What can a TV show do when it suddenly loses its star?
Most quit, a few push on … and one created a musical.
That didn’t happen quickly. “Transparent” debuts its musical finale Friday, almost two years after the last previous episode. And Jill and Faith Soloway had a head start.
“Faith has been writing these songs that come from the heart of the Soloway family saga,” Jill said. “We had been dreaming of a Broadway musical one day.” Read more…
For a good chunk of Martin Clunes’ year, the transformation is total.
The suit and tie go on; the glower returns. He becomes a country doctor with a city soul; he becomes a guy with great medical skill – unless blood is involved – and an awful bedside manner.
Then the “Doc Martin” filming ends and he reverts to being the opposite. “I’m far too keen to please,” said Clunes (shown here with Caroline Catz, who plays his wife(. “I wish I had his ability to explain to people that he is always right and they are wrong.” Read more…
TV has had approximately three zillion comedy episodes, some of them topical and timely.
Few, however, have dealt with the common situation of being bi-racial.
“For me, (it) is to be comfortable everywhere and to be at home nowhere,” said Peter Saji, a producer of ABC’s new “Mixed-ish” series (shown here). Read more…
As Gina Yashere tells it, her career choices were limited.
“I used to … say that in a Nigerian amily, there are only four choices of jobs – doctor, lawyer, engineer, disgrace to the family.”
She took the third choice (briefly being an engineer in London) and then the fourth, as a stand-up comedian. Now her roots are reflected in this fall’s first new broadcast-network show. Read more…
For the big-four TV networks, it all starts Monday (Sept. 23)
.Over the next week, they’ll introduce 13 new fall shows (including “The Unicorn,” shown here), with the final three arriving a week later.
Here’s a round-up of those 16, all starting Sept. 23-29, except where noted. We’ll have a separate story on the CW network, which starts two weeks later. The others – PBS cable, streaming – have been busy year-around and we’ve had ongoing coverage. Read more…
Let’s check the calendar one more time. Is this really the second half of September? Read more…
To understand the big-tent view of Ken Burns’ “Country Music,” let’s step back 46 years
It’s May of 1973, at the Michigan State University Auditorium. The concert has the Eagles … and Gram Parsons (with Emmylou Harris) … and Lester Flatt (with Marty Stuart).
Really. The guy from the Byrds … and the band that would make “Life In the Fast Lane” … and the guy whose mandolin propelled “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Tickets ($7) included a second night, with Quicksilver, Canned Heat and REO Speedwagon.
It was, Stuart (shown here) said, “the first time I saw rock and roll and bluegrass and honky tonk and folk music and gospel music collide …. I remember thinking, ‘It can all exist under the umbrella of country music.’” Read more…
Raul Julia reached New York in 1964, a time when people made easy assumptions.
He was an actor from Puerto Rico; surely, that meant lots of street-smart roles. One talk-show host said she’d heard he didn’t speak English when he got there.
“Of course he spoke English,” theater director Oskar Eustis said. “He spoke beautiful English.”
Julia (shown here) – the subject of a PBS profile Friday — grew up around English-speaking teachers. He was college-educated, Shakespeare-trained. “He was very well-educated …. Latinos don’t (only) come under stressful conditions,” actor Esai Morales said. “We are not always struggling to survive.” Read more…
Tamron Hall had just blitzed through a rich range of subjects.
She’d invoked the talk-show masters – Oprah and Donahue – plus Mike Douglas and more. She’d ranged from the nobility of her sharecropper grandfather to the day she hung up on her friend Prince.
But she also surprised us cinematically: Her favorite movie now is “Shrek”; her “favorite growing up was ‘Rocky,’ because he got up.”
That’s what she’s done: She got up from her low point – NBC gave her morning hour to Megyn Kelley – and now has a syndicated show, starting Sept. 9 (see www.tamronhallshow.com). Read more…
Let’s designate this as the ultimate tourist experience:
One day in 2011, Susan Olsen says, a bus had stopped outside the house that used to be shown as the exterior of the “Brady Bunch” home. Tourists looked around at … well, not much. And then …
“The ‘Wienermobile’ pulled up and Cindy Brady got out.” Read more…
