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It’s a new look for a still-menacing king

For 429 years, actors have been striding onstage to proclaim: “Now is the winter of our discontent.”
Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen did it in movies of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Al Pacino, Mark Rylance, Jose Ferrer and others did it on Broadway. There have been at least 21 productions on Broadway, maybe 21 zillion in England.
Most of the stars have (like the real King Richard III) been male and white. “Four-and-a-half centuries of white dudes – I mean, let’s shake it up a little,” Danai Gurira said to the Television Critics Association.
That’s what she did in a New York Central Park show, which will air at 9 p.m. Friday (May 19) on PBS’ “Great Performances.” Gurira(shown here) – best known as Odeye, the African warrior leader in “Black Panther” movies – is Richard. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 15, 2023

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CW’s solution for summer and fall: O, Canada

Maybe the “C” in the CW network stands for “Canada.” Consider the moves this week:
— One day, CW announced an ambitious summer schedule that includes four scripted shows from Canada, three new and one (“Family Law”) returning.
— The next, it said another Canadian show will be on its fall schedule. “The Spencer Sisters” (shown here) will star Lea Thompson and Stacey Farber as mother-and-daughter detectives. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 12, 2023

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CW loads its summer with new (to Americans) shows

Maybe the CW network didn’t get the worry-about-the-strike memo.
Showing no signs of caution, the mini-network has announced a summer line-up that will be filled with new episodes … or ones that are new to American audiences.
That includes lots of scripted shows – American, British, Australian (shown here) and (especially) Canadian – plus some non-fiction.
With the prospect of a long Writers Guild strike, networks might have been expected to cache away prospects. CBS has announced a fall schedule with only two new shows. During the pandemic, CW used Canadian shows to prop up its fall line-up; that year, Fox delayed two summer shows until fall.
But the new summer plan indicates CW is holding nothing back. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 11, 2023

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Strike quickly jolts broadcast TV

Life, you may have noticed, is rarely fair.
That’s become clear now, as the Writers Guild strike settles in, leaving an uneven impact:
— At one extreme are the movie studios, which pile up scripts and projects far in advance. For now, everything seems unchanged – same superheroes, supervillains, super collisions.
— In the middle are the streamers and a few cable networks. They try for the movie-studio approach.
— At the other end are the commercial broadcast networks. For them, the effects are instant and jolting; Pete Davidson (shown here) was one of the first to be smited. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 9, 2023

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CBS uncancels “SWAT” and adds games

Staring into a foggy future, CBS has made some quick shifts.
Today (May 8) it did something rare – uncanceling a show: “SWAT” (shown here) will be back next season, after all; however, another police drama, “East New York,” will not.
That came after recent moves to add two primetime game shows. Both will be produced and hosted by leading-man types – Josh Duhamel and Jaime Camil.
The games seem to be well-timed: The writers strike is expected to be long-term, leaving networks in need of unscripted shows. The cop-show switch, however, was unusual. The details: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 9, 2023

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“Bridgerton” prequel: some greatness, then very-goodness

In its first hour, the “Bridgerton” prequel seems ready to be a really great show.
It soon retreats into merely being a very good one; it insists on emphasizing – and even expanding — a crisis from history. But that opening hour is a gem.
“Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” (shown here) is a six-parter that arrived recently on Netflix. It maintains the lush look and vivid characters, while jumping between two timelines.
There’s the one we know from the first two “Bridgerton” seasons: King George, descended into madness, is mostly invisible; his wife Charlotte is the unflinching, unsmiling ruler. And there’s this prequel time, when she was 17, heading to marry a king she’d never met. That’s the part that produced three amazing scenes in the first hour: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 6, 2023

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As strike begins, “Dancing” returns to ABC

Let’s think of this as another quick – and unsettling – reaction to the writers’ strike:
ABC announced today (Wednesday) that “Dancing With the Stars” (shown here) will return to the network.
In fact, it will sprawl across three entities: Episodes will air live on ABC and Disney+ , then show up the next day on Hulu.
As the strike began Tuesday, some quick consequences included: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 3, 2023

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As the strike starts, Pete is gone and FBoys are back

On the first day of the writers’ strike, two bits of news seemed especially ominous:
— “Saturday Night Live” is dumping this week’s new episode … and, probably, the rest of the season. It would have been a big night, with Pete Davidson hosting.
— “FBoy Island” – previously a summertime distraction(shown here) – will be in the regular-season line-up for the CW network. So will its spin-off, “FGirl” Island.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 3, 2023

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The coronation: lots of choices, lots of channels

The last time TV covered the coronation of a British monarch, it did a sturdy job.
The pictures were black-and-white and kind of fuzzy, but we got the idea: A young woman we knew little about had become the royal head of a thriving empire.
Since then, TV has had a lot of time – 69 years, 11 months and five days – to improve its work. Now – with crisp, pretty pictures on endless networks – an old man (shown here) we know too much about is crowned as the royal head of a shrinking empire.
The coronation of King Charles III starts at 6 a.m. ET Saturday (May 7) and may last for two hours or so. (Even that is an hour less than the previous one.) Most networks are planning to cover it from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m.; here’s a round-up: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 2, 2023

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“9-1-1” jumps from Fox to ABC

The Fox network will go into next season without two of its top dramas – “The Resident” and “9-1-1.”
For viewers, however, there’s a key difference: “Resident” is apparently finished, but “9-1-1” (shown here) will simply jump to ABC.
Both shows have filmed six seasons and faced the usual tug: Costs nudge up, while ratings stagnate.
Complicating that are two other factors for “9-1-1”; the show is: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 1, 2023