The streamer’s new feature promises to combat endless scrolling by offering you what they think you want to watch
If you log on to Netflix any time soon, you’re likely to see the words “play something” dangling below the profile icons on the menu screen. Click these words and you’ll be taken directly to the platform’s latest experiment in home entertainment: force feeding.
Related: Netflix records dramatic slowdown in subscribers as pandemic boom wears off
Continue reading...Line of Duty, Game of Thrones, Lost, Dexter ... so much TV goes from fan favourite to laughing stock the second its finale ends. Has any show ever stuck the landing?
If Sunday night’s Line of Duty really was the last ever, there’s a sense that the entire programme has been tarnished by its finale.
Because that’s what happens with TV shows. Think of Game of Thrones. Think how rapturously it was received for years, and how it was all undone by the abject gormlessness of its final episode. Think of Dexter, and how a once wildly successful series became a laughing stock as the final credits rolled. Think of Lost, and how a divisive finale sent Damon Lindelof into such a funk that his next show ended up being an explicit meditation on the depressive nature of grief. Screw up the landing and the whole thing goes to hell.
Continue reading...John Swartzwelder, known for creating some of the best Simpsons episodes, has opened up about the show’s heyday – and why Homer is a big talking dog
The reclusive Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder, who is credited with creating some of the most popular episodes in the show’s 31-year history, has given his first interview since leaving the hit series 18 years ago.
The screenwriter, who wrote 59 episodes between 1990 and 2003 – including the James Bond parody You Only Move Twice and Homer the Great, which memorably featured the Stonecutters sect – spoke to the New Yorker’s Mike Sacks via email. Introducing his subject, Sacks described Swartzwelder as a cult figure for his offbeat work on the show, “conjuring dark characters from a strange, old America: banjo-playing hobos, cigarette-smoking ventriloquist dummies … pantsless, singing old-timers”.
Continue reading...After more than two decades of distinguished work in the US theatre as an actor, director and teacher, and appearances in a dozen or so films, Olympia Dukakis, who has died aged 89, became hugely famous overnight by winning the best supporting actress Oscar in 1988 for her performance as Cher’s mother in the romantic film Moonstruck (1987).
The course of her career suggests that her ambitions never lay in the direction of Hollywood. Her theatrical credits read like the canon of classic and modern plays: she had roles in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, Pirandello, Brecht, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, on and off Broadway, as well as in various regional theatres across the country. In films, she took on several character roles, making an impression in scores of pictures for more than half a century.
Continue reading...Manager posts critical statement on singer’s behalf after Panic on the Streets of Springfield airs
The Simpsons has earned the wrath of Morrissey after it parodied the former Smiths frontman in an episode of the show.
The singer was satirised during the episode Panic on the Streets of Springfield, which aired in the US on Sunday night. In the episode, Lisa Simpson becomes obsessed with a fictional band called the Snuffs and befriends its frontman, Quilloughby.
Continue reading...Azaria, who is white, voiced the role of the Indian American shopkeeper from show’s inception in 1989 but stood down last year
The actor Hank Azaria has apologised “to every single Indian person” for his portrayal of Apu in The Simpsons.
Azaria, who is white, voiced the role of the Indian American shopkeeper from the show’s inception in 1989 but stood down last year amid criticism of racial stereotyping. He said he was willing to be held accountable for its “negative consequences”.
Continue reading...The Oscar-nominated film-maker behind I Am Not Your Negro returns with Exterminate All the Brutes, a dense new HBO docuseries about a horrifying history
Truly, what else was there left to say about race in America after the words of James Baldwin? This is what Raoul Peck found himself contemplating after the success of his 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, which was nominated for an Academy Award and won an Emmy, a Bafta and a César award. He was confounded and disappointed to realize that some audiences, particularly in Europe, weren’t fully comprehending the work of what he calls “one of the best, if not the best analyst of what racism is”, believing it to be primarily an American concern.
Related: 'We're all part of the story': behind Will Smith's 14th amendment docuseries
Continue reading...Walter’s Arrested Development matriarch was drunk, dismissive, cruel and likable, yet we all envied her freedom. This was her masterstroke
Jessica Walter racked up a reported 161 film and TV credits over her 70-year acting career. If that number had only been 160, she would have still been the best sort of actor: a safe pair of hands who gets consistent work shoring up individual episodes of long-running shows. The spectrum of series that Walter appeared in over the years was impressive: Flipper, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, Knot’s Landing, Magnum, and Law and Order are just a few. She would pop in for a single episode, class it up a little and leave.
However, she will be remembered for one show above all. As Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, Walter landed the role she was born to play: a beautifully written, brilliantly wicked character that she elevated to icon status.
Continue reading...The Emmy-winning actor, who also starred in Play Misty For Me and Grand Prix, died at her home in New York
Actor Jessica Walter has died at the age of 80.
Walter, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, died in her sleep at her New York home.
Continue reading...Continuing our series on a year of bumper pandemic viewing, our critics finally watch the shows that had passed them by, from Downton to Twin Peaks
As with my experience of so many modern cultural touchstones, I first came to 24 via a Simpsons parody. Being only seven years old in 2001, when the 24-episode “real time” thriller first aired, my knowledge of Kiefer Sutherland’s exhausting counter-terror mission to stop the assassination of a presidential hopeful came from a 2007 Simpsons episode starring Lisa and Bart in a split-screen chase to hold off the detonation of a powerful stink bomb at Springfield Elementary.
Continue reading...Disney’s Avengers spinoff series offers up a patchy yet encouraging combination of exhilarating action and soapy drama
There was every legitimate reason to feel a little daunted and wearied by Disney’s glut of small-screen streaming announcements back in 2019 that was then compounded last year during another migraine-inducing investor day, an overlong list of shows expanding universes that were already stretched beyond necessity. But after The Mandalorian brought a surprising new edge to the Star Wars universe and, more recently, WandaVision found a certain offbeat creativity within the overly straitlaced world of Marvel, exhaustion was replaced with intrigue as Disney+ insisted on itself as more than just a digital dumping ground.
Related: Marvel's next wave of heroes will tear up tradition in the name of progress
Continue reading...In a new HBO series, Cullen Hoback falls deep into a rabbit-hole while investigating the conspiracy theory-spreading cult
Anyone who spends enough time online will eventually have one of those rabbit-hole experiences, in which late-night hours slip away as one click after the other draws a person deeper into an engrossing vortex of information. Mostly, it’ll be a perfectly innocent obsession with the history of curling or the various shapes of pasta. But thousands of web-surfers have gone through this with the world of QAnon, a difficult-to-define movement combining cult-like religious fervency, the ideological action-plans of a political party, and computer games connecting the virtual dimension to reality.
Related: Groomed: how a film-maker learned to confront a childhood of abuse
Continue reading...Stuttering affects one in 20 children, yet is still stigmatized, something the documentary My Beautiful Stutter hopes to correct
One of the most moving scenes in My Beautiful Stutter, a documentary now streaming on Discovery+, involves just a microphone and an open stage. Many of the attendees at Camp Say in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a getaway for youth who stutter hosted by the New York-based organization the Stuttering Association for the Young, grew up feeling broken or confused, ostracized by a neurological disorder that tangles the flow of fluent speech. Some campers recite poetry, others get through just their name before breaking into tears, all afforded the space to speak rarely given in the non-stuttering world (what can take a non-stutterer a minute to read or say could take a person who stutters 10 times as long). Tears abound; the scene hums with the bottomless human desire, felt most acutely as a teenager, to be seen, heard, loved, accepted.
Related: 'They become dangerous tools': the dark side of personality tests
Continue reading...HBO’s Covid Diaries NYC stitches together five documentary shorts by film-makers between 16-22, covering the dizzying, surreal first days of the pandemic
The middle of March 2021 will bring, for most Americans, a strange, surreal anniversary: the year mark of the horrifying realization – be it through a tweet, a cancellation, a diagnosis of a loved one or a celebrity, a lost job or gig – that the coronavirus was a very real threat that would implode the world as we knew it. For Aracelie Colón, then a 16-year-old high school junior in Manhattan, it was the email announcing a two-week closure from school. For fellow high school junior Shane Fleming, it was the positive diagnosis of a classmate and the closure of the Film Forum, where the movie buff caught a final feature showing on 14 March. For Arlet Guallpa, then 22, it was an ambulance outside her building in Washington Heights, fetching the first of many residents who would succumb to the virus.
Related: 'They refused to act': inside a chilling documentary on Trump's bungled Covid-19 response
Continue reading...‘Fox turned down the first draft because I didn’t put any murders in it. People watch mob shows because they like to see murders’
I was still writing the pilot episode when Steven Van Zandt – who would go on to play strip-club owner and second-in-command Silvio Dante – came to read for the part of Tony Soprano. I thought: “With Steven, it could be more like The Simpsons: more comedy, less nasty bits, more absurd.” But once we hired Jim Gandolfini for Tony, it all went back to where it started.
Continue reading...The conversation, expected to draw millions of viewers, could mark the transition from royalty to Hollywood elite
It may be an American coronation of sorts.
When Oprah Winfrey’s highly anticipated and potentially explosive interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex airs in its primetime spot on Sunday evening, millions across the US are expected to watch. It will be the couple’s first interview since since stepping back from their royal duties in early 2020, but it could also mark the moment that the Sussexes evolve from British royalty to Hollywood elite.
Continue reading...The new HBO documentary in which Mia and Dylan Farrow revisit their 1992 allegation against Woody Allen claims to be an even-handed investigation. But its failure to present the facts makes it feel more like activism
“HBO Doc About Woody Allen & Mia Farrow Ignores Mia’s 3 Dead Kids, Her Child Molester Brother, Other Family Tragedies” was the headline on one US showbiz site, above its review of the four-part documentary, Allen v Farrow, about the continuing battle between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, now entering its fourth decade. But this review was very much an outlier. In the vast main, reaction to the strongly anti-Allen series has been overwhelmingly positive, with Buzzfeed describing it as a “nuanced reckoning” and Entertainment Weekly comparing it to the recent documentaries about Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Epstein. This reaction is more of a reflection of the public’s feelings towards Allen – particularly in the US – than of the documentary, which sets itself up as an investigation but much more resembles PR, as biased and partial as a political candidate’s advert vilifying an opponent in election season.
Related: Allen v Farrow review – effective docuseries on allegations of abuse
Continue reading...Her TV show has been No 1 in the US since 1998, but many have criticised her approach to justice. As she hangs up her gavel after 25 years, she discusses wealth, success and repentance
Order, order. Court is in session, Judge Judith Sheindlin presiding, and while you are here you will follow her rules.
Don’t throw paper on the floor. Hang on to your gum wrapper until you get to a bin. Don’t befoul your community. Try not to scratch other people’s cars and, if you do, leave your details on the windscreen. Don’t tell lies. Confront your problems and try to solve them.
Continue reading...Can Grammer successfully reprise his role in the classic comedy as fastidious radio psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane?
Already standing high in the tiny line of spinoff shows that at least equal the longevity and legend of the parent, Frasier (NBC, 1993-2004) – born out of Cheers (NBC, 1982-93) – will aim for a place on an even emptier plinth: classic series successfully revived after a long gap.
Arrested Development in the US, and Birds of a Feather and Open All Hours in the UK, have managed such a comeback, but those shows did not have the status of Frasier. To dust off the fastidious Seattle-based radio psychiatrist played by Kelsey Grammer entails something like the degree of risk in going back to Fawlty Towers, which its creator, John Cleese, has perhaps wisely always refused to do.
Continue reading...After more than 30 years in the role, Shearer’s replacement reflects show’s commitment to no longer have white actors voicing black characters
After more than 30 years playing Dr Julius Hibbert on The Simpsons, Harry Shearer will be replaced by voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson – seven months after the show’s producers committed to no longer have white actors voicing black characters.
On Monday, Fox confirmed the episode that aired last night in the United States, Dairy Queen, would be Shearer’s last as Hibbert. From Sunday, the doctor will be played by Richardson instead. Shearer will continue voicing his other characters, which include Mr Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders and Reverend Lovejoy.
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