Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music and video game platforms this week.
Movies
— Romantic comedy fans would do well to make an evening around “Rye Lane,” a Sundance Film Festival breakout that arrives on Hulu on Friday, March 31. The 80-minute charmer follows 20-somethings Dom (“Industry’s” David Jonsson), sensitive and a little uptight, and Yas (Vivian Oparah), a lively free spirit, on one eventful day in South London. When they meet, they are strangers who are reeling from bad breakups and appear to be polar opposites. The feature debut of director Raine Allen-Miller and writers Tom Melia and Nathan Byron, “Rye Lane” has garnered comparisons to Richard Curtis in his heyday and had critics singing about Jonsson and Oparah’s terrific chemistry its freshness.
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This combination of images shows promotional art for “The Big Door Prize,” premiering March 29 on Apple TV+, from left, “Rye Lane,” a film premiering March 31 on Hulu and “Tetris,” a film premiering March 31 on Apple TV+. (Apple TV+/Hulu/Apple TV+ via AP)
— “Tetris,” a new film coming to Apple TV+ on Friday, March 31, explores the wild origin story of how one of the most popular video games of all time reached the world from its Soviet beginnings. Taron Egerton, sporting a Ted Lasso mustache, plays Henk Rogers, the American who secured the rights to distribute it globally from the Soviets and, specifically, Alexey Pajitnov, the Russian computer engineer who created the addictive block puzzle. Directed by Jon S. Baird, the film takes quite a few liberties with the truth to create suspenseful, comedic, Cold War-era thriller.
— With over $2.3 billion grossed at the box office, there’s a good chance you (and everyone you know) has already seen “Avatar: The Way of Water,” James Cameron’s 13-years-in-the-making, $350 million, 3-hour-long spectacle that won over critics and audiences alike, despite over a decade of jokes about its cultural irrelevance. Now after months of playing in theaters only, you can finally bring Pandora to your living room. Starting Tuesday, it’ll be available to purchase digitally (its Disney+ release date has yet to be announced). The film left this critic (a self-proclaimed “Avatar” agnostic) dazzled and floating on a blockbuster high. But a big question remains: Will it have the same impact on the small screen?
— AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr
Music
— When Joni Mitchell was celebrated with the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the event was by invitation only. Now PBS is inviting you to watch a recording of that night from earlier this month. It airs Friday, March 31 and features James Taylor, Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Herbie Hancock, Cyndi Lauper, Marcus Mumford, Graham Nash, Diana Krall, Lucius and Angelique Kidjo. Mitchell will sing George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”
FILE – Joni Mitchell, right, performs at the presentation of the Gershwin Prize in Washington on March 1, 2023. “Joni Mitchell: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song” will air on Friday on PBS. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)
— Chlöe — the elder half of Chloe x Halle — is releasing her solo debut, “In Pieces,” on Friday, March 31. The 14-track album has features by Chris Brown (on “How Does It Feel”), Missy Elliott (on “Told Ya”) and Future (on “Cheatback”). The cover art depicts Chlöe holding a colorful, crystalline version of her heart. “I hope this project brings healing to those who listen, as it’s been completely therapeutic for me,” she wrote on social media. In the single, “Pray It Away” she sings “I lost my halo/My halo is gone.”
This image released by Columbia Records shows “In Pieces,” a solo debut album by Chlöe. (Columbia via AP)
— AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy
Television
— A new docuseries on Fuse tackles issues surrounding women in sports including mental health, gender, race, social stigmas, and body image. “Like A Girl” is hosted by former college basketball player and designer Bejia Velez. Female athletes featured include Paralympic swimmer Anastasia Pagonis, beach volleyball player April Ross, who is a three-time Olympic medalist, and a skateboarder from Jersey City, New Jersey named Jennifer Soto. “Like a Girl” debuts Monday on Fuse.
— “Riverdale” returns for its final season Wednesday on the CW. Season seven begins with Archie, Veronica, Betty, Jughead and the rest of the gang transported back to the age of sock hops, swing skirts, cardigan sweaters and milkshakes in 1955. Jughead is the only one who remembers where they came from and works to convince his friends that they need to get back to their former lives. Like the previous “Riverdale” seasons, the last episodes will also feature a murder mystery.
— “The Big Door Prize” is a new series on Apple TV+ that’s a blend of sci-fi, comedy and heart. A mysterious machine that can reveal people’s true purpose in life appears in a local drug store and turns a small-town upside down. Some view the machine’s revelations as a push in the right direction and freedom to live out fantasies. Others feel defensive or let down by what the machine says. The series stars Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”) in a charming and delightfully silly role — but each episode also focuses on a different character’s reaction to their personal prediction by the machine. The show is based on the novel by M.O. Walsh and debuts Wednesday.
Video games
— Major League Baseball is always looking for ways to reach a younger audience. Which may explain why Jazz Chisholm Jr. — an appealing yet unproven young outfielder for the Miami Marlins — is on the cover of MLB The Show 23. On the other hand, the most intriguing new feature of the annual baseball sim may be more appealing to old-timers: a mode celebrating heroes of the Negro Leagues like Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil. The just-concluded World Baseball Classic tournament is also part of this year’s lineup. As usual, Sony’s San Diego Studio has spent the offseason tinkering with game mechanics and graphics, most dramatically by giving you the ability to scan your own face onto a player. The Show 23 steps up to the plate Tuesday on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One and Nintendo Switch.
Photos: Notable Deaths in 2023
Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch, whose emergence from the sea in a skimpy, furry bikini in the film “One Million Years B.C.” would propel her to international sex symbol status throughout the 1960s and ’70s, died Feb. 15, 2023. She was 82. Welch’s breakthrough came in 1966’s campy prehistoric flick “One Million Years B.C.,” despite having a grand total of three lines. Clad in a brown doeskin bikini, she successfully evaded pterodactyls but not the notice of the public.
David Crosby
David Crosby, the brash rock musician who evolved from a baby-faced harmony singer with the Byrds to a mustachioed hippie superstar and an ongoing troubadour in Crosby, Stills, Nash & (sometimes) Young, died Jan. 18, 2023, at age 81. While he only wrote a handful of widely known songs, the witty and ever opinionated Crosby was on the front lines of the cultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s — whether triumphing with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young on stage at Woodstock, testifying on behalf of a hirsute generation in his anthem “Almost Cut My Hair” or mourning the assassination of Robert Kennedy in “Long Time Gone.”
Richard Belzer
Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible detectives as John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: SVU,” died Feb. 19, 2023. He was 78. For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode of “Homicide” and last played him in 2016 on “Law & Order: SVU.”
Cindy Williams
Cindy Williams, who was among the most recognizable stars in America in the 1970s and 1980s for her role as Shirley opposite Penny Marshall’s Laverne on the beloved sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died Jan. 25, 2023. She was 75. Williams played the straitlaced Shirley Feeney to Marshall’s more libertine Laverne DeFazio on the show about a pair of blue-collar roommates who toiled on the assembly line of a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lisa Marie Presley
Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley and a singer-songwriter dedicated to her father’s legacy, died Jan. 12, 2023. She was 54. Presley shared her father’s brooding charisma — the hooded eyes, the insolent smile, the low, sultry voice — and followed him professionally, releasing her own rock albums in the 2000s.
Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck, a guitar virtuoso who pushed the boundaries of blues, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, influencing generations of shredders along the way and becoming known as the guitar player’s guitar player, died Jan. 10, 2023. He was 78. Beck was among the rock-guitarist pantheon from the late ’60s that included Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. Beck won eight Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice — once with the Yardbirds in 1992 and again as a solo artist in 2009.
Gary Rossington
Gary Rossington, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s last surviving original member who also helped to found the group, died March 5, 2023, at age 71. According to Rolling Stone, it was during a fateful Little League game, Ronnie Van Zant hit a line drive into the shoulder blades of opposing player Bob Burns and met his future bandmates. Rossington, Burns, Van Zant, and guitarist Allen Collins gathered that afternoon at Burns’ Jacksonville home to jam the Rolling Stone’s “Time Is on My Side.”
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter, an influential jazz innovator whose lyrical, complex jazz compositions and pioneering saxophone playing sounded through more than half a century of American music, died March 2, 2023. He was 89.
Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach, the singularly gifted and popular composer who delighted millions with the quirky arrangements and unforgettable melodies of “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and dozens of other hits, died Feb. 8, 2023. The Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning composer was 94. Over the past 70 years, only Lennon-McCartney, Carole King and a handful of others rivaled his genius for instantly catchy songs that remained performed, played and hummed long after they were written. He had a run of top 10 hits from the 1950s into the 21st century, and his music was heard everywhere from movie soundtracks and radios to home stereo systems and iPods, whether “Alfie” and “I Say a Little Prayer” or “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “This Guy’s in Love with You.”
Tom Sizemore
Tom Sizemore, the “Saving Private Ryan” actor whose bright 1990s star burned out under the weight of his own domestic violence and drug convictions, died March3, 2023, at age 61. Sizemore became a star with acclaimed appearances in “Natural Born Killers” and the cult-classic crime thriller “Heat.”
Charles Kimbrough
Charles Kimbrough, a Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor who played a straight-laced news anchor opposite Candice Bergen on “Murphy Brown,” died Jan. 11, 2023. He was 86. Kimbrough played newsman Jim Dial across the 10 seasons of CBS hit sitcom “Murphy Brown” between 1988 and 1998, earning an Emmy nomination in 1990 for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series. He reprised the role for three episodes in the 2018 reboot.
Stella Stevens
Stella Stevens, a prominent leading lady in 1960s and 70s comedies perhaps best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis’s affection in “The Nutty Professor,” died Feb. 17, 2023. She was 84. She was a prolific actor in television and film up through the 1990s, officially retiring in 2010.
Annie Wersching
Actor Annie Wersching, best known for playing FBI agent Renee Walker in the series “24″ and providing the voice for Tess in the video game “The Last of Us,” died Jan. 29, 2023. She was 45. Her first credit was in “Star Trek: Enterprise,” and she would go on to have recurring roles in the seventh and eighth seasons of “24,” “Bosch,” “The Vampire Diaries,” Marvel’s “Runaways,” “The Rookie” and, most recently, the second season of “Star Trek: Picard” as the Borg Queen.
Tim McCarver
Tim McCarver, the All-Star catcher and Hall of Fame broadcaster who during 60 years in baseball won two World Series titles with the St. Louis Cardinals and had a long run as one of the country’s most recognized, incisive and talkative television commentators, died Feb. 16, 2023. He was 81.
Billy Packer
Billy Packer (left), an Emmy award-winning college basketball broadcaster who covered 34 Final Fours for NBC and CBS, died Jan. 26, 2023. He was 82. Packer’s broadcasting career coincided with the growth of college basketball. He worked as analyst or color commentator on every Final Four from 1975 to 2008. He received a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality, Studio and Sports Analyst in 1993.
Dave Hollis
Dave Hollis, who left his post as a Disney executive to help his wife run a successful lifestyle empire, died Feb. 12, 2023. He was 47. Hollis worked for Disney for 17 years and had been head of distribution for the company for seven years when he left in 2018 to join his wife’s venture. The parents of four moved from Los Angeles to the Austin area, collaborated on livestreams, podcasts and organized life-affirming conferences. In their podcast, “Rise Together,” they focused on marriage.
David Jude Jolicoeur
David Jude Jolicoeur, known widely as Trugoy the Dove and one of the founding members of the Long Island hip-hop trio De La Soul, died Feb. 12, 2023. He was 54. De La Soul’s debut studio album “3 Feet High and Rising,” produced by Prince Paul, was released in 1989 by Tommy Boy Records and praised for being a more light-hearted and positive counterpart to more charged rap offerings. De La Soul signaled the beginning of alternative hip-hop.
Barrett Strong
Barrett Strong, one of Motown’s founding artists and most gifted songwriters who sang lead on the company’s breakthrough single “Money (That’s What I Want)” and later collaborated with Norman Whitfield on such classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” died Jan. 29, 2023. He was 81.
Lloyd Morrisett
Lloyd Morrisett, the co-creator of the beloved children’s education TV series “Sesame Street,” which uses empathy and fuzzy monsters like Abby Cadabby, Elmo and Cookie Monster to charm and teach generations around the world, died Jan. 15, 2023. He was 93.
Robbie Knievel
Robbie Knievel, an American stunt performer who set records with daredevil motorcycle jumps following the tire tracks of his thrill-seeking father — including at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1989 and a Grand Canyon chasm a decade later — died Jan. 13, 2023. He was 60.
Gina Lollobrigida
Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved international stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” after the title of one of her movies, died Jan. 16, 2023. She was 95. Besides “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman” in 1955, career highlights included Golden Globe-winner “Come September,” with Rock Hudson; “Trapeze;” “Beat the Devil,” a 1953 John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell.”
Lynette Hardaway (“Diamond”)
Lynette Hardaway, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump and one half of the conservative political commentary duo Diamond and Silk, died Jan. 9, 2023. She was 51. Hardaway (pictured at left), known by the moniker “Diamond,” carved out a unique role as a Black woman who loudly backed Trump and right-wing policies.
Adam Rich
Adam Rich, the child actor with a pageboy mop-top who charmed TV audiences as “America’s little brother” on “Eight is Enough,” died Jan. 7, 2023. He was 54. Rich had a limited acting career after starring at age 8 as Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight children, on the ABC hit dramedy that ran from from 1977 to 1981.
Bobby Hull
Hall of Fame forward Bobby Hull, who helped the Chicago Blackhawks win the 1961 Stanley Cup Final, has died. Hull was 84. The two-time MVP was one of the most prolific scorers in NHL history, leading the league in goals seven times. Nicknamed “The Golden Jet” for his speed and blond hair, he posted 13 consecutive seasons with 30 goals or more from 1959-72.
Charles White
Charles White, the Southern California tailback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1979, died Jan. 11, 2023. He was 64. A two-time All-American and Los Angeles native, White won a national title in 1978 before claiming the Heisman in the following season, when he captained the Trojans and led the nation in yards rushing.
Jerry Richardson
Jerry Richardson, the Carolina Panthers founder and for years one of the NFL’s most influential owners until a scandal forced him to sell the team, died March 1, 2023. He was 86.
Sister André
Lucile Randon, a French nun known as Sister André and believed to be the world’s oldest person, died Jan. 17, 2023, at age 118. She was born in the town of Ales, southern France, on Feb. 11, 1904. She was also one of the world’s oldest survivors of COVID-19.
Tatjana Patitz
Tatjana Patitz, one of an elite group of famed supermodels who graced magazine covers in the 1980s and ’90s and appeared in George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” music video, died at age 56.
Russell Banks
Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as “Affliction” and “The Sweet Hereafter” in the wintry, rural communities of his native Northeast and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist John Brown in “Cloudsplitter,” died Jan. 7, 2023. He was 82.
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal George Pell, a onetime financial adviser to Pope Francis who spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia on child sex abuse charges before his convictions were overturned, died Jan. 10, 2023. He was 81.
Ken Block
Ken Block, a motorsports icon known for his stunt driving and for co-founding the action sports apparel brand DC Shoes, died Jan. 2, 2023, in a snowmobiling accident near his home in Utah. Block rose to fame as a rally car driver and in 2005 was awarded Rally America’s Rookie of the Year honors.
Walter Cunningham
Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA’s Apollo program, died Jan. 3, 2023. He was 90. Cunningham was one of three astronauts aboard the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, an 11-day spaceflight that beamed live television broadcasts as they orbited Earth, paving the way for the moon landing less than a year later.
Anton Walkes
Professional soccer player Anton Walkes died Jan. 18, 2023, from injuries he sustained in a boat crash off the coast of Miami. He was 25. Walkes began his career with English Premier League club Tottenham and also played for Portsmouth before signing with Atlanta United in MLS. He joined Charlotte for the club’s debut MLS season in 2022.
Robert Blake
Robert Blake, the Emmy award-winning performer who went from acclaim for his acting to notoriety when he was tried and acquitted in the killing of his wife, died March 9, 2023, at age 89. Blake, star of the 1970s TV show, “Baretta,” never recovered from the long ordeal which began with the shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, outside a Studio City restaurant on May 4, 2001. The story of their strange marriage, the child it produced and its violent end was a Hollywood tragedy played out in court. Blake portrayed real-life murderer Perry Smith in the movie of Truman Capote’s true crime best seller “In Cold Blood.”
Chaim Topol
Chaim Topol, a leading Israeli actor who charmed generations of theatergoers and movie-watchers with his portrayal of Tevye, the long-suffering and charismatic milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof,” died March 8, 2023, at age 87. A recipient of two Golden Globe awards and nominee for both an Academy Award and a Tony Award, Topol long has ranked among Israel’s most decorated actors.
Bobby Caldwell
Bobby Caldwell, a soulful R&B singer and songwriter who had a major hit in 1978 with “What You Won’t Do for Love” and a voice and musical style adored by generations of his fellow artists, died March 14, 2023. He was 71. The smooth soul jam “What You Won’t Do for Love” went to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 on what was then called the Hot Selling Soul Singles chart. It became a long-term standard and career-defining hit for Caldwell, who also wrote the song.
Pat Schroeder
Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, died March 13, 2023. She was 82. Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics for 24 years, shaking up stodgy government institutions by forcing them to acknowledge that women had a role in government. She was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and won easy reelection 11 times from her safe district in Denver.
Lance Reddick
Lance Reddick, a character actor who specialized in intense, icy and possibly sinister authority figures on TV and film, including “The Wire,” “Fringe” and the “John Wick” franchise, died March 17, 2023. He was 60. Reddick was often put in a suit or a crisp uniform during his career, playing tall, taciturn and elegant men of distinction. He was best known for his role as straight-laced Lt. Cedric Daniels on the hit HBO series “The Wire,” where his character was agonizingly trapped in the messy politics of the Baltimore police department.
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