Television
“Everyone, I’ve got bad news,” dad Peter Griffin tells his family in the opening scene of Fox’s “Family Guy.” “We’ve been canceled.”
“Oh, no, Peter,” responds wife Lois. “How could they do that?”
But Peter is understanding. “Unfortunately, there’s no more room on the schedule. We’ve just got to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like ‘Dark Angel,’ ‘Titus,’ ‘Undeclared,’ ‘Action,’ ‘That ’80s Show,’ ‘Wonderfalls,’ ‘Fastlane,’ ‘Andy Richter Controls the Universe,’ ‘Skin,’ ‘Girls Club,’ ‘Cracking Up,’ ‘The Pitts,’ ‘Firefly,’ ‘Get Real,’ ‘Freakylinks,’ ‘Wanda at Large,’ ‘Costello,’ ‘The Lone Gunmen,’ ‘A Minute With Stan Hooper,’ ‘Normal, Ohio,’ ‘Pasadena,’ ‘Harsh Realm,’ ‘Keen Eddie,’ ‘The Street,’ ‘American Embassy,’ ‘Cedric the Entertainer,’ ‘The Tick,’ ‘Luis’ and ‘Greg the Bunny.’ But I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes, we might have a shot.”
The champions
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Billable Hours (Showcase Canada)
The Comedians of Comedy (Comedy Central)
Video at the High St pub, Eugene
The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
- In a cramped, claustrophobic Wild West
This is not the Old West of John Ford or Howard Hawks. For one thing, there are almost no open spaces, let alone a range. The second season opens on Sunday with a stagecoach rumbling into town — there is only a brief glimpse of blue sky and pine trees before the camera closes in on passengers squashed together and jostling against a backdrop of overturned earth and mineshafts. And once they reach Deadwood, they enter a fetid, sepia-toned, mud-soaked world where boggy streets teem with people and the sun never seems to shine. The gold rush town may have been set in the middle of South Dakota’s famous Black Hills, but this Deadwood could be Five Points from ”Gangs of New York” or a shtetl in Eastern Europe.
Deadwood puts ‘that word’ on lively display
How does one ask one’s wife to watch “Deadwood”? I have to believe E.B. Farnum, the HBO series mining camp’s wispy-haired hotelier and mayor, would have an idea or two.
Imagine E.B. in his sweat-stained suit, his sanity dangling from a rusty watch chain, soliloquizing to himself.
“Excuse me, madam. Forgive me for interrupting your repast. Might I . . . escort you . . . into the parlor to partake in entertainment? A television show, so acclaimed, so popular. Come if you can. For I confess, I am mesmerized by its dramatic depictions of the Wild West, with its ample blood, mud and cursing. Gold, E.B. Pure gold. Of course, I wound up muttering something more akin to this:
“Honey, I’m writing a story, something on the curlicue language of ‘Deadwood,’ an artsy piece. Um, the kids are in bed. Wanna watch?”
Not Melvillean, but surely a better result than E.B.’s ill-timed attempt to present himself to mining tycoon George Hearst in last season’s finale. “Allow me a moment’s silence, Mr. Hearst, sir,” E.B. muttered, leaning on Hearst’s breakfast table. “I am having a digestive crisis and must focus on suppressing its expression.” Ah, vulgar yet courtly. How the tongues gallop through the Black Hills of 1876. Joseph Rose The Oregonian
- The 4400 return to Earth
Television critic Andrew Wallenstein reviews The 4400, a new science-fiction series airing on the USA Network. The premise of the series is that a large group of missing persons — possibly victims of alien abduction — suddenly return to Earth all at once.
- Conchords: Musical comedy from clueless Kiwis
Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, aka the folk-parody band Flight of the Conchords, hail from New Zealand and were named best alternative-comedy act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Now they’re starring in an HBO series called, yes, Flight of the Conchords - which is, yes, about two transplanted New Zealanders living in New York City’s Lower East side.
Futurama (Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim)
Video - Bender: “Wait I’m thinking of Eugene Oregon”
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (SciFi)
Video - the madness that is Sue White
- Head Case is a mere slip of a thing, just 15 minutes long. And that’s a perfect size for this semi-improvised comedy about Beverly Hills psychotherapist Elizabeth Goode (Alexandra Wentworth, “In Living Color”) and her celebrity patients. The Goode doctor has quite a clientele: Alanis Morissette, Sean Hayes, Andy Dick, Jane Kaczmarek, Tom Sizemore, Ralph Macchio, Shelby Lynne and more. The celebs, playing neurotically exaggerated versions of themselves, improvise their dialogue, and Wentworth plays along. Jason Priestley, who does a nice turn in the premiere, has a small problem that the doc seems intent on turning into a big one. Convinced that the actor is gay, despite his protests that he loves his wife, Goode stages a couple of lurid love scenes with a pair of Ken dolls, then gets the perplexed Priestley to dress in drag. The sight of this Hollywood hunk looking like a Neanderthal disco queen is easily worth a quarter-hour of anyone’s time. Star and co-creator Wentworth is inventive and more than willing to embarrass herself, though she leans a little too heavily on the crazy-shrink shtick. It’s also a real pleasure to see the distinctively droll Steve Landesburg (”Barney Miller”) back in action as a rival therapist who’s morose verging on clinically depressed because Goode’s schedule is full while his is as roomy as all outdoors. Like the best improv, “Head Case” rarely allows a good gag to go on too long. At 30 minutes, it probably would have plodded; at half that, it flies.
Ice Road Truckers (History Channel)
Kath and Kim (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
- This is THE best, most consistently funny show on TV at the moment. Every episode is packed full of surreal situations and incredibly quick fire humour. What I most like about this show is that Gina Riley and Jane Turner have managed to create a programme with more than one layer to it. You can watch it and enjoy the visual comedy, from Kath’s dodgy perm and MC Hammer jumpsuits, to Kel’s greasy slicked hair. You can laugh hysterically at the situational humour and observational humour. But… if you watch an episode again you’ll pick up on whole new jokes you missed the first time around, because throughout each episode, subtle wordplay is in action. The two women who write and star in K&K admit to being hugely influenced by Ab Fab, and you can definitely see the similarities, although it’s more of a role-reversal with the mother being the more sensible of the two, and the daughter being the selfish, spoilt whiny brat. The over the top costumes and catchphrases are also influenced by Ab Fab - I thought I’d never see colours as violent and clashing again after Ab Fab’s Edina bowed out, but Kath seems to be spearheading an eighties fluro revival. This show truly deserves a place in TV history, it’s far funnier than any British comedies of recent years, please go out and buy it!
- This is what reality shows should have been. It is truly one of the best shows that I have seen on TV in a long time. A show with real substance and heart. Inspiring, and by the time it is over you will feel worn out, as if you travelled all those miles right along with them. I have always wanted to drive to the Arctic Circle and, thanks to this show, I finally took the step from wanting to doing. Too bad LWR didn’t get more publicity in the US, the quality is far superior to the mindless drivel we have on the big networks. Of course if they actually aired something like this it might raise expectations and we can’t have that. I loved this series so much I purchased the DVD from Amazon UK. It took less than a week to get here. It is an all region DVD but it is PAL format. It plays just fine on a computer as long as you have a decent player like Power DVD. It doesn’t play on our old TV or DVD player but I have a newer TV and DVD player at home that plays that does OK. The sound and picture are a little out of sync due to the format difference.
- Each week a band of unfortunates narrowly escapes deadly pitfalls in pursuit of a shadowy mystery. Not the characters - the writers. They’ve recklessly piled on several seasons’ worth of plot twists in one year. Yet the show has stayed just this side of ridiculous, through grounded performances and a flashback device that keeps it all from getting too claustrophobic - and helps newcomers get to know the cast.
Lovespring International (Lifetime)
- Lovespring International promotes itself as “an elite Beverly Hills dating service.” In smaller print, it adds, “Located in Tarzana, Calif.”This joke is the introduction to a new comedy that has its premiere on Lifetime tonight, and it signals the series’ deadpan comic bent. “Lovespring International” is very funny in the same vein as “The Office” (NBC), “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO) and “Reno 911!” (Comedy Central): icy-dry satire laced with moments of farce and inspired lunacy.”It sounds like you are doing your job too well, but the truth is you’re not doing it well enough,” a disgruntled female client tells the agency’s two relationship counselors. They are baffled when she complains that all the men they have proffered make her feel pressured by falling for her at first sight. “I don’t expect you to understand what it is like to feel loved,” she says.It’s surprising that this improvised comedy, which has a talented pool of comedy writers and actors, and includes Eric McCormack (”Will & Grace”) among its executive producers (he also makes a cameo appearance as a love-hungry client), would end up on Lifetime. This cable channel offers original programming as well as reruns of “The Nanny” and movies about kidnapped-killed-betrayed women, but it mostly consists of female empowerment dramas like “Strong Medicine” and “The Division.” The madcap spirit of “Lovespring” seems more suited to Comedy Central or Fox.Tastes in television comedy have broadened. Some of the most popular new shows do without a laugh track, rely on some improvisation and are filmed with a single camera. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the poker-faced satire of Christopher Guest (”Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” ) or Larry David caught on with Middle America. But now there are many half-hour comedies, from the recently canceled Fox series “Arrested Development” to “My Name Is Earl” on NBC, that reflect the same comic sensibility. Alessandra Stanley New York Times
The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman (IFC)
Video - Jackie and Tara do peyote
- The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman is an IFC original series back for its second season, featuring “Angel of compromise” Laura Kightlinger as Jackie Woodman, a transplanted Los Angeles writer on the edge of everything, almost. Show creator, star and writer Kightlinger along with writer David Punch chronicle the two 35 year-old women, Jackie and her best friend Tara Wentzel, whose bad judgment and self-loathing constantly undermine their path to success.In a modern female buddy comedy that takes a bit from “I Love Lucy,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Absolutely Fabulous” and “The Player,” the show twists absurdly as a modern LA gal tale of navigating the entertainment industry, skewering every ridiculous fad, social hierarchy, personality archetype and trend unique to Los Angeles. “Minor Accomplishments” celebrates the ups and mostly downs of these two misstepping strivers.Jackie is on myriad of anti-depressants and other self-medicating concoctions, and working not so hard for that next big break. Her best friend Tara plays the Ethel to Jackie’s Lucy role beautifully. Two drinks and she’s anyone’s.Production assistant and cubicle prisoner Tara is low on the Night Sky production company totem pole, a harmless schemer who misfires personally and professionally at almost every turn. Every thought that crosses Tara’s mind is spoken, and her inappropriate for work wardrobe, combined with a lack of ethics and her willingness to try just about anything, shows off actress Nicholle Tom brilliantly in her sidekick role. Mary Kay Place plays Jackie’s mother, a southern belle who has more action in the sack than her daughter Jackie, who always seems to prefer a stiff martini to a stiff man. Place directs an episode during the new season.Jackie’s day job at the Magazine with boss Skylar (Azura Skye) and Mitchell (Patrick Bristow), her bitter and self-absorbed coworkers, has Woodman on the go writing up endless content filler that hardly satisfies her.Jackie Woodman features one oddball scenario after another - Jackie’s hunky neighbor below who moonlights as a serial murderer, conversations with squirrels, her thinly veiled attempts of manipulation with clannish Hollywood power lesbians for a career break, and in her office where sometimes she randomly huffs paint with her boss and co-worker for a quick high.The episode where love finds Jackie and Tara simultaneously is superb, as Jackie and Kip knock heads in their scripted cute meet, resulting in empty flasks clunking to the ground, in a tip of the hat to all cornball film romance. Their eyes lock, initiating the funniest booze and drug fueled whirlwind romance ever.”The gods of dope have rendered me useless,” says Jackie to Kip. He supplies her with some fake awake, recharging her efforts to finish her review of Yoshida, a Japanese filmmaker. Subsequent fallout of the binge orgy is a clever homage to Japanese Godzilla films as the inebriated Jackie and Kip terrorize L.A. Tides turn as Jackie confronts Kip with the “late” news. “I’m mentally ill and hooked on anti-depressants and you’re Ken Kesey” says Jackie when they think they may be pregnant, aborting the Kip relationship.
“I’m glad, I’d rather be alone, [pause...beat] it doesn’t get any easier does it?” muses half-in-the-bag Tara to Jackie, as the two toast martinis to celebrate the perfectly timed demise of their relationships.
Jackie is a sotted, sardonic hero swatting one hollow promise at a time, relatable to anyone navigating their way up the “Chutes and Ladders” entertainment matrix in a city that operates by its own otherworldly rules. The show is hip, irreverent and meant for adults. If Reba or Gilmore Girls were your favorite TV shows, you will absolutely hate this.
Peking to Paris (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
- On May 15 2005 a crew of 15 - ten drivers and co-drivers and five support crew - set off in five 100 year-old cars on a 14,000 kilometre journey. It was to be a daring recreation of the Peking to Paris Raid and a journey that took them more than a third of the way around the globe. This is the story of their spectacular adventure, told as a four-part documentary on ABC Television.
Samantha Brown Travels (Travel Channel)
The Sarah Silverman Program (Comedy Central)
Video - Tommy on anger management
- Meet Tommy Saxondale, an ex-roadie with anger management issues and a pest control business. Survivor of a hostile divorce, Tommy now lives with his girlfriend Magz, proprietress of the anarchic T-shirt shop Smash the System. Tommy regards himself as a maverick and a free-thinker and takes every opportunity to impart his wisdom to his young assistant Raymond. And as well as Pharaoh ants, mice and occasionally moths, Tommy has to battle with snowboarders, pigeon-loving activists… and people who talk about property prices. While Tommy enjoys talking about himself, training Raymond in the mysterious and deadly art of pest control, and sharing a few life lessons, Raymond has little choice but to listen. He lives in Tommy’s spare room and gets an uncomfortably close view of Tommy and Magzs’ sparky relationship. Vicky, the receptionist who hands out the jobs for Tommy’s Stealth Pest Control operation, takes ‘banter’ to the next level, knowing exactly how to provoke instant frustration. Tommy knows his own mind and isn’t afraid to speak it. Unfortunately, those around him don’t give him quite the level of respect he feels he deserves. And that’s going to result in a few more visits to the anger management course.
Shameless (Channel 4/Sundance)
- The critically acclaimed and brilliantly funny drama from award-winning writer Paul Abbott features the Chatsworth Estate’s Gallaghers, probably the UK’s most dysfunctional family. Head of the family, Frank, embarks on a series of adventures with his remarkably well-balanced children Fiona, Lip, Ian, Debbie, Carl and Liam - not forgetting the other two with Frank’s valium-fuelled lover, Sheila. Shameless is packed with sex, drugs, gratuitous violence, love and scams. Chaos ensues with more tales of how one extraordinary family goes about its normal everyday life.
The Showbiz Show with David Spade (Comedy Central)
Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg (TV Land)
- It was quite a departure: ‘6 Feet’s’ glorious finale
Now that “Six Feet Under” is dead and gone - its extended finale having aired two nights ago - I feel it’s more than safe to perform an autopsy. Many of you feel so, as well, and I thank you for your support in response to my recent column about time-shift viewing, secret-revealing and when a spoiler no longer is a spoiler. For the benefit of those on the losing side of my argument, I offer this warning. In a few more paragraphs, I’ll be discussing, in detail, the brilliant final moments of the episode that aired Sunday. If you haven’t seen your tape or TiVo copy yet, or are waiting for Friday’s 9:30 p. m. rebroadcast on HBO, then stop reading.
And if you don’t want any information revealed until you’ve watched the final-season “Six Feet Under” DVD set when it comes out next year, then you should have stopped reading one paragraph ago anyway. When I previewed the finale last Friday, I wrote that I loved the ending - ranked it as the third best in TV history - but didn’t, and wouldn’t, say why. Now I can. First, there was the going-away party for Lauren Ambrose’s Claire, which ended with an impromptu salute to Peter Krause’s Nate, her late sibling. Everyone traded memories and took turns raising a glass to his name. What made it so poignant was that, for once, the spirit of Nate was not in the room to witness it. They were at peace with his absence, so he was absent. Similarly, when Claire drove away from the family, heading to a new life in New York, Nate was shown running after her, eventually receding from view in her side-view mirror. At that moment, she stopped looking back and started looking ahead - and so did “Six Feet Under,” as writer-director Alan Ball delivered one last, astonishingly powerful coda to end his five-year series. The show, which had begun in 2001 with the death of one member of the Fisher family, ended Sunday with the flash-forward deaths of all the others. As the music swelled on Claire’s car CD player, and the empty-road horizon stretched out before her, we were propelled into the future, and given the dates and circumstances of the major characters’ deaths. Matriarch Ruth (Frances Conroy) died with her family around her bedside. To others, death came violently or quietly, but it always came - accompanied by the fade-to-white light and postscript, up to and including the last surviving member of the original clan: “Claire Simone Fisher, 1983-2085. “For a show centered on death, it was the perfect way to go. It also was one way to obliterate the need, or temptation, for a reunion show down the line. As Claire drove away and we got our first glimpse into what appeared to be the future - Ruth tossing tennis balls at pets at her proposed doggie day-care business - I got a quiet thrill watching the TV and wondering if Ball was going where I suddenly suspected he was going. When he did - and summed up one death after another - he was summing up those characters’ lives as well, in a fashion that provided the ultimate sense of closure. David Bianculli New York Daily News
- Six Feet Under laid to rest gracefully
For five rocky seasons, the Fishers and everyone who shared their orbit have taken it on the chin. They have waged war with themselves, one another and an unforgiving universe. Smart, self-absorbed, unsettled, all too human - to us, these people were fascinating and often relatable. But not always easy to deal with. They could really try our patience. They were overdue for fixing. Good news: By the end of the 75-minute finale, we can leave them secure in knowing their recovery has begun. And thanks to the wondrously fitting postscript, we will know a great deal more. Even at the end, “Six Feet Under” doesn’t go soft. But it takes its leave with its affairs in order. It can rest, at last, in peace. A groundbreaking series (in more ways than one) when it premiered in June 2001, “Six Feet Under” dared to whistle past the graveyard with its fancifully discomfiting look at life and death. It fulfilled a promise by creator Alan Ball (who wrote and directed the finale) to be “a show about life in the presence of death. “Death was always dropping in. At the start of each episode (nearly every one, that is, except the finale), someone met his or her demise in a fashion that might be heartbreaking (claimed by sudden infant death syndrome), grotesque (cut in half by an elevator) or morbidly funny (hit by a car while witnessing the Rapture). Each slice of life (or, more aptly, slice of death) was meant to demonstrate the randomness and ineluctability of our common fate. “Six Feet Under” thought a lot about death, and about death’s impact on the survivors. After all, it viewed death through the eyes of a family that runs a funeral home - assisting at the cusp of the hereafter, while struggling with the here and now. In its premiere four years ago, its tone was quickly established: The patriarch, Nathaniel Fisher, was killed while fiddling with his cigarette when a bus smacked into the hearse he was driving. But he never went away. Played by Richard Jenkins, he engaged in an active afterlife throughout the series’ run. Now, on the finale, he reappears to bully his son David into saving himself. Later in the episode, he and son Nate jointly offer Brenda a much-needed blessing. On “Six Feet Under,” ghostly presences are skilled at saying what needs to be said, as when Nate gives Claire a pep talk about moving to New York to pursue her photography. “You want to know a secret?” he counsels. “I spent my whole life being scared: of not being ready, of not being right, of not being who I should be. And where did it get me? “Then, in the show’s closing minutes, as Claire gathers the people she loves most for a farewell photo before she drives away, Nate, looking on, says a curious thing. “You can’t take a picture of this,” he tells her. “It’s already gone. “In this richly satisfying finish to a series like none other, we understand what he means. We see these characters as we have never seen them before. But as we realize how much we cared for them, we understand they’re not there. “Six Feet Under” will be over. So the pictures that count will reside inside us. Long after it has gone.
- And they all died happily ever after, sort of
Some said the world would end in fire. Some said in ice. But no one predicted that the finale to HBO’s apocalyptic drama “Six Feet Under” would be served room temperature. Instead, insiders, who had seen the show in advance, promised last week that the 75-minute episode would blow our minds. But, really, we should have been skeptical: our minds, after all, were already blown. . . Suddenly, “Six Feet Under” seemed prepared to end on a note of uplift, hugs and Polonian advice: life goes on; family is where you find it; follow your dreams; to thine own self be true. And it didn’t exactly not end that way, except that this show had one last mortal-coil shuffle to perform. This one was intended to be a showstopper. As Claire drove east in a new car - bless her, she had totaled that hideous hearse in her accident - she let her mind wander. Into the young, agile mind came a premonition: everyone would die. Suddenly the show became a montage of the ways all the show’s remaining major characters would leave this world. Keith (Mathew St. Patrick), David’s boyfriend, was shot in the back of an armored truck. An aged Brenda died while listening to her brother ramble on about emotional closure. Ruth expired in bed, attended by David and her companion, George (James Cromwell). David keeled over while fantasizing about Keith. Rico collapsed on a cruise ship. And finally Claire herself, her eyes so rheumy they looked opaque, died in a huge dark-wood bed, surrounded by evidence of a well-lived, love-filled life and an HBO set designer’s sense of future decor. The year was 2085. She was 102. The sequence flew by. It was very pale. The aging makeup, unfortunately, turned all of them into characters from “Cocoon” or Miss Havisham, with spectral expressions and white flyaway hair. Keith’s murder seemed stupid. In fact, the whole overwrought montage was at least half ludicrous, and almost half lovely. But that precious ratio - which recalls the balance of silliness and beauty in Trollope and some of Hardy - has always been the show’s strong suit, a 19th-century tone ingeniously invented and confidently maintained over five seasons. It’s rare that a sensibility remains so unified and so unshy on a fancy soap opera; melodramatists too often get scared of being called hysterics and betray their genre, blowing it off for dumb stunts or trying, in some 11th hour, to sober up and turn manly. But the producers of “Six Feet Under” never cared about impressing the “Wire” or “Deadwood” audiences. They had their ratio, and they saw it through. “Six Feet Under” was a beautiful series, and its finale will suffice. Virginia Heffernan New York Times
- Canada’s ‘Slings & Arrows’ nails backstage life in a way Studio 60 only wishes it could
For even if you’ve never heard of it before, “Slings & Arrows” is one of the smartest, funniest and, in its way, most moving shows on television. And though it draws its inspiration, and many of its themes and dramatic motifs, from the works of Shakespeare, it does so in a way that reminds us less of high school lit classes than the Bard’s grasp on the blood and bone of human existence.
Everyone’s life contains some measure of drama. And theatrical types are never shy when it comes to pulling the curtain back on their own backstage struggles. But as with any workplace drama, the machinations matter much less than the hopes, conflicts and struggles that feed them. At one time it seemed as if “Studio 60″ would locate the human story beneath the glossy surface of its Hollywood setting. The extent of its failure seems most vivid when you see it in the reflected light of “Slings & Arrows,” and its less glamorous, more memorable troupe of Canadian actors.
Video - “Rode Hard, meet Put Away Wet”
- Herc’s seen Willow & Cordelia throw down…
Q: Kendall Casablancas (”Buffy” alumna Charisma Carpenter) and Trina Echolls (”Buffy” alumna Alyson Hannigan) have a run-in? Is there torn clothing?
A: It’s much more of an encounter than a run-in, but really it’s a scene that exists mostly to make hardcore “Buffy” fans (like myself) pee their pants a little.
Q: Are there any inside jokes referencing a shared Scooby past?
A: None that I noticed, happily. They mainly snipe. Trina mocks Kendall for dating her high-schooler bro while Kendall mocks Trina for the sad state of her showbiz career.
Q: Hannigan has her own sitcom on CBS, which was not the case when she appeared on “Veronica” last season. Is her appearance incredibly brief?
A: Perversely, Hannigan gets substantially more screen time in this, her third “Mars” episode, than she did her first two times around.
Q: Would you still give this episode four stars if someone else had the roles of Trina and Kendall?
A: I would. Ain’t It Cool News
since 15 August 2007
