Middleditch and Schwartz
via @tombini on Instagram

Middleditch & Schwartz playing NYC; Bill Gates likes ‘Silicon Valley’ (which delayed its next season)

Middleditch and Schwartz
via @tombini on Instagram

Comedians and longtime friends Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz spent most of this year on an improv tour under the collective name Middleditch & Schwartz, and the two are teasing an upcoming NYC show in 2019. While the venue of the show hasn’t been announced, Thomas tells fans to clear their schedules for February 22, and says the show will be much “bigger than before.” Further details will be revealed when tickets go on sale Monday (11/26) at 11 AM EST.

UPDATE: The NYC show happens at Carnegie Hall on 2/22 and tickets are on sale now.

Speaking of Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley‘s upcoming sixth season has reportedly been delayed. According to TVLine, production for the show has been delayed to summer 2019, with a projected air date of 2020, due to executive producer Alec Berg‘s work on another HBO show, Barry, with Bill Hader. The report also quotes Berg as hinting towards a possible end to the series:

I can’t say we have [a specific end date] in mind, but we definitely for the first time are starting to talk about, “How long do you think this will continue…?” There is no definitive plan [to conclude the series], but we’re starting to think that maybe there are less shows left than there are in the can.

Meanwhile, someone who knows a thing or two about Silicon Valley, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has said that he’s a fan of the show. In a recent blog post, Gates said the show is for people who “really want to understand how Silicon Valley works today,” and that he most identifies with Thomas Middleditch’s character of Richard Hendricks. Here’s more from Gates’ blog post:

I have friends in Silicon Valley who refuse to watch the show because they think it’s just making fun of them. I always tell them: “You really should watch it, because they don’t make any more fun of us than we deserve.” You can believe, as I do, that tech companies really are improving life with amazing tools and also admit that sometimes, who wins and who loses is pretty arbitrary. Somebody gets an idea almost right, but not quite, and their business fails; then someone else does it just a little bit better and they are viewed as a genius for the rest of their life. The show captures that perfectly.

Check out the rest of Gates’ blog post here, and check out a clip from the last season of Silicon Valley below.