To Do: March 1–15: Our biweekly guide on what to see, hear, watch, and read.
TV
Alaska Daily
Warm hearts and cold cases.
ABC, March 2.
It’s rare for a network series these days to distinguish itself from the pack, but there’s something endearing about this news-reporting drama, which returns for the back half of its first season. Although it began with Hilary Swank playing a big-city hotshot disgruntled about taking a job in Anchorage, it has become a warm ensemble celebration of shoe-leather local journalism. —Kathryn VanArendonk
The 95th Academy Awards
Every movie award everywhere all at once.
ABC, March 12.
Jimmy Kimmel hosts the Oscars in a year when the movies attempted to reassert their cultural significance. The daring Everything Everywhere All at Once looks poised to receive several statuettes, while Colin Farrell will likely win Best Actor and say charming things about his pet donkey. —Jen Chaney
Top Chef
Twenty seasons of Tom Colicchio’s hats.
Bravo, March 9.
The most storied cook-off series is bringing together a group of international winners and competitors to battle their American counterparts. The “World All-Stars†represent various regions, and the entire season is filmed in London and Paris. Will that benefit chefs trained in European techniques? Probably. —Roxana Hadadi
Daisy Jones & the Six
Based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel.
Amazon, March 3.
The faux oral history of the rise and fall of a ’70s rock band that is not not Fleetwood Mac has been turned into this ten-episode series starring Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, and Suki Waterhouse. Also making an appearance: Timothy Olyphant as a manager with a killer wig. —J.C.
Temple
This is going to hurt.
Topic, March 2.
This adaptation of a Norwegian series features Mark Strong as a surgeon who opens an underground health clinic for those avoiding the mainstream medical system. Hospital-focused series tend toward either melodrama or broad comedy, but this one is aiming for a grittier, more urgent tone. —R.H.
Perry Mason
The classic-procedural reboot returns.
HBO, March 6.
The legal thriller is back to remind us that all noiresque mysteries should star Matthew Rhys. No, wait: All TV shows should star Matthew Rhys. Yes, that’s what I meant. —J.C.
History of the World Part II
A sequel to the 1981 Mel Brooks movie.
Hulu, March 6.
The new Hulu series is the least necessary, most absurdly brainless comedy sketch show you’ll find on TV this spring. Nick Kroll plays a peasant in Tsarist Russia, and Johnny Knoxville plays Rasputin. Kumail Nanjiani tries to pitch a new book pairing soup with sexual positions: the Kama Souptra. I laughed helplessly. —K.V.A.
Movies
Operation Fortune
Action, adventure, Aubrey Plaza.
In select theaters, March 3.
Guy Ritchie’s latest, in which Jason Statham leads a team of spies and thieves determined to undermine an arms dealer played by Hugh Grant, is a funny, fleet-of-foot heist movie — exactly the kind of film Ritchie should be making. —Bilge Ebiri
The New York International Children’s Film Festival
Showcasing cool films for a young audience.
Select theaters, March 3 through 19.
This year’s offerings range from the animated Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, about a 6-year-old forced by war to leave her Syrian home, to the Danish My Robot Brother, which takes place in a future in which all children have their own synthetic companions. —Alison Willmore
Dressed to Kill
A murder in New York City.
Roxy Cinema, March 9 through 11.
Much hated at the time of its release but now justly regarded as a classic, Brian De Palma’s thriller — a mixture of Hitchcock homage and ’70s-style psychosexual melodrama, starring Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, and Angie Dickinson — is being screened in 35-mm. —B.E.
Music
Endless Summer Vacation
Miley’s love letter to L.A.
Columbia Records, March 10.
Miley Cyrus changes up every album, so there’s no telling what her eighth will try. Lead single “Flowers†suggests glossy dance pop, but this set could be a grab bag with production by Harry Styles sidemen Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, trap maestro Mike WiLL Made It, and pop-rock specialist Greg Kurstin. —Craig Jenkins
Luv Is 4ever Tour
Kindred spirits making aqueous sounds.
Terminal 5, March 3 and 4.
Rappers JID and Smino are collaborators prone to pairing skittering syllables and plush beats with the unexpected lightness of stones skipping across ponds. If you enjoyed the maturing lyricism of JID’s The Forever Story and Smino’s Luv 4 Rent last year, catch the joint tour. —C.J.
Lover’s Game
Folk rock from a husband-and-wife duo.
Mercury Nashville, March 10.
War and Treaty’s latest taps producer Dave Cobb for a sound that, if the singles “Blank Page†and “Ain’t No Harmin’ Me†are to be trusted, is roomier and crunchier than previous work. —C.J.
Books
Saving Time
Clocking out.
Random House, March 7.
Jenny Odell’s latest is a consideration of time that bounds from the meaning of church bells to present-day methods for optimizing every moment of our lives — always with an eye to the holdouts against temporal order. —Emma Alpern
Podcasts
Drifting Off With Joe Pera
Vibe out.
Independent.
Sad that Joe Pera Talks With You wasn’t renewed? Good news. The calm, meditative Buffalo comedian is taking his talents — and his frequent collaborator, the composer Ryan Dann — to a format that’s almost too fitting: the sleep podcast. New episodes monthly. —Nicholas Quah
You Didn’t See Nothin’
Unearthing the past.
USG Audio and the Invisible Institute.
The Chicago writer and designer Yohance Lacour revisits the late-’90s news story of a young Black boy beaten into a coma by white teenagers, which led him to investigative journalism. —N.Q.
Theater
A Doll’s House
Chastain is back on Broadway.
Hudson Theatre, opens March 9.
Jessica Chastain is one of our celebrities with the greatest theater-kid energy, yet she hasn’t been on Broadway since starring in The Heiress in 2013. She’s back now, leading the Ibsen classic with a new translation by Amy Herzog and direction by rising British lover of chic minimalism Jamie Lloyd. —Jackson McHenry
The Seagull/Woodstock, NY
Chekhov goes upstate.
The Pershing Square Signature Center, through March 26.
This meta-rewriting of the Chekhov classic by Thomas Bradshaw sets the action among contemporary New York theater people on a retreat up the Hudson. The nearly ideal cast includes Parker Posey and Hari Nef. —J.M.
Public Obscenities
Bilingual hookups.
Soho Rep, through March 26.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s play performed in Bangla and English has a Bengali Ph.D. student and his boyfriend on a trip back to his home in Kolkata planning to interview locals on hookup apps for research and making an unexpected family discovery along the way. —J.M.
Art
Joel Mesler
Devout portraits.
Cheim & Read Gallery, 23 East 67th Street; through March 25.
For a time in the early aughts, L.A. native Joel Mesler was one of the hottest gallerists anywhere. Then he shut down his New York gallery and reemerged as an artist. After colorful paintings of flamingos and leaves, we get a series of portraits of rabbis. Delving into his own Judaism is already taking him deeper into his vision. —Jerry Saltz
Tommy Kha
Photographing origins.
Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, 26 Baxter Street; through March 22.
Tommy Kha’s latest solo exhibition explores Asian American communities in the South in vivid color à la William Eggleston. Kha’s through-line is the shrine, a symbol of how the past will always seep into the present and a metaphor for photography as a marker of passing time. —Elena Goukassian
Classical
Overstory Overture
Of woods and woodwinds.
Alice Tully Hall, March 7.
If a novel about trees seemed like a surprise best seller, a 30-minute vocal work inspired by Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book might be even more unlikely. But Tod Machover has success translating rarefied sources into musical experiences. The superb mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato headlines the concert performed by the Sejong Soloists. —J.D.
Inheritances
A chosen legacy.
92nd Street Y, March 11.
If someone handed you a thick wad of bills in a parking lot, what would you do with the money? That’s how pianist Adam Tendler came into his inheritance, and he used it to buy new piano pieces by 16 composers, including Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, and Missy Mazzoli. —J.D.
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra
The Canadian ensemble’s exuberant program.
Carnegie Hall, March 8.
Yefim Bronfman can dart and dodge his way through Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 like a goshawk on the hunt; the orchestra will have to sweat to keep up. Showing off its new music director Rafael Payare, the OSM also performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. —J.D.
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