July 2009 Archives

Knights of The TV Round Table: A Freewheeling Critical Discussion

July 29, 2009 8:41 AM

In the current cover story of Broadcasting & Cable, Marisa Guthrie presides over a roundtable of TV critics, tossing out questions about the coming TV season and other things.

Participating critics were Robert Bianco of USA Today, Matt Roush of TV Guide, Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News, Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, and, representing TV WORTH WATCHING, yours truly...

The full article is fun, and tells you not only what to anticipate this fall, but what to take great pains to avoid.

Thanks, Marisa. Thanks, gang. And thanks, B&C. Click HERE to read the full article. have fun.

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Ben Silverman Exits NBC Universal: Quality TV Stock Futures Rise

July 28, 2009 8:05 AM

TV executives are people, too -- but unlike most people, especially in this economy, they have the uncanny ability to fail up, and parachute into increasingly lucrative deals once being forced or steered out of their jobs.

So I don't feel sorry for Ben Silverman, whose exit as co-chairman of NBC Universal was announced yesterday. But I am happy for the potential future of quality TV at that network, because Silverman, in his NBC post, sure wasn't providing much of it...

The best dramas under his reign, Friday Night Lights and Life, were either sublet to satellite TV to reduce costs or cancelled outright. The best comedies on his schedule were 30 Rock, which predated his arrival, and The Office (which did as well, but he was an executive producer of that Americanized remake, as he was of ABC's Ugly Betty). In both cases, nothing he did increased the audiences for those shows substantially, even in a year in which Tina Fey infected the entire country with her version of Sarah Palin fever.

That's a shamefully short list of excellent TV shows, especially for the network that, when "mired in third place" in the early 1980s, launched its Must-See TV campaign in the first place. But under Silverman, when NBC was mired in FOURTH place (and with Univision gaining fast), NBC was a lot more concerned with program costs, production deals and product placement than whether what was on the air was any god or not.

Bionic Woman and Knight Rider remakes didn't HAVE to be awful ideas for remakes -- but under Silverman, they certainly were, as was Kath & Kim. And while surrendering five hours of weekly prime time to Jay Leno may save the network's bottom line, the bottom line for quality TV is that those are five fewer hours for quality scripted TV. Not that NBC is doing much of that these days anyway.

Perhaps the lowest NBC has sunk, under Silverman, has been this summer's move to revive an old ABC reality-show stinker, I'm a Celebrity -- Get Me Out of Here. That was when I decided NBC's new slogan should be changed to "I Used to be a Network -- Get Me Out of Here."

And now it's Silverman who's out, and Jeff Gaspin, who at least was witness to former NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's "Must-See TV" reign, who's in. Bonnie Hammer, who has done such great work with the cable side of things, apparently must wait her turn, but I'm guessing not for long.

But that's only if making good TV, once again, becomes something the folks at NBC begin to care about. If they don't want to be mired in FIFTH place by 2012, they'd better start caring, quickly.

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Pushing Daisies: Gone from TV, But Arriving on DVD

July 23, 2009 10:10 AM

The facts were these:

Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC in October 2007. I instantly hailed it as the best new series of the year, viewers embraced it, and all was well. Then, a month later, came the writers' strike, and the series never recovered. Once ABC burned through the programs already filmed, the network held off showing new episodes until the fall of 2008, by which time the series had lost its momentum.

But now, on DVD, comes the complete 13-episode second season of Pushing Daisies, to remind us, all over again, what a bold, brilliant, beautiful series it was...

Created by Bryan Fuller, and telling of a piemaker with the ability to raise the dead, it's the kind of show that comes around only about once a decade -- a show with such a distinctive look and tone, with everything from its visual flair and its musical soundtrack to its heightened dialogue and outrageous plots, that it stands apart from everything around it. Twin Peaks was like that. So were Due South and Northern Exposure.

And Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season, released this week by Warner Home Video, displays in almost every frame why this ABC series was The One That Got Away. More than that, it was The One Just Hitting Its Full Stride -- or, to put it another way, The One That Deserved a Few More Years.

The Extras in this DVD set, which you can buy by clicking HERE (or the Blu-Ray by clicking HERE, show how much care went into this series. The sets. The scored music. The computer-generated effects. The acting and scripts. The absurdly imaginative murders and crime scenes.

And the 13 shows... what a baker's dozen (how appropriate) of tasty treats. Guest stars are served up without fanfare, each bringing his or her peculiarly tasty flavors: Fred Willard, Richard Benjamin, George Segal, Wendie Malick, David Arquette and Stephen Root. There are nasty Norwegians and sinister synchronized swimmers, buzzing beekeepers and ghoulish graverobbers.

And the regular cast: Jim Dale Lee Pace and Anna Friel (pictured) star as Ned and Chuck. Ned can revive the dead with a single touch, and revives Chuck, his former childhood sweetheart -- but can't touch her again, or she'll die forever. Chi McBride is Emerson, the private eye who uses Ned's gifts to solve crimes; Kristin Chenoweth (pictured at top) is Olive, who has an unrequited love for Ned and works in his pie shop; and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene play Chuck's eccentric aunts -- one of whom actually is her mother.

Jim Dale narrates Pushing Daisies in true storybook style, and always, at some point, advances the narrative by saying, "The facts were these..." The visuals will make you laugh -- but so will the verbals. When Emerson (pictured) is invited to the circus, for example, he pats the pockets of his jacket and says, "Where did I put that rat's ass I could give?" Still makes me laugh.

What makes me sad, though, is that ABC canceled this series before Fuller and company got to mount their planned musical episode (imagine that, with Broadway musical vets Chenoweth and Greene already on board) -- and before what surely, given Ned's powers and their desire to finally kiss, would have been one of the best, most poetic series finales in history.

DVD, though, gives us a chance to fully appreciate Pushing Daisies -- which, in the end (and especally AT the end), is more than ABC ever did.

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One Last Piece of Our Cronkite Tribute: Bill Brioux Quotes A Swearing, Stuttering Uncle Walter

July 22, 2009 7:20 AM

When I put out a call (actually, an email) to our TV WORTH WATCHING writers for reflections about Walter Cronkite, one of them, Bill Brioux, turns out to have been unreachable for the weekend in some remote cabin. (Canadians will do that.) When he returned, and found what we'd done here, he wrote his own, and it's too terrific -- and R-rated -- not to share...

He tells, for one thing, about the same press conference I did, where Cronkite cackled with glee when demand for his attention turned into a verbal free-for-all. But Brioux tells it with a lot more detail, a lot more flair, and a lot more... brio. And he tells other stories as well, including Cronkite's account of a stuttering rival from the old days.

With Bill's perspective, which you can read in full by clicking here to his blog TV Feeds My Family, our TV WORTH WATCHING Walter Cronkite tribute is complete -- covering a collective couple centuries or so of TV journalism experience. And, for this topic, that's the way it is.

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Walter Cronkite: All of Us At TV WORTH WATCHING Remember The Way He Was

July 20, 2009 5:45 AM

[I'm keeping this up one more day because I'm so proud of this group effort. Please read -- and add your own comments! -- David B.] We're a bunch of veteran TV reporters and critics here at TV WORTH WATCHING, and each of us has his or her favorite memories -- as viewers and as interviewers -- of iconic CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at age 92. So in a tag-team tribute to one of the finest and most important journalists in television history, today we present a string of salutes, stories and observations about The Most Trusted Man in America...

My own radio tribute to Cronkite, on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, ran Monday, and can be heard here. Meanwhile, I'll offer some quick comments here, as will the other contributors to TV WORTH WATCHING -- all of whom, it's worth noting, have enough experience and clout to have interviewed Cronkite themselves.

Their respective reflections will be presented in reverse alphabetical order, just so I can't be accused of favoritism. So here we go: Salutes to Walter Cronkite, written by Diane Werts, Ed Martin, Diane Holloway, Tom Brinkmoeller, myself and P.J. Bednarski. I consider this compilation one of TV WORTH WATCHING's finest hours to date, so please enjoy... and add your own comments.

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Walter Cronkite Wasn't One of "The Boys" -- But Reflected Them Proudly

By Diane Werts

Walter Cronkite is famous not just for being Walter Cronkite. Or being a solid newsman. Or an avuncular presence, America's uncle, or anything else anybody wants to celebrate about the man's life, upon his death.

No, Cronkite remains renowned, 30 years later, for being the primary face of a TV program that remains the gold standard for a nightly news broadcast. His CBS Evening News, from 1962 to 1981, was reported by a cast of correspondents whose names I can still remember, in an era when few current viewers can cite reporters in TV news today.

Richard C. Hottelet. Charles Collingwood. Robert Pierpoint. Roger Mudd. Terry Drinkwater. Eric Sevareid (pictured). Barry Serafin. Robert Trout.

OK, those are just great names, in and of themselves, especially said aloud, as correspondents do when wrapping their report. But they're also memorable because they were such authoritative reporters -- men (nearly all men in those days) who knew how to go out and get a story, and how to bring it back and boil it down to a couple of salient minutes saying more than hours of "breaking news" babble today, and how to do it with an eloquence, clarity and flair born of working with the meanings of words, not "sound bites" or "pictures arriving now."

These men had most often cut their teeth in newspapers, typically, or print wire services. And in war, World War II mostly. Some in radio,and later video. But all of them did it in a day when reporters knew how to gather their own information, not simply relay facts or hearsay procured by producers or researchers. They had to harvest it from personal sources, not merely parrot press room briefings. They could write with fluency. After actually thinking it through, themselves.

Cronkite had worked for United Press (forerunner of UPI), where he'd covered postwar news in Belgium and the Netherlands, the Nuremberg trials, and even Stalin-era Moscow. Hottelet came from UP, too, where he'd been stationed in pre-war Berlin. Collingwood, also, reporting from London. And Howard K. Smith, later known as ABC's evening anchor, who jumped from UP to work alongside Hottelet in Berlin for CBS Radio.

Sevareid, later known for his columnist-style commentaries in Cronkite's "Evening News" broadcasts, learned his trade in print, too. He'd worked for newspapers in Minneapolis and Paris, before joining the radio gang known as "Murrow's boys," having been assembled mid-century by CBS news legend Edward R. Murrow.

Trout (pictured below) was the rarity who'd been in radio from the 1930s, having pioneered the "anchor" role of helming a "roundup" of reports from correspondents in farflung locales.

Walter Cronkite would eclipse Trout as his most illustrious professional descendent. But Cronkite didn't do it alone. He couldn't possibly have been the "voice of authority" without that authoritative broadcast behind him -- without commanding reports to introduce, in a broadcast widely considered the country's most respected, from a news organization that defined the word "esteemed."

It was an era of three networks, when only two had widely respected newscasts. (NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, airing 1956-70, was a compelling and occasionally more highly rated competitor.) Nearly all Americans watched Cronkite's CBS Evening News at some point, if not regularly.

"Uncle Walter" became a household name, a trusted source, a daily companion, to Americans of all ages.

But he was no lone ranger.

And Cronkite would have been the first to report that.

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This Just In: Uncle Walter Did NOT Sail with Princess Di...

By Ed Martin

I have interviewed hundreds of famous people during the last 20 years and can recall only two times when I was awestruck. Fortunately, in both instances the awe struck me after the interview had been completed. The first time this happened was when I interviewed Walter Cronkite in March, 1995. As I stepped out into the bustle of midtown Manhattan after our meeting, I suddenly froze and said to myself, "Damn, that was Walter Cronkite!"

(The second moment of awe came after a brief interview with Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles ten months later. As I turned my tape recorder off and turned away from him I mumbled, "Damn, that was Steven Spielberg!")

I interviewed Cronkite shortly before the premiere of Headlines and Sound Bites: Is That the Way It Is?, an installment of The Cronkite Report, a quarterly series he was producing for Discovery Channel at the time. The intent of the program was to determine how well broadcast and print press had been serving the information needs of the public in the Nineties.

In hindsight the timing was profound, not simply for the premiere of Cronkite's show but for my interview. The traditional understanding and consumption of news reporting, which up to that time had been challenged only by CNN and television tabloid shows, was about to be uprooted by the arrival during the next two years of MSNBC and Fox News Channel, not to mention the first significant surges in home computer usage and the creation of Internet content.

We didn't realize it at that moment, but the media world Cronkite had known throughout his career, and that I had known throughout my lifetime, was about to come to an end.

Cronkite was relatively upbeat on the subject, despite growing concerns from critics and media observers that fragmented attention spans and the appeal of the sound bite were corroding news reporting on television. Not so, Uncle Walter asserted. He explained to me that a study undertaken for his program found that TV news at the time treated the four or five top stories of the day with the same attention, almost the same time and space emphasis as newspapers.

Who knew? Not Cronkite: He admitted that his final assessment "was a little different than we anticipated when we started the piece." He did give newspapers the advantage because they continued to report stories long after they had fallen off the nightly news.

Still, he was gravely concerned at the time with the growing tabloidization of news (especially its impact on local news broadcasts, which he dismissed as "pretty much of a disaster across the country") and gross factual errors in local and regional newspapers.

He shared with me a story about Princess Diana's early-Nineties visit to Martha's Vineyard, where Cronkite maintained a home and indulged in his passion for sailing. After a reporter from The Cape Cod Times speculated about it, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Associated Press all reported that Cronkite had taken the princess for a ride on his boat.

In truth, he said, the two never crossed paths during her stay on the island. But the reports took on a life of their own, and soon thereafter a leading newspaper in London revealed that Diana had chosen to tell her life story to Cronkite via a new TV series and had travelled to Martha's Vineyard to negotiate the deal. The story, he told me, "Didn't contain one iota of truth."

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Walter Cronkite: The Texas Connection

By Diane Holloway

During the course of my 30-year career as TV critic for the Austin American-Statesman, I wrote more than a dozen pieces on Walter Cronkite. His Texas roots ran deep, from his childhood in Houston to his Austin days as a journalism student at the University of Texas to his return to Houston as a cub reporter for the Houston Press.

He wrote for the Daily Texan (UT's newspaper) and was a part-time sports reporter for a local radio station in Austin. His daughter Kathy and his two grandsons still live here and he remained an adjunct communications professor at UT until his death.

Here are some of my favorite Cronkite interview moments:

On CBS's decision to bump him from the anchor desk in 1981 and then keep him off the air but tied to a lifetime "special correspondent" contract: "It's not the way I want it, quite honestly. I'd love to have them make better use of me... They need somebody with historical knowledge and capability, but it's too late for me now."

On his memories of growing up in Houston in the Depression: "My mother denied it, but I know good and well that she made hamburgers out of dog food."

On his move from print to the new TV journalism: "We literally figured it out as we went along. For an old newspaper man, it was like carrying a printing press around."

On his pick for biggest story: "Space. Man leaving his environment and landing on another orb is certainly the biggest story of the 20th century." Cronkite always got misty talking about space.

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Uncle Walter at Walt Disney World

By Tom Brinkmoeller

I watched CBS' assassination and moon landing coverage, wrote about the Cronkite-to-Rather transition and had a few other contacts with Walter Cronkite as a reporter.

But the ones I remember most happened several years after I left the paper. I was working as a Walt Disney World publicist, assigned to the new movie theme park that was being built, when Mr. and Mrs. Cronkite visited Disney's Florida park.

They were asked if they would like a pre-opening tour of parts of the park, and when they said yes, I was assigned to see if we could get some publicity out of the event. I met them as they were touring the New York City backlot, a movie-like permanent set that would have worked for movies, had any ever been shot there.

Celebrities who were asked for favors like this, a publicity photo shoot, weren't predictable. Some were agreeable; others growled and flashed their celebrity fangs. The Cronkites were totally gracious, happily posing by a parking meter on the fake street. He even pulled a quarter out of his pocket to feed the phony meter.

A couple of months later, Cronkite and Robin Williams were on an L.A. sound stage to record the audio for an animated film Disney was to use in the new park's animation-studio tour. I was there, too, to collect background for press kits yet to be written.

Had I relied only on Williams, whose protective handlers stood like a wall between the ordinary and their man, I would have gone home with an empty notebook. But Cronkite, who arrived without any entourage and joked with the crew, took time to talk, and the notebook ended up full of good stuff.

In both encounters, Cronkite was under no obligation to help me out. But he did, and he seemed to enjoy it. In both cases he treated everyone he met with the same genuine kindness. Once you met him this way, you learned the term used so often to describe him, "avuncular," reached far beyond his gray hair or authoritative voice and delivery. He was the kind of person you'd love to have for an uncle.

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Uncle Walter Meets Uncle Barky -- and Betty Bacall

By David Bianculli

In 2006, as TV Critic for the New York Daily News, I noted the occasion of Walter Cronkite's 90th birthday by stating the following:

"As Walter Cronkite enters his ninth decade, it's worth noting - though not necessarily celebrating - that there will never be another like him.

"No matter how long TV continues, the likes of Uncle Walter, once heralded in surveys and the press as the 'most trusted' man in America, will not be seen again. It can't happen."

Except for that fact that Cronkite, at that point in his life, actually would have been entering his TENTH decade, I stand by my story. TV is too fragmented. TV news is too slight.

I'm old enough, and lucky enough, to have witnessed all of what might be called Walter Cronkite's greatest hits: the JFK assassination coverage, the space race and moon landing, his Vietnam special report. (I play clips from all of them on my Fresh Air report.) Any one of those could have made a career. Cronkite's career incuded them all, and more. Next to Edward R. Murrow, who virtually invented the professional standards of broadcast news on CBS Radio (and, later, on TV's See It Now), Walter Cronkite was the best of his kind.

But of all my Cronkite memories, the two I'd like to share here are more random and less known.

The first came in 1978, the year CBS mounted a celebrity-filled prime-time special celebrating its 50th anniversary as a broadcast entity (using radio, not TV, as a starting point). The networks had money to burn in those days, and CBS burned some of its by mounting a ridiculously lavish party in New York, inviting almost every star who had been part of the network's 50-year history.

I was a young TV critic for what then was the Fort Lauderdale News, and found myself, early on, so intimidated by all the star wattage that I sat against a wall in a chair, watching quietly as a roomful of famous people attacked the shrimp buffet and congregated at the bar. All of a sudden, Walter Cronkite, who was walking with a cane because of a leg injury he'd just gotten while sailing, sat in the seat next to me, and struck up a casual conversation.

I'd never met him before, but he acted like we were old buddies as he whispered war stories about one celebrity after another. Then he pointed to one, Lauren Bacall, and raved about her: so beautiful, so sexy, so classy. At that moment, she turned around, saw Cronkite, and immediately came over. "Hi, Betty," he said, beaming widely and rising to greet her. She sat next to him on the other side, and I listened -- the luckiest fly on the best possible wall -- as the two of them told stories about everybody else, and laughed, and drank.

The second occasion was decades later -- in 2006, as Cronkite faced TV critics as a press conference for his coming American Masters profile on PBS. Cronkite sat there, in front of an understandably respectful room of reporters, telling tale after tale about presidents, colleagues and earthshaking news events.

Ed Bark, then the veteran TV critic for the Dallas Morning News (and now running a terrific website about TV called UncleBarky.com, got so annoyed that other reporters were cutting off his attempts to ask Cronkite a question that he finally shouted one down, demanding that it was his turn. Cronkite's eyes sparkled, and he clapped his hand together, at the temporary dust-up. NOW we're having some fun, he said, or something like that -- obviously gleeful that the press conference had taken a competitive turn.

For Cronkite, that's the way it was in his day... and the way he always liked it.

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When Cronkite Died, So Did Broadcast Network TV News

By P.J. Bednarski

The death of Walter Cronkite signifies the official end of broadcast network television news. Network news divisions may claim impressive achievements while they lived, but Cronkite was the final, definite period at the end of the sentence.

Cronkite's death erases the last presence of broadcast news stature -- with only Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and a few other lesser lights as the last remnants of the network swagger.

Most people think that's OK: When network television ruled, there weren't many national competitors, and none on television. Everybody who wasn't there knows it was awful that three powerful gatekeepers decided what was important.

Thank goodness news organizations do a much better job of representing diverse points of view these days, with dignified, thoughtful informed news and opinion. The bold truths from Glenn Beck, the cool calm of Chris Matthews, the Lincoln-Douglas quality debates on The View and the entire crusading predator-baiting thing on NBC are displays of the sophistication television has developed since Cronkite signed off in 1981.

When Cronkite said, "That's the way it is," no doubt he didn't believe it. Nor did intelligent viewers. But the fact that Cronkite proclaimed it gave CBS News the crown of certitude. This wasn't all the news there was, he was saying, but that which CBS and Cronkite had presented was the truest version.

He might have believed it was true and it might have been at least mostly true, which is extraordinary to consider now, given the hundreds of versions of fact that news consumers now have the option to choose. Long after he left, Cronkite's sign-off continued to engrave the stature of that network. It might be why those who attack "network news" save special ire for CBS. It bragged about its world view, and for 20 years it had this utterly regular guy representing it.

Next to The New York Times claiming it has "All the News That's Fit to Print," no other American news organization really speaks in superlatives about its journalistic acuity. They might talk about their popularity. But they don't say, in essence: We Know What's Going On.

Cronkite was a perfect fit for the William S. Paley era of CBS News, during which CBS did have authority its competitors lacked, or, when it didn't, acted like it did. When Laurence Tisch began to dismantle the news division, it wasn't surprising the big names at CBS News contemplated seceding from the network. You'd have thought that the B in CBS stood for brio.

And that's what's over with Cronkite's death. It's the definite nail in the coffin, the death of a journalist who represented the strength of the Institution, with a pride no other journalist or sloganeer would dare to replicate today. Once, reporters and editors bled for the places they worked, and disdained the competition. Today, everybody puts himself or herself on a more or less even field, so that nobody has to lead.

In two decades we've gone from "That's the Way It Is" -- definitive, bold, brassy -- to "We Report, You Decide" -- which, even coming from in-your-face Fox News, really is a pretty meek slogan that takes the messy work out of their hands, and hands it to You, the Viewer. It's not a statement of superiority. It's an invitation for focus groups.

Cronkite was the last TV newsman who will be able to make legitimate claims of importance, for himself or for his news organization.

As an example, CBS, relentlessly committed to procedural crime dramas, gave short shrift to his death on Friday night -- no way to treat their own legend, as even Cronkite would have acknowledged. And CNN, particularly, used his passing as a good way to fill up hours of nauseating programming because, after all, filling time is the primary business of 24/7 news operations.

Maybe the slogan for news organizations ought to be that which viewers now easily know is true:

"That's business."

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2009 Emmy Nominations: What They Missed, What They Got Right

July 16, 2009 10:01 AM

The always conservative voters behind the Emmy nominations have welcomed some deserving first-timers this year, including Jim Parsons of CBS's The Big Bang Theory and Elisabeth Moss of AMC's Mad Men. But today's nominations also snubbed a LOT of deserving artists and programs...

This good news and bad news approach is typical of the Emmys, but this year the good and bad seemed to arrive simultaneously. Fox's Family Guy became the first animated series to compete in the Outstanding Comedy Series category since The Flintstones. Good news for fans of that series, I guess, but what a slap in the face for Fox's The Simpsons, which should have been considered in the same category for, oh, the past two decades.

AMC's Breaking Bad getting nominated for the first time as Outstanding Drama Series? That's well-deserved, as was star Bryan Cranston's win last year. And Aaron Paul getting nominated in the supporting category? That's a win-win. No bad news here.

But the DirecTV-NBC series Friday Night Lights got a single nomination, and the fabulous leading players, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, were ignored. So was the work of Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins in the final season of FX's The Shield, James Spader's work on the final season of ABC's Boston Legal, Denis Leary's powerful work on FX's Rescue Me, and Damian Lewis' great work in NBC's underappreciated Life. Kiefer Sutherland was snubbed in the best series actor category for Fox's 24, but was nominated, for the same Jack Bauer role, in the movies and miniseries category.

The ranks of the drama and comedy series categories were swelled to admit seven nominees each, making room for such newly honored contenders as HBO's Flight of the Conchords and AMC's Breaking Bad. But HBO's True Blood was snubbed, as were Rescue Me, The Shield, ABC's Pushing Daisies, and others.

NBC's 30 Rock set a record for most nominations by a series in a single year (22 nods). And in guest actor spots, Alan Alda has a chance for a new Emmy for his role as Jack's dad on 30 Rock, and Michael J. Fox has a shot for his role on Rescue Me. I'd like them both to win -- but I'd also like to see Justin Timberlake take home a statuette for his work as a guest star on NBC's Saturday Night Live.

One thing the nominations do point out this year: Amid all the horrid junk on TV this year, there also was a lot worth celebrating. The seven drama series in contention, for example, all are worth watching: HBO's Big Love, Breaking Bad, FX's Damages, Showtime's Dexter, Fox's House, ABC's Lost and Mad Men. TV Worth Watching, every one...

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RomaFictionFest: Keeping Scripted Television Alive, Part II

July 15, 2009 7:37 AM

Yesterday I reviewed some of the intriguing completed TV series screened in Rome last week at RomaFictionFest, an international gathering of creative and executive types interested in scripted television. Today I'll detail the best pitches for shows that haven't been made yet -- covering everything from a musical biopic of a largely unexplored chapter in the life of Frank Sinatra, and the story of a pygmy from the Congo who was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo a century ago...

Here's the way the RomaTVPitching sessions worked. For three days, an auditorium full of people who develop TV for domestic and international markets -- including such active U.S. participants as Showtime, TNT and HBO -- sat and listened as prospective TV producers pitched their next ideas, showed short clip reels of related materials or examples of their previous work, and hoped to find some financial and/or creative partners.

Each team of pitchers got 10 minutes, after which the audience members were allotted five minutes to offer their succinct and unvarnished reaction. If the ideas didn't work, the wannabes knew almost instantly their new pet proects were not gonnabe. But a pitch that got buzz often got some instant interest, the promise of a same-day meeting, and the very real chance to turn a good TV idea into some actual good TV.

Series, miniseries and telemovies each got a day. It underscored the sad realization that, for broadcast networks in the United States, the market for TV movies and miniseries is virtually extinct. But cable outlets and boutique networks, abroad as well as in the states, offered some relief. Over the three days, here are some of the best proposals -- coming soon, we hope, to a TV set near you.

FOR FAME AND FORTUNE -- This was the most outstanding project to originate from the U.S., and if you saw the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you saw a scene with a character based on this real-life subject. In 1904, a pgymy named Ota Benga was among the Belgian Congo natives brought to the United States as part of the St. Louis World's Fair Afterward, Benga wanted to remain, and ended up being put on display in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo. Unthinkable? Indefensible? Yes, but, as this TV project wants to make clear, Benga was as much opportunist as victim.

The project comes from Madison Davis Lacy, one of the original visionaries behind Eyes on the Prize, one of the best TV documentaries ever made. The director attached is British filmmaker Horace Ove, whose pioneering work predates even his bold 1968 work, Baldwin's Nigger. This is a project that should -- that must -- see the light of day.

TOM AND FRANK -- This project, from Brazil, wowed the audience by showing documentary clips capturing the 1967 studio and concert tour collaboration of Frank Sinatra and guitarist-composer-singer Antonio Carlos Jobim, the bossa nova popularizer of "Girl from Ipanema" fame. Writer Giuliano Cedroni sees it as a music-filled period miniseries, capturing the fiery pair's lengthy, unusual and sometimes stormy friendship. It may work better as a self-contained telemovie, but Cedroni definitely has struck gold here.

ALIAS GARBO -- Garbo was the code name of Juan Pujol Garcia, a WWII spy who was so effective as a double agent, he was awarded both an MBE by the British and an Iron Cross by the Nazis. Where did his true loyalties lie, and what was his story? That's what this Spanish production, written by British screenwriter John Howlett, will attempt to reveal. Howlett co-wrote the screenplay for Lindsay Anderson's If..., which makes this even more enticing.

SHAKESPEARE IN VENICE -- Do William Shakespeare's Venetian plays -- among them Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello -- have enough telling details about the place and culture that the playwright, in his "missing years," may have lived there? This Italian miniseries, written and directed by Alessandro Bettero, will make, and follow, that assertion. Shakespeare in Love was a worldwide hit in theaters, so why not a more dramatic, and investigative, approach?

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE -- Another Italian project (this one from writer-director Fabio Segatori) this historical docudrama picked up interest immediately from potential co-production partners in France and Germany, where this 13th-century crusade began. Thousands of children were led on a march across the Alps, expecting the sea to part for them when they reached Marseilles. It didn't, but there's an individual true-life story to be told here as well, and its message of tolerance, as well as its love story, makes it a vey attractive dramatic property.

CLEOPATRA -- This comes from the BBC, and the pitch stressed comparisons to both Rome and The Tudors. Expect it to land on premium cable in the States, and to have its 13 episodes tracing the life of Cleopatra from her early childhood to her final asp-irations.

FIFTH BUSINESS: THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY -- This three-part, six-hour Canadian miniseries is based on that country's beloved novels by Robertson Davies, in which the throwing of a snowball (with a schoolmaster's paperweight packed within) figures in both the start and the climax of a story that spans 60 years. Writer Charles K. Pitts and producer Niv Fichman drew lots of interest on the strength of their pitch -- and even more when they dropped the name (though not yet for publication) of the famous Canadian director about to be attached to the project. I promised not to identify the famous Canadian director -- but your initial guess is likely to be correct.

MR. 7 MINUTES -- From Italy, this may be one of the purest, most playful ideas of all. The title character is a ruthless, impatient filmmaker (think Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold from Entourage, only as a producer, not an agent), whose waiting room is full of nervous screenwriters waiting to pitch him their ideas. Each of them, upon entering his office, is given precisely seven minutes, after which "Mr. 7 Minutes" coldly deconstructs their concept. The series is conceived as episodes that last precisely seven minutes, with each film "idea" fleshed out, and with a multiplatform exposure that includes, and is ready-made for, the Internet.

Seven minutes to pitch, then an instant dose of cold-blooded reality. Add a few more minutes, and that's RomaTVPitching, the exciting showcase, run by Pat Ferns, that already has served as a midwife to many international TV productions. Here's hoping the ones I just mentioned are among the next litter of actual programs to emerge from RomaFiction Fest...

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RomaFictionFest: Keeping Scripted Television Alive, Part I

July 14, 2009 8:06 AM

Tonight on the five commercial broadcast networks, there are a total of 14 hours of prime-time programming. Only four of them are scripted, and only one 30-minute program, ABC's Better Off Ted, is not a rerun. That's why last week's RomaFictionFest, in which TV writers, producers and executives from around the globe gathered to nurture the future of scripted programming, is such a big deal. If quality scripted television is an endangered species, RomaFictionFest is a renewing, encouraging greenhouse...

Basically, there are two levels to the festival. One is a nightly series of screenings, open to the public and presented on various theaters throughout Rome, showing current and upcoming scripted shows from around the world. The other is a daily series of pitch meetings, set in an auditorium and offering simultaneous translation through headphones, like a miniature United Nations.

International TV creators describe their ideas for their next projects, and seek funding or production partners from the executives in attendance. In the past two years of this festival's existence, pitches have resulted in partnerships, and partnerships in programs. The director of RomaTV Pitching, Canadian producer Pat Ferns, pushes attendees for their opinions and, when possible, for some commitments, or to schedule some meetings.

I attended as a newly invited member of the International Advisory Board, and loved it. I loved attending the screenings, both for the all-access pass my badge provided me and for the high quality of the stuff shown. I also was blown away by many of the pitch presentations over the three days, and took notes on several fledgling productions that, if and when they come to pass, surely will qualify as TV Worth Watching.

Today, I'll describe the best programs from the screenings I attended. Tomorrow, I'll describe the best pitches. Here goes...

LAW AND ORDER U.K. -- Maybe it's because I've been so consumed by my Smothers Brothers book, but I had no idea this NBC series had crossed the pond. Instead of walking the streets of New York, the inspectors and prosecutors of this international entry in the Law & Order franchise walk a different set of mean streets. The episode I saw, for example, took place in London, with the British police pursuing their leads as the Tower Bridge loomed in the background.

Does the show translate to the United Kingdom? Perfectly, and effortlessly. Except for the fact that the attorneys and judges wear powdered wigs and red robes, it's the same show, based on adapted versions of the same scripts. Stars include Jamie Bamber (Apollo on Battlestar Galactica) and Freema Agyeman (from Doctor Who and Little Dorrit, both seen stateside), and the episode I saw was based on a third-season Law & Order script, in which a sadistic gynecologist takes advantage of his patients -- including Agyeman's assistant prosecuting attorney. TNT or BBC America, or some other cable network, should import this series immediately. I suspect all hard-core L&O fans would devour it.

UNDERBELLY -- This Australian production, based on the history of organized crime in Melbourne, plays like a Down Under cross between Martin Scorsese's Casino and Paul Haggis' EZ Streets. We spend equal time with criminals and cops, and the fact-based plots are as twisted as the characters. It's a fast-paced, sexy, violent, funny whirlwind of a crime drama. And while it's wholly engrossing as is, news from the festival is that a deal is imminent for a new production, for American TV, overseen by just the sort of U.S. director you'd love to see tackle a story like this.

BURYING BRIAN -- This New Zealand miniseries is a mature comedy-drama about four mature yet lovely women who bond together when one of them accidentally kills her husband. (Their picture leads this column above.) It's like Desperate Housewives, if one of the gals needed a little help from her friends to stay out of jail -- and it's every bit as sassy, and funny, as Housewives. Again, it holds up perfectly as is, but an American adaptation of this script, cast with the right four ladies, could be a big asset for Lifetime, USA, AMC or elsewhere.

DARWIN'S BRAVE NEW WORLD -- The festival makes room for documentaries (I'm not sure why, since it's called a FictionFest), and one of the best of them this year is a multipart series, an Australian/Canadian co-production, that's a docudrama stressing the reenactment elements. The draw is the detail of Darwin's life, and how, when he finally reveals the outline of his heretical theory of evolution to a scientific colleague, he nervously admits, "This is rather like confessing to a murder."

Fabulous photography of creatures encountered during Darwin's many voyages makes this a must-see miniseries for nature lovers, and the natural drama (so to speak) of Darwin's life should satisfy any lover of period stories. This one doesn't need to be remade -- merely imported. Animal Planet and Discovery Channel are two obvious places to start.

GUANTANAMO: INSIDE THE WIRE -- This British dcumentary is a natural fit for the PBS series P.O.V., which ought to import and present it intact. In 2001, journalist Yvonne Ridley went to Pakistan, donning a burka to investigate conditions there, and was captured by the Taliban.

For 10 days, she faced death, then was freed. Six years later, she and young British writer-producer-director David Miller got the approval to go to Guantanamo Bay -- where the oppressive media restrictions, as well as what she witnessed there, made Ridley upset, angry, frightened, sad, and other things perfect for a P.O.V. assessment of conditions at that top-secret U.S. prison facility in Cuba.

Even though what we CAN'T see is revealing, Inside the Wire does reveal a lot: about the depth and machinations of the on-site censorship, about the contents and distribution of books in the prison library, and more than one astonishing fact. For example: Musical torture was used as one of the methods to break down prisoners, and the music used was from Barney the purple dinosaur. Surely, Barney should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. I always thought so, even here in the States...

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Thanks to the Jackson Memorial TV Coverage, We'll Always Have Paris -- But Should We?

July 8, 2009 9:53 AM

Just because I was in Rome, that didn't mean I couldn't watch the Michael Jackson memorial TV coverage, on several channels, in more than one language. I even watched a Sky network late-night repeat of The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I was part of an audience she estimated as "tens of millions," and which CNN International later claimed was "more than 1 billion." All of those viewers saw something, at the very end, I'm not certain they should have...

It was Paris Katherine Jackson, Michael's 11-year-old daughter, flanked by her relatives at the end of the ceremony. They clutched the microphone for her as Paris, formerly protected from the media by her father and seen in public shrouded by colored veils, sobbed out a two-sentence message straight from the heart. It was her first public utterance -- and to more than a billion people, it won't be forgotten.

"Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine," Paris said, choking back tears. "And I just want to say I love him so much."

As an unscripted, unexpected, unforgettable globally televised display of grief from a child to a parent, those heartfelt, heartbreaking words from Paris were the biggest such display on TV since little John John saluted the passing casket of his slain father, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. But this new moment, somehow, reveals even more of the child's personal grief.

Maybe it was cathartic for Paris. Maybe it was something she desperately, definitely wanted to do, and maybe she's better for it. Certainly, she got the world's notice, reminding everyone that the loss of Michael Jackson was, to she and her siblings, more than just the passing of a phenomenally talented pop star.

But I'm conflicted about this. I wonder, though Paris' comments were by far the most poignant part of the lengthy tribute, whether they WERE the best thing for the child, or whether she should have been shielded from the media spotlight just as aggressively as when her father was alive. I lost a parent suddenly at about that age, and I'm not sure, whatever decisions I may have made at the time about what to say or how to act, there's a justification for broadcasting such grief.

I don't trust my own reactions, though, to decide whether baring her soul, and delivering such a loving, sad message on international TV, was good or bad -- for her OR for the viewing public.

You tell me.

All I know is, it felt almost too painful, and too private, to watch.

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Problems With Site Server -- May Not Be Able to Update Today

July 8, 2009 2:21 AM

Working from Rome isn't all it's cracked up to be. When I was loading this morning's BEST BETS update, my system disconnected, then locked me out of my own website administration. I'll have to take this issue to a higher pay and brain grade, but it'll take a while, thanks to the time difference. Bad news: No fresh Best Bets until this is repaired. Good news: It was a very slow TV night anyway. Wish me luck...

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Michael Jackson Coverage Goes Mega -- Again

July 7, 2009 1:55 AM

Last week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an overview of the saturation media coverage of Jackson's death was capped by a reporter who noted, for the record, that Michael Jackson can only die once.

Maybe. But today on TV, the networks are diving headfirst into round two... the memorial coverage.

The morning salvo, built around the public memorial service at Staples Center in Los Angeles -- public, that is, for the people who won a raffle for free tickets, with more than a million people requesting seats -- will start with the network morning shows and cable news outlets, even though the service itself doesn't start until 1 p.m. ET.

News is out, of course, about some of the celebrities schedule to attend -- though who's really coming, and who might be performing, and how long it might be, is all in flux. Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and Usher are three names bandied about a lot this morning, so we'll see.

But where should we watch?

For the morning and afternoon events, I'd start with ABC, where an expanded Good Morning America pairs host Charles Gibson with Nightline co-anchor Martin Bashir, he of the famed Michael Jackson interview a few years back. I'd also check in with MTV and BET, as well as the traditional cable news outlets. MSNBC starts with special coverage at 11 a.m. ET, CNN and MTV at noon, and the actual service begins at 1.

Then, in prime time, Michael Jackson will die, or at least be remembered, all over again. Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, like pit bulls refusing to let go of the same chew toy, will co-anchor a special 20/20 program at 9 p.m. ET. That's one to watch, definitely, if only to witness the "chemistry" between the two reigning divas of ABC News.

ABC has another Jackson special at 10 p.m. ET, the same hour that CBS presents a special 48 Hours and NBC serves up a special hour of Dateline. And when they're through, flip to Comedy Central, where Stewart and company will have had enough time, barely, to lampoon the afternoon memorial coverage on tonight's Daily Show at 11 p.m. ET.

Only dying once? Not on TV. With the last global music superstar of such stature, expect Michael Jackson to keep dying, on television, for a long, long time.

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When in Rome...

July 6, 2009 9:22 AM

On the 4th of July, while by tradition I should have been grilling a gamey roster of exotic meats, I was instead airborne, flying from Philadelphia to Rome. I'm here for business, which is a pleasure, but I'm also prepared, between duties, for a week of all-out celebration...

I had to take it with me to pull it off, but I've finally sent back to New York the finished, no-fooling, completely edited and updated and revised Smothers Brothers manuscript. About a ream of pages, marked with my notations and deletions and additions on top of my copy editor's, which are in addition to the revisions by my editor. Included were Post-It flags marking places where I'd added a sentence or paragraph long enough to require them being typed out rather than handwritten -- 30 flags for 29 chapters.

So now it's out of my hands, literally. If UPS doesn't mess up this international shipment, my editor will have the manuscript tomorrow, and her understandably impatient and hamstrung colleagues will be able to lurch into a higher gear. Meanwhile, all the rest of the book material, including the dedication and acknowledgments, was sent this morning via email. So I'm DONE, DONE, DONE. No more revisions. No more fact-checking interviews.

Finishing all this up meant I missed a day's sessions, and at least two terrific opportunities for meals and a private tour. But already, I've enjoyed one such meal, at a remote hilltop location so gorgeous, with food so delicious, it as sinful. We even drove over part of the original Appian Way (see picture) to get there, winding our Way, Appian or otherwise, through hidden streets I could never hope to find unaided, and undriven.

But from now on, it's all work and all play. I'm here as a member of the International Advisory Board of RomaFictionFest 2009, a gathering of international TV writers, producers, executives and other interested types specializing in the creation of scripted dramas, comedies and documentaries. In other words, this is a convention of people determined to rage against reality TV.

For the next few days, I'll be seeing some of the best TV in the world, and hearing about what's coming next. Eating and drinking some of the best food and wine in the world is a bonus -- but after shipping off Dangerously Funny, I'm determined to be Dangerously Indulgent.

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