Stay Tuned

The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, May 1, 2020 4 By Dana Simpson TV Media F asten your seatbelts for another year of dollars and deceit. "Billions," Showtime's most provocative corporate drama, returns for its fifth season on Sunday, May 3, and fans of the show can't wait to see more of their favorite fic- tional billionaires as they scheme and slither their way to the top of the Wall Street food chain. The Season 5 trailer, which was released earlier this year, introduces viewers to a whole new set of power dy- namics and betrayal, making it evident that the fifth year of this captivating show is amp- ing up the drama from the get- go. The 12-episode season will be released in two parts this year, due to filming complica- tions caused by the coronavi- rus pandemic. The first seven episodes will air starting this week, and the show will take a break mid-June at a natural point in the story arc. At this stage, there is no way to know when the second part of the season will air, but the much- anticipated remaining epi- sodes will be filmed and re- leased as soon as the produc- tion process is safe to resume. In the meantime, Part 1 of the season continues to follow dueling New York City high-so- ciety members Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti, "Sideways," 2004) and Bobby "Axe" Axel- rod (Damian Lewis, "Band of Brothers") as they try to take each other down in a grueling game of cat and mouse. Providing more twists and turns than a Shakespearean production, Chuck and Axe have been on a collision course with one another since 2016. From Chuck getting a tip about insider trading and Axe's sub- sequent disappearance in Sea- son 1 to the two men going head to head in court in Season 3, it appears the billionaires will squabble over just about anything from money and business to women and poli- tics. Just when it seemed they would band together to form an alliance — especially with Axe's focus now more clearly aimed at the destruction of Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon, "Or- ange Is the New Black") and her company — Chuck and Axe are once again pitted against each other as Season 5 will feature a new player, Mi- chael Prince (Corey Stoll, "House of Cards"), who joins their high-stakes — and, quite honestly, exhausting — game. At the end of Season 4, "Bil- lions" co-creator David Levien told Entertainment Weekly a bit about the fate of Chuck and Axe: "When we thought of bring- ing them together, we didn't know exactly when they would start to be at odds again," Levi- en said. "We just knew two men with these qualities, this alpha dog mentality, that a peace and alliance could never last forever." With the arrival of this new threat to Axe and his company, Axe Capital (AxeCap for short), Chuck appears to have a plan in the works — be- cause when does he not? — but all the alliances that have been crafted over the past four years are likely to fall apart as companies lose money, em- ployees and power. Now, a newcomer to the feud (and the series), Chuck's friend, Prof. Catherine "Cat" Brant (Julianna Margulies, "The Good Wife"), expresses her concern that his quest for dominance has gotten out of hand. Amid triple crosses, dou- ble agents and a single com- mon goal, things begin to get "tribal," and every player in- volved in this corporate chess game will quickly begin to re- alize who is the king and who is a pawn. It's not just the kings at play in the business game, either. Taylor, who has been fighting to keep her firm together and pull away from Axe, will have to make some serious adjust- ments as she is forced back to work at AxeCap, while Wendy (Maggie Siff, "Sons of Anar- chy"), who had just spent the day at a closed-course recre- ational demolition site with Rebecca (Nina Arianda, "Goli- ath") venting her frustrations and "moving earth," can't avoid her problems forever as she anxiously awaits the medi- cal board's decision on her case. coverstory Julianna Margulies as seen in "Billions" A few billion more: Wall Street gets a new Prince in Season 5 of 'Billions' By Adam Thomlison TV Media Q: What happened to William Petersen after he left "CSI"? A: William Petersen, best known as Gil Grissom in CBS's procedural smash "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," was nev- er a prolific screen actor. Deadline.com once called him "one of those highly selective actors who never wore out his wel- come." He seemed to take that to extremes with "CSI." He was so concerned with wearing out his welcome that he left the show early, and then mostly dropped out of the screen biz in favor of theatrical acting back in Chicago, where he got his start. And that's mostly "what happened" to Petersen. He's tak- en a total of five screen roles since leaving "CSI" in 2009, and when he wasn't doing those he was busting a hump on a Windy City stage. If you really miss hanging out with Petersen and you aren't fortunate enough to live in Chicago, I have two pieces of good news: One of his other screen gigs was a full-time TV role you might not have heard of (the WGN America drama "Manhat- tan"), and "CSI" might be coming back. He appeared in all 10 episodes of the second season of the period military drama "Manhattan" in 2015 — it was can- celed after that, but you can still find it if you look. Q: Was the Humphrey Bogart movie "The Harder They Fall" based on anything? A: It may have been based on a couple of things, actually. "The Harder They Fall" (1956), one of the great boxing movies and film legend Humphrey Bogart's last picture, was based directly on the novel of the same name by Budd Schul- berg. However, Schulberg's book is allegedly a fictionalized take on the career of real-life prize fighter Primo Carnera. Carnera himself sued Columbia Pictures, saying the movie was based on him and didn't put him in a very good light, but he lost the suit. "The Harder They Fall" certainly doesn't put its fictional fighter, Toro Moreno (Mike Lane, "Demon Keeper," 1994), in a good light. The film stars Bogart as a former sports writer hired to work for a crooked promoter to help him promote a young boxer, Moreno, whose fights are being fixed. Bogart's character was also supposedly based on a real person: sports writer Harold Conrad. Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided. hollywoodQ&A Towne Floring 3 x 2 The Powell Company 2 x 2

• Cover