February 2008 Archives

February 27, 2008 - To Everything There is a (TV) Season, Turn, Turn, Turn... Including Pete Seeger

February 27, 2008 12:14 AM

The PBS series American Masters devotes tonight's installment to a performer with a very song, storied and musical history: Pete Seeger, the blacklisted banjo player whose career achievements include popularizing folk music, protesting the Vietnam War and spearheading a movement to clean up the Hudson River.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (9 p.m. ET; check local listings), by necessity, is as much a political as a musical journey. Musically, we learn how and why he was so exposed to, and interested in, what's now called roots music as a very young child, and how he came to pick up and champion an unlikely instrument, the banjo.

But that was after playing hit songs of the 1920s on the ukelele to school classmates. The documentary offers firsthand testimony from Seeger's brother, and later his wife, who corroborate the most unlikely of stories - how a man stayed true to his beliefs, and his belief in his country, even when it was all but impossible to reconcile the two.

The playbook of songs with which Seeger is associated, with and without the folk group The Weavers, includes "Goodnight Irene," "Little Boxes," "Turn Turn Turn," "Wimoweh," "Guantanamera," "If I Had a Hammer" and the hugely influential "We Shall Overcome" (which he adapted before it became adopted by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement) and "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."

Seeger wrote that one, and performed it in the 1960s on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - but not without difficulty. Seeger's appearance on that show ended his 17-year blacklist from network prime time, but "Big Muddy," an anti-war song obviously aimed at LBJ's Vietnam policy, was cut by CBS. It was reinserted the following year, and still is a very powerful performance and TV moment.

Other potent moments in the documentary include his large-group singalongs, seen in different decades at a wide variety of events and locations; people like Johnny Cash and Arlo Guthrie, sticking up for Seeger's unflagging activism and marveling at his unflagging optimism; and having him declare ambitious goals - the end of a war, the rebirth of a river - only to see them eventually come true.

When I began working on a book about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Pete Seeger was the first person, other than Tom and Dick Smothers, I interviewed. That was 14 years ago... and my optimistic dream is that, this year, it'll finally be completed, I time for the brothers' 50th anniversary as a performing group next year.

To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season...

Meanwhile, watch tonight's American Masters. Tom Smothers is in there - and so are decades of music and activism from an admirably pure performer.

February 26, 2008 - I'm Just Mad about Saffron... And HBO's "The Gates"

February 25, 2008 11:20 PM

In some ways, you had to be there. But in other ways, tonight's HBO documentary, The Gates, captures much of the excitement, wonder and exhilaration of walking through Central Park three years ago, when artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude succeeded in mounting their two-week installation of thousands of saffron-colored gates throughout the park.

It was a vision they had pursued for decades, and The Gates (10 p.m. ET) wastes no time in retracing their steps. The first half of the documentary is devoted to the couple's efforts to persuade New York City officials to realize their dream. These efforts, amazingly, are presented in an amazingly thorough visual record, because Christo had enlisted filmmaker Albert Maysles to film them in 1979 as they approached lawyers and city officials, attended town halls and faced wearying and discouraging opposition.

Discouraging, but never successful. After 24 years, and a new administration headed by Michael Bloomberg, The gates project was approved: more than 7,000 16-foot gates erected along Central Park's paths, with brightly colored nylon flags hanging from them in the breeze.

The documentary, by Antonio Ferrera, Albert and David Maysles, and Matthew Prinzing, superbly shows the effect of The Gates, on the onlookers as well as the park. Through rain and shine, snow and darkness, this 2005 art installation was a thing of beauty, and a joy for... two weeks.

But what a joy. The sights are delightful, but so are the sounds, and The Gates smartly pays attention to them. One park visitor likens the enthusiastic opening-day chatter to the excited conversational buzz of a crowded theater lobby. Elderly men and their young grandchildren watch and laugh with equal amounts of awe, and the effect, on the people and the park, is nothing short of transformational.

The only thing this HBO program fails to point out is how people, walking under the gates, were eager to make eye contact, smile and converse - the exact opposite experience of the usual New York stroll. I visited The Gates several times, and felt lucky to so so. (The pictures on today's blog, taken by my friends and me, are proof.)

For the opening-day visit, I gave the women in our party saffron-colored pashmina scarves ($10 each, New Jersey Turnpike rest stop). They were a hit everywhere we walked - even with Christo and Jean-Claude, who were being driven around the park and stopped to call the ladies over to thank them for getting into the colorful spirit.

We thanked them right back. Their installation, The Gates, is everything I love about art. Just like the documentary The Gates is everything I love about television, and HBO, and that network's endlessly tasteful executive producer of documentaries, Sheila Nevins.

February 25, 2008 - "SNL" Casts Obama and Looks Forward, While the Oscars Hands Out Awards and Looks Backward

February 25, 2008 1:25 AM

Under unusual conditions and tough deadlines, both ABC's Oscar telecast and NBC's Saturday Night Live presented solid shows over the weekend. Both benefited greatly from their smartly chosen guest hosts - Jon Stewart and Tina Fey, respectively - both of whom were returning to familiar territory.

But it was mostly that the shows were there at all, rather than sidelined or crippled by a writers' strike, that mattered the most. The Oscars and SNL weren't just good. They were good to see.

Just seeing Jack Nicholson on his usual Cheshire cat perch, enjoying and encouraging everyone in front of and around him, made the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast more enjoyable than it would have been without him. As for host Stewart, at least one of his one-liners was a home run - when he complimented eventual supporting actor winner Javier Bardem, in No Country for Old Men, for "combining Hannibal Lecter's murderousness with Dorothy Hamill's wedge cut."

One of last night's time-eating Oscar innovations, planned in case the strike was still on and the actors were absent, turned out to be welcome in any event - and ought to be an annual tradition from now on.

Prefacing the reading of the nominees in the categories of leading and supporting actor and actress were montages of previous winners in those categories. It was wall-to-wall glamour, excitement and fun, and put each new winner in an instantly understandable and valuable context. Even the montage showing a few seconds of each Best Picture winner since Wings nabbed the first one in 1927 was fun.

And back on Saturday Night Live, the speed with which the cast and writers turned Thursday's Democratic debate into Saturday's satirical fodder was very impressive - more so than the jokes themselves, which, in the opening skit, were a little less than sharp.

That skit did, though, introduce the comic who would be playing Barack Obama: Fred Armisen. He had little to do in this first appearance - not even one smile - but Armisen, who for years has brightened SNL with a pitch-perfect Prince, doubtlessly will evolve his Obama portrayal into another color-blind comedy classic.

February 22, 2008 - Post-Strike Rewards: "Saturday Night Live" One Night, Oscars the Next

February 22, 2008 2:54 AM

What a terrific weekend for live television.

Tomorrow night at 11:30 p.m. ET, NBC's Saturday Night Live returns for the first fresh show since the writers' strike began - and returns with one of TV's most talented comic writers, SNL alumnus Tina Fey, as the guest host. Brilliant choice.

Then, Sunday night at 8:30 ET, ABC presents the Academy Awards, with a star-studded red carpet instead of a star-barring picket line. The host this year, working with just over a week's preparation, is Jon Stewart. Again, brilliant choice.

SNL has been in reruns since the first week of November, when NBC News anchor Brian Williams was the guest host - and, for the record, was very funny. Dropping in for a cameo? Barack Obama, for real. Now the show is scrambling to find someone to play him - and whoever gets the gig may have a juicy recurring role for years, with or without Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton.

Not having SNL around during these past four months has been almost tragic: Every week has brought unexpected new twists in the Republican and Democratic races for the presidency, twists that could and should have provided this show with reams of priceless material. Rudy Giuliani, just to name one, literally got away easy.

And Fey, coming off a superb second mini-season of 30 Rock, returns to her old stomping grounds as the perfect returning-show guest host. And if Fey is there, can 30 Rock co-star and frequent, brilliant guest host Alec Baldwin be far behind?

And then there's the Oscars. When Stewart originally said yes to hosting for a second time, there may have been pressure to do better, and do well. But now, putting any show together at all, under the most rushed circumstances imaginable, will be met with nothing but gratitude. Stewart has a free pass. He can't fail.

But he can, and doubtlessly will, joke about politics, and the writers' strike, as well as the films and Hollywood. What a great year to have Stewart at the helm - and, after so many months of having to make do without TV writers, what a great weekend to have SNL and the Oscars back at full strength.

February 21, 2008 - Listen to the Jukebox, Send Some Feedback

February 21, 2008 3:54 AM

I'm happy to report - thrilled, actually - that the two remaining pieces of the TV WORTH WATCHING puzzle are up and running, and ready for you to check out and (I hope) enjoy. Click on the TV JUKEBOX and FEEDBACK buttons on the navigation bar, and dive in.

The JUKEBOX page is designed to showcase some particularly worthwhile CD collections of TV show themes and soundtracks. Some, presented on the left column of the page, will offer a single song sample. The featured CD will present 10 tracks, listed in the jukebox, with individual reviews and streaming audio.

As on the FRESH AIR page, the idea is to read, then listen, or the other way around. (By the way, there's a new update of the FRESH AIR page as well, adding more of my all-time favorite reviews.) And on JUKEBOX, there are links so that anything you like, you can click to buy.

The FEEDBACK page is designed to hear from you, on specific topics, and share TV memories. The two starting questions ask about your first favorite prime-time TV series, and - sigh - your first TV sex symbols.

Special thanks, as always, to Eric Gould for designing these website pages so cleanly and creatively, and for Chris Spurgeon for implementing them with computer magic I can't begin to comprehend. But I can appreciate it - and even I had lots of fun road-testing the JUKEBOX page, especially.

I hope you do, too. Let me know... and f you have other favorite TV soundtrack or theme CDs you'd like me to highlight, let me know that as well.

If the strike has left us with less quality TV Worth Watching, at least we can focus on some TV Worth Hearing.

February 20, 2008 - "Company," From Then to Now

February 20, 2008 3:17 AM

The PBS series Great Performances, tonight at 9 ET (check local listings), presents a telecast of the 2006 revival of Company, the groundbreaking Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. Raul Esparza plays Bobby, the single man surrounded by ambivalently married couples - and the staging, by director John Doyle, requires that the actors double as their own orchestra.

It's definitely worth seeing, and it's quite enjoyable. For me, though, nothing beats my memory of seeing the original 1970 production, in my first trip to New York City.

Even though I spent the last 20 years as a New York TV critic, I didn't get to the city, for the first time, until my senior year of high school. I traveled from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, part of a Performing Arts theater trip organized by Nova High School teachers Allen Hill and Joyce Hall. As a student, I had designed lighting for our school musicals; now I was about to see real theater for the first time, on Broadway.

The first day, we saw a matinee of Purlie, starring Cleavon Little and Melba Moore - an astoundingly energetic, entertaining new musical. Then, that night, we saw Company. Dean Jones had left the show, and Larry Kert had taken his place. But Elaine Stritch was still in the cast singing "The Ladies Who Lunch," a show-stopping number I'll never forget.

I was a kid then, but Sondheim's lyrics hit me like a punch in the gut. Ever since, they always have. Seeing Company that day remains one of my favorite moments at the theater - and the following year, when our school troupe returned to New York and I snared some box seats for Sondheim's Follies, I cemented a love affair with his music and output that has continued unabated ever since.

Any original or Broadway revival of any Sondheim show, I'll be there - and I'm still angry that the Roundabout Theatre's Assassins wasn't filmed for TV, and that Encore's Follies wasn't recorded for posterity. This year's Roundabout revival of Sunday in the Park with George? Already have tickets to see it twice - and the end of act one, in the original production, is another of my all-time theater thrills.

For those who can't get to Broadway, or haven't seen Company, I almost envy your chance to be introduced to this fabulous score, and these insightful and unforgettable lyrics, through the easy miracle of television. Over the years, the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim have meant an awful lot to me. The older I get, the smarter he seems... but it's just me getting mature enough to understand what his characters are singing.

Listen tonight, and you'll be grateful, not sorry.

February 19, 2008 - Careful, NBC, or Your Initials Soon May Stand for "Nothing But Crap"

February 19, 2008 2:12 AM

There's an old network trick when it comes to promoting truly tacky TV shows: If a new program is mind-numbingly bad or indefensible, don't send preview copies to critics. Fox used to be the champ at that in the reality-show genre, and did it again recently by unveiling Moment of Truth without sending advance episodes.

But guess which network suddenly is swimming in the bottom of the barrel? NBC, whose colorful peacock is in danger of being shoved aside by a smelly skunk.

Once upon a time, boys and girls, NBC was a major network - tops in the ratings, unbeatable on Thursdays, and honoring a legacy as a place where quality television was presented and nurtured. But baby, look at you now.

On Sunday, NBC premiered a telemovie revival of Knight Rider, a tacky 1980s action series in which David Hasselhoff drove around with a computerized talking car. Guess what? The new Knight Rider was not sent out for critics to preview. Guess what else? It was awful.

How bad? Worse than NBC's remake, earlier this season, of The Bionic Woman. Worse than the previous record-holder of horrendous TV updates, the defunct WB network's rancid remake of The Lone Ranger.

And yet I'm glad that NBC didn't sent out preview copies, because that meant I had to watch Knight Rider like a TV civilian, with commercials intact. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known that a series of commercials, starring the same human and automotive headliners of Knight Rider, played throughout the two-hour movie, advertising the brand of vehicle.

The commercials were better made, and slightly better acted, than the telemovie, but otherwise were indistinguishable from the program. (See if you can tell, from the pictures, which comes from the show, and which from the ad. It's not easy.)

That Sunday debacle was followed, last night, by another show not sent out to critics: My Dad is Better Than Your Dad.

I just watched it. Unfortunately. It's the sort of show that used to be seen, more than a decade ago, in the afternoons on Nickelodeon, back when green slime was new and the target audience was preteens with Attention Deficit Disorder. But on this show, the family dynamics are dysfunctional, most of the kids (and parents) act like brats, and the whole thing has the low-rent tackiness of American Gladiators - another recent NBC "innovation."

This Friday, NBC presents yet another new game show, called Amnesia. I haven't seen it yet, but that's because, as of this point, NBC hasn't sent a preview copy. But maybe it doesn't mean NBC has another cringingly hollow new show on its hands.

Maybe, given the title, someone at NBC just forgot.

But if NBC doesn't remember, and embrace, its few good shows worth watching -- 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, The Office, My Name Is Earl and a precious few others - all its broadcast competitors will be able to mock NBC with a familiar taunt:

My Network Is Better Than Your Network.

February 18, 2008 - The Writers' Strike Is Over, But the Unscripted Junk Continues

February 18, 2008 12:56 AM

Two of the judges from Dancing with the Stars learn which of their dance teams emerges as victorious in tonight's finale of ABC's Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann. I couldn't care less.

No, wait, I could care less. Tonight's also the premiere of NBC's My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, and there's no new TV show I could care less about than that.

No, wait, that's not true, either. Because tonight at 9 ET, the CW network presents the debut episode of Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious. If there's a more instantly dismissable new series on television, I can't think of it, and I certainly wouldn't want to watch it.

Girlicious is a spinoff of sorts from last year's CW time-waster, The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll. That show spent a whole season winnowing a field of competitors to select one young woman to join the ranks of the Pussycat Dolls. Shortly after the finale anointed Asia Nitollano as the winner, she announced she'd rather launch her solo career, and said "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Pussycat Dolls job offer.

So if last year's Pussycat Dolls show pulled a season-long bait-and-switch, and not even the winner cared enough to stick around, why in the world would anyone swallow the bait and stick around for Girlicious?

I've seen the opening hour, and it's dreadful. It might be entertaining as the subject of a fatalistic drinking game - take a shot every time someone says "like," and you'll be dead by, like, the halfway point. But on its own merits, Girlicious has none.

Thanks, but no thanks.

February 16, 2008 - Still Easier Than Rolling Off a Blog

February 16, 2008 4:05 AM

By mere coincidence, the writers' strike and TV WORTH WATCHING began the exact same day, on November 5. For more than a month, I wrote every single day - and every single day, they didn't. Beginning December 15, I decided to stop writing new blogs on weekends.

I'll continue to write daily, providing BIANCULLI'S BEST BETS. But the seven-day-a-week column/blog pace is killing me, so instead of supplying a new blog on weekends, I'll post my favorite test pattern instead.

Enjoy your weekend. I plan to.

February 15, 2008 - On the CBS "Dexter," There Will Be Blood... But Not as Much

February 15, 2008 1:20 AM

If not for the strike, this wouldn't have happened... but starting Sunday, CBS will be repeating the first season of Dexter, the daring Showtime series I ranked as one of the Top 10 TV shows of 2007. But it arrives, it should be noted, a little differently.

Dexter stars Michael C. Hall, giving an even more amazing performance than he did as the repressed brother on HBO's Six Feet Under, as a blood-spatter expert who works in forensics for the Miami police department, examining crime scenes. That's his day job. At night, he sometimes identifies and seeks out serial killers who have eluded prosecution - then murders them himself.

In other words, he's a serial killer of serial killers.

If you're a premium network such as Showtime, without censorial restrictions and with a real drive to attract the sort of attention HBO did with The Sopranos, a series like Dexter is a perfect fit. But how comfortably will it fit on CBS, and will the transplant take?

First, the good news - and there's a lot of it. When Sex and the City was edited for the shift to basic cable TV on TBS, both the language and the sex took major hits. When The Sopranos went on A&E, the language and violence were so jarringly replaced or removed that it was, like the tamer Sex and the City, it was no fun to watch.

But the first season of Dexter is almost completely without sex, and the only rough language emanates from two cops on the Miami force: Dexter's sister, and a sergeant named Doakes (Erik Kig), who's convinced there's something creepy about Dexter. And there is.

His curses are tamed so much for CBS that a lot of spice is lost, and I'd still prefer first-time Dexter viewers watch the unedited first-season DVD instead. Otherwise, the subtle edits in the two episodes sent for preview are marginal, though not unnoticable.

What I wonder about is much later in the season, when Dexter is shown, both in flashbacks and in present day, in a virtual bloodbath of a crime scene. There's no getting around that - and if it's minimized on CBS, so is the exact element that makes the character so understandable, and the series itself so powerful.

In a New York press conference Wednesday, Showtime executives Matt Blank and Bob Greenblatt talked of CBS's enthusiasm for the series, allowing each episode to run almost 50 minutes of a one-hour time slot. That's several minutes more than a hour drama usually gets, because of advertising - but because pressure groups have targeted Dexter without seeing the edited broadcast version, less ad time may have been unavoidable.

I asked the Showtime executives that, since the entire 12-episode first season of Dexter told one serialized dramatic story, and since CBS had a history of canceling such series prematurely in recent years, whether they'd gotten assurances that CBS would run all 12. Greenblatt guessed that, unless "no one shows up on Sunday," CBS would carry this strike-year experiment through to the end. Blank, referring to the fact that Dexter is available already, in unedited form, as a DVD boxed set and as downloads, added with a smile, "And the good news? There's always somewhere else you can see it."

If CBS cancels Dexter, or if you're not comfortable with the network editing, remember that.

February 14, 2008 - The Writers Are Back: Wow! Wow! Wow!

February 14, 2008 2:44 AM

At first, it appeared that Comedy Central's A Daily Show with Jon Stewart hadn't gotten the memo that the writers were back. Otherwise, why start the show by calling it A Daily Show, Stewart's personal show of support for his missing staffers, rather than the non-strike title The Daily Show?

It turned out, though, to be only a tease. Stewart led his show by welcoming the writers back, leading with the fact that the strike was over. He then changed the A back to a The, and The show was on.

On other shows, in their own ways, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien - the other late-night programs doing without writers - all did the same thing, but to varying degrees of success.

Stewart got an A. Colbert and O'Brien were close behind... and the others, on this first night back, weren't.

After welcoming the writers back, Stewart led the show, to his increasingly obvious distaste, with a report on the Westminster Kennel Show, describing the beagle's surprise win as "a decisive victory in the war on terrier."

Stewart shuddered, sneered and scowled.

"Really?" he asked, obviously addressing his writers. "You've been gone 100 days, this is the (BLEEP) you're gonna pull?" It was the funniest bit, on any talk show all night, dealing with the writers' return.

Colbert, on The Colbert Report, welcomed his writers back by having them run on camera individually, accept a handshake and a pencil, and keep on moving. Some of them were real writers. Others were ringers, such as Kevin Bacon. And when Colbert enthused about finally having words to read in the prompter again, we were shown the words as he said them.

"Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow."

Leno, too, noted that the writers were back, but the monologue didn't seem stronger as a result. Leno's biggest laugh came when he mistakenly said "Osama" when he meant "Obama," and blamed "a disgruntled writer" for the mistake. A bit later, Leno also got excited noting one obvious change, now that the picket lines are down.

"Tomorrow night, what's this?" he asked, announcing an upcoming guest. "An actual star? Russell Crowe is coming here tomorrow!"

Jimmy Kimmel started Jimmy Kimmel Live, over on ABC, by announcing, "After 100 excruciating days, the writers strike is over." Then, by presenting jokes about Carrot Top and Oliver North, he offered some excruciatingly tired punch lines by writers who should have been more rested.

Conan O'Brien started Late Night by saying of his writers, "It's great to have them back. In fact, they wrote that. It's the first thing they wrote."

And now, finally, back to business as normal... and to a Happy Valentine's Day.

Comments (3) | Permalink

February 13, 2008 - Viewers Held Hostage, Day 100: Our Long National TV Nightmare Is Over

February 13, 2008 1:57 AM

When Writers Guild of America members voted yesterday to authorize an end to the strike, it had been exactly 100 days, by my count, since the strike began on Nov. 5, 2007. And I'm pretty sure I'm counting correctly, since that was the day, by coincidence, I launched TV WORTH WATCHING.

Welcome back, TV writers. It's been increasingly lonely here without you.

But let's celebrate, for several reasons. Already, the networks have made some good decisions and announced some heartwarming renewals. I'm thrilled that ABC's Pushing Daisies will be back next fall, that Lost will try to squeeze in a handful of more episodes before the season ends, and that NBC looks to be bringing back Chuck. If NBC shows some taste - an increasingly long shot, these days, apparently - and renews Friday Night Lights for a third season, then long-term TV prospects for a return to quality will be quite nice, thank you.

Meanwhile, there are the short-term rewards to enjoy. The talk-show hosts who have done without writers - Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert - all should have them back today, and launch their reopening nights this evening. That's right - A Daily Show, beginning tonight, will have its writers on board, and be The Daily Show again. On Friday, Bill Maher will follow suit, and probably present his first new "New Rules" in more than 100 days.

Backstage, the booking wars already have accelerated and turned nasty again, as some guests booked on the CBS shows during the strike are trying to shift back to the higher-rated Tonight Show now that picket lines are down. Does loyalty and commitment mean nothing? In late night, in some quarters, apparently not.

But moving ahead is an exciting prospect nonetheless. Within days, Lorne Michaels will decide upon, and announce, the first Saturday Night Live guest host in more than three months. Next come the first sitcoms to have started production... and slowly but surely, things on TV will start approaching normal.

And yes, in this instance, that's a good thing.

February 12, 2008 - Fiddling Around with "My Grammy Moment"

February 12, 2008 1:43 AM

When I visited The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last month to attend the rehearsal of an hour devoted entirely to Ringo Starr, I was impressed enough by one unfamiliar face to consider going up backstage and complimenting her afterward.

It was the first time she was playing with the former Beatle, and in the course of the four songs played on Ferguson's show, she backed him up by playing violin, acoustic guitar and singing - all while radiating enough energy, talent and charisma that the Late Late Show director and cameramen, in particular, took careful note.

After the show, I wanted to get her name, and tell her how impressive she had been holding her own with such musical icons as Starr and Dave Stewart, but I didn't. I couldn't think of a way to make it sound genuine (I'm a TV critic! This is a professional opinion!) rather than creepy. So I let the moment pass.

Imagine my surprise, then, when midway through Sunday's Grammy Awards telecast on CBS, Jason Bateman set up the special on-air "My Grammy Moment" contest - in which three musicians not signed to any record label would audition live for a chance to join the orchestra backing the Foo Fighters - and introduced the three finalists.

Finalist #1 was named Ann Marie Calhoun - and looked remarkably like the young woman who had played with Ringo, on the same CBS network, a few weeks before. Her "audition" was brief, but showed the same assured bow technique on the violin, and the same dazzling smile.

No surprise: She won, and got to go take her place in the string section, backing the Foo Fighters.

Yesterday, I called the Late Late Show offices and asked if there was a way they could look up the call sheet for the night Ringo Starr and company performed, and check to see if an Ann Marie Calhoun had been one of the backup players. There was. They did. She had.

Now, I'm not saying the Grammys are playing fast and loose with their "My Grammy Moment" rules. If the violinist didn't have a recording contract, she was fair game, though hardly the sort of off-the-street amateur the contest was encouraging.

What I am saying, though, is that if two weeks before, you got to sing and play with a Beatle on "With a Little Help From My Friends" on national TV, then maybe sitting in the string section behind the Foo Fighters wouldn't even count as your biggest thrill of the month.

A "Grammy Moment," yeah.

But a Beatle Moment, that's at least three times as good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

February 11, 2008 - TV Writers Vote Tomorrow, And May Be Back to Work Wednesday

February 11, 2008 10:43 AM

The end of the Writers Guild of America strike, if it plays out this week as expected, will arrive just in time, and conclude the only way it should: With the membership voting to accept terms, rather than accept the decision of the WGA equivalent of super-delegates.

If all goes well - and it ought to, since the alternative would cripple so many aspects of TV that it might never fully recover - Tuesday's vote will mean certain parts of Hollywood can work on getting back up to speed as quickly as possible.

Other parts, though, may never be the same.

A resolution this week, and a resumption of production, means several good things. The Oscar telecast, a mere 13 days from now, will proceed unpicketed, and fully attended. The networks, if they so choose, can stage a smaller version of pilot season, present upfronts to potential advertisers, and mount a May sweeps populated by fresh episodes of most prime-time series.

But that's only if they so choose. Even if both sides of this dispute shake hands and resolve to work together, there's a real possibility the status quo, having been disrupted by this strike, provides the excuse for rewriting the play book.

Fewer scripts may be ordered for pilots, and fewer pilots made, not just this spring, but from now on. Just because new episodes of shows can be produced in time to appear before the season ends, that doesn't mean they'll be shown then. Network programmers may decide it's better to stockpile shows until fall, or, in the case of borderline successes, simply stop making them. Even the concept of the fall season might be up for grabs.

The so-called "bubble shows" most vulnerable to cancellation right now include series that deserve patience and support as much as they need them. ABC has Pushing Daisies, the season's best new show. NBC has Chuck, and CBS has Big Bang Theory. That's just for starters, but you get the idea. If NBC contends itself with cheaper, flashier crap like American Gladiators, struggling but worthy shows like Chuck could be - dead meat.

One part of the TV landscape is returning more reliably. If the WGA membership votes yes on Tuesday, then Wednesday night will bring the first staff-written installments of 2008 for shows featuring Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And circle this date on your calendar: Saturday, February 23, is the likely return date for the first fresh Saturday Night Live since November 3.

Meanwhile, last night CBS presented the 50th annual Grammy Awards. There were, as usual, some great moments - Beyoncé and Tina Turner, the Beatles tribute, Rhapsody in Blue, even the exiled-in-London mini-concert from loose-cannon Amy Winehouse, among others.

But this high-profile CBS special was tarnished a bit by the network's promo ads for what's coming next, courtesy of the strike. A spring edition of Big Brother?

That's not a promo. That's a threat.

The truth is, the networks need good, fresh, scripted programming - and fast.

February 9, 2008 - Still Easier Than Rolling Off a Blog

February 9, 2008 3:08 AM

Enjoy your weekend. I plan to.

February 08, 2008 - The Strike May be Ending - And HBO's "Inside the NFL" Definitely Is

February 8, 2008 3:50 AM

What happens tomorrow, in separate East and West Coast meetings of active members of the Writers Guild of America, will determine whether the four-month-old strike will be ending very, very soon. My guess is based on a combination of conversations and an urgent Hollywood syzygy, with the Oscars, the upfronts and the May sweeps all dependent upon a swift resolution.

(Syzygy, by the way, is one of my favorite obscure words. It means a rare alignment of things or forces - like the celestial alignment that triggered events in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But I digress.)

So very soon, Hollywood most likely will be able to attempt to generate quality, worthwhile television again. Coincidentally, HBO has chosen this very week to say goodbye to one of the longest-running shows on television - and a program that has evolved into one of its most reliably entertaining series.

Inside the NFL began in 1977 - two years before the debut of ESPN's SportsCenter. On broadcast TV, only 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS newsmagazine that premiered in 1968, has clocked more years in prime time.

At first, the show was low-budget and low-rent, but evolved eventually into a glossy showcase for both NFL Films and the NFL. The current team of co-analysts - Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Dan Marino and Cris Carter - work really well together, displaying the genuine camaraderie that many other network sports shows work so hard to fake.

On the final show, which is repeated tonight at 7 p.m. ET, this quartet also made room for former hosts Len Dawson and Nick Buoniconti, and looked back at the 31 seasons of Inside the NFL - while, in the same hour, showing highlights and formerly unseen sideline pictures and sound from the truly super Super Bowl XLII.

"There was good work done here," Costas said of Inside the NFL, while his colleagues bemoaned the fact that HBO - allegedly because the show had become very expensive and time-intensive to produce - had decided to pull the plug and fire its correspondents.

"Who said that any of us got fired?" Costas said. "Just because somebody made a boneheaded decision to discontinue one of the best and longest-running shows ever..."

The rest of his words were drowned out by the cheers of his cohorts, who agreed with Costas. And so do I. If there's some way this group, or this show, can take their act over to, say, the NFL Network, that's be a lot preferable to just letting it end the season with a whimper and vanishing into the sunset.

The New England Patriots already did that.

Inside the NFL deserved better. Thanks to all involved for a fabulous 31-year run. If you don't resurface elsewhere, in some other form - or if HBO doesn't have an unexpected but justifiable change of heart - you'll be sorely missed.

February 07, 2008 - With or Without Writers, Late-Night Shows are Hitting Home Runs

February 7, 2008 1:31 AM

The writers' strike, now officially into month four, could end any day now (for once, that's the same word I'm getting from various sources, who have yet to agree on anything). If these are the waning days - and nights - of the strike, then it ought to be noted that TV's late-night shows have managed to do some especially strong work lately, with or without writers.

The shows with writers - CBS's Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - have sparkled, ironically, mostly because of their hosts.

Letterman's interviews with Paris Hilton and Hillary Clinton were conducted masterfully, and he got Hillary to joke and talk about husband Bill more candidly than I've seen in any other public forum. Ferguson, meanwhile, made a strong impact, and sent a strong message, by not being funny. When Ferguson was filmed being sworn in as an American citizen, he radiated nothing other than seriousness and pride. It was a surprisingly, memorably touching moment...and, all things considered, a great day for America.

Conversely, three of the shows without writers teamed up for a delightful, same-night trifecta of mock hostility. The argument was which of them was responsible for the political resurgence of Mike Huckabee. Was it Stephen Colbert for featuring Huckabee on his show and jokingly being offered the vice presidential spot? Conan O'Brien, for re-popularizing Chuck Norris, who supported Huckabee? Or Jon Stewart, who made Colbert a star correspondent, and previously, on his short-lived Fox talk series, featured brand-new talk show host O'Brien as an early guest?
In this space last month, I suggested Colbert and O'Brien should launch an all-out feud, in the Jack Benny-Fred Allen tradition.

But I never imagined it would come to this: all three hosts, appearing on each other's shows the same night to spar not just verbally, but ultimately physically. Colbert, then O'Brien, crashed Comedy Central's A Daily Show. Stewart, then O'Brien, crashed its companion program, The Colbert Report. Then Stewart and Colbert crashed NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, to the delight of all three studio audiences. Great stuff, guys. Keep it up, as long as you need to.

Also without writers, over at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel Live presented Kimmel's long-time girlfriend, comedienne Sarah Silverman, presenting him with a strike-delayed birthday video. It features Matt Damon, and it's almost painfully funny. Here it is, courtesy of YouTube.

Can writers improve on this level of stuff? Hard to imagine.

February 06, 2008 - Super Tuesday's Clear Winner Is... A Player to be Named Later

February 6, 2008 2:16 AM

When Hillary Clinton showed up on CBS on Late Show with David Letterman Monday night - the day after the Super Bowl, the day before Super Tuesday - she likened the then-upcoming "national primary" contest to the game just played in Arizona. She and Barack Obama, Clinton predicted, probably would be battling down to the very last minute.

Letterman didn't ask her whether, in that scenario, she would end up as the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. But by around 1 a.m. ET this morning, as I'm writing this, she - and some of the network pundits - had made the right call. Super Tuesday, for the Democrats, could end up with a delegates score so close that this contest for the top spot on the ticket could go all the way to the convention.

That hasn't happened in so many decades that just the prospect of it made many of last night's network analysts swoon. It might be just wishful thinking, with everyone projecting what they most wanted to make the 2008 election campaign as interesting a story as possible. Certainly, that explains why Karl Rove, on Fox News, came closer than anyone of anointing Hillary Clinton the presumptive candidate - while warning that even anti-Clinton sentiment might not be enough to mobilize enough Republican voters to win, without the right candidate on the Republican side.

But with Mike Huckabee doing a bit better than predicted, and Mitt Romney doing worse, the Republican story has a few interesting chapters left in it, too. And the Democratic race on Super Tuesday was so complex and compelling, with delegate totals and divisions mattering as much as simple state victories, that there was plenty to explain and explore.

There were, accordingly, plenty of people dispatched as explainers and explorers, and plenty of time devoted to the coverage. CBS and ABC expanded their originally scheduled prime time coverage - ABC going the full three hours of prime time - and CNN so overloaded itself with pundits, it had enough to field two separate squads and run an internal scrimmage.

Technical gimmicks, from touch screens to Telestrators, abounded, but what mattered most last night were the analysts.

It was the biggest night yet for the new guard of broadcast network anchors - a different crew than when Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather worked the previous Super Tuesday in 2004. (Although Rather did hold his own, it should be noted, by anchoring live coverage on HD Net, and Brokaw was on view as well, and especially welcome on MSNBC.) But the anchors, by and large, served as traffic cops, though ABC's Charles Gibson did add a lot of his own observations, and good ones, too.

It was up to the analysts, though, to put the numbers into perspective as well as crunch them - and here, they did their jobs well, and early. The Super Bowl ended in regulation, but this choosing-a-candidate business was about to go into overtime.

Play ball...

February 05, 2008 - Shifting from Super Bowl to Super Tuesday

February 5, 2008 1:13 AM

Sunday was the Super Bowl, that amazing, astounding game that made "Super" seem inadequate. Monday the Nielsen ratings came in, anointing it as the most-viewed Super Bowl ever with 97.5 million viewers. Only the 1983 finale of M*A*S*H, which drew an estimated 106 million viewers, ranks higher as a TV show seen by American viewers.

Today, a fraction of those viewers will turn to the next compelling televised national contests: the American Idol auditions on Fox, and, on most broadcast and cable networks, prime-time coverage of the Super Tuesday primary results.

Conventional wisdom says that more people vote for American Idol than in presidential elections, but 2008 may be a different type of year. It was for the Super Bowl, when the promise of watching history being made, either way, drew people in record numbers.

Maybe, just maybe, it'll be that way for the primaries - that people will emerge in unexpected numbers to take part in the process, as they did in the Iowa Caucus. Maybe that'll be true of the TV coverage as well - that people will sense, as they did by tuning in the Super Bowl, that something unprecedented and unforgettable was about to happen.

All I know is, in what could be the waning days of the writers' strike, it's an especially exciting time to be watching television.

My advice for tonight? Start with your favorite news source, then skip around. And around, and around, past the broadcast networks to such disparate sources as Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Brit Hume on Fox News and Dan Rather on HD Net.

Like reading day-after news stories of the New York Giants' upset victory over the New England Patriots, the facts don't change - but the way they're described and analyzed can be wildly, and enlighteningly, different.

February 04, 2008 - Yes, Virginia, It Was a Super Bowl

February 4, 2008 1:21 AM

It was a huge upset, but not at all upsetting. Last night's Super Bowl XLII ended with Eli Manning and the New York Giants robbing the New England Patriots of the lead, and their perfect season, in the final minute of play. It was a great game - and in every way, it was great for broadcast network television.

For once, the biggest TV audience of the year got to watch something worthy of its attention. It was worth watching, and impossible to turn away from, until the last second - literally the last second, when Tom Brady and the Patriots turned the ball over on downs, and the Giants won, 17-14. Fox's Terry Bradshaw called it "the greatest Super Bowl I've ever witnessed" (but that excludes, I guess, the ones in which he was playing).

But it was a great game. Who saw it coming? On Fox, not Bradshaw. Not Howie Long. Not Jimmy Johnson. But the other guy with whom they traded predictions all season, Frank TV comic impressionist Frank Caliendo, did. Before the game, he was the only one of the four to put the Giants in the win column.

Other off-the-field observations:

The post-Super Bowl episode of House was a good move by Fox, a very strong episode that ought to earn it some new viewers. But the commercials, this year, were well below par.

Best commercial? My vote would go for the Coke ad set during Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, with giant balloons of Stewie from Family Guy and Underdog fought each other over a giant inflated balloon bottle of Coke - which was won, in the end, by good old Charlie Brown.

I also liked the Fed Ex ad with the giant pigeons, the Vitamin Water ad with Shaq as a giant jockey, and - how deliciously twisted - the cavemen from the Geico ads doing a Geico ad complaining about the poor makeup and casting on the TV series Cavemen. Which, of course, was based on the Geico cavemen.

(Oh, and the terminator from The Sarah Connor Chronicles tackling that annoying NFL Fox robot? Priceless.)

Oh, and ads for movies stood out, too. The Iron Man promo was exciting, the Adam Sandler ad for You Don't Mess with the Zohan made it look like an instant hit, and the Disney-Pixar Wall-E movie looks like fun, too.

But for once, today, the commercials aren't the best thing to talk about. There was that final drive by Manning... and everything else about the game itself. Brought to you, it's worth remembering, by free TV.

February 2, 2008 - Still Easier Than Rolling Off a Blog

February 2, 2008 1:07 AM

Enjoy your weekend. I plan to.

February 01, 2008 - Super Debate, Super "Lost," Super Bowl, Super Duper Tuesday

February 1, 2008 1:14 AM

After months of moaning the length and impact of the writers' strike, let's sound a different note today - and give thanks for four nationally televised events, just presented or upcoming, that qualify as both popular and important. In all four cases, TV is better for them.

One: Last night's CNN Democratic presidential candidates debate, the first after the field had been winnowed to just Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Refreshingly civil and unusually specific, it presented both candidates and their policies well - and, for the most part, also presented television in a good light. TV actually adding to the political discourse in a civil and informative way: What a concept. With luck, it might catch on.

Two: Last night's premiere of Lost on ABC. It was a reminder of just how good broadcast TV can be when it's in the right hands. For my Fresh Air review, listen here.

Three: Sunday's Super Bowl XLII on Fox. Sure, it's going to be the biggest TV event of the year. Invariably, it is. But this year, with the undefeated New England Patriots going against Eli Manning and the New York Giants, it's a major-market, big-story showdown for the ages. Even if it is a rout, as most analysts predict, it's a giant piece of sports history. And if the brother of last year's victorious Super Bowl quarterback somehow commandeers a victory, it'll be the biggest Super Bowl upset since Joe Namath led another New York squad, the Jets, past the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III - and that was XXXIX years ago.

Four: Tuesday is being called Super Duper Tuesday (how mature), because so many delegates and states are in play, it really is the equivalent of a national political primary. It's the biggest night yet in a political narrative that already has had more surprises and shifts than anyone predicted - so much so that predictions and polling data, themselves, are suspect this year. That makes the coverage Tuesday night, whatever happens and wherever you turn, another important night of television.

Reasons to watch TV these days? That's four, right there, in less than a week's time.