Earth Day is gone now, but its impact lingers on our TV sets and computer screens.
There’s PBS’ Greta Thunberg film (see separate story), which now reruns on three Wednesdays. And a surge of films on the streaming channels, including the splendid “Secrets of the Whales” (see separate story) and the fun “The Year the Earth Changed.”
And on April 23, there’s the back half of a two-day rerun marathon. Let’s start there: Read more…
In rare moments, a master actor gets to play a double or triple role.
That includes comedy guys – Eddie Murphy, Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers – and various Englishmen who become Jekyll and Hyde. And now, sort of, there’s Chiara Aurelia.
No, you probably haven’t heard of her. She’s 18 and has had some roles … five of them playing the younger version of a main character. But when “Cruel Summer” debuts (9 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, April 20, on Freeform), she has virtually a triple role – the same teen-ager (Jeanette, shown here, center, at the start), over three summers that transform her completely.
“Each year kind of represents a different element of all of our lives,” Aurelia told the Television Critics Association. “You know – the darkness, the sadness, the youthfulness.” Read more…
Scattered around Hollywood, it seems, are warehouses (or hard drives) stuffed with scripts.
They’ve been purchased and pondered and then ignored. Few survive; one exception is the “Big Shot” series, which starts streaming Friday (April 16) on the Disney+ service.
“When Disney+ started, they … said, ‘Have you seen any scripts over the years that didn’t get made that you might like?’” John Stamos (shown here) – who stars as a guy who was once big in men’s college basketball, but now coaches high school girls – told the Television Critics Association. Read more…
It took a mere half-century for two sorta-neighbors to meet and work together.
That’s on “Prodigal Son” (9 p.m. Tuesdays on Fox), which has just returned from a month-long break. Michael Sheen co-stars and Catherine Zeta-Jones has joined the cast; they play doctors at a prison (shown here), with a key difference: She’s an employee, he’s a prisoner.
Here are two people who grew up in the same southwestern area of Wales, at the same time, yet never quite met. “We actually have childhood friends” in common, Zeta-Jones told the Television Critics Association. “My mom and dad know his dad.” And yet, they’d “never met before; I’d admired (him) from a distance.”
That distance was about 5,000 miles. Zeta-Jones, 51, became a Hollywood star – an Oscar-winner (“Chicago”), married to an Oscar-winner (Michael Douglas) – while Sheen, 52, was starring in British theater and TV. Read more…
By now, TV viewers might figure they know every aspect of World War II. Or not.
How about the Swedish-born princess who became Norway’s best lobbyist? Or the bankers behind bars, performing Shakespeare? Or a Spanish diplomat, defying rules to help Jews flee from Nazis? Such stories show up in two PBS shows that debuted on Easter and continue on Sundays:
– “My Grandparents’ War” has British actors learn about their kin. It started with Helena Bonham Carter and now has Mark Rylance (April 11), Kristin Scott Thomas and Carey Mulligan.
– “Atlantic Crossing” traces Princess Martha, the niece of three kings (Norway, Denmark and her native Sweden) and the wife of her cousin, Crown Prince Olav of Norway. In the opener (shown here), they barely escaped the Nazi invasion; on April 11, a plan emerges: Olav will stay in London with his father (the king) and the government-in-exile; Martha will attempt a sea journey to the U.S. with their children. Read more…
Last year, one of TV’s best characters arrived.
Matilda, 17, was confident (sometimes), quirky (always), talented and likable. She was also autistic.
And she was, apparently, authentic. Kayla Cromer (shown here), who plays her in “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay” (10 p.m. Thursdays on Freeform, starting the second season April 8) is on the autism spectrum.
“I wasn’t coddled,” Cromer, 23, said by phone. And maybe she would have survived Matilda’s ordeal. Read more…
So there was Michael Colton, getting unemployment checks. That happens to writers sometimes.
And there was his twin, with a very different reality: “He sold a company for about $7 million,” Colton told the Television Critics Association.
Colton’s brotherly reaction to this? “It was all of these feelings of anxiety, mixed with pride, mixed with jealousy and insecurity.”
Then he went to his default position – comedy. The result is “Home Economics” (shown here), which debuts at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday (April 7) on ABC. Read more…
Ernest Hemingway’s fame soared in two ways.
As a writer, he was popular and praised. As a person, he was something more.
People knew him (shown here) as a pop-culture figure who traveled the globe and did it all – food, drink, romance, adventure – to excess. It was an impressive reputation … even if some of it wasn’t true.
“The public persona became such a burden to him,” said Lynn Novick, who combined with Ken Burns to mold “Hemingway,” a compelling, three-night documentary that starts Monday (April 5) on PBS, So it was “wonderful to discover him young, before he became that stereotype.” Read more…
The world conspired to make sure of two things: Danielle Brooks would play Mahalia Jackson and Kenny Leon would direct her.
Now “Mahalia” debuts at 8 p.m. Saturday on Lifetime, rerunning at 11:03 p.m. and then at 5:30 p.m. the next day, Easter Sunday.
Jackson (shown here) was a gospel star – the first to win a Grammy – and an ally of Martin Luther King. People recall different first impressions: Read more…
What we learn from Denis Leary’s lives – his real one and his fictional one in the new “Moodys” comedy – is basic:
Marriage and family are works in progress. Occasionally, you get it right.
“Within the course of a marriage, you do have a lot of love and anger and stories and experiences to build on,” Leary told the Television Critics Association, “in dealing with, especially, adult children.”
In “Moodys,” Leary and his wife — played by Elizabeth Perkins (they’re shown here) — have three grown-up children. A mini-series in December of 2019 saw all of them return home for Christmas; now the series (debuting at 9 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, April 2, on Fox) has them moving back in, at least temporarily. Read more…
