Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/23/2016 i TV Guide Magazine

Leona Lewis Winner, The X Factor (U.K.), 2006 The struggling musician was 21 when she auditioned and became an instant favorite of Cowell’s, who mentored her on the show. Following her victory, Lewis signed a one-million-pound recording contract with his label. Her first album, Spirit, debuted at No. 1 in nine countries. Susan Boyle Runner-up, Britain’s Got Talent, 2009 The Scottish singer captured viewers’ hearts and became an internet sensation with her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables. Her 2009 debut album broke the U.K. record for bestselling album in its first week. One Direction Third place, The X Factor (U.K.), 2010 Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles all auditioned as solo performers, but Cowell saw chemistry and grouped the boys together.…

TIME FOR A shake-up. So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation—the 13th season of the Fox reality hit—has dropped the age requirement and will feature only dancers who are 8 to 13 years old. Host Cat Deeley freaked when she heard about it. “I had two immediate concerns: that our show would turn pageant-y and weird, and that the talent might not be all that great,” she says. “I didn’t want to have to tell the audience, ‘Now be nice. Remember, little Johnny is only 8.’ ” But, Deeley admits, “I was dead wrong. This is the best thing to happen to our show in years.” Executive producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe goes one better: “Two of the young people we found are among the best dancers in…

MAY 23–29 THE FLASH TUESDAY, MAY 24 Season finale, 8/7c, The CW Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is in for the race of his life, which also happens to be the title of The Flash’s pulse-pounding Season 2 finale. And it’s not just his speedster nemesis Zoom (Teddy Sears) who has him running wild. “Something extraordinary happens at the end of the [previous] episode that is just shocking,” Sears reveals. “It’s totally out of left field.” It’s also part of the catalyst that throws Barry, who has endured so much already at the hands of his black-suited foe, into a mad dash to destroy Zoom once and for all. Barry had better hop to it: Zoom still has that master plan to take over Earth-1 and wipe all of the alternate…

NBC THE GOOD PLACE Everything old is new again. The broadcast networks are betting big on familiar titles for the 2016–17 season, including adaptations of several feature films. Fox leads the charge with reboots of two memorable movie franchises. The 1987 buddy-cop action comedy Lethal Weapon will be introduced to a new generation with Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans Sr. as partners Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh. The 1973 horror classic The Exorcist also gets a makeover as a psychological thriller following two priests examining a case of demonic possession; Geena Davis is the head of the family possessed. “We approached each show in a different way,” says Fox Entertainment President David Madden. “Lethal Weapon beautifully reconfigures the amazing chemistry between those beloved characters, while The Exorcist only takes inspiration…

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (voiced by Robert Smigel) will have another election special later this year. “People are so protective of Danny and Mindy. They get upset when another guy is even in her orbit,” Mindy Kaling says about her alter ego’s split with her baby daddy (Chris Messina) on The Mindy Project, which was renewed for Season 5. “Chance is, on its surface, a thriller in the classic noir tradition of Hammett and Chandler, Hitchcock and Wilder,” Hugh Laurie says of his fall drama. “But underneath lies a story that hums with passion, love, violence, fear, joy and, dare I say it, a profound exploration of what it is to be human.” “It splits the dif erence between life’s really dark moments with lines that are just so…

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, Season finale Wednesday, May 25, NBC THE CAST OF Law & Order: SVU is filming the penultimate episode of their 17th season on a brisk spring day on the production’s squadroom set in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and, true to form, there’s some disorder within their midst. The detectives of NYPD’s sex-crimes unit are gathered along with ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza) to coordinate a strategy to bring down Gary Munson (guest star Brad Garrett), a corrupt corrections officer with choice connections who sexually abuses his charges both in and out of jail. Everyone involved is so focused on the scene that no one notices when Ice T’s Fin mistakenly says “rape” instead of the scripted “route.” When he mock-whispers to Peter Scanavino’s Detective Sonny…

BLOODLINE, Season premiere Friday, May 27, Netflix Bloodline’s John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler) is really angry. Like take-a-bat-andplay-piñata-with-your-brother’s-truck angry. His older sibling, Danny (Ben Mendelsohn), has just admitted to another dastardly deed that could threaten the reputation of their prominent South Florida family— not to mention John’s bid for county sheriff. And that’s something he can’t abide. John is mad enough to kill Danny—except he already did last season and persuaded his sister Meg (Linda Cardellini) and brother Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) to help him cover it up. Seems you just can’t keep this bad man down: The Rayburn black sheep is dead but definitely not forgotten in Bloodline’s second season. Through a feat of semi-modern technology (we won’t spoil it for you), he’s found a way to terrorize his family…

WHEN YOU SLAY the head of the Armenian mafia, you might want to think about getting out of town. Showtime’s Ray Donovan returns June 26 with sociopathic patriarch Mickey Donovan (Jon Voight, left, with Liev Schreiber, J. LaRose and Apesanahkwat) hiding out in some nowhere burg in the Nevada desert. “Mickey has created a new identity for himself and started a new life, but he’s still up to no good,” executive producer David Hollander says. Leading man Schreiber directed the premiere (above) with no identity crisis. “Liev doesn’t get lost in himself,” Hollander says. “He can shape a story and completely forget he’s also acting in it. He got great performances from everybody.” FOR THE RECORD RETIRING After 46 seasons reporting for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Morley Safer retired with the…

AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, Season premiere Tuesday, May 31, 8/7c, NBC SIMON COWELL IS LATE. It’s an unseasonably warm Sunday in March and, outside the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, hundreds of America’s Got Talent fans have been waiting for hours to catch a glimpse of the show’s newest judge. Members of a marching band put down their instruments and sit in the shade as an hour passes beyond the scheduled 2pm arrival time, while the folks lining the red carpet leading into the theater use the American flags distributed by members of the production team to shield their faces from the sun. “We’re usually waiting two hours for him. He plays the boss card,” says judge and supermodel Heidi Klum, referring to Cowell’s other role as cocreator and executive producer of the…

ROOTS, Miniseries premiere Monday, May 30, 9/8c, History, A&E and Lifetime THERE WAS AN America before Roots; there was an America after Roots. They were not the same country.” —LeVar Burton When producer Mark Wolper told Burton that he planned to remake ABC’s 1977 groundbreaking miniseries, the actor, whose image as the chained Mandinka captive Kunta Kinte has become iconic, asked, “Why?” After all, the original was an unqualified success. Millions of Americans had tuned in to Roots—based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Alex Haley—which ran for 12 hours on eight consecutive nights. It was an astonishing result for a show about several generations of an African-American family moving from bondage to freedom. (Haley claimed it was his own family’s story, but later admitted that the book mixed fact…

This is the theater I recognize—the dogged professionalism, the jealousies, the misunderstandings, the unrequited love —IAN MCKELLEN THE FIRST THING you need to know when gabbing with Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins is that neither wishes to be called “Sir.” They are certainly entitled to that grand honor—McKellen was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1991; Hopkins, two years later—but they are uneasy with the formality it engenders and they sure as hell don’t want anyone putting them on pedestals. Both of these revered actors—who are sharing the screen for the first time in the wickedly juicy Starz movie The Dresser—come from simple beginnings. McKellen’s father was a lay preacher, Hopkins was the son of a baker. And they remain, in their minds anyway, just regular Joes. “No actor who is…