Year: 2019

News and Quick Comments

Back to brevity with the clever “Back to Life”

Living in the land of bulk, American TV series want to go mega. Seven seasons, at 22 episodes a year, will do fine.
But British TV comes in all sizes. The latest example is “Back to Life,” the splendid little Showtime series. It debuts at 10 and 10:30 p.m. Nov. 10 (five weeks later than originally scheduled) and its first season has only six half-hour episodes
.That’s three hours total. The whole series is an hour shorter than “Cleopatra,” even 39 minutes shorter than “Heaven’s Gate.” In that time, we get drama, comedy and a big finish. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / November 2, 2019
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Nov. 4: Master minds collide

1) “Jeopardy,” check local listings. James Holzhauer stirred fresh interest in a show that’s been around for 55 years. He won 32 straight nights and amassed $2.46 million, close to the non-tourney record of Ken Jennings ($2.52 million, with 75 wins). Then Emma Boettcher, a young librarian, beat him; she won twice more, totaling $98,000. Now the two-week “Tournament of Champions” begins. The schedule has him on Wednesday and her on Thursday; they could collide next week. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / November 2, 2019
Stories

It’s typecasting … in a good way

For Auli’i Cravalho (shown here), this is a pleasant bit of type-casting. She’s in a water-y life – again.
She had the title role in “Moana,” as an adventurous islander; now it’s “Little Mermaid Live.”
In real life, Cravalho hasn’t, to our knowledge, taken a solo ocean trip in search of a legendary demigod, as Moana did. Or collected artifacts in an undersea kingdom, as Ariel the mermaid did.
But she is Hawaiian, which makes her close to both. “(I) grew up maybe 20 minutes from beach,” she said, “so I would say I was pretty water-active as a kid.”
Read more…

By Mike Hughes / November 1, 2019
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Nov. 3: Farewell to “Durrells” and “Affair”

1) “The Durrells in Corfu” finale, 8 p.m., PBS. This has been an amiable, four-season run, following the real people described in Gerald Durrell’s books. Widowed and broke, Louisa moved with her four children to a Greek island in the 1930s. Now their boarding house is doing fine, their lives are settled … but the Germans have invaded Albania, just two miles away. Larry has returned home, Margo is on the way and Louisa scrambles anew, in a well-crafted farewell episode. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / November 1, 2019
Weekly Previews

Week’s top-10 for Nov. 4: Fox is back; so are musicals

1) “The Resident,” 8 p.m. Tuesday, Fox. When the World Series went a full seven games, we lost two Tuesdays and Wednesdays on Fox. Now they’re back, starting here with airline troubles – a pilot with a drinking problem; a tough flight for Dr. Bell. Some hospital scenes are cliché (the patient resisting treatment) or unlikely (mid-surgery sniping), but the non-medical scenes are excellent: Mina ponders fresh responsibility; The Raptor (Malcolm-Jamal Warner, shown here in a previous episode) hesitantly considers meeting his birth mother. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 31, 2019
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Nov. 2: Kristen Stewart, all day

1) “Twilight Saga” and/or “Saturday Night Live.” Clearly, this is Kristen Stewart’s day. The entire saga – in which she finds love and/or lust with a vampire and a werewolf – is on the Paramount Network at noon and 3, 6, 9 and 11:30 p.m. And if you skip that last one, you can see her second time as “SNL” host, at 11:29 p.m. on NBC; Coldplay is the music guest. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 31, 2019
Stories

Life after “Thrones”? HBO has epic scale … and Lin-Manuel

(For HBO, this is the post-“Thrones” era. “Game of Thrones” — shown here — is gone; one of its prequels has been nixed. The next epic fantasy? There’s “Watchmen” at 9 p.m. Sunday and now “His Dark Materials,” debuting at 9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4. Here’s a look at Lin-Manuel Miranda — yes, the “Hamilton” guy — who is the show’s co-star and its superfan.)
By Mike Hughes
Lin-Manuel Miranda was talking to TV critics, which was familiar turf.
He had met the Television Critics Association back in 2013, when he was the co-star of … well, something or other
“The legendary ‘Do No Harm’ … The lowest-rated show in the history of NBC,” Miranda recalled.
Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 31, 2019
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Nov. 1: The streaming war heats up

1) “The Morning Show,” any time, Apple TV+. A new streaming service is born – with an even newer (and bigger) one looming. Unlike other streamers, Apple doesn’t have a backlog of classic shows. What it has, however, is starpower. “Morning Show” has Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Another series — “For All Mankind,” imagining an accelerated NASA – is from Ronald Moore, the “Outlander” and “Battlestar: Galactica” producer. And Disney’s streamer will follow on Nov. 12. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 30, 2019
Stories

A musical surge begins

Every now and then, TV remembers one of its highest callings – to give us full-scale musicals.
Then it forgets again, sometimes for years. But now comes a spurt; there are three musicals in eight days, covering a rich range
On Friday (Nov. 1), PBS has the relentlessly giddy “42nd Street.” The songs are peppy, the dancing is zesty and the story … well, no one tried to improve on the 1933 movie this is based on.
A week later, it has the exact opposite with “The King and I” (shown here). Once you get past the lush music and costumes, you have the serious story of a 19th-century despot. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 29, 2019
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Oct. 31: Laughs or gore on Halloween

1) “The Good Place,” 9 p.m., NBC. Ratings go down a tad on Halloween, so CBS’ comedies have reruns tonight. Not so with the NBC ones, which are new. “Superstore” and “Perfect Harmony” (8 and 8:30 p.m.) have Halloween episodes, big and busy and intermittently funny. Avoiding the holiday are “Will & Grace” (9:30) and this show, which has lunk-headed Brent writing an awful novel. It’s a clever episode, punctuated by wonderfully stylized moments in which Michael (Ted Danson, shown here) tells the story to Bad Janet. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 29, 2019