Timothy Hutton

Timothy Hutton, from Ordinary People andTaps to a Cars video

We had such a good time on Leverage, I think we all could’ve done many more seasons. But, you know, five seasons was a really great run, and I think we did… 76 episodes? Something like that. But those five years flew by. We had a great time, we filmed four out of the five years in Portland, Oregon, and for half the year during those five years, we all lived in Portland, had apartments there, and really became a kind of family together.

Mad Men finale episodes

promo video

Garofalo on Broad City!

Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall on Masterpiece Theater starts on April 5th, a week before Game of Thrones.

Tony® Award-winning actor Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night) and Emmy® and Golden Globe® Award-winner Damian Lewis (Homeland) star in the six-hour television miniseries adapted from Hilary Mantel’s best-selling Booker Prize-winning novels: Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The television event presents an intimate and provocative portrait of Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant and enigmatic consigliere to King Henry VIII, as he maneuvers the corridors of power at the Tudor court. MASTERPIECE brings both of these works to life in Wolf Hall, airing on Sundays, April 5-May 10, 2015 at the special time of 9:55pm on PBS. 

Mark Rylance is Thomas Cromwell, a brutal blacksmith’s son who rises from the ashes of personal disaster, and deftly picks his way through a court where ‘man is wolf to man.’ Damian Lewis is King Henry VIII, haunted by his brother’s premature death and obsessed with protecting the Tudor dynasty by securing his succession with a male heir to the throne. 

Told from Cromwell’s perspective, Wolf Hall follows the complex machinations and back room dealings of this pragmatic and accomplished power broker – from humble beginnings and with an enigmatic past – who must serve king and country while dealing with deadly political intrigue, Henry VIII’s tempestuous relationship with Anne Boleyn and the religious upheavals of the Protestant reformation. 

A historical drama for a modern audience, this unromanticized re-telling lifts the veil on the Tudor middle class and the internal struggles England faced on the brink of Reformation. At the center of it all is Cromwell, navigating the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power, trapped between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive. 

The cast also includes Claire Foy (Little Dorrit) as the future queen Anne Boleyn, Bernard Hill (Five Days) as the king's military commander the Duke of Norfolk, Anton Lesser (Endeavour) as Thomas More, Mark Gatiss (Sherlock) as Cromwell’s rival advisor Stephen Gardiner, Joanne Whalley (The Borgias) as Henry’s spurned first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and Jonathan Pryce (Cranford) as Cardinal Wolsey, the powerful Lord Chancellor who recognized Cromwell’s potential.

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson on The Wire

video of Snoop

Obama said his favorite character was Omar Little. Snoop and Bodie were good too. So many.

Robert Wisdom and The Wire coincidence

Yesterday I had this post about The Wire and Colvin's Hamsterdam.

Tonight, Robert Wisdom the actor who played Colvin was on SyFy's show 12 Monkeys. His character mentions a "Senator Royce" who of course shares a name with The Wire's Baltimore Mayor Royce.

The Wire and legalization

HBO ran all 5 seasons of the Wire in 5 days. I recorded them and have been re-watching the show at a leisurely pace. Season 3 had the plot line with Major Colvin, Hamsterdam, and drug legalization. That was in 2004 and ten years later pot is legal in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

Obama is right, it's one of the best shows ever on television and Omar Little is probably my favorite character too although there are a lot of good characters. The creators of Game of Thrones explicitly said they modeled their vast canvas on The Wire.

Golden Globes

Best Drama: Imitation Game, Selma, Boyhood

Actress Drama: Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)

Actor Drama: Cumberbatch (Imitation Game), Oyelowo (Selma)

Best Comedy: Grand Budapest Hotel

Actress Comedy: Amy Adams (Big Eyes), Emily Blunt (Into the Woods)

Actor Comedy: Michael Keaton (Birdman), Joaquin Phoenix (Inherent Vice)

Director: David Fincher (Gone Girl), Richard Linklater (Boyhood), Ava DuVernay (Selma)

Screenplay: Anderson (Grand Budapest Hotel), Flynn (Gone Girl), Linklater (Boyhood), Moore (Imitation Game)

TV Drama: Game of Thrones

Drama Actress: Viola Davis

Drama Actor: Clive Owen

TV Comedy: Silicon Valley

TV Comedy Actress: Juliet Lous-Dreyfus

Mini-series: The Normal Heart

Mini series actor: Mark Ruffalo

Mini series supporting: Matt Boemer

Mini series actress; Maggie Gyllenhal (An Honorable Woman), Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge)

Person of Interest

Butlerian Jihad: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

AV Club reviews Person Of Interest: “The Cold War”

recognition

Golden Globe nominations include Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl; Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game; Fincher for Gone Girl; Linklater for Boyhood; Clive Owen for the Knick; Silicon Valley; The Normal Heart; Juila Louis-Dreyfus for Veep; Louis CK. Game of Thrones. True Detective and Fargo were good too if dark.

Time magazine recognized Game of Thrones, The Americans, Broad City, Louis CK, True Detective, Fargo, and Last Week with John Oliver.

Continuum

Continuum has been renewed for one last season

"The Canadian series, which stars Rachel Nichols as a well-meaning fascist from the future and Erik Knudson as her sidekick, Teenage Canadian Steve Jobs, will return for a six-episode fourth season, set to air next year. Hopefully, those six episodes will give creator Simon Barry and his staff time to close the book on the series’ convoluted but entertaining take on militarized police forces, idealistic terrorists, and magical skintight spy suits, since the fourth season will be the show’s last."

The Walking Dead and Beth Greene

AV Club reviews The Walking Dead: “Coda”

"You keep telling yourself you have to do whatever it takes just until this is all over. But it isn't over. This is it. This is who you are and what this place is until the end."

- Beth Greene to Dawn

Emily Bazelon

Bazelon was one of my favorite regulars on The Colbert Report along with the German ambassador. Hopefully she'll visit the new show.

Person of Interest

AV Club reviews Person Of Interest: “Prophets”

Rogue

20 additional episodes have been ordered.

Sorrowing man, look how worn you've become

You once were Lord of the barren sea

There's blood on our hands in this perfect madness

You're living on borrowed time

Oh how you have lost your way,

Oh how you have lost your way

There's no sympathy for we don't know the cure

Cause what you've got, well it runs too deep

But you've lived and breathed more than any man I know

But you're not done, oh, at least I hope

Oh how you have lost your way,

Oh how you have lost your way

In this life we have made together

Oh how you have lost your way

Oh, how you have lost your way

Oh, how you have lost your way.

Manhattan

AV Club reviews Manhattan: “Perestroika”

Steampunk - The Knick

AV Club reviews The Knick: “Crutchfield”

Manhattan was renewed for a second season

Yeah, science! The new trend in TV drama by Brandon Nowalk

Carrie Coon

Carrie Coon got started in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was in The Leftovers and Gone Girl.

new SyFy show on corporations

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are making a Syfy show about evil corporations

Person of Interst and cannibals

Eat the poor and weak.

AV Club reviews The Walking Dead: “No Sanctuary”

Samaritan versus The Machine is price versus value in economics or rather political economy.  Terminus is more like Price/Samaritan. Rick Grimes, Glenn and the gang are more like Value/The Machine. Every life is valuable (although feminists will quibble and rightly so.)