Archive for the Local TV Category

The Last Post of 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Americans watching British TV, Behind-The-Scenes, BiogTV, British Shows on American TV, Internet TV, Local TV, Reality TV, Reviews, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV Criticism, TV Culture, TV History, TV News, Watching TV with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2021 by Tom Steward

New Blog 14.1

Am I just too goddamn old to appreciate The Walking Dead: World Beyond?

America was rescued from the brink of fascism by a hair’s breadth but, you’re right, Chris Harrison, all anyone was talking about in the first week of November was The Bachelorette.

The end credits of The Mandalorian are back!

Covid-19 has turned every reality show in 2020 into the first hour of The Birds.

Star Trek: Discovery boldly goes where Star Trek has gone before.

I sincerely hope production designers on The Walking Dead series are paid handsomely and writers the bare minimum.

How long have the opening titles of reality television been like novelty backwards chronology episodes of 90s shows?

I predict Timothy Olyphant will become the Bart Maverick of The Mandalorian.

My AT & T U-Verse lies to me like Trump to his base.

I see your Werner Herzog and I raise you David Cronenberg.

I previously predicted that Conan would be a Vine by the time my son was at college. He’s only three and Conan is already on a streaming platform.

The Bachelorette accidentally revived Bachelor Pad for a season.

Not content with being Space Have Gun, Will Travel, The Mandalorian wants to be Space CHIPS.

I’m surprised there was public outcry when The Charlie Brown Holiday Specials left broadcast television but not when the Peanuts gang were used as shills for an insurance company.

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY

Pictured (l-r): Anthony Rapp as Stamets; Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou; Mary Wiseman as Tilly; Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham; of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Photo Cr: Michael Gibson/CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Discovery reminds me of an awards show skit riffing on Star Trek.

The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special could be subtitled The Roast of George Lucas.

The biggest revelation of Showtime’s The Reagans is that previous documentaries on the family have all been under the spell of their mythmaking.

Geico sells insurance and condones fraud.

The dialogue in the edited-for-TV version of Scream about The Exorcist being edited-for-TV should have been edited-for-TV.

B is only 3 and can already identify characters on TV shows by their story functions. For example, Fred from Scooby-Doo is “We’ll go this way, you go that way.”

The Thanksgiving episode of The Mandalorian is brought to you by parents of children who skipped nap and fell asleep at the dinner table the day before.

I’d Ask The Storybots if there is a better example of their kind of show in the whole of television. It’d be a short episode.

I replied “Yes” to Netflix’s question about whether I was enjoying Star Trek: Enterprise because there was no option listed for “Not really but I need to watch this for completism’s sake.”

The Crown faithfully recreates the weekend in the Summer of 1981 when The British Royal Family stalked a CGI Stag.

Mario Lopez stars as Colonel Sanders in a Lifetime Original mini-movie called A Recipe for Seduction … is a honey-mustard trap for TV reporters!

I’ve spent decades wishing that the actors in Star Trek would loosen up. Discovery reminds me to be careful what I wish for.

Fun game. Watch The Mandalorian on a Holiday Weekend and complete the dialogue every time it buffers.

New Blog 14.3

Having PBS on in the morning and hearing the incidental music from Curious George makes me feel like even my kid is a sophisticate.

The best thing about the home release of The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone is that Francis Coppola does an introduction in front of a bookshelf in the kind of segments typically reserved for movies that American culture is now ashamed of.

If we stop making television about Reagan and Thatcher, do you think they’ll relinquish their hold on the future?

Ask The Storybots scratches my itch for exposition dump theme tunes.

When it comes to Star Trek canon, you have to take Enterprise with The Original Series.

Sorry, Mandalorian, but Droid Tales is the only Star Wars canon revision I’m interested in.

I always said that a young Margaret Thatcher was the role Gillian Anderson was born to play but until The Crown I thought I was talking figuratively.

12/10 was a good day to bury backdoor pilots.

I’m a little perturbed that the HBO Max algorithm can’t see the difference between Scooby-Doo and The Dead Don’t Die.

The Mandalorian is the best version of what you used to do with your Star Wars toys. Although for extra authenticity, Favreau should start throwing disabled He-Man and Ghostbusters characters into the mix.

Star Trek series must be fringe-watched. This is my new term for watching one episode of every series in a franchise at a time.

Ducktales went the way of Glow.

August and September 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Behind-The-Scenes, BiogTV, British Shows on American TV, Internet TV, Local TV, Reality TV, Reviews, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV Criticism, TV Culture, TV History, TV News with tags , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2020 by Tom Steward

New Blog 13.1

Star Trek: Enterprise really tests my rule about not skipping introductions.

Thanks for the offer, Bravo, but I’m probably not going to learn about Race in America from someone who thinks the Underground Railroad was a railroad.

I may not have learnt the truth about Brandi Glanville and Denise Richards from this season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills but I now know that the Housewife safety words are “Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!”

Breaking News: TV show about humans in the grip of a deadly virus delayed due to humans in grip of a deadly virus.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s prophecy record extends from The Good Friday Agreement to America’s reaction to COVID.

I had no idea that the “so much more” promised by HBO Max would be the Alan Partridge canon. And I’m not complaining.

In other news, Fox just sold their 20th Television.

If Black Mirror were cut-for-time and edited-for-TV, it would resemble The Twilight Zone reboot.

While we wax lyrical about how much television has improved, Captain Kirk is using self-knowledge of his latent racism to free himself from his captors in an episode of TV from 1966.

Some of the promises Nick Jnr. make about the educational value of their programming are just plain lies.

Black-ish had to go online to criticize Trump. Talk about giving your opponent home advantage.

To treat Gone With The Wind and Blazing Saddles as equally dangerous is a kind of racism in and of itself.

I don’t remember so many characters from the entertainment industry in previous iterations of The Twilight Zone.

New Blog 13.2

Video killed the lady Star Trek.

It’s only a matter of time before Trump calls on John Ratzenberger to defend his dismantling of the postal service.

How far away from the microphones do the Kratt Brothers have to stand when they record Wild Kratts?

How long will the proposed Netflix Shuffle Button last once we’ve all been cycled to late-period Steven Seagal movies?

Of all the John Oliver rants that could go viral, who knew it’d be the ones about the Gilmore Girls reboot and Danbury?

If Strange New Worlds doesn’t include a showdown between William Shatner and George Takei, I’m cancelling my latest free month of CBS All Access.

Boy Scout Child Abuse is not and will never be infomercial material.

Not content with foisting Australian cartoon dogs on us on weekday lunchtimes, Nick Jnr. now wants our children eating to the sound of animated British dirt bikes.

Airing between the years of 1999 and 2006, The West Wing was always key to encouraging responsible voting.

The design of the HBO Max app is based on the aesthetic principle of counter-intuition.

The Next Generation was Gene Roddenberry’s vision of heaven. We are living in his hell.

I’m looking forward to ABC’s uncut, commercial-free airing of Do The Right Thing when another African-American dies in their prime.

I know self-loathing is his thing but I’m saddened to hear John Oliver compare himself unfavorably to Rowan Atkinson as Zazu in The Lion King. I mean, I assume he’s right. I’m not watching that shit to find out. And it’s free on Disney Plus.

In Carol Baskin, Dancing With The Stars continues its policy of casting the refugees of doomed marriages.

New Blog 13.3

Erika Jayne’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion Zoom video looks like a pigeon caught on CCTV.

Trump got confused while watching Short Treks because somebody told him he had a “series of minisodes.”

In the wake of African Americans being routinely murdered by the police, The Help is trending on Netflix and Amazon Prime’s “Black Stories” section is headed up by Space Jam.

The subtitled disclaimer on Luis Miguel: The Series disappears too quickly for me to be entirely sure, but I think we’re supposed to watch the show as if it were a dream.

I expect Lisa Rinna’s “Gaslighting” number to top the Christmas charts launch a nationwide Cabaret.

Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado prompted G to wonder “Why isn’t he living in more splendor? He has the same air conditioner we do.”

Lower Decks proves that there is no Star Trek episode that cannot be spun off into a full series.

The Twilight Zone writers should talk to each other before they commit fingers to keys.

Has there ever been a hit show that survived the loss of its star for more than two subsequent seasons?

The Walking Dead is Dead.

September 8 is Star Trek Day. Except for viewers in Canada.

The Cast Members

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Behind-The-Scenes, Local TV, TV Acting, Unsung Heroes with tags , , , , , , , on April 7, 2016 by Tom Steward

It’s not often I ask you to do something – except look up words (or so G tells me). But at the end of this post, I’m going to ask you for money. It’s not going to me (not for a long time anyway) instead to a group of talented and ambitious individuals who want to shape the future of television sitcoms. But they need your help to do it!

The true test of a great sitcom idea is this. If you hear it and your first thought is ‘why haven’t they done that before?’, it’s a winner. If you ask that question and get the reply ‘it has’ it’s a loser. Aaron Roberts, Executive Producer of The Cast Members, needn’t worry because his sitcom about a rag tag group of movie theater employees is one of the most original yet obvious (in a good way) premises we’ve had in television comedy for years. In fact, Aaron is hoping to breathe fresh air into the comedy world:

‘Television is at its golden age with dramas, most people believe it is consistently better than the films that flood the box office week after week. But, television sitcoms? The last great ones to go off the air left what was NBC’s comedy block in shambles a few years ago. The bad outweigh good and most networks continue to rehash old premises with new faces or even worse – straight rebooting old IP’

The Cast Members is a grassroots project from independent production company Blue Vision Entertainment, who have already scripted 6 episodes and are ready to shoot an initial season with an insanely talented ensemble cast already assembled (ensembled?!) and an award-winning crew behind-the-scenes. The Cast Members is on Indiegogo to raise funds for a pilot from the 1600+ strong audience they’ve found on social media and actors and crew even got together to shoot some promo videos introducing the ensemble cast in separate scenes to really showcase all the talent attached to the project and obtain a picture of what audiences would expect to find in full length episodes.

What Aaron is doing is highly ambitious, but not unprecedented in television comedy:

‘This is the beginning of another Always Sunny or Broad City type of story; the small production that started on the web that will mark the precipice of some great comedy careers’

Nor is this a flash-in-the-pan. It’s a show that has been evolving in independent development for over 2 years and that – Aaron guarantees – will eventually air somewhere. As for content, Aaron is confident of the sitcom’s broad appeal:

‘With performers from all ethnicities and walks of life…the story has heart and speaks to anyone who has ever held a minimum wage, first employment that they sort of ‘had’ to work’

Aaron is, however, under no delusions as to what the main selling point of the sitcom is; the cast members…appropriately enough:

‘The best possible cast of the rise acting talent possible from California was assembled. Multiple NYT award nominees and recipients. Actors with credits list such as The Daily Show, Modern Family, Faking It, Tangerine and more are finally ready to break out from bit roles and showcase their true comedic chops. Two actors are currently starring in theater productions in New York and San Diego that are receiving rave reviews. Not to mention the couple working stand-up comedians portraying different characters on the show’

I’m glad Aaron said all that, so I didn’t have to. You see, I’m in the cast of this show, playing (movie) theater (concessions) veteran Peter Peterman, who thanks to Aaron’s keen sense of comedic resource exploitation developed an English accent and gained a wife between drafts. I’m even in one of the crowdfunding videos, which you can watch below. See if you can spot me. I do rather blend in:

So take a chance on this production. It’s got an interesting story to tell and 20 absolutely talented actors to do it. If you need more proof for your purchase, you can watch all ten superbly written and performed crowdfunding videos for free via the show’s Facebook page or on Indiegogo, where you can also send your donation. The amount doesn’t matter (but don’t hold back if you don’t have to!) just be sure to help us out and you can say you were a part of sitcom history before anyone else. And – if you need a closer – just remember how critical I’ve been of TV on this blog then re-read this post!

 

UK with Me: Part 2

Posted in Americans watching British TV, British Shows on American TV, Local TV, TV channels, TV History, Uncategorized, Watching TV with tags , , , , , , , on January 18, 2016 by Tom Steward

Where I continue my rundown of the TV I watched during my time in the UK, as a result of visiting at a time of year conducive to indoor sports that require no physical prowess or ability. Since we didn’t have a darts board, the television would have to do. Much of the British television I had written off as dated and defunct had returned and, though many were old wine in old bottles, there were several programs being broadcast made by familiar names that added something new and interesting to a pre-existing legacy. There were also genuinely innovative moments:

 

Car Share – BBC One

 

uk

Hands up who likes Peter Kay again

 

After emerging in the late nineties as a successor to the observationally rich character comedy pioneered in the North of England by writer-performers such as Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood and Steve Coogan with That Peter Kay Thing, Peter Kay stagnated creatively in the naughties and the teens, content with cosying up to light entertainment until it swallowed his authenticity. The two-hander sitcom Car Share which follows two colleagues carpooling on their commute to and from work was exactly the stripped-down concept that Kay needed to reboot his realism. Punctuated by conversational silences drowned out in the perfectly pastiched audio garbage of satellite radio commercials, the wiretapped feel of the dialogue and understated sincerity of the couple’s interaction reminds us why Kay was once such a treasured comic voice in British culture. Even the more indulgent sequences, such as the fantasy music videos, have an almost Dennis Potter-like quality in the context of the storyline.

 

Toast of London – Channel 4

 

Toast of London

His career is toast

 

Arthur Mathews once co-wrote and created Father Ted, the sitcom of its day and one which – like much British comedy of the time – refuses to date and instead grows in stature the more we find out about the world (or in this case the Catholic Church). Nothing that Mathews has done since has been able to surpass Father Ted, although surreal juxtaposition sketch show Big Train came tantalisingly close. But seeing Toast of London, which Mathews devised with Matt Berry, a comedian, actor and writer who is a darling of cult comedy and possesses a sleazy retro quality that consumes everything he does, you feel as if he might come close. As with Father Ted, the sitcom is set in another sphere of absurd mediocrity; that of the jobbing actor. As heavily stylised as its ecumenical predecessor – which often resembled a live-action version of The Simpsons – it nonetheless discovers inherent truths about the profession that a documentary treatment couldn’t, though you suspect many of the situations encountered are anecdotally motivated.

 

All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride – BBC Four

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No really…this is it

 

If the successes of Gogglebox and Car Share have demonstrated anything, it’s that extremely basic formats still hold tremendous appeal for British TV audiences. But All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride has taken this to avant-garde extremes. A camera is rigged to a traditional reindeer sleigh and taken on a two-hour journey across the Artic wilderness of Norway. There’s no music or editing or semblance of a narrative, simply the spectacular footage the camera collects as it moves. Of course, TV audiences adore gazing lingeringly at landscapes given the ratings-winning genre of nature programming, but the development here is about time, and how much of it we’ll give without the reward of storytelling and entertainment. Perhaps the structureless viral video has immunised us to the boredom of simple watching, or maybe this is gentle and familiar enough a subject to bring experimental video art into our homes by the back door.

 

Downton Abbey – ITV

 

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Downton finale criticized for anachronisms

 

I’ll remain as anachronistic as Downton itself by pretending that anyone in America who wants to see the finale hasn’t already used their internet connection to steal it, and not offer any spoilers. Not that there’s a lot to spoil, the finale ramming home how little storylines or character development have to do with the appeal of this piece of virtual tourism versus the other quality television drama of our time. Creator and writer of all episodes Julian Fellowes certainly knows what his audience wants, and is not shy about giving it to them in as tidiest boxes as he can pack. I preferred the series in high melodrama mode and so it was somewhat of a disappointment to me that the electric hair-dryer that everyone kept pointing out was merely historical window-dressing and not foreshadowing some Emmerdale-like fiery disaster to wipe out the cast. Indeed, any hint of tragedy seems to have been smoked red herring.

UK with Me: Part 1

Posted in Americans watching British TV, British Shows on American TV, Local TV, TV channels, TV History, Watching TV with tags , , , , , , , on January 15, 2016 by Tom Steward

I spent Christmas in England, which meant that for the majority of my trip I was under or adjacent to water. This – coupled with apples not falling far from family trees – left me watching a lot of television. After going cold turkey with British television in my first couple of years living in America – literally in the case of the daily cooking shows I opted out of when I left – returning this time I felt as if I had been missing out, not just because of what British TV makes but also what it shows. Here’s my travel watch list:

 

The Bridge –BBC Four

 

bron

Sex is Sex

 

It might seem perverse that the first program I watched upon returning to the UK was Scandinavian but that’s testament to the BBC’s policy of screening the best in European television crime drama, which is currently the best in the world. The third season of the police detective show about crimes that cross the Danish and Swedish border remained as flawlessly acted, written and photographed as the first two, even following the departure of star Kim Bodnia in the run-up to filming. As in previous seasons, a repertory of outstanding Scandinavian character actors were there to play supporting roles but were given more screen time and development, particularly Nicolas Bro formerly of The Killing who guarantees at least one laugh-out-loud moment per episode. Sofia Helin’s new co-star Thure Lindhardt (or Saga’s new partner Henrik) is still the perfect counterpoint to TV’s twitchiest detective, but his sardonic cynicism is also much-needed relief from Martin’s increasingly grating emotional naivety. Creator Hans Rosenfeldt has talked about the rule of three in Scandinavian TV drama in relation to The Killing and Borgen but with both Saga and Henrik having story arcs in progress, he can afford to break with tradition.

 

Tim Peake – BBC News

 

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Ground Control to Major Tim

 

I woke on the first full day of my trip to catch TV news coverage of the launch of the rocket that took British astronaut Tim Peake to the International Space Station, the first Briton to do so. Never mind how visually unstimulating and uneventful the launch was as television or how difficult it was to extract a milestone from the seventh British person to enter space, but it says something about how little there is to be proud about in Britain in years that don’t have major international sporting events that Peake’s journey into space was such big news in the national media. A live transmission from the space station with the inevitable satellite delay was some of the most tedious television you’re ever likely to witness.

 

Peep Show – Channel 4

 

peep

No more kicking off

 

I didn’t even know the final season of Channel 4’s longest-running and possibly finest sitcom was on the air, and was even less aware that the episode I started watching mid-way through was the finale. It says something about my ignorance but even more about how good the writing on the series is. No need for self-aggrandising, Peep Show left us with as unassumingly brilliant an episode as it had ever produced, with a nod to the perpetuation of a gloomy cycle of immature repetition that dooms Mark and Jeremy to a life of wanking and watercolours. Nine seasons – especially in British terms – of a sitcom is impossible without a foolproof concept and filtering the action through Mark and Jeremy’s first-person perspective – some early camera tomfoolery aside – was innovation that lasted. Even so, the key to sustaining the show was gradually escalating the abhorrence of the character’s life choices from jilting spouses to attempting murder, and happily the finale continues to raise the stakes.

 

Gogglebox – Channel 4

 

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Talking Heads

 

A reality show about people watching TV was always the sleeping lion of television pitches, but it needed exactly the right execution to succeed, and that’s exactly what Gogglebox did in 2013 when it blended fly-on-the-wall and sitcom formats to a perfect consistency. Since I last saw the show, however, it has bloomed into Channel 4’s flagship Friday night program and even spawned (quite literally) a spin-off in the shape of Gogglesprogs, which marries Gogglebox to another immaculate format; children obliviously saying funny things on TV. One particular sprog who looked like an Alan Bennett doll appeared to have already figured out how David Cameron rose to power through pre-existing privilege and public apathy and was the mouthpiece of abolitionists young and old throughout Britain when remarking on Queen Elizabeth’s record-breaking reign as British monarch: ‘Doing what? She just walks and waves.’ From the mouths of babes…

 

 

 

 

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