Televisionary

The Daily Beast: "Little People, Big Controversy: Game of Thrones and Life’s Too Short"

2012-02-16T07:44:00.000-08:00

Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage used the Golden Globes last month to draw attention to a dwarf-tossing attack in England. But with the launch of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s Life’s Too Short on HBO, it’s hard to imagine a stranger time to be premiering a potentially exploitative comedy about a dwarf. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Little People, Big Controversy: Game of Thrones and Life’s Too Short," in which I look at Ricky Gervais' new HBO comedy Life's Too Short and ponder its exploitative potential. When Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor last month, he used the award show’s significant global viewing audience to name-check Martin Henderson, to whom he dedicated his award. While millions of viewers raced to Google Henderson at Dinklage’s suggestion, it quickly became clear that he was not speaking of the Australian actor (who costarred in The Ring), but rather a 37-year-old English dwarf who was the victim of a vicious pub attack in October that left him forced to use a wheelchair and crutches after a patron tossed him through the air. The attack against the 4-foot-2 Henderson was news to Americans, but it came on the heels of a well-publicized incident in the U.K., in which media reports surfaced that England’s rugby World Cup team had attended a dwarf-tossing event in New Zealand. Henderson has indicated that the two incidents could be related, with the rugby players’...

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey: How PBS Got Cool" (Again)

2012-02-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

At The Daily Beast, my colleague Maria Elena Fernandez and I examine how PBS got cool: the massive success of Downton Abbey has brought PBS an increase in donations, funding for Masterpiece, a boost in ratings for other programs, and an unlikely place in the zeitgeist. (Plus, RuPaul on Downton's appeal.) You can read my latest feature, entitled "Downton Abbey: How PBS Got Cool," in which Fernandez and I talk to Rebecca Eaton, RuPaul, PBS SoCal, WNET, and PBS executives, and The Soup producer Matthew Carney, among others. Patton Oswalt obsessively live tweets it from his weekly viewing parties. Katy Perry is using it to distract herself from her marital woes. Roger Ebert has stepped outside the movie realm to praise it in his blog. Saturday Night Live spoofed it. Mob Wives star Big Ang Raiola recited favorite quips for Us Weekly. The Onion equated watching one episode with reading a book. And Wednesday night The Soup will celebrate it with a special parody starring RuPaul and drag queens Raven and Shangela. Could all of this fuss really be about a PBS show? Quite right. Masterpiece's Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning hit, Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, a TV ratings success and cultural phenomenon, has catapulted the public-television broadcaster with the stodgy reputation to the cool kids' table. “We don’t know how to handle that over here,” said Mel Rogers, CEO and president of PBS SoCal, the PBS member station that serves greater Los Angeles. "We got...

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The Daily Beast: "Switched at Birth: ABC Family’s Groundbreaking Deaf/Hearing Drama

2012-02-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

And now for something different. I'm definitely not within ABC Family's target demographic, but I've fallen head over heels in love with the cable network's drama Switched at Birth, which is a profound and reflective exploration of communication, identity, and self-expression. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Switched at Birth: ABC Family’s Groundbreaking Deaf/Hearing Drama," in which I take a look at the teen soap, which explores self-expression and the communication gulf between the hearing and deaf communities, and talk to creator Lizzy Weiss and stars Katie Leclerc, Sean Berdy, and Marlee Matlin. When Marlee Matlin walked away with an Academy Award for her heart-wrenching turn as a deaf custodian in 1986’s romantic drama Children of a Lesser God, it seemed as though film had finally encountered a definitive depiction of a deaf individual and the often tenuous relationship between the hearing and the deaf worlds. Television has lagged behind; nearly 30 years later, most TV shows still typically shove deaf characters into the background or use them as props as part of a hearing person’s story. Switched at Birth reverses that course. On the surface, the teen soap, which launched on ABC Family last summer, appears to revolve around two teenage girls (Vanessa Marano, Katie Leclerc) who discover that they were switched at birth as their families—a wealthy white couple (D.W. Moffett, Lea Thompson) and a Latina recovering-alcoholic...

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The Daily Beast: "Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! Lost, NCIS, Big Love, Veep Writers on His Legacy"

2012-02-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens. Over at The Daily Beast, we're celebrating Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! Lost, NCIS, Big Love, Veep Writers on His Legacy," in which I talk to TV auteurs including Lost's Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci, NCIS's Gary Glasberg, and others as they reflect on how Dickens’s work has influenced storytelling on television. Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens (1812–1870), but the popularity of the writer of such novels as Great Expectations, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield—to name but a few of his immortal works—hasn’t diminished in the time since his death. In the pantheon of great English-language novelists, Dickens reigns supreme for a number of reasons. He was a master storyteller who created unforgettable characters—a menagerie that included the grotesque, the disenfranchised, the saintly, and the avaricious robber barons of his day—who leapt off the page and continue to live on in the imaginations of those who read his words. And his whiplash-inducing plots, with their constant twists, fused populist entertainment and deft societal commentary. Despite his fame and fortune, Dickens was a champion for social reform, turning his attention to education, the Victorian workhouse, social inequity, and financial speculation, and offering blistering commentary on...

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The Daily Beast: "Smash: Anjelica Huston on Her Husband’s Death, Her New Role, and Whether She’ll Sing"

2012-02-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Over at The Daily Beast, I talk with Anjelica Huston about her husband’s death, her formidable character on Smash, and the “cult of murder” on television today. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Smash's Scene Stealer," here. It is impossible to miss Anjelica Huston when she walks into a room. In this case, the room was the bar at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California, a few hours before Huston was set to take the stage before a ballroom of television critics at the TCA Winter Press Tour to answer questions for her new show, the Broadway-set drama Smash, which premieres Monday on NBC. With her raven Cleopatra cut, an armful of gently clanging bracelets, and her impressive height, Huston is unlikely to get lost in a crowd, but her considerable talents as an actress render that an impossibility. As she slinked into a club chair on a gray January morning, she exuded a sense of serenity and warmth that is deeply at odds with the troubled characters she often plays. “Were you one of those kids I scared to death?” she asked, when the topic of The Witches arose; Huston starred in the 1990 adaption of Roald Dahl’s novel as The Grand High Witch, Miss Eva Ernst, and terrified a generation of young moviegoers when she removed her face to reveal a grotesque monster beneath the placid façade. The Academy Award-winning actress, perhaps best known for her roles in The Royal Tenenbaums, The Addams Family, and Prizzi’s Honor, is no stranger to television—she...

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The Daily Beast: "Why I’m Tired of Top Chef"

2012-02-01T06:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the things you once loved can disappoint you the most. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Why I’m Tired of Top Chef," in which I take a look at the current season of Bravo's Top Chef, whose repetitive challenges, lackluster contestants, and Texas-sized problems have made watching this season a chore. Everything is bigger in Texas, Bravo’s culinary competition Top Chef keeps reminding us, but the show, which airs Wednesday evenings, has never felt quite so irrelevant and predictable. Now in its ninth season, Top Chef appears to be a pale imitation of its former self, a reality competition show that turned an often-mysterious world—the thought processes of highly trained chefs, their inspirations, and their imaginations—into something accessible and deeply understandable to the lay viewer. But that was before Bravo’s schedule was littered with various iterations of the Top Chef concept, variations that included pastry chefs, master chefs, and the original-flavor show that started it all. (A planned Top Chef Junior spinoff has wisely never seen the light of day.) It seems that not a week goes by during the year that some form of the franchise is not airing … and by doing so, Bravo is swiftly running the Emmy-winning show into the ground. The Texas-based ninth season feels entirely tired, the result of overproducing, gimmicky challenges, sponsor tie-ins, and forced drama. Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

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The Daily Beast: "Smash's Big Broadway Bet" and "11 Secrets of Smash"

2012-01-24T07:08:00.000-08:00

Fifty years after her death, the mention of Marilyn Monroe conjures up familiar imagery: that whispery voice, the platinum hair, her vulnerability. From Michelle Williams’s recent embodiment to yet another reissue of Monroe’s last photo shoot, she’s still inescapable, and always exerting a gravitational pull on popular imagination. In this week's issue of Newsweek, you can read my latest feature, "Smash's Big Broadway Bet," which looks at NBC's musical-drama Smash, launching February 6th, through the prism of both Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact and the stakes that the show faces ahead. Will this end up being The West Wing with music or Cop Rock? I talk to creator/executive producer Theresa Rebeck, Anjelica Huston, and NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. On The Daily Beast, the piece gets a companion story in "11 Secrets of Smash," in which I take a look at several questions surrounding the show including: What would the Showtime version have looked like? Can this show save NBC? Is it based on a book? What does the future hold for the show? Plus, much more. Smash premieres Monday, February 6th at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

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The Daily Beast: "TV's Worst New Show: CBS' Rob"

2012-01-11T07:41:00.000-08:00

There’s a new contender for the worst new show of the year in CBS’s Rob Schneider vehicle, Rob—it’s racist and unfunny. At the Daily Beast, I take a look at the truly terrible first episode in my latest feature, "TV's Worst New Show." The media have lately been celebrating the remarkable comeback of the sitcom, which had seen better days. Modern Family continues to outperform itself; Community dazzles with its inventiveness; Suburgatory perfectly captures the suburbs-are-hell trope with wit and bite; Happy Endings has surprised many by becoming a hit; and CBS’s 2 Broke Girls is poised to become television’s most-watched comedy. But for all the talk about revitalized formats and audience engagement this past fall, this doesn’t account for Work It and Rob, two midseason comedy offerings that are so awful they may in fact be harbingers of the Fall of Man. While this may be hyperbolic, Rob and Work It do symbolize how far the sitcom format has fallen, at any rate. It’s hard to perfectly capture the intense sense of fiery rage that I felt in watching these hackneyed and humorless failures. Both Rob and Work It are deeply offensive in their own ways, but the real crime is that Rob, which launches on CBS on Thursday, and its ABC sibling lack any real sense of humor. Work It had seemingly plumbed the nadir of the television comedy, and it seemed it couldn’t get any worse. Wrong! It can get worse, and does with Rob. Rob—which was previously known as ¡Rob! but, for reasons...

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The Winds of War: An Advance Review of Downton Abbey Season Two

2012-01-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I'm a devotee of lavish British costume drama Downton Abbey, which recently wrapped its second season run on ITV in the U.K. and which finally heads across the pond this weekend, where it will again air as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic skein. In the last year or so since we last saw the Crawleys, viewers from all walks of life have discovered the irresistible joys of the sublime Downton Abbey, reveling in the spirit of unpredictability and historical detail that Julian Fellowes' creation has in abundance, as well as memorable characters, a winning blend of pathos and humor, plot twists, and star-crossed romances. Not since Upstairs, Downstairs has a period drama seemed quite so tangible and relevant, at once timeless and thoroughly modern at the same time. Season Two of Downton Abbey is set two years after the end of the first season, as Britain--and Europe as a whole--is enmeshed in the First World War. On the winds of war, change has come to the stately house, and neither master nor servant has emerged unscathed as members of every class must adapt to their circumstances, which become greatly altered as the season wears on. (For more on what specific characters are up to in the second season, you can read this Daily Beast feature that I wrote in August, in which the actors and Fellowes tell me what Matthew, Mary, and the others are up to in Season Two.) Just as the first season found Downton invaded by technology and new ideas as the...

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Justified, Downton Abbey, Shameless, and More: What to Watch on TV This Winter

2012-01-03T07:37:00.000-08:00

With the return of Justified, Downton Abbey, and Shameless, and the launch of Touch, Luck, and others, I take a look at what’s coming to your TV this winter over at The Daily Beast, in my latest feature, "What to Watch on TV This Winter." (To get right to my thoughts on the 18 shows included and bypass the intro, you can click here.) January brings some fresh opportunities for the broadcast and cable networks to try and lure you back with new and returning programming. Among the highlights: costume drama fiends will be lined up for the Jan. 8 return of British drama Downton Abbey; FX’s Justified returns for a third season of Kentucky shootouts on Jan. 17; HBO’s cult comedy Eastbound and Down returns on Feb. 19; auteurs David Milch and Michael Mann unite for HBO’s Luck, launching Jan. 29; and Kiefer Sutherland returns to television with Fox’s Touch, which will get a preview broadcast on Jan. 25. (It officially premieres on March 19.) Absolutely Fabulous, the outrageous British cult comedy that gave the world the fashion-obsessed Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), will celebrate its 20th anniversary with three brand-new specials this year, the first of which airs on both BBC America and Logo on Jan. 8 at 10 p.m. ABC will offer the globe-spanning espionage/revenge drama Missing, starring Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent in search of her son, who vanished in Europe, and Game of Thrones’s Sean Bean, beginning March 15. In the not-soon-enough...

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "Most Memorable TV Deaths of 2011"

2011-12-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

Looking back, 2011 proved to be a particularly deadly one for television characters, whose bodies were stacking up even before the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead, which rather notoriously raises the body count each season. From Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones to Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire, TV-show creators this year proved that they were only too willing to kill off beloved characters or shock their respective audiences with deaths involving characters long believed to be “safe,” whether those were little girls, Halloween trick-or-treaters, or heroes. Safety, it seems, is an outmoded idea. Head over to The Daily Beast to read my and Maria Elena Fernandez's latest feature, "Most Memorable TV Deaths of 2011," in which we examine our choices for the most memorable TV demises this year, rounding up an unlucky 13 who left their fictional lives too soon. But beware: if you’re not up to date on the 12 shows discussed below, you’ll want to avoid reading any further, as there are SPOILERS. Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

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The Daily Beast: "Homeland, Justified, Downton Abbey and More: The Best and Worst TV Shows of 2011"

2011-12-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

At The Daily Beast, it's finally time for my Best and Worst TV Shows of 2011 list: with 10 shows up for recognition as the best (including Justified, Homeland, Downton Abbey, Community, Parks and Recreation, Game of Thrones, The Good Wife, and more) and five for worst of 2011. (Plus, you can also compare my Best/Worst picks to my colleague Maria Elena Fernandez's.) Head over to The Daily Beast to read my latest feature, "Homeland, Justified, Downton Abbey and More: The Best and Worst TV Shows of 2011," which--as the title indicates--rounds up the best and worst television that 2011 had to offer. Warning: the story may contain spoilers if you are not entirely caught up on the shows discussed here. What is your take on our lists? Did your favorite/least favorite shows make the cut? Head to the comments section to discuss and debate.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

Our Own Worst Enemy is Ourselves: Quick Thoughts on the Homeland Season Finale

2011-12-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

I'm puzzled by how polarizing the season finale ("Marine One") of Showtime's Homeland ended up being, with viewers on one side or the other about just how effective--and believable--the climax of the espionage drama was last night. Personally, I thought it was powerful, heartbreaking, and superlative, filled with emotional resonance and an aura of tragedy hovering uneasily over everyone, particularly the now-tragic figure of Cassandra-like Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), whose portents of doom fell onto deaf ears. It's Carrie who saves the lives of the Vice President and his cabinet as well as that of Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), but her instability is used as a weapon against her. In essence, she saves the world, but is denied the knowledge that she's done so. Her breakdown in the final third of the episode isn't just a mental one, but that of communication as well as self-worth. Carrie's entire persona is based on a laser-like precision of the facts, collating information, and projecting possible scenarios. Her guilt over missing some valuable clue that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 have shaped the person she is today, one who is determined to dig at the truth regardless of the personal cost to herself. Which is why Carrie's decision at the end of the episode is all the more tragic. In voluntarily opting to undergo electroshock therapy, Carrie is choosing to forget, to wipe clean the slate of her memory, and start fresh....

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The Daily Beast: "TV Breaks the Incest Taboo"

2011-12-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, Bored to Death and other TV shows have recently featured incest storylines or themes. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "TV Breaks the Incest Taboo," in which I examine this troubling trend in scripted programming. In 1990, Twin Peaks gave the world a nightmare vision into the seediness beneath the placid veneer of small-town America. But while one of the many puzzles embedded within Twin Peaks’ narrative was the identity of the murderer of teen queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), the true secret lurking at the heart of the mystery was the incest and abuse suffered by Laura at the hands of her father, Leland (Ray Wise) and the psychic damage this secret caused his wife, Sarah (Grace Zabriskie). It’s a reveal so horrific, so destructive, that the creators represented it in terms of the supernatural, having Leland possessed by a demonic entity in order to explain the cruelty and lack of humanity that such a crime would require. “The act at the black heart of the murder colored the entire narrative,” Twin Peaks’ co-creator Mark Frost told The Daily Beast this week. “Incest is a primal, eternal taboo in civilized culture, and some of the greatest tragedies ever written proceed from it, or lead to it.” In the 20-plus years since Twin Peaks first premiered, television’s approach to incest had changed little, with few shows daring to break that taboo. But, particularly in the last year, scripted television...

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The Daily Beast: "Fall TV Report Card: The Winners and Losers"

2011-12-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

With the 2011-12 television season in full swing and the cancellation orders stacking up, Jace Lacob rounds up the season’s winners (Revenge! Homeland!), losers (Man Up! Whitney!), and draws. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Fall TV Report Card: The Winners and Losers," in which I offer up not a critic's list, or a Best of 2011 TV list, but a business story selecting the winners and losers (as well as draws) for the first half of the 2011-12 television season. (Those selections are in the gallery.) With the 2011-12 television season well underway, it’s become increasingly clear that this isn’t the best fall the broadcasters have ever had. Back in May, when the networks touted their new offerings to advertisers, it appeared they were trying to take some risks with their programming. But the opposite is true: most of those shows featured what the networks hoped were built-in audiences for retro brand settings (Pan Am! The Playboy Club!) or remakes of vintage television (Charlie’s Angels, it’s back to pop-culture heaven for you), but viewers largely stayed away from these and many of the new fall shows. Those claiming that viewers’ attention is elsewhere, such as on the Internet, likely don’t have a response for the oversize audience for things like AMC’s The Walking Dead, now the highest-rated cable show on the air, or the first post–Charlie Sheen episode of CBS’s Two and a Half Men. (The latter could be due to sampling, but the show has...

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "Bravo’s Addictive Work of Art"

2011-11-30T07:32:00.000-08:00

The art-world reality competition, Work of Art, with its oddball artists, overly harsh judges, and a terrifically animated mentor has become must-see television. Let’s be honest: Many of us watch reality television to fulfill a voyeuristic need to peer into other people’s lives, and to perhaps feel better about our own. The staggering success of Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise would seem to prove this, just as, similarly, the cable channel’s reality shows tap this universal human need within the context of competition. We’ve seen pastry chefs break down about Red Hots, fashion designers make competitors’ mothers cry (Project Runway’s Jeffrey Sebelia, we’re looking at you), but the drama has perhaps never seemed quite so real or the participants quite so tortured as the artists on Bravo’s highly addictive Work of Art, currently airing its second season Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Bravo’s Addictive Work of Art," in which I look at the unexpected pleasures to be found in Bravo's art competition series. Work of Art: The Search for the Next Great Artist airs Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "Showtime's Homeland: The Best New Show of the Season

2011-11-16T07:26:00.000-08:00

There is no room for argument: Showtime’s provocative and gut-wrenching psychological thriller Homeland is the best new show of the season. Revolving around two very unreliable narrators engaged in a series of riveting mind games, Homeland explores an America 10 years after 9/11, surveying the damage done to both the national psyche and the central protagonists. Claire Danes plays Carrie Mathison, a CIA operative with both a mental illness and a troubling sense of personal guilt that she missed crucial intelligence prior to the Sept. 11 attacks; Damian Lewis (Life) plays soldier Nicholas Brody, a prisoner of war who returns home to a family that long thought him dead, and who may or may not have been turned into an enemy of the state during his eight-year captivity in Iraq. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Showtime's Homeland: The Best New Show of the Season," in which I talk to the show's co-creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon about terrorism, intelligence analysis, and paranoia in the post-9/11 and post-24 era. Homeland airs Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake"

2011-11-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

Community fans, this is your St. Crispin’s Day moment. Dumping Community in favor of shifting around the Thursday-night comedies feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Community, after all, is not the iceberg that’s sinking NBC. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake," in which I look at the case for and against keeping the brilliant and subversive comedy around. For right now, Community airs Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on NBC.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "American Horror Story: The Craziest Show on TV"

2011-11-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

The most divisive show on television is FX’s American Horror Story, a haunted-house drama created by Glee’s Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, with viewers and critics loving it, hating it, or loving to hate it. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "American Horror Story: The Craziest Show on TV," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I, in our latest He Said/She Said discussion, examine the show's merits and failings and attempt to come to something resembling an agreement about the show. (Spoiler: we don't.) What is your take on American Horror Story? Head to the comments section to discuss, debate, and react. American Horror Story airs Wednesdays at 10 pm ET/PT on FX.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).

The Daily Beast: "The Teens of Parenthood"

2011-11-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

In NBC’s Parenthood, the show’s teens--including Mae Whitman, Sarah Ramos, and Miles Heizer--often walk away with the most heartbreaking and emotional storylines. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "TV's Most Talented Teens" (formerly known as "The Teens of Parenthood"), in which I sit down with Whitman, Ramos, and Heizer to discuss their characters, on-set camaraderie, and, yes, the haircut that launched a thousand tweets. Parenthood returns with new episodes tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).