that platform to talk about our better selves. Hopefully, we’re continuing to make him proud.

“That’s one of the reasons, not just stylistically, that we wanted to harken back to the original series,” with standalone episodes. “We wanted to have that big idea of the week on the planet of the week.”

“Strange Worlds” began as a spin-off of “Star Trek Discovery.”  Season 2 kicks off with Pike’s Number One Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) on trial because she’s revealed to be an Illyrian, a genetically altered race.  Is this really about trans kids?

“It could be an allegory for all sorts of prejudice or persecution,” Romijn said. “It could be within the trans community. It could be racial, it could be religious. It could be an analogy for immigrant stories!

“It still just has to do with these human themes of prejudice and persecution still existing in this futuristic, utopian world. That is ‘Star Trek’ where we still can’t get away from certain things.”

Added Mount, “I certainly think that you can make that argument. It’s a very valid question. I don’t think it’s our place to nail some things down so tightly and to limit it. But I can confirm that those conversations have certainly happened in the background.”

Paramount + streams the first of 10 episodes of  “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2” on Thursday

That was the impetus behind Stephen Pandos to make “Burden of Proof,” HBO’s four-part documentary that streams Tuesday on MAX.

It was February 1987 when Stephen’s only sibling Jennifer disappeared in the middle of the night. His parents waited two days before notifying the police, who were stymied. The case remained inert for over 20 years until Stephen became obsessed with this mystery.

“It started for me in 2009, seven years before the filming started, when the police suggested that my parents were responsible for my sister’s disappearance,” Pandos, 55, said last week in a phone interview. “Because I don’t have any other siblings, at that point I felt justice for my sister became my responsibility. For me, doing nothing” was not an option.

His parents had divorced. Stephen was convinced his father, a Vietnam vet with PTSD given to explosive rages, had killed Jennifer and his mother helped cover it up.

“Initially,” he said, “my idea was to tell a story about the complications and nuances of trauma. Specifically about my mother, believing that she knew what happened but had compartmentalized it and put it away in a place where she couldn’t or didn’t want to access it.”

In 2015 Cynthia Hill, an award-winning documentarian, came aboard. “I had recently made a film, ‘Private Violence,’ about domestic violence. Stephen knew about that film. I think he thought that I would understand what his family had gone through in the relationship between his mother and father,” she said.

“It was going to be a film about this lingering trauma that the family had experienced, thinking the parents could be responsible for Jennifer’s disappearance.”

As the police re-opened and reactivated the case, “Burden” expanded from a feature length film to a series.  “Our intentions were to tell a story about Jennifer,” Hill said.  “To understand her and what happens to her.”

She uses re-enactments to tell what becomes a complicated story with surprising twists and suspects.

“As I got in deeper the story,” Hill said, “is about memory — and memory being unreliable. It’s also about how we create scenarios that are in our head that may or may not be factual. Or what truly happened.

“That’s what I wanted to explore with the reenactments, this notion of different realities. The ‘What could have happened?’ or ‘What people think happened.’

“That required a kind of filmmaking I’d not done. That was important for this story.”

 “Burden of Proof” streams Tuesday on MAX

When he was approached by directors Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths and writer Neil Morris a couple of years ago about being the sole subject of a documentary, he was hesitant at first. While he’s appeared in many horror documentaries, he wasn’t interested in taking a deep dive into his villainous character, but rather sharing how he got to that place and what his life and career have been like since.

Luckily, all parties were in agreement, and they began interviewing Englund about his life on film at his home in Laguna Beach. They also filmed interviews with several peers including his “A Nightmare on Elm Street” co-star Heather Langenkamp, “Candyman” actor Tony Todd, “Insidious” star Lin Shaye, and “Friday the 13th” actor Kane Hodder. “Hatchet” director Adam Green and “Cabin Fever” director Eli Roth also weighed in, as well as Englund’s wife, Nancy, to talk about his impact on the horror genre.

The project, “Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story,” will be available on the Screambox streaming service and digital on June 6.

“I look at this film as being more about an actor’s survival in Hollywood,” Englund said during a Zoom interview from his home earlier this month.

He’s got a jam-packed schedule that has him filming projects and making appearances at horror and sci-fi conventions around the world.

Englund is not shy about discussing Freddy. He says he’s grateful for the role and has embraced the fact that it’s what he’ll be associated with, even joking in the documentary that Freddy will undoubtedly be mentioned in the first line of his obituary.
But he didn’t set out to be a horror icon.

“I never planned to be a genre star or a horror icon — well, I’m not the icon, Freddy Krueger is — but I wanted to be James Dean when I was a kid,” he said. “I wanted to be Marlon Brando and I fell in love with English actors and wanted to be Albert Finney. I wanted to be one of the cool guys like Peter O’Toole and a character actor like Warren Oates and Strother Martin.”

There were also plenty of parts Englund auditioned for that he didn’t get. He read for the role of Han Solo in George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” which was sort of sprung on him upon leaving an audition for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
He didn’t get a call back for either one.

In the mid-’80s, Englund got the role that would completely change the course of his career. In 1984, he starred in “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” a supernatural slasher about a man who murdered children as they were dreaming. The film had a young and relatively unknown cast, and it marked the acting debut of Johnny Depp.

Freddy was everywhere. The character was plastered onto lunchboxes and T-shirts and even had his own short-lived television show. Englund made appearances as Freddy on daytime talk shows and showed up in music videos.

A new generation of horror fans are discovering his past movies thanks to his role on the fourth season of the Netflix show “Stranger Things.”

Tribune News Service

Q: I have watched “Yellowstone” but have not heard if it is going to continue. I’m hoping it will be. Would appreciate any info you have.

A: Yes, “Yellowstone” will continue, and then it will not. The rest of the most recent, fifth season will air on Paramount Network beginning in November. When those episodes are done, so is the series. Conflicts with star Kevin Costner over the shooting schedule reportedly led to the show’s demise. But the planning has gone forward on a so-far-untitled sequel which will begin airing in December; reports indicate that Matthew McConaughey will star in it along with some of the “Yellowstone” regulars.

Q: It seems I recollect several scenes in the 1976 version of “Midway,” featuring Mariette Hartley as Matt Garth’s love interest. However, in the many times I’ve watched the movie in more recent years, those scenes no longer exist. Am I just imagining Hartley in that movie?

A: You have encountered a TV oddity, the reediting of a theatrical film for telecast for reasons other than content censorship.

The “Midway” movie, which starred Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda and others, was expanded for showing on NBC in 1980, with the added scenes including a relationship between Heston’s character, Matt Garth, and a woman. The woman was played not by Mariette Hartley, but by Susan Sullivan. The expanded version was then shown across two nights on NBC. When the theatrical version is shown on TV these days, it is without that added-for-TV material.

NBC, by the way, did something similar in 1977, taking “The Godfather,” “The Godfather Part II,” additional footage and some censorship to create a four-night miniseries. Coppola reportedly agreed to the project to raise money to make “Apocalypse Now.”

Q: As a senior citizen, I am trying to remember the stars of the show “Family,” which aired many years ago. I don’t even remember what years it was on, but can see the characters in my mind, but not the names. It was really a wonderful TV series in its day!

A: “Family” was an admired drama during its 1976-80 run on ABC. It focused on the Lawrence family: father Doug (James Broderick), mother Kate (Sada Thompson), son Willie (Gary Frank) and daughters Buddy (Kristy McNichol) and Nancy. Elayne Heilveil played Nancy in the first season and was followed by Meredith Baxter, billed as Meredith Baxter Birney in those days. A later cast addition was Quinn Cummings as adoptee Annie Cooper. Frank, Thompson and McNichol all won Emmys for their work on the show. One place you can see episodes is the free streaming service Tubi.

Tribune News Service

Q: Shouldn’t television producers be required to resolve major questions before a series is removed from viewing? Not alone, but probably most annoying was “Colony,” which created an entire set of circumstances and never resolved ANYTHING.

A: Networks and television producers make deals for a specific number of episodes in a TV season, although the number varies from one show to the next. Still, the people making the show do not always know if they are going to be canceled as they make their allotted number of episodes. I also remember one producer claiming he put a huge cliffhanger in his season-ending show to pressure the network to renew it.

But we see plenty of occasions when cliffhangers do not prevent cancellation. Some shows anticipating cancellation do offer a wrapping-up moment in their season finale; both “The Resident” and “East New York” did that this season. And “How I Met Your Mother” shot some wrap-up scenes in its second season, although the show ran long enough that the scenes were not used until years later.

But other shows press on as if they will see another day. And once they’ve completed their deal, it takes another round of deal-making to make a finale episode possible, and a network’s willingness to air it, and those are money decisions more than creative ones.

Speaking of other TV aggravations …

Q: I just read about “Alaska Daily” being canceled. I really enjoyed the show, but when there are three-and-a-half months between episodes ABC should have run a crawl stating that they canceled the show.

A: Quite a few readers wrote in about the cancellation of the Hilary Swank drama. More than one mentioned the months-long hiatus at midseason was a problem. While many shows take midseason breaks, this was an extensive one, especially for a show that needed some nurturing to draw an audience. And some wanted to take their complaints to ABC, which you can do with the “submit programming feedback” link at support.abc.com.

Q: When I was very young (5 or 6), my mother took me to a movie that was so violent I insisted on leaving. This would have been around 1947-1949. I’ve always wondered what the title was! It involved a robbery of a high-end jewelry store, then one of the robbers being shot in the stomach, then operated on by one of his henchmen. At this point, we left!

A: That is most likely “The Asphalt Jungle,” a crime classic directed by John Huston, from 1950.

Tribune News Service

The longtime action star — and former California governor — hasn’t exactly leaped out of his comfort zone with the one-hour action-comedy “FUBAR,” the eight-episode debut season streaming on Netflix.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series created by Nick Santora is “loosely inspired” by “True Lies,” an action-comedy movie from writer-director James Cameron. In that well-received romp, Schwarzenegger portrays Harry Tasker, who hides the fact he is a U.S. spy from his family.

In “FUBAR,” Schwarzenegger portrays Luke Brunner, who, well, hides the fact he is a U.S. spy from his family.

The “Lies”-like premise isn’t the problem with “FUBAR,” which, in a fun nod to the film, brings in one of Schwarzenegger’s costars, Tom Arnold, for a guest-starring role in the fifth installment.

What is the problem? It simply isn’t very good.

Let’s be clear about one thing, however: Arnold “I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger is NOT the issue. Whenever the Austrian star is on the screen, “FUBAR” has a little bit of charm and something resembling a pulse. When he’s out of frame, the show is about as flat as a kitchen floor.

Whereas in “True Lies”  the story largely concerned the secrets between a husband and his wife, “FUBAR” is primarily interested in Luke’s relationship with his beloved daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro). He still craves daddy-daughter time, and he doesn’t approve of her choice in partners, the kind-but-wussy Carter (Jay Baruchel of “This Is the End”).

We meet Luke on what is supposed to be his final mission before retiring from the CIA in the Santora-penned first episode, “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” Things get a little hairy, but, with the help of his remote-working right-hand man, the entirely nerdy Barry (Milan Carter, “Warped!”), Luke is able to take out the bad guys.

Retirement has to wait, though, as Luke is recruited to extract another agent from an undercover operation. Luke is quire familiar with this bad guy, Boro (Gabriel Luna, “The Last of Us”); after posing as an associate of Boro’s father, Luke killed the man, unbeknown to Boro, and worked to remain a positive influence in the young man’s life. Now Boro is applying all he’s learned into a plan that could lead to many deaths.

When Luke reappears in Boro’s life, he discovers the undercover agent is — you guessed it — Emma, neither knowing the other worked for the CIA. And thus begins the backbone of the series: constant arguments between Luke and Emma about secrets and trustworthiness and the need for him to stay out of her personal life.

At first, the scenes shared by Schwarzenegger and Barbaro (“Top Gun: Maverick”) are one of the stronger suits of “FUBAR,” but they occur so regularly and are so repetitive that they wear very thin.

It’s certainly impressive that, now in his mid-70s, the still larger-than-life Schwarzenegger can carry a slice of action-oriented entertainment. Unfortunately, he gets too little help from his co-stars and Santora (“Reacher”) and the show’s other writers and directors.

Tribune News Service

Celebrity documentaries often dig up old talk show footage, and early in HBO’s “Being Mary Tyler Moore” we see her interviewed by David Susskind. The exchange reveals both the host’s stubborn assumptions about gender roles and Moore’s polite disinterest in pandering to his line of questioning.

The clip is from 1966, just as “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was drawing to a close. The sitcom made Moore a star playing Laura Petrie, and in Susskind’s estimation, the character is an “idealization of the American wife.” Then he pontificates, just generally, on what he sees as the sad state of matrimony in real life: Walk into any restaurant and “the woman is yakking like crazy and the man has a hurt, bored expression.”

What he fails to realize is that he’s creating that very dynamic in the television studio — except he is the one yakking like crazy while his guest has a hurt, bored expression. He thinks women are only “half-married” if they work outside the home. She gently but firmly pushes back. “Women should be human beings first, women second, and wives and mothers third,” she tells him. “It should fall in that order.”

Moore could turn the world on with her smile. Pioneering and funny. But woe to the person who underestimated her steely intelligence.

Off-screen, she was reserved in ways that differed from her most famous roles, first as Laura Petrie in those pedal pushers (previous to that, housewives appeared only in dresses, and it was a change Moore pushed for) and later as local TV news producer Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

She had impeccable comedy instincts — full of warmth and vulnerability and class — and I wish the film tried to examine a bit further how she sharpened those talents over the years.

She would switch gears with “Ordinary People” in 1980. It was a departure from what audiences had come to expect, instead playing a brittle, grieving mother who kept her feelings bottled up to preserve her elegant, upscale suburban Chicago facade. But Moore probably had more in common with the character than many realized — maybe not so chilly, but aloof. She kept to herself and wasn’t naturally open and revealing. That’s one of the more interesting revelations of the film.

She was a combination of strength, nervousness and determination, but she didn’t see herself as Mary Richards, independent woman extraordinaire. She was married throughout the show’s run to Grant Tinker (who headed up her production company MTM Enterprises), but the character’s backbone? “That was real,” she says. “That kind of substance and intrinsic dignity of being.”

Directed by James Adolphus (with a raft of producers including Lena Waithe), “Being Mary Tyler Moore” relies on old interviews with Moore, who died in 2017, and new off-camera interviews that Adolphus layers in as voice-overs.

Moore’s father would joke that the family came from impoverished nobility, but her mother struggled with alcoholism and that created instability: “She was most at ease at a party, or giving a party,” Moore says. “Everybody’s good-time best gal. Not the most attuned to parenting that I would have liked. She would start drinking during the day and would not stop until somebody found the bottle and took it away.”

Moore found fame in the 1960s, thanks to “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” but her career faltered after that, including a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on Broadway, and a movie contract that compelled her to appear in less-than-stellar films, including 1969′s “Change of Habit,” as a nun opposite Elvis Presley.

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” would put her back on top in the 1970s. But when the show ended, so did her marriage to Tinker. Single for the first time in years, she moved to New York at 40, looking for a fresh start.

Maybe she was hoping to run away from problems that had been festering under the California sun. So much of her public persona was rooted in those exquisite manners — there was almost a throwback quality to the way she carried herself — but we learn that, in private, she could become belligerent after a few drinks. It was only in middle age that she acknowledged alcohol was a problem for her, as it had been for her mother.

She would eventually marry again, this time to a doctor named Robert Levine, who is an executive producer here and who provided the personal footage of Moore at home, including that of an informal gathering before her wedding that has the feel of a slumber party, where she’s toasted by good friend Betty White, among others.

Moore’s second act in New York was less about burnishing her celebrity than about a woman finally coming into herself. L.A. can be thrumming with career neuroses — the kind that foster an arrested development, especially if fame hits early and fast.

Maybe relocating was a way to shed all of that and reinvent some ideas she had about herself.

———

‘BEING MARY TYLER MOORE’

3 stars (out of 4)

Not rated

Running time: 1:59

How to watch: 8 p.m. ET Friday on HBO (and streaming on Max)

———

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The longtime action star — and former California governor — hasn’t exactly leaped out of his comfort zone with the one-hour action-comedy “FUBAR,” the eight-episode debut season of which has just dropped on Netflix.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series created by Nick Santora is “loosely inspired” by “True Lies,” an action-comedy movie from writer-director James Cameron. In that well-received romp, Schwarzenegger portrays Harry Tasker, who hides the fact he is a U.S. spy from his family.

In “FUBAR,” Schwarzenegger portrays Luke Brunner, who, well, hides the fact he is a U.S. spy from his family.

The “Lies”-like premise isn’t the problem with “FUBAR,” which, in a fun nod to the film, brings in one of Schwarzenegger’s costars, Tom Arnold, for a guest-starring role in the fifth installment.

What is the problem? It simply isn’t very good.

Let’s be clear about one thing, however: Arnold “I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger is NOT the issue. Whenever the Austrian star — sporting that accent so familiar from many a “Terminator” movie and other big-budget action hits of the last few decades — is on the screen, “FUBAR” has a little bit of charm and something resembling a pulse. When he’s out of frame, the show is about as flat as a kitchen floor.

Whereas in “True Lies” — which, by the way, recently was adapted into what proved to be a short-lived series on CBS — the story largely concerned the secrets between a husband and his wife, “FUBAR” primarily is interested in Luke’s relationship with his beloved daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro). He still craves daddy-daughter time, and he doesn’t approve of her choice in partners, the kind-but-wussy Carter (Jay Baruchel of “This Is The End”).

We meet Luke on what is supposed to be his final mission before retiring from the CIA in the Santora-penned first episode, “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” Things get a little hairy, but, with the help of his remote-working right-hand man, the entirely nerdy Barry (Milan Carter, “Warped!”), Luke is able to take out the bad guys.

Retirement has to wait, though, as Luke is recruited to extract another agent from an undercover operation. Luke is quire familiar with this bad guy, Boro (Gabriel Luna, “The Last of Us”); after posing as an associate of Boro’s father, Luke killed the man, unbeknown to Boro, and worked to remain a positive influence in the young man’s life, going so far as to pay for his schooling. Now Boro is applying all he’s learned into a plan that could lead to many deaths.

Packed with character-driven moments, ‘The Last of Us’ is a gripping adaptation of acclaimed video game | TV review

When Luke reappears in Boro’s life, he discovers the undercover agent is — you guessed it — Emma, neither knowing the other worked for the CIA. And thus begins the backbone of the series: constant arguments between Luke and Emma about secrets and trustworthiness and the need for him to stay out of her personal life. (Emma is pretty mad at her father for making the exact life choice she made decades later.)

Giving Emma her space proves exceedingly difficult for Luke, who, in the episodes that follow, repeatedly makes decisions that prioritize her well-being over the mission objective that he surely wouldn’t were she not so dear to him.

At first, the scenes shared by Schwarzenegger and Barbaro (“Top Gun: Maverick”) are one of the stronger suits of “FUBAR,” but they occur so regularly and are so repetitive that they wear very thin.

The show’s next best element is Luke’s efforts to win back his ex-wife, Tally (Fabiana Udenio, “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery”), who left him years ago after constantly seeming less important to him than his work, which supposedly was selling fitness equipment. You can’t help but become at least a little invested in this.

Other than that, we mainly get the lukewarm dynamics among Luke’s associates, portrayed by Fortune Feimster (“The Mindy Project”), Travis Van Winkle (“You”), Aparna Brielle (“A.P. Bio”) and Carter.

‘FUBAR” — and by the way, given the first letter of the acronym, you’ll have to Google it if you don’t already know its meaning — isn’t even as fun as its episode titles, which also include “Stole Train,” “Honeyplot” and “Urine Luck.” The show pairs a lot of low-ish budget action with only the rare laugh-out-loud moment, such as the joke stand-up comic Feimster lands regarding her character’s car.

Like so many streaming series, “FUBAR” simply doesn’t have enough story to justify its overall runtime, a real problem considering we’re talking about all of eight hours in this case.

It’s certainly impressive that, now in his mid-70s, the still larger-than-life Schwarzenegger can carry a slice of action-oriented entertainment. Unfortunately, he gets too little help from his co-stars and Santora (“Reacher”) and the show’s other writers and directors.

“FUBAR” attempts to set up a second season in the climactic finale, “That’s It and That’s All,” but it’s hard to imagine that it “will be back.”

‘FUBAR’

What: Eight-episode debut season of action-comedy spy series.

Where: Netflix.

When: All episodes available now.

Info: Netflix.com.

When it comes to shaggy dog sports movies of the late 20th century, few did it better than Ron Shelton. As a writer and director, he understood the appeal of semi-ridiculous, semi-charming men past their prime looking for one last shot at greatness — or at least a half-baked redemption. Sandwiched between the soulful minor league romance of “Bull Durham” and dusty pro golfing dreams of “Tin Cup,” Shelton turned to the high-spirited pickup basketballs games of Los Angeles for 1992′s “White Men Can’t Jump,” a buddy film starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as an unlikely pair who team up to hustle any takers.

But “White Men Can’t Jump” no longer exists to be fondly remembered and rewatched, but as a library title to be reimagined. Shelton is credited as a co-writer here with Kenya Barris and Doug Hall, and that should be the good news. But like so much else that Hollywood endlessly recycles, the question hovering around the edges of the movie is simply: Why?

The original is on Hulu. The new version is on Hulu. All things being equal, what would compel audiences to watch the remake?

Stepping into Harrelson and Snipes’ basketball shoes are Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls, and they have a nice, unforced chemistry together. But they’re stuck inside a movie that lacks shape and propulsion — and the effervescent presence of Rosie Perez and her “Jeopardy!” ambitions — but adds a back story about thwarted potential.

In the first movie, basketball was just a means to an end: Fast cash. Now it’s that plus something more.

Better known for his music career, this is Harlow’s first major role as an actor. He plays a one-time college player named Jeremy, whose dreams died with his two bum knees. Now he’s scrapping by selling detox potions and coaching one-on-one. He’s one of those white guys who tries too hard around Black people — this feels like Barris’ influence on the script; it’s a style of joke he’s returned to often across his projects — but Harlow has a looseness that works. He’s a goof who believes in the power of meditation (when he’s not popping pain pills, a detail that is introduced and then mostly abandoned) and he strolls onto the basketball court wearing Birkenstocks and socks and looking out of place. But he can still hit a three pointer.

Harlow has the benefit of a far more seasoned scene partner in Walls, playing a top high school prospect named Kamal who flamed out after decking a heckler at a game. Ten years later, he’s married with a kid and keeping his head down, working as a package delivery driver. He’s stoic for the most part, except when he rings a doorbell and the homeowner says “Don’t I know you?” and all that repressed bile about his nonexistent basketball career comes back up. Walls brings a sense of melancholy to the role and instead of the brash, cocky guy of the original, he’s skeptical and contemplative and bruised. That gives things a slightly more serious subtext.

Walls has real chops (memorably as Don Cornelius in the “Soul Train” biopic series) but here he’s playing a character sapped of the kind of over-the-top personality that might give the film a stronger comic energy. (Calmatic is the director, who also helmed this year’s “House Party” remake).

Kamal and Jeremy are both in need of fast money, but their pickup game hustle is missing that loose-limbed combination of con-artistry and joke-filled, testosterone-fueled posturing. This should be more fun.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare the two movies, but it’s instructive because the changes don’t deepen or improve the story so much as rob it of what made it interesting in the first place. Harrelson played a mostly likable mess of a man who was his own worst enemy; Snipes played a fast-talking, street savvy type who wasn’t above hustling his own partner. But here, Harlow is closer to the human embodiment of a golden retriever looking for a home, while Walls is saddled with character beats that amount to rolling his eyes at his partner’s weirdo antics.

Even the trash talking is minimal and flat.

In other words, everything feels cleaner. No betrayals. No massive debts owed to scary guys. No real banter. And the women are barely more than plot points, although Teyana Taylor does a lot with the little she’s given as Kamal’s wife. Lance Reddick, who died in March, shows up briefly as Kamal’s father and it’s bittersweet to see him in one of his last roles.

Despite it all, the movie mostly hangs together, even if it lacks some of the visual punch of the original, which shot exclusively at outdoor courts. Too many of the early scenes here take place in dimly lit indoor gyms that give off a claustrophobic feel, although the twosome do eventually play at Watts and Venice Beach, locations also featured in the first film.

But at its core, this isn’t a story about two hustlers. Deep down, both Kamal and Jeremy still pine for the NBA. A truer, more shambolic story would have spent time sorting out why that’s such a pipe dream now that they’re in their late 20s. Instead, in the end the movie chooses fantasy.

Hoop dreams, indeed.

———

‘WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for pervasive language and some drug material)

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: Hulu

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

nmetz@chicagotribune.com

———

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

They first worked on “Neighbors,” the 2014 campus comedy about rowdy frat boys, and then its 2-year-later sequel.  “Platonic,” which revolves around whether guys can really be “just friends” with women, is co-created and directed by their “Neighbors” helmer Nick Stoller.

“I didn’t want to do the show if we didn’t have Seth,” Byrne, 43, said in a Zoom interview with Rogen.  “Having worked together for the ‘Neighbors’ movies I knew we would be having fun and enjoying each other. Just a nice dynamic onscreen.

“A show like this lives — and dies! — on the chemistry of the friendship. It really does. We went in knowing we had that. Since we aren’t a married couple, this was different but really exciting and made me want to do the show.”

“Part of the appeal,” Rogen,  41, said, “was bringing this theatrical style, R-rated adult comedy to a half-hour serialized television show.

“It felt very original in a lot of ways. But also allowed us to do stuff that we thought we were good at.”

As to the show’s Big Question, can people be platonic friends without getting mates or significant others jealous?

“It should,” Rogen answered.  “I do fundamentally think that men and women can be platonic friends with one another. People project a lot onto relationships and jealousy can come out if you’re insecure. I personally believe that you can have platonic relationships. I have many of them and so the proof is in the pudding.”

“I did have a deep, dear friend who’s a guy,” Byrne recalled. “We were roommates. But nobody could believe that we weren’t together — which is one of the reasons I found this quite relatable, the story and an examination of that.

“Because in the end, it’s really what everybody else is asking you rather than what you say.”

Emmett’s downfall began with an investigation (“The Man Who Played Hollywood: Inside Randall Emmett’s Crumbling Empire”) by L.A. Times reporters Amy Kaufman and Meg James into claims against Emmett that include allegations of race discrimination, workplace abuse, and questionable on-set behavior toward actor Bruce Willis as his mental acuity declined ― all of which Emmett denies.

The ABC News Studios-L.A. Times Studios-produced doc will feature interview footage with Emmett’s ex-fiancee, “Vanderpump Rules” star Lala Kent, and exclusive interviews with Kent’s mom and brother, past employees and more. Here is a timeline of Emmett’s troubles as chronicled by The Times.

‘Vanderpump Rules’

Emmett came to the public’s attention in a guest role on eight seasons of the Bravo series “Vanderpump Rules,” a reality show about the people working at “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Lisa Vanderpump’s West Hollywood restaurants and bars. He became a recurring cast member in the ninth season. Though he is no longer part of the show, there’s still all kinds of scandal going on there.

Bruce Willis

While investigating Emmett, it was revealed that nearly two dozen people who were on set with Willis expressed concerns about the actor’s declining cognitive state on movie sets in recent years. Emmett produced the films and in a statement to The Times, he denied knowing of his condition or that he was aware “of any decline in Mr. Willis’ health” — a disputed claim. Since 2006, the actor has appeared in two dozen projects under Emmett’s production company, Emmett/Furla Oasis — and the pace of the output heightened as Willis’ health declined. Willis was diagnosed with aphasia, and later, frontotemporal dementia. Willis has since halted his acting career, though he still enjoys an “impromptu” harmonica solo every once in a while.

The investigation

Times reporters Kaufman and James interviewed dozens of people connected to Emmett and his productions. Alongside those interviews, a review of hundreds of court filings and internal company records depicted an empire that was crumbling. The producer faced and still faces lawsuits and mounting debts, as well as allegations of abuse against women, assistants and business partners. He is accused of inappropriate behavior with women, including offering acting work in exchange for sexual favors, and of forcing assistants to conduct dangerous and illegal activity on his behalf.

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“I’ve probably been on the road 60 percent of my life,” Stallone, 76, announces in the first episode.  “I looked around, my daughters are grown. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend some serious time with them?

“Where, “he added with a laugh, “they couldn’t escape? They had to be with me.”

Married to Jennifer Flavin Stallone, their three daughters are: Sophia, at 26 the oldest, “My dad raised us as military brats. You get up, you do 10 push-ups.”

Sistine, 24, the middle child says, “My dad is over protective and quite intimidating.”

And Scarlet, 20, rates as the wild card, “the funniest person ever.”

Jennifer says, “We don’t live in a normal world. But when we’re all together, getting dinner, it feels like home.”

“The first time I met her,” Sly testifies, “I felt the earth move. I knew this was someone unique and special.  And 35 years later I was right.”

With Dad away so often, it’s Mom who’s been the disciplinarian, coach, confidant.  She has always been fiercely protective of their privacy.  How does that square with this look inside her family?

“They’re adults,” she said in a group interview from Manhattan’s Park Lane Hotel.  “They each make the decision that they want to be a part of it. I knew that.

“We just did a great job raising them and I felt like this would be a really interesting reality show. They’ve been raised in this unusual world. They’re super famous but they’ve been raised in a very normal upbringing, where everything was normal.

“So now that they’re adults, we’re able to open our doors and let people see what we’re really like behind the scenes. So far, everybody’s super excited about it.”

It was the daughters’ podcast that spun off into this “Family” reality series.  Does this mean they are all anticipating showbiz careers now? Are we going to see them on “Tulsa King”?

“Scarlet I think is the only one that’s going to be on ‘Tulsa King,’” Sophia said.  “In terms of showbiz careers, it’s something – I’m going to speak for myself right now — we are all really interested in. Because we grew up knowing that world, we studied that world. It’s pretty much in our eye-line all the time.

“So it just makes sense to be in this business — and we thoroughly enjoy it.”

“The Family Stallone” streams on Paramount+

If the strike lasts for months? The network lineup — all those cop shows and sitcoms — will not be ready to premiere in the fall as usual. We’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it. For the time being, writers have not yet asked audiences to boycott TV altogether or cancel their streaming subscriptions, but a number of shows in production have been paused.

A mix of new and returning shows, here’s a look at what’s on tap in the first few weeks of the summer TV season.

“American Born Chinese” (May 24 on Disney+): An action comedy starring Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh and based on Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel, it tells the story of a teen and a new student he befriends at school who is the son of a mythological Chinese god.

“Platonic” (May 24 on Apple TV+): Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen star in this 10-episode comedy series as former best friends who reconnect in middle age — and become so consumed with their renewed friendship that it destabilizes everything else in their lives.

“FUBAR” (May 25 on Netflix): Netflix has been churning out shows about top secret government whoevers and here’s yet another. But what stands out is the name above the title: Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first TV series ever, playing a CIA agent roped back in for one last job after he’s retired. Things get more complicated when he finds out his daughter (Monica Barbaro) also secretly works for the CIA and they’ve been paired up as a team. Jaunty, loud and violent; you’ll know if this is for you.

“The Crowded Room” (June 9 on Apple TV+): From creator Akiva Goldsman (who won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind”) the limited series thriller unfolds through interrogations with a man who is arrested following his involvement in a 1979 shooting in New York City. Tom Holland, Amanda Seyfried and Emmy Rossum star.

“The Full Monty” (June 14 on Hulu): Another pointless reboot! But let’s temper our cynicism, maybe this TV adaptation (from FX) will be as modestly charming the 1997 British film. The story picks up 25 years later with the “same band of brothers as they navigate the postindustrial city of Sheffield and society’s crumbling health care, education and employment sectors.” That sounds deceptively dour, because the lads were always an amusing bunch.

“I’m a Virgo” (June 23 on Amazon): From Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”) comes another surreal story. The seven-episode comedy/fantasy/coming-of-ager centers on a 13-foot-tall guy from Oakland played by Jharrel Jerome, who won an Emmy for “When They See Us.” An avid fan of TV and comic book stories, his character is launched on a mythical quest when he encounters a real-life superhero played by “Justified’s” Walton Goggins.

“Only Murders in the Building” (Aug. 8 on Hulu): Season 3 of the murder mystery starring Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez. Meryl Streep joins the shenanigans this time out.

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A ‘90s-era phenomenon, Anna Nicole Smith became famous for emulating Marilyn Monroe’s blond bombshell appearance, first on the pages of Playboy and later as a model for Guess jeans. Smith’s kinship with the ghost of Monroe always came across as superficial. They cultivated a similar look and both would rise to stardom from humble beginnings, only for it to end in tragedy. But that’s a simplistic understanding of either woman.

For anyone old enough to remember Smith’s heyday, the Netflix documentary “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me” doesn’t reveal unknown facets of her life so much as lay them out in one place. It’s a deeply sad story, but the title of director Ursula Macfarlane’s film is also ironic. I’m not sure anyone here, from those interviewed to the filmmakers themselves, really knows much about Smith beyond what she presented to the world.

Hollywood and certain corners of the media have a way of chewing people up and spitting them out, and there has been a recent spate of streaming documentaries claiming to right those wrongs, while also exploiting their subjects all over again. Are these projects — about Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson and Brittany Murphy — trying to make sense of history, or make entertainment of it?

Celebrity comes with a cost and Smith certainly experienced her fair share of its downside.

Her modeling career wasn’t the springboard she’d hoped for. Her acting career never amounted to much beyond some bit roles. With plenty of interest in her comings and going, but few other career options — plus her tendency to court the paparazzi, plus her marriage to an elderly billionaire she met during her time as an exotic dancer — she was treated as a punchline.

But who was she behind the persona she created for the media? Even as the documentary attempts a more humane telling of her story, she remains someone who was defined by events in her life, rather than her own sense of the world.

Unlike Pamela Anderson, that other ‘90s-era pinup who also felt the sting of tabloid celebrity and was recently the subject of a Netflix documentary, Smith is not here to tell her own story or reflect on anything in hindsight. So we’re left to rely on old interviews, in which she is vague or evasive about the details of her childhood in small-town Texas. Was she raised in an abusive home, as she suggests? Or was that something she invented to garner interest and sympathy, as alleged by her late mother? The documentary simply presents both possibilities and leaves it at that.

I didn’t pay much attention to Smith at the height of her fame, nor the depths. The media coverage seemed empty and sordid and exploitative. There was nothing there. It was a bit dull? But you could say that about any number of present-day boldface names (including the Kardashians) and influencers who have followed in her wake. I think the difference with Smith is that as adept as she was at creating an image, she wasn’t business savvy. She didn’t understand that her initial flush of fame was a small window in which she needed to surround herself with the right kind of people. Namely, those who understood how to leverage her talents and specific appeal, rather than treat her as a disposable commodity. She was sweet and bubbly. There’s always a market for that.

It’s not that she tried to make it on her own. Quite the opposite. She just had bad instincts about who she surrounded herself with. “She kept looking for somebody else to save her,” is how one of her lawyers puts it. Too often, she infantilized herself, sometimes literally; meeting her estranged father for the first time, she shows up wearing pigtails.

Her marriage to oil baron J. Howard Marshall followed that pattern as well. He was 89 at the time; she was 26. If their relationship was transactional, it doesn’t come across as cynical in the footage we see of them together. There’s a tenderness they shared. How often were they living under the same roof? We hear plaintive voicemail messages he leaves for her (I wish the film explained how and from whom these messages were obtained) and it suggests the two were perhaps not living together at all. But they both got something beneficial out of the arrangement. He seemed to adore her and she seemed to adore him right back, along with the money he funneled her way. She was ultimately denied any portion of his fortune after his death, and the inheritance became the subject of a protracted legal fight (which continued even after Smith’s death in 2007) and that became yet more chum for the tabloids.

Things fell apart for Smith due to a number of factors, including a pill addiction and the death of her 20-year-old son Daniel just days after she gave birth to her second child, a girl named Dannielynn.

Watching the documentary, it’s impossible not to think of Dannielynn, who is now 16. It appears she has no involvement with the film. She was just a few months old when Smith died, and she has been raised in relative obscurity by her father, Larry Birkhead.

But the privacy of her childhood seems to be coming to an end. They both attended the Kentucky Derby earlier this month, a social event where the whole point is to be seen and photographed. Birkhead also gave interviews to People magazine and E! about his daughter and you have to wonder: To what end?

If anyone saw firsthand how fickle and damaging celebrity can be, it’s Birkhead. Why would he want anything like that for his daughter?

———

‘ANNA NICOLE SMITH: YOU DON’T KNOW ME’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Netflix

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Dan O’Neill, a field biologist and conservationist, is its history-making guide. He knows observing life in the jungle or on the savannah can at times be truly scary.

“There was one moment filming lions, the biggest man-eating cat on the planet, in Kenya. We’d found one and I stood up in the back of the Jeep as the truck was running around in the high grass,” O’Neill, 31, said in a phone interview from the UK.

“You’re just there. I mean, there’s no protection. You’re not in a box with bars protecting you. There’s not even sides to the Jeep. I was looking at the sleeping lion and suddenly he woke up, stood up, looked me dead in the eyes and took a step forward.

“Honestly, it was probably the scariest moment of my entire life. I felt my soul leave my body because I thought I was going to get eaten by a lion in that moment.

“But then it realized what I was and it sauntered off. That’s a testament to the fact that there’s no reason for those animals to attack us. It didn’t see us as prey.

“And oftentimes when these animals do attack people, they’re either starving, hungry, or it’s mistaken identity. It’s hair-raising of course. But it was cool to actually look a fully grown male lion in the eyes, be totally within striking distance and live to tell the tale.”

“Giants” has proved to be a career breakthrough for O’Neill, who would love a Season 2. “This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Fingers crossed, there’ll be another season. There’s definitely more animals to explore.

“What I’m really hopeful for is that it’ll change other people’s lives in some way. Because this series is the first time an LGBT wildlife presenter has ever hosted an HD documentary series anywhere in the world. In any territory! On any major network. It hasn’t even happened back in the UK where I’m from.

“So it’s a huge experience for me, because when I was growing up as a young gay kid, I didn’t have anyone to look up to doing the things that I dreamed of doing: I wanted to be an explorer.

“So I really hope that this will be the start of something where more people like me feel that this is the sort of career they can pursue in science or adventure on TV.”

“Giants” streams Thursday on Curiosity Stream

To what do they credit their durability, longevity and sustained interest so many years later?

“I’m gonna say, first of all, good luck,” Arquette, seated next to Dillon for a Zoom interview, began. “Second of all, choosing good other talent to work with.

“Even though Matt was a heartthrob, he didn’t go for that clean, clear leading man, the obvious thing. And I didn’t go for that either. I always wanted messy, complicated parts, interesting stories. When you only commit to that leading lady-leading man thing it’s a dead-end road.”

“For me, I always believed in myself,” Dillon, 59, began. “I wasn’t interested in fame; I was really interested in work. Doing good work. That can be frustrating at times.

“Because I didn’t become an actor because I wanted to be known, I didn’t have that exhibitionistic kind of wanting to perform. It was more about what you could do, what you could transmit. There was something powerful from the very beginning for me to see characters that I recognized, that were real.

“Which is why I like this show — because that’s was this is. This is authentic — that was important to me. And I think that’s maybe my greatest strength: my curiosity.”

“High Desert” has enough drugs – uppers, downers, hallucinogens – it could just as easily be called “Desert High.”  Arquette’s Peggy is an addict working in a low-rent tourist “Wild West Show.” She’s tripping when she visits her husband Denny (Dillon) in prison.

“In Peggy and Denny’s history, there is a struggle,” Arquette, 55, offered. “When you’re struggling with addiction, there’s also a struggle with honesty, with living by life’s rules, by society’s rules, the things that make your life and society work well.

“So Peggy’s creating her own little rules for the way things go. Running away from and trying to numb her pain. At the end of the day when you look at addicts, you often look at a real, vulnerable person underneath who doesn’t have the skill set to deal with their vulnerability.”

“The show tells it like it is. It doesn’t glorify these characters’ behavior,” Dillon said. “But we laugh because there’s a lot of human nature in there that is really funny. They basically created the characters, let the characters who are also their own worst enemies run with the story. Anything can happen then.

“As an actor you can’t ask for more than that – a great character to sink your teeth into.”

“I was definitely surprised by the number of murders and deaths there are each week in London. How many more there are than we suspect,” Whelan, 42, said in a Zoom interview from her London home, her well-behaved two-year-old son perched on her lap.

“I’d thought like, one a week or one a month. But several? Several times that you just have to deliver a death message and have to confirm that? There’s so much more death and murder and bad [expletive] that happens than whatever you see in the news. Only any of the high-profile cases get through. I thought most people live and let live.”

Whelan’s Sarah Collins is a former Murder Squad detective on the homicide squad in this second season of Kate London’s bestselling trilogy book series “Post Mortem.”

A former cop, London gets points for authenticity and the mindset and contradictions that can come with the job.

“It’s trying to shine a light on the fact that there is trouble” in London’s police force, Whelan said.  “People are trying their best and they’ve been under great scrutiny for certain things that have gone wrong over here with certain high-profile cases.

“I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. But I think the police here are largely decent and doing their best.”

“Tower,” she added, “shines a light on the fact there are problems but ultimately, we’re just trying to solve crimes.”

In the first season Sarah Collins seems a lonely lesbian, recently broken up with her partner and adrift.  “Tower 2” offers a bit of hope.

“I think she’s kind of married to her job. She’s very dedicated to her work, very by the book. She’s very morally correct. And the ethical codes — there’s not really much nuance in her policing.

“That’s what she comes up against with her colleagues.  There’s a bit more space for them to be moving around while she’s very much more like, ‘This is right and this is wrong. And this protocol mustn’t be broken for any reason.’

“So yeah, she’s quite down the line. And, as I say, she’s possibly quite lonely and really takes her job home with her, works extra hours.  In Season 2, we find out a bit more about her and why that might be and flesh things out a bit more.”

Which prompts the inevitable query: Will there be a ‘Tower 3’?

“We are very, very hopeful,” Whelan answered, bouncing her boy.

“Their voice was very clear,” Arquette says of the “High Desert” creators’ vision. “And they were incredible with comedy and black comedy, and that sort of weird sense of humor that I have. So that was the beginning of this thing.”

That was in 2016, a year after Arquette won an Oscar, Golden Globe, and an armful of other prizes for her acting in Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood.” And even though she went on to make such acclaimed TV series as “Escape at Dannemora,” “The Act,” and “Severance” in the years that followed, Arquette never abandoned “High Desert.”

“We tried to sell it everywhere and finally we found a home at Apple TV+,” she says. “You know, it’s risqué material. It’s a farce. It’s a counterculture comedy. It’s got all these strange characters who are, like, lost a little bit and making a lot of mistakes.”

“High Desert” premieres on Apple TV+ with three episodes on Wednesday, May 17; all eight episodes of the series are directed by Jay Roach.

Arquette plays Peggy Newman, a woman whose tribulations don’t ever entirely get her down, though her frustrating almost-ex-husband Denny, played by Matt Dillon, can frustrate her no end. The cast also includes Bernadette Peters as a ’70s TV actress who reminds Peggy of her mother, and Rupert Friend as Guru Bob, a former TV news anchor turned sketchy spiritual leader.

Weruche Opia is Peggy’s best friend Carol and Kier O’Donnell and Christine Taylor are her straight-laced brother and sister Stewart and Dianne. Brad Garrett is the morose private investigator who reluctantly agrees to let Peggy work with him.

All except Garrett recently talked on video calls about “High Desert,” speaking about everything from the appeal of their characters and the tone of the show to the significance of the California desert in it.

“There’s a lot of love in it, and there’s a lot of family in it,” Arquette says of the ensemble and the story that unfolds mostly in the high desert. “And a lot of people make a lot of dumb decisions and dumb mistakes and chaos ensues everywhere they go.”

A ‘criminal-ish’ couple

Peggy and Denny are a couple that shouldn’t really be together, though only Peggy seems to see that and even she can’t seem to quit her no-good husband.

“He’s constitutionally not able to be honest, you know, that’s the thing,” Dillon says on a video call with Arquette recently. “As much as he wants to – his heart’s in the right place – he can’t help manipulating because he’s got that criminal element to him.”

Not that he’s just a criminal, Dillon adds.

“There’s a lot of duality there,” he says. “He’s spiritual but he’s also a criminal. The spirituality is a kind of newfound thing, and there’s a little bit of B.S. in all this, but he really does believe it.”

Arquette says she sees the couple as perfectly suited for each other in both the best and worst ways.

“Her mother’s kind of a childlike figure and her dad was not the world’s greatest masculine figure, so Denny stepped into that position with the family as a provider,” she says. “Kind of the patriarch of this family through this skewed lens of a criminal-ish person with a beautiful heart.

“They both have these great hearts,” Arquette says. “They both tend to be a little bit of a criminal. They both can deceive you. They have their own rules for society. But she does know that Denny truly loves her and would die for her if need be.

“Like Matt said, Denny would be the one to put her in a position of having someone shoot at them. So he might take a bullet for her, but he’s also going to put her in the position where someone’s shooting bullets at her.”

Light and dark

While “High Desert” most closely resembles a comedy – think of the Coen Brothers’ films – its tone shifts in and out of darker moods as the episodes unfold. For many in the cast, that was part of the appeal of taking on their roles.

“It’s presenting the human condition of difficulties and addictions that some people may have,” Peters says. “And yet trying to overcome the obstacles even if you put the obstacles in your own way.

“I think it will be kind of subconscious for people when they see the show,” she says. “It is this funny show going on, and irreverent, and a murder mystery. And yet there’s this underlying loss that Peggy’s going through, and just trying to move forward.”

That blurring of the line between comedy and tragedy was attractive to Friend as he considered taking on the role of Guru Bob.

“The other day I was talking with my wife about the fact that 30 or 40 years ago in storytelling we had goodies and baddies,” the English actor says. “You had kind of big ’80s movies and there was a bad guy and there was a girl and there was a hero. And it was all quite sort of black and white.

“I’m really grateful that we’re working at a time when those edges have all been blurred,” Friend says. “People do good things for bad intentions. Peggy sometimes makes a hell of a mess of things but her heart is absolutely in the right place.

“We’re able to blend genres and I think the world is a richer place in storytelling for that,” he says.

O’Donnell and Taylor play the straight man and woman to Arquette as Peggy. They’re grounded and serious and yet love their sister, much as co-showrunner Nancy Fichman loved the sister on whom she loosely based the character of Peggy.

“The things that appeal to me are things based in some sort of a reflection of our own lives,” O’Donnell says. “And this show certainly has that. It was always trying to find that balance of how dark can we get with these pretty intense subjects without it dipping into full-blown drama.

“Peggy’s continually saying to us, ‘Remember the good old days, you guys?’ And it’s like, ‘What are you talking about it?’” he continues. “She has this sort of bizarre revisionist history.

“There’s something incredibly sad but sweet about that. So that was always the line we were trying to dance around.”

In the desert

Arquette says it was important to her to shoot as much of “High Desert” in locations as close as possible to its setting and much of the series is shot in Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs. (An exception: Pioneertown, where Peggy works in a Wild West Show, was recreated at the Sable Ranch movie backlot in Santa Clarita.)

“The people that gravitate to the desert are a little fringy sometimes,” she says. “A little living their own way. Or they didn’t quite work where they were with their families and they end up here. Their nature is the coyote nature. It’s the, ‘I’m gonna figure out a way to survive with very little resources.’”

To the rest of the cast, that felt right, too.

“It was lovely and picturesque to actually be in the desert,” she says. “I think that setting the show there definitely adds to the tone of the show. That juxtaposition of how life is, the highs and lows of what’s going on.”

Taylor, who as the proper Palm Springs resident shows up in the Yucca Valley desert in heels and a blazer, agreed that the locations worked to enhance the storytelling.

“It really was its own character,” she says. “Keir and I have talked about it, that the desert, there is this sort of magical, mystical, lawless aspect of sort of being out in the wild, wild west where Peggy is making these big decisions and we are very fish out of water.”

Peters says she’s not a desert person – its hot, dry clime makes her uncomfortable, she says – though the beautiful sunsets and the unexpected delight of cactus blossoms moved her.

“In the midst of it all, you’ll have a prickly cactus blooming with a beautiful flower,” she says. “You have those sunsets that are gorgeous. So here’s her life that’s really sort of falling apart, and yet there’s hope.

“Pretty remarkable,” Peters says. “When a cactus can bloom, it’s kind of breathtaking when you see something like that happening. It looks like it doesn’t even need water to survive, and yet here comes this beautiful flower. It’s kind of a miracle.”

What is Hollywood without screenwriters? No characters to play. No scripts to shoot. That’s as fundamental as it gets.

TV and film writers are represented by the Writers Guild of America. With the exception of a few highly paid names, many have seen their careers become untenable in recent years as streaming radically upended the financial model. The people who dream up the shows and movies that we so compulsively watch are struggling to earn a living doing it. As a result, the WGA went on strike last week after the studios rejected many of its contract proposals.

That means no writing is being done for the foreseeable future. It’s unclear how long the strike will last. It could be days. It could be months. Late-night talk shows were the first to go dark, but other shows have also paused production or preproduction on their new seasons, including Netflix’s “Cobra Kai” and Showtime’s “Yellowjackets.”

A new “Game of Thrones” spinoff for HBO has paused its writers room as well, according to George R.R. Martin, who said in a blog post: “I am not in LA, so I cannot walk a picket line as I did in 1988, but I want to go on the record with my full and complete and unequivocal support of my Guild.”

Also not filming are two shows from Apple TV+ pegged to themes that seem awfully ironic considering the real-world context: “Severance,” which is about workers organizing together to push back against an exploitative company, and “Loot,” the Maya Rudolph comedy about a billionaire who comes to realize it’s immoral to hoard wealth.

Even “Stranger Things,” one of Netflix’s biggest shows, has shut down. Here’s how creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained their decision on Twitter:

“Writing does not stop when filming begins. While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out.”

That’s not just an act of solidarity. Showrunners are writers, which means they are also members of the WGA alongside the screenwriters they hire. From top to bottom, everyone has experienced firsthand the studios’ budget-squeezing strategies.

Here are some of the issues at play in regards to compensation:

• TV writers are paid weekly. Under the broadcast model, that’s usually 22 episodes a season. But for streaming, that number is closer to eight to 10 episodes. Earning a living is no longer about landing a job in a writers room and hoping the show is successful enough to be renewed, but the need to land several jobs in a year.
• There are fewer jobs to go around because many streaming shows are allocated budgets that only allow for mini-rooms: Fewer writers hired to work for a shorter period of time — and therefore receive less money.
• The WGA contract has traditionally outlined minimum pay at different levels, from staff writer (an entry-level position) all the way up to executive producer (which includes the showrunner). The idea is that, as writers gain experience, they are able to work their way up through the levels and see their pay increase — except many writers are forced to repeat as a staff writer over and over again. It’s cheaper for studios that way and it’s a practice that hits Black writers and other writers of color especially hard as they attempt to build a resume.
• It used to be standard for writers to be on set (and get paid for it) when their episode films. That’s no longer the case and it’s another cost-cutting measure by streamers. But as many writers point out, writing doesn’t stop once a script is handed in. Any number of changes are made on the day of a shoot because that’s the nature of making TV and film: Unexpected complications arise and a scene needs to be rewritten on the fly. Being on set helps train future showrunners — which is what the studios should want: People who understand the nuts and bolts of it all, so money isn’t wasted because of lack of experience.
• Residuals, or payment for the reuse of a credited writer’s work, are also a key issue. Historically, they have been enough to help float writers through extended lulls between jobs, which can sometimes be a year or longer. Currently though, residuals for shows on streaming pay pennies compared with the amounts paid when an episode reruns on network TV. The same issue with residuals also affects film writers, whether their movies are originally made for a streamer or end up there after a theatrical release.

The WGA is also concerned about the use of artificial intelligence to generate scripts. That certainly sounds like a way to eliminate writers from the process altogether — or to justify reducing their fee if they’re instead “cleaning up” what AI has churned out.

Even a hit show is no guarantee of stability. Alex O’Keefe was a writer on the first season of the Chicago-shot FX series “The Bear,” which returns with a new season on Hulu next month.

“Working as a staff writer, I was still broke, still on Medicaid,” he said in a tweet. “The studio wouldn’t fly me out to the writers room in LA, so I worked from my Brooklyn apartment. My heat was out that pandemic winter, my space heater blew out the lights. I worked on Episode 8 from a library.

“All I can say about Hollywood is this: all that glitters is not gold. I won the lottery, and landed a gig on a low-budget show that became a national sensation. ‘The Bear’ was a gift, but in the end, ‘The Bear’ was a gig. And between gigs, I barely survive.”

All of this is happening at a time when studios are boasting profits and CEO compensation is eye-popping in its multimillions. Somebody’s making money. For the most part, it isn’t writers — who also have agents and managers who typically get 10% of whatever they earn.

The studios are represented collectively in contract negotiations by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — which includes companies such as Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, among others. The entertainment industry lost more than $10 billion in share value on the first day of the strike.

The last WGA strike was 15 years ago and according to The Hollywood Reporter, “the fallout of the 100-day stoppage was around $2 billion (or $2.8 billion in 2023 dollars). This time the financial toll may be even greater — and felt faster.”

It’s unclear if this concern is persuasive to studios. On a post-earnings call last week, Paramount President Bob Bakish noted “we have a lot of content in the can” along with a “broad range of reality and unscripted as well as sports, and that is not affected. We can do more in those areas if necessary.”

But if an agreement isn’t made soon, the fall lineup on network TV isn’t going to be ready in time — all those sitcoms and cop shows and hospital shows that reliably draw more audiences than most streaming shows. That’s a problem for broadcasters, who still draw millions of viewers but have been steadily losing ground to streaming.

Here’s why this matters for audiences.

These issues of economic justice mirror labor issues in just about any other industry. Executives rake in obscene amounts while laying off workers. Often, this isn’t about keeping the lights on, but about giving Wall Street what it wants: Not just profits but higher profits every quarter, i.e. “growth,” which sounds less like a business model than a cancerous tumor. For the employees who remain, skyrocketing cost-of-living and inflation have gone unaddressed. That’s not fair play. That’s a blueprint for what we’re seeing right now: Striking workers and a record increase in employees forming unions.

Last week, a small group of United Farm Workers showed up to picket alongside the WGA. Here’s hoping in the future, when other industries are in need of vocal and visible support, Hollywood writers give that same energy and solidarity in return.

There are more contract negotiations the studios will soon have to contend with. Their agreements with the guilds representing actors (SAG-AFTRA) and directors (DGA) are set to expire June 30. It’s possible those guilds may vote to strike as well.

Actors have shown up on the WGA picket lines already to show their support, from Dermot Mulroney to Rob Lowe to “Abbott Elementary’s” Lisa Ann Walter to SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher. Jill Hennessy, who became a household name on “Law & Order” and now stars on “City on a Hill,” joined a picket line and tweeted out a photo with the caption: “Without writers, I’m speechless …”

Earlier this week, brothers Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and the upcoming film “Oppenheimer,” which he also wrote) and Jonathan Nolan (co-creator of “Westworld”) were on the picket line in front of Paramount Studios.

Notably absent so far are the writers who have also become super-producers — people like Dick Wolf and Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes and Chuck Lorre and Taylor Sheridan — who have multimillion-dollar deals and clout that could be put to use right now.

Similarly, what would it look like if the biggest names in of Hollywood — Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Lawrence, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese — showed up on the picket lines as well? Or said to media outlets: Interview me about why these issues are important. In terms of personal net worth and influence, they’ve all reached a place in their careers where they can afford to take that risk.

Despite what’s transpiring in the real world, there’s been a conspicuous lack of union stories onscreen over the last decade or so.

We don’t know what happens behind closed doors. But my guess is that writers do want to incorporate unions into the fictional worlds of TV and film. Or write more overt “Norma Rae”-like stories that are entirely about labor organizing. They just haven’t been getting the opportunities.

After all, the corporate antagonists in those stories have a lot in common with studio bosses themselves. Decisions at this level are always deliberate and intentional and a cynic might argue that executives are giving away the game: If they pretend labor issues aren’t a major concern of our current moment, then maybe they can con audiences into believing it too.

Still, the absence of fictional union stories from Hollywood is striking. And the disconnect is getting stranger by the day.

(Nina Metz is a Chicago Tribune critic who covers TV and film.)

‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’

This “Bridgerton” prequel has a few things in common with the blockbuster original: witty dialogue, graphic sex scenes, orchestrated versions of pop songs, Julia Andrews’ narration. It also has a star-making performance from lead India Amarteifio, embracing a character who’s not afraid of embracing her character’s urges to wriggle out of her corset and romp in the royal hay. But the eight-part series is grounded in reality, which means creator Shonda Rhimes has to deal with the madness of King George III. The ways his advisers handle his “condition” could never be mistaken for romantic gestures. If you’re just thirsty for another costumed comedy, this won’t be your cup of tea. Netflix

‘Jewish Matchmaking’

Aleeza Ben Shalom has little in common with Yente, the village matchmaker from “Fiddler on the Roof.” She’s so warm, funny and open-minded that you might consider converting to Judaism just to get her help. The other draw to this series is the clients. Like the ones in “Indian Matchmaking,” they’re more interested in finding true love than sneaking into a fantasy suite. Netflix

‘MTV Movie & TV Awards’

Drew Barrymore has pulled out as host of this annual event. She made the decision just three days before the ceremonies, saying she wanted to show her solidarity to writers during their strike. The show is still expected to go on, but it won’t be the same without Barrymore, who has been enjoying a bit of comeback.

Her Ted Lasso-like spirit would have been the perfect match for a show that isn’t embarrassed to have categories like best kiss, give a lifetime achievement award to Jennifer Coolidge and nominate the Cocaine Bear as Best Villain. 8 p.m. Sunday, MTV

‘Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind’

The death of the legendary singer-songwriter on May 1 makes this the ideal time to check out this 2019 documentary that’s full of revelations, starting with the fact that he regretted writing “For Lovin’ Me.” Directors Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni also include plenty of performance excerpts, proving once and for all that Lightfoot is much more than the guy who taught us about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Pluto, Tubi, Roku

‘Jeopardy! Masters’

The long-running game show justifies its three-week stint in prime time with a showdown involving six of its most successful contestants. The slight favorite would have to be Amy Schneider, who has the second-longest winning streak of all time. Ken Jennings, who still holds the record, will host. 8 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, Friday, ABC

‘The Muppets Mayhem’

Lilly Singh may still have her NBC talk show if she had hired Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem as her house band. As an ambitious music executive, the former host of “A Little Late” offers a nice contrast to the veteran Muppets, popping a new vein every time they resort to their hippy, dippy ways. But their act keeps getting upstaged by celebrity cameos from the likes of Billy Corgan, Kesha, Tommy Lee and others eager to fulfill a childhood fantasy — although I’m guessing more than a couple were bummed to learn they wouldn’t be sharing the screen with Miss Piggy. It’s fun to see the cavalcade of stars and hear our furry friends cover songs like “Have a Little Faith In Me” and “God Only Knows.” But the biggest laughs come when Animal and company drive Singh a little nuts. Disney+

‘The 58th Academy of Country Music Awards’

The ceremony is making news again. Last year, it became the first major awards show to go live on a streaming service. This time around, Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton will host from the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility in Frisco, Texas. The other big change: The competition for the evening’s most coveted award, entertainer of the year, has expanded from five to seven contenders. 8 p.m. Thursday, Prime Video

‘Celebrating 50 Years of Broadway’s Best’

Musical lovers who can’t regularly afford theater tickets owe a debt of gratitude to “Great Performances,” the long-running PBS series that offers free admission to top-tier shows, all from the comfort of your living rooms. This all-star concert celebrates that special relationship with elaborate numbers from “Company,” “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” But the special is dominated by divas, most notably Solea Pfeiffer who belts out a heart-wrenching rendition of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” and Sara Bareillies, delivering a tender version of “She Used to Be Mine.” 10 p.m. Friday, PBS

‘Hannah Gadsby: Something Special’

In her previous two comedy specials, the Aussie stand-up has taken fans on soul-searching guilt trips, forcing us to rethink what makes us laugh — and why. This adventure is not nearly as intense. “This is going to be a feel-good show,” she says near the start of the show, taped at the Sydney Opera House last fall. “I feel I owe you one.” The result is a polished, but fairly routine take on loving her wife and their dogs. It’s not that special. Netflix

Tribune News Service

Directed by Davis Guggenheim, an Oscar-winning documentarian for “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Still” mixes scenes from Fox’s career, new interviews and archival material to let Fox, 62 next month, tell his story in his own way.

The movie offers re-enactments from Fox’s movies and blurs the line between the man and the characters he plays. It uses moments in his movies to portray moments in his life, like meeting Tracy Pollan, his wife.

“I was excited,” Guggenheim, 59, said in a joint virtual press conference with Fox, “to try this idea of, Can you make a documentary that feels like an ‘80s movie? Something that’s big, something’s that fun, a lot of laughs, big music.  And part of that is to put ‘80s and ‘90s movies in it.

“It’s a different kind of documentary. It’s a wild ride in the way that those movies felt like at the time.”

Fox, who was diagnosed at 30 with Parkinson’s and went public with his condition in 1998, has continued to act and penned four best-selling books, beginning with “Lucky Man: A Memoir” in 2002.

“We started with Michael’s four books,” Guggenheim explained. “If you haven’t read the books, they’re incredible and incredibly revealing. Two were especially relevant to what we’re doing, with these powerful scenes. We mapped out a version of them; Michael gave us this incredible map to follow.

“And then it changed.  Scenes of Michael with his family, with his doctor, are scenes we didn’t know was going to happen.”

“The film,” Fox declared, “is much more than my books.  It’s a whole journey of its own.”

Guggenheim knew that whatever success “Still” would find would be because of Fox and his positive attitude.

“A lot of people are guarded about what they’re sharing. Michael,” he discovered, “is a total open book. Which says a lot about him.

“Michael’s funny and I have to say before I found your book (I read it during the pandemic), I was low and depressed. I think I needed a movie and a story like this – I needed to laugh a bit.”

“My thing in any case is: What’s the funny part?” Fox offered.  “There is something about this tragedy that can bring you low but it’s more challenging and rewarding to ask, What’s universally human in this?  And what I find universal is funny.”

What the filmmaker found: “Michael’s full of optimism.

“You have a lot of falls,” he said to Fox, “you’re in a lot of pain. But his attitude is to see the brighter side of things.  That is infectious.”

 “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” streams May 12 on AppleTV+

Q: A lot of my friends and I are VERY upset that “Dancing with the Stars” moved from ABC to Disney+. There are so many shows that do not provide us with wholesome entertainment while “DWTS” did.

A: Then you will be pleased to learn that the show will be back on ABC in the fall, with simulcasts on Disney+ and next-day telecasts on Hulu. Several reports noted this will give ABC an unscripted program to fill time if the writers strike delays production of scripted shows for the fall.
There will be changes in the show. To the delight of many of my readers, Tyra Banks will no longer host. Alfonso Ribeiro, who co-hosted in Banks’ last season, will be back as host along with Julianne Hough. Judges are Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Julianne’s brother, Derek Hough. (Longtime judge Len Goodman stepped down from the show last year and passed away in April.)

Q: At the conclusion of “Modern Family,” there was no reference to the fact that the families had been the subject of a documentary. I expected the documentary maker would be revealed, the way “The Office” did. It seemed like a huge loose end.

A: When the long-running sitcom ended in 2020, co-creator Christopher Lloyd told EW.com that the show did not want to reveal the documentary crew. “Obviously, we started out in our pilot having that person be a character,” he said, but the show felt that would take the audience out of the family stories. “And then having lived in a mockumentary form without literally a crew for 250 episodes, it felt like it might’ve been too meta or too cute to maybe do that for us. … We were just using (the documentary) as a technique more than a sort of an actual reality.”

Q: I am wondering if “Only Murders in the Building” on Hulu is likely to be renewed.

A: The comedy-mystery starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez has a third season on the way. And during his tour with Short, Martin said the new season arrives on Aug. 8. Look for Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd in the cast.

Tribune News Service

Few TV producers draw mass audiences as reliably as Shonda Rhimes, who correctly predicted Julia Quinn’s Regency-era “Bridgerton” romance novels would appeal to millions. Building off that success, Rhimes’ latest effort for Netflix is a prequel series that takes place several decades prior to the events of the books. This time, though, the central character isn’t fictional but very much part of the historical record.

“Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” looks at the queen’s “rise to prominence and power,” with her 1761 marriage as a teenager to King George. As with the first two seasons of “Bridgerton,” it features a likable ensemble cast that generates smoldering earnestness with a soupcon of camp. There’s real chemistry between the central pair. The settings are opulent and vivid. I suspect anyone who has enjoyed “Bridgerton” so far will find many of the same pleasures herein.

But both series sidestep a glaring reality: The significant links to slavery among Britain’s wealthy and elite.

One of Rhimes’ primary changes to the books has been to diversify the cast of characters. That includes casting Queen Charlotte as a Black woman, played by Golda Rosheuvel in middle age and India Amarteifio as the younger queen (both appear in the new series), and that choice is a nod to some theories about the real Charlotte’s family tree. Though she was German, it’s believed she was descended from a Black branch of the Portuguese royal family, several generations removed.

Rhimes has taken this suggestion and made it overt: What if Great Britain had a queen not only with distant Black ancestry, but who was Black herself?

I understand the appeal. The premise imagines an alternate reality that chips away at white supremacy. A win for representation and inclusive storytelling, in the words of the cast in the lead-up to the premiere. It’s tough to talk about the more complicated reality in sound bites. But complicated, it is. The real British royal family has a long and brutal history — and present-day wealth — tied to the enslavement of Black people, which is at odds with “Queen Charlotte’s” version of the monarchy.

Rhimes has an answer for that. The show is “not a history lesson,” we are informed at the top of the first episode. “It is fiction inspired by fact. All liberties taken by the author are quite intentional.”

Fair enough. And yet …

Kristen Warner is a professor at Cornell University who studies race and representation in TV and film. “On one level, I fully understand and empathize with writers who are not trying to educate or not trying to teach an audience about anything,” she said.

“But I also think that disclaimer is highly disingenuous for two reasons. One, because television implicitly or not, meaningfully or not, intentionally or not, teaches us things. We are informed by what we watch. We learn about things — about people, about cultures, about history — from watching television. That’s been true from its inception.

“And the second thing is, we’re living in a moment where the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how chattel slavery actually operated, are being removed from textbooks and removed from the curriculum in certain places, by law.

“So I wonder — by saying ‘this is not a history lesson’ and asking audiences to not think about what is happening in the British Empire — if the show is unintentionally becoming strange bedfellows with the very people who don’t want the history of enslavement taught in schools.”

Audiences are smart enough to hold two competing ideas in their head. So let’s look at the history.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, “the history of Kensington Palace, the home of a succession of monarchs, and more recently the Prince and Princess of Wales, is uncomfortably entwined with the monarchy’s involvement in slavery.” A previously unseen document from 1869 was recently discovered that shows King William III received £1,000 of shares in the slave-trading Royal African Company. That’s as direct as it gets.

“Across almost three centuries, 12 British monarchs sponsored, supported or profited from Britain’s involvement in slavery,” the Guardian reported. In the lead up to King Charles’ coronation, the paper has run a series of stories under the heading “Cost of the Crown” and they are not only an investigation into the finances and private wealth of the British royal family, but also “the vast apparatus of secrecy that obscures these from the public.”

As Warner points out, one could question whether, intentionally or not, a show like “Queen Charlotte” is working in concert with that vast apparatus.

George and Charlotte had 15 children together. Their son William (who would later become king in 1830) was a vocal defender of slavery while still a prince. He claimed abolitionists had “grossly misrepresented the mistreatment of enslaved men and women in the British sugar colonies,” according to documents in the Royal Archives and Royal Library.

What about Charlotte herself? A blog from the Library of Congress had this to say:

“The marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle led to speculation about whether or not Queen Charlotte had an African ancestor. Did she? The jury is still out. She did not, in any case, choose to identify with people of African descent or with the plight of the enslaved in Britain’s colonies.”

Here’s what we know, according to Library of Congress documents:

“In 1788, as Britain’s abolitionist movement gained steam, Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who had been stolen as a child in Africa, pleaded with the Queen: ‘I supplicate your Majesty’s compassion for millions of my African countrymen, who groan under the lash of tyranny in the West Indies.’

“Her response? Silence.”

That doesn’t feel like a win for anything, representation or otherwise, no matter how smoothly “Queen Charlotte” avoids this inconvenient truth about its title character.

The slave trade was abolished in 1807 during King George’s reign. And yet the exploitation didn’t end there. The blood money had already been amassed into fortunes and palatial estates, and many of Britain’s wealthiest still maintained plantations in the Caribbean that profited from enslaved labor.

The truth is ugly. “Queen Charlotte” has romanticized it instead, and it’s no coincidence that Netflix chose to premiere the series two days before the real life coronation of King Charles, even as the British monarchy has come under increased scrutiny. When Prince William insisted to a cluster of journalists that “we are very much not a racist family,” as he did in 2021, that’s a public relations problem no amount of manufactured glamour can obscure.

Charles has been facing down a negative press cycle since the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September, and historians are making explicit connections between the monarchy’s whitewashed portrayal in TV and film and how this works to erase the realities of colonial racism and violence.

Where does “Queen Charlotte” fit into that?

The show glancingly and very delicately acknowledges that Britain’s aristos are resistant to accepting a Black queen, along with the elevation of other Black families to their social circle. The characters themselves refer to this shift as “the great experiment” and the new Black members of high society soon find it’s a precarious position they occupy. But their concern is devoid of context. Even in private, no one comments on the dicey source of everyone’s riches.

Consider a moment early on when Charlotte first arrives from Germany. The king’s mother gives her a once over and insists on inspecting her teeth. It’s a subtle allusion to the way enslaved people were assessed at auction. Is the subtext intentional? Maybe. But the show has nothing to say about it — Charlotte is disturbed but seems entirely unaware of the implications — and it’s gone in a flash.

“Bridgerton” and “Queen Charlotte” exist as crinoline-lined fantasies. And yet neither shy away from other unpleasant realities, including the ways in which women lacked full agency over their lives in this period. “Shonda Rhimes is very comfortable talking about gender inequality,” said Cornell’s Warner. Nor does “Queen Charlotte” avoid staging a number of barbaric mental health “treatments” inflicted upon King George. “She’s picking and choosing what she finds comfortable and what she finds resistant to the fantasy,” said Warner.

I’ve always thought “Bridgerton” could have avoided these issues if it took a cue from “Game of Thrones” and invented a fictional setting from scratch. Warner agrees. “If you want to create a world that is analogous to Regency England, build that world — but don’t call it Britain! Create the world that you wish to see. But don’t use the real world and then act like, if people check you for it, well, you’re not a history teacher.”

Warner calls these projects “fantasy with a candy coating of history.

“I wrote a piece last year about ‘Bridgerton’ asking: Can a show encapsulate both fantasy and the legacies of imperialism and colonization? And a lot of women of color and Black women in particular were like: I just don’t want to think about it. So I understand that.

“But at the same time, you can never remove yourself from this conversation. And when you do, bad things happen.”

(Nina Metz is a Chicago Tribune critic who covers TV and film.)

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Conceived and scripted by Graham Yost (“Speed”), “Silo” is set a mile below ground where Earth’s last 10,000 people live far from the toxic surface.  What’s strange is no one knows why or even when the protective silo was built.

Ferguson’s Juliette is an engineer whose investigation of a lover’s murder leads to deeper, stranger mysteries about this underground colony.

Unlike the upcoming final two “Mission:Impossibles” and “Dune Part Two,” was part of the attraction with “Silo” that it’s original and finite?

“Oh, I don’t compare!  I think every decision I make, every character that I choose, it’s a new journey,” Ferguson, 39, said from London in a Zoom interview.  “There’ll be different reasons as to why I take them.

“This one, I just really fell in love with Juliette. She’s really cool and she’s vulnerable. And with what they’ve asked me to do,” she said of the role’s intense physicality, “it’s fun to stay in shape. I love the drama between the characters and what she unravels in the storytelling. There was so much to love, why would I not do it?”

As to who Juliette really is, “An incredibly intelligent mechanic who basically is the only one who can run the generator that runs the silo. Her purpose is very straightforward: If you don’t run the generator, it will shut down and kill the entire silo.

“We find out quite quickly that she’s lost significant people in her life,” Ferguson added. “So she’s very brittle, very vulnerable and extremely hurt.”

This veteran of two previous “M:I” epics reprises Ilsa Faust in the final Tom Cruise vehicles, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” due in July and then “Part 2” next year.  And, yes, there’s also “Dune Part Two.”

What can she say?

“You know how incredible ‘Mission’ is — we use words like Explosive, Incredible, Dynamite.  And it’s a start but to be honest, these are stunts you’ve never seen before. It’s dark, darker than the other ones and I enjoy that.

“I like the fact that [writer-director] Chris McQuarrie and Tom keep on wanting to take the next ‘Mission’ to another level. And this one definitely is.”

As for Lady Jessica and the final “Dune,” “I love the first one. I think the second one is going to be much better. Because [director and co-writer] Denis Villeneuve has taken the story to such a cool gruesomely detailed — I mean, the journey is like ‘Dune.’ But on crack, basically. I mean it’s everything. And more.”

“Silo” streams on AppleTV+ on Friday

Jackson, who recently starred in Showtime’s angsty drama “The Affair,” portrays Dan Gallagher, played by Michael Douglas in the film.

Jackson told “Access Hollywood” ahead of the series premiere that the show was “very keen to tell the story of consequences for Dan,” and that viewers get to experience Caplan’s Alex in the way Close had envisioned more than 25 years ago.

In the original film, Gallagher is a happily married attorney when he meets the sultry book editor Alex Forrest. A lapse in judgment and steamy extramarital fling leads to increasingly unstable and dangerous behavior from the jilted lover (Forrest), who will stop at nothing to get Gallagher’s attention.

Although the original painted Forrest as a villainous and crazy mistress, the new series offers a nuanced look at mental health.

“We get in and have sympathy and empathy for the journey that Alex is going on … and really make sure that we try to present in the story why this woman is,” Jackson continued to “Access Hollywood,” “and who this woman is, beyond just the villain.”

Caplan, who starred in Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” plays Close’s Forrest and echoed Jackson’s sentiment to the Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles premiere. “I feel like the narrative of the film,” she said, “which is like, ‘Nice guy, horrible woman, must die’ — I think it’s really promising how far we’ve come as a culture where now audiences want to know, ‘Well, wait a minute, let’s talk more about her, her possible mental illnesses, her upbringing.'”

According to Close, the original ending of the film was quite different from the final cut, and Close fought it for weeks, saying they switched Forrest from being self-destructive to being a violent knife-wielding psychopath.

In 2010, Douglas and Close took a look back at the film and discussed some of the most iconic and pivotal scenes for ABC. Close revealed that she’d put a lot of care and effort into trying to understand why her character behaved the way she did.

“I never thought of her as a villain,” Close said, before adding that she did more research for the role of Alex than for any other role throughout her career.

“I went to a psychiatrist because I wanted to understand if it was possible for someone to have her behaviors — particularly the rabbit — and if it was, what would cause that? And I was told yes it was. So I always thought she was a human being in a lot of pain and she needed a lot of help.”

Tribune News Service

In 1942 Amsterdam when the Nazis took began rounding up Jews to send to death camps, Otto Frank’s family went into hiding in a hidden attic above his business they called the Annex.  Their story became known after the war when Otto, the family’s sole survivor after they were discovered, published his daughter’s “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Anne’s diary was found and saved by Miep Gies (pronounced Meep Geez) who had worked for Otto and kept them fed when they hid in the Annex. If discovered, she would have been executed on the spot.

“Obviously I had read the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ when I was younger, kind of educationally,” Powley said in a Zoom interview. “And I know a lot about this part of history. But I didn’t really know anything about Miep Gies. So I had a lot of learning to do.

“And the more I discovered what she accomplished, I was astounded and impressed, just in awe of this incredible women. She’s an inspiration and I feel very honored to have played her.”

“A Small Light” begins in the early 1930s, before war and occupation, where the Miep we see is not a revered saint, much less a portrait of courage but pretty much a party-hearty person.

“When she was younger, she was a party girl. She loved dancing. She liked to go drinking with her friends. She really was,” Powley, 31, learned, “an ordinary person in quite extraordinary circumstances. I felt very connected to her, just as a young woman, immediately.”

Which is why there’s humor and sexuality in the darkness of “Small Light.”

“What would be the point by putting someone on a pedestal and making like a dusty, sepia-toned version?” Powley asked. “We’re showing the story in a very relatable young woman who just was put in an insane circumstance and did incredible things that’s going to make people think, ‘What would I do if I was in that situation?’

“And that’s the point. If we’re going to rehash this part of history, then let’s do it in a different way. Let’s do it in a way that makes us think about the current situation of the world where we live in the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever seen.

“There are more displaced people now than there were during World War II. So it couldn’t be a better time to hold a mirror up and think, ‘What should I do?”

“A Small Light” airs the first two episodes Monday at 9 p.m. on NatGeo and streams the next day on Disney+

Newton N. Minow

Tori Bowie

Gordon Lightfoot

Jerry Springer

Harry Belafonte

Len Goodman

Barry Humphries, Dame Edna

Otis Redding III

Mary Quant

Al Jaffee

Michael Lerner

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Willis Reed

Lance Reddick

Pat Schroeder

Joe Pepitone

Dick Fosbury

Bud Grant

Chaim Topol

Pat McCormick

Gary Rossington

Tom Sizemore

Richard Belzer

Stella Stevens

Raquel Welch

Trugoy the Dove

Hugh Hudson

Burt Bacharach

Charles Kimbrough

Pervez Musharraf

Melinda Dillon

Paco Rabanne

Cindy Williams

Annie Wersching

Tom Verlaine

Gregory Allen Howard

David Crosby

Gina Lollobrigida

Robbie Knievel

Lisa Marie Presley

Jeff Beck

King Constantine II of Greece

Charles Simic

Walter Cunningham

Contributing: Chicago Tribune

The expensive and reasonably entertaining new science-fiction-tinged spy series from Prime Video — debuting with its first two episodes this week, before releasing its four remaining first-season installments weekly — continues to suggest this after flipping to the standard orientation.

Executive produced by Hollywood heavyweights Joe and Anthony Russo, “Citadel” places us aboard a passenger train, on which we meet two agents of the series’ namesake global spy agency, Richard Madden’s Mason Kane and Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ Nadia Sinh. They exchange some flirtatious banter, as well as a kiss to maintain their cover, before he excuses himself to fight another man in a restroom and she corners their target at a nearby table.

“What are you, CIA?” the man asks her. “MI6?”

“Do I look like a woman who plays for the minor leagues?” Nadia responds.

In fact, he knows full well that she’s Citadel.

Thought to be carrying uranium, the man instead is part of an expansive plot by the nefarious organization Manticore to bring down Citadel. It is, unfortunately for the world, an effort that proves to be successful.

Nadia and Mason escape the train with their lives. But not, as it turns out, with their memories.

The main narrative of “Citadel” is set eight years later, with the separated super agents living civilian lives with new identities and with virtually no recollections about their dangerous former lives. Of course, they soon will be brought back together, with the help of former Citadel colleague Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) to keep a highly sensitive briefcase from falling into Manticore’s hands.

Running point for Manticore is Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville), who has her seemingly clean hands in world affairs thanks to her job as the British ambassador to the United States. As one would expect of such a villain, she apparently will stop at nothing to acquire said case.

In September, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the budget of “Citadel” was ballooning to more than $200 million, making it one of the most expensive shows ever.

Not that “Citadel” is going for realism, but it can be a little tough to take seriously, especially when you think about this all-important case, in which reside worldwide nuclear codes and MORE. As MacGuffins go, this one is big and meaty and … just a bit too silly.

One thing “Citadel” does have going for it is strong casting.

Madden — best known for portraying Robb Stark on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” before being the compelling center of the British drama series “Bodyguard,” brings his usual nobility and determination to Mason, whose primary motivation is to protect the family he’s made since is espionage days.

Meanwhile, Indian superstar Chopra, a regular on the U.S. series “Quantico” who also appeared in 2021’s “Matrix Resurrections,” brings something to the “Citadel” table, as well. She helps to create a bit of mystery around Nadia and brings sparks to the scenes shared with Madden.

And then there’s Tucci, who is, well, entirely Tucci-esque, infusing Bernard with a devil-may-care vibe even while desperate to save the world. What can we say? Bernard is the light-hearted Q to the co-OO7s, and it works.

Without being too specific with the details, there’s a nice twist as to what degree both agents return to their former selves. Also, those involved in crafting “Citadel” — including Newton Thomas Sigel, the cinematographer on the Russos’ 2021 film, “Cherry,” who directs at least the first three installments — succeed in building mystery around something not even Mason knows about himself.

The Hollywood Reporter reported in March that a second season already has been green-lit.

We’ll see how we feel about getting more of the show at the conclusion of this first season, which surely has more twists in store for us.

It may not feel like the big leagues yet, but it could get there.

Prime debuts two episodes of ‘Citadel’ Friday,  with subsequent installments arriving the following four Fridays.

Emily is seven when she vacations in the ‘90s with her parents and older sister Alison, 18, at a pricey Caribbean resort. Alison (Wes Duchovny, Tea Leoni and David Duchovny’s daughter) is murdered but no killer is charged.

A decade later Emily (Australia’s Alycia Debnam-Carey of “Fear the Walking Dead”) has a boyfriend, a Manhattan pad and persistent trauma from her sister’s death.

“These two young boys from the island who work at the hotel were accused of murder and acquitted,” Debnam-Carey, 29, explained in a Zoom interview.  “But then 10 years later, Emily is suddenly confronted with one of the accused. What ensues is her attempt to not only figure out what happened and find justice for her sister but essentially really figure out who she is and try and reconcile these two halves of her life.”

Her sister’s death left Emily broken. “She doesn’t really know who she is,” Debnam-Carey said. “She’s essentially tried to fill a void in her life. In essence, in many ways, she’s tried to become a version of her sister to heal from this trauma.

“The first time we think we’re seeing her as this stable person with a boyfriend, a job. But slowly we start to see the cracks and a lot of unresolved trauma that she’s working through to find, essentially, an understanding of herself.

“I think she’s absolutely haunted by all of this  because she never was able to get the answers that she wanted.”

As Emily navigates between detection and her “normal” life, Debnam-Carey had to maintain an unraveling identity. “This was a really hard, I’m not going to lie.

“So much of it was spent in anxiety and a very heavy mental place. Most days were this oscillating experience between a child-like Emily who desperately wanted to feel special and that she was heard,” she said. “And her wish that she could be herself.

“Then there’s this adult Emily who felt she needed to avenge her sister and create a resolution for herself.”

With a 100-plus “Fear the Walking Dead” episodes, did this young actor ever worry about being typecast?

“Maybe a little bit.  But my goal as an actor has always been to be a bit of chameleon and seek out change and growth in different ways. So I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I just became pretty determined that would not be the case.”

“Saint X” streams on Hulu Wednesday