Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, who co-starred in the 2001 arthouse hit Y Tu Mamá También, have re-teamed for a new Spanish-language series. García Bernal plays Esteban Osuna, an aging Mexican boxer looking to cap an unexpected career comeback with an even bigger win. Powerful criminals who control the sport have other ideas, though, informing Osuna’s manager and lifelong friend, played by Luna, that Osuna must take a dive. Wednesday, Oct. 9, Hulu.

by Malcolm Gladwell 

“You know what you’re getting when you open a book by Malcolm Gladwell,” said The Economist. In 2000, his mega-best-seller The Tipping Point “revealed a market for idea-driven books that use social science to render the world more comprehensible.” In subsequent blockbusters, such as Blink and Outliers, Gladwell followed the formula he’d devised. Now, with Revenge of the Tipping Point, he “returns to familiar ground.” But where his breakthrough book was “largely wide-eyed and optimistic,” the sequel “reflects a more techno-skeptical age.” The Tipping Point argued that positive social change can emerge from the actions of a small number of people. Revenge of the Tipping Point zooms in on “a delightfully tricky” related question about destructive social contagions: If we understand where a tipping point lies, can it be avoided? 

Gladwell’s return to this subject “will probably satisfy hardcore fans, and challenge and divert other readers,” said Julia M. Klein in the Los Angeles Times. He explores the opiate epidemic, highlights the dangers of monocultures by comparing a wealthy community known for its high suicide rate with the genetic uniformity of cheetahs, and argues that one-third of any group creates a tipping point for changes to the group’s culture. He also uses the term “overstory” to describe any story a community tells about itself that affects members’ behavior, arguing that overstories can explain why an epidemic of bank robberies swept 1980s Los Angeles but not the rest of the country. As Gladwell weaves his tales, “it remains possible to wonder whether he is cherry-picking examples to serve his theories.” Even so, “it is not necessary to buy everything Gladwell is selling to appreciate Revenge of the Tipping Point.” 

“For the best writers, writing is about questions, propelled by the endless revision of one’s mind,” said Anand Giridharadas in The New York Times. But Gladwell’s books, “especially this one,” are so focused on presenting memorable ironclad laws of human group behavior that they distort reality. Previously, the rules he proposed were at least catchy, such as that 10,000 hours of practice produces mastery. Here, the rules themselves “have the consistency of a slushy.” Gladwell’s popularity, especially among people who otherwise read little that prompts inventive thinking, makes him a potentially valuable public intellectual. Unfortunately, his latest book is “self-help without the practical advice, storytelling without the literariness, nonfiction without the vital truths, and a business book without the actionable insights.”

The British actress who could wither with a glance

Maggie Smith was one of the true grandes dames of stage and screen. Over a nearly seven-­decade career, she electrified audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, winning two Oscars, a Tony, four Emmys, and five BAFTAs. Many of her signature roles dripped with sharp-tongued aristocratic superiority, whether she was playing Shakespearean and Restoration comedy heroines onstage, a stuffy Edwardian chaperone in the Merchant Ivory classic A Room With a View (1985), or the acerbic Lady Grantham in the 2010–2015 TV series Downton Abbey. That intimidating hauteur, her directors and fellow actors said, extended offstage. Smith, who was both shy and a perfectionist, admitted she could be prickly. “The awful thing is, I’m very aware when I’m being difficult,” she said in 2017, “but I’m usually so scared.” 

Margaret Natalie Smith was raised near Oxford by “dour and withholding parents” who didn’t encourage theatrical ambitions, said The Washington Post. When she pursued acting anyway, she sought comedic roles to distract “from what she had been told by her mother and grandmother were her inadequate looks.” She first appeared in a 1956 Broadway revue then returned to London and in 1963 became a founding player in Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre. After a few small but memorable film roles, she “became a star in her own right” with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), said The Guardian (U.K.). Her “iconic performance” as a charismatic but lethally manipulative teacher won her an Academy Award; a decade later, she won another for playing a jittery actress on the eve of losing an Oscar in the Neil Simon comedy California Suite (1978). 

Long known “mostly among theater and film cognoscenti,” said The New York Times, “she achieved global fame” in her 60s as Hogwarts’ firm but protective Professor Minerva McGonagall, appearing in seven of the eight Harry Potter movies from 2001 through 2011. She was suddenly recognized on the street by children. Soon after she’d also be stopped by their parents after starring as the “scene-stealing” dowager countess Lady Grantham in the British import Downton Abbey, said the Los Angeles Times. Millions tuned in to watch Smith deliver the countess’ barbs—“No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else’s house”—in the TV series and two films. 

Despite a bout of breast cancer in the early 2000s, she continued to work, said The Times (U.K.), appearing in several films with her fellow Dame Judi Dench, and in a one-woman play as late as 2019. Acting, she said, was relaxing for her. “You know who you are for a bit. It’s quite a holiday, not having to fathom it out.”