Hemsworth submits to extreme cures
Even superheroes get the blues. Feel stress. Worry about aging, mortality and their weight. The new National Geographic series “Limitless With Chris Hemsworth” streams on Disney+ and features the “Thor” actor submitting himself to some extreme therapies to combat common ailments.
Handsome, fit and ridiculously chiseled in a way that’s required when pretending to be a cartoon god, Hemsworth opens the first episode by admitting that he’s consumed with stress. Like many, he wakes up at 3 in the morning and finds his mind racing. He’s not fond of this habit and is well aware that sleeplessness and anxiety can take their toll on one’s health and lifespan.
To address this concern, he consults a therapist with a radical new approach. He’s going to confront his stress in the most anxiety-producing way possible: strapping himself to a bungee cord apparatus and diving off a 900-foot building in Sydney, Australia.
It’s around this time in the proceedings that viewers may get the hint that “Limitless” is not so much a how-to for addressing their problems, but another Disney promotional vehicle for its growing Marvel Comic Universe. Maybe that’s why it’s called “Limitless.”
Over several episodes, the blue-eyed actor will endure an extreme fourday fast to “unlock the body’s natural anti-aging powers”; submit to Arctic temperatures (in the Arctic!) to shock his system into longevity; put his “Thor” physique to the test with a grueling exercise regime, and then quietly submit to the fact that we all grow old by donning Hollywood prosthetics to pass as a senior citizen in a retirement village. Will Thor spend time watching “Wheel of Fortune”? I’ll never tell.
› Also streaming on Disney+, “The Santa Clauses” miniseries allows Tim Allen to return to the 1994 comedy and its sequels. “Clauses” does not hide the fact that Scott (Allen) has been at his gift-delivering gig for nearly 30 years and that he’s more than ready to hand the felt hat to a worthy successor.
Along the way, we meet Kal Penn as a joyless overnight delivery executive who sees Santa’s deft work as “competition,” and a woman who used to be one of Scott’s favorite tiny tykes who has now grown up to be a 30-year-old living in her mother’s basement. Railing on the failings of the younger generations seems to be something Santa/Scott imported from Tim Allen’s days on “Last Man Standing.”
› “NOVA” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-G, check local listings) explores the abstract mathematical notions of zero and infinity and looks at how various cultures, separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, invented these concepts in their own particular fashion.
› Streaming on Netflix, the 2022 documentary “In Her Hands” profiles Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor as she confronts the Taliban’s takeover.