‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 5 Is a Comeback for the Series and Elisabeth Moss: TV Review

EXCLUSIVE: K.C. Collins (Lost Girl) has been tapped for a key recurring role opposite Oliver Hudson on the upcoming second season of Fox’s The Cleaning Lady.

Prince Harry is "desperately making last-minute changes" to tell-all book following the death of Queen Elizabeth. The 38-year-old royal - who stepped down from duties back in 2020 and relocated to L. A with wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex back in 2020 - had received a multi-million advance to pen an "explosive" memoir with a ghost writer but is said to be "desperately trying to refine" the tome before it is published later this year following the passing of his grandmother.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” the streamer announced as production begins on the new season. The new season will take a meta turn, with the Principal Gutierrez character announcing that Disney has decided to make the long-awaited “High School Musical 4: The Reunion” movie on location at their in-show high school. Bleu, Coleman, Grabeel, Johnson, Reed and Kaycee Stroh will play themselves, resurrecting their “High School Musical” roles within the show, while the students will play featured extras in the in-universe movie.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is returning for a fourth season on Disney+ and the streaming service has announced that six original franchise stars are joining the show.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic “Reasonable Doubt” has a healthy amount of “Scandal” in its DNA. The series was created by former “Scandal” writer and producer Raamla Mohamed; Kerry Washington directs the first episode. And the swirling intrigue around a self-styled do-gooder protagonist — who’s unconventional in her methods, and irresistibly drawn to drama — will recall Olivia Pope, the character Washington played on the ABC drama. Back then, Olivia unwound with a glass of red wine; as if to flex the looser, loucher possibilities of streaming, Emayatzy Corinealdi’s Jax Stewart ends her day with a cigarette. That seems an apt distillation of a series that’s charged with a nervy energy; “Reasonable Doubt” places Corinealdi’s very flawed protagonist at its center and watches as she generates smoke, and steam. Jax is a former public defender who now works in high-profile criminal defense in Los Angeles; her attention is divided between her caseload and her attraction to a man she once defended, incarcerated for many, years but still a vivid part of her life.

Netflix has provided a first glimpse at the upcoming third season of Darren Star’s comedy series Emily In Paris. 

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The rescue, in summer 2018, of a youth soccer team and their coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand remains one of the most outright inspiring stories of recent years. Amidst intense interest and scrutiny, an international team came up with a plan to anesthetize the boys and maneuver them out of the flooded caves before monsoon rains intensified. It’s a tense story, and one with an outcome that isn’t just upbeat but is genuinely astounding. Little wonder that it’s lent itself to repeated retellings, including last year’s documentary “The Cave” and this year’s quietly released Ron Howard drama “Thirteen Lives,” starring Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell as the heroic British cave divers.

In 2015, pals Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas got together with IFC to create “Documentary Now!,” a mockumentary TV series that spoofs celebrated docs through film history. The show was an immediate hit, and now it heads into its fourth season, ready to premiere on IFC/AMC+ next month.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic It’s easy to root for “Abbott Elementary.” In its first season, Quinta Brunson’s series established itself as both a big-hearted and sweet-natured half-hour and as a sign of life for the network comedy. Rooted both in the office-comedy genre that’s as old as the medium (with the office, in this case, being a Philadelphia public school) and in the 21st-century custom of the mockumentary, “Abbott” has been a sharp and strong argument for traditional forms. Brunson’s Emmy win for writing the show’s pilot came both as the welcome celebration of a new talent and as no surprise. And the first two episodes of the show’s second season continue its strong trajectory. The school came into a windfall in the previous season, and the decision of how to disburse it hangs over the proceedings. This is an elegant way to deploy both halves of “Abbott’s” emotional equation: The show’s teachers know that they are underfunded and that even a bonus will go too quickly, and yet they keep on going with a smile, because what’s the alternative? A scene in which the teachers visit a richly resourced charter school before returning home to scruffy deprivation plays fascinatingly, with barely concealed envy ricocheting from face to face.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The story of Alexis Haines’ entanglement with a circle of Los Angeles-area home invaders has been told multiple times over: In the reporting of Nancy Jo Sales, who profiled her for Vanity Fair in 2010; on her own reality show, “Pretty Wild,” which aired on E! in 2010; and in Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film “The Bling Ring,” based on Sales’ work. Now, Haines (formerly Alexis Neiers), along with former associate Nick Norgo (formerly Nick Prugo), attempts to set the record straight in the Netflix documentary series “The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist.” The three-episode series sheds little light, and bulks out its running time with idle musings on fame that feel warmed over from the early 2010s. It’s not that Haines’ and Norgo’s stories, told with both respective parties’ permission in this doc, don’t have inherent interest: Both of them became entranced by the concept of celebrity and, as part of the “bling ring” cabal, stole cash and belongings from the homes of famous people, including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom. (One of their victims, “The Hills” personality Audrina Patridge, speaks to the camera for “The Real Bling Ring.”)

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic On the first episode of Jennifer Hudson’s new talk show, guest Simon Cowell was very gently criticizing the series “American Idol,” on which he had been a judge and Hudson had been a contestant. Remarking how he found the producers’ assignment for her to sing a Barry Manilow song (which she did the week she was sent home) to be unfair to her and outdated, Cowell generated the first semblance of real heat on the episode. Here was something, perhaps, with the frisson and excitement of real conversation. Hudson let it sit there, allowing a couple moments of silence before remarking “Simon being Simon,” then trailing off. This first episode began with a run-through of Hudson’s career achievements: From the sorrow of her “Idol” elimination during Barry Manilow Week to her casting in “Dreamgirls,” for which she would win an acting Oscar, to her successful recording career. Hudson has won all four major entertainment awards — an EGOT, which speaks to the somewhat mythic place she occupies in the celebrity landscape: The recipient of a second chance whose unabashedly showy voice couldn’t be constrained by a reality-show loss.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In today’s podcast news roundup, Katy Perry’s retrospective about Elizabeth Taylor as “the original influencer” is set to hit next month; Remi Adeleke gets a two-series podcast deal with Tenderfoot TV; John Allen (aka MrBallen) hires Nick Witters as CEO of Ballen Studios and signs with UTA; and more. “Elizabeth the First,” a 10-episode podcast series narrated by Katy Perry, will premiere on Monday, Oct. 3. The series comes from Imperative Entertainment, House of Taylor, which oversees the late actor’s estate, and Perry’s Kitty Purry Productions. “Elizabeth the First” will be available on all major podcast platforms and the Imperative Entertainment Premium Channel on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. Originally, it was slated to debut this spring.)

Joseph Morgan (The Originals) and Cristina Rodlo (No One Gets Out Alive) have joined the Season 2 cast of Paramount+’s original series Halo, based on the hugely popular Xbox video game franchise. The announcement Wednesday comes as production on the second season has begun in Iceland. Additional filming is to take place in Budapest, Hungary, later this year.

A difficult goodbye. The Handmaid’s Tale said goodbye to original cast member Alexis Bledel ahead of season 5 — which was tough for star Elisabeth Moss.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Back as a full-scale production for the first time since 2019, the Emmys moved, in moments, with a refreshing fleetness. But much of the production seemed strangely stuck in a hazy past. Why, for instance, did host Kenan Thompson only uncork his best material after the first commercial break, after an opening during which he staggered through choreographed routines to TV theme songs? And why were those songs generally for series not honored at this year’s Emmys? We began with “Friends,” moved into “The Brady Bunch” — with a brief shoutout to the cast of that classic sitcom sitting in the audience, not to be mentioned again — and ended on “Game of Thrones,” the big winner at the last pre-COVID Emmys.

Meaghan Oppenheimer to “Tell Me Lies,” her new 10-episode Hulu series starring Grace Van Patten and Jackson White that premiered Sept. 7.“I think there a couple of things we haven’t seen much on TV.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The prospect of Susan Sarandon leading an “Empire”-style music drama set in the world of country music is an instantly alluring one. Not merely is Sarandon a compelling screen presence (one who FX’s “Feud” proved works well on TV), but the particular contours of her public image as a stalwart leftist activist would seem to rub up intriguingly against her character, a survivor in the culturally conservative world of Nashville. Bad luck for viewers, then, that Sarandon, largely at a remove from the story for plot reasons, is such a minimally used part of Fox’s new drama “Monarch,” and that the elements that supersede her hold such little interest. Dottie Cantrell Roman and Albie Roman, played by Sarandon and Trace Adkins, are the parents to three children, two of them rival vocalists (Anna Friel and Beth Ditto); Dottie and Albie’s son (Joshua Sasse) must try to hold the clan together despite his sisters’ egos and need for validation.