Posted Jun 26th 2009 12:02PM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Over the span of Hung's first few episodes, Ray Drecker utters a lot of depressing one-liners. Things like "everything's falling apart" and "I used to be a big deal" are common phrases for him. However, as the title of the show suggests, Ray Drecker (played by The Punisher's Thomas Jane) has at least one thing to be very happy about.
The new HBO dramedy is set in Detroit against the backdrop of a financially ruined automotive industry skyline, and as the world crumbles around him, Ray is forced to re-evaluate his life while everything he cares about slowly slips away. It's unsettling and sad, but in some ways, fortuitous ... at least for HBO anyway. Considering the current economic crisis many Americans are experiencing, a lot of people are going to relate to this show. Just probably not to the big penis part.
Continue reading HBO's Hung -- An early look
Posted Jun 25th 2009 2:02PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals, Early Looks, Reality-Free
I really wish I could have liked the pilot for
Virtuality. It was Ron Moore's first new series since the end of his
Battlestar Galactica relaunch that wasn't related to that series. Unfortunately, the pilot seems to fall flat and is unlikely to lead into a series.
The concept is solid. It's about a group of 12 space travellers (each of whom could be mistaken for an underwear model) who are on Earth's first interstellar spacecraft, the Phaeton. Earth has become all but unlivable and they are traveling to a nearby star for ten years (five there, five back) and try to save the planet.
Continue reading Virtuality -- An early look
Posted Jun 24th 2009 2:02PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Early Looks, Reality-Free
NBC has been promoting the crap out of their new summer adventure series,
The Philanthropist, for weeks now. Starring
James Purefoy as Teddy Rist, a billionaire playboy who decides to save the world, The previews held absolutely no interest for me. Now, after having seen the pilot, I realize that my first impression was the correct one.
Premiering tonight at 10 PM,
The Philanthropist is basically an hour of an insufferable rich dude talking about how awesome he is. We watch the premise of the show unfold through the eyes of Rist himself, as he tells his tale of heroism (saving a Nigerian boy from drowning; surviving a shoot-out and a snake bite in order to deliver some Cholera vaccines to a village) to a bored bartender.
Continue reading The Philanthropist - An early look
Posted Jun 3rd 2009 1:02PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Programming, OpEd, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
The producers of
The Listener, a new NBC semi-supernatural drama created in Canada, seemingly spent too much time "listening" to moody, do-gooder predecessors such as
Medium or
Ghost Whisperer. The end result is just a little too familiar to generate much excitement.
The Listener is a rare animal -- a Canadian production from Shaftesbury Films and
CTV picked up by an American network for prime time TV. You're left wondering if NBC might have bought a show directly inspired by programs already on the air in the U.S.
It's not uncommon for networks to remake shows popular in other countries.
The Office is an obvious direct example in the U.S., and reality shows just change titles as they jump back and forth over the Atlantic.
The Listener looks like CTV wanted to clone the success of the American mini-genre of the average human struggling with a supernatural gift that calls him or her to an extraordinary life. We've seen that plenty in the U.S., but NBC thought we might like to see it again.
Continue reading The Listener -- An early look
Posted May 31st 2009 3:13PM by Michael Pascua
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Episode Reviews
Mark Burnett strikes again with
Expedition Africa: Stanley & Livingstone, premiering tonight at 10 PM ET on History. The show channels a travel documentary with Burnett-style storyline. Four modern day explorers (Pasquale Scaturro, Mireya Mayor, Benedict Allen, and Kevin Sites) try to recreate the path that Henry Morton Stanley took to find Dr. David Livingstone. They forgo most of modern day technology (with the exception of water purifiers, sun block and medical kits) and depend on a map, a compass, porters, and two Maasai warriors.
Continue reading Expedition Africa -- An early look
Posted May 29th 2009 11:07AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Late Night, Early Looks, Reality-Free
Have you been anxiously awaiting the return of Conan O'Brien and company to late night television? Are you tossing and turning each night because you are lacking your nightly dose of string dancing? Do you find it impossible to get through the day without knowing if Conzie will return to television as the Conzie we all know and love and are thinking of seeking professional help?
Thankfully, I've got the cure. Seek professional help. Make sure he prescribes some strong brain juice for you too, something you have to inject with a syringe.
A recent
Ain't It Cool News report says that test shows of Conan's new
Tonight Show are underway this week. And the reviews are overwhelmingly positive if you're a big fan of Conan's old
Late Night show.
Continue reading Tonight Show test shows new show is just like the old show
Posted May 25th 2009 10:00AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Early Looks, Reality-Free
During the pilot episode of the new FOX drama
Mental, Annabella Sciorra's Dr. Nora Skoff tells Chris Vance's Dr. Jack Gallagher that his recent decision to strip down butt-naked to help a patient deserves some of her Harvard business school advice - ask for royalties because the video of it is sure to be more popular than Paris Hilton's sex tape. To that, I offer some insight from a Syracuse University TV production graduate - there's a reason FOX held off on premiering
Mental until the summer. It's not very good.
Continue reading Mental -- An early look
Posted May 19th 2009 9:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Early Looks, Reality-Free
If you heard about Fox's new musical drama/comedy
Glee and thought it's probably going to be something like
Disney's High School Musical, you're wrong. Gleefully wrong.
Glee is one of the best entertainments I've seen on television in a long, long time.
Writer/producer/director Ryan Murphy describes the show as a hybrid, and he's right. It is. For me, I saw elements of the movie
Election, plus
Fame and
Friday Night Lights, with a bit of
The Wonder Years thrown in, only it's not nostalgia.
Glee is all the best parts of all the above, plus music and dancing and great characters and really witty material.
Continue reading Glee -- An early look
Posted Apr 25th 2009 6:30PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Heroes, Early Looks, Reality-Free
After watching the penultimate episode of "Volume Four: Fugitives" on NBC's
Heroes last week, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when a dashing young man in a FedEx uniform delivered a surprise package to my doorstep later in the week. Inside was a rough cut of "An Invisible Thread," the season finale of
Heroes. Now this wasn't nearly as rough as the
X-Men Origins: Wolverine debacle floating around the interwebs, but neither was it the completely polished version we'll see this upcoming Monday at 9:00 PM ET.
Overall, I found myself a little disappointed as I've been with every volume finale we've had since the very beginning. And admittedly, I might just be wanting something a little bit more than what we're able to get here. As for deaths and new beginnings, those we do get. I'll tell you this: one person who I felt certain was going to die didn't. One person who I thought as a possibility to die did ... but sort of didn't. But really did. The only hint I'll give you is
Marvel's first Exiles series.
Continue reading Heroes: An Invisible Thread (season finale) -- An early look
Posted Apr 17th 2009 5:02PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Animation, Early Looks, Reality-Free
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has been breathlessly anticipating
Sit Down, Shut Up (premiering on FOX Sunday at 8:30 PM ET), the newest series from
Arrested Development creator
Mitch Hurwitz.
SDSU is an animated series based on a live-action Australian show by the same name. It follows a group of under-performing teachers at a Florida high school.
The teachers are all flaky, disinterested in their students, and with the exception of Larry Littlejunk (
Jason Bateman), highly under-qualified for their positions. An example? Miracle Grohe (
Kristen Chenoweth), the science teacher, beat Larry out of the job by stripping off all her clothes and yelling, "I ain't come from no monkey!"
The humor manages to be both broad and subtle at the same time, much in the way
Arrested Development managed to be. However, though Bateman himself calls this show an animated version of
AD, that's overstating it a bit.
Sit Down, Shut Up, is more like
Arrested Development's annoying younger brother.
Continue reading Sit Down, Shut Up -- An early look
Posted Apr 8th 2009 5:12PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Early Looks, Reality-Free, Parks and Recreation
First there was talk of a spin-off of
The Office. Word was that Amy Poehler was attached. Then we got the notion that Rashida Jones may just reprise her role of Karen in that spin-off. And then it became
Parks and Recreation. The show follows the exploits of the Parks Department in a small city in Indiana. So our spin-off went from more office politics to ... well, politics. But Amy Poehler is here. And while Rashida Jones is on board, it's not as Karen.
Still, the comparisons are going to be inevitable. Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who are both key parts of
The Office team, created this show, it airs right before
The Office, and both are shot in that mock documentary style. Then you have Poehler's lead role as Deputy Director Leslie Knope. She appears to be as oblivious to the world that truly exists around her as Michael Scott is on
The Office, but more in a naively optimistic way than a narcissistic asshat way. As Jones' character Ann Perkins describes her: "She's a little doofy, but she's sweet."
Continue reading Parks and Recreation -- An early look
Posted Apr 8th 2009 3:39PM by Michael Pascua
Filed under: Programming, Early Looks
Bravo has announced the show
Top Chef Masters will begin Wednesday June 10th. The show is basically the celebrity version of
Top Chef, where "world-renowned" chefs will compete for $100,000. The money will be given to their favorite charity. The format hasn't changed: the quickfire and the elimination challenges remain, but there will be a five-star grading system implemented.
There are 24 chefs, but I will have to trust the producers with their use of the words "world-renowned" since I'm just an average guy. One of the few chefs I know is
Top Chef guest judge
Wylie Dufresne, who is well known for his work on molecular gastronomy. The contestants' bios are available on the
Bravo website.
Continue reading Top Chef Masters premieres this June
Posted Apr 3rd 2009 1:29PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Video, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Southland, the gritty new police drama from film producer Ann Biderman, puts the spotlight on the dark and grimy corners of Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of uniformed cops and plainclothes detectives. Unfortunately, the series premiere is mired in cop show clichés and forgets to deliver anything we haven't seen before.
The first episode –
stream it now or watch it below, a week before it debuts on NBC – owes a lot to
NYPD Blue,
Homicide: Life on the Street and countless other cop shows that came before it. It's a procedural with a large cast about cops struggling to balance "the job" with their personal lives.
Continue reading Southland -- An early look - VIDEO
Posted Apr 2nd 2009 2:08PM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, Rescue Me, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Hard to believe that it's been over a year and a half since
Rescue Me bowed its
season four finale. The
minisodes that aired last summer served to remind us that the FDNY drama was alive and kicking, but more than anything, they made one other point clear - there ain't nothing like the real thing.
Rescue Me returns to FX this coming Tuesday, April 7th at 10PM ET, and after screening the first nine episodes of the fifth season's 22, trust me when I say that all the bad reviews associated with the mediocrity of season four can be forgotten. Tommy Gavin is back and better than ever.
Continue reading Rescue Me, season five -- An early look
Posted Mar 17th 2009 10:01AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
![[L-R]: Lem (Malcolm Barrett), Ted (Jay Harrington), and Phil (Jonathan Slavin)](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tvsquad.com/media/2009/03/113205_2346_pretvs425.jpg)
Better Off Ted, ABC's new workplace comedy, debuts Wednesday at 8:30PM ET. However, the timing of the show's release couldn't be more fortuitous... or disastrous, depending on how you look at it. The show revolves around an ethically inept conglomerate, Veridian Dynamics, and as a result, viewers will unavoidably end up thinking about everything that's wrong with our economy - from Bernie Madoff to AIG to Enron (a stretch yes, but still relevant). As a comedy, it's a decidedly glass half-full approach. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when most viewers will probably have more in common with a glass half-empty mantra. Will it work? I'm thinking yes.
Continue reading Better Off Ted -- An early look
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TV Squad previews NBC's new shows (part 1)
TV 101: How ESPN controls the world and what the other networks can learn from it
TV Squad previews CBS's new shows
