Category: TCA Press Tour (Page 40 of 56)

TCA Press Tour, Day 2: CMT

July 10, 2008 /

If you’re a regular reader of Premium Hollywood…and while there aren’t many of them, I have to believe there are some of them, so don’t correct me even if I am wrong…you know that while I’m definitely not what you’d call a reality-show addict, I definitely have my favorite guilty pleasures amongst that particular genre. I watched every episode of The CW’s “Crowned” and “Farmer Wants A Wife,” thank you very much, and I enjoyed the former so much that I actually traded a couple of E-mails with one of the contestants, Hollis Scarborough, on MySpace. (She and her mom were totally robbed, by the way.) Falling chronologically between those two series, however, was another show that I found myself sucked into: CMT’s “Gone Country,” which took a heaping helping of disparate celebrities – Bobby Brown, Maureen McCormick, Carnie Wilson, Diana DeGarmo, Julio Iglesias, Jr., Sisqo, and Dee Snider – as they attempted to live the country music lifestyle and, in the process, earn enough country cred for one of them to win a recording session as…you guessed it…a country music artist. The winner was Julio Iglesias, Jr., but there was a trio of individuals who bonded so well together that the producers decided to spin them off into their own series, this time trying to blend reality and scripted comedy into something called “Outsider’s Inn,” which finds Brown, McCormick, and Wilson running a bed and breakfast in a small town.

But we’ll get to that.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, News, Reality TV, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Comedies

TCA Press Tour, Day 2: Comedy Central

July 10, 2008 /

Does the world really need a “Gong Show” revival? I wouldn’t have thought so at first, but when you throw in the fact that the host will be Dave Atell, the viability of the program picks up a bit…so much so, in fact, that I remained interested in checking it out even after I discovered that it was a Happy Madison production. I haven’t seen a full episode of the show yet, but we were able to check out a collection of clips from upcoming episodes, and I must say that I laughed a lot…possibly too much, really, given that some of the acts that were spotlighted were decidedly less than highbrow (not that that’s really a problem for a certain percentage of the Comedy Central audience), but the funny bone wants what the funny bone wants.

When Comedy Central’s Lauren Corrao indicated that “this is not your father’s ‘Gong Show,’ she couldn’t have been more right; this is definitely a series that has no intentions of shying away from anything too odd or disconcerting, as evidenced by Atell’s response to the question about his favorite acts that he’s seen thus far.

“Well, we have the whole gamut,” said Atell, “from a unicycle act to the more raunchy, odd-cabaret cabaret act. So the acts that I enjoy the most are the raunchy vaudeville acts, but, you know, it’s up to the judges, so I guess unicycle beats queefer.”

Awesome.

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Actors, External Entertainment, External TV, News, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Comedies

TCA Press Tour, Day 2: AMC

July 10, 2008 /

At the 2007 TCA Press Tour, the critics were all abuzz about this new show on AMC called “Mad Men.” Some of us had seen the screeners of the first episode or two, some of us had not, but there was absolutely no-one in the house whose curiosity wasn’t piqued about this series which would take place in the early 1960s and examine the life and times of ad men…and, of course, the women who love them. Over the course of the year, “Mad Men” became a full-fledged television phenomenon, bringing new attention to AMC as a place to find top-notch original series (a reputation aided in recent months by “Breaking Bad”), and with the recent release of Season 1 of “Mad Men” on DVD, the excitement over the impending premiere the show’s second season is at a fever pitch.

How disappointing, then, that the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, is so steadfastly against revealing anything about the upcoming season.

Not that I blame the guy. As much as I love a good spoiler, I can totally understand why a show’s producer wouldn’t want to spill his guts about what we can expect to see in the future, because he wants us to be as surprised as everyone else. But with that said, AMC did provide us with the first two episodes of the new season, and he was even hesitant to discuss the events that take place in those.

So, y’know, basically, the big scoop we can reveal about the second season of “Mad Men” is that there is one.

Okay, I’m just kidding. There’s a little bit that we’ve gleaned about it, and the bit that’s probably going to be the most frustrating for those who like to get their answers quickly is that there’s been a bit of a time shift, jumping ahead slightly rather than picking up immediately after the events at the end of Season 1. There’s a specific reason that Weiner has opted to go this direction, however…well, actually, make that two reasons.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, News, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Dramas

TCA Press Tour, Day 2: WEtv

July 10, 2008 /

I must admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for WEtv. It’s not because I find myself watching it all that much of my own accord, you understand, but my wife is a diligent viewer of “Bridezillas” marathons, and I’ve been known to get caught up in an episode or two while she’s watching that show. And, okay, I had quite a few laughs at “Party Mamas,” too. Oh, hell, if I’m going to talk up the network at all, then I should also praise “High School Confidential,” which was a really fantastic reality series that explored the lives of twelve girls over the course of four years.

Fine. I like WEtv. Happy?

And I’m probably going to end up liking it a bit more now that they’re adding a very interesting new series called “The Locator.”

Troy Dunn is the titular character of this reality series, and he’s a gentleman who has spent the past 18 years finding over 40,000 people and reconnecting lives. Steve Cheskin, head of programming for WeTV, couldn’t say enough good things about it, but probably the greatest compliment he paid was this: “It was the best-testing, highest-testing pilot I ever remember in my 20-some years of being in the business.” Indeed, it’s such a heartwarming premise for a series, with Dunn going on a quest in each episode to find a friend or family member who’s been MIA for years…and, in the case of the latter, they’ve sometimes never even met, such as in the pilot episode, where we see a young woman named Katie go on a quest to find her mother.

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Documentaries, External Entertainment, External TV, News, Reality TV, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV

TCA Press Tour, Day 1: Style / G4 / E!

July 9, 2008 /

Okay, I’m not going to lie to you: I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time regaling you with information about Style’s new show, “Ruby,” which focuses on Ruby Gettinger, a woman in Savannah, GA, who’s battling with weight issues…like, to the point where, at her highest, she weighed 700 pounds. I’m not anti-Style by any means, but…okay, look, here’s the thing: I’m a heavyset guy, and I need to lose weight, too, but I’ve never been terribly overly interested in “The Biggest Loser” (I thought I had become a regular viewer this season, but it just didn’t end up keeping my attention), and, ultimately, I’m just not that enthralled with the idea of watching Ruby’s quest to lose weight. I wish her well, sure, and she seems like a really nice lady, but based on what I saw in the clips they provided before the panel and the things that were said during the panel, I’m not very fond of her “you skinny people” and “us fat people” mindset. I don’t get the impression that she means it in a bad way, but, still, it somehow feels like sides are being drawn…and I’m a little concerned about what side I’m on, frankly.

Thankfully, I was far more interested in the proceedings when G4 put the spotlight on their signature series, “Attack of the Show,” hosted by Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn. I’ve really only caught the show a couple of times, but I’ve always been entertained by it, and having gotten more than a few laughs from Kevin and Olivia (as well as their producer, Gavin Purcell) during the course of their panel, I’m thinking I might need to check it out more often in the future. At the very least, I’ll be pursuing an interview with them as soon as I get back.

I was approached by one of my peers after the panel, and since he’d never seen the show before, he asked me if it was really as much about frat-boy humor as it was made to appear by the footage they offered up during the panel. Funny thing is, I’d never gotten the impression that it was that kind of show. I’d always gotten the impression that it was more a show for people who might ordinarily be labeled as nerds or geeks but refuse to let themselves be dragged down by a description like that…so, yeah, they focus on gaming and technology and shows like “Heroes” and “Lost,” but they also get a giggle from a fart joke, too.

Purcell acknowledged that it was a difficult balance to maintain sometimes. “(It) really has to do with the intelligent angle you try to take on things,” he said. “We always try to think of things the smarter way. We’ve got to believe our audience has come up, and a lot of them are not the guys that were on the football team. They’re the guys that were on the chess team or the AV club…and the funny thing is that those guys are the popular people now. So it’s really
important for us to be smart and serve that audience.”

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External Entertainment, External TV, News, Reality TV, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV

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