OCTOBER 20 • 2022 | 43

CATCHING UP ON A 
REBOOT, INSIDE AMY 
SCHUMER RETURNS 
To be frank, Reboot, a 
Hulu series that premiered 
on Sept. 20, somehow 
“flew under my radar.” 
But, if I had written about 
it before now, I wouldn’t 
have been able to tell you 
how “Jewish” this series is. 
“Jewish stuff” begins to be 
revealed in the third and 
fourth episodes. 
The eight-episode first 
season concludes on Oct. 
25. The series was created 
by Steven Levitan, 60, 
who also created Modern 
Family. 
The set-up: Hannah 
Korman (Rachel Bloom, 
35) writes a “reboot” script 
for Step Right Up, a hit 
sitcom that went off the 
air in 2007. It was about a 
black man who is married 
to a white woman. The 
black man is the stepfather 
of his wife’s (white) son. 
A streaming channel 
likes Hannah’s script, 
and they approve a first 
“reboot” season. What 
really grabs them is that 
Hannah has made Step 
Right Up, a fairly tame 
broadcast network TV 
show, into something much 
more edgy and adult. 
It’s now a series that fits 

into an HBO-like channel 
lineup. 
(Spoilers Ahead!) The 
reboot is in production 
when Gordon Gelman 
(Paul Reiser, 66) tells the 
channel that he still owns 
the rights to Step Right Up. 
Pretty soon, Gelman and 
Korman agree to co-head 
the reboot. 
Early on, we learn 
that Korman is Gelman’s 
daughter and that he 
essentially abandoned 
Hannah in favor of his 
“second” family. 
In the third episode, 
Gelman makes it very 
clear he is Jewish (among 
other things, he mentions 
his rabbi). In the same 
episode, Hannah hires four 
hip young female writers. 
Gelman meets them in 
the writers’ room, and 
they don’t amuse him. At 
the next meeting, Gelman 
shouts: “Here comes the 
Jews” — and three aged 
Jewish sitcom writers 
Gelman hired walk into the 
room. Two of the super-
veteran writers are played 
by Jews: Fred Melamed, 
66, and George Wyner, 
76.
Watch the series and 
find out if Hannah and 
Gelman’s writers can 
“merge” — and if Hannah’s 
edgy approach, which the 
cast likes, can “survive” 
Gelman. 
Inside Amy Schumer, a 

Comedy Central hit sketch 
comedy series, ran from 
2013-2016 (four seasons). 
Schumer often wrote the 
scripts and she appeared 
in every sketch. There 
were about 10 episodes 
each season. Inside 
Amy got good reviews 
and good ratings. (You 
can watch the first four 
seasons on HBO Max). 
Why the series went off 
the air has always been 
murky. It was renewed 
for a fifth season early in 
2016. But a fifth season 
didn’t appear. I always 
assumed that Schumer 
just walked away from the 
series when her first film, 
Train Wreck (2015), which 
she starred in and wrote, 
became a critical hit and 
made $140 million (five 
times its cost). 
Well, that fifth season of 
new shows will now stream 
on Paramount+. In 2019, 
the NY Times reported 
that Schumer contractually 
owed Comedy Central 
a fifth season. Last year, 
Paramount Global, which 
owns many channels, 
including CBS and 
Comedy Central, launched 
Paramount+, and it’s my 
guess they thought it 
would be “just great” 
to enforce Schumer’s 
contract.
The fifth season will be 
just five episodes. The first 
two will first stream on 

Oct. 20. The last three will 
stream weekly. Reports say 
it will stream on Comedy 
Central “sometime” in the 
future. 

 Tár, which stars the 
great Cate Blanchett as a 
German orchestra leader, 
opens in theaters on Oct. 
21. Advance reviews are 
terrific. Look for Allan 
Corduner, 72, a veteran 
British Jewish actor, as 
the orchestra’s assistant 
conductor. Corduner, the 
son of a German Jewish 
refugee mother, was a 
very talented pianist in his 
youth and wanted to be a 
conductor before he opted 
to become an actor.
You may not know 
Corduner, but you’ve 
almost certainly have 
seen him in more than 
one movie. He’s often 
played Jewish characters. 
As his first film role he 
played a yeshiva student 
in Yentl (1983). In Defiance 
(2008), he played the old 
(Jewish) schoolteacher of 
the Bielski brothers (real 
Polish Jewish partisans 
who fought the Nazis). 
In Operation Finale, he 
played Gideon Hausner, 
the prosecuting attorney at 
Eichmann’s trial. 
Halloween is fast coming 
up and I have to thank my 
friend, Michael, a horror 
film fan, for alerting me 
that Sarah Wolfkind, 22, 
the star of a “chiller” that 
I recently wrote about, 
Grimcutty, is the daughter 
of a Jewish father and an 
Asian-American mother. 
Grimcutty is an original 
Hulu film. 
I have other Halloween-
related goodies ready 
to go into your info bag. 
Check out my next column, 
the last before the spooky 
holiday. 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

ORIGINAL BY RED CARPET REPORT ON MINGLE MEDIA TV

Rachel Bloom

GAGE SKIDMORE

Paul Reiser

HOWMUCHDOILOVEU 

Allan Corduner

