Wayne Brady now has his comedy six-pack – one of the youngest comedy groups ever.
How young? All six together are 92 years old … still, for instance, five years younger than comedy producer Norman Lear.
Those teens were picked for “Wayne Brady’s Comedy IQ,” at 8 p.m. ET Mondays on BYU TV, a cable and streaming channel. In the opener, Brady worked with a dozen kids, before picking his six. Read more…
Back in 1972, the American society seemed to be transforming.
“You just had the Civil Rights Act and the Pay Equity Act,” said Cate Blanchett (shown here), who produced and stars in “Mrs. America,” an ambitious mini-series. “So there was already change afoot.”
The next step was the Equal Rights Amendment. It seemed easy, said director Ryan Fleck. “It had Republican support, it had Democratic support – which is sort of unheard of nowadays.
The ERA sailed through the House, 354-24 and through the Senate, 84-8. Hawaii ratified it that same day, Delaware and New Hampshire the next day, Iowa and Idaho the day after that. Then Phyllis Schlafly stepped in. That’s what “Mrs. America” is about. Read more…
The music world keeps juggling genres and descriptions. It has rock and rap and R-&-B, hip hop and pop and more.
But at their roots, some people say, is gospel music in general and the Clark Sisters in particular. “I may rap,” Queen Latifah said, “but I got Clark in my heart.”
Others agreed. “I sing R&B music,” Shelea Frazier said, “but gospel is a lifestyle. So I’m always going to sing in the name of Jesus.”
That makes their movie (shown here) logical for this weekend. Lifetime will debut “The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel” on Saturday, then repeat it twice on Easter Sunday. Read more…
Our TV sets have a new function this weekend: They can be portals to a virtual Easter.
Other years have had plenty of Easter shows, but they didn’t seem as necessary. People went to church and to family gatherings and more.
This year, however, many churches are closed, sending their services online. TV has a bigger role.
The broadcast networks do a little. ABC has already had its annual “Ten Commandments”; NBC came up with a late addition: At 7 p.m. Sunday, it will rerun its “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert,” an ambitious production with John Legend, Sara Bareilles, Alice Cooper and lots of Broadway stars. Read more…
Two long-running comedies say farewell this week.
One is much-loved, one much-liked. Both will be greatly missed. And together, they show how life (especially TV life) has changed in a decade or so.
Planning “Modern Family” in 2009, producers decided to start with a gay couple adopting a baby. “I remember saying to Chris (Lloyd), ‘Well, there goes Middle America,’” Steve Levitan recalled.
Now jump ahead 11 years: When “Schitt’s Creek” closes its season Tuesday, the entire focus will be on the wedding of David (Dan Levy) and Patrick (Noah Reid), shown here. Read more…
When the “Modern Family” cast first assembled, Jesse Tyler Ferguson was surrounded by strangers.
The auditions had been separate, he told the Television Critic Association in January. Now he was meeting his fictional family.
“I remember Sofia (Vergara) giving everyone hugs. I was like, ‘This is the nicest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my entire life. And she (plays) my stepmother.’”
They would continue for more than a decade. Ten-and-half years after the opening episode (shown here) debuted, “Modern Family” ends its run Wednesday on ABC Read more…
As the world began its slowdown and shutdown, some people made modest changes.
Wayne Brady, however, required a full attitude adjustment. For decades, he seemed to be in a state of perpetual overemployment.
It was just two months ago, at a Television Critics Association session, that people were asking him about that. “Man, me got 15 jobs,” Brady(shown here winning “Masked Singer”) joked. “What you talking about?”
Now that “15” is closer to zero, but we still see him everywhere, from CBS (already-taped episodes of “Let’s Make a Deal” and “The Neighborhood”) to CW (“Whose Line Is It Anyway” reruns) to BYU TV, where “Wayne Brady’s Comedy IQ” is on Mondays, molding teens into a sketch-comedy troupe. Read more…
As Europe began crumbling in 1939, a new generation was jolted.
That’s true of the fictional characters at the core of “World on Fire,” the sweeping mini-series that starts Sunday (April 5) on PBS.
“They were all kids, … going through the kinds of things that we go through now – friendship and heartbreak and falling in love and making these terrible mistakes,” said Jonah Hauer-King (shown here with Zofia Wichlacz), who stars. “But the stakes were so high.” Read more…
At 63, George Keays seemed to have an enviable life – good health, great setting, solid finances.
He had retired as a telecom executive and returned to his previous field of real estate. He lived in Boulder, Colo., a place that emphasizes outdoor living.
“I was a healthy person” who never smoked, he told the Television Critics Association in January. “I have run a marathon. I have always been exercising regularly, eating right.”
Then doctors said he had stage-4 lung cancer, with little time left. “They were ‘six to nine months.’”
That was four years ago. Now Keays is featured in “Cuba’s Cancer Hope” (shown here) a “Nova” documentary (9 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, on PBS) that includes some American doctors who were startled by the island’s medical progress Read more…
This isn’t what a filmmaker expects her mother to say at a premiere.
Nanfu Wang was presenting “One Child Nation,” which would go on to big things. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and debuts Monday (March 30) on PBS.
The film takes a fierce look at the policy that dominated China for 36 years, using everything from propoganda (shown here) to punishment, limiting families to one (and in some cases two) children. It offered horror stories of forced sterilizations and abortions, of children abandoned or sold.
American audiences tend to be horrified. And the reaction of Wang’s mother, who was a Chinese villager during the that era? “At the premiere Q&A, somebody asked her what she thought about it,” Wang said. “And she said, ‘Well, I think the film is great …. But I still believe the one-child policy was necessary.’ And that was surprising to me and surprising to everyone.” Read more…
