1) “United States of Al,” 8:31 p.m., CBS. In its first season, “Al” has offered few big laughs, but lots of pleasant, little ones … plus some immensely likable characters, Now it adds some solid emotion: A veterans’ group wants to honor the guys, but that requires a speech – which is an ordeal for Riley (shown here, right), but a breeze for Al (center), his former Afghan translator. Read more…
Network televiison, it seems, will soon be plugged up with franchise spin-offs.
NBC has just ordered “Law & Order: For the Defense.” That comes after the debut of “Law & Order: Organized Crime” (shown here) on NBC … and after CBS ordered spin-offs of “FBI,” “CSI” and “NCIS.”
The play-it-safe approach reflects a new reality, when networks simply can’t get their shows sampled. CBS has tried some non-franchise dramas, with “Tommy” and “Clarice” stumbling in the ratings and “All Rise” remaining on the fence. So spin-offs – most of them not yet cast – are set for next season: Read more…
For movie buffs – deprived of the cinema experience for a year – there’s a tad of good news:
Now we can all catch the Classic Film Festival. It will start with the 1961 “West Side Story” (shown here) at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) Thursday and will sprawl across four days (May 6-9), two networks (Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max) and 95 years.
For a decade, the festival was just for people who could get to Los Angeles. In classic theaters, it showed great movies, interviewing some of the stars and filmmakers. Then came the COVID impact: Read more…
1) “Chicago P.D.,” 10 p.m., NBC. For Kim (Marina Squerciati, shown here, front, in a previous episode), here’s a potent hour on two fronts. At home, she’s working on adopting a sweet and troubled girl whose mother was murdered. At work, she and other cops start with a body that landed on a car, then get into something much bigger. It’s a solid story and “P.D.” – the best of NBC’s three Chicago shows – does it well. Read more…
1) “Prodigal Son,” 9 p.m., Fox. Last week, a jailbreak set three people free – including Malcolm’s dad, who is both a charming surgeon and a serial killer. Now the search begins, as Malcolm works with a federal marshal (shown here, left), his sister, their mother and the prison doctor (Catherine Zeta-Jones). It’s an intense hour that delivers some surprises – then pushes things ahead to next week. Read more…
New people keep jumping to the streaming side of television … including some who were doing just fine without it.
Now “Girls5Eva” (shown here) arrives Thursday (May 6) on Peacock, mixing brash comedy and bubbly songs. It’s produced by Tina Fey, whose previous shows have prospered on NBC, in movie theaters, even on Broadway.
Why switch to a streaming network? Some people do that so they can use adult material, but this show is “really pretty clean and watchable,” Fey said.
Better reasons? Streamers offer more flexibility in the length of episodes – “which, with music, is a huge help,” said Robert Carlock, Fey’s producing partner – and in the number of them. “You can make a boutique amount of episodes,” Fey said. Read more…
1) “American Masters: Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir,” 9-11 p.m., PBS. Tan (shown here) was a successful business writer, working on “all the subjects I had no interest in.” She was interested in people – and had known some vivid ones. Her sweet-spirited father and brother died of brain tumors, leaving her, she said, as “a very angry girl … with this crazy, suicidal mother.” Later, fictionalizing slightly, she wrote “The Joy Luck Club”; she had a best-seller at 36, with more to follow. Here’s a fascinating proile. Read more…
In the vast void of summer TV, is there a place for new, scripted shows?
We’ll find out this year, when the CW network makes a huge push. This summer, it will start the seasons of eight scripted shows (including “Dead Pixels,” shown here) … return two others after long rests … and continue five spring shows that overlap deep into the summer.
That follows the 2020 slump, when the COVID lockdown crippled networks’ summer schedules.
For this year, networks are planning a return to normal. But that means reality shows – “America’s Got Talent,” “Bachelorette,” “Big Brother,” etc. – plus a pile of ABC games. Broadcast networks are avoiding new, scripted shows in the summer … except for PBS on Sundays and CW almost every day. Read more…
Amy Tan was 15 when her world disintegrated.
“My brother was dying and then my father was dying,” she told the Television Critics Association . “My mother became a little unbalanced … . She and I had many arguments.”
In a six-month stretch, she lost two people to brain cancer; she was soon whisked from California to Switzerland by her mother, who had known previous depths of despair.
Tan, 69, has told versions of these stories often – in “The Joy Luck Club,” which became a best-seller when she was 36 (shown here) in other novels and in non-fiction. Now they’re in an intriguing PBS documemtary Monday (May 3). But alongside all the agony, there’s also a surprising layer of fun. Read more…
1) “The Story of Latenight,” 9 p.m. and midnight ET, CNN. It was almost 60 years ago that TV jumped into the giant, late-night void. After launching “Today,” NBC’s Pat Weaver (Sigourney’s dad) started “Tonight” in 1952. He wanted news and sports; Steve Allen (shown here), the host, preferred comedy, music and talk. The result, one person says, was “chaotic” and “joyous.” When Allen went to prime time, NBC stumbled, then discovered Jack Paar and Johnny Carson … which is where this fun opener ends. Read more…
