LOS ANGELES — The nice thing about being an upscale chef is that the food is already there.
It’s in the pantry and the freezer; you just mix it and cook it and such.
But Gordon Ramsay’s new show is a little like his Scottish boyhood, in which he had to catch the food first. Or steal it.
“My father couldn’t afford fishing rights,” Ramsay recalled.”So we were poaching; we were stealing salmon.” Read more…
LOS ANGELES – Imagine a baseball team shedding superstars.
Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle all retire … just as the manager is told to play more games with more people.That’s HBO now.
Gone are “Game of Thrones” (shown here) — with 32 Emmy nominations, a dozen more than any other show – plus “Veep” and “Big Little Lies.” The pilot has been shot for a “Thrones” prequel, progamming chief Casey Bloys told the Television Critics Association, but there have been no plans for a third “Lies” season.
This comes just after HBO got corporate instructions to have more shows on more nights. “The big challenge … was to make sure we weren’t just filling hours to fill hours,” Bloys said.
So far, that seems to be working. After averaging just over 100 hours of original shows in most seasons, HBO will finish this year with 150; next year, it may have 160. That means: Read more…
LOS ANGELES — We’ve all been in this situation, sort of:
A shark has bitten a chunk out of our boat, which is slowly sinking. This happens to be the world’s largest great white shark – 20 feet and 2.5 tons; also, a couple 15-footers were nearby
.That moment in Hawaii is being shown – and re-shown – in cable’s “Sharkfest/Shark Week” marathon. What thoughts were racing through the mind of Kimberly Jeffries (shown here) at the time?
“I was thinking, ‘This is going to be really expensive to fix,’” she said. Read more…
When “Bachelorette” has its finale July 30, some viewers might be skeptical.
Does it really matter? Do the couples ever stay together?
Hardly ever, when the guy is in charge. But sometimes, when the woman makes the choice – as we see in a different show, “Cash Pad,” that same night. Consider: Read more…
For “Masterpiece” fans, waiting for the new vicar is like waiting for Halley’s Comet or a Cubs pennant.It takes patience … but yes, it’s worth it.
On July 28 – in the season’s third week and fourth episode – Tom Brittney finally takes over as Will Davenport, the crimesolving vicar in a little English village. He replaces James Norton, who had finished his three-year contract and stayed for some transition episodes.
In some ways, it might not seem like a big change. Both stars are tall, handsome and young; Norton is 34, Brittney is 28.But this is set at a time when a few years seemed like a new generation.
“I represent this sort of youth coming in at the end of the ’50s – the rock ‘n’ roll, leather-jacket-wearing, motorbike-riding, Elvis-listening people,” Brittney said. Read more…
There are some ways in which great white sharks are different from Victorian-era poets.
Well, there are probably a lot of ways, but we’ll settle on these:
— Poets, like other mammals, reach full size by early adulthood; sharks, like other fish, don’t. “They never stop growing,” said Chris Lowe, a marine biology professor featured in cable’s “Sharkfest.”
— We already know most of the details about old poets; great whites are another matter. “Biologists thought they were coastal,” Lowe said. “Boy were we wrong about that.” Read more…
At times, the calendar can be our friend.T
hat’s the case with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. It falls on a Saturday (July 20), meaning:
— More people will be available. Families can snuggle together … as families did a half-century ago.
— And this is a low point – a mid-summer Saturday – for viewers. There are fewer distractions. With that in mind, here’s a round-up of Saturday choices. Read more…
As the new “Suits” season arrives, viewers can brace for a fresh blitz of lawyer words.
The concepts bounce around; actors have to seem like they’re cozy with them.
“When you’re doing ‘techno-babble’ – which is what we used to call it – you have to make sure you understand it,” said Denise Crosby (shown here), the new “Suits” antagonist.
And yes, she’s worked with some of the best babblers of tangled techno. She was Tasha Yar, the security officer in the first year of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” After the character died, she’s been Yar’s daughter … and her grandmother (in a fan-fiction film) … and, due to time travel, Yar herself. Read more…
This isn’t your usual TV-comedy turf. There’s no supersized apartment, no superfun job, no expectations.
“Florida Girls” has four women sharing a messy home and a messy life. They’re about 25, almost a decade after dropping out of school.
There used to be five of them, but Mandy went upscale. She got her GED, got a job, moved out and goes by Amanda. Read more…
As moon-landing films fill our TV screens, something becomes clear:
The world has changed profoundly in the past 50 years. These documentaries show a 1969 when:
— Americans obsessed on the Soviet threat. It “really was kind of war by another means,” said Robert Stone, whose three-night film starts Monday (July 8) on PBS.
— The space program was all-white. It went 23 years before having a black man in space.
— And it was virtually all-male (as shown in this celebration photo). You can ask Poppy Northcutt, who was then the lone woman at Mission Control. Read more…
