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I’m filling in for Margaret as your televisual concierge this week. As 2020 snowplows toward the calendar’s end, I’ve been thinking through the logic (logic?) of which shows get renewed and revived and which don’t. Me? I would have loved more seasons of “GLOW,” “On Becoming a God in Central Florida,” even the downbeat “Veronica Mars” extension.
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I want saris, and I’m not sorry
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| The Bollywood stars Ishaan Khatter and Tabu star in the BBC production of “A Suitable Boy,” directed by Mira Nair.Taha Ahmad/BBC/Acorn TV |
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Vikram Seth’s bedside table-toppling novel, nearly 1500 pages in softcover, follows the marriage prospects of a middle-class Indian woman, Lata (Tanya Maniktala), in the early 1950s, just after partition. Andrew Davies (who adapted the wet-shirt Colin Firth version of “Pride and Prejudice”) has written it as a six-episode limited series for the BBC, the company’s first to star an all-South Asian lead cast. The series’s director, Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”), who shot it on location in India, has called it “‘The Crown’ in Brown.”
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Despite nearly universal praise for the cast, which includes the bedroom-eyed Bollywood leading man Ishaan Khatter, the response to the series, which debuted in Britain in July, has been all over the post-colonial map. Even in the first episode, the conjoining of the narrow marriage plot with broader political events shows seams. (A police complaint was also filed in India against Netflix, which distributes the show there, for depicting an interfaith kiss at a Hindu temple.) But see it if Merchant-Ivory-style costume drama is your happy place, if you admire Nair’s precise, sociological eye, or if you just want to bask in the radiance of the Bollywood legend Tabu, who plays an elegant courtesan.
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I want a kick line, and I want it now
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| The cast of “Chicago,” as seen in a performance from “One Night Only: The Best of Broadway.”Virginia Sherwood/NBC |
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‘One Night Only: The Best of Broadway’
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When to watch: Thursday at 8 p.m., on NBC.
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In October, the Tony Awards finally released its 2020 nominations. Congratulations to Aaron Tveit, the sole choice for best leading actor in a musical. But when or where or how the ceremony will happen? We still don’t know. Meanwhile, Broadway has been shushed for nearly nine months and will remain closed at least through May. If the absence of jazz hands and vibrato hurts your heart, NBC has a temporary analgesic, a two-hour benefit, hosted by Tina Fey, for the nonprofit group Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
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Performances are confirmed from current shows like “Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of the Temptations,” “Chicago,” “Jagged Little Pill” and “Mean Girls.” Also confirmed are numbers from “Diana: The Musical,” which was in previews when the lockdown was announced; “Rent,” about to embark on a 25th anniversary tour; and “Jersey Boys,” which seems always to be playing somewhere. (A title like “One Night Only” might suggest a “Dream Girls” appearance, but no.) The cast of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has promised to work some magic. Jake Gyllenhaal, too. And optimistic producers will provide glimpses of shows planned for 2021 because those uncomfortable plush seats can’t stay empty forever, right? Right?
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