ian mcshane-related stories
Kings: The New King, Part 2 (series finale) - open thread
And so Kings has ended its run on NBC. This was one of the "quality" dramas that some people got excited about when it debuted months ago ... and then it crashed and NBC shoved it over to Saturday nights. But if Twitter is any indication, it still has its fans. What did you think of last night's episode?
Kings exiled to the summer
Were you hoping to find out if David was able to reconnect with his family or why William Cross' son had a high heeled shoe in his room? Tune in two months from now to find out.
NBC's Kings has been moved to the middle of June after just four episodes, the last of which was moved from Sunday to Saturday just as Macaulay Culkin made an intriguing special appearance.
This just spells even more gloom and doom for the show that has suffered from low ratings and a juggled time slot since it hit the air. A two-month hiatus is the television equivalent of the "I just want to be friends" dump.
Continue reading Kings exiled to the summer
Kings: Judgment Day
(S01E04) - "What's the point of having power if you don't use it?"
The inevitable has slowly become reality. NBC has shuffled Kings off to a Saturday time slot, affectionately known in TV watcher circles as the "death slot." Kings has now been left in that barren viewer-less void of TV's unwanted to rot in the hot sun of the shunned. Does anyone else smell bacon burning?
It's a shame really. Last Saturday's episode was able to give the series a good kick in the ass, even after the last episode felt like an action packed opus setting itself up for a shark jumper.
"Judgment Day" has turned Kings from a simple game of "Candy Land" where the good make it to the land of sugary goodness and the evil end up stuck in the Chocolate Swamp to a complex mesh of chess where the pieces are allowed to move each other.
Continue reading Kings: Judgment Day
I hope you didn't get too attached to Kings
There are two ways to get rid of a show. The network could just cancel it outright and never show it again, or they could take the show and burn off the remaining episodes on Saturday night, once a night of must-see TV but now a night filled with reruns, movies, and shows like Cops. Some would say that the latter is the worst of the fates, since you know it's going to be canceled but it's still on the air as a tease. Guess which NBC did with Kings?
Yup, the network has taken the show off of Sunday nights and will air the remaining eight episodes on Saturday nights at 8PM. The ratings kept falling and falling, with last week's episode getting the lowest ratings yet. NBC just sees no reason to leave it on Sunday nights. To fill the hour, Celebrity Apprentice will expand to three hours.
Just kidding. They're expanding Dateline to two hours. Is that better?
Kings: Insurrection
(S01E04) - Lives are more important than livelihood.
A major political leader's daughter has been kidnapped by militant insurgents and only one government insider can save her. Throw in a pair of electric nipple clamps hooked up to a car battery and a ticking clock, and it sounds like you've got an episode of 24.
This, however, was last night's Kings. Episode four takes a seemingly innocent decision to give Port of Prosperity to rival Gath and almost turns the whole affair into the white hot embers of a growing civil war within Shiloh.
King Silas' decision to give Gath the Port of Prosperity returns to bite him in the ass when its residents don't like their leader's use of eminent domain. So Silas puts our hero David Shepherd back in the spotlight to quell the growing insurgency and test his loyalty.
Continue reading Kings: Insurrection
Kings: First Night
(S01E03) - "We make amends Silas; the pure, the unblemished for our sins."
Last week's episode seemed to have blown Kings' war wad early and left us with nothing worthwhile to look forward to other than a long nap.
Episode three, however, pumps the series full of B-12, beta blockers and a spoonful of blood thinner and gives it the energy and vigor it needs to be a pleasure machine once again.
"First Night" gets Kings back to makin' bacon by bringing back old enemies and giving them the ammunition to launch their own attacks. It also creates new ones who have the hate production capabilities of a mutated Darth Vader spliced with Paris Hilton and a dash of Dick Cheney.
Continue reading Kings: First Night
Kings: Prosperity
(S01E02) - "You're just one boy. What good can you do here against all that?"
Kings is a show about a lot of things: love, money, greed, power, guys in suits that cost more than one year of college tuition. Mostly it's about action and consequences. So if the show's premiere episode was about war as a consequence, then naturally the next episode should be about its root cause: politics.
We finally get a taste of the aristocracy from the inside in the second episode. All the scheming and conniving that makes the greatest primetime soap operas and dramas like The Shield and The West Wing so great to watch. The fun comes from figuring how people like Vic Mackey and President Bartlet are going to get themselves out one bear trap without chewing their own foot off and choking on the marrow.
In Kings' case, however, the plot seems to have found its way out of one bear trap and inadvertently stepped right into another.
Continue reading Kings: Prosperity
It's not so good to be Kings
The response for NBC's Kings has been a good one. The show has garnered good praise from both the TV critics' shires and their sovereign nation of loyal readers minus the ones who still work at newspapers since they technically don't have any.If only critics' words could directly affect the world in which we live simply by committing ink to paper. Just think of the possibilities. Barack Obama would reopen Guantanamo Bay long enough to try Rob Schneider as a war criminal. Family Guy would have only lasted one episode instead of longer than most fossil remains. Deadwood would return to the air as a Saturday morning cartoon show called The $*&#ing Amalgamated Adventures of That Unnecessarily Profane #*$&ing #(#(*sucker Al #*($ing Swearengen.
More importantly, Kings would have done a hell of a lot better in its time slot.
Continue reading It's not so good to be Kings
Kings: Goliath (series premiere)
(S01E01) - "We give up what we want when we want power."
The two-part premiere of NBC's new political morality drama Kings kicks off in ways you would expect.
It's not just a political soap opera. It's a war epic. It's a family drama. It's a historical fantasy, even though such a thing sounds completely improbable. At times, it's even a comedy. All of these genres get their chance to shine in the show's first episode, "Goliath," and not all of them work, but they make for an interesting mix of television conventions.
Continue reading Kings: Goliath (series premiere)
Dylan Baker talks about Kings, playing creeps, and The Pitts - VIDEOS
Dylan Baker is one of those "That Guy" actors, a guy you've probably seen in a million different shows and movies, but can't quite place his name. But his "That Guy-ness" has a twist: he generally plays creeps, scumbags, pedophiles, and otherwise not-so-nice people. It's a lot in life he seems to be perfectly OK with. "I think they're more interesting. They're more fun to play."In Kings (which Danny previewed earlier today), the Biblical-themed soap that premieres on NBC on Sunday, March 15, Baker finds himself in as equally reprehensible role: he plays William Cross, the head of a huge conglomerate that holds the purse strings behind the power of King Silas Benjamin of Gilboa (Ian McShane). The complicating factor is that he's also the brother of Silas' wife, Rose (Susanna Thompson).
I spoke to the 49-year old character actor about the show, how he thinks his character has a little bit of Dick (Cheney) in him, how he can play a child molester (fans of the 1998 movie Happiness will know what I'm talking about) and how much he loved working on the doomed sitcom The Pitts.
Continue reading Dylan Baker talks about Kings, playing creeps, and The Pitts - VIDEOS
Kings -- An early look
My television has missed Ian McShane since Deadwood went buh-bye. His cunning and devious but seemingly moralistic portrayal of Al Swearengen made for a great complex character who could be a villian or an angel, depending on the situation and how evil you are.
He's born to play gruff badasses with gravely voices and icy cold stares that could land a bruise without him lifting a finger. That complex character has returned in McShane's new utopian morality drama Kings, much more toned down, of course.
After all, this is NBC, network television. They have enough money troubles without having the FCC breathing down their neck.
Continue reading Kings -- An early look
Kings stars take questions from the blogosphere - VIDEO
A few weeks ago, I was invited, along with a number of writers from websites and blogs (including our friends at AOL TV), to screen the two-hour premiere of NBC's new Blblical-themed fantasy soap, Kings. The show, which premieres on Sunday, March 15, has gotten a lot of hype since the Peacock network introduced it last summer. That hype was mostly due to its star, Ian McShane. Everyone knew that the former Deadwood star would bring a stern intensity to the show; heck, his orneriness during the summer TCA session for the show alone made people look forward to his performance.
Alas, the bloggers wouldn't get a chance to question McShane during the post-screening Q&A; they did get a chance to speak to creator Michael Green and co-stars Susanna Thompson, Allison Miller, Dylan Baker, and Eamonn Walker. Some choice quotes and video of the session are after the jump.
Continue reading Kings stars take questions from the blogosphere - VIDEO
Here's a sneak peek at NBC's Kings - VIDEO
Can I be a little bit cynical here? I'm watching the preview of the new NBC drama Kings (after the jump), and I can already tell this is probably going to have a hard time making it. Looks like it has a great cast (including Ian McShane) and a plot you don't usually see on primetime television (a small town guy becomes a war hero and rises to power in a city with the help of people behind the scenes pulling the strings - based on the story of King David).But it also seems like a show that might be hard for viewers to grab hold of, especially in this day and age of networks wanting quick hits and large numbers of viewers. It seems rather complex and epic, and yet another show with a continuing storyline.
Oh, and it's on NBC, which means that they'll probably put it on Monday night at 10, and we know what happens to shows that debut there (NBC has not announced a premiere date for the show yet, only that it's sometime in 2009). NBC already failed with Four Kings; what makes them think they can succeed with one? Take a look at the video and let us know what you think.
Continue reading Here's a sneak peek at NBC's Kings - VIDEO
Here's how Deadwood would have ended (if it hadn't ended)
Jonathan told you earlier this summer that there would be a Deadwood DVD set coming at the end of the year. I bet you didn't know it was going to be 19 discs.The Deadwood complete series set will house all three seasons on those 19 discs, and it will come with a rather large booklet guide to the show as well. But that isn't the big news. The big news is that the set will include among its two hours of extras a feature titled "The Meaning of Endings," which will be a detailed explanation of what would have happened to the characters had HBO not canceled the show.
Continue reading Here's how Deadwood would have ended (if it hadn't ended)
The Daily Show: September 5, 2008 - VIDEOS
Before we jump right into things, let's take a moment to think about just how amazing these past two weeks of Daily Show have been. The program has always been pretty solid, but both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention have provided beautiful fodder for both Jon and the correspondents, who seem to have finally hit their stride. This particular group of correspondents works best when they're all teamed up, and it really showed during convention coverage. From Jason Jones and Samantha Bee sucking face in front of hapless interviewees to Rob Riggle and Wyatt Cenac grillin' up some arugula in an elitist parking lot. TDS is taking another break next week and, boy, do they deserve it.
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