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Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticDeep into “The Last Movie Stars” — a six-episode HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke — Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward appear on the cover of a 1980 issue of McCall’s magazine. In the headline, his name comes first, then hers, then a reference to “their very private marriage.”This may come as a surprise, even as the order of names, and Newman’s face forcing Woodward’s to the cover’s bottom half, make perfect sense.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticTaron Egerton is at the center of Apple’s new drama “Black Bird,” a show that asks him, foremost, to be a reactive force. Tangled in the prison system after his plan to plead out for a short narcotics-charge sentence blows up, Egerton’s Jimmy Keene is offered the opportunity to get out.

J. Kim Murphy Amazon Prime Video has canceled “Night Sky,” its science-fiction series starring Sissy Spacek and J.K.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIt can feel at times as though the logical endpoint of the streaming revolution is a restaging of the TV landscape of, say, 1990, just atomized across vastly more players. It’s inevitable: With so much content, certain traditional, and perhaps little-missed, forms can’t help returning.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched Episodes 8 and 9 of “Stranger Things 4,” now streaming on Netflix.Writing about the first seven episodes of the current, fourth season of “Stranger Things,” I noted that its ambition was both laudable and detrimental, gesturing back to a more exciting era of Netflix while also freighting each episode with more than it could bear.The final two episodes of the fourth season, which launched July 1, prove that doubly true. The moments that sing — including, once again, in the cadences of Kate Bush, this season’s musical patron sorceress — really are on a different level than just about anything the streamer has done lately.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn his new Amazon series “The Terminal List,” actor Chris Pratt is built like a brick wall, and has about half as much charisma. His character, James Reece, is on a Charles Bronson-esque mission of revenge against the forces that ambushed his Navy SEAL platoon in the field and, back home, irrevocably altered his family life (with his wife played, mainly in flashback, by a wildly overqualified Riley Keough, and his daughter by Arlo Mertz).

Selome Hailu After four weeks in the No. 1 position of Netflix’s Top 10 chart, Season 4 of “Stranger Things” has finally slipped from the top. Season 3 of “The Umbrella Academy” took that position during the June 20-26 viewing window, having premiered on June 22.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Only Murders in the Building” was a surprising triumph last year — a comedy whose amiable, low-key wit built in power as its first season ran on. With fine work by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez at the center, it added up to a portrait of disaffected and alienated people.In its second outing, “Only Murders” no longer has its element of surprise: We know what it can do.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn the new season of “Westworld,” Evan Rachel Wood’s character describes the concept of the NPC — in video game parlance, the “non-player-characters,” the electronic background figures who exist to serve the person in control. Going by Dolores, Wood’s character once lived such a fate herself, as a sentient “host” at a theme park; having long since freed her mind, she’s now known as Christina, living in an American city, working at a video game company where she’s the one telling stories.Well, stories on the margins, at least.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticMaybe in part because the present looks so bleak, it’s lately been a boom time for shows about looking back on childhood. “The Wonder Years,” on ABC, is an update of the 1980s classic, now narrated by Don Cheadle as he reflects on the Montgomery of the 1960s.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticWhen “The Umbrella Academy” last aired new episodes, in July 2020, its star occupied a different place in the culture, under a different name.Elliot Page, the Academy Award-nominated performer, is by far the highest-profile member of the show’s cast — all playing a family of superheroes perennially trying to thwart apocalypse. And his public disclosure that he is a trans man in late 2020 presented the series with a conundrum as it looked ahead to a third season.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticA partnership with Melissa McCarthy — one of the defining comic talents of the past 10-plus years — might seem like the sort of thing a streamer would want to spotlight and celebrate. So it’s surprising that “God’s Favorite Idiot,” a new comedy series on Netflix, dropped without ever been having made available to critics in advance.Surprising, that is, to those without familiarity with the breadth of McCarthy’s oeuvre.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticJeff Bridges, in his new series “The Old Man,” is playing the kind of spy they don’t make anymore.His Dan Chase is, even at an advanced age, a master tactician; he repeatedly bests men many years younger than he is in hand-to-hand combat. He’s also winningly persuasive, so much so that the FBI counterintelligence chief tasked with finding him (John Lithgow) can’t resist giving him a head start.Indeed, the aptly named Chase seems perpetually one step ahead in evading pursuit, and the show is similarly ahead of us at home: We find out just what has made Chase, and what makes the chase, as we go.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticEarly in the first episode of AMC’s new series “Dark Winds,” Zahn McClarnon’s Joe Leaphorn advises Kiowa Gordon’s Jim Chee about a way to get ahead when investigating crimes on a Navajo reservation. Leaphorn’s been doing this for a while, and isn’t impressed by his new deputy’s credentials, or his naked ambition; sometimes, pragmatic approaches are best, so Leaphorn advises Chee to keep a carton of cigarettes around.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe very first thing one sees in each episode of the new reboot of “Queer as Folk” — before the action even starts — is the handwritten name of the streamer on which it appears, with an underline jauntily appearing beneath the last four letters of “Peacock.” It’s an elbow to the ribs, or to regions further south, that comes on strong from the earliest moments of the series; do you get it? Do you?This show, about the lives of queer and trans people in New Orleans, centers that one syllable, and a few similar terms: Like the early-2000s Showtime series that preceded it (itself based on a British drama by Russell T. Davies), “Queer as Folk” 2022 is relentless in its pursuit of pleasure.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere may be few ways of living more disconcerting than to be a one-season reality-TV star. The forced adjustment happens twice: First, suddenly, you’re thrust into the line of sight of the nation or the world, made into a symbol of something greater than yourself and flattened out into someone less than you know yourself to be.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Deep down, you are an outlaw yourself,” a director tells his leading lady. “It’s what we share.” His star thanks him, taking the remark as a compliment, but insists she’s nowhere as daring as the character she’s tasked with playing.This moment, in the first episode of HBO’s new series “Irma Vep,” is tossed-off and casual; the actors playing auteur and actress, Vincent Macaigne and Alicia Vikander, are believably weary, film-industry warriors just trying to get through the conversation, and the day.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched Season 4 of “Stranger Things,” now streaming on Netflix.“Stranger Things” isn’t just Netflix’s crown jewel — it’s a document from an era when the streamer’s ambitions looked a lot different. And its creators know it.The series, like the recently concluded “Ozark” and like “The Crown,” which has two seasons remaining in its reign, is made with care and with no small expense.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSome of the most exciting filmmaking in “Pistol,” FX’s new Danny Boyle-directed limited series, happens onstage. In concert scenes featuring the Sex Pistols — the real-life punk pathbreakers at the center of this story — the camera toggles between performer and spectator, moving so rapidly that it seems to eliminate the distance between the two.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticNear the beginning of the final episode of Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, the host found herself sadly, solemnly dancing.Wiping away tears, DeGeneres stomped up the steps of her stage’s audience section, embracing members of the crowd wearily, mouthing the lyrics “you’ve got the best of my love” — even as it seemed evident from her demeanor that her guests had what was left of it. This was an admirable concession to routine from a host who has made her name through nimble footwork: Redefining herself as a broadcast-ready daytime host after the 1990s sitcom “Ellen” was cancelled shortly after her public coming-out, DeGeneres embraced cute rubber-soled jiving as a way to express her desire to seem relatable.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn his new comedy special on Netflix, Ricky Gervais mocks “the new women […] with beards and cocks”; he urges trans women to “lose the cock” towards the end of a long tirade about trans people’s anatomy. It’d be easy to call this shocking.

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor, Variety.comVariety has been nominated for 72 Southern California Journalism Awards, including two for journalist of the year, three for entertainment journalist of the year and six nominations for criticism of TV, music and books.The awards, given out by the Los Angeles Press Club, honor outstanding journalism in the region across print, digital, radio and broadcast platforms.Executive editor Ramin Setoodeh and deputy music editor Jem Aswad are both up for journalist of the year. TV critic Daniel D’Addario along with chief film critic Owen Gleiberman and features editor Chris Willman are all nominated for entertainment journalist of the year.Aswad leads all Variety staffers with 14 total nominations, followed by Willman with nine nominations.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticDavid E. Kelley never went away, exactly, but his brand of high-middlebrow drama conveyed with alternating froth and gravity has been particularly thick on the ground of late.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticWhen it comes to “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” what’s old is new. Quite literally.Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, published in 2003, captured the imagination of a vast readership with its story of a marriage unmoored by a husband’s tendency to skip through time. The widespread swooning made a film adaptation, released in 2009 and starring Eric Bana as time traveler and Rachel McAdams as wife, a foregone conclusion.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe true-crime tale has lately dominated scripted TV, with miniseries-length dissections of infamous incidents coming thick on the ground. Many of these shows have played as flat reenactments that don’t earn the running time they demand, serials that seem to be more interested in checking items off a list to get us to an opinion about “what really happened” than in finding something transformative in a familiar story.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe partial meltdown at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 was a perfect coalescing of factors in two senses. First, a series of cascading mechanical and human errors brought the plant close to a catastrophe that would have potentially made much of the East Coast uninhabitable, we’re told in the new documentary “Meltdown: Three Mile Island.” Second, coming as it did both within memory of the height of Cold War paranoia and days after the release of the film “The China Syndrome,” the disaster was perfectly primed to set off anxieties about the danger of atomic energy.“Meltdown: Three Mile Island,” a new four-part documentary on Netflix, does an elegant job of braiding those two truths — that Three Mile Island was a narrowly averted nightmare scenario and that it lives on in the public imagination as an argument against nuclear energy.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThis article contains spoilers for the final episode of “Ozark.”Say this much for the final moments of “Ozark”: They speak to the show’s sense of its own importance.After four seasons, the Byrde family’s saga came to its conclusion with the launch of the drama’s final set of episodes on Netflix — or, at least, the part of the story we as viewers see concluded. The implication of those last seconds is that Marty and Wendy, the amoral husband and wife played by Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, will indeed accomplish everything they want, and will do so with the buy-in of their son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner).In the finale, the Byrdes throw a charity gala that represents their emergence from the depths they’ve occupied to become, once more, legitimate citizens.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticEarly in Paramount Plus’ new limited series “The Offer,” movie mogul Robert Evans is delivering a soliloquy about the moment he discovered his destiny. “It was magic,” he declares. “Real magic.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe world of home-shopping networks is one that seems ripe for comedy; the scenes in “Hacks,” for instance, in which Deborah Vance goes on television to hawk garments and jewelry are some of that show’s most cleverly observed. The challenge, as with all things in fiction, is getting the details right.That’s the first place that “I Love That for You,” Showtime’s new comedy set at a fictional TV channel, falls short. Starring and co-created by “Saturday Night Live” standout Vanessa Bayer, “I Love That for You” weaponizes its central presence’s askew vision of life as a series of petty humiliations, most easily borne by making oneself the butt of the joke.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere’s a moment late in the run of Apple TV+s’ new limited series “Shining Girls” in which one character puts forward an urgent question, and gets a mind-bending answer. “Is he going to kill me?” one woman asks. “He already has,” the other responds.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticTelevision, this spring, has been full of stories of real-life people struggling against the petty matters of their respective realities and reinventing themselves as heroic figures. On “The Dropout,” Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) pushed past the limits of science to declare herself a genius, no matter how unrealistic her putative accomplishments; on “Inventing Anna,” Anna Delvey (Julia Garner) made herself into a wealthy woman of leisure, despite having neither wealth nor, in her endless gyrating calculations, leisure time. And on “WeCrashed,” Rebekah Neumann (Anne Hathaway)…I know.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe first problem for Starz’s new series “Gaslit” may be in its title.Sure, to “gaslight,” as a verb, has its origins in the 1944 film (and its earlier stage source material), all about a woman whose husband, insistent on his falsehoods, leads her to question her sanity. But its contemporary usage, as a slang term with a meaning that has drifted closer to simply “lying,” might not be how a woman in the 1970s would understand a case of marital dishonesty.Which is not to say that Martha Mitchell, the character Julia Roberts plays here, doesn’t have a keen understanding of just what she’s up against.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticPerhaps the only gratifying thing about Rudy Giuliani’s appearance on “The Masked Singer” is that the element of surprise the show’s producers craved was ruined in advance.Wednesday night’s episode of “The Masked Singer” saw former New York City mayor and lawyer for former President Donald Trump revealed as the Jack in the Box. Fitting his costume, the disguised Giuliani explosively popped out of his captivity to perform George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ “Bad to the Bone” after a dancer turned his crank, to squeals of delight from the show’s audience and judges.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticTo some subset of the audience of the 2000 reality show “The Real World: New Orleans,” Danny Roberts was the biggest celebrity on TV.Roberts was the gay cast member on a TV franchise that placed a premium on frankness, openness, and unpracticed charm. The first episode of Roberts’ season saw him gradually and haltingly coming out to the six housemates producers had arranged for him to live with for months, at one point announcing he was gay in French so as to avoid doing so in English.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“I needed to hear the roar of the crowd one more time — and I heard it.”That’s how Magic Johnson describes his 1991 appearance on Arsenio Hall’s talk show in the new documentary “They Call Me Magic.” It was a key moment in Johnson’s public life, coming just after the basketball star’s announcement that he had contracted HIV. And it’s slightly telling that what Johnson recalls is not any particular thing he said but the applause of the audience for whom he was putting on a show.Johnson, throughout both his athletic and business careers, is as close to an entertainer as an athlete gets.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere’s an expression that Bill Hader lets play across his face at the end of the first episode of “Barry’s” new season. Pointing a gun at one of the show’s major characters, Barry orders them to comply with a plan he’s just coming up with on the fly; a grin flickers around his mouth, then takes root, as his eyes glimmer with self-belief far too serene to be disrupted by the knowledge that what he’s doing is madness.HBO has requested that reviewers withhold key plot details of the next installment of “Barry,” TV’s darkest comedy or its funniest drama.