US TV

An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.

Question of the week: is there a good reason why the summer broadcast schedules are so weak?

25 June 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

It can’t have escaped your attention that there’s not much on television to hold your attention at the moment. Well, except on cable, which actually has a summer season: Suits, Burn Notice, Royal Pains et al are just kicking off on USA; HBO has just launched The Newsroom; Sky Atlantic has some new comedies beginning tonight, including the return of Alan Partridge; and so on.

But not on broadcast networks on either side of the Atlantic. There, all is dead. The assumption, of course, is that we’re all going to be out in the beautiful sunshine or on our holidays so won’t want to start watching something we’re going to miss an episode of. Can you see the flaw in that argument, particularly in an era when the big sillies have a habit of ‘stripping’ shows so all the episodes air in a single week, rather than weekly?

Indeed, as the cable networks show, there’s an audience for programmes at this time of year, even if it is slightly reduced. So:

Is there a good reason for the emptiness of the broadcast networks’ schedules being so empty or are they failing to keep up with the times? And would you watch new shows that started in the summer if they put them on?

Answers below or on your own blog, please?

News

Monday’s “Sky 1 commssions two dramas, Devious Maids picked up and David Tennant to star in The Politician’s Husband” news

25 June 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Paddington poster

Film

Trailers

Theatre

UK TV

  • Trailer for Strike Back: Vengeance
  • Sky1 HD commissions The Smoke and Moonfleet, commissions second series of Moone Boy, Starlings, Little Crackers, orders more of Charlie Brooker’s A Touch of Cloth
  • Olivia Colman and Katie Leung join Run
  • David Tennant and Emily Watson to star in BBC2’s The Politician’s Husband
  • Greg Davies to star in C4 sitcom [subscription required]

US TV

New US TV shows

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Longmire (A&E)

19 June 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, A&E

So time to pass a verdict on A&E’s new show, modern western Longmire. Not much has changed since the first episode, in which craggy Robert Taylor went around investigating crimes in Wyoming, aided by his traditional, conservative values, while pesky women, youngsters and Native Americans (there are no gay people in Wyoming) tried their best to help or interfere, but proved to be no match for his superior wit and inherent white male superiority.

The subsequent two episodes have more of less followed this exact same formula, albeit with fewer thrills and with less depth. Everything’s about Taylor or about making Taylor look good, while Katee Sackhoff and company get little by way of plot, characterisation or anything else.

However, it is a well made show, thoughtful, mostly well acted, beautiful to look at, and it does have moments of poignancy. It’s also a refreshing change to most urban dramas, looking at rural issues that don’t often appear in crime dramas, although episode three does have the mob intruding. Taylor’s character is sympathetic, even if he’s simultaneously an ornery, uncommunicative man of the land, and Sackhoff is good in more or less everything she’s in.

Sometimes engrossing, different but nothing spectacular.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: If The Glades can survive for four seasons on A&E, this will probably last at least a couple.

Classic TV

Nostalgia corner: Benson (1979-1986)

14 June 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Benson

One of my childhood memories is of laughing a lot at Benson, a spin-off from soap-opera parody Soap that starred Soap‘s real star, Robert Guillaume, as a former butler who becomes the head of household affairs to a politician, Governor Eugene Gatling, and slowly makes his way up the political ladder, eventually running against him in an election. Here he is in Soap.

The show initially revolved around Benson’s housekeeping dilemmas, his fights with the German cook Gretchen Wilhemina Kraus (Inga Swenson, also from Soap), and his interactions with chief of staff John Taylor (David Hedison in the pilot episode, then Lewis J Stadlen). After the first season, Taylor was replaced by Clayton Endicott III (Rene Auberjonois) and Benson and Endicott’s sniping made up most of the show’s humour after that.

During the series, Benson worked his way up from head of household affairs to state budget director, and eventually became lieutenant governor. During the final episodes of the seventh season, Benson ran for governor and at the end of the series’ final episode, with the race still too close to call, Benson and the governor made their peace with one another and sat down together to watch election returns on TV. As the broadcaster began to announce that a winner in the close election (with a third candidate also a potential winner) was at last being projected, the episode ended on a freeze frame of Benson and Gatling, leaving the series with an unresolved cliffhanger.

What would have happened if the show had been renewed? Well, in 2007, showrunner Bob Fraser said that the season ended on a cliffhanger at the request of the network and that the show was canceled after the cliffhanger had aired. Had the show continued, Gatling would have won the election and Benson would have become a senator.

Benson has several distinctions. As well as running for an awful long time and having a black character as the story, it was the first TV show to mention the Internet – or Arpanet as it was called then. It also fired Jerry Seinfeld after just three episodes. He played a messenger. He probably wasn’t a good actor then, either. Great show, just not a great actor.

Unfortunately, despite my childhood memories, I tried rewatching it recently and didn’t find it funny any more. Sigh. But here’s the title sequence and the first episode – maybe they’ll bring back memories for you and you’ll end up buying it from Amazon.