Most scripted television strives to mirror contemporary life with at least some level of precision. Producers spend months, sometimes years, meticulously surveying target audiences and researching subcultures in order to accurately reflect the humor, taste, attention span, fears, politics, and self-image of a particular demographic or scene. But sometimes, they end up forecasting and setting cultural trends rather than reflecting them.
That’s clearly been the case with the 1920s fashion craze brought on by Martin Scorsese’s Emmy-winning Boardwalk Empire, still young in its second season. The fascination with the Roaring Twenties may have already begun in 2009, when faux speakeasies began popping up in every city across the US, but the show has repackaged the Prohibition image for a wider audience and spoon-fed it to designers, whose catwalks are now crowded with flapper-inspired frocks and feathers.Boardwalk Empire isn’t the first, though, and it won’t be the last. We’ve rounded up the television shows that, for better or for worse, catalyzed the fashion fads of their eras. Which current shows do you hope turn out to be trendsetters? Read More »
While Hollywood still sits on top of a celluloid empire, TV production is rapidly moving east. New York may not have the temperate filming climate that Los Angeles boasts, but it does offer producers a 30 percent tax credit, instated in 2008, and of course the authentic New York City backdrop against which many shows are set. This season, 23 prime-time series are being filmed in New York, up from a measly nine in 2006.
But flying a film crew out east and renting out a Brooklyn loft doesn’t ensure that a show will get the aura — or the facts — right. New York shows have tried and failed to accurately portray New York City on screen, often apparently because they were too busy collecting a library of picturesque Central Park shots to pick up on the kinds of food New Yorkers eat, how much rent they pay, the way they talk to their neighbors, and the fact that most of us actually don’t spend all that much time in Central Park. We’ve rounded up our favorite Big Apple shows and ranked them from realistic to laughable. Which city show do you think is most representative of the real New York?
‘Tis the season to be a woman on TV comedies. If you’ve spent the last few months living in a television-less cave, you might be surprised to discover that we’ve reached a bit of a renaissance of female-driven network sitcoms. (Also, you might be surprised to be back in society! In that case, hello! Hope your time in the cave was okay!) The latest primetime trend is usually a pretty boring and inconsequential thing to discuss, but we’re now at a moment in which a significant portion of the surviving and debatably thriving fall sitcoms have women as their comedic leads (See: New Girl,2 Broke Girls, Whitney, etc.). If you ask us, that’s a pretty neat thing!
Still, while we love that these funny ladies are dismantling the boys club of primetime TV while simultaneously getting a shot to spice up the comedy scene, we can’t help but wonder if these shows themselves are doing all that we proclaim they are. If you ask us, it’s not even about feminism, per se; it’s more about pushing the envelope by including female-specific perspectives in humor. (A little less banal period jokes, a little more Bridesmaids, you know?) After the jump, we’re taking a look at some of the great females of sitcom history. Consider it our attempt to remind Zooey that fabulous bangs does not an instant comedic legend make.
Like a chronic rash, Carrie Bradshaw just keeps coming back. It’s old news that the folks behind Sex and the City want to make a third movie, but that vague threat was overshadowed by the very real revelation, earlier this week, that the CW has committed to developing The Carrie Diaries. The SATC prequel will follow Carrie to high school in the early ’80s, where she’ll have a boyfriend and a popular-girl rival. Pretty groundbreaking stuff, right? The whole misguided mess has us thinking about shows whose prequels we’d actually enjoy watching. Ten of our suggestions are after the jump; add yours in the comments.
As we may have mentioned a timeor twelve, we’re less than pleased that we had to go an entire summer without a new season of Mad Men. While we’re waiting for its postponed winter season premiere, however, the fine folks at NBC and ABC have been kind enough to offer up some alternatives — and hey, look at that, they just so happen to each have a show set in the early ‘60s, all full of vintage styles and attitudes! ABC’s Pan Am (starring Christina Ricci) focuses on a group of stewardesses and pilots working for the titular airline; executive producer/director Thomas Schlamme (who, in all fairness, has done a lot of good television) says — insists— “It’s not the time period it takes place in, it’s not the characters. It has nothing to do with Mad Men.” Uh huh. NBC, meanwhile, is offering up The Playboy Club (“Basically, it’s Mad Men with boobs,” said Joel McHale at a press event), focusing on the staff at the famed nightclub — where, huh, Mad Men’s Lane Price had a membership and a girlfriend last season. What a coincidence!
Television is a business, of course, so it would stand to reason that networks would want to hedge their bets by giving viewers more of a good thing they like. More often than not, however, TV’s copycats fail — because viewers see right through the ruse, and because the reason they liked the trendsetters was that they were new and unique, unlike the other stuff on the tube. After the jump, we’ll take a look at some of the most blatant Xeroxes in TV history.
1. When the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum opens this morning at 10 am, it will be the first time since 2001 that the public will be able to enter the World Trade Center grounds. [via The Daily Beast]
2. Cyndi Lauper messed up the lyrics to the national anthem while performing at the US Open yesterday; funny enough, she had trouble with the same lines that Christina Aguilera did earlier this year. As she later explained on Twitter: “I got choked up in the middle remembering 9/11. I hope I didn’t mess up too bad. I wanted it to be comforting.” [via Guardian]
3. Russian director Alexander Sokurov’s film Faust won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Said jury head Darren Aronofsky, “There are some films that make you cry, there are some films that make you laugh, there are some films that change you forever after you see them; and this is one of them.” [via BBC]
4. Married couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are teaming up on a multi-camera comedy for NBC about a pair of dueling sisters; DeGeneres will executive produce the project, and it will star de Rossi. [via Deadline]
5. It’s official: The CW is about to close a deal for a script based on The Carrie Diaries, Candice Bushnell’s prequel to Sex and the City that explores Carrie Bradshaw’s high school years; if the pilot is picked up, the show could begin airing as early as next fall. [via EW]
After our post on dream movie apartments generated so much discussion, it occurred to us that another installment was in order. Television is just as responsible as films are for our unrealistic apartment fantasies. Sunken living rooms, hardwood floors, and skyline views were all common fixtures in the homes of our favorite characters — rarely did we see a protagonist wrangle with poor water pressure or get stuck with windows that faced brick walls. With that in mind, we’ve complied a list of the best apartments on television, from the Bass-Van der Woodsens’ swanky uptown abode to Fraiser’s chic Seattle sprawl. Share your own picks in the comments.
It’s pilot season, and Vulture has posted a rundown of the 20 shows they’re most excited for (plus five more they’re morbidly curious about). Although their list only represents about a third of what’s out there, it gives a good sense of what’s trending in America’s writer’s rooms. We’ve broken down the patterns we’re seeing in new, 2011 programming after the jump.
Sex and the City is dead, and Michael Patrick King killed it, with the awfulness that was Sex and the City 2. No matter. King is still planning to resurrect its stinking corpse for The Carrie Diaries, a prequel that tracks our over-analytical heroine from high school in the ’80s through her early days in New York. And now, there’s a rumor spreading that Blake Lively will play the young Carrie. Although we don’t dislike Lively as much as most people seem to, we think that if this project really is happening, she would be an awful choice for Carrie. So the news that her people are denying she’s been cast gives us hope. After the jump, we cast the prequel, based on the potentially misguided belief that the young Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte will also be making appearances.
1. Lady Gaga will play muse on Bravo’s new fashion competition show, Launch My Line, in an episode that will air on January 6. [via People]
2. Sex and the City 2‘s new teaser trailer includes a “New York State of Mind” soundtrack and the girls riding around the desert on camels. [via rPulse]
3. T.I. was released from prison early yesterday, and admitted to an Atlanta halfway house. [via XXL]
4. Ricky Gervais is working on a new animated series for HBO based on his popular podcasts. His buddies Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington (!) will be doing voices as well; the show debuts February 19. [via THR]
5. Kim Peek, the savant who inspired Dustin Hoffman‘s character in Rain Main, has died at 58. [via Slashfilm]
