Maya and Marty in Manhattan

Are you ready for a prime time variety show? NBC is at it again tonight with Maya & Marty, the Maya being Maya Rudolph and Marty being Martin Short. Both know comedy and therefore NBC is not going too far onto a limb with six planned episodes. When you add guests such as Tom Hanks, Larry David and Paul Rudd you have a promising start.

You may remember another NBC variety show that premiered last year with Neil Patrick Harris called Best Time Ever. It was fun as well as short-lived. That said, even one season of something new and fresh is okay, so let the show begin. 

A Fantastic Duo on Starz

No, I am not talking about super heroes, but rather fantastic actors.  Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen have teamed up for a one-night special called The Dresser, premiering tonight on Starz.  Hopkins plays a WWII-era stage actor playing King Lear, whereas McKellen is his assistant keeping together on and off the stage.  Of course, The Dresser itself was once a play and only later the BBC had the great idea of widening its audience. 

Seldom do you see a match up of this caliber, so you are in for a treat.  Take a look at this trailer for more.   

Discussing his role in this BBC production, Hopkins says he and McKellen would like more opportunities for such programs:

I’d like to do another one with the BBC. Ian said he hopes they do more of these classic plays. The audiences in London loved it, as did the critics. There’s not much going on, it’s all talk. But audiences like it. And American audiences will like it, too. You watch a film, and you don’t know who’s chasing who in a car scene. I can’t watch it. I try to watch these films and I’m so bored. Who cares? They have sex. Give me a break! I wasn’t born yesterday. And these car chases. God almighty! It’s all too much. It’s so boring. Everyone talks in a whisper now because it sounds so sexy. It doesn’t sound sexy. You can’t hear! I’m just an old grinch. You watch, and you can see the attitude of the actor. They think, “I am hot s–t.”

I am fine without car chases.  Good acting is an ingredient missing from many films these days.  Maybe I too can be a grinch.

The Return of Roots

You may have missed the Roots mini-series on ABC in 1976, Roots: The Next Generations in 1979, and maybe even Roots: The Gift in 1988, yet 40 years later it has been polished off again and is back for a four-night run on the History Channel. The original Roots ran over eight nights in January 1976, but this time it starts on Memorial Day Weekend (Monday night).  We tend to see this weekend as a time to remember struggles with other nations, yet slavery was all about a simmering civil war that went on for centuries only to be partly settled by a real Civil War and legislation 100 years later. 

If you are not familiar with the story, here is a trailer and what you can expect in the first episode, 

In 1750 in the river region of The Gambia in West Africa, Omoro Kinte and his wife, Binta, have their first child, a son named Kunta. Kunta is trained in Mandinka customs and is a dedicated student who dreams of traveling to the university. After being kidnapped and captured by the Koros, Kunta is sold to British slave traders in 1767 and is shipped to America. In Annapolis, Maryland, he is sold to a Virginia planter named John Waller and is given the slave name Toby. Kunta strongly resists his new name and enslavement. He relies on the wise counsel of Fiddler, an assimilated slave and sophisticated musician who has been assigned to train him. Malachi Kirby, and Forest Whitaker star.

London's paper The Guardian notes that in a time of films such as Djang Unchained, it may be harder to tell a dark story with little in the way of happy endings, but notes:

Roots hasn’t endured because of high-concept action, wish fulfillment or fancy prosthetics. In fact, it has survived in the cultural consciousness in spite of the limitations inherent in the medium of television. It’s also survived the failings of its author.  Alex Haley was sued and later admitted to plagiarizing an earlier work, plus the mislabeling of his work as more fact than fiction. Roots doesn’t have to be a true story to be powerful. It’s a fable – one with an origin in reality, but a fable nonetheless. It can stand for the millions of other stories just like it – stories of men and women in bondage, yearning to be unchained.

At a time when America seems to be falling for politicians who want to whitewash the past and make false promises about the future, maybe we need a fable that shows us the struggles it took to bring us to this point in time and the importance of learning from history before it is too late.

Amazon Presents Doctor Thorne

I am not sure why the creator of Downton Abbey put his latest project on Amazon rather than PBS, but we are lucky either way. Julian Fellowes's new series Doctor Thorne once again brings us stately homes, society dances, familial financial transactions, subtle intrigue, and repartee galore. It also brings us Ian McShane as the obnoxious Sir Roger Scatcherd, who gets the Maggie Smith lines this time. 

If you are not sure, here is a summary of episode one from the UK's ITV:

1855. When Doctor Thorne’s penniless niece, Mary, is excluded from the wedding preparations of her childhood playmate, she probes her uncle for the truth of her birth. 

She is devastated to learn that she is the illegitimate child of his late brother. It seems she has neither breeding nor fortune. This is a problem, as Mary and the heir to the Greshamsbury Estate, Frank, have fallen in love.

Frank is under strict instructions from his over‐bearing mother, Lady Arabella, to save his family from financial ruin by marrying money. Frank’s mother schemes to separate the two lovebirds, encouraging her son to woo the wealthy American heiress, Miss Dunstable. 

Meanwhile, Doctor Thorne acts as both physician and business advisor to railway millionaire, Sir Roger Scatcherd, in whose hands the fate of Greshamsbury lies, and who is rapidly drinking himself into an early grave.

I have enjoyed the series now available online, and I recommend it to fans of Fellowes. Sadly, the Anthony Trollope tale is in only four parts and then it is gone. Yet Trollope has more tales and Fellowes more energy, so we can hope for more. 

Update: If you are more interested in a book from Mr. Fellowes, you can buy Belgravia next month and get a preview on a downloadable app. Here is more on his new story:

Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode. Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is people by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Duchess of Richmond's n0w legendary ball, one family's life will change forever. 

Don't Cross Claire Underwood

It was not that long ago I mentioned a salary dispute between the male and female cast on Netflix's Grace and Frankie. Well, another salary dispute has flared up on House of Cards, also on Netflix.

Robin Wright, who plays Claire Underwood, demanded equal pay with her co-star Kevin Spacey. It seems like a plot line from the show, but it is true. Though I am not sure her performance merits the pay. I guess $5.5 million a year was not enough.

I think both Lily and Jane had a better argument on Grace and Frankie. I also believe Claire should avoid subway stations in the future since one quick shove could give Netflix more money for future programming. Hey, it hasn't hurt Game of Thrones. 

AMC Brings You a Very Dark Preacher

Are you ready for another series based on a comic book?  AMC's Preacher, premiering tonight, brings to life a 1990s comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.  The two authors created about 66 storylines, so this is a series with no end if that is how AMC wants to play it.  But what is it about, you ask.  Here is the outline and trailer:

Preacher is a supernatural, twisted and darkly comedic drama that follows a West Texas preacher named Jesse Custer, who is inhabited by a mysterious entity that causes him to develop a highly unusual power. Jesse, his badass ex-girlfriend Tulip and an Irish vagabond named Cassidy come together, and when they do, they are thrust into a crazy world populated by a cast of characters from Heaven, Hell and everywhere in between.

In fact, Cassidy is a vampire rather than a "vagabond" and the series is horribly violent, which may or may not bring you on board.  And another character has a very interesting face that may lead to laughs or looks of horror.

Critic Kevin Fallon in The Daily Beast had some trouble defining the show, noting:
 
It’s also impossible to describe succinctly. It’s at once a supernatural thriller, a meditation on spirituality, a portrait of life in the Deep South, a classic Western, horror camp, slapstick comedy, and comic book-inspired character study. It’s ridiculous and unsettling and provocative and perverse. The gore is grotesque. The humor is gut-busting.

Check it out if it piques your interest.  To me it looks like a cross between Supernatural, Dominion, and Justified.  All good shows, but I prefer each alone.  I may sit this one out.

HBO Brings us the Johnson Years

Tonight on HBO you get a glimpse into the administration of President Johnson, with the lead role played by Bryan Cranston who you may remember from Breaking Bad.  The program, All The Way, bring Cranston's Broadway act to television.

Here is a quick summary (and trailer) from HBO:

All The Way offers a riveting behind-the scenes look at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s tumultuous first year in office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Staking his presidency on what would be an historic unprecedented Civil Rights Act, Johnson finds himself caught between the moral imperative of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the expectations of the southern Democratic Party leaders who brought Johnson to power.  As King battles to press Johnson while controlling more radical elements of the Civil Rights Movement, Johnson navigates the bill through Congress, winning a landslide victory against Barry Goldwater, but causing the South to defect from the Democratic Party.

You can learn more about the series in this HBO clip where Bryan Cranston and others talk about their characters and the period being portrayed. 

It is about time we get a profile of a great man rather than being forced to relive the O.J. Simpson trial and other "docu-dramas" on television these days.  And maybe Americans will learn more about what it takes to be president in a season where reality TV seems to be more important than the everyday realities of a dangerous world.  Character matters in difficult times.