Alexander Larman

Unless you have been rock-bound over the last few weeks – or avoiding all social media, which in 2025 amounts to much the same – you can scarcely have missed the controversy over the recent three-night gala staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl. Jesus, you see, is not played by a white man, as is customary, but Cynthia Erivo, the Wicked star who is black, female and queer. This has not gone down well with traditionalists, but Erivo is one of the most talented singers working today – as well as a fine actress – and so, if the first reviews are to be believed, she blew the roof off the Hollywood Bowl, stealing the show entirely from a starry cast including Adam Lambert and Josh Gad.

The world has changed a great deal since September 2009, when the final episode of Mike Judge’s sitcom King of the Hill aired, and it has altered immeasurably since January 1997, when the show was first broadcast. Given that legacy television has become the new vogue – how else to explain the apparently endless resurrections of Dexter? – Judge can be forgiven for bringing back his second most popular animated show for a new audience. But the suspicion lingered that King of the Hill was a series very much of its time, and that the adventures of its well-meaning but vaguely idiotic patriarch, Hank, and his overbearing wife, Peggy, would not translate especially well to the colder, more demanding brave new world we now inhabit.

The death on Saturday of the musician, humorist and mathematician Tom Lehrer at the impressive age of 97 brings a near-end to a great American tradition of edgy, sometimes almost-unsayable satire amongst a postwar generation of New York’s Jews. Only Mel Brooks and Woody Allen are still carrying the torch, and neither of them are young men. Still, for all of their impressive achievements, it is hard to equal Lehrer’s unfathomable genius at his peak. Equally stunning is the realization that this peak only spanned around a decade: he recorded two studio albums in 1953 and 1959, and three live albums between 1959 and 1965. Yet the songs that he wrote remain extraordinary, giddy delights, combining tuneful arrangements with “did-he-really-say-that?” lyrics.

Very few of us, whether celebrities or mere mortals, manage to arrange the circumstances of our departure from this world in order to leave in a blaze of glory. Up until today, the only example I could think of was David Bowie, who died two days after his glorious final album, Blackstar, was released. But now he is joined in whatever Valhalla rock stars congregate in by none other than Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, who has died at the age of 76. His death comes a mere two and a half weeks after his former band played their final gig in Villa Park in Birmingham, England, where the band hailed from. The concert, “Back to the Beginning,” saw Osbourne clearly in failing health, unable to stand or walk due to his Parkinson’s disease, and seated, appropriately enough, on a throne.

I preface this review by saying that – unless you are the greatest admirer of Lena Dunham or anyone in the (admittedly impressive) cast of her new Netflix series, Too Much – it is very easy to give this particular show a miss. It is a tedious, unfunny collection of clichés, strange American-centric perspectives on life in London, a charmless, Dunhamesque lead, a chemistry-free central pairing and guest appearances from her famous friends that seem somewhere between embarrassed and incongruous. Yet there are many worse shows on streaming services, most of which have not attracted anything like The Discourse that Too Much has thus far – and which, I am painfully aware, this article is contributing to. Why this? Why now?

It must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today. His Apple TV series The Studio –in which he stars as a beleaguered studio chief attempting to walk the fine line between commercial and artistic respectability – has been nominated for an impressive 23 Emmy awards. This ties the second season of The Bear (2023) for the most nominations for a comedy. Rogen himself could potentially win plaudits for writing, acting and directing, and the show itself looks like the one to beat in the category of best comedy series. The show’s opponents include The Bear – which ceased to be funny at least two seasons ago – as well as Hacks and Only Murders in the Building, both of which have had their moment in the sun.