Stories

Quirky series leads (slowly) to cable success

Imagine you’re a young writer/actor, long on ideas and short on opportunity.
You could take the approach of Brian Jordan Alvarez. He made a quirky, low-budget digital series; praise and a big-time cable series followed promptly.
Well, semi-promptly. Alvarez’s “English Teacher” (shown here) debuts at 10 p.m. ET Monday (Sept. 2) on FX … eight years after his “The Gay and Wonderful Life of Caleb Gallo” was named the year’s best web series.
“I had sort of tried to make my way through the studio system,” said Alvarez, 37. “And I had failed in a variety of ways. I really couldn’t figure out how to get through it.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 28, 2024

Stories

Suddenly, Netflix has a trove of AMC dramas

For Netflix viewers, this is an unexpected bonanza.
On Monday (Aug. 19), they’ll suddenly add 13 series. Most are pretty good; some are sort of great.
All arrive from the AMC cable network, for a one-year stay on Netflix. That includes “Walking Dead” and Anne Rice tales (including “Interview With the Vampire,” shown here), plus others – “Dark Winds,” “Monsieur Spade” – that are less-known, but beautifully crafted.
Their journey tells a lot about recent TV changes: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 16, 2024

Stories

“Baywatch”: no sonnets, but great bodies

David Chokachi summed up his duties with admirable accuracy.
“We weren’t … doing Shakespeare.” he said. “We were doing ‘Baywatch.’”
Yes, there’s a difference, “Baywatch” (shown here) had no sonnets or soliloquies, but lots of running, rescuing and red swimwear.
Sometimes, that’s enough. “It succeeded beyond everybody’s expectation,” Chokachi told the Television Critics Association. “A billion viewers – we’re in the Guinness Book of World Records.”
It also influenced people’s decisions – geographic, vocational and more. Just ask Matthew Felker, who directed “After Baywatch,” a documentary arriving Aug. 27 on Hulu. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 13, 2024

Stories

Hallmark joins the plus party, in a big way

No one would accuse Hallmark of being trendy or jumpy.
The company has been around for 114 years, still family-owned. For years, its cable channels seemed to keep re-making the same movie.
But now it’s joining TV’s biggest trend – streaming services with a “+” in their names. And it’s doing it in a surprisingly ambitious way with everything from a mini-series (“Holidazed, shown here with Erin Cahill) to reality shows.
“Hallmark+ will be more than just a streaming platform,” Mike Perry, the Hallmark CEO, said. “It will be the very best of Hallmark all in one place.”
Details arrived Aug. 14 (see separate story), but the general idea was sketched earlier, at Television Critics Association sessions:
Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 10, 2024

Stories

Counting the votes? Here (really) is bipartisan consensus

As the election nears, we can fret about all the ways that vote-counts can go wrong. Or we can marvel that they rarely do.
“Think about what a miracle an election is,” said David Becker, head of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “We count 160 million pieces of paper” and do it “exceptionally fast.”
And it’s done in a wildly decentralized way. “We practice a fierce federalism,” said Ralph Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer for 40 years.
Each state sets its own rules, often leaving room for local variations. The result, Becker said, is “a system of 10,000 different jurisdictions and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.”
They were talking to the Television Critics Association about “Counting the Vote,” a Margaret Hoover (shown here) film that airs Aug. 27 on PBS. And this was a truly bi-partisan collection. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 6, 2024

Stories

Enough dragons; it’s time to face bankers

Kit Harington has sort of been here before – in a sprawling HBO series, filled with ambitious souls straining for power.
This time, however, there are fewer dragons and less danger. Banks are like that.
His first film role, as Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones,” flung him into stardom. Now Harington (shown here, right) joins “Industry,” which is set in the upper-tier world of British banking. It starts its third season at 9 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 11) on HBO and Max.
He’s Sir Henry Muck, CEO of a tech firm. The role is “very much about the British class system,” said Harington, who grew up in upper-class comfort. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 5, 2024

Stories

Faith-based films begin a Saturday surge

In the midst of TV’s late-summer blahs, the Great American Family cable channel has a new-movie spree.
It will have a new, faith-based film at 8 p.m. ET for six straight Saturdays. That starts Aug. 3, with one starring Carlos and Alexa PenaVega (shown here), a married duo that has made several Hallmark and GAF films..
GAF began after the Hallmark Channel decided to diversify its films. Former Hallmark executives bought and retooled Great American Country. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 31, 2024

Stories

August is TV’s Julie-and-Blake month

It seemed like one of those weird Hollywood mismatches.
Blake Edwards was a writer-director, fresh from movies with big, goofy sight gags. Julie Andrews was a singer-actress, fresh from mega-musicals.
He was Hollywood; she was London and Broadway. They were miles apart … and then, after their marriage in 1969, constantly together, sometimes making fluff and other times creating serious comedy/dramas like “Victor/Victoria” (shown here), which is the centerpiece of an Aug. 4 cable marathon..
“Seeing the shift in her career, when Blake … urged her to take on very different roles, I found was fascinating,” said producer Michael Kantor. And now, by coincidence, each gets a separate focus in August: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 26, 2024

Stories

She’s an all-eras star, after all

Decades ago, people explained to Samantha Morton the hard realities of an acting career.
“I was told that I didn’t have a period face,” she told the Television Critics Association. “So I wasn’t a period actress.”
That was back in the ‘90s, when the British were making lots of historical dramas. And there she was , with a face stuck in the wrong period. BUT …
Turn on Starz at 8 p.m. Fridays (rerunning at 9:30) and you’ll see her starring in “The Serpent Queen” (shown She plays 14th-century leader Catherine De Medici. Look around for classics and you’ll see her in the title role of “Jane Eyre.” In the 27 years between those, she’s done lots of work in all periods and styles. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 22, 2024

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