Stories

Glamor is back; so is sleazy Cecil

It’s not easy being the sleaziest guy on PBS.
Some people silently scowl at you; some aren’t silent. Just ask Mark Umbers, -whose third season of “Hotel Portofino” starts at 8 p.m., Sunday, July 28.(He’s shown here as Cecil Ainsworth, feigning contentment with his wife Bella.)
One friend-of-a-friend bumped into him in London, he recalled. “She couldn’t talk tp me,. She said, ‘I’ve seen your show. You’re very triggering’ And she just walked away.”
It’s logical to walk away from Cecil, but not from Umbers. In real life, he seems to be a charming chap. He’s not an elitist jerk, but he plays one on TV; he also has a jerk-adjacent resume — prep school and Oxford, majoring in Latin and in Greek literature and history. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 22, 2024

Stories

Newhart: Yes, a really funny accountant

(This updates the obit/appreciation that I posted earlier)
There’s a logical question people ask: “What’s (so-and-so) really like?”
Often, there’s no good answer, but for Bob Newhart – who died Thursday (July 19), at 94 – it’s simple: He’s exactly like … well, Bob Newhart.
Few people have had so much success wrapping a stage personality around a real one. He kept playing a quiet Midwestern accountant, surrounded by a noisier world. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 19, 2024

Stories

Convention viewing: small sip or supersized

These days, viewers can try three sizes of convention coverage. There’s:
— The big gulp. PBS (shown here) has three hours (8-11 p.m.ET,, through Thursday) of gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Republican convention. So do the cable and digital news channels.
— Small sips – an hour a night, starting at 10 ET. That’s on ABC, CBS and NBC (which adds a 9 p.m. hour on Wednesday and Thursday).
“We gave much more time to the conventions” in the old days, Andrew Lack — a network news executive from 1976 to 2001 – told the Television Critics Association. That gave networks room “for more reporting that they could share with the public over a longer period of time.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 16, 2024

Stories

PBS’ fast start this fall: mysteries, elections, Hispanic history

While the broadcast networks get off to a semi-groggy start this fall, PBS will be busy quickly.
Its three-mystery Sundays will start Sept. 15, centering on “Moonflower Murders” (shown hare), witty sequel to the 2022 “Magie Murders.” Some of its non-fiction shows start that week, with an early emphasis on the elections.
A few hings will arrive even earlier, including a profile of writer-director Blake Edwards (“Pink Panther,” “10”) on Aug. 28. Like the late Edwards, it managed to be funny and joyous, with moments of morose depth.
And some will be late. Sara Bareilles will star in her “Waitress” musical on Nov. 15. Three days later, PBS starts Ken Burns’ “Leonardo Da Vinci,” a richly detailed, two-night, four-hour film Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 15, 2024

Stories

No retreat: FX plans a one-of-each fall

With some basic-cable channels in full retreat, FX remains fairly ambitious.
The network has set a plan for this fall with one of everything, It has an edgy comedy, a one-shot documentary, a documentary mini-series, a scripted mini-series and the return of the fierce drama, “The Old Man” (shown hre in its first season).
As streaming grows and cable declines, many key channels – TNT, TBS, USA, etc. — have been dropping scripted shows. Even FX Productions makes some shows — “The Bear,” “Reservation Dogs,” “Clipped,” etc. — that are only for Hulu, not for the FX network.
But there are still some key shows that will air first on FX, reaching Hulu the next day. Chronologically, they include: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 10, 2024

Stories

These movie masters started with micro-budgets

Where do the great filmmakers come from?
Baseball has its minor leagues, NASCAR has county fairgrounds, music has juke joints and dive bars. And for a time, filmmakers had Roger Corman.
Now that will be noted in a cable marathon. In eight hours (starting at 8 p.m. ET, July 17), Turner Classic Movies has the first films of Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme and Peter Bogdanovich (whose “Targets,” with Boris Karloff, is shown here). Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 9, 2024

Stories

Here comes TV’s summer, Part II

No one seems to agree on when summer starts.
Many people say June, but the TV networks disagree. Two (NBC and Fox) started their summers in May; the others aited until July.
So now we get a mid-summer surge on ABC and CBS. It includes new seasons of– five game shows, plus “Big Brother” (shown here from last season), “The Bachelorette,” a light-hearted judge show and even a few specials. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 5, 2024

Stories

He was a micro-budget movie master

Hollywood has people who think big, talk big, spend big. Budgets soar.
But then there was Roger Corman, who died last month at 98. He made kinda-good movies on really awful budgets. Now they’re featured in three Wednesday marathons on Turner Classic Movies.
Wedged into 28 hours on July 3, 10 and 17 will be 18 movies – some of them scary (including “Masque of the Red Death,” shown here) some of them frantic, none of them expensive. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 1, 2024

Stories

Her voice soars into 4th-of-July and beyond

Loren Allred’s life has swirled with contrasts.
She went from the grunge world of Pittsburgh to the grunge-less world of Salt Lake City. She went from classical music to stadium-style pop.
Now there’s a bigger change: Allred, 34, used to say she was introverted, a backstage soul; she was the unseen mega-voice in “The Greatest Showman.” But on July 4, she’ll be on PBS’ “A Capitol Fourth,” singing to maybe a half-million people in person and more on TV..
“I really believe in exposure therapy.” Allred said with a laugh. Exposed to big audiences, she slowly transformed. “Now I actually enjoy it.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 28, 2024

Stories

It’s a sunny tale with Spanish flavor

At times, the streaming world seems full of sad souls and crumbling kingdoms. Eva Longoria decided to go another way.
“We’ve had a wave of dystopian shows and I’m always, ‘Ugh, I’m so depressed,” she told the Television Critics Associatdion.
So she stars in “Land of Women,” a six-parter (the poster is shown here) that starts Wednesday (June 26) on Apple TV+. “This show is so blue-skies, it’s so escapism,” she said, inspiring viewers to think: “I want to go to Spain and drink wine.”
Which is what she did. She went to Peralada, a winemaking village of 1,860 people, in Spain’s Catelonia region. There, the film crew dictated the pace. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 19, 2024