Near the start of “Severance’s” penultimate Season 1 episode, the Macrodata Refinement division reaches an important milestone. After sweating their quota all quarter, the newest (and most reluctant) team member, Helly R. (Britt Lower), reaches 100 percent on her refinement file. Finally. They’ve done it. With one last click and drag of her cursor, the four-person team has met their high-pressure, oft-belabored, months-in-the-making goal. And in return, they get to watch a video....

In isolation, there are stretches where stars Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear arrive in the general vicinity of the better version of the show they’re locked in to. As couple Pat and Terry Phelps, deep in the midst of a transitional phase of their marriage, Cox and Kinnear are asked to play these people as fundamentally fractured. Pat is still reeling from a momentary affair that threatened to implode her already tenuous family connection....

In the sketch, Kevin is clearly oblivious to the Pigeon Lady’s state of poverty, bragging about his big hotel suite at the Plaza (in reference to where Kevin stayed in the movie), and about eating two whole pizzas in the back of a limousine. Villaseñor’s costuming is also spot-on for fans of Kevin’s iconic green jacket and beanie. But the sketch takes a dark hairpin turn when the Wet Bandits, as Harry and Marv are known, show up to crash Kevin’s attempts to help out the poor Pigeon Lady, who just wanted a piece of pizza....

With its vibrant sun-soaked tapestry and whimsical characters committed to an idyllic fantasy, “Some Kind of Heaven” plays like a companion piece to “The Beach Bum,” or perhaps adds some fragment to its expanded universe. At the same time, there’s an element of executive producer Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” to Oppenheim’s melancholic portrait of aging men and women keen on capturing the rascally, devil-may-care energy of their youth — no matter the risks....

Viewers have long fretted over how, exactly, specific series will grapple with COVID-19’s disruptive nature, or if it’s even in select shows’ DNA to address the mask-wearing elephant in the room. Only “Superstore” can handle COVID! No, this is “It’s Always Sunny’s” time to shine! But if series like Netflix’s “Social Distance” and “films” like HBO’s “Coastal Elites” are any indicator, odds are there will be more pandemic-infused specials than anyone can anticipate....

“Stranger Things 4” treads a whole lot of water before showing its hand at the end of Episode 7 — but what a hand it is. Like most television shows, “Stranger Things” uses its episodic structure to follow multiple parallel storylines. One follows Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), one follows the Upside Down, and there may be others, all destined to converge roughly around the finale when El can save the world....

Yes, this is the premise of the 1989 film “Major League,” a sports-comedy classic if not an outright classic sans modifier, and it’s also the basic premise of “Ted Lasso,” the new light comedy from Apple TV+ that’s… really, really good. While a few superficial tweaks mask just how much the latter owes to the former — “Ted Lasso” is about a soccer team, and the former owner didn’t die, he just got divorced — what makes Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence’s series its own enchanting entry in the sports entertainment cannon is the same thing that makes Ted Lasso himself so darn compelling: attitude....

Morrison, who played Boba’s father Jango Fett in the 2002 “Star Wars” film “Attack of the Clones,” was one of the most popular guest actors in “The Mandalorian” Season 2. Morrison will star in the series alongside Ming-Na Wen, who portrayed elite assassin Fennec Shand in both seasons of “The Mandalorian.” Fennec teamed up with Boba during the show’s second season. Though “The Book of Boba Fett” will mark the first “Star Wars” television show to be centered on the bounty hunter, the character has been a key part of a myriad of old “Star Wars” comics, books, and other titles....

The newscast recaps several of the key plot developments from the show’s sophomore season and details what some of its key characters have been up to in between Season 2 and 3; Homelander (Antony Starr) has been secluded inside Vought Tower, while Hughie (Jack Quaid) has become a senior analyst for the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, among other developments. Like much of the the series’ comedy, the Vought News Network video is also an incredibly blatant satire....

West’s casting nearly completes the final cast overhaul for “The Crown.” The show’s final two seasons will feature Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II (taking over from Claire Foy and Olivia Colman), Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip (taking over from Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies), and Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana (taking over from Emma Corrin, who debuts in the fourth season). While “The Crown” showrunner Peter Morgan originally planned for the series to run for five seasons, he changed his mind earlier this year and extended the series’ final run into two seasons....

“In the hands of a lesser actor, Arvin would have just been an impenetrable, potentially alienating character who did a lot of awful things,” Campos said in an exclusive statement about casting Holland in his new feature. “The key to him was understanding his trauma and communicating the humanity in him. Beyond adapting his voice and his physicality, Tom was able to take on and carry the trauma Arvin had lived but was still able to communicate the warmth and humanity that made Arvin an accessible character we could actually connect with and root for....

A direct sequel to 2016’s “The Purge: Election Year,” “The Forever Purge” follows a Mexican couple on the run from a drug cartel who become stranded on a Texas ranch. Though the presidential elections eliminated the Purge, the couple find themselves hunted by a group of outsiders who plan to continue the tradition despite it being outlawed. The premise shifts the saga away from its usual urban setting, while still promising to deal with issues of race and class as the previous films did (via THR)....

Just days after its premiere on the streaming platform, the Russo brothers-directed spy thriller has already locked in both a sequel and a spin-off. After “The Gray Man,” starring Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling, debuted at the number one slot on Netflix, the platform has greenlit two new projects tied to the success. “The Gray Man” saw star Evans play sociopathic assassin Lloyd Hansen, who is hired to hunt down CIA mercenary Courtland Gentry, aka Sierra Six (Gosling), after a security breach....

The first season of “The Mandalorian” served as Disney+’s tentpole launch title and helped the streaming service gain a rapid subscriber base shortly after launch. “The Mandalorian” Season 2 is expected to feature a handful of familiar faces including Temuera Morrison (who played Jango Fett in “Attack of the Clones”) as Boba Fett, as well as ex-Jedi Ahsoka Tano, who will be portrayed by Rosario Dawson. Giancarlo Esposito, who portrayed sinister Imperial agent Moff Gideon in the show’s first season, is also expected to square off against the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) as the titular protagonist works to reconnect The Child with his species....

The “Star Wars” spinoff became an immediate hit when it premiered in late 2019. Audiences and critics alike praised the show for its movie-like visuals that far exceeded the spectacle of most competing sci-fi series television projects. “The Mandalorian” ran the visual gamut from frantic dogfights in space to tense shootouts in claustrophobic hallways and featured a wide array of colorful aliens and classic “Star Wars” technology, from blaster rifles to the famed Darksaber....

So when Leder tells you something is difficult, you better believe it. “Finales are very hard,” she said during a recent Zoom interview. “I often wonder, which is harder: the pilot or the finale?” Leder is often called on for both, most recently directing the first episode of “The Morning Show,” as well as its emotional finale, “The Interview.” She received an Emmy nomination for the latter, her first Outstanding Directing nod since 2006, and as she weighs the difficulties of both setting the tone and paying off on its promise, you can see the years of experience flash across her face....

Sixty years later, the Netflix documentary “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes” uncovers new details about the night that Monroe allegedly overdosed on drugs at the age of 36. In 1992, Monroe’s case was reopened after KTLA’s “The Marilyn Files” aired on TV. Netflix’s “The Unheard Tapes” premieres April 27, and no conspiracy theory or Kennedy connection is left unturned. The interviews from the 1992 investigation have never been heard until now....

Here’s the official synopsis, per Netflix: “Were George Mallory and his companion Andrew Irvine the first men to scale Everest on June 8, 1924? Only the little Vestpocket Kodak camera they took with them might reveal the truth. In Kathmandu, 70 years later, a young Japanese reporter named Fukamachi Makoto recognizes the camera in the hands of the mysterious Habu Joji, an outcast climber believed missing for years. Fukamachi enters a world of obsessive mountaineers hungry for impossible conquests on a journey that leads him, step by step, towards the summit of the gods....

Not that “The Woman King” doesn’t orchestrate large-scale action scenes or create involving environments its heroes need to run, chase, and fight their way through deeper into its run time, but the opening sequence does feel like a thesis statement — one that required as much group training offscreen as it does onscreen. “We trained throughout the entire movie. So if [the actors] weren’t on camera, they were in the rehearsal space still training, learning [fight choreography], and still refining their skillset with the weapons....

But does that mean it’s good? Bad? Effective? Affecting? “Timely,” on its own, doesn’t really tell us anything qualitative, and even as a context clue, the word has been hollowed out by misuse. Commentators who use “timely” to describe narratives about police misconduct or racial injustice simply haven’t been paying attention long enough. Overuse is a problem, too. As long as you’re writing about what’s going on in the world today — and, one way or another, we all are — everything is timely....