Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week

May 16, 2025

Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Memorial Day weekend is nearly upon us, and the Globe welcomes the unofficial start of the season with the full-to-bursting Summer Arts Guide. The most suspenseful series (sports or otherwise) of the spring, Celtics vs. Knicks, picks back up Friday night, just as the WNBA season tips off. The next night brings the finale of the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” with host Scarlett Johansson and musical guest Bad Bunny. For the latest and greatest in streaming movies and TV, turn to the Globe’s Matt Juul, whose picks include the if-you-know-you-know event of the week, Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest final. And the saga of Bill Belichick and his “creative muse” draws the scrutiny of the Globe’s Mark Shanahan, who gets a cookie for not using the word “cringe.”

Summer Arts Guide

Elijah Ahmad Lewis as The Scarecrow and Dana Cimone as Dorothy in "The Wiz." Jeremy Daniel

City and country, outdoors and indoors, mountain and seashore — the Summer Arts Guide offerings are nearly infinite, and the Globe’s subject-matter experts are on the case and all over the map of New England. The month-by-month breakdown of 82 noteworthy events is a tad overwhelming (all of Tanglewood is a single entry, for example), but what a great problem to have!

At the movies, expect “the usual glut of sequels and remakes.” As the summer blockbuster turns 50, Odie Henderson spotlights 34 features. He includes “the best movie of 2025 so far” (“The Life of Chuck”), the return of “one of the worst slasher franchises in horror movie history” (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”), the latest addition to Tom Cruise’s 29-year-old “Mission: Impossible” franchise, and everything in between.

On the small screen, “Stick” stars Owen Wilson as a washed-up golfer who discovers a teen prodigy (Peter Dager) “and impulsively decides to cash in everything to try and make him into a star.” Playing opposite Wilson was a challenge, Dager tells Stuart Miller, because he “has such a distinctive kind of delivery.”

“Stick” is one of Lisa Weidenfeld’s 10 new TV shows to watch. Other series making the cut include the Steve Carell vehicle “Mountainhead,” Marvel product “Ironheart,” and animated comedy “Long Story Short,” from “BoJack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

The inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial begins next week and runs through October. Ahead of the city-wide “infiltration of public spaces,” Murray Whyte offers “a walking (and occasionally T-assisted) tour of some of what I think will be the most powerful pieces soon to pop up in neighborhoods near and far,” plus a helpful interactive map.

Pete Holmes “did not set out to be a wholesome-looking comic shocking people with scatological references.” But he did change the name of his “PG-13” tour after a single show. The pride of Lexington chats with Nick A. Zaino III about the “Pete Here Now” tour, the evolution of his act, and our collective “weird, puritanical past.”

“Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” has its North American premiere next week at the ART. The creators of the two-person musical found West End success by embracing a classic genre. “We still want rom-coms, but we also want a tiny bit more reality stirred into it,” composer Jim Barne tells Alyssa Vaughn.

At June’s Boston Early Music Festival, the Boston Camerata “will deliver a program that might look tailor-made for the present moment,” writes A.Z. Madonna. “A Gallery of Kings: Uses and Abuses of Power ca. 1300,” says music director Anne Azéma, will help the group “comfort people that they’re not alone; that others have thought about these questions before them.”

TV on the Radio is back on tour — with a Boston show July 30 — and “really happy” about it, says Jaleel Bunton. More than a decade after the band’s most recent album, is new music in the works? “For now, we’re really happy doing what we’re doing‚” Bunton tells Marc Hirsh. (That’s not a “no”!)

The July debut of the new Doris Duke Theatre will be a high point of the Jacob’s Pillow season. “We envision this as a maker space for new experiences that require time and resources,” artistic director Pamela Tatge tells Karen Campbell. The event “kicks off a performance season highlighted by world premieres and US debuts.”

Film & Movies

Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in the movie “Friendship.” Spencer Pazer/Courtesy of A24

“Friendship,” nominally a comedy, “has exactly one funny moment in it.” Starring Tim Robinson as a stalker and Paul Rudd as his stalk-ee, it garners 1½ stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson. “All ‘Friendship’ offers,” he writes, “is a ChatGPT version of a human being desperately seeking camaraderie for no discernible or believable reason.”

This weekend’s Global Cinema Film Festival invites viewers “to explore the often dire challenges facing international communities through film.” Documentarian and festival founder Raouf Jacob tells Globe correspondent Henry Bova, “I’m proud to say that we’re still continuing that mission, if not expanding our goal, to give documentary filmmaking the platform it deserves.”

TV & Streaming

Rachel Hilson and Josh Holloway in "Duster." Ursula Coyote/Max

“Duster” is “a mostly straightforward crime thriller” with a top-notch pedigree. Co-creators J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan “populate Phoenix’s underworld with a variety of appealingly offbeat characters, and they incorporate their 1970s pop-culture influences without turning the show into an empty pastiche,” writes Globe correspondent Josh Bell. Rachel Hilson, Josh Holloway (“Lost”), and Keith David top-line the “high-octane fun.”

Alexander Skarsgård plays the title character in “Murderbot,” a “campy sci-fi adventure told from the perspective of a part human, part robot machine.” Adapted from a 144-page novella, the 10-episode series “can be exhausting to watch,” writes Globe correspondent Kevin Slane. “Unfortunately, ‘Murderbot’ falls short in its attempt at balancing a light sci-fi saga and a deeper understanding of its protagonist’s psyche.”

Theater

Sarah-Anne Martinez and Emily Skinner in "The Light in the Piazza." Julieta Cervantes

The Huntington’s production of “The Light in the Piazza” affords “a chance to experience the stunning vocal power of Sarah-Anne Martinez. ” Although it lacks “dramatic logic” and “necessary tension,” the show benefits from “the quality of the cast’s singing,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. “While Martinez is on a plane of virtuosity all her own, [Emily] Skinner and [Joshua] Grosso also sing beautifully.”

Bringing “Learning How to Read by Moonlight” to the stage has been “an act of joy,” in playwright-composer Gaven D. Trinidad’s words. “Music has always been a part of my life, and singing is a part of the Filipino culture. It’s really about finding joy.” Globe correspondent Terry Byrne has a behind-the-scenes look at the CHUANG Stage and Company One production, which plays three local venues (consecutively) starting Friday.

Music

James Taylor (left) and Peter Asher in December 1969. Henry Diltz

Producer Peter Asher brings his “Musical Memoir of the ’60s and Beyond” to Arlington Sunday. “Like a British Forrest Gump, Asher has taken part in, or witnessed, so many major 20th-century pop culture moments, it could fill a book,” writes Globe correspondent Lauren Daley. Their Q&A overflows with big names — Streisand, Dylan, and McCartney, for starters — and intriguing observations like “I’ve been the best man three times, and all three were disasters.”

After just three years in the Boston area, composer-cellist-singer Hayley Yu Qin is already making a mark. Tuesday brings the latest event in the new performance series Narratives of Women of Color in Greater Boston. Qin conceived it as a way to “see what actually happened and what I didn’t know, and what I could create,” she tells Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak, writing for Sound Check.

Books

Madeleine Thien's new novel is “The Book of Records.” Andrew Querner

Madeleine Thien’s new novel, “The Book of Records,” follows 7-year-old Lina and her father to “The Sea, where the rules of time and space as we know it don’t apply.” Readers who enjoyed Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West” and Omar El Akkad’s “What Strange Paradise” “will find much to enjoy in the structure, tone, and concerns of ‘The Book of Records,’” writes Globe reviewer Leland Cheuk. But “it’s the child’s story ... that this reader wanted more of.”

Boston Globe Media Partners thanks its sponsors for supporting our newsletters. The sponsoring advertiser does not influence or create any editorial content for this newsletter. If you are interested in advertising opportunities, please contact us here.