Television

Three Summer Series Renewed

August 9, 2007
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Three Summer Series Renewed

USA Network has renewed its superb espionage comedy-drama Burn Notice, according to a report on TV Guide’s website. The brief story says that USAN has ordered another thirteen episodes. The program, which airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. EDT, grabbed an impressive 4.4 million viewers last week, up a full million from the previous week. Clearly its audience is building thanks to laudatory reviews such as this author’s own, and highly positive word of mouth among discerning viewers. In addition, Turner Network Television has renewed Saving Grace, the spicy new religious drama starring Holly Hunter. According to TNT, the critically acclaimed series amassed on July 23 the largest audience for a new ad-supported cable series premiere for the year, bringing in more than 6.4 million viewers, as documented by Nielsen data. The show has averaged 5.5 million viewers so far.

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ABC Is “Gayest” TV Network—Study

August 8, 2007
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ABC Is “Gayest” TV Network—Study

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has declared that the U.S. television networks are not "gay" enough but that Disney-owned ABC is getting close. The organization, which has been highly successful at bullying corporations into supporting a radical pro-homosexual agenda, issued its first report on the matter after analyzing "the number of ‘impressions,’ or occurrences, of gay characters, discussions or themes counted during 4,693 hours of programming examined from June 2006 through May 2007," according to Reuters:

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Spike TV’s Show “Murder” and the Need to Police the Police

August 7, 2007
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Another interesting summer TV program on cable is the elegantly named series Murder, which appears Tuesday nights on Spike TV. Although it’s a "reality" program, most of which are absolute garbage, Murder is both interesting and somewhat edifying. The premise of the show is to have two teams compete to solve a real-life crime by visiting a meticulous recreation of the crime scene, hearing the medical examiner summarize the findings of the autopsies, viewing the police interviews, and so on.

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ABC to Present “Masters of Science Fiction”

August 2, 2007
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ABC to Present “Masters of Science Fiction”

I’m not a big fan of science fiction, but this sounds interesting (from AP): a limited series of adaptations of short stories, offered in August by ABC. In some ways, this is pretty amazing stuff: material from top-flight authors like Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, directed by well-known directors like Mark Rydell ("On Golden Pond") and Michael Tolkin ("The Player"), with actors like Sam Waterston, Judy Davis, Brian Dennehy, Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell. . . .

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More Thoughts on “Saving Grace”

July 25, 2007
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More Thoughts on “Saving Grace”

"Bubba," a regular reader of this site, has sent us his thoughts on the new TNT TV program Saving Grace, in a comment on my article on that show and AMC-TV’s Mad Men. I think readers will benefit from Bubba’s analysis, so I append it here with gratitude to their thoughtful author. Sam: I was wondering whether you would review Saving Grace and what your opinion would be. I looked at the show from a few angles (from the couch, from the kitchen grabbing a snack, from the recliner)and generally liked what I saw. For what its worth, I offer a few of my observations.

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TV Tackles the Sensate Culture

July 23, 2007
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TV Tackles the Sensate Culture

Summer has become the main season for cable TV networks to premiere new series and specials, as the broadcast networks give themselves over to reruns and game shows on the assumption that nobody wants to watch television on warm summer nights. That’s probably a good bet—and certainly a good thing if true—and it has a further benefit in that the cable networks tend to be a little more creative than the broadcast majors in the kinds of series they offer. Chasing a smaller audience allows them to be more adventurous in what they’ll try—and sometimes they succeed. Two good examples are AMC-TV’s Mad Men and TNT’s Saving Grace, both of which premiered in the past few days.

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Emmy Award Nominees Announced, World Yawns Mightily

July 19, 2007
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Emmy Award Nominees Announced, World Yawns Mightily

  The nominees for TV’s Primetime Emmy Awards were announced today, and details are available here for those who care. I am one who does not. For some reason these award shows and the actual choosing of winners hold absolutely no interest for me, except of course in my capacity as a scientist of social diseases, I mean social phenomena. Probably my main dispute with these things is that the awards are so clearly not based on true merit, but given that it’s reasonable to disagree over what merits praise or condemnation in a cultural artifact, I suppose that’s a lost cause.

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House, M.D. Set for Changes

July 18, 2007
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House, M.D. Set for Changes

The producers of the highly rated and critically acclaimed Fox medical-mystery drama House are already facing the same dilemma as the producers of Monk (see entry immediately below), as the Fox program enters its fourth year. The producers are initiating major changes to keep the program from going stale. Season three included another of those annoying "House gets his comeuppance but doesn’t learn anything or change at all" story arcs, this time with a police detective (played by David Morse) hounding him with drug abuse charges. It was boring, stupid, and unnecessary, but at least the producers had the good sense to drop it after a few weeks. In addition, the story showed the stupidity of many of our drug laws and the stubborn asininity of the people who enforce them. We should give the show’s producers credit for trying to breathe new life into the program in only its third season.

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Monk Stumbles Out of Gate

July 18, 2007
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Monk Stumbles Out of Gate

As I mentioned in my post last week on the season premieres of USA Network mainstays Monk and Psych, TV series tend to go a bit stale during their fifth and sixth seasons, and smart producers combat the problem by making significant changes while retaining the show’s most appealing aspects. I stated my hope that Monk would concentrate more on the mystery aspects of the show and less on the kooky character stuff, while of course retaining the core of the concept, Monk’s eccentricities. Unfortunately, the season premiere episode, while amusing and watchable, went in the opposite direction, emphasizing a goofy character played by comedienne Sarah Silverman.

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“Burn Notice” Refreshes Spy Genre

July 16, 2007
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“Burn Notice” Refreshes Spy Genre

    With "how to" shows being so popular on television, it was only a matter of time before somebody created a narrative fiction form of the series. The new program is exactly that, right down to having a voice-over narrator fill us in on how it all works. What "it" is that the show teaches us is how to dispense of confidence tricksters, mobsters, and other such miscreants. 

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Monk and Psych Return

July 13, 2007
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Monk and Psych Return

  Tonight brings the season premieres of the mystery-comedy shows Monk and Psych on USA Network. I’ve written extensively on thse two programs, on this site and elsewhere, and am looking forward to the new season of each. (See articles here, here, here, here, and here, for more info on these two programs.) It will be interesting to gauge the quality of the new season’s episodes. Psych, now going into its second year of production, was pretty good at the beginning and got better as the season went on. I think we can expect continued improvement.

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“Hot Ghetto Mess” TV Program Under Fire

July 11, 2007
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“Hot Ghetto Mess” TV Program Under Fire

At least two companies have pulled their ads from the upcoming July 25 premiere of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) program Hot Ghetto Mess which is based on the popular website of the same name. Expressing the same attitude as the website, the program will show viewer-submitted videos of stupid things people do, with an emphasis on the black community. It will also feature comedy, pictures, music, and man-on-the-street interviews to "shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they play in American lifestyle," as the BET web page for the program puts it. It will feature, according to the BET site, "shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers." In short, in showing the stupidity and ignorance of many Americans, Hot Ghetto Mess will do precisely what a good many shows directed at a broad audience do, but will be directed toward black Americans.

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