Archive: May, 2012
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
The History Channel’s “Hatfields & McCoys” has already made history, drawing 13.9 million viewers on Monday night for its first installment, making it the “No. 1 non-sports telecast in ad-supported cable history.”
So, OK, maybe that’s not the kind of stat you memorized in school, but 13.9 million people watching anything on television these days is a lot. On Memorial Day, it’s particularly impressive.
And like a studio blockbuster that keeps pumping out sequels, this one isn’t even over, with four more hours to go on Tuesday and Wednesday.
(Spoiler alert: The feud that inspired it, happily, has been over for some time.)
If you weren’t among the 17 million who watched either the original showing or its later encore, Sunday’s episode is being repeated at 7 p.m. Tuesday, before the second episode, which begins at 9.
Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton play the leaders of two backwoods families who engaged in a decades-long conflict in the 19th century that was at least partly triggered by a dispute over a misappropriated pig.
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
Who knew the kid with the snow globe would age so badly?
OK, so that’s not how Fox’s “House” ended Dr. Toad’s Wild Ride Monday night, in an episode that averaged nearly 8.7 million viewers, enough to win the time slot in both viewers and among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers target.
But while “St. Elsewhere’s” claim to strangest season finale ever (medical show division) remains intact, “House” did manage to surprise.
(Read no further if you don’t want to know how.)
Oh, I never actually bought that the addicted doctor (Hugh Laurie) was dead. Dr. Gregory House was playing the modern-day Sherlock Holmes long before Benedict Cumberbatch signed on for “Sherlock” and Holmes he was, right to the not-so-bitter end, faking his own death in a warehouse fire to escape the six-month prison stretch that would have coincided with the final months of his best friend Wilson’s life, then interrupting Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) with a text message in mid-eulogy to take him on one last road trip.
I was mildly surprised, though, that Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) wasn’t there, not in House’s guest star-studded hallucinations, in which he was supposedly debating life or death, and not even at the fake funeral, where Wilson got a text from the guest of honor in mid-eulogy.
They brought back Kal Penn, whose character committed a far more unlikely suicide to free Penn to go work at the White House. They brought back Anne Dudek, who’d also played dead before on “House,” as well as Sela Ward, whose character had once loved him, and Jennifer Morrison, who’s gone from battling House to battling the Evil Queen on “Once Upon a Time.”
Andre Braugher made a brief guest appearance in another scene, as House’s former shrink.
But the absence of Edelstein, who left the show rather abruptly at the end of Season 7 after the show failed to reach an agreement with her on a contract extension, was a sizable one.
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
That Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game is about to get a lot easier.
The Philly-raised Bacon, who’s famously worked with at least half the actors in Hollywood, will be tracking a vast network of serial killers in “The Following,” a new drama from Kevin Williamson (“Vampire Diaries,” “Dawson’s Creek”) that Fox’s entertainment chief calls “our next ‘24.’ ”
Premiering at midseason — where Fox is still at its strongest — it has Bacon playing a former FBI agent brought in to help deal with a death row escapee (James Purefoy, “Rome”) who’s found a way to make connections with other serial killers, getting them to form alliances and work together.
I’m thinking LinkedIn — or the Bacon game — but with a much higher body count.
The 53-year-old Bacon, son of the late city planner Edmund Bacon, has made an occasional TV guest shot — often playing himself — and was nominated for an Emmy for the HBO movie “Taking Chance,” but he’s never starred in a series.
Landing him “really was the casting coup of the year,” said Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly in a conference call with reporters Monday morning, hours before the network unveiled its 2012-13 schedule to advertisers in New York.
“He had expressed an interest” in a series, Reilly said. “There are more and more big stars who are intrigued with doing television.”
It probably didn’t hurt that Bacon’s wife, Kyra Sedgwick, is coming off an extremely successful seven-season run on TNT’s “The Closer,” which will air its final six episodes beginning July 9.
Or that “The Following” will have a cablelike schedule, with a 15-episode season that will allow Fox to air it for “15 weeks straight,” Reilly said.
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
It’s hard to imagine a major life change, be it marriage or mourning, that couldn’t be made a little worse by being experienced on camera for a "reality" show audience.
But the family of the late Whitney Houston, whose presence in her then-husband’s Bravo show, "Being Bobby Brown," didn’t exactly represent a career highlight, has apparently decided "reality" is the way to go.
Lifetime Friday announced it was picking up 10 hourlong episodes of a show about Houston’s family, tentatively titled, "The Houston Family Chronicles," described as "an all-new docu-series that will follow the lives of the late Whitney Houston’s family, led by Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law and manager, and including Pat’s daughter Rayah, Whitney’s brother Gary, daughter Bobbi Kristina and mother, Grammy Award-winning singer Cissy Houston."
Though the emphasis will supposedly be on the family dealing with the loss of Bobbi Kristina’s mother, the idea of a show had apparently been around long before Whitney Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton in February.
"I have been working … over the past few years developing a project suitable for myself and our family. The unexpected passing of Whitney certainly affects the direction of the show. However, it is my hope that others will be enlightened as they watch our family heal and move forward," said Pat Houston in a statement released by Lifetime.
"Certainly affects the direction"? Bet it does.
Am I the only one who thinks Lifetime wouldn't have been nearly as interested in a show about Whitney Houston's sister-in-law (and, OK, manager) this time last year?
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
In a move that’s bound to call for a celebratory glass of wine in some circles, TBS has swooped in to rescue ABC’s Courteney Cox sitcom “Cougar Town.”
The show’s fourth season will premiere on the basic-cable channel early in 2013 and has also acquired rerun rights for the 61 episodes from the first three seasons.
Created by Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs,” “Spin City”), the unfortunately named comedy stars Cox as Jules, a divorced mother of an almost grown son (Dan Boyd). Other stars include Josh Hopkins who plays her fiancé, Christa Miller and Ian Gomez as neighbors, Brian Van Holt as Jules’ ex and Busy Phillips as her “feisty protégé.”
Yes, they drink a lot, but mostly on weekends, insists Lawrence.
And now they all have something to drink to.
Ellen Gray, Daily News TV Critic
When famous people die, reporters look to their notebooks (or their audio files) for old interviews, and TV people go to the videotape.
Bill Moyers' people have sent along (see below) what they're calling "one of the most candid and comprehensive interviews ever with [children's book author] Maurice Sendak," which includes this response to the oft-asked question of what happened to Max, the indelible protagonist of "Where the Wild Things Are":
"It’s such a coy question that I always say, ‘Well, he’s in therapy forever. He has to wear a straitjacket when he’s with his therapist,’” Sendak told Moyers.
Hulu has some other Sendak-on-TV stuff:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/354073/the-colbert-report-stephens-childrens-book
http://www.hulu.com/watch/99642/where-the-wild-things-are---maurice-sendak-and-spike-jonez-vignette
