Set in 1546, “Firebrand” opens with a fairy-tale-like intro delivered by a teenage Princess Elizabeth (Junia Rees): “In a rotten, blood-soaked island kingdom, cursed by plague and riven by religious unrest, there once was a queen by the name of Katherine Parr.” That much is true, if perhaps hyperbolic in its grim assessment of 16th-century

As a photographer, Franz Jantzen can depict only visible phenomena. But that doesn’t mean the images in his Hemphill Artworks show are easily recognizable. Some of the pictures’ titles accurately convey their subjects, as in two details of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. But impressionistic techniques — thermal imaging, disorienting perspectives and digital image-stitching — present viewers

“House of the Dragon” remains refreshingly free of chess masters. That might be the clearest distinction between Max’s odd, fast-moving prequel about the Targaryens and “Game of Thrones,” which abounded in psychopaths whose cunning strategies (and savage realpolitik) were supposed to impress viewers almost as much as they horrified them. For those who came to

NEW YORK — Several years ago, while being interviewed for a babysitting job, Megan Stalter was asked what her long-term plans were since her comedy career probably wouldn’t pan out. “My feelings were hurt because I believe in myself so much,” she recalls from the back of an SUV as Manhattan’s West Side Highway whizzes

In “Game of Thrones,” death was everywhere. Red weddings. King’s coronations. Battles with ice zombies. So too is the case in “House of the Dragon,” the prequel spinoff series set hundreds of years earlier, which returns to HBO and Max on Sunday for its second season. “House of the Dragon,” based on George R.R. Martin’s