Chamberlain and Zuri Hall were among those who wore sleek, sexy gowns that play on men’s suiting in pinstripes as they walked up the grand steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zendaya, a co-host last year, wore a perfectly tailored white trouser suit with a matching wide-brim hat from Louis Vuitton,

The menswear vibe for women was frequent and expected, “women wanting to maintain a traditionally feminine dress silhouette while still respecting the theme,” said William Dingle, director of style for blackmenswear.com, a cultural impact agency that focuses on uplifting Black men.

Highlights from Met Gala exhibit: A look at Black style gives prominent voice to emerging designers

Alicia Keys and her husband, Swizz Beatz, leaned WAY in on the pinstripes in red. She rocked a head of bejeweled braids. He rocked a do-rag.

Doja Cat, always fearless when it comes to fashion, donned a Marc Jacobs bodysuit look with orange and black wildcat detailing and broad-shouldered pinstripes. Taylor went for a stunning Zoot Suit look with a red, feather-adorned top hat and a huge matching cape dripping with flowers and bling. She collaborated with famed costumer designer Ruth E. Carter.

The Zoot was popularized in Harlem in the 1940s.

Madonna, “no stranger to gender-bending fashion,” Dingle said, showed up in a monochrome taupe tuxedo clutching a cigar. It was Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann, the designer who took over when Ford stepped aside.

And then there were the bombshells …

Megan Thee Stallion in Michael Kors and Dua Lipa in black Chanel included. Megan’s look had a high side slit and floral lace embellishment. Lipa was giving elevated flapper in feathers and an “S” curl style for her hair. And Miley Cyrus oozed womanhood in a custom cropped black crocodile jacket and long black taffeta skirt by Alaïa.

Diana Ross, meanwhile, swallowed the carpet in a huge white train, escorted by her son, Evan Ross.

Lizzo debuted blonde hair to go with her pink and black Christian Siriano gown with a plunge at the front. It was so tight at the legs she struggled to walk.

The standouts among the men

As for the men, co-host A$AP Rocky told The Associated Press that Anna Wintour suggested he wear a Black designer.

“So I wore myself,” the musician said of his custom suit designed by his creative agency, AWGE, complete with a black parka and diamond-crested umbrella. “Everything is designed by yours truly.”

Rocky, Rihanna’s partner and dad to their two kids, confirmed to reporters that baby No. 3 in on the way. He spoke about it after Rihanna was photographed walking in the rain with her baby bump out in a blue crop top and skirt.

“It feels amazing, you know,” Rocky said. “It’s time that we show the people what we was cooking up. And I’m glad everybody’s happy for us ’cause we definitely happy, you know.”

He added: “Honestly, it’s a blessing nonetheless. Because you know how like some people in other situations at times can be envious of other people. But we’ve been seeing love for the most part. And we real receptive to that and appreciate that, you know what I mean? That’s love. Love is love.”

This Met Gala is filled with pro athletes — and dressing them is a unique challenge

The dress code explained

What, exactly, was the suggested dress code of the night, “Tailored for You,” is inspired by Black dandyism. And what, exactly, is the Met Gala for? To raise money for the Met’s Costume Institute. The gala raised a record $31 million before it began.

Marie Claire, editor in chief of Marie Claire, noted a few trends done well.

“Top trends from the night: Black and white (Zoe Saldaña, Whoopi Goldberg, Gabrielle Union), pinstripes (Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats), suiting (Lupita Nyong’o, Ego Nwodim), hats (Lupita Nyong’o, Whoopi Goldberg and Teyana Taylor).”

More on the men

Colman Domingo, one of the evening’s hosts, wore a pleated, gold adorned cape over a gray and black suit, his jacket a pearled windowpane design with a huge dotted black flower. His look, including his cape and a dotted black scarf at his neck, evoked the late André Leon Talley, the fashion icon who made history as a rare Black editor at Vogue.

Domingo, in Valentino, arrived with Vogue’s Wintour, dressed in a pastel blue coat over a shimmery white gown by Louis Vuitton, a gala sponsor. Fellow co-chair Lewis Hamilton donned a jaunty ivory tuxedo with a cropped jacket, a matching beret and cowrie shell embellishment.

Hamilton’s look carried deep meaning.

“The color of ivory denotes purity and status; cowries pass from hand to hand, the regal sash turns shamanic,” he wrote on Instagram.

Claire Stern, Elle digital director added: “Known for championing Black designers, the F1 star once again used his platform to celebrate heritage and creativity on one of fashion’s biggest stages.”

Colman has epitomized contemporary dandyism in a variety of looks over the years.

Pharrell Williams, another co-host, was demure in a double-breasted, beaded evening jacket and dark trousers. He kept his dark shades on while posing for the cameras. Williams walked with his wife, Helen Lasichanh, in a black bodysuit and matching jacket.

Williams, the Louis Vuitton menswear creative director, said his 15,000 pearls were arranged in a pinstripe design and the jacket took 400 hours to construct.

Walton Goggins, a guest this year with others from “The White Lotus,” wore a deconstructed suit look with seams out and a pleated skirt he twirled for the cameras.

LeBron James, the NBA superstar, was named honorary chair of the evening but bowed out at the last minute due to a knee injury.

Other Met Gala looks that stood out

Monica L. Miller, whose book inspired the evening, wore a bejeweled cropped cape over a dress adorned with cowrie shells by Grace Wales Bonner. It’s a direct connection to a piece in the gala’s companion Metropolitan Museum of Art spring exhibit that Miller guest curated.

What other women killed the menswear game? Coco Jones in an ivory tuxedo coat with a train over matching trousers, both covered in chunky embellishment.

“Coco Jones absolutely leaned in,” Dingle said. “I love the pearl and gem embellishments here, as well as the long coat, and even the necklace. Because she’s taller, the long coat even further elongates her legs. This is a fantastic look.”

Her look was by Indian designer Manish Malhotra. She said she wanted to honor Black excellence by going all out.

Sarah Snook of “Succession” fame and fresh off a Tony nomination for “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was successfully on theme as well.

“She’s in a two-button, double-breasted jacket fashioned into a tailcoat-like train in satin fabric for luster, plus crimson lining for a pop of color,” Dingle said. “I like the multiple brooches on the wide lapel.”

Gigi Hadid, on the other hand, went all woman. She pulled up the spirit of Josephine Baker in a shimmery velvet gold halter gown by Miu Miu that hugged her hips, hip hugging being a big trend of the night for the women.

Bad Bunny, ever a fashion rebel, wore a custom black Prada suit. The best detail: his woven hat, which appeared to be a reference to the pava, a straw hat associated with the Puerto Rican jíbaro.

Associated Press writers Gary Hamilton, Beatrice Dupuy, Jocelyn Noveck and Maria Sherman contributed to this story.

Buzzi died Thursday at her home in Texas, her agent Mike Eisenstadt said. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more fun doing those shows than you had watching them.”

Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.

She was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”

Schlatter was holding auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead.

“I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing A Life in Comedy.” “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”

The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On “Laugh-In,” her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.

“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018. “So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”

Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.

“Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm to sketch comedy that made her a standout on ‘Laugh-In’ and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity of the era,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.

Her other recurring characters on “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a cocktail-lounge regular who got drunk with husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and an inconsiderate flight attendant.

“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”

Buzzi remained friends through the years with “Laugh-In” co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, she was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a nationally known stone sculptor. Her father and later her brother operated Buzzi Memorials, a gravestone and monument maker in Stonington, Connecticut, where she was head cheerleader in high school.

Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17. Two years later, she traveled with singer Rudy Vallee in a musical and comedy act during her summer break. That earned her an Actors’ Equity union card before she graduated from the playhouse’s College of Theatre Arts.

Buzzi moved to New York and was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 such shows she performed in on the East Coast.

She got her national television break on “The Garry Moore Show” in 1964, just after Carol Burnett was replaced by Dorothy Loudon on the series. She played Shakundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to Dom DeLuise’s character Dominic the Great.

Buzzi was a regular on the CBS variety show “The Entertainers” whose hosts included Burnett and Bob Newhart.

She was in the original Broadway cast of “Sweet Charity” with Gwen Verdon in 1966.

Buzzi toured the country with her nightclub act, including appearances in Las Vegas.

She was a semi-regular on “That Girl” as Marlo Thomas’ friend. She co-starred with Jim Nabors as time-traveling androids on “The Lost Saucer” in the mid-1970s.

Her other guest appearances included variety shows hosted by Burnett, Flip Wilson, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Donny and Marie Osmond and Leslie Uggams.

She appeared in Ball’s last comedy series “Life With Lucy.”

Buzzi guested in music videos with “Weird Al” Yankovic, the B-52’s and the Presidents of the United States of America.

She did hundreds of guest voices in cartoon series including “Pound Puppies,” “Berenstain Bears,” “The Smurfs” and “The Angry Beavers.”

She was Emmy nominated for her six-year run as shopkeeper Ruthie on “Sesame Street.”

Her movie credits included “Freaky Friday,” “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash,” “The North Avenue Irregulars” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.”

Buzzi was active on social media and had thousands of followers whom she rewarded with such one-liners as “I have never faked a sarcasm” and “Scientists say the universe is made up entirely of neurons, protons and electrons. They seem to have missed morons.”

She married actor Perkins in 1978.

The couple moved from California to Texas in 2003 and bought a 640-acre ranch near Stephenville.

Buzzi retired from acting in 2021 and suffered a series of strokes the following year. Her husband told The Dallas Morning News in 2023 that she had dementia.

The eight-episode TV adaptation from Tina Fey and fellow “30 Rock” alumni Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield is deeply confused about its intentions, retaining most of the movie’s details (so much so that it feels like the equivalent of cinematic karaoke) while also making changes that fail to deepen the narrative. The end result invites constant comparisons, which becomes the only way to sort through this strange project made by people who clearly revere the original, but are unable to either channel Alda’s sensibilities or create meaningful ones of their own.

Ultimately, it’s not funny, which is such a strange and disappointing contrast to the source material, about three bougie middle-aged couples from New York who have known each other for decades and vacation throughout the year together, one trip per season as delineated by Vivaldi’s gorgeous “Four Seasons” concerti.

The group’s easy rapport is destabilized when one of the couples splits up. Suddenly, there’s a much younger girlfriend along for future getaways, which creates all kinds of anxieties. “I can’t relax around a new person!” goes one complaint, and this gets at the magnetic pull of long-term friendships: Even with most of your flaws laid bare, you’re accepted for who you are. But introduce someone unfamiliar to the mix? That comfort level evaporates, and long-established rhythms and understandings are tested.

The series has retained the character names from the movie, but it fails to give them enough texture. (This is actually the second TV adaptation; Alda created a CBS sitcom based on the film that ran for just a handful of episodes in 1984.)

Fey and Will Forte step into the roles originally filled by Alda and Carol Burnett, and their defining trait is a light (sometimes not-so-light) tension between them. But otherwise their personalities are barely sketched out. This is especially egregious considering Alda was playing such a specific type: A gregarious guy who is sentimental about bonds we make with one another, but he can only go so far; when he’s challenged, he doesn’t know what to do. There’s a real warmth beneath his ridiculousness and he’s a gas to be around. Forte’s version is possibly a mild hypochondriac. That’s it. That’s not a character, that’s a script note in the margins that says “to be developed later.”

Colman Domingo is always a welcome presence on screen and he and Marco Calvani are the Jack Weston and Rita Moreno equivalents. They’re probably the most successful pairing, in terms of bringing something semi-compelling to the series, as the former chafes under the latter’s overprotective instincts. Their clashes have the big, broad quality of the original, albeit minus much of the humor.

Rounding things out are Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver as the Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis characters (aka the couple that will divorce), with Erika Henningsen as the enthusiastic woman he starts dating not long after. I can’t speak to how audiences might have greeted the age difference in 1981, but the update doesn’t quite tackle why a Zillinial (who happily drinks mushroom tea instead of coffee) would be so cheerful about spending all this vacation time with a bunch of conventional-minded Gen-Xers. At least in this version, Kenney-Silver’s character is only semi-jettisoned from the story after the breakup, and her sense of alienation from the group is given more time and focus, although I’m not sure the show does anything interesting with these scenes.

In the movie, six adults pile into one vehicle, clown car-style, which is absurd and wonderfully comedic, but also conveys their desire to just be together. In the TV series, they all have their separate SUVs, which is perhaps appropriate for the flat disjointedness of the endeavor. Their presence together feels compulsory. Nothing resonates. Collectively, their interactions tend to have a sour rather than lived-in quality where they get a kick out of one another, even as they complain in private, or to one another’s faces. Their trips lack laughter. It’s telling that when Alda shows up for a cameo, he’s able to do more with his few lines than the entire cast musters throughout the series.

Divorce can bring out all kinds of insecurities for everyone else. Why does this new couple seem so happy, so energized, and why does their presence feel like a rebuke? That’s really what fuels much of the storyline and it plays out in fascinating ways in the film. Not so much here.

The 1981 movie might be one of my favorite performances from Burnett. Her and Alda’s characters have the kind of specific grievances borne of a long marriage and it’s as if we’re a fly on the wall witnessing something rarely glimpsed in public: How couples fight when they’re behind closed doors. The film is piercingly observant on this. Very real but also very funny. The show attempts its own version of this fight, but the issues are so much more amorphous — the pair simply aren’t in sync anymore — so their back-and-forth doesn’t convey anything interesting about how this relationship works. The scene is constipated.

Fed up with her husband, in the original Burnett tells him: “The reality is you’re married to a middle-aged woman with a good sense of humor and dry skin.” In the remake, the line is slightly different: “I hate to break it to you, but you’re married to a middle-aged woman with dry skin.” Well, it’s honest. Fey’s character has no sense of humor.

The series retains the wall-to-wall score of Vivaldi, which can’t be beat. The final moments set up a cheap cliffhanger (a plot point that also exists in the movie) which suggests the show’s creators anticipate at least one if not more seasons.

But why bother? The original 1981 movie comes to Netflix May 5. Just watch that instead.

“The Four Seasons” — 2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Netflix

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

Sources told the Daily Beast that William is determined to strip the couple of the HRH titles, which stand for His and Her Royal Highness, since Meghan has recently made it clear that she plans to continue using the title, even after she and Harry told the queen they wouldn’t.

Meghan has been seen publicly brandishing her HRH title in recent promotional efforts related to her personal brand and her venture in selling jam and other lifestyle products, according to the Daily Beast.

“(King) Charles might be happy to put up with this, but William won’t,” a former courtier told The Daily Beast’s European editor Tom Sykes. “He loathes and despises Harry and Meghan with every bone in his body, he believes they have betrayed everything the family stands for and the idea that they are using their royal status as a calling card will enrage him.”

HRH is a mostly honorific title that’s granted by the monarch. It doesn’t necessarily confer special powers, perks or responsibilities, but it carries a lot of symbolic weight and prestige. It is usually reserved for children and grandchildren of the monarch, typically senior royals who represent the monarch in an official capacity, according to CNN.

It sometimes is extended to their spouses, which the queen did for Meghan when she married Harry in 2018. But both Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson lost their HRH titles when they divorced Charles and Prince Andrew, respectively.

When Harry and Meghan decided to leave royal duties in 2020, move to the United States and pursue potentially lucrative media deals and other commercial opportunities, they got to keep their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles.

They also got to keep their HRH titles, but only under an agreement with the late queen that they would never publicly use the titles or refer to themselves as HRH — since they no longer represented her or the British government, according to CNN and the Daily Beast. For the queen and others, there was serious concern about making sure that Harry and Meghan kept their planned commercial ventures separate from their royal associations.

Friends of William told the Daily Beast last week that they thought Meghan has been testing the waters of using her HRH title. It started when she posted on social media a screengrab of a note she received from a senior Ukrainian official, who addressed her as HRH.

Posting the complimentary note no doubt was Meghan’s way of burnishing her profile as a global philanthropist. But Meghan knew when it came to the HRH issue, she could also say she had “deniability” because she herself didn’t use the tile because the note came from someone else, Sykes wrote.

Now, it has emerged that Meghan sent podcaster and entrepreneur Jamie Kern Lima a gift basket of her As Ever brand of “homemade strawberry sauce” with a card saying: “With the Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex.” The basket, and the note, were displayed on the latest edition of Kern Lima’s podcast.

Meghan’s side has argued that she is entitled to use the title, provided it’s not for commercial use, Sykes reported.

But a former palace aide told Sykes that this interpretation the agreement with the queen is “complete rubbish.” The source said that the so-called Sandringham Summit in January 2020 — where the queen, Charles, William and Harry settled the terms of his and Meghan’s exit from royal life — “made it clear that they had agreed not to use the HRH titles at all, ever, in any capacity.”

The official statement, which can still be seen on the official royal website, supports this interpretation, according to Sykes. It reads: “The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family.”

If Meghan has violated the agreement, it appears that Charles is reluctant to take any action because he doesn’t want to upset his daughter-in-law and son. While the king would one day like to reconcile with his son, the relationship has become so bad that he has stopped responding to his son’s phone calls or letters, People magazine reported.

“Charles has completely lost control,” a friend of William’s told Sykes. “Meghan using her HRH exposes how weak and enfeebled he is. She knows he won’t do anything.”

On the other hand, this friend said. “There is no way King William will stand for this. The titles will simply be removed when he is king.”

People start quoting it before they get home. Before you know it, the movie has become more than the stuff of comedy-nerd cult fandom. It goes from anti-establishment to Establishment. And, who knows, maybe it turns into a musical.

For decades now, millions of people — guys, mostly — have been unable to help themselves. (These comedy phenomena tend to be boy-driven but half the girls in my high school were quoting it, too.) They blurt things like “It’s only a flesh wound!” or reference the knights who say “Ni!” because someone else said it first, and best. Then you blink and it’s 2025. And “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” has turned 50.

This merry, bloody, muddy trashing of Arthurian legend returns to theaters May 4 and 7 in a Fathom Entertainment engagement. It’s also streaming widely.

“Spamalot,” the Broadway musical version of “Holy Grail,” tried out in Chicago 20 years ago, successfully. It’s among the most frequently staged musicals of the 21st century, in part because its staging demands are modest and partly because it’s not raunchy enough to keep it out of most high schools or colleges, at least in most states. “Spamalot” works mainly as a kind of karaoke act, recreating and expanding many of the film’s beloved highlights, among them the almost psychotically hummable 66-second pip “Knights of the Round Table,” music by Neil Innes, lyrics by Graham Chapman and John Cleese. (The subsequent “Spamalot” score primarily came from Eric Idle and John Du Prez.)

The six men behind the movie — Chapman, Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin — made a ridiculous impact once they formed the Python troupe in 1969. That year, the dubious television experiment known as “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” more or less tricked BBC1 into airing nude organists, existential nightmares about cheese shops and arguments-for-hire, and the wholly unexpected Spanish Inquisition.

Here in America, those who caught “Holy Grail” in its 1975 release could barely process the experience. I was 14. Waiting for the movie to come to Racine, Wisconsin, didn’t seem endurable. This was just a few weeks before “Jaws” came out everywhere at once, marking the beginning of the end of movies’ traditional slow rollout from big cities to smaller ones.

I tagged along on a drive to a suburban Milwaukee multiplex with my pal Jay McHale, a wonderful musician no longer with us, and his great friend and collaborator Victor DeLorenzo, a terrific actor and musician who became the propulsive percussion heartbeat of the Violent Femmes. No three people ever laughed harder at anything than we three at “Holy Grail.” I did not quite know what hit me that night, though I’d had run-ins with a Python precedent or two. Peter Sellers, for starters. And Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. My parents, ever-game and in love with Chicago, bought tickets to Cook and Moore’s sketch showcase “Good Evening” at the Blackstone, not long after “Holy Grail” had opened.

Later in 1975, having initially declined to give the Python’s “Flying Circus” a berth on its programming schedule, WTTW-TV thought, well, why not? “Holy Grail” was a hit in theaters, and they seemed to like “Flying Circus” in Dallas. (KERA-TV was the first PBS affiliate to air it.) Well. That sealed it. I watched it weekly, I bought the albums, and when our high school drama department staged the once-evergreen, now-passé English farce “Charley’s Aunt,” every single kid in that cast sounded like they were doing southeastern Wisconsin variations on “Monty Python and Holy Grail.”

I saw “Holy Grail” again the other day. I saw it so many times in the ’70s, and one or two more years later, yet I’d forgotten so much. The opening credits, for example, with their sublimely droll mock-Swedish subtitles (“Wi nøt trei å høliday in Sweden this yër?”) and the obsession with moose and moose bites (“pretti nasti”).

Also, that oh what the hell ending, when the police officers interrupt the action finale. It’s one of the few things in “Holy Grail” that works conceptually, but maybe not beyond that. I remember the groans and confusion in the theater 50 years ago, once that non-ending ending ended the evening.

And yet it was a mere scratch. A flesh wound, in a brazen triumph of wordplay, swordplay and what Americans used to call “college humor.” The movie didn’t behave. It barely hung together. But it offered many lessons, beginning with: You don’t need much money to make a weirdly good-looking cheapo costume picture. The “Holy Grail” production budget, around $300,000 U.S. dollars in the year of production in 1974, equates to $2 million today. (Members of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull put up most of the funding, by the way.)

Another lesson: Don’t worry much about the audience. Just make whatever you’re making for yourselves, and it might work out. Sometimes. This time, certainly.

And this: Two words you often find hanging out together, patience and forbearance, remain vitally important in the matter of “Holy Grail.” They’re crucial to anyone who was, is or will be the parent, the sibling or the friend of a “Holy Grail” fan, because it’s a tough film to avoid quoting at awkward or obvious moments. You’ll be hearing bits of it here and there for the rest of your life.

We revisit our favorite comedies at our peril, I think, especially if they go back a half-century. Nobody can nor should expect to have the same feelings about any movie over that much time. If human/movie love is unconditional (an argument for another day), it nonetheless takes a rare combination of luck, muck and wiles to hold up as well as “Holy Grail.”

Happy 50th, and to all Pythons, deceased or living: Dine well there in Camelot.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

More information about Chicago-area screenings on May 4 and 7 at www.fathomentertainment.com

The miniseries is agreeable enough as upscale fan fiction about the Austen sisters. That’s probably a draw for many viewers. I’m not sure it’s enough.

Based on Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel of the same name, it stars Keeley Hawes as a middle-aged Cassie who hightails it to the home of old family friends in the village of Kintbury. That’s where one of Jane’s closest confidants Eliza lived and died, and where Cassie suspects a cache of Jane’s letters are stored. She must find them! And without letting anyone know that she’s desperate to recover them, lest anyone — including Cassie’s unpleasant sister-in-law; Eliza’s daughter; an observant housemaid — ask too many questions, or get their hands on the papers in question and treat them with less discretion.

What might have been in those letters? What secrets was Cassie burying? “I imagine they would have contained a lot of indiscreet mentions of annoying relatives,” Hornby speculates in one interview, which is far less scandalous than the series implies, at least in the beginning.

Adapted by Andrea Gibb, we see the Austens in flashback, when Cassie’s upbeat personality and hopeful future comes to an end when the man to whom she was engaged dies. This is actually happened. The reason she never married anyone else? A self-flagellating contrivance invented by Hornby, but it does allow the story to speculate what Jane might have thought about her sister’s choices in life — thoughts she shared in her letters to Eliza. Reading the old letters, a bittersweet smile occasionally crosses Cassie’s face, but she’s more prone to melancholy or indignation at these memories.

Jane probably wouldn’t have cared if the letters became part of her legacy, at least the Jane we get to know here, played by Patsy Ferran, who bears a resemblance to the author (though perhaps with a leaner face). She understands the power of social pressure (it certainly was an ongoing theme in her books), but in her own life she isn’t especially worried about propriety or how things look to outsiders.

So why the (overly?) protective impulse from Cassie? By this point, the 19th century was hurtling into the fullness of the Victorian era and maybe her decision was shaped by those buttoned-up norms. Or maybe she just hated the idea of anyone poking their nose into Jane’s private side.

But as a character, she’s too underwritten for either of these possibilities to come to life, and Hawes (married to “Succession’s” Matthew Macfadyen, who himself starred in an adaptation of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”) isn’t given much to work with. Cassie and Jane were the only two daughters in their family and were especially close. But the former is the far less interesting person, both in the present (it’s unclear in what year the series takes place) and in flashbacks (where she’s played by Synnøve Karlsen). She’s a pill, actually. I don’t have a problem with that, but it means Hawes is left to fill in the gaps, mostly with breathless line readings, as if she were a woman overwhelmed by the world.

As a writer, Jane was preoccupied with the power of romance, but in her own life she was wittily opinionated and headstrong and perhaps those traits shaped her choices when it came to her own decision not to marry. It’s not a stretch to assume those tendencies extended to her correspondence, as well. Reading back over her sister’s occasionally gossipy letters, maybe Cassie thought those qualities were just too dangerous to reveal publicly.

“Miss Austen” — 2 stars (out of four)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Sundays on PBS

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

The draft was televised on ESPN, NFL Network, ABC and ESPN Deportes as well as being available online. It is an 11% increase over last year, which averaged 12.3 million.

The first-round record remains 15.5 million in 2020.

The NFL also announced that 205,000 fans attended the first round in Green Bay.

Jack (Luke Kirby) runs the New York ballet. Genevieve (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is his counterpart in Paris. “The audience is dead and dying. So’s the funding. I’ve got union issues,” she says, proposing the one-year exchange. At the mention of unions, he shrugs, “You’re French.” And anyway, the stunt sounds ridiculous. But it appeals to a wealthy arts patron (Simon Callow) who swoops in and informs them both: This is happening whether you like it or not. And so, the tempestuous Parisian star Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge) is sent Stateside, while Mishi (Taïs Vinolo), a dancer on the rise, and Tobias (Gideon Glick), a mercurial choreographer, relocate to France. The experiment has begun.

This isn’t the first time the Palladinos have ventured into the world of ballet. Their 2012 series “Bunheads” ran for just a single season and felt like a spiritual descendant of “Gilmore Girls,” both in how it was shot and its focus on high school-aged characters. This show (named for the French word for principal dancer) has more adult aims and is better for it. I have some criticisms, and yet I kind of love the series — it’s that kind of show. You recognize the flaws, but that doesn’t stop you from appreciating it as a whole and wanting to watch more.

Regardless of the transatlantic divide, everyone is working through failure or self-doubt, or grappling with professional forks in the road. Jack and Genevieve must juggle the business prerogatives that fund the whole thing. Heading up a ballet company is an exercise in putting out fires and not losing one’s cool — the latter of which they manage less than half the time. There’s a running joke of Jack protesting that one thing or another is out of his control and someone will ask: “Don’t you run this place?”

“Étoile” is about a very specific and insular world and it brings to mind the look and feel of movies like 1977’s “The Turning Point” or 1980’s “Fame.” At one point, the camera pans through a building filled with community dance classes of all types, and it has the wonderful cacophonous feel of fly-on-the-wall documentary footage, capturing a slice of New York that’s rarely seen on screen anymore. Another montage depicts dancers prepping their feet for pointe shoes: The tape and bandages and, perhaps unexpectedly, wrapping toes in a sanitary pad.

A veteran costumer in Paris pops up for just one scene but she’s a memorable character with a seen-it-all demeanor. When the Paris dance corps is ready to riot over their frustrations with a choreographer, they’re mollified when their boss simply changes the subject: “Who wants free cigarettes?” Ahead of a fundraiser, someone reminisces about the old days: “It used to be if you wanted to entice a dancer to a gala, you’d tuck a healthy line of blow under the salad plate.”

Major arts organizations have formidable boards of directors to contend with, and the Palladinos have an ear for the absurdity of these conference room showdowns. Jack is punchy and semi-beleaguered, an old money, Mayflower-descended nepobaby whose uniform is a black suit, black shirt and Allbirds on his feet. Genevieve is less fully formed. She is physically clumsy, sloppy about details and has a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time — seeming entirely out of her depth, and yet is unaware of this fact. She wears stiletto heels but is forever taking them off because they’re so impractical, a facile detail that’s supposed to function as character development.

The show’s lesser bits require a hefty suspension of disbelief. Would switching a few dancers between companies really result in a dramatic and sustained increase in ticket sales? Would a difficult and stubborn type like Cheyenne — who is also an eco-activist in her spare time — seriously consider coming to the U.S. in this political climate? The show was written long before our current moment, but it is premiering against a real-world backdrop in which, as one recent story noted, “a wave of artists are reconsidering tours over U.S. border detention fears.”

During the run of “Bunheads,” it was mildly critiqued for featuring no Black dancers. The casting of Vinolo is seemingly a corrective, but it’s a half-measure because the show dodges any hints of the racism that actual Black dancers have talked about encountering. Vinolo is a bona fide ballet dancer in real life, by the way, which is true of some but not all in the cast. The dance doubles are named in the end credits of each episode, which is a detail I appreciate; no one here is trying to perpetrate any fictions about this kind of thing.

Sometimes French characters speak English amongst themselves, as if Amazon put a limit on the number of subtitled scenes allowed. Gainsbourg has no flair for the Palladinos’ style of comedy, and the rich benefactor is a wildly dated trope, as if we still lived in a time when the wealthy were susceptible to pangs of noblesse oblige. Tobias, the choreographer, is neurodivergent and his anxieties and inflexibility tend to be played for sardonic laughs (sometimes at the expense of creating a more nuanced character) and I’m curious what opinions will be about some of the choices the show has made in terms of how he is written and performed.

And yet “Étoile” won me over. The dance sequences are filmed so that you see the entire line of the dancers’ bodies as they move through space, unmarred by nervous editing. (The show was initially picked up by Amazon for two seasons, so a second season is on the way.) Stick around for the closing credits, which are a wonderful collage of dancers in rehearsal or casually hanging around backstage.

The series is filled with actors who are alumni of past shows from the Palladinos, including Kelly Bishop, who turns up as Jack’s mom. She is terrific and even more so because Nina Arianda has been cast as her daughter. Finally, here is an actress who believably feels like she could be Bishop’s offspring and it functions as a jolt of electricity when you realize this casting choice feels like a once-in-a-lifetime aligning of the planets.

Ultimately, so much of “Étoile” rides on de Laâge’s hilariously ferocious performance as the Parisian sent to New York against her will. When the doorman at her hotel offers to get her a cab, she bluntly scowls: “I have legs.”

To someone else, she asks: Do you know anything about ballet dancers? “We’re weird. We do weird things. We stand on our toes on purpose. Why? I don’t know. Ask Louis XIV. Our whole lives are spent in disgusting, unsanitary places. We smell. All the time.” You’re trying to scare me off, comes the reply. “No, if I was trying to scare you off, I’d show you my feet.”

“Étoile” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Amazon

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

Back for a third season on Amazon, the show’s swindlers-with-a-moral-compass include Noah Wyle, who joined the ensemble when the series was rebooted in 2021. More recently, Wyle has been giving a wonderfully unfussy performance on the hospital drama “The Pitt,” which just wrapped its first 15-episode season. But it’s fun to see him doing something lighter on “Leverage.” Though he plays an attorney, his actual purpose within the team has never been clearly spelled out. That’s fine, and better than fine when he gets to go undercover in service of the con, whether as an eccentric CEO of a cryonics company or a pool hustler with incredible sideburns, because it’s in these moments that Wyle gets to be silly.

That fits the tone of this breezy caper series from John Rogers and Chris Downey, where details and logistics are less important than a jaunty overall approach that gives audiences something that’s been in short supply both in fiction and the real world: Consequences for the rich and corrupt.

A man stealing water from an aquifer and then selling it back to the area’s residents? A local judge with a taste for gifts rivaling Clarence Thomas’s? A company that’s more or less a chop shop selling human body parts? The team has found their next project.

They’re able to scam the scammers because they have very specialized skills and seemingly unlimited funds. That’s not exactly a galvanizing message, but there is one episode that features ordinary people coming together to push out a nasty crook of a mayor, albeit with considerable “Leverage” shenanigans making it possible. As a series, it has its head screwed on straight. I mean, right now? With everything that’s happening? As someone puts it, a con is just a set of artificial circumstances designed to elicit an intended response. It’s impossible to hear those words and not think of the stock market in recent weeks.

Aldis Hodge and Aleyse Shannon play the group’s hackers (the former is once again largely absent from the season, I’m guessing due to scheduling conflicts with his other Amazon series, “Cross”) and I was bummed at the inclusion of stray bits of dialogue along the lines of “I can run an AI algorithm.” The team may wink in the face of “rules,” but their existence is predicated on a clear ethical framework and they’d never be so blithe and cavalier about the many issues surrounding artificial intelligence. These casual references stick out in a bad way.

It’s surprising because the show tends to do the little things so well. In one episode, a food bank charity raises money at a gala where the theme is Marie Antoinette. So wrong, so absurd — no notes! In another episode, the team’s cat burglar (Beth Riesgraf) and muscle (Christian Kane) impersonate FBI agents in windbreakers, and it works as a legit parody of these kinds of swaggering portrayals. The brains of each operation is the grifter (Gina Bellman) and she’s the steadying presence amid the wild card personalities of her compatriots.

Something about the energy and storytelling flags in the final two of the season’s 10 episodes, but it’s a minor quibble. I can’t express how satisfying it is to watch a television show that doesn’t pretend we have to accept that systems are permanently rigged and we’re all doomed. It’s also deeply ironic that this show exists on this streaming platform. Hell, any streaming platform, for that matter. These are not companies particularly interested in notions of “fairness” or “balancing the scales,” and yet somehow this show exists. Hustling the hustlers? I’ll take it.

“Leverage: Redemption” Season 3 — 3 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Amazon

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

How are you going to resist? Will you push back? Keep your head down and hope the flood passes over your head? Say something, risking your well-being when they sweep everyone up in one of their raids? Or fight, knowing what you decide, at this harrowing moment, shapes the rest of your life? Of course, I’m talking about “Star Wars.” Specifically, the fascinating Disney series “Andor,” beginning its second season on April 22. Why — what did you think I was talking about?

Oh.

Understandable: “Andor” tells the story of how a disorganized Rebellion took shape even as the Empire tightened its grip over every living thing in the galaxy and every corner of their lives. The second season is a lot like the first. Meaning, it’s the most vital, resonant political parable being made right now, all the more remarkable for coming out of the House of Mouse. Chicago, naturally, doesn’t factor into this galaxy, and yet, it’s hard not to watch it in Chicago without seeing it aligned with every Midwesterner who ever flipped a bird to an overzealous bootlicker. People here don’t want to scrap, but don’t go quietly. There are Sanctuary Cities in this galaxy and as the second season of its fascist nightmare begins, that’s exactly where resistance emerges.

Again… I’m talking about “Star Wars.”

Wait — what did you think I meant?

“Andor,” written and shaped by Tony Gilroy, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Michael Clayton” and much of the “Bourne Identity” thrillers, is a very different “Star Wars.” It’s a grown-up portrait of guerrilla training alongside institutional rot, full of moral choices and adult consequences. There are no Jedi or Wookies or lightsabers. John Williams is nowhere to be heard. Humans outnumber aliens, and though this new season begins with an action sequence as rousing as anything in the big-screen versions, there’s not much action. There is, rather, skulking and spying and decline.

If John Le Carré wrote “Star Wars” — well, here you go. Conversations happen in the shadows between clenched teeth at minimal volumes. The best special effect is the cast’s ability to hold a pleasant mask for certain people, then shift imperceptibly to faces of worry. No one whispers “The Force is with you.” But Rebel martyrs leave stark calls to action: “There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It is here and it is not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.”

More than a few culture critics have spotted hints of “The Wire” in the construction and complexity of “Andor.” That’s not a bad model. The narrative alternates between the everyday people suffering everyday intimidations and cruelties, and the (mostly) low-level government civil servants and foot soldiers tasked with carrying out a suffocating, hypocritical regime. Really, this is a portrait of the slow creep of fascism and the hard choices that everyone from careerist strivers to wealthy socialites are forced to make.

There’s no Dark Side magic here that draws working-class people into serving the Empire, just ambition without a moral compass. You’ve heard of “the banality of evil”? Here, it’s intricately shown — we see Imperial number-pushers return home to their mothers, middle management ignoring compassion for efficiency and ladder-climbers angling for promotions. In fact, other than Ben Mendelsohn’s Officer Krennic (the chief bad guy in the 2016 film “Rogue One”), nearly all of the Imperials here work at desks.

Their role, as they see it, is to supply “order.”

It’s as if the humanist intellectual Hannah Arendt and not George Lucas had created “Star Wars” almost 50 years ago, though remarkably, it’s never preachy — it’s all show, no tell. The first season was mostly about convincing a handful of potential leaders to assemble a coherent resistance. This season, they’re fully committed, but unorganized and unable to agree on how to do this. Again, “Andor” is savvy about both how fascism works and revolutions can fail. During the second season, Imperial officers worry quietly, in memos, that the Empire is overreaching, arresting too many innocents, fostering cracks in its armor. Gilroy is too smart a writer to contrast that with some brave, humble activists: Without explicitly describing the many ways revolutions take shape, his activists fight each other, debate small things while bigger things (a Death Star, for instance) loom.

What they can’t agree on is pretty much what real-world revolutionaries debate: Do we turn the weapons of the enemy against themselves, or create a new day from scratch?

The leaders in the Rebellion even smartly echo what actual revolutions tend to need: Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is a ruthless operative from a poor family exploited by the enemy; Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) is an elite politician willing to launder money and move weapons; Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard) is a wealthy antique dealer quietly attempting to build a rigorous network of the likeminded who are not naive; Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) is the hotheaded guerrilla faction leader maybe too reactionary to be effective. But all accept a certain amount of collateral loss in the service of rebellion.

Depending on where you stand, they’re future leaders or current terrorists. It’s the universe of “Star Wars,” with heroes in white and villains in black, but “Andor” is never so clean. Heroes here are probably doomed in one way or another: As Skarsgard’s Luthen says, “I burn my life to make a sunrise I know I’ll never see.” Meanwhile, no joke, the Empire is auditing communities. They have even hired disinformation marketing teams that aim to “plant the right ideas in the right market in the right sequence,” weaponizing opinion.

The Rebels are stuck arguing ground rules and tactics, but the Empire is all big picture.

The roots of “Star Wars,” as most fans can tell you, sprang out of a loosely plotted parable about colonialism that Lucas wanted to tell, intentionally reminiscent of an American empire that runs into fierce resistance in Vietnam. It was a byproduct of ‘60s counterculture, albeit buried beneath the influence of old Westerns and samurai movies.

Gilroy works in that original inspiration, laying out the methods of fascism, tacking on “The Battle of Algiers” for good measure. He can be a terrific, often thrilling writer who seems to be speaking to contemporary America in real time: His bad guys are eager to identify the good guys who “can be relied on to do the wrong thing.” One resistance leader pleads to another: “Aren’t you tired of fighting with people who agree with you?” In the first season, Cassian Andor, not quite committed to losing his life for a naive rebellion, nonetheless zeroes in on the enemy’s true weakness: “They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied they can’t even imagine it, that someone like me could get into their house and spit in their food.” Throughout the second season (and I have seen much of it), he’s whittling rage with subterfuge.

“Andor,” startlingly, is the resistance culture much of the resistance culture of the past decade — the satirical statues surreptitiously placed in public squares, the crafting accessories at protests, the TikTok rants — hoped to be. It’s never disposable and, in the tradition of 1950s sci-fi paranoia flicks like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Thing,” it captures its times without ever needing to spell out what it’s actually saying. The art world needs a model of 21st-century protest art right now. Here you go. It’s powerful, unsettling, then step outside, and it’s too real.

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com