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Television

ABC’s ‘Detroit 1-8-7′ Tries for Greater Realism, with Mixed Results

October 19, 2010

Having achieved success with medical dramas on Thursdays and situation comedies on Wednesdays, along with some popular reality shows, ABC has set its sights on another TV staple in the past couple of years: crime dramas. It has a winner in Castle (Mondays, 10 p.m. EDT) and experienced a couple of audience failures with two very good shows, The Unusuals and The Forgotten. All three of those shows were a little off the beaten path, a bit quirky, not the ordinary run of police procedural. Given the decidedly mixed results of that strategy (one that fits with ABC’s basic programming approach, which has mined the mildly quirky vein since the late 1950s), it’s no surprise that with Detroit 1-8-7 the Alphanet is trying a show much more in line with current-day police procedural formulas. And wonder of wonders, audiences like it, so far. Viewers gave it a B+ in the USA Today audience poll, second-best among the twenty-one series rated, and it finished second in its timeslot last week, behind CBS’s The Good Wife, with 7.4 million viewers (Good Wife having grabbed 11.8 million). Reviewers were less enthusiastic, giving it a 64 out of a 100 on Metacritic. The show

NBC’s ‘Chase’ Strong on Moral Issues, Crime Show Formulas

October 18, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

NBC’s ‘Chase’ Strong on Moral Issues, Crime Show Formulas

Both NBC and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions have hit some hard times in recent years. Bruckheimer’s signature programs—notably the CSI franchise—are past their prime, and recent series such as The Forgotten and The Whole Truth have failed to generate the hoped-for audiences. NBC has been mired in fourth-place among the broadcast TV networks and is struggling to recover from a series of blunders exemplified by last season’s Tonight Show disaster. Bruckheimer’s latest new series (one of two this year), the police drama Chase (NBC, Mondays, 10 p.m. EDT), is up against a big challenge: Monday Night Football on CBS, the established hit cop show Castle on ABC, and the new hit cop show Hawaii Five-0 on CBS. Add to that a relatively weak lead-in from The Event (which is getting killed in the ratings by ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and CBS’s Two and a Half Men), plus a lackluster reaction from those who have seen the show (a C+ rating in the USA Today audience poll—14th out of the 21 new shows), and things do not look good for Chase. That’s a pity because the show has some good things to offer. The central character is Annie Frost, a U.S.

Jack the Ripper in the Twenty-Third and a Halfth Century

October 14, 2010

By Mike Gray

Jack the Ripper in the Twenty-Third and a Halfth Century

by Mike Gray “I think we bear left,” Kirk said. But the turn they took led them into an alley. They had paused, about to retrace their steps, when a woman’s agonized scream tore the silent darkness before them. “It came from there!” Kirk shouted, and plunged deeper into the foggy alley, McCoy at his heels. They both stopped at the sound of heavy breathing. Kirk took a forward step only to stop again. He had stumbled over a body. It was sprawled, face down, on the damp paving. The back of the cloak it wore was ripped by venomous slashes. McCoy, kneeling beside it, lifted the head. After a long moment, he raised a face that was blanched with horror. “It’s Kara,” he said. “Dead. Stabbed a dozen times.” The heavy breathing sound came again. They ran toward it. Scott was crouched against the alley wall. He stared at them unseeingly, his face twisted into a grimace. In his hands he held a long, sharp knife. It was wet with blood. — James Blish (1921-75), “Wolf in the Fold” story adaptation of a Star Trek script (1967) by Robert Bloch (1917-94). Perhaps on the day of judgment the true

‘Defenders’ Looks Good for CBS

October 13, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

With The Defenders (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.) CBS follows the pattern of last year’s critical success, the Emmy-winning legal drama The Good Wife, which featured strong performances from two popular TV stars in the lead roles, by Juliana Margulies and Christopher Noth, and a solid supporting cast. The Defenders follows that formula but takes a rather lighter tone, telling the story of two raffish but dedicated defense lawyers in Las Vegas. Nick Kaczmarek (Jerry O’Donnell) is a young, personable, professionally daring swinger, and Pete Morelli (Jim Belushi) is his cautious, anxiety-prone, middle-aged partner who’s a wiz in the courtroom, particularly brilliant at cross-examination. Pete craves bourgeois normality but is separated from his wife, while Nick loves the high life but doesn’t let it interfere with his work. In the pilot episode, the two take on the case of a young man who shot someone during a multi-person fistfight. The story plays out as a murder mystery with the defense lawyers functioning as the detective characters. There’s not much work with physical clues or brilliant intuitions on the part of the detective characters; instead, the story is in the private investigator format, with the questioning of witnesses constituting the major part of

‘Blue Bloods’ ‘Samaritan’ Episode Raises Important Law and Order Questions

October 8, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

‘Blue Bloods’ ‘Samaritan’ Episode Raises Important Law and Order Questions

The new CBS police drama series Blue Bloods did very well with audiences on its premiere night two weeks ago, finishing as the second-highest rated new show, after Hawaii Five-0, garnering 13.0 million viewers. As I noted in my review last week, the show takes an intelligent and nuanced attitude toward the police, recognizing their necessity but also the temptations their power creates. Episode 2, “Samaritan,” which premiered last week, considers those matters and adds an interesting, broader look at how the justice system puts citizens in an awful dilemma by claiming a monopoly on the use of force, denying people the right to protect themselves from violence. The episode deals with the search for and prosecution of a man who shot one of a gang of robbers and rapists on a subway train. The shooter and thugs are both of the same ethnic group, which removes that element from the story and puts the focus where it is most important: on the vigilante aspect of the story and the way the system punishes people who protect themselves and others. The latter is obviously a perversion of justice, but the producers wisely refrain from pushing the viewer to a particular

Bruckheimer’s ‘The Whole Truth’ Confronts a Somber Reality: Ratings

October 6, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

Bruckheimer’s ‘The Whole Truth’ Confronts a Somber Reality: Ratings

If you’re interested in watching The Whole Truth, the new ABC legal drama (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT), you might want to tune in tonight. It may not last long. The show is on life-support after debuting to an anemic total of 4.8 million viewers. It might last a little while, since it’s from Jerry Bruckheimer Productions, the makers of the successful CSI franchise and numerous other hit shows but also several unsuccessful series in recent years (such as Miami Medical and The Forgotten), but the lack of audience excitement (a C+ in USA Today‘s audience poll) suggests it’s going to be a tough slog. The show is certainly not bad, just not particularly compelling. Its biggest flaw appears to be the lack of any particularly likable characters among the leads. The latter seems an odd choice, especially given that there’s nothing in the concept to suggest the central characters couldn’t have had some charm, and the performers chosen to play them have a history of decent audience appeal. The concept is not only workable but in fact rather smart. It’s a legal show depicting both sides of a trial, as the prosecuor and defense both preapare their cases and then

First Fall Season TV Cancellations Hit

October 3, 2010

By Editor

Fox’s Lone Star and ABC’s My Generation have been canceled by their respective networks. Fox story here, ABC story here. S. T. Karnick’s review of Lone Star forecast this outcome, as it happens. Review here.

TV Writer-Producer Stephen J. Cannell, RIP

October 2, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

The late Stephen J. Cannell was a fixture on U.S. television for more than four decades.

CBS’s ‘Blue Bloods’ Dramatizes Dilemmas of Police Power

October 1, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

CBS’s ‘Blue Bloods’ Dramatizes Dilemmas of Police Power

The first thing the viewer will notice about the new CBS series Blue Bloods (Fridays, 10 EDT) is its impressive cast: Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, and Len Cariou lead a very talented group of performers. But what makes the show really worth watching is its sophisticated attitude toward the police: in theory they are admirable, and to a great degree in practice as well, but the exceptions are often disastrous. The opening scenes of the pilot episode establish a strongly positive view of the police, conveying a sense that the great majority go into the job with some amount of idealism, even if the system is prone to corruption. We meet the Reagan family, a multigenerational clan of New York City police officers, currently led by Police Chief Frank Reagan (Selleck). His son, Detective Danny Reagan (Wahlberg), is called away from a graduation ceremony for new police officers, where his Harvard-educated brother is one of the new-minted coppers. All of this sets up the ideal against which the show then compares the reality of policing a major American city. The case to which Danny Reagan is called concerns a daylight kidnapping of a young girl off a New

“This Is for Ladies Only!”

October 1, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

ESPN is starting up a new programming brand for females: espnW. It will begin as a blog and could evolve into a TV channel.

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

September 30, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

Sure, the new CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says is based on a very thin gimmick: a snarky but funny and very popular Twitter feed by previously unknown writer Justin Halpern. And sure, William Shatner plays a parody of his recent TV persona, as the weird blowhard named in the show’s title. And sure, sitcoms populated with quirky characters are a dime a dozen. But Shatner is a really talented comic actor, and he and the producers have given the show and its main characters a good deal more depth than one might have any right to expect. The concept turns out to have some potential for interesting situations reminiscent of real-life problems most people encounter. The story is laid out in a simple and direct manner in the pilot, but festooned with plenty of comical one-liners. A young, unemployed man and his cantankerous, hard-nosed father attempt to reconnect after years apart because of a divorce. The son barely knows the father, but he shows up on his doorstep anyway because he has nowhere else to go, having been laid off from his job. He is in fact rather afraid of the old man, for good reason, as the latter

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

September 29, 2010

By S. T. Karnick

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

As the fourth-rated broadcast TV network, NBC has made plenty of mistakes during the past few years, under now-ousted CEO Jeff Zucker. These failures actually arose from NBC’s longtime corporate culture and mission, which have been in place since the 1950s: an emphasis on specials and spectacular ideas as opposed to creating solid entertainment. It was NBC’s ambitions, inherited from the innovative TV programmer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver in the 1950s, that led to expensive, high-concept shows such as Kings, Heroes, The Event, and the like (note the high-flown titles of these series). Even last season’s Tonight Show debacle can be seen as part of this trend, an attempt at innovation and specialness on the cheap. This approach has failed at least as often as it has succeeded—NBC’s ratings were seldom spectacular under Weaver; CBS tended to rule the roost then, as today. In fact NBC’s greatest success in the post-Weaver years was the Brandon Tartikoff era, when the former ABC program exec wedded the network’s typical ambition and thirst for innovation with a smart quest for personable actors and entertaining concepts. With Zucker now on the way out and Jeff Gaspin installed as board chairman, NBC appears to be trying

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Television

ABC’s ‘Detroit 1-8-7′ Tries for Greater Realism, with Mixed Results

NBC’s ‘Chase’ Strong on Moral Issues, Crime Show Formulas

Jack the Ripper in the Twenty-Third and a Halfth Century

‘Defenders’ Looks Good for CBS

‘Blue Bloods’ ‘Samaritan’ Episode Raises Important Law and Order Questions

Bruckheimer’s ‘The Whole Truth’ Confronts a Somber Reality: Ratings

First Fall Season TV Cancellations Hit

TV Writer-Producer Stephen J. Cannell, RIP

CBS’s ‘Blue Bloods’ Dramatizes Dilemmas of Police Power

“This Is for Ladies Only!”

CBS’s ‘$#*! My Dad Says’ Nicely Transcends Gimmick Origin

NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

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