Today's Entertainment

• FOR THE WEEK OF July 24 - 30, 2023 • yOuR WEEKly GuIDE TO TV ENTERTAINMENT Zahn McClarnon in "Dark Winds" The Battle of New York resumes this week, as the New York Mets head to Yankee Stadium to take on the Yankees in a midsummer matchup airing July 25 on TBS and YES. With both teams boasting payrolls among the largest in Major League Baseball, the Yankees seemingly have more to show for it than the Mets this season, despite this season's Subway Series being tied 1-1. The Yankees start- ed the month sitting at well over .500, and even an injury to star slugger Aaron Judge hasn't derailed their season's trajectory. For the Mets, it's been a season plagued by injuries and inconsistencies, making it difficult to stay out of the bottom half — a stark difference from the 2022 season. But if there is a glimmer of hope for the Mets, it's former National League Rookie of the Year Pete Alonso. Alonso has been one of the most consistent players not only for the Mets, but in the entire major leagues. This season, the Mets first baseman is one of the league's top players in terms of home runs and leads his team in RBIs, proving that 2022 was no fluke. Despite missing 10 games with a sprained wrist and struggling in his early return from the IL, Alonso was selected to his third all-star team, having already won back-to-back Home Run Derby competitions in 2019 and 2021 (the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). "I thought that the derby wasn't necessarily the biggest priority when I was coming back from the wrist," Alonso said earlier this month upon learning of his third career all-star selec- tion. "It was trying to come back and be as productive as I can for my team. If I'm able to play a game, I'm definitely going to be able to take batting practice. So for me the biggest concern was getting back to the team. The derby for me is a happy bonus." Pete Alonso hopes to keep Mets season alive By Roberto Jozef playerprofile By Adam Thomlison Q: I loved the new Poirot movies with Kenneth Branagh, and I thought the actor playing Poirot's friend, Monsieur Bouc, was excel- lent. What else has he been in? A: Tom Bateman has done a lot on TV and film, mostly in his native Britain, but he owes much of his current stardom to Kenneth Branagh ("Hamlet," 1996). He was a member of Branagh's stage-acting troupe prior to being cast in the actor-director's lavish adaptation of "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017), as the railway employee who helps Poirot solve the puzzling case. He returned for the sequel, "Death on the Nile" (2022), and his career has since taken off nicely. Most notably for North Ameri- can audiences, Bateman has a leading role in the new sitcom "Based on a True Story," which debuted last month on the streaming platform Peacock. It stars "Big Bang Theory" alum Kaley Cuoco as a pregnant realtor who, along with Bateman's character, gets caught up in a murder case. They try to exploit their predicament by investigating it themselves and turning it into a true-crime audio series (pod- cast, in modern parlance). Tom Bateman ON PEACOCK celebrityUpdate OF BASED ON A TRUE STORY

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