Innholdsfortegnelse for March 20, 2017 i TV Guide Magazine

@TVGMMattRoush Why bother resurrecting Nashville on cable if the star, Connie Britton, wanted to leave? It reminds me of Patrick Dempsey wanting out of Grey’s Anatomy, even though having Derek walk out on Meredith and the kids wasn’t an option. That show rebounded, but Grey’s has a deeper ensemble than Nashville, and all storylines seem connected to Rayna. Your thoughts? —Jake MATT ROUSH: This is without question the No. 1 topic in my mailbag in recent weeks. The initial cry of “I’m never watching again” has been tempered with more of a wait-and-see after the airing of those tear-jerking farewell episodes. It does seem as if Nashville has lost its emotional and narrative core with the passing of Britton’s Rayna Jaymes character, but unlike Grey’s, at least they won’t be…

REGINA KING American Crime Sundays, 10/9c, ABC My current favorite show This Is Us. It makes me laugh and cry, sometimes both at the same time. Also, Power [above]—it’s gritty and sexy. The first thing I watch when I wake up I don’t usually have time to watch TV in the morning! The show that always makes me laugh Impractical Jokers. I’ve only seen it, like, three times, but I laughed out loud each time. What I eat while watching Well, that’s just not fair because I love food and I’m never eating the same thing. My dream costar Carol Burnett The show I miss most The Golden Girls [above] and The Jeffersons. Both shows were genius and had sing-along theme songs. The funniest person on TV Tituss Burgess. His…

@TVGMMattRoush Two police shootings add up to a powerfully provocative polemic Shots Fired A timely drama asks if social justice is possible DRAMA SERIES PREMIERE Wednesday, March 22, 8/7c, Fox HOT-BUTTON ISSUES DON’T come more volatile than the one presented in the dramatically uneven Shots Fired. The 10-part event series opens in the grim wake of an African-American cop’s shooting of an unarmed white college student in a racially divided North Carolina town. Before you can say “Ferguson,” the Department of Justice enlists two persons of color—feisty investigator Ashe Akino (sultry Sanaa Lathan) and Ivy League Special Prosecutor Preston Terry (Stephan James)—to put a lid on this potentially explosive situation. The optics are not accidental. Reminiscent of the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night, though more about the heat…

COMEDY SERIES PREMIERE Wednesday, March 29, 8:30/7:30c, ABC @ImaginaryMaryTV AT FIRST GLANCE, Imaginary Mary— ABC’s new series starring the eternally effervescent Jenna Elfman (Dharma & Greg)—appears to have all the trappings of a standard rom-com. Elfman plays Alice, a sports publicist who’s killing it on the career front but, yep, is too fiercely independent to find love. That is, until she meets disarming single dad Ben (Broad City’s Stephen Schneider). Now comes the twist: When Alice starts to have real feelings, it triggers the sudden reappearance of her imaginary childhood friend Mary (voiced by SNL alum Rachel Dratch). And her old pal isn’t back to brush up on hopscotch either. As Alice quickly learns, this furball is brimming with opinions. Here, Elfman gives us a piece of her mind(s). This premise…

DRAMA SEASON PREMIERE Monday, April 10, 10/9c, AMC @BetterCallSaul THE ROAD THAT lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) heads down to become the Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad gets more treacherous in the third season of Bad prequel Better Call Saul. “Jimmy is sitting on top of a time bomb and he doesn’t know it,” says executive producer Peter Gould, referring to Jimmy’s confession—which was secretly taped by his brother, Chuck (Michael McKean)—that he altered important business documents. “Chuck does not mean Jimmy well with that recording,” Gould adds. “Chuck must have a plan—he is one smart guy. So the question is, when’s the other shoe going to drop?” Also feeling threatened is ex-cop Mike (Jonathan Banks), who knows someone is watching his every move. “He’s trying to get the drop…

COP OUT Several readers were upset with our February 27 “The Best on the Beat” sidebar, which ranked the five best cop shows. Rosalyn Robertshaw wrote, “NYPD Blue is the best police drama of all time. It deserved to be rated No. 1 on your list.” Cathy Ritchie agreed. “NYPD Blue gave us some of the finest acting ever seen on television, exemplified by Dennis Franz,” she wrote. Kathleen Dunning-Torbett had a classic in mind. “Cagney & Lacey broke ground on many levels and should’ve been included,” she wrote. Point taken. At least NYPD Blue got a shout-out in the entry for Hill Street Blues, also from Steven Bochco NOT GOOD CBS is releasing The Good Wife’s spinoff The Good Fight weekly through its paid streaming service, CBS All Access,…

THINK OF A show with pretty, sexy vampires or superpowered young people prone to brooding and romance and Julie Plec is probably involved. Earlier this month, her Vampire Diaries finished its eightyear run, and its spinoff, The Originals (Fridays, 8/7c, The CW), just returned for Season 4. The Originals’ storyline is now set five years after Klaus Mikaelson’s protégé, Marcel, took down Klaus’s vampire family. “It’s a dark season with a new insidious villain who causes a lot of damage,” Plec teases. She shares how her love affair with horror and fantasy began Your first producer gigs were on Wes Craven’s movies. How did a nice girl right out of college get to work with the master of horror? I was never a real fan of horror movies outside of…

DRAMA SERIES PREMIERE Tuesday, April 25, 9/8c, National Geographic Channel @NatGeoChannel “Real-life characters send out very welcoming signals to me as an actor, especially when they are idiosyncratic antiheroes. I enjoy getting into their psyches” —Rush IF ANYONE ASKS Geoffrey Rush, “Who do you think you are, Albert Einstein?” he can answer, “I was, once.” The Australian actor stars as the world’s most influential scientist in Genius, National Geographic Channel’s new anthology about innovators—and the network’s first scripted series. (Rush plays Einstein as an older man; Johnny Flynn is the younger version.) Rush’s résumé is full of biographical roles. He won an Oscar for playing mentally disordered pianist David Helfgott in Shine and an Emmy for the title role in HBO’s Life and Death of Peter Sellers. The 65-year-old shares…

UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT COMEDY Returns Friday, May 19, Netflix Streaming’s sunniest, most resilient former mole woman is back! With her kidnapper, the Reverend (Jon Hamm), in her life again, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) finds herself in a very uncomfortable position. Meanwhile, Titus (Tituss Burgess) returns from his cruise ready to audition for an exciting new role—hopefully not as a Geisha this time. DIRTY DANCING MOVIE Premieres Wednesday, May 24, 8/7c, ABC You know the story: the Catskills resort, the blossoming ingenue, the hunky dance instructor, the watermelon! The classic 1987 film is now being re-imagined as a three-hour musical event with an all-star cast including Abigail Breslin (Baby), Colt Prattes (Johnny), Debra Messing (Mrs. Houseman), Nicole Scherzinger (Penny), Katey Sagal (Mrs. Pressman), Billy Dee Williams (Tito) and more. Come for the…

The Wild Life COMEDY (2016) Saturday, April 1, 7:25am/6:25c, HBO Robinson Crusoe, meet Long John Silver. The English novelist Daniel Defoe created his classic island castaway in 1719, 164 years before Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about his pirate in Treasure Island. But they are both fictional characters, so why not? In this animated version of Crusoe’s adventures aimed at the younger set, a coterie of colorful tropical island animals (led by the red parrot Mak and goat Scrubby, left, with Crusoe) help the shipwrecked sailor build a tree house before Silver and his not-so-merry band come ashore. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World COMEDY (1963) Saturday, April 1, 9:45/8:45c, TCM There is not enough space to list the dozens of luminaries crammed into this comedy opus about a mad dash to…

DRAMA SERIES FINALE Tuesday, March 28, 9/8c, Fox FINDING THE PERFECT actress to play Bones forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan—who would go toe-to-toe with David Boreanaz’s FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth—when the Fox series began in 2005 all came down to a mere step forward. Two remaining actresses were up for the role, and in a key audition scene, Boreanaz assertively stepped toward Emily Deschanel. Rather than backing down, she then stepped toward him. “It sounds like a simple thing, but it was her instinct and it was electric,” series creator Hart Hanson recalls. Twelve seasons and 246 episodes later, the drama—loosely inspired by forensic anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs’s Temperance Brennan novels and a documentary about Reichs’s life—wraps up with a two-part finale airing March 21 and 28. “It seemed…

“Grace and Frankie are taking charge. I hear from a lot of younger women that our show is making them feel less afraid of getting older. That’s the goal” —Fonda COMEDY SEASON PREMIERE Friday, March 24, Netflix @GraceandFrankie IT’S POSITIVELY ORGASMIC! When the rollicking AARP-appeal comedy Grace and Frankie returns for its third season, divorcées Grace Hanson (Jane Fonda) and Frankie Bergstein (Lily Tomlin) are ready to conquer the business world with their brandnew invention: a super-duper vibrator for senior women called the Ménage à Moi. They’ve thought of everything: The instructions come in large-size print, the on-off switch glows in the dark so it’s easy to find and the amazing rotator head makes it possible to hit all the right lady bits even if one is limited— as Grace…

DANCING WITH THE STARS REALITY Returns Monday, March 20, 8/7c, ABC Don’t pity Season 24! TV legends (Mr. T and Charo), sports stars (NFLrunning back Rashad Jennings and former Red Sox catcher David Ross), Olympic medalists (Simone Biles and Nancy Kerrigan), a Housewife (Erika Girardi), a Bachelor (Nick Viall), an ex–Saturday Night Live regular (Chris Kattan) and—why not?—a professional bull rider (Bonner Bolton) are some of the names rounding out the cast of the latest season of ABC’s beloved ballroom competition show. UPSCALE WITH PRENTICE PENNY REALITY Premieres Tuesday, March 21, 10/9c, TruTV Prentice Penny, showrunner of Insecure (and former producer on Happy Endings), steps in front of the camera to demystify what it takes to live the high life in his new unscripted series. Topics he tackles include fashion,…

COMEDY SEASON PREMIERE Sunday, April 16, 10/9c, HBO @VeepHBO BARACK OBAMA CELEBRATED the end of his time in the White House by kite surfing off the coast of the Virgin Islands with wife Michelle and billionaire Richard Branson. Veep’s Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) isn’t so lucky. When the HBO comedy returns for Season 6, the ex-president (whom we last saw helicoptering out of Washington, D.C., sans hope, prospects and most of her staff) won’t be hanging out with celebrities. Nor will she be fielding big-money job offers. Heck, she’ll even have to struggle to get the obligatory presidential library erected in her name. And everyone gets one of those. “You still have to find people willing to think you deserve a library, which is not something easy for Selina,” executive…

FANTASY SERIES PREMIERE Sunday, April 30, 9/8c, Starz @AmericanGods STZ “The focus for the show is on the characters and the stories. Special effects are the spices, not the meat. And you can’t just eat a bowl of cinnamon” —Executive producer Michael Green WILL AMERICAN GODS be the next great adaptation that Starz turns into an international phenomenon, à la Outlander? “It’s Clash of the Titans by way of The Grifters,” explains executive producer Bryan Fuller, who developed Neil Gaiman’s beloved 2001 book of the same name into a TV show with Michael Green (Blade Runner 2049). The ambitious series follows convict Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) upon his release from prison and, desperate for a job and purpose in life, he starts working with con artist Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane). Aside…

American Girl Story: Ivy & Julie FAMILY MOVIE PREMIERE Friday, March 24, Amazon The heartwarming girl-power franchise’s latest installment unfolds in 1970s San Francisco, where 10-year-old Chinese-American Ivy (Nina Lu) tries to honor her Asian heritage while yearning to be more like her all-American best friend, Julie (Hannah Nordberg, left, with Lu). When Ivy’s gymnastics tournament overlaps with her family’s Spring Festival celebration, stuff really hits the Chinese fan. Dave Chappelle Specials COMEDY STAND-UP PREMIERE Tuesday, March 21, Netflix Chappelle returns after a 12-year TV stand-up hiatus with two new specials from his personal vault: The Art of Spin (filmed in Los Angeles last year) and Deep In the Heart of Texas (filmed in Austin in 2015). Both tackle race, class, culture, politics and more. Five Came Back DOCUMENTARY MINISERIES…

MLB’S “SURREAL” SEASON OPENER MLB Opening Day Sunday, April 2 1/noon c, ESPN New York Yankees at Tampa Bay Rays 4/3c, ESPN2 San Francisco Giants at Arizona Diamondbacks 8:30/7:30c, ESPN Chicago Cubs at St. Louis Cardinals WHEN THE FIRST pitch of the 2017 Major League Baseball season is thrown, it marks the beginning of a strange, unfamiliar era of the game: The Chicago Cubs are the defending World Series champions. It’s still not a dream or fake news. The Cubs won the 2016 World Series in a Game 7 thriller that required extra innings to beat the Cleveland Indians 8–7 to capture their first title in 108 years. Baseball’s regular season opens April 2, and the Cubs will have the spotlight as they take on their archrivals, the St. Louis…

ACROSS 1 Norman’s last name on It’s Your Move 5 John of Touched by an Angel 8 Hamlet has five 12 Robert of The Sopranos 13 Propel, in a way 14 Limousine driver on The Watcher 15 A law firm position (2 wds.) 18 Crows 19 Italian white wines 20 ____ Detector 21 Canal of song 22 Elegant and fashionable 25 Jesse wore one on her job 28 Alice’s boss 29 Animals Are People ____ 30 Family on Eerie, Indiana 34 Scottish drinking cups 37 A hollow place inside the earth 38 Anywhere, ____ 39 Ointments 41 Movie type 45 Ulla’s profession on Flipper 47 Chase and catch 48 McClanahan of Mama’s Family 49 Carmen Electra on Baywatch 50 From ____ to Eternity 51 The Closer network 52 Ham of Scandal DOWN 1  Dangerous Curves’ Cutter 2…

@damianholbrook LOVE IT! HATE IT! Cheers to Feud for being an unrivaled joy. Old Hollywood meets new-school camp as Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon (above) bring the Joan Crawford–Bette Davis beef to Technicolor-brilliant life in FX’s cocktail of gossip, glamour and behind-the-scenes bitchiness. Cheers to Making History for making time travel hilarious. Whether he’s visiting Colonial Massachusetts or Capone’s Chicago, Adam Pally’s (right, with Yassir Lester) era-hopping doofus is a hilariously inept sweetheart who’s totally worth spending time with. Cheers to Time After Time for making time travel sexy. If classic literature featured the hot H.G. Wells (Freddie Stroma) and jacked Jack the Ripper (Josh Bowman, right) running amok in modern-day Manhattan like ABC’s fun new thriller, we’re betting people would read more. Cheers to Pete Davidson for cleaning up…