Judi Dench

Michael Williams, a noted character and Shakespearean actor who performed frequently opposite his Oscar-winning wife, Dame Judi Dench, has died. Williams died Thursday at the couple's home in Surrey in southern England. He was 65, and the cause of death was lung cancer, which he had been fighting since 1999. Joint stalwarts of the British stage, Williams and Dench also appeared together in the popular TV comedy "A Fine Romance," playing a couple on the small screen as they were in life.

In "Via Dolorosa," the daring David Hare monologue currently at the Booth Theatre, the prolific English playwright tells audiences that the subject of his recent work has been "faith." In "Amy's View," the acclaimed Hare tragicomedy that joined him a few blocks away at the Barrymore Theatre on Thursday, the object of that faith is the theater.

"Grief produces energy," Dame Judi Dench was saying over tea--in her case, coffee--in the stately foyer of the landmark Savoy Hotel. Sadly, she knows the subject all too well. The petite 67-year-old English actress, unfussily elegant in a brown suede jacket and camel scarf, was referring to how the British and American people, after slogging through a shellshocked, post-Sept. 11 malaise, had seemed to spring to life.

David Hare's "Amy's View" takes a panoramic look at a 16-year span in the lives of its characters and an indirect glimpse at cultural changes in England between 1979 and 1995. But it feels surprisingly detailed and solid, without the sketchy quality that often afflicts plays that attempt to cover so much in less than three hours.

SERIES Everest: Beyond the Limit: In the third-season premiere of the unscripted adventure series, an avalanche buries a team of climbers (8 p.m. Discovery). In a second new episode, at 9, a storm front closes in on Mt. Everest as climber John Golden presses on to reach the summit on a surgically reconstructed knee, and in a third new episode, at 10, astronaut Scott Parazynski and senior citizen Dawes Eddy attempt a history-making summit bid. Emergency Level One: In the premiere of this unscripted series, two pregnant women are involved in a car crash and a police shooting puts a patient's life in the hands of the trauma team (8 p.m. TLC)

About three years ago, producer Graham Broadbent visited the offices of Peter Rice, who was then running Fox Searchlight Pictures. Stacked near Rice's DVD player were discs of the senior citizen comedies "Cocoon" and "Cocoon: The Return. " "There have to be movies for older audiences," Rice told Broadbent. "There have to be. " Broadbent replied, "I think we may have something for you. " The movie Broadbent pitched that day was "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,"a comedy starring Judi Dench and Bill Nighy about a fledgling retirement home in India.

"Look upon your work!" In "Skyfall," Javier Bardem as the vengeance-driven villain known as Silva demands this of spy chief M (Judi Dench) and James Bond (Daniel Craig) in a devilish baritone as he twists a dental mouthpiece dripping with saliva out of his jaw, to reveal the rotted tooth or two that remain in his head, while his face caves in and one eye bulges like Quasimodo's. And to think that some of us revere Bardem partly for his continental good looks. "Your work cannot come from your vanity," the actor, recognized last week with a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for the performance, says via phone from London.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. on Monday agreed to pay $5 million for a license to kill any attempt by Sony Pictures Entertainment to make a James Bond movie. The amount is the net sum MGM will pay to Sony to cement its rights to one of Hollywood's most valuable film franchises, as well as to obtain from Sony the rights to the classic Bond story "Casino Royale," the only Bond film rights MGM didn't already own.