Fame reached Sheryl Crow (shown here) at its own odd pace. It was slow and gradual … and then came in one big whoosh.
“There is no handbook for becoming famous when you’re a really private, small-town person,” she told the Television Critics Association. “It was emotional; it was exhausting.”
She’s still sorting it out in “Sheryl,” an involving documentary that debuts at 9 p.m. Friday (May 6) on Showtime. Read more…
Life is different, Stephen McGann has found, when you’re married to an in-demand TV writer.
Books keep arriving, in hopes that Heidi Thomas will adapt them. They form “the growing mountain of night-time reading we stack by our bedside,” McGann wrote in “Call the Midwife: A Labour of Love” (2022, Neal Street Productions).
Thomas reads fast and discards quickly. But a dozen years ago, she announced: “You know, I think I might be able to do something with this.”
The result is “Call the Midwife” (shown here with McGann and Max Mcmillan, who plays his son),now at a key point: Previous episodes are at www.pbs.org and the 11th-season finale is at 8 p.m. Sunday (May 8) on PBS: Last week, a crash left three people on a train, near death — Sister Julienne and a former patient … and Dr. Turner, played by McGann. Read more…
Donna Schmidt realized she was in an alternate universe.
Her daughter Rachel went to Lowell, the high-achievers’ San Francisco high school that’s now featured in a compelling PBS documentary (shown here). Everything was sort of backwards.
In other schools, kids might toss their books in a corner for the weekend and focus on leisure. Not Rachel or her classmates.
“Friday, when she gets home, she would start studying,” Schmidt told the Television Critics Association, in a press conference for “Try Harder!” (10 p.m. Monday, May 2, on PBS, under the “Independent Lens” banner). “That was just the weirdest thing …. So that’s (my) Friday, too.” Read more…
Vanessa Bayer manages to see the bright side of things – including childhood leukemia.
“I was able to get a lot of perks from it,” she told the Television Critics Association. Indirectly, that led to “I Love That For You,” at 8:30 p.m. Sundays on Showtime, starting May 1.
Bayer (shown here) plays a cancer survivor, stretching for her dream job, at a home-shopping network. In real life, her dream job (seven years on “Saturday Night Live”) came after survival.
“I had leukemia when I was 15,” she said. She’s fine now … and she’s mastered the art of making the best of something. Read more…
Back in 1972, Paramount Pictures was wobbling.
It had made three big-budget musicals, but not the good ones … and three Neil Simon comedies, but not the funny ones … and some youth-oriented films, but not the famous ones. It had scored with “Love Story,” flopped with others and needed a break; it got it with “The Godfather.”
And a half-century later? The Paramount+ streaming service and cable’s Paramount Network have had modest starts. One solution – again – is “The Godfather.” On Thursday, Paramount+ starts “The Offer” (shown here) a 10-part mini-series about the making of the film; that weekend, the cable network has both the film and its sequel – 7 and 11 p.m. Saturday, 4 and 7:45 p.m. Sunday
“I watched (‘The Godfather’) before I was a teenager and it deeply affected me,” Juno Temple, one of the “Offer” stars, told the Television Critics Association. “I have such a romanticism of Hollywood’s past.” Read more…
This is the sort of role actors might dream of.
It’s a guy who knows nothing … then, gradually, knows everything. He’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” in a series (shown here) debuting at 10 p.m. Sunday (April 24) on Showtime. And he’s also a master mimic.
“One of the things that was really exciting … is just the variety of it,” said Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays him. It was a giant challenge, for a guy who could have chosen a different life.
In her comedy act, Gina Yashere (the “Bob Hearts Abishola” co-creator and co-star) used to say: “In a Nigerian family, there are only four choices of jobs – doctor, lawyer, engineer, disgrace to the family.” Read more…
As the 1980s began, Los Angles had a surplus of flash and fury.
There was movie magic, music magic and … well, regular magic. What was missing was something on the sports side; then Earvin “Magic” Johnson (shown here) joined the Los Angeles Lakers.
The result? Four decades later, “he’s still the most popular athlete in Los Angeles,” Jimmy Kimmel says in “They Call Me Magic,” the four-part documentary that debuts Friday (April 22) on Apple TV+.
Others in the film have their own adjectives. Johnson is “mythological” (Samuel L. Jackson) … His passes “make it seem like he’s clairvoyant” (Kareem Abdul-Jabar) … “He was an oxymoron; he could play any position” (former Laker Coach Pat Riley) … And “he played with such joy” (Grant Hill). Read more…
The first Earth Day of the Covid years brought a bright-eyed, bright-skies novelty. In Northern India, for instance, people were delighted; for the first time, they could see the Himalayas.
The second pandemic Earth Day even brought a film about slowed-down world: “The Year the Earth Changed” saw nature rebounding vibrantly.
Now comes the third one (shown here with climber Alex Honnold on Disney+). Filmmaking has been difficult, but there’s still a big, ambitious line-up — see separate list under “news and quick comments” — on PBS and the streaming channels. Read more…
As the new “Mayans M.C.” season booms onto the screen, it seems a bit like a newsreel from the Ukraine.
Here are the bikers, outgunned and outmanned, clinging to their home. They have Molotov cocktails, makeshift shields and desperation.
These scenes (10 p.m. Tuesday, April 19, on FX) were filmed before the Ukraine war, but they remind us that fact inspires fiction. Consider: Read more…
For most shows, this would have been simple:
One of the actors couldn’t get there, due to Covic concerns. It was time to write her out and move on.
But that’s not how “Better Things” (shown here) works. For its final season, it took elaborate steps — peaking with an episode that airs at 10 p.m. Monday (April 18), then moves to Hulu. “This would have been woefully incomplete without it,” Adlon said in a Television Critics Association virtual press conference. Read more…
