<em>The Studio</em> Is Hollywood’s Funniest Nervous Breakdown

There is a special kind of entertainment-industry nonsense that can only be generated by people who say “the brand” without irony. The Studio gets it. The Apple TV+ comedy, starring Seth Rogen as the newly installed head of a struggling movie studio, is less a workplace sitcom than a 30-minute anxiety attack in a very expensive suit.

Its best joke is that everyone involved desperately wants to make art, provided the art tests well with seventeen-year-olds in suburban Ohio. The show skewers superhero fatigue, celebrity vanity, awards-season fraudulence and the terrifying moment when a studio executive realizes the director has “a vision.” It is fast, mean and packed with cameos that actually serve the joke instead of merely waving from the VIP balcony.

Benny’s Picks

The Studio — Apple TV+. Start with the premiere, then watch “The Oner,” an episode built around an apparently impossible single tracking shot. It is the rare Hollywood satire that knows executives are ridiculous but filmmakers are also capable of behaving like medieval warlords because someone moved a lamp.

Adolescence — Netflix. This four-part drama is bleak, formally audacious and absolutely not “background television.” Each episode unfolds in one continuous take, but the gimmick would be worthless if the performances weren’t this bruising. Watch it when you have the emotional capacity to spend several hours staring into the middle distance afterward.

Hurry Up Tomorrow — in theaters. The Weeknd’s feature-film experiment is messy, moody and occasionally convinced that a cigarette held near a window counts as character development. Still, it has atmosphere to spare, and the music gives it a pulse that many far more competent films lack. Not a masterpiece—more like a beautiful fever dream that forgot to bring a plot.

James by Percival Everett — bookstores and libraries. Everett retells Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective and turns a familiar American classic into a razor-sharp argument about language, power and who gets to be fully human on the page. It is funny, furious and considerably more alive than most “important” novels people recommend with the warmth of a tax audit.

Skip It: Any new reality show described as “a social experiment.” That phrase now means producers put attractive strangers in a house, removed their phones and waited for somebody to cry beside a hot tub. We have learned enough about human behavior. Please return the microphones.

Sleeper Pick: Girls5eva on Netflix. A criminally underappreciated pop comedy about a reunited girl group, it has sharper jokes per minute than most prestige comedies have per season. The song “New York Lonely Boy” alone deserves a small, tasteful monument.