Three years ago, the quasi-scripted comedy “Jury Duty,” an unassuming offering on the now defunct streaming service Freevee, became a social-media sensation through its particular brand of gentle brazenness. Its creators, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, Frankensteined the series by stitching together two moribund TV genres—the mockumentary sitcom and the prank show—to construct something new,…
The Elusive Body, by Alexandra Sifferlin (Viking). Each year, around twelve million people in the U.S. experience a medical diagnostic error; some three million live with diseases that remain undiagnosed even after exhaustive medical investigation. Sifferlin’s book examines the roots of this situation, and explores avenues for addressing it. Though some methods—such as improving physician…
Starting in 2017, Bateman played Marty Byrde, an accountant turned cash launderer for a ruthless Mexican cartel, in “Ozark,” arguably his signature role. The show is lit in wan grays and murky browns—this has, over the years, become an irritating Netflix cliché, but, in the case of “Ozark,” the coloristic choice really works. Marty becomes…
Enter Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a government official with a barbed half smile and a will of iron, who drags Grace back to the world of top-flight science, which he left behind years before, after flaming out of academia. Stratt is the head of Project Hail Mary, a global rescue effort to stop the star-eaters…
Still, the most remarkable performance at the Cherry Lane is by Peter Friedman, who plays the kind of father you rarely see in art: a good one. It’s a hard sort of acting to describe, a spectacle of humility and self-awareness, unshowy and confident. A businessman with a genial, chatty energy, Mae’s father, facing mortality,…
