Show creator David E. Kelley (who has a long track record with legal dramas, not that you’d know it here) has made a number of changes, none of which deepen the narrative. Instead of being a father to one, Rusty now has kids, plural. Instead of hiring a one-time courtroom foe as his attorney, now his former boss, the recently ousted state’s attorney, is mounting Rusty’s defense. Instead of crime scene photos of the victim fully clothed, the show takes us to the crime scene where the victim is trussed up naked. Even her fertility status (a key piece of evidence in the original) is changed. None of these details improve the story or create a sense of “maybe I don’t know where this is going” for anyone familiar with Turow’s novel or the film.

The 1990 movie came out amid a spate of erotic thrillers premised on a lurid femme fatale archetype, of women who are too sexy for their own good and the men whose lives they destroy, from “Basic Instinct” to “Fatal Attraction” (also recently adapted into a inconsequential TV series for Paramount+). There’s a cringe-worthy moment in the film when the victim’s ex all but blames her for her own murder, recalling a look of disgust she once gave him: “At that moment, I remember I had the most desperate wish that she were dead. Maybe she made a man feel like that who actually acted on that fantasy.”

Then again, at least the movie had lines like this: “They’re so close, you can see (one guy’s) nose sticking out of (the other guy’s) belly button.” Even so, the movie is too long at two hours and there’s nowhere near enough story to fill out a multi-episode TV series. Tangents about corruption in the criminal justice system seem to have evaporated, despite the expanded running time.

Gyllenhaal plays Rusty as unsympathetically as possible, which isn’t a bad choice — he’s a man who made bad choices and now his back is against the wall — but Gyllenhaal’s talents are not suited to this suite of emotions and behaviors, which read mostly as “angry” and “desperate.” Rusty is off the rails, but there’s no ambiguity, and the victim is barely a character (true of the movie as well) but rather an idea upon whom everyone can project their issues.

The script does nobody here any favors, including Ruth Negga as Rusty’s wife, Bill Camp as his boss and protector, and Peter Sarsgaard as an office rival who is all too eager to nail him.

Sarsgaard is usually a terrific actor, but even he can’t make any of this work. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he says, “my name is Tommasino Molto. But I’m from Chicago, like you, so it’s Tommy.” Considering the adaptation has no interest in its Chicago setting, this sudden introduction of a character’s supposed Chicago bonafides is weird. Sweaty, even. “Presumed Sweaty” might have been a more accurate title for the series overall.

“Presumed Innocent” — 1.5 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Apple TV+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

A real-life, downmarket version of “Succession,” it offers a claustrophobic portrait of the festival’s eccentric and off-putting founder George Coulam and the three subordinates — two men and a woman, tidily echoing “Succession’s” Kendall, Roman and Shiv — whose sweaty hopes and dreams of Ren faire domination are dependent on Coulam’s mercurial moods. Who will wrest control from the old man, if anyone?

Director Lance Oppenheim (whose credits include the recent Hulu documentary “Spermworld”) takes a stylized approach, giving the documentary an untrustworthy and manipulated feel that suggests a number of moments were staged. But it also seems likely that Coulam is too peculiar and stubborn — too lacking in self-awareness — to be anyone other than who he is, whether a camera is there or not.

Founded 50 years ago, tens of thousands of people attend the fest on any given day. Located an hour outside of Houston, it’s a moneymaker. But Coulam is ready to retire and he’s looking to sell the whole shebang for $60 million. Whether that happens is another matter.

Coulam is all business when it comes to the fest, but does he have any emotional investment? Unclear. He doesn’t seem to find any delight or whimsy in this artificial world he’s created.

Not so for general manager Jeff Baldwin, who has a background in theater and a childlike and dreamy outlook. He says things like “George is Willy Wonka,” then later compares his boss to King Lear. Heading up a massive kettle corn operation at the fest is Louie Migliaccio, a fast-talking shark who chugs Red Bull as if his life depends on it. His family has money and he’s hoping they will buy the fest. Then there’s Darla Smith, who once ran an elephant attraction before becoming a vendor coordinator. Her ambitions are never articulated but she seems competent, if uninspiring. They each battle for Coulam’s favor and are subject to his rebukes, depending upon who is in his line of fire. Everyone is stressed. Everyone is paranoid. Everyone drives a truck or an SUV.

Though Coulam modeled himself on Walt Disney, apparently he’s done with all that. Now in his mid-80s, “I want to do art and chase ladies.” Seemingly unprompted, he tells director Oppenheim about his medical regimen: “I have to take Viagra and Cialis and I have to have a shot of testosterone once a week” — he pronounces it testoserahn. An assistant nearby nods expressionless. “If you get a shot every week, you can have an erection until you die. And that’s my goal.” He’s also hired someone to help him navigate “sugar daddy sites” and says he’s looking for “a nice, thin lady between 30 and 50 years old.” But the women he matches with are in their 20s. The first thing he asks is if their breasts are natural. “I want someone to love me and take care of me,” he says, with no concept that this imaginary woman might want things out of a relationship as well. He’s too controlling and too rigid to consider that.

But his taste is questionable across the board. “Ugly art is not art,” he says. His home — with its garish, maximalist interiors —  is an ironic testament to this. He’s intense and self-absorbed, so it doesn’t stretch the imagination that he agreed to do this documentary. Why anyone else did remains a mystery.

“Ren Faire” — 2.5 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Episodes 2 and 3 air back-to-back at 8 p.m. Sunday (all three parts streaming on Max)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

Sterling never had much of a national profile in pop culture but his downfall changed all that. His assistant and maybe-mistress V. Stiviano was in the habit of recording their conversations — with his knowledge — which included a rant berating her for being photographed with Black people. That snippet would ultimately find its way to TMZ, which resulted in Sterling being banned from the NBA and forced to sell his stake in the team. Throughout it all, Stiviano had a strange push-pull response to the ensuing media interest.

That’s the recap, which suggests the story doesn’t warrant more than a movie-length treatment. But FX is in the TV business and the six-episode series (streaming on Hulu) does some things I found intriguing.

Ed O’Neill has said he wasn’t interested in playing Sterling at first and I get the reluctance; he’s not only repellent, he’s boring. As a real estate mogul, Sterling was previously the subject of housing discrimination lawsuits as well as sexual harassment lawsuits. Those in business with him overlooked this history and that kind of choice is neither new nor shocking, but it does put everyone in his orbit on a morally compromised path.

Adapted from a “30 for 30” podcast, the series is from creator Gina Welch (whose credits include the thematically adjacent “Feud” and “Ray Donovan”) and it’s a study in that old axiom: When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. That’s true of everyone who had personal or professional dealings with Sterling, including Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman), his longtime wife Shelly (Jacki Weaver), coach Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne), as well as the players and front office personnel.

At one point, Sterling loses his temper with Rivers and barks: “I’m your owner.” It’s all so loaded. He’s portrayed as breezily untouchable, which is illustrated in flashbacks. He’s sitting for a deposition and describing in some detail a limo encounter with a prostitute. The anecdote is presented without context, because there’s a punchline coming. When he’s finished, the attorney across the table dryly responds: “Mr. Sterling, the question was, is this your handwriting?” That exchange isn’t an invention by Welch. Just truth being stranger than fiction.

Welch has a lot on her mind but not all of it coheres. The show is strongest when it’s less focused on Stiviano’s grasping desire for fame or recreating her awkward interview with Barbara Walters (in which she clunkily described herself as Sterling’s “right hand arm man”) and more interested in longstanding issues of racism in the NBA and the tense debates Sterling’s bigotry provoked for Rivers and the players.

“The whole season you’re talking about tuning out distractions,” a player tells the coach. “But this tape is everything. Dude is literally saying that I’m a piece of property.” This sparks some meaty and nuanced arguments about whether to boycott or play. Ultimately, they play. But “Clipped” does a decent enough job suggesting all kinds of “and what if they hadn’t?” questions that aren’t addressed on screen.

O’Neill goes all in. It’s the flashier, in-your-face role. But it’s Weaver and Fishburne who stand out. Weaver’s version of Shelly Sterling is a fascinating enigma and portrait of an enabler. Privately she’s exasperated by the trouble her husband is causing them both, but publicly she insists he was tricked into saying racist things. Whether she believes it or not is irrelevant, because (as portrayed here) she’s not horrified by any of it. Her focus is on maintaining as much of their lifestyle and wealth as possible. And she does it with a sugary disposition, calling Rivers and the players “honey” as they silently and stonily tolerate her presence.

Fishburne is the soiled, hangdog conscience of the series. He’s a class act who is disgusted by Sterling and just wants to do his job — but he also knows that’s a losing bet he made the moment he accepted a position with the team. Even so, the way he giddily bounces in his seat when NBA commissioner Adam Silver announces that Sterling is out is a terrific moment of satisfaction. (Darin Cooper’s Silver is unyielding and unemotional; he’s all business.)

The series also pauses to let one-time general manager Elgin Baylor (Clifton Davis) hold his head high and say his piece about his own deal with the devil. Sterling wasn’t interested in spending for players, which rendered Baylor largely ineffectual. But he was also given extraordinary job security despite the team’s horrendous record. The scene arrives out of nowhere, but the undercurrent of racism once again comes to the fore and that righteous tension is far more intriguing than anything happening in Sterling’s private life.

At one point early in the series, Stiviano spots a celebrity and sighs. “How come famous people glow like that?” A friend splashes cold water on the fantasy: “Usually it’s not happiness.” It might be the show’s most salient point.

“Clipped” — 2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Hulu

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

Participants this time out may be upending relationship norms on the surface — there’s a throuple! — but even so, they are working through universal struggles, conflicts and vulnerabilities.

Everything feels so charged. And yet the show has such a soothing effect because it’s predicated on the idea that conflict can happen in a safe and managed environment. That human behavior (and misery) isn’t mysterious or unchangeable. There’s something so optimistic in that outlook. “We’re all in the grip of some kind of prism through which we see reality,” Guralnik says in voiceover as we see glimpses of her clients go about their daily lives. “Often couples, when they’re busy fighting with each other, are reenacting things that happened to them in the past. Their trauma is holding them hostage to a very particular way of interpreting reality.”

But there are other ways to see the world — or the dynamic one has with a partner — she says. And once people embrace that, they can break free of those old patterns “and suddenly the world kind of opens.”

Whether or not you relate to the people featured on “Couples Therapy” — or even like them as individuals — doesn’t matter as much as Guralnik’s reassuring presence. She’s kind and quietly attentive, but fully in control of these sessions. She has a soft timbre to her voice, but she will firmly push back when the moment warrants it.

The season follows the travails of three couples and one throuple. One couple are the children of immigrants and their troubles involve her hateful mother and a nonexistent sex life. Another couple is, years later, still reeling from childhood traumas that creep into their relationship. Another couple is trying to navigate a tension borne from mutual frustration that plays out in conflicts about domestic chores. In the throuple, two women are in a relationship with the same man, but not in a relationship with one another — and in fact, the women see other people as well. They are polyamorous, but this particular threesome has been causing them enough angst (about whose needs and feelings are prioritized) to bring them here.

The various participants are deeply human but also cringe-worthy. You think: I would not want to be in a relationship with any of these people! But Guralnik isn’t there to judge.

Sometimes she helps people figure out what they’re really feeling. Psychoanalysis, she says, “is the idea that we are motivated by unconscious forces. We know that what people are saying is only part of what is going on. Analysts listen for unconscious material and how the past might be hijacking their experience right now.”

In one session, a client feels it’s important to talk about who started a fight.

Guralnik: “I think that’s one way to possibly go. From my experience, it doesn’t really work — and it doesn’t matter who started it.”

Client: “Hmm. I just feel like it does matter who started it.”

Guralnik: “It matters if you’re in court. It doesn’t matter if you just want to make things better.” Orna!

Sometimes she asks about their childhood because “what happens to us early in life establishes a certain kind of blueprint as to how the rest of life is going to get experienced,” she says. “We’re born in a state of complete vulnerability and dependence and we take in for the first time social order, hierarchies, what is forbidden, what is allowed. All of that, really, starts in the family.”

One client this season is dealing with repression. Another with dissociation. These create additional complications in their relationships. Emotionally or physically abusive childhoods can have long-term effects on adult intimacy, but Guralnik tries to help her clients embrace the idea that those old coping mechanisms can be abandoned if they don’t work for them anymore.

Each session takes place on a set carefully designed to look like a lived-in office space, with stylish but unobtrusive mid-century furniture and grasscloth wallpaper. Her dog Nico is curled up quietly in the corner. The couch is blue-gray with terracotta-colored throw pillows, and behind it is a credenza stained a golden oak. The coffee table has books and knicknacks. The lighting is soft and seems natural, as if an unseen window is providing illumination.

The overall effect is cozy and the dreamy soundtrack only accentuates that feeling. The doctor is in.

“Couples Therapy” — 4 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Two episodes air back-to-back 9 p.m. Sundays on Showtime (streaming on Paramount+)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

At least that’s how it played out for me, taking it all in Stateside. Apparently many of the films are quite good. I won’t be writing about that here because I haven’t seen them yet. What I can comment on is the vibe and a general sense of cluelessness emanating from the festival this time out.

Writing for the Hollywood newsletter The Ankler, Claire Atkinson found that nearly everyone she spoke to “at the rooftop parties, in the street, in the see-and-be-seen hotel lobbies or even over the phone, says the same thing: This is the year that excitement about movies has returned.”

That may be wishful thinking. It was business as usual at the star-studded press conferences and red carpet events. But “the movies” as we know them are undergoing an existential crisis. What kind of theatrical life is any film destined to have? Director Sean Baker echoed this concern when he picked up the top prize Palme d’Or for his romantic comedy “Anora.” The world, he said, “has to be reminded that watching a film at home, while scrolling through your phone and checking emails and half-paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so. Watching a film with others in a movie theater is one of the great communal experiences.”

Alas, box office results have been telling a different story. The walls are crumbling down around the industry, but the parties on yachts continued unabated and the pro forma standing ovations following screenings were dutifully timed and reported by journalists, as if this information meant something.

A primary concern of the Hollywood strikes last year was the threat of AI, not that you’d know it at Cannes, where a producer was on hand with a “sizzle reel of AI-translated trailers of international films,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, noting the tech is a “chance for hit international films to cheaply produce a high-quality English-language dub that will make them more attractive for the global market.” That’s bad news for actors who make a living dubbing foreign films. It gets worse. Also being shopped was a biopic about Vladimir Putin that uses AI to re-skin an actor with Putin’s face, creating a deep fake. The film’s Polish director Patryk Vega, also known as Besaleel, told the Hollywood Reporter that he predicts “film and TV productions will eventually employ only leading and perhaps supporting actors, while the entire world of background and minor characters will be created digitally.” Perhaps in the coming years, Cannes will simply introduce a new award category called the AI d’Or.

Let’s turn to filmmakers who are still doing it the old fashioned way. Francis Ford Coppola brought his $120 million, years-in-the-making allegory of our times “Megalopolis” to Cannes in the hopes of finding a buyer. At his press conference he noted, “It’s not people who become politicians who are the answer (to our nation’s problems) but the artists of America.” A lofty statement. But if he genuinely believes it, who does he think will fund and distribute films that challenge and critique the very systems studios actually benefit from? (Coppola is an outlier who is rich enough to self-fund his latest movie.)

Here’s what was conspicuously missing from much of the coverage around Coppola: Only days earlier, a report emerged that the filmmaker behind “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” had allegedly behaved inappropriately during the filming of some scenes for “Megalopolis.” According to The Guardian: “Coppola came on to the set and tried to kiss some of the topless and scantily clad female extras. He apparently claimed he was ‘trying to get them in the mood.’”

These accusations were seemingly a non-issue at Cannes. Perhaps that’s fitting. One of Coppola’s stars who walked the red carpet was Shia LaBeouf, who is being sued by former girlfriend FKA Twigs. The civil case, which is pending, alleges “‘relentless’ abuse by the actor, including claims that he strangled her, knowingly infected her with a sexually transmitted disease and threatened to crash a car they were both in.” Producers were also at Cannes pre-selling a crime drama to star LaBeouf.

Other producers were selling an action-thriller starring James Franco. Two years ago, he settled a class action lawsuit brought by former acting students alleging they were sexually exploited by him. The presence of both LaBeouf and Franco prompted Variety to ask: “Is anyone really canceled in Cannes?” The Ankler’s Atkinson quoted a culture editor at at French TV channel who said 75% of the films at this year’s fest have a female protagonist “seeking revenge, fighting back, finding her place.” How does that square with Cannes welcoming, with open arms, men who put real women in those kinds of circumstances?

Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett was at the fest promoting a dark comedy called “Rumours,” about world leaders who find themselves lost in the woods, literally. Sitting for an interview, she talked about the persistent lack of women working behind the camera: “There’s 50 people on set and there’s three women. It’s like, when is this going to deeply, profoundly shift?” Her concern rings hollow: Blanchett is an A-list talent who is likely key in securing financing — if she believes things need to change, she could start by leveraging her own clout.

Even the red carpet — heavily photographed for its supposed glamour — took on a nasty tinge this year. Singer Kelly Rowland attended a premiere and was rudely hustled up the steps by an usher who kept her arm extended behind Rowland as a barrier, as if she were a bouncer escorting a rowdy patron off the premises. Afterwards, Rowland said: “There were other women that attended that carpet who did not quite look like me and they didn’t get scolded or pushed off or told to get off.” The same usher was subsequently filmed being aggressive with at least three other women, going so far as to physically accost one of them.

The fest has long cultivated a culture of elitism and exclusion, as Deadline critic Valerie Complex put it, writing about her experiences a couple years ago as one of the few Black writers in attendance. The microaggressions, she said, were constant: “I sat down in a reserved row, and three different seat ushers came over to my seat to check my ticket to make sure I was in the proper place. They weren’t checking anyone else’s tickets, just mine.”

Let’s wrap it up on a positive note, because there was one bright spot at the fest this year: Yet another dog to steal everyone’s heart. Last year’s Palm Dog winner (a real award) was Messi, the dog in “Anatomy of a Fall.” This year the honor went to a mixed breed named Kodi, who appears in the Swiss-French film “Dog on Trial,” a courtroom drama about a lawyer who takes on a dog — who has bitten three people — as a client. The story is apparently loosely based on a real case in France.

If Cannes is going to the dogs, at least there are actual dogs around to lighten the mood.

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

That story — about political activist Huey P. Newton and movie producer Bert Schneider, who made counterculture classics such as “Easy Rider” — forms the basis of the six-episode Apple TV+ series “The Big Cigar,”  which attempts to be many things at once, weaving in serious themes amid the jaunty energy of a heist.

Developed by Jim Hecht (and based on a 2012 article by Joshuah Bearman), the series makes its intentions clear at the outset, with the voice of Newton, played by André Holland, offering a disclaimer: “The story I’m about to tell you is true. At least, mostly true. Or at least how I remember it. But it is coming through the lens of Hollywood, so let’s see how much of my story they’re really willing to show.”

It’s the summer of 1974 and Newton is arrested on charges of assaulting a tailor and fatally shooting a teenage prostitute. Is it a frame up? Newton says yes, and tensions with the local police and the FBI suggest this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Out on bail, Newton needs someone who can move mountains, so he turns to Schneider (Alessandro Nivola), with whom he had been developing a biopic. “You’re the hotshot producer,” he says. “You want to produce something? Produce this.”

So Schneider concocts a non-existent movie that will shoot on location in Cuba called “The Big Cigar.” (If the fake-movie-as-subterfuge premise sounds familiar, a similar scheme was cooked up to help American hostages escape from Iran in 1979, a story depicted in the Ben Affleck-directed best picture winner “Argo,” also based on a Bearman article.) Not mentioned here? This wasn’t Schneider’s first fugitive rodeo; he had also recently funded Abbie Hoffman’s escape, stemming from drug charges.

But his plan this time becomes a comedy of errors. Dire circumstances, both logistical and psychological, ensue. But the series is committed to keeping things fairly light and palatable, even as it contends with the brutality of racist police and internal schisms (some of them baited by the feds) that would splinter the Black Panther party.

Regardless of the role, Holland is the kind of actor who holds the screen with a quiet charisma. In Newton, he has also found the character’s roiling intensity fueled by his justified paranoia and a tendency to hold grudges. Sometimes his temper gets the best of him, but he has a clear-headed assessment of how rigged systems function.

Temperamentally, Schneider (and by extension, Nivola) is his opposite — a creature of Hollywood with a movie star girlfriend (Candice Bergen) and a reputation as a renegade despite his nepo-baby origins (his father is president of Columbia Pictures). In flashback, we see Newton begrudgingly attend a party at Schneider’s invitation. When Newton spots Richard Pryor, he asks his opinion of the white crowd: “Deep in their genes,” says the comedian, “they got a lot of guilt and they’re willing to pay a steep price for absolution.”

Newton is skeptical. Revolution is survival to me, he tells Schneider, it’s optional for you. “That’s exactly why I gotta do it,” comes the reply. “I want to finance the revolution!’ To punctuate the moment, Schneider turns and does a line of coke. I mean, I laughed! (Schneider did in fact funnel considerable funds to the Black Panthers, so his words weren’t just Hollywood hokum.)

Like so many projects of this type, it was initially developed as a movie. Nothing came of that and now here we are, with the story stretched out into a multi-part series from showrunner Janine Sherman Barrois that is enjoyably watchable if occasionally tonally uncertain. (One of Barrois’ previous credits is “Claws,” which had a similar approach, both exuberantly outsized but with substance.) Tiffany Boone (as Gwen Fontaine, Newton’s girlfriend and the stabilizing force in his life), P.J. Byrne (as Schneider’s childhood friend and producing partner Stephen Blauner) and Jordane Christie (as Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale) are terrific in supporting roles. The FBI are portrayed as clowns rather than heroes, which makes “The Big Cigar” a rarity in Hollywood at the moment, and the series itself is enjoyable despite the self-congratulatory speeches for Schneider and Blauner each, explaining why they’re good white people. Schneider in particular keeps stressing his close friendship with Newton, but nothing on screen backs that up, leaving it unclear how Newton actually felt about Schneider.

A reason to watch is simply for a terrific exchange that transpires after Blauner has just escaped with his life while trying to coordinate some of the logistics of their plan.

“You were in a shootout in a Jewish deli?” Newton asks incredulously.

Blauner is numb. “All delis are Jewish. I think.”

“Nah, the Italians got ’em,” Schneider chimes in. “The Greeks, too.

Bottom line, he tells Newton: “The mob’s got a hit out on you.” That’s only one of the many problems he will have to contend with. “The Big Cigar” turns all of it into big entertainment.

“The Big Cigar” — 2.5 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Apple TV+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

In the best way possible, the four-part series from filmmaker Jamila Wignot feels like falling down a rabbit hole. When it comes to the soundtrack of the ’60s and ’70s, Motown was an essential player. But the story behind — and influence of — Stax is just as relevant.

Founded by the brother-sister team of Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, the company name was derived from the first two letters of their last names: st+ax= Stax. “We made a few country records that were bad,” Stewart says about their initial efforts in the late 1950s. Shortly thereafter, the white owners quickly shifted their focus to Black singers and songwriters including Sam & Dave (“Hold On I’m Coming”), Otis Redding (“A Little Tenderness”) and Isaac Hayes (“Theme from Shaft”) and the business took off.

In 1967, the label’s roster of talent went on a European tour and someone mentions seeing Paul McCartney in the audience at one of their shows. To her credit, Wignot doesn’t interview McCartney (or any other boldface name not involved directly with the label) and it’s the right choice; the Stax artists — and by extension this series — do not need famous admirers to validate their story or the music. The Memphis sound stands on its own. And every once in a while, Wignot lets these songs play all the way through. There’s a terrific moment where Booker T. Jones sits at the piano and walks us through his thought process as he experimented with the chord progressions that led to his famously slinky instrumental “Green Onions” in 1962. There’s also electric footage of Sam & Dave in London, and we get to see the full performance of Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” at the Monterey International Pop Festival in ’67. Their talent is thrilling. And essential to the company’s success.

Business acumen, on the other hand, wasn’t Stewart’s forte. “I wanted to go to the studio and cut records and just have fun,” he says. The company signed a deal with Atlantic early on to distribute their output and the deal would ultimately have disastrous results. Call it naiveté or call it negligence; in interviews, the elderly Stewart comes across as gentle and soft-spoken. Not the kind of shark typically associated with a music executive. (His sister died in 2004, but Wignot has unearthed archival interviews of her as well.) It was Al Bell, who began as head of promotions and eventually became co-owner, who had the corporate savvy to guide Stax through some of its toughest challenges. Due to both internal and external forces, Stax was on the brink of disaster more than once.

Racism is a constant undertow throughout the Stax story as well. It was an integrated company, but the label’s white musicians were detached from what their Black friends and colleagues were experiencing. Stewart’s anecdotes make it clear that he was uncomfortable with the harsh realities of racism, but that’s as far as his thought process goes. Bell recalls: “I remember we were leaving the studio — me and Jim and Otis Redding — and as we stepped out of the door, a police car pulled up and they jumped out with their guns.” They were informed Black people weren’t allowed on the street with white people.

“It was just too strong a system to tear down in Memphis,” Jones says. “You needed to keep your mouth shut and hope for the best — or fight.” When Black sanitation workers went on strike, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to rally support and he stayed at the Lorraine Motel, the unofficial gathering spot for Stax musicians and where he would be gunned down in 1968.

Back at the studio, “no one talked about Dr. King’s assassination,” Jones says. “I started to, deep down, feel that something was amiss. They didn’t understand my daily life as a Black person in Memphis.” Wignot cuts to one of his white bandmates: “If they felt that way, the way they do now, why didn’t they say something then?” Jones has a reply for that: “The close relationships we had in the studio didn’t happen outside the studio. So I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up those subjects with the band.”

This suggests all kinds of tension beneath Stax’s copacetic integrated surface. It’s meaty and complicated. Stewart says that “even though we were worlds apart socially,” what they had in common was that they were “rural people with rural roots.” Even so, neither he nor his white colleagues seem to grasp how disconnected they were — perhaps still are — from the effects of racism on a person’s psyche. I also would have liked to hear more details about the nature of the contracts the musicians signed with Stax. Exploitation is not uncommon in the music industry and it feels like an omission to not ask if that was the case here.

The story of Stax is also one that anticipates our current moment: The push for rapid growth. Many of the original personalities felt the company was no longer the homey environment it had once been. It had become too corporate and feelings were hurt, people left. Ultimately it all collapsed.

But the music remains.

“STAX: Soulsville U.S.A.” — 3 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on HBO (and streaming on Max)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

On the bright side, I’m expecting the return of “The Bear” to be as satisfying as it has been in seasons past (haven’t seen a lick of the new episodes, I’m just going on track record alone). New and unfamiliar athletes will become household names as the Summer Olympics kicks into gear, which is one of my favorite traditions. And “Couples Therapy,” back for a fourth season, remains one of the best unscripted shows on television.

Here’s a look at what’s on the schedule:

“Eric” (May 30 on Netflix): Benedict Cumberbatch returns to television as a children’s show puppeteer whose life falls apart when his preteen son goes missing. Netflix marketing describes the six-episode limited series as a thriller about a desperate father battling demons as he takes to the “vibrant, dangerous and intoxicating streets of ’80s New York.”

“Couples Therapy” (June 2 on Showtime; begins streaming May 31on Paramount+ ): Consistently absorbing and enlightening, “Couples Therapy” may be the least cynical reality show in existence. That’s thanks to the producers as well as the calming, thoughtful approach taken by psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik, who helps couples recognize the patterns — often shaped in childhood — that can make building a life together as adults so difficult. I always feel smarter about human beings and our struggle to connect after watching this show.

“Clipped” (June 4 on Hulu): “Winning Time” on HBO took a sprawling look back at the rise of the LA Lakers. Now Hulu (via FX) narrows its focus to LA’s other NBA team, the Clippers and, specifically, the team’s notorious former owner Donald Sterling (played by Ed O’Neill), who was banned for life by the league and forced to sell the team after making racist remarks. Laurence Fishburne also stars as coach Doc Rivers.

“Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” (June 7 on Hulu): I’m skeptical of these kinds of biopic TV projects (Apple’s “The New Look,” about Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, was embarrassing for its Nazi apologia) but hope springs eternal. This time the designer du jour is Karl Lagerfeld, who would ultimately become the longtime and influential creative director at Chanel. Despite his impressive professional standing, Lagerfeld had a less than stellar reputation as a human being, with accusations that he was fatphobic and misogynistic, among others. The Hulu series, starring Daniel Brühl, is set in 1972, long before those allegations came to light.

“Queenie” (June 7 on Hulu): Adapted from the 2019 novel by Candice Carty-Williams, the series revolves around a 20-something Black British Jamaican woman named Queenie who is weathering a quarter-life crisis that involves messy breakup, questionable rebound hookups and just trying to find her way in the world. Reviewing the book, The Guardian called it a “smart and breezy comic debut.”

“The Trial of Socrates” (June 13 on Lakeshore PBS WYIN): A mock trial starring Chicago native John Kapelos (“The Breakfast Club”) as the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, who was tried and convicted for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. That’s recreated here with testimony from Socrates and real attorneys playing the prosecution and the defense. The broadcast “invites audiences to consider anew the fragility of democracy, the limits of freedom, and the imperfection of human justice.”

“Presumed Innocent” (June 14 on Apple TV+): Scott Turow’s Chicago-set legal thriller was first adapted for the screen in 1990 as a star vehicle for Harrison Ford. Now it’s being rehashed as an eight-episode limited series starring Jake Gyllenhaal as prosecutor Rusty Sabich, who must investigate the murder of a colleague with whom he was also having a secret affair. Messy! If the recent multi-episode TV adaptation of “Fatal Attraction” is anything to go by, expanding a decades-old movie into a TV series runs the risk of draining much of the story’s snap and crackle. We’ll see how this one fares.

“Grantchester” (June 16 on PBS Masterpiece): The longrunning 1950s-set series about a handsome young vicar who helps solve murders had grown steadily tedious in recent seasons. Perhaps casting a new vicar will freshen things up for Season 9, which takes place in 1961. Rishi Nair steps into the role beginning in Episode 3 (the show contrives a reason to get him shirtless within the first 10 minutes; I laughed but he is legitimately dashing and makes the show watchable again). Nair replaces Tom Brittney, who himself replaced James Norton, making him the series’ third vicar to team up with Detective Inspector Geordie Keating.

“House of the Dragon” (June 16 on HBO): I was deeply unimpressed with this Targaryen-focused “Game of Thrones” prequel when it premiered. For my money, it plays like a knockoff: Gayme of Throans. Drink every time someone says “your grace”! But to each their own, and if you were eagerly awaiting the show’s second season these past two years, here’s your Sunday night viewing for the summer months.

“Orphan Black: Echoes”(June 23 on AMC): I liked the original “Orphan Black” primarily for Tatiana Maslany’s hilariously varied performances playing clones of herself, but the story itself ultimately became too convoluted for my taste. Krysten Ritter takes over the lead role in this reboot that purports to take “a deep dive into the exploration of the scientific manipulation of human existence.”

“The Bear” (June 27 on Hulu): The Chicago-set hit series from FX returns for Season 3, following the restaurant trials and tribulations of Carmy & Co., who ended last season with the opening of their fine-dining revamp of the old Italian beef sandwich shop.

“Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” (July 11 on Hulu): A three-part docuseries about Dr. Ann Burgess, who helped develop serial killer profiling and was the inspiration for a character on the Netflix series “Mindhunter.” The series is based on her book “A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mindhunters and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind” and looks into some of her most famous cases, as well her efforts in the anti-rape movement.

“Cobra Kai” (July 18 on Netflix): I watch this “Karate Kid” TV sequel mainly for the oddball chemistry between Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, aka the one-time underdog karate kid (Ralph Macchio) and his one-time nemesis (William Zabka) who are still in each other’s lives all these years later and now somehow actually friends. I love their mismatched energy! Can’t say I’m as engrossed by anything to do with the show’s teenage contingent, who are never half as interesting. The show returns for its sixth and final season, and Netflix is dividing that into three parts. Part 1 premieres in July, Part 2 in November (November?? Yes, November) and “the final event” premieres sometime after that in 2025.

“Lady in the Lake” (July 19 on Apple TV+): A seven-part thriller starring Natalie Portman as a 1960s housewife-turned-journalist in Baltimore who investigates the death of a Black mother.

“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” (Aug. 3 on HBO): A new documentary about the Hollywood legend who died in 2011 that uses her “own voice to narrate her story, accompanied by personal photos, home movies and clips from her iconic roles that mirror her real-life challenges and triumphs, while also challenging audiences to reconsider Taylor’s legacy.”

Other notable dates: The 77th Tony Awards hosted by Ariana DeBose (June 16 on CBS) and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris (July 26 to Aug. 11 on NBC).

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

(If Hollywood is so eager to greenlight shows that reflect our world back to us, why haven’t we seen a bunch about union organizing? But I digress. True crime podcasters it is.)

“Saturday Night Live” alum Will Forte (the sole American in the cast) plays Gilbert, whose first podcast made him into a minor star. He hasn’t been able to replicate his initial success and, as a one-hit wonder, he’s driven by professional desperation. Siobhán Cullen plays Dove, an Irish newspaper journalist based in London. When a story she’s working on proves too dangerous, her boss reassigns her to work with Gilbert and she reluctantly agrees. Off they go to Bodkin with a young and inexperienced assistant of sorts named Emmy (Robyn Cara). Her job description is unclear, but that’s the least of the issues that hamper the series. It’s too bad because it starts off promisingly enough.

The show isn’t a satire so much as a misty, murky thriller that (initially, at least) has some decent sardonic energy driving it. There’s a running joke every time they explain the podcast to someone new:  “And people will listen to it?” comes the amused if dubious reply. The show also pokes fun at cliches about Ireland’s beauty while also capturing said beauty. “Is it raining? I can’t tell,” Gilberts asks at one point.  “It’s just sort of a wet breeze?” Emmy wonders. A local interrupts their conversation: “It stays raining in Ireland. Even when you think it’s dry, it’s still raining, only very, very small drops.”

Catching sight of a nun in a pub, Gilbert is just thrilled: “I love this country!” He’s open-faced and derpy, but he also takes a patient and thoughtful approach to the work: “Journalism isn’t just squeezing people for information, we’re here to build relationships.” Dove scoffs. She’s hard-bitten, stony-faced and nursing some childhood traumas that have made her perpetually suspicious of everyone. She doesn’t want to be here! Emmy is caught in the middle, between these two more seasoned investigators, and trying to keep the peace.

As they make the rounds, they run into plenty of resistance. “Let the past go,” someone implores. “It’s done nothing to you.” Tempers explode, corpses are found in the trunk of a car and money is stapled to a man’s forehead (don’t ask). But the mystery of who went missing, and why, is too shaggy, too convoluted and meandering, to make any kind of sense or keep you locked in. Mysteries should be complicated but not hard to follow.

I kept waiting for the series (from Jez Scharf, who is showrunner with Alex Metcalf) to find its narrative footing, but it lacks the kind of methodical unraveling needed to sustain interest. The cast of characters remain undeveloped beyond their surface-level tropes. There’s not even a sense of what this podcast will sound like.

“Bodkin” is the first scripted series from Higher Ground, the production company formed by Barack and Michelle Obama “to tell powerful stories that entertain.” It’s a piffle of a show and probably not what most audiences would expect a former two-term U.S. president to put his name and energy behind. Higher Ground doesn’t have to make more important-seeming or creatively substantial scripted fare, necessarily,  but it does need to make good TV if it wants to be taken seriously.

“Bodkin” — 2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Netflix

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

It’s also probably one of the most under-watched by Emmy voters; the first season received zero nominations. That’s one of the more head-shaking omissions I’ve seen in recent memory, because AMC’s adaptation of the Anne Rice novels is just so richly written, so thrillingly inhabited by its cast, so effortlessly funny. The first season premiered two years ago and if you missed it and want to catch up, it’s worth subscribing to AMC+ for this show alone. I don’t even like vampire stories and I’m in the bag for this one.

A key choice at the outset by show creator Rolin Jones was to shift Rice’s timeline forward, beginning the story in 1910 rather than 1791, when Louis de Pointe du Lac (a wonderfully miserable Jacob Anderson) is turned into a vampire by Lestat de Lioncourt (the equally wonderful and louche Sam Reid).

Their toxic affair falls apart viciously 30 years later — the homoerotic subtext of the book is no longer merely hinted at — which is where Season 2 picks up, with Louis and his quasi-spawn Claudia (Delainey Hayles, ably replacing Season 1’s Bailey Bass) traveling through Europe during World War II in search of other vampires. They haven’t been human for decades, but their human needs and compulsions remain. They’re looking for community, driven by the desire to be known and to be understood.

Eventually, the pair settle in Paris after the war and find their way to Théâtre des Vampires, where the grand guignol on stage is all too real. Everyone in the troupe is a vampire, but the audience is blissfully unaware, which is why these nightly performances are such a handy way to hide in plain sight. Claudia is instantly drawn to this world. Louis is mildly disgusted (he really has not come around to the whole vampire thing!) so he keeps a respectful distance while she immerses herself in this twisted little community where “Who’s your maker?” passes for small talk the same way someone might ask, “Where are you from?”

Beneath the cheery, circus-like surface of the theater troupe, power plays and schisms abound, some of them fueled by the sly, dangerous and excitingly diva-esque Santiago (Ben Daniels), whose over-the-top ego is only matched by his opportunism. He’s a riveting, hilarious menace! Louis finds him lacking: “I nodded off one night while Santiago was hamming it up. Apparently that made me persona non grata with the leading man.”

Overseeing the theater company’s operations is the elegantly serene Armand (Assad Zaman), whose romance with Louis creates yet more tension within the troupe — tension that will ultimately come to a head. But before all that can happen, there’s a quiet moment of flirtation between the two as they stand outside a sprawling country villa. Inside, havoc is on the menu as the theater troupe feasts on humans who likely deserved it, not that these vampires seem concerned about such distinctions. But the contrast — romance in the foreground, chaos in the background — is emblematic of the show’s sense of humor.

Where is Lestat during all of this? Vanquished — or so we’re meant to believe. But he haunts Louis’ psyche like an invasive thought, always showing up at inopportune moments, because Louis can be tedious and self-pitying if left to his own devices, leading you to wonder: Can a vampire be a nihilist?

The story’s framing device — the interview of the title — is just as thick with that blend of intrigue and comedy, as journalist Daniel Molloy (an amusingly sour Eric Bogosian) tries to wrangle something approximating the truth from both present-day Louis and Armand, who live together in expensive domestic bliss. Their penthouse in Dubai is where the interview takes place. Cranky as always, Daniel is impatient and unimpressed with Louis’ ramblings and Armand’s polite reticence. But eventually he gets at something messier than expected: The real story about his first attempt to interview Louis in San Francisco back in 1973, when both were fried on coke and quaaludes.

The show understands how to build emotional stakes that make all this timeline jumping so gripping. Other small nuances stand out, like the way a couple can fight and then somehow also bicker within said fight, like a nesting doll of anger and frustration. “Interview with the Vampire” is always atmospheric, whether it’s the calming concrete and right angles of the modernist Dubai abode, or the ancient catacombs of the theater’s bowels. The show’s minimalist title sequence is such a stroke of genius, mimicking the sound of an orchestra tuning its instruments. The performance is about to begin. And what a performance it is.

“Interview with the Vampire” Season 2 — 4 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Sundays on AMC (and streaming on AMC+)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.