TheCarolBurnettShow-related stories
Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:00AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, Programming, OpEd, Reality-Free
For the longest time, I've kvetched about the fact that the television industry has stopped programming for Saturday night. For years, Saturday was a great night of television. I remember
M*A*S*H and
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, not to mention guilty pleasures like
The Facts of Life and
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Even NBC's thrillogy,
The Pretender and
Profiler were fun. All those shows were Saturday night hits (some bigger than others).
Well,
I'm not alone in missing Saturday TV; Oscar-winner Barry Levinson feels the same. Levinson is also a TV producer -- he did
Homicide: Life on the Street and
The Philanthropist -- and he thinks the networks are making a big mistake by not seizing on Saturday primetime. He knows the business pretty well and he's confused by the networks' strategy.
"I don't think the answer is to retreat," he told the New York Daily News. "When you give up Saturday night, you open the door for people to go somewhere else. Basically, they're shrinking their own audience."
Continue reading Barry Levinson urges TV to take back Saturday night
Posted Aug 14th 2009 12:29PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Casting, Reality-Free
Well, nobody can accuse Kate Winslet of not being courageous. The actress -- also an Oscar-winner for
The Reader -- is going to do a remake. Right now
Mildred Pierce is slated as a miniseries starring Kate Winslet with Todd Haynes (
Far From Heaven) writing and directing. HBO is first in line to broadcast the mini, but the contracts haven't been signed yet.
Remakes always make me a little queasy. After all, for every success like
The Fugitive, there's a debacle like
The Wild Wild West. But this time around it's not a television series being remade, it's a famous and semi-classic Oscar-winner,
Mildred Pierce. The name alone evokes images of Joan Crawford with shoulder pads you could die for and a horrible teenage daughter played by Ann Blyth.
Continue reading Kate Winslet takes on the ghost of Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
Posted Aug 6th 2008 2:23PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Cancellations, Reality-Free
Perhaps the strangest soap opera of all time has come to an end now that
Passions has been canceled by DirecTV. The gothic, modern psycho-drama set in a small Maine town replete with witches, elves, zombies and even some regular people, lasted nine years on the air. In primetime terms, that would be a hell of a run. For soaps, it characterizes
Passions as a noble -- to some -- failure.
I never cared for
Passions. It turned me off in the first season, 1999, but it wasn't because of the outre elements. I was actually interested in the gothic stuff because I'd grown up enjoying
Dark Shadows with Barnabus and Quentin and Angelique and all those horror classic reinterpretations on a next-to-nothing budget -- furniture provided by Stern's Department Store, as I recall -- including werewolves,
Frankenstein's monster and
The Innocents, and parallel universes.
Dark Shadows remains a vivid, happy memory.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Passions played out
Posted Oct 12th 2007 10:27AM by Paul Goebel
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Other Reality Shows, Celebrities, Game Show, TV Squad Lists, Chuck
For whatever reason, the name Chuck has turned out to be very popular this year. On TV, Pushing Daisies has a major character named Chuck and, of course, there's the new series Chuck. in the theaters, Chuck and Larry were happily married and Dane Cook was a Chuck with extraordinary luck. All these Chuck's got me thinking (not to mention craving a hamburger) some of the greatest people on television have been named Chuck. Here are a few.
Chuck Cunningham (Happy Days)
When the Cunningham family first made their appearance, Chuck was clearly the funniest part of the family. Unfortunately as the show progressed, it became clear that there simply wasn't enough room for Chuck in the house or on the series. Chuck Cunningham lives on, however, as the most famous forgotten character of all time.
Continue reading The top five Chucks on television
The TV Squad Podcast: Vik Sahay of Chuck, Oprah talk, brutal timeslots, and more!
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Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
