Repeating a trick it learned during the pandemic, ABC will have two reality shows on consecutive nights this fall.
It will be “Dancing With the Stars” on Mondays and an extra “Bachelorette” – right after the summer one – on Tuesdays.
The latter will provide a lead-in for a promising drama-with-music: “Queens” (shown here) at 10 p.m. Tuesdays, has Eve and Brandy in a story of a former hip-hop band, re-uniting. Read more…
Are most of us desperate to rebound, to recover, to have a second chance at life?
The Fox network seems to think so. Introducing his fall line-up to reporters, programming chief Charlie Collier talked of a time for “second chances and re-invention.”
His new shows keep reflecting that: Three women rethink their lives after a friend’s death (“Pivoting”) … A Cambodian doctor rebuilds her life after becoming a cleaning woman for U.S. mobsters (“The Cleaning Lady”) … People desperate for a second chance try a dance show (“The Big Leap,” shown here).
Even a reality show (tucked neatly after “The Masked Singer”) has a re-invention theme: Performers don’t compete as themselves, but as their avatars. Read more…
Tim Allen has been living inside our TV sets for three decades.
He started “Home Improvement” in 1991 and will end “Last Man Standing” (shown here in an early promo photo) at 9 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday (May 20) on Fox)In a 30-year stretch, he spent 17 years with those two shows; also, TV kept rerunning his movies – especially “Galaxy Quest” and all the “Toy Story” and “Santa Clause” tales.
Now Allen’s overload stretch is ending; this will require some adjustment. Read more…
The song “American Anthem” ripples through decades of Denyce Graves’ memories.
She met it 23 years ago, when her friend, composer Gene Scheer, sent it by cassette. Her reaction, she recalls, was instant: “It’s beautiful …. It’s a reflective piece that makes you think about your life.”
So she sang it often – from the a Hillary Clinton event to George W. Bush’s second inauguration. (“I’m a bi-partisan, equal-opportunity singer.”) After the latter, Sen. Joe Biden “came up to me and said, ‘What was that song!?’” Sixteen years later, he would quote it in in own inaugural speech.
Now comes another lofty occasion. From a rooftop overlooking the Capitol, Graves (shown here) sings “American Anthem” for the “National Memorial Day Concert,” at 8 p.m. May 30 on PBS, rerunning at 9:30. Read more…
The CW network is expanding its lone (almost) mission to have new, scripted shows this summer.
The latest step is to add a third season of “The Outpost” (shown here), a modestly budgeted fantasy adventure. That will arrive July 15; also, two Canadian dramas will adjust their debuts slightly: “Burden of Truth” starts its fourth and final season July 30, “Coroner” starts its third on Aug.19.
That’s part of a scripted summer that makes CW unusual in the broadcast (non-cable) world.
Cable networks will have summer scripted shows, as usual. Freeform, for instance, has just announced the starting dates for “Motherland: Fort Salem” (June 22), “Grown-ish” (July 8) and the second half of the “Good Trouble” season (July 14). Its “The Bold Type” will also have a brief, final season, from May 26 to June 30. Read more…
One of the best TV comedies is saying farewell on Thursday (May 13).
But don’t expect a big send-off in the “MASH”/”Seinfeld”/”Big Bang” mode. “Mom” (shown here, 9 p.m., CBS) has spent its eight seasons in a middle ground – usually funny, sometimes poignant, rarely honored.
Its honors have been strictly for Allison Janney, the show’s amazing star – five Emmy nominations and two wins. (There have also been four nominations for editing and one for cinematography.) Read more…
“Sanditon” (shown here) will rise from the dead … again.
It’s a tale that vanished with Jane Austen’s death in 1817. It returned – more than two centuries later – with a lush PBS mini-series … then was abruptly canceled after its first season. Now, more than a year later, comes the surprising news that second and third seasons will eventually be produced. Read more…
When “Saturday Night Live” announced its final hosts of the season, it included one surprise.
Two of them – Keegan-Michael Key on May 15, Anya Taylor-Joy on May 22 – fit the usual mold. He’s an actor/comedian; she’s an actress.
But first, on May 8 (with Miley Cyrus as music guest) is Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame. And that breaks a long trend of using only singers, actors or comedians.
The last layman (as we’ll call him) hosting was football’s J.J. Watt; that was 15 months ago. Before that, the last ones were basketball’s Charles Barkley in 2018 … and, alas, Donald Trump in 2015. 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…
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…
