When “The Hard Hat Riot” arrives — 9 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 30) on PBS — it will deliver everything we expect from a great documentary.
It has two strong sides, dozens of passionate voices, plenty of conflicting values. In big and small ways, it shows the world transforming.
But the film (shown here) has one other distinction: For now, at least, it’s the second-to-last one aired by the award-winning “American Experience.” Read more…
For TV people, the problem is clear: Their audiences are smaller and older and less-engaged.
And one solution? Try more mysteries.
Americans are pretty good at making mysteries; the British and their colonists are great at it. Such shows — less action, more thinking — can be done on TV’s tightening budgets.
So now there’s an abundance, including two streamers (Acorn and Britbox), the Sunday stronghold on PBS and scattered shows elsewhere.
On Sunday (Sept. 28), PBS wraps up three of its mysteries, including the richly layered “Unforgotten.” The next day, Acorn starts an engrossing six-parter, “Murder Before Evensong” (shown here). The following Sunday (Oct. 5), PBS introduces one of its best shows, “Maigret.” And in between, there’s more, led by Fox’s “Murder in a Small Town” and CBS’ “Elsbeth.” Let’s take a chronological look: Read more…
In old movies and TV shows, we saw journalists like Woodward and Bernstein, Lou Grant and Murphy Brown, Edward R. Murrow and maybe Clark Kent.
Some were fictional, some weren’t. Most were unscarred; they had thriving news organizations backing them.
And now? Meet Lee Raybon (the central figure in the poster here), the jey character in “The Lowdown,” which debuts at 9 and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 23) on FX. He’s battered, bruised and broke; he works free-lance, with no employer to shield him.
“I think that’s all we have left, you know?” writer-director-producer Sterlin Harjo said in a Zoom press conference. “We have citizen journalists.” Read more…
The “Downton Abbey” era began with two rejections. Then came the flip side, with soaring success.
That has included six PBS seasons, 69 Emmy nominations (with 15 wins) and three movies.
The third — “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” (shown here) — is in theaters now; “Downton” fans will love it, others will find it kind of interesting. It wraps up a splendid stretch that began with rejection. Read more…
A new TV season is almost here. But be warned: It will look an awful lot like the old one.
With shrinking ratings and fading profits, the networks tend to stick with what’s already there. This fall, the five big broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW — combine for only four new dramas. Each one (including “Boston Blue, shown here) isa spin-off.
That’s part of a general cutback that began with the pandemic and strikes, then stuck as streamers grabbed bigger chunks of the audience.
In response, the big networks leaned toward game shows and reality shows (lower costs) and sports (the best shot at younger viewers). ABC took back Monday foorball from ESPN and “Dancing With the Stars” from Disney+, also filling Sundays with Disney movies. Fox inserted football on Fridays; beginning Oct. 21, NBC will have pro basketball on Tuesdays. Read more…
(Here’s the second of three season-preview stories. This one focuses on cable and streamers.)
As the big TV networks keep trimming down, others — streamers and a few cable networks — are bulking up.
It all evens out … except that viewers have to juggle and pay for lots of separate things.
Right now, there’s a flurry of returning cable-or-streaming shows, starting with the brilliant “Only Murders in the Building” (shown here), Tuesdays on Hulu. This time, the sorta-sleuths try to see who killed the doorman.
Other key returners include “Reasonable Doubt” (Hulu, Sept. 18), “The Morning Show” (Apple TV+, Sept. 19), “Tulsa King” (Paramount+, Sept. 21), “Slow Horses” (Apple TV+, Sept. 24), “Billy the Kid” (MGM+. Sept. 28), “Loot” (Apple, Oct. 15), “The Diplomat” (Netflix, Oct. 18), “Palm Royale” (Apple, Nov. 12) and more.
But this list involves new shows. Here’s a sampling of scripted series and mini-series on this cable or streaming this fall: Read more…
(This starts a three-story preview of the new season. For this story, we survey new shows on the broadcast networks; next is a cable/streaming round-up.)
It’s almost time for the fall TV season to arrive.
And don’t worry: There aren’t many new shows to keep track of.
If you add up all the new ones on the four big networks, you have three dramas (each of them a spin-off), three game or competition shows and one comedy.
Yes, one comedy (“DMV,” shown here). Let’s hope you don’t need a lot of laughs. Read more…
It’s always handy when job-preparation involves bar-hopping.
That was the case for Emilia Jones, as she prepared for “Task” the intense, seven-week mini-series that stars Mark Ruffalo (shown here) and debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday (Sept. 7) on HBO.
Jones (23 and the star of the Oscar-winning “Coda”) is from England, where people seem to have an entirely different approach to words. Now she was playing someone rooted in the blue-collar traditions of small-town Pennsylvania. With dialect coach Susanne Sulby, she was on a mission.
“Two weeks before we started shooting, Susanne and I would go around bars and listen,” she said by Zoom. That soon felt natural. “It’s really fun; it’s not just an accent, it’s like an energy.” Read more…
Back in the days of “The Office,” Michael Scott gave a talk at a college.
“Paper will always be important,” he said (or some such thing). “Write that down.”
That brought some dutiful click-click-clicks. Students were writing it down on their computers, with no paper in sight.
It was a sign of things to come — including the sometimes-terrific “The Paper” (shown here), which debuts its entire 10-episode season Thursday (Sept. 4) on Peacock. Read more…
Growing up in a “very silly” and very mobile family, Emily Corcoran knew she liked comedy and liked Greece.
She also liked the idea of mismatched half-sisters. Now she’s combined that in “The Sunshine Murders” (shown here), debuting 8-10 p.m. ET Thursday (Sept. 4).
That’s on UpTV, a family-friendly cable channel that juggles reruns, movies and a few shows from other countries. “Heartland” and “Hudson & Rex” are Canadian; “Sunshine” is … well, from Greece, New Zealand, England, Cyprus and beyond.
It follows the recent trend of “cozy crime” shows, ones — from “Elsbeth” to “Grantchester” to “High Potential” — in which the crimes may be foul, but many of the people are warm and pleasant. Read more…
