Innholdsfortegnelse for May 29, 2017 i TV Guide Magazine

Is NCIS having ratings problems? It seems any time a series is heading toward oblivion they introduce— yes!–a baby. Now we have Tim’s wife, Delilah, ready to have a kid in a not-sosubtle attempt to bolster ratings. This will bring about such scenarios as the crisis when Tim brings the baby to work, Abby gets all misty-eyed and decides she wants one, and all the other worn-out plotlines. Could next season be the end for NCIS? —Rick MATT ROUSH: Not likely. It’s still one of TV’s top-rated dramas (though far from its peak), and until they announce an exit strategy, I’d expect CBS to keep it around as long as they can afford to. If a core team member were expecting, I’d understand your concern about the baby storyline. And…

FOX NEWS CHANNEL founder Roger Ailes knew how to sell his product, whether it was a political candidate like Richard Nixon— Ailes taught him how to be more likable on TV—or a right-leaning cable news network. Fox News Channel, which Ailes started in 1996, quickly rose to domination in the cable news market and moved much of the country’s political conversation, thanks in part to its nonstop coverage of the President Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal soon after the network’s launch. The combination of reporting during the day and strongly conservative opinion shows in primetime quickly appealed to a portion of the American public that felt ignored. After helping to boost Donald Trump’s potential as a serious presidential candidate, Ailes’s reign ended unexpectedly in the summer of 2016 when a lineup…

The F Word PREMIERES Wednesday, May 31, 9/8c, Fox @TheFWordFOX GET YOUR MIND out of the gutter! According to international superchef Gordon Ramsay, the F in his new Fox series, The F Word, stands for “food” and “family.” But we’ll see about that. With this latest TV venture, the hilariously temperamental potty mouth— whose string of hits includes Kitchen Nightmares, Hotel Hell, Hell’s Kitchen, MasterChef and MasterChef Junior—is boldly going where he’s never gone before. This is live TV, people! And the stress and anxiety will be off the charts. Each episode pits two groups of amateur cooks against each other—they’re families, friends, coworkers—and they must take over a stateof- the-art restaurant and prepare a dazzling meal for over 80 nitpicky guests. The winners pocket $100,000. But will they survive…

PREMIERES Sunday, June 4, 10/9c, Showtime @SHO_DyingUpHere ONE NIGHT YOU’RE hot, the next you’re not. Showtime’s sprawling new drama series I’m Dying Up Here—executive produced by Jim Carrey—is a tart yet soulful look at the maddening roller-coaster world of stand-up comics. This isn’t today’s scene, mind you, where there are comedy clubs galore in every major city. This show is set in Hollywood in 1973, and there is really only one place to hone your chops—on stage at Goldie’s, a watering hole inspired by the legendary Sunset Strip club the Comedy Store. If you’re killing it at Goldie’s, you might land yourself a few minutes on Merv Griffin’s talk show or, better yet, Johnny Carson’s. But if you get up to that microphone and really suck—or you’re just having a…

PREMIERES Wednesday, August 2, 10/9c, USA @TheSinnerUSA WE ALL GO a little crazy sometimes— but most of us don’t go as nuts as young mom Cora Tannetti (Jessica Biel) does at the start of USA’s new eight-episode miniseries The Sinner. The seemingly average Upstate New Yorker is enjoying a day at the lake with her son and husband when, without provocation, she suddenly sprints forward and stabs a stranger to death with the knife she’d been using to peel fruit. According to Cora, she has no idea why. “The series opens with the familiar and the everyday,” executive producer Derek Simonds says. “Then it shows how this everyday can be ripped apart really suddenly and easily. And that, in truth, we’re all living a different interior life. We say we…

RETURNS Sunday, July 16, 9/8c, HBO @GameOfThrones A POWER-HUNGRY QUEEN, a bastard knight and a mother of dragons walk into a Westeros bar.… One of these three rivals will win the Iron Throne, but only time will tell if victory depends more on cunning, honor or sheer military force. We look at the strengths and weaknesses of each potential ruler as the hit HBO series enters Season 7. DAENERYS TARGARYEN: THE CHALLENGER Onetime innocent princess Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), who considers herself the rightful heir to the throne, is sailing toward Westeros with forces that make the arsenals of her rivals—current queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and king in the North Jon Snow (Kit Harington)—look like children’s toys. Daenerys’s impressive armada carries a huge army of devoted Unsullied soldiers and…

RETURNS Wednesday, June 28, 10/9c, TV Land @YoungerTV YOU GOTTA ADMIRE a show that’s ballsy enough to toss its entire premise out the window. TV Land’s Younger centers on Liza Miller (Sutton Foster), a 40-year-old divorcée and single mom who claims to be 26 in order to score a job in the ageist world of New York publishing. But during last season’s head-spinning cliffhanger, Liza suddenly came clean to her work BFF, Kelsey (Hilary Duff). Foster tells us all about the fallout in Season 4. What made Liza go and blab everything to Kelsey? And what happens now to your hit show? It was all built on this major lie! Even I was going, “What the hell is Liza doing?” But, for her, it was all about redemption. Her life…

Florence Foster Jenkins COMEDY (2016) Monday, May 29, 8/7c, Epix Meryl Streep (left, with Hugh Grant) racked up her 20th Oscar nomination for playing this infamous NYC heiress with a shocking lack of talent for singing opera. Grant costars as Florence’s überdevoted hubby. Free State of Jones DRAMA (2016) Saturday, June 10, 8/7c, Showtime Newton Knight led a resistance against the Confederate Army in Mississippi during the Civil War. Matthew McConaughey (left) plays the real-life guy. Keri Russell (The Americans) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Black Mirror) costar as his two wives. The Magnificent Seven ACTION (2016) Sunday, June 11, 8/7c, Epix If you need an actor to match the charisma of Yul Brynner from the 1960 original, it’s a good call to cast Denzel Washington. If you need an actor to match the charisma…

START YOUR SUMMER off right with some of the year’s biggest sports events. Soccer It’s a friendly match, so it doesn’t count in the standings, but Carli Lloyd and the U.S. Women’s National Team will be out to avenge their 2016 Olympics loss when they travel to face Sweden (June 8, 1:30/ 12:30c, ESPN2) in a warm-up for the fourteam, round-robin Tournament of Nations hosted by the U.S. later this summer. Also, the U.S. Men’s National Team takes on Venezuela in a World Cup Qualifying warmup in Utah (June 3, 10/9c, Fox Sports 1). Memorial Day MLB ESPN celebrates the holiday May 29 with the New York Yankees at the Baltimore Orioles (1/noon c), the Washington Nationals at the San Francisco Giants (4/3c) and the Detroit Tigers at the Kansas…

DAYTIME DRAMA Thelma Driscoll agreed with our May 15 issue’s “Jeers to the networks” for not airing the Daytime Emmys on April 30. “Shame on the networks,” she wrote. “They find time and space for littleknown music award shows but can’t find three hours a year to broadcast the Daytime Emmys? The daytime viewers should be treated better.” The awards show last aired on television in 2015 on Pop and has only been available to stream online since. GRAVE MISSTEP On May 15, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and partner Sasha Farber were eliminated from Dancing With the Stars. Though the competition named its winner on May 23, John Walden believes Biles should have at least made the finals. “Simone Biles eliminated?” he wrote. “She had two perfect scores that night!…

JAMES CORDEN SAID IT best, joking during the CBS fall presentation: “This is like your own personal Groundhog Day.” Remakes, reboots and retreads of familiar genres are all the rage, but video teases of several shows made me want to take a second look THE GIFTED (Mondays, 9/8c, Fox) This Marvel thriller about mutant teens stands out with a compelling family-as-fugitives angle. Casting the always appealing Amy Acker and Stephen Moyer as the protective parents is a bonus. THE GOOD DOCTOR (Mondays, 10/9c, ABC) House creator David Shore introduces another unorthodox medical hero—though one considerably less arrogant. Freddie Highmore (fresh off his brilliant work on Bates Motel) stars as an autistic savant whose surgical skills defy the skeptics in his midst. YOUNG SHELDON (Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, CBS) Speaking of geniuses, the adorable Iain Armitage plays…

It’s one of those scandals you never forget. In 1989, 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik Menendez shot and killed their parents, businessman Jose and homemaker Kitty, in their Beverly Hills den. The boys— who are both still serving life sentences— claimed they had been sexually abused by their father. Few people believed them. Lifetime’s new film Menendez: Blood Brothers (June 11, 8/7c) takes the opposite view. “The popular notion is that Lyle and Erik were greedy monsters,” executive producer Randy Barbato says. “This movie explores the possibility that the reason they murdered their parents was exactly what they claimed.” And yes, that’s former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love (left, with Benito Martinez as Jose) playing Kitty. “It is a completely unexpected role for her,” Barbato says. “But Courtney could portray the…

POWERS BOOTHE, who died in his sleep at age 68 on May 14, was very good at playing bad. The West Texas native twirled his mustache in several movies (among them Sin City and Tombstone) throughout his long career, but it was his TV villains—complex, intense, corrupt and powerful—that were stamped in the public consciousness. In one of his first on-screen roles, 1980’s Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, the young actor won an Emmy for his riveting portrayal of the cult leader and Jonestown mass murderer. Ten years later, in the miniseries Family of Spies, he played another real-life bad guy, John A. Walker Jr., who sold Navy secrets to the Soviets. His later memorable characters included unstable saloon owner Cy Tolliver in HBO’s Western Deadwood (right), 24’s…

PREMIERES Wednesday, July 12, 9/8c, CBS @SalvationCBS CBS JUST LOVES a summer series about the possible extinction of humanity, doesn’t it? First, hordes of mutant animals attacked on Zoo; now, a massive asteroid is hurtling toward Earth in the network’s new geopolitical thriller, Salvation. But don’t expect a dystopian story, promises executive producer Liz Kruger (Extant). “Our show is more of an optimistic summer popcorn movie,” she says. “We’re about trying to save the world.” Finding a way to divert the huge rock is in the hands of Department of Defense honcho Harris Edwards (Ian Anthony Dale) and Darius Tanz (Santiago Cabrera), a billionaire tech entrepreneur. Tanz was anticipating this disaster and has been working on a seven-year preparedness plan. Apparently that wasn’t enough: When the series begins, they have…

RETURNS Tuesday, May 30, 9/8c, TNT @AnimalKingdom THE UNSCRUPULOUS CODY clan often has the cops— and a gangster or two—hot on their heels. But in Season 2 of the SoCal crime drama, the big bads are hitting much closer to home. “The real story this year is the threat from inside the family and the debilitating damage that people who love each other can actually do to one another,” says executive producer Jonathan Lisco. Though matriarch Janine “Smurf” Cody (Ellen Barkin) may be the queen-pin in the family’s crime business, it looks like her boys (Scott Speedman, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Robson and Jake Weary) will be making moves that don’t include her. “In the season premiere, a heist doesn’t quite go as planned,” Lisco teases, “and it becomes the precipitating…

PREMIERES Monday, July 24, 10/9c, NBC @NBCMidnightTX IF YOU MISS True Blood, the sexy supernatural series based on Charlaine Harris’s bestsellers, you might want to add some tasty Midnight, Texas barbecue to your summer fantasy menu. NBC’s new thriller is adapted from Harris’s most recent trilogy, about a Lone Star berg populated by freaks hiding themselves away from normal society. The otherworldly drama begins when a medium named Manfred Bernardo (Blindspot’s Francois Arnaud) arrives in Midnight. “He’s on the run because he’s done some very bad things to some very bad people,” Arnaud explains. “He wants to settle down in a calm, peaceful place—and his dead grandmother suggests he’d fit right in there.” Yep, Manfred communicates with spirits. The one-stoplight town, however, is far from the quiet sanctuary he was hoping…

RETURNS Friday, June 23,11/10c, USA @PlayingHouseUSA SEASON 2 OF USA’s Playing House ended back in September of 2015, but it’ll be like no time has passed when suburban Pinebrook, Connecticut, besties Maggie (Lennon Parham) and Emma (Jessica St. Clair) finally return for their third go-round. “We pick up a couple of weeks after Maggie and Emma’s epic adventure stalking Kenny Loggins and the cliffhanger where [Emma’s ex] Mark [Keegan-Michael Key] shows up on their porch to talk to Emma,” previews cocreator Parham. “What did he say to her?” Romantic issues won’t be the only hurdles challenging the pals. And one conflict is straight from Parham and St. Clair’s real life. “We had a seriously intense year,” explains Parham. “In 2015, Jess was diagnosed with breast cancer, and with the help…

Sunday, June 4, 8am/7c, Disney Channel IT’S NEVER TOO soon to learn about the Big C. Disney Junior’s Peabody Award–winning hit Doc McStuffins will push the boundaries of preschool programming on June 4 with an episode themed around cancer. It’s not the first time this progressive series— about an African-American girl who wants to become a doctor and practices on her toys—has gone to bold places. Past topics include the importance of blood donations, difficulty adjusting to a new sibling and the emotions little ones face when a military parent is deployed. But this story, airing on National Cancer Survivors Day, is something else altogether. “Many kids watching us have chronic diseases— things that can’t be cured with a kiss and a cuddle— so we created a story specifically for…

MAY 29, 2017 | PUZZLE #1311 ACROSS 1 Brick’s sister on McKenna 5 Jeanne of Love & Marriage 8 Anthony’s son on All About the Andersons 12 Cain’s brother 13 Cotton gin inventor 14 Whose Line ____ Anyway? (2 wds.) 15 Spy on The Bullwinkle Show (2 wds.) 18 Linda of Unfaithfully Yours 19 Vivian Vance on I Love Lucy 22 Boy ____ World 26 ____ culpa 27 Bloom of Animal House 31 Take a bough 32 Buttram of Green Acres 33 George Peppard action series, with The (2 wds.) 34 _____ Grant 35 Caregiver tool (abbr.) 36 Robert Urich on Vega$ 37 A late-night announcer 38 Internet search service 40 Curtis and Danza 42 Norma’s eatery on Twin Peaks (2 wds.) 46 Dan ran one on One Tree Hill…

My current favorite show MARK FEUERSTEIN Prison Break SEASON FINALE Tuesday, May 30, 9/8c, Fox American Crime. I also love Homeland, Survivor (above) and Stranger Things. The funniest person on TV Louis C.K. His observations about family, being a middle-aged man and modern life are astute and brilliant. The show I’d like to guest star on Louie. And Silicon Valley (above)—the writing snaps, crackles and pops. The Wire. While in Greece, my wife and I watched Seasons 3 and 4 back-to-back. Nothing will ever compare to that sublime TV binge-viewing experience. What I hate-watch Myself on any late-night talk show, but I’m working on it. The show I miss most Curb Your Enthusiasm My dream costar Paulo Costanzo. I spent eight seasons on Royal Pains playing his brother. He always…

CLAIMING YOUR WORK is like play is so clichéd. But when Master of None cocreator and executive producer Alan Yang says it, he speaks the truth. “I started writing for a comedy magazine in college and it made me really, really happy,” the Harvard grad explains. “It exposed me to the fact that this can be a job.” And an award-winning one: In 2016, Yang and Master of None cocreator Aziz Ansari scored the best comedy writing Emmy. Yang’s speech, which called for better (and more) depictions of Asian-Americans, almost torched the web. We talked to the producer about his work…uh, play. PARKS AND RECREATION The producer earned his first Emmy nomination in 2015 for the Amy Poehler–led NBC comedy. It’s also where he met future writing partner Ansari. “We…

PREMIERES Monday, May 29, 10/9c, ABC @StarCrossedABC SHAKESPEARE’S CLASSIC TEARJERKER Romeo and Juliet ends with the deaths of its lusty young lovers— and a note of hope that the grieving Montagues and Capulets might finally cease their age-old feud. But there’s no such luck in the sexy, swoony sequel Still Star-Crossed. Created by former Scandal scribe Heather Mitchell and based on Melinda Taub’s hit young-adult novel of the same name, this multiethnic, multicultural series dumps the Bard’s promising conclusion and lets all-out war erupt at Romeo and Juliet’s funeral. Soon, fair Verona is a city in crisis, yet there’s still lots of time for marvelously messy romance. “This show is for everyone who can relate to the giddy, crazy rush of first love,” Mitchell says. “And who hasn’t watched as a…

RETURNS Sunday, August 6, 9/8c, Showtime @SHO_RayDonovan SHOWBIZ IS BRUTAL, but not as brutal as nearly getting whacked by the Russian mob. Ray Donovan jumps ahead almost one year with Liev Schreiber’s title character returning to his old job as a Hollywood fixer—much saner than his bloody battle last season with those pesky Russkies!—and this time it’ll be a family enterprise. Brothers Bunchy (Dash Mihok) and Daryll (Pooch Hall) are now Ray’s trusty assistants, and they’ll be plenty busy with their new client, Samantha Winslow (Oscar winner Susan Sarandon), a Roger Ailes–type megamogul facing a major crisis. “Samantha has a couple of fixers of her own, and she’s been outed in the media for misusing them,” executive producer David Hollander says. “Keeping these fixers on the payroll would look bad…

PREMIERES Sunday, July 9, 9/8c, CBS @CandyCrushCBS CANDY CRUSH, THE highly addictive cellphone game app familiar to commuters and commercialavoiders everywhere, will now take up residence on the largest interactive screen imaginable. (The massive panel featured on this CBS newbie is potentially the biggest ever seen in this genre.) The popular pastime, which requires swapping adjacent “candies” to form a row of at least three matching items, is coming to life as a full-on primetime game show. And this time folks get to use more than their digits to make all the magic happen. (Harnesses! Ladders! Claws!) Mario Lopez—already plenty busy with his regular gig on the syndicated entertainment news show Extra—is an emcee who knows a little something about game shows (he’s previously competed on Hollywood Game Night, Celebrity…

PREMIERES Sunday, June 11, 9/8c, TNT @ClawsTNT NAIL SALONS ARE well-known for a few things: acrylic designs, French manicures, juicy gossip—and, in TNT’s darkly funny new series Claws, a healthy dose of disreputable crime. Niecy Nash (pictured at right) plays Desna Simms, a Florida salon proprietor with big dreams that keep getting derailed despite her best efforts. “You meet her at a point in time where she’s trying to get off the ride of money laundering,” Nash says, “but she is continually sucked back in by [the Mafia].” The Reno 911! vet and her costars take us inside the New Orleans set to show us all the fun at their fingertips.…

Sarah Silverman: A Speck of Dust COMEDY STAND-UP PREMIERE Tuesday, May 30, Netflix The two-time Emmy winner riffs on laser hair removal, sibling rivalry and the recent throat infection and subsequent surgery that nearly took her life last year. House of Cards DRAMA SEASON PREMIERE Season 5, Tuesday, May 30, Netflix Running for reelection is tough when your closet has more skeletons than the Museum of Natural History. But Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey, right) and his running mate/wife, Claire (Robin Wright, left), plan to draw attention away from their misdeeds by exaggerating the threat of an attack from the terrorist group ICO. And if that doesn’t work, they can point fingers at Frank’s handsome opponent, Will Conway (Joel Kinnaman), who still refuses to talk about his war record. Le Mans:…

ON OCTOBER 22, David Letterman will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (it will be broadcast on a later date). In the meantime, fans can savor his career—from a humble start as an Indianapolis weatherman to his legacy on both NBC’s Late Night and CBS’s Late Show—in the new biography Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night, by Jason Zinoman. Letterman is characterized best by the eye-rolling and snide remarks he used to distance himself from the showbiz world. He even distanced himself from the title of his own show: “Late Night is like calling Coke ‘brown fizzy soda,’ Letterman said, according to Zinoman. “It’s nothing but serviceable.” However, distance only makes the heart grow fonder, which…

Cheers to NBC for traveling back in time. After axing its underrated and wildly entertaining Timeless, the network rightfully reversed course and renewed the era-hopping show starring Abigail Spencer (left, with Matt Lanter and Malcolm Barrett) for a second season. Cheers to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for serving hot Lemonade. Sorry, we’re not sorry that we can’t stop humming the Beyoncé-spoofing tunes penned by Tina Fey and hubby Jeff Richmond for Titus (Tituss Burgess) with the no hair in Season 3’s stellar second episode. Cheers to Master of None for its masterful mix of heart and humanity. In Season 2 of the delightful Netflix comedy, star and cocreator Aziz Ansari (right, with Alessandra Mastronardi) has us swooning over his ebullient charm, cultural realness and so-relatable approach to romance. Cheers to The Originals for honoring…