Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep-14-15 i TV Guide Magazine

WE SHOULD HAVE seen it coming. The first of Steven Spielberg’s films to spawn a TV sequel is Minority Report, the 2002 Tom Cruise sci-fi hit about a police unit that stops crimes before they happen, thanks to the visions of three genetically mutated psychics known as precogs. (The title refers to what happens when one of the precogs’ glimpses into the future differs from what the other two see.) At the movie’s conclusion, the Precrime department disbanded and the precogs were sent to a secluded island. “What happens to them,” executive producer Max Borenstein says, “is the jumping-off point for the series.” The sequel begins in 2065, a decade later. Two of the precogs, twin brothers Dash (Stark Sands) and Arthur (Nick Zano), have abandoned sister Agatha (Laura Regan)…

IT MAY BE the most anticipated show of the new season and the most controversial: After nearly 20 years away from TV, Jim Henson’s felt friends are returning to the small screen, but even before filming began, off-camera drama erupted when Kermit and Miss Piggy shocked the world with their breakup. Can pop culture’s most famous interspecies exes make it work? “Oh, sure, sure,” promises Kermit, who is now seeing another pig—ABC’s head of marketing, Denise. “Listen, it can be tough, you know? But there’s [always] a lot of craziness that goes on with a Muppets production.” He’s not pulling our normal-size legs. Borrowing the docucomedy style of The Office and Modern Family, The Muppets is a wild behind-the-scenes look at the making of the fictional talk show Up Late…

ROB LOWE AND the 1980s: together again. Comedy Central’s newest offering is Moonbeam City, an animated series that lampoons all the bombastic, largerthan-life cop shows of that bright, pastelcolored era. At the center of the action is Dazzle Novak (Lowe), an idiotic—though handsome—detective who’s obsessed with sex and should never be trusted with a gun. (In one scene, he tries to stop a fire by shooting at it.) Elizabeth Banks voices Dazzle’s unimpressed, shoulder pad–clad police chief (aptly named Pizzaz), and Will Forte is Rad Cunningham, a coworker at the squad and the “sort of d--khead Karate Kid villain,” according to creator Scott Gairdner. “I wanted to do a show that celebrated this sleek, neon ’80s vibe and that paid tribute to the awesome designs, awesome fashion and awesome synth…

FOR MITCH (MARK-PAUL Gosselaar) and his wife, Tracy (Vanessa Lachey), and their best friends/neighbors Russell (Tone Bell) and Angie (Bresha Webb), no topic is taboo. The comedy uses the foursome’s multiracial friendship to tell some truths about race and racism in America. How do you handle tackling issues that might make some viewers feel really uncomfortable? Gosselaar: We’re going to try to talk about these gray areas that might seem a bit taboo for conversation, but we’re going to find the funny in it. There’s a scene in which you guys are singing Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and Russell tells Mitch he can’t sing the N-word. Have you run into those conversations in real life? Bell: I run into them all the time. [Laughs] Gosselaar: What do you mean…

THIS WOULD MAKE Joe Biden seem pretty badass. In the new spy drama Agent X, the vice president of the United States has a much more powerful role than simply breaking ties in the Senate. For centuries, the government has been hiding the real Constitution, which includes a directive that, in times of national crisis, the country’s second-in-command can deploy a covert operative, known as Agent X, to fix the mess. “In the show’s mythology, Nathan Hale was the first Agent X,” executive producer William Blake Herron says, citing the American Revolutionary spy. When casting Veep Natalie Maccabee (the reference to the ancient Jewish warriors is deliberate) “we needed an actress who had chops and was believable,” Herron says. He wanted Sharon Stone, and, luckily, she wanted the part, her…

DAVID MYERS (WELSH newcomer Craig Roberts) is halfway to an accounting degree at NYU when he scores his ultimate summer gig: working as an assistant tennis pro at New Jersey’s well-heeled Red Oaks Country Club. What follows over the course of 10 half-hour episodes of the new Amazon laffer Red Oaks is an awakening of sorts, as David realizes a suburban number cruncher’s life is not quite the one he wants. Creators Gregory Jacobs and Joe Gangemi hit upon the idea for Oaks with executive producer Steven Soderbergh while Jacobs and Soderbergh were collaborating on HBO’s Emmy-winning Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra. (“Not exactly the same kind of story,” Jacobs acknowledges amusingly.) It was originally conceived as a feature, but the more the trio played with the idea, the more…

CHEERS TO ARROW ’S STEPHEN AMELL for his heroic WWE debut. After a socialmedia war of words with pro baddie Stardust, the longtime wrestling fan put his muscles where his mouth was by taking on the fighter (left, with Amell) during last month’s SummerSlam event. And he didn’t even need backup from Diggle! CHEERS TO USA for postponing the Mr. Robot finale. Due to a scene that was too reminiscent of the real-life on-air assassination of a Virginia newswoman and her cameraman, the cable net decided to bump the Rami Malek (left) thriller’s first-season ender by a week, making us love everything about this amazing new drama even more. FACEBOOK CHEER 81% OF FAC E BOOK FA N S CHEER IT CHEERS TO BEAUTY AND THE BEAST for continuing to…

DOLLY PARTON’S COAT OF MANY COLORS She may be known for her big, um, voice, but in the December 10 NBC movie about her childhood, Dolly Parton’s mini-me is set to steal some attention. “She is gonna be a star,” raves the country icon of Alyvia Alyn Lind, who plays young Parton opposite Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and Ricky Schroder as her parents. “It is very personal,” exec producer Parton says of the film. “It’s about my life and my family, the people who made me who and what I am.” SHARK TANK Dude, where’s my entrepreneur? On the September 25 premiere of ABC’s Shark Tank, the panel of investment bigwigs is joined by Ashton Kutcher (center, with Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary). “He’s a legitimate businessperson who asked tough questions,”…

IT’S A BIRD! It’s a plane! It’s…about time a female superhero from the DC Comics Universe got her own TV show! On the heels of The CW’s Arrow and The Flash—and from the same producers— comes Supergirl, a new action drama about Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist), a Kryptonian sweetheart sent to Earth to watch over her very famous cousin. “When we meet her [in the pilot], she’s been living as an Earthling and hasn’t used a lick of her powers for 12 years,” explains Glee vet Benoist. Kara is now 24, working in the L.A.-ish National City as a low-rung assistant for media mogul Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart). Thanks to a series of comic book-caliber events, a startling reveal by her adoptive sister, Alex (Chyler Leigh), plus the help of…

BY THE END of the 2011 feature film Limitless, struggling author Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) had transformed into a wealthy would-be politician thanks to dangerous “smart drug” NZT, which allows users to increase their brain power. In CBS’s continuation of the movie, struggling musician Brian Finch (Jake McDorman) lucks into some NZT and attracts the attention of New York FBI agent Rebecca Harris (Dexter’s Jennifer Carpenter). After Brian gets a little help from Eddie himself (Cooper, an executive producer, will be an occasional guest star), the FBI realizes a guy with that high an IQ makes for a good crimesolving partner. They agree to supply Brian with NZT and partner him with Rebecca. We get smart with McDorman and Carpenter. —Oriana Schwindt Before finding NZT and a purpose, Brian is…

THE BASTARD EXECUTIONER’S Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones) doesn’t actually begin the series as the titular slaughterman. He’s an erstwhile knight who fled a disastrous battle for the Welsh barley fields of (fictional) Ventrishire, where he’s adopted the guise of a simple farmer and married a local girl. Following him like a mystical, silver-haired crow is mysterious medicine woman Annora of the Alders (Katey Sagal), who tends to the villagers with her bodyguard/lover the Dark Mute (played by show creator Kurt Sutter) in tow. Life is good, for a while. This is the early 14th century, not long after Wales had its keister thoroughly kicked by England’s King Edward I, the fearsome Longshanks of legend. Now his son Edward II sits on the throne, relying on his English barons to keep…

IN MOST CASINOS, a pit boss is a manager who oversees the employees working the floor. In NBC’s thriller The Player, Wesley Snipes’s Mr. Johnson instead serves at the whim of a shadowy cabal of superrich gamblers who bet on crime. More specifically, they wager on whether or not a single person (called the Player)— with some help from the information-and-resource-providing Dealer—can stop a particular crime that’s been predicted by an immensely powerful algorithm. Mr. Johnson is one-third of the House, which facilitates the life-or-death stakes, along with Dealer Cassandra (Charity Wakefield) and former Special Ops/security consultant Alex Kane (Strike Back’s Philip Winchester), who has been brought in to replace a “disappointing” (read: dead) Player. Along the way, there’s a wild, semi-naked foot chase down the Vegas strip, lurking conspiracies…

NO MATTER WHAT your middle school bully might have told you, ballet isn’t for sissies. And neither is Flesh and Bone, Starz’s eight-episode miniseries set in New York City’s ultracompetitive professional ballet scene. (All episodes will be available via Starz On Demand the same day as the premiere.) Within the first 10 minutes, the lead character, young ingenue Claire (reallife ballerina Sarah Hay), pulls off her own toenail. And it just gets grittier from there. “I like to think of the series as Breaking Bad: Ballet,” explains creator Moira Walley-Beckett, who earned an Emmy for her writing work on AMC’s iconic drama. “It’s a dark psychological journey set against the backdrop of dance’s underbelly. The ballet world is a nutty, nutty place.” Not that Claire is completely untroubled to begin…

INSPIRED BY THE 16th-century epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, which chronicles the adventures of a Buddhist monk as he travels to India seeking enlightenment, Into the Badlands is a martial arts mélange that follows warrior Sunny (Daniel Wu) and a young boy he rescues, M.K. (Aramis Knight), on their own quest toward enlightenment. The series is set far, far in the future, when the America we know is nothing more than a faint memory, the victim of a catastrophic event no one alive even remembers. (“This is way after the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead,” jokes cocreator Al Gough.) A feudalistic society has sprung up from the ruins, with seven leaders called barons ruling fiefdoms that manage natural resources like oil, mining and opium. “The barons are…

FEW BONDS ARE stronger than one between siblings. That’s especially true for Alex (Tommy Dewey) and Valerie (Michaela Watkins), the brother-sister pair at the center of this half-hour dramedy. The series is a reflection of creator Zander Lehmann’s life—he and his younger sister lived together as adults for three eventful years. “I basically wrote a television show about our fake lives in the future. It comes from a lot of truth,” Lehmann says, though some of the details differ (Val is older and just-divorced; Alex is the founder of a monstrously successful online dating site), and executive producers Jason Reitman (who directed Juno) and Helen Estabrook contributed with stories of their own strange family dynamics. As the show opens, the newly single Val and her teen daughter have just moved…

RURAL CHESHIRE WAS far from the front during World War II, but the women of this English village (whose fathers, sons and brothers were on the battlefields) could still do their bit for king and country. Inspired by a true story, the six-part drama follows the ladies of the Great Paxford Women’s Institute—led by warring queen bees Frances (Samantha Bond) and Joyce (Francesca Annis)—as they work to keep their village running and the home fires burning.…

HAVE MERCY! JOHN Stamos is back on primetime television in the new comedy Grandfathered, playing Jimmy Martino, a bachelor and high-profile restaurateur whose swinging lifestyle is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Gerald (Josh Peck), the son he never knew he had. Added bonus: Gerald has a daughter of his own, Edie (played by twins Layla and Emelia Golfieri), quickly making Jimmy the most eligible grandpa in all of Los Angeles. “He’s a guy who, just by his nature, wants it all,” says the 52-year-old Stamos, who also serves as executive producer. “He wants to maintain his bourgeois life through the restaurant, celebrities, women and dating, but he also wants to do the right thing and be the right kind of father. He just doesn’t know how, and he certainly…

BAD THINGS HAVE gone down in and around Los Angeles, like the Black Dahlia murder, the Manson killings and the Hillside strangulations. Now, in the anthology series Wicked City (each season will follow a different fictional case in the City of Angels), it’s the Grainger-Beaumontaine serial slashings of Sunset Strip partygoers throughout the early 1980s. Series creator Steven Baigelman introduces us to his nutty perps, the cops on their tail and the journalists following the story. 1. THE KILLER Kent Grainger (Ed Westwick) Grainger makes his living restoring old cars and gets his kicks from stabbing women inside them. He’s charming, smart and a whiz at luring in the desperate Hollywood locals. “Kent is a chameleon who can pose as all those guys who claim they’ll make a young lady’s…

CODE BLACK IS a loose ER term referring to the number of incoming patients outstripping a hospital’s ability to treat them all. It’s a harrowing experience for everyone involved—even when the patients are mere actors, according to Code star Marcia Gay Harden. The 56-year-old actress may be an Oscar winner (for 2000’s Pollock), and this isn’t the first time she’s donned the white coat (her Trophy Wife character was a doctor), but playing Leanne Rorish, Angels’ Memorial Hospital’s residency director, is proving to be quite an education. “I’m like, ‘SAG [Screen Actors Guild] is after my name, not MD,’ ” Harden says with a laugh. What is it about Leanne that speaks to you? She commands on her own, but she doesn’t exist on her own. She needs everyone around…

HOLDING OUT FOR a hero? We’ve got plenty! But will they be there when you need one? Heroes Reborn, a reboot of the landmark 2006–2010 series Heroes, takes place five years after the original at a time of growing global hysteria. “People with special powers are being hounded—even killed—and now they’ve gone into hiding,” creator Tim Kring says. Timing couldn’t be worse, because, notes Kring, “the world is about to face a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions.” Returning to this dire scenario are such Heroes favorites as Jack Coleman (Noah, aka HRG), Masi Oka (Hiro) and Greg Grunberg (Matt). Zachary Levi, of Chuck fame, joins the franchise as Luke Collins, a twisted vigilante out for revenge against all Evolved Humans, or EVOs. Expect many more fresh faces. Who is concealing a…

KEN JEONG DIDN’T have to look far to find inspiration for his new sitcom, Dr. Ken. The ensemble comedy, which splits time between family and work, is loosely based on The Hangover and Community star’s prefame life, in which he worked as a physician—a job he took seriously. “I wasn’t that jokey doctor like Patch Adams,” says Jeong, who still has an active license but doesn’t practice. “I wasn’t walking around in a clown outfit going, ‘Hey, you got herpes, but I got your nose!’ ” The same can’t be said for Ken Park, the character Jeong plays with a bedside manner that leaves a lot to be desired. His diagnosis for a man with ankle swelling and shortness of breath? “You’re fat.” But executive producer Mike Sikowitz says fans…

IF YOU’RE JONESING for your newest Vikings (or, for that matter, History’s Vikings) fix, don’t fret: Pillaging-and-plundering Norsemen will be wreaking havoc on poor old England and on your TV screen this fall. BBC America’s eight-part series The Last Kingdom is looking back at the ninth century in an adaptation of historical novelist Bernard Cornwell’s eight-book saga The Saxon Stories; fortuitously, a ninth book, titled Warriors of the Storm, is due in early 2016, right at the tail end of this series’ finale. Executive producers Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant have traded the genteel drawing rooms of Downton Abbey for a trek back to the first millennium, when the Danes were conquering and occupying most of England’s small, disparate kingdoms. (There are no dragons here, but lots of blood, battles…

“I’M WRITING A very important book,” said sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick to his third wife before penning 1962’s The Man in the High Castle. In truth, Dick had no book. He didn’t even have an outline. So he turned to an unused idea about an alternate reality in which Germany and Japan won WWII and colonized the U.S. To call High Castle complicated is like saying Caligula saw a few naked buttocks. Through five main characters (and a dozen more supporting), Dick ponders humanity, racism and superstition and poses big questions: Is what we perceive always real? Will knowing the truth free us from our perceptions? While it may be the most acclaimed of the author’s 40-plus novels (and the only one to win sci-fi’s prestigious Hugo Award), it’s…

THANKS TO RECENT blockbusters (The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy), the general public is well aware of the superheroes keeping the world safe. Robot Chicken producers Matt Senreich and Zeb Wells would like to introduce one more group: the League of Freedom, headed up by old-timer Titanium Rex (voiced by producer Bryan Cranston) and including such castoffs as bargain-bin Batman Black Saturn (Tucker Gilmore), flight expert/potato-peeling wonder American Ranger (Keegan-Michael Key), cat-woman hybrid Cooch (Heidi Lynn Gardner) and aging muscleman Brad (Tom Root). The stop-motion animated comedy SuperMansion is an outgrowth of the creators’ desire to show what happens when supers aren’t heroing. Senreich and Wells have plenty of experience mocking comic tropes from their Robot Chicken DC Comics specials but figured it was time to play with toys of…