Stories

Stories

A quick tour of new shows on big-four networks

For the big-four TV networks, it all starts Monday (Sept. 23)
.Over the next week, they’ll introduce 13 new fall shows (including “The Unicorn,” shown here), with the final three arriving a week later.
Here’s a round-up of those 16, all starting Sept. 23-29, except where noted. We’ll have a separate story on the CW network, which starts two weeks later. The others – PBS cable, streaming – have been busy year-around and we’ve had ongoing coverage. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 18, 2019
Stories

Here’s an epic, big-tent view of country music

To understand the big-tent view of Ken Burns’ “Country Music,” let’s step back 46 years
It’s May of 1973, at the Michigan State University Auditorium. The concert has the Eagles … and Gram Parsons (with Emmylou Harris) … and Lester Flatt (with Marty Stuart).
Really. The guy from the Byrds … and the band that would make “Life In the Fast Lane” … and the guy whose mandolin propelled “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Tickets ($7) included a second night, with Quicksilver, Canned Heat and REO Speedwagon.
It was, Stuart (shown here) said, “the first time I saw rock and roll and bluegrass and honky tonk and folk music and gospel music collide …. I remember thinking, ‘It can all exist under the umbrella of country music.’” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 11, 2019
Stories

Raul Julia’s life was a passionate party

Raul Julia reached New York in 1964, a time when people made easy assumptions.
He was an actor from Puerto Rico; surely, that meant lots of street-smart roles. One talk-show host said she’d heard he didn’t speak English when he got there.
“Of course he spoke English,” theater director Oskar Eustis said. “He spoke beautiful English.”
Julia (shown here) – the subject of a PBS profile Friday — grew up around English-speaking teachers. He was college-educated, Shakespeare-trained. “He was very well-educated …. Latinos don’t (only) come under stressful conditions,” actor Esai Morales said. “We are not always struggling to survive.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 10, 2019
Stories

Tamron: Texan tackles talk turf

Tamron Hall had just blitzed through a rich range of subjects.
She’d invoked the talk-show masters – Oprah and Donahue – plus Mike Douglas and more. She’d ranged from the nobility of her sharecropper grandfather to the day she hung up on her friend Prince.
But she also surprised us cinematically: Her favorite movie now is “Shrek”; her “favorite growing up was ‘Rocky,’ because he got up.”
That’s what she’s done: She got up from her low point – NBC gave her morning hour to Megyn Kelley – and now has a syndicated show, starting Sept. 9 (see www.tamronhallshow.com). Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 7, 2019
Stories

Bradys make retro a pop-artform

Let’s designate this as the ultimate tourist experience:
One day in 2011, Susan Olsen says, a bus had stopped outside the house that used to be shown as the exterior of the “Brady Bunch” home. Tourists looked around at … well, not much. And then …
“The ‘Wienermobile’ pulled up and Cindy Brady got out.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 6, 2019
Stories

Valerie Harper: Some fun memories coming

Memories of Valerie Harper – fun ones, funny ones – will reach digital TV over the next few days.
The reruns are from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda,” Both shows seemed to share the upbeat approach of Harper, who died Friday (Aug. 30) at 80.
“I had a very positive mom,” she said in 2014, adding: “I’ve always thought that life is here to have fun and to meet people …. But this really brings you up short, when you hear that you have limited time.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 4, 2019
Stories

TV wrestling starts a rowdy new era

A generation ago, Teal Piper (shown here) recalls, wrestling didn’t seem like an equal-opportunity workplace.
“Women were really accessories to the men,” she said. They were there for sex appeal.
She once expressed that opinion to her father – possibly in a snarky, teenager way. “He just let me have it.” He slammed his fist, broke the table, and lectured that women work twice as hard.
It should be mentioned that her dad, the late wrestling star Rowdy Roddy Piper, had table-thumping strength plus social consciousness. “He had three daughters and he was a feminist at heart.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 2, 2019
Stories

Wu-Tang: Urban sound, built on Carolina dreams

By the time he was a teenager, Rza would be immersed in New York’s hip-hop scene.
He would eventually be linked with Method Man and Ghostface Killah and Ol’ Dirty Bastard and more. He would create Wu-Tang Clan (shown here), the powerhouse group depicted in a new Hulu series
.But some of the first poetry he heard wasn’t rap … and he wasn’t in New York … and he wasn’t Rza. He was Bobby Diggs, living in North Carolina and listening to his uncle.“
He spoke in song, nursery rhymes all day,” Rza said. “Or old folk tales.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / September 1, 2019
Stories

“Mayans” lures all outsiders … even non-violent ones

Few of us have ever been in a Latino motorcycle club, it seems.
Fewer have shot a person, much less dismembered one. Even fewer have killed with our bare hands.
Then why is it that we easily relate to “Mayans M.C.,” which starts its second season Tuesday?
It’s all about “the things we didn’t get,” said Kurt Sutter, the show’s co-creator, “whether it’s love, camaraderie or brotherhood or justice.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 30, 2019