The summer round of the Television Critics Association press tour (the TCAs) is in full swing, and as mentioned back during the winter tour, “Television Christmas” is one succinct way to describe the tour. Well, Christmas has come early, as network and cable alike have all come to Beverly Hills to sell the new, the old, and the possible future of television.
Netflix
Netflix must be the best place on earth to work, and if it’s not, then all of its employees did a great job of making it feel that way with each Netflix panel. Even the Sense8 panel extolled the greatness of Netflix and its dedication to quality, which came across as slightly awkward as Netflix actually has yet to renew the series for a second season. But even with that cloud looming, Netflix’s quality over quantity was the theme. There was news of BoJack Horseman being renewed for a third season, while the first panel of the day was Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is also getting another season.
Premiere dates were revealed for new shows such as the Pablo Escobar drama Narcos (28 August), Aziz Ansari’s sitcom Master of None (6 November), and the “saved from A&E cancellation” western Longmire (10 September). The Fuller House panel saw Netflix executive Ted Sarandos reveal that the Olsen twins are “teetering whether or not they’ll be around” for the series. Marvel’s Jessica Jones showrunner, Melissa Rosenberg, revealed that the series will have a completely different look and tone than Marvel’s Daredevil and will be a psychological thriller.
Documentaries were a strong presence among week one’s panels, and Chelsea Handler revealed that her entree into the streaming platform would be a series of four Chelsea Does documentary series: Chelsea Does Marriage, Chelsea Does Racism, Chelsea Does Silicon Valley and Chelsea Does Drugs, all directed by Eddie Schmidt. As for her late-night talkshow on Netflix, that’s only in its infancy. But keeping with the theme of Netflix love, Handler compared the experience working with her previous employer, E!, with working for Netflix: “It’s a difference between playing, you know, with like kids on a playground or being in a really well-respected college.”
The Orange Is the New Black panel was cast-only, and even thought it was a reminder that this is one of the most charming casts on television, it was an effort in deflection. Natasha Lyonne was on the panel, which naturally opened her up to questions about whether her character Nicky Nichols would be back on the show. Of course, spoiler control was key (all throughout the TCAs), and Lyonne both could not and would not acknowledge whether she was on the show – a fact that ranged from amusing to awkward, depending on how persistent any particular critic was on the matter. A joke question lightened the mood surrounding this particular looming question – “Is Jon Snow dead?” – and Lyonne ran with the idea of finally understanding what the people over at Game of Thrones have to deal with. As the panel of Netflix’s flagship series was only cast, no major plot questions were raised or answered, but cast member Lea DeLaria gave two scoops for season four: “I’m in it, and it comes out sometime next year.”
BBC America
BBC America wasn’t packed with panels (only two shows), but it was full of announcements for new series in 2016 and a slate of series in development. For the former, that was the political thriller Undercover, starring Sophie Okonedo (Criminal Justice) and Adrian Lester (Hustle), and contemporary mystery Thirteen. The latter included projects such as BBC’s second attempt at Dirk Gently (the first was from 2010-2012), from Max Landis (Chronicle); an untitled project with both actors and civilians from writer/director Sebastian Silva; the story of an American woman who finds herself trapped within Tokyo’s Shibuya underworld in Moths; and film-maker Dana Shapiro’s The Greater Good, about the lone survivor of the Jonestown massacre. Then there’s BBC America’s answer to Starz’s Outlander (without time travel) and HBO’s Game of Thrones (without dragons) in the form of The Last Kingdom, which is set to premiere on 10 October. The eight-episode series is based on the book series by Bernard Cornwell and set against the backdrop of the birth of England. According to executive producer Gareth Neame – who was creatively inspired by The Tudors and its approach to historical fiction – The Last Kingdom “is the story of a man and his destiny”.
In a way, the same could be said about the Doctor, right? For the Doctor Who panel, showrunner Steven Moffat was the only one physically present for the press. Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi were busy filming the new season of Doctor Who (returning 19 September), but they were more than willing to take time out of their schedules to answer questions via satellite. As an early panel, Coleman and Capaldi pretending they could see the critics was quickly the highlight of the day, bringing some much-needed fun to what could be a repetitive process. It was also good for a distraction from the fact that Moffat was another tight-lipped panelist – though who could blame him when questions asked for complete plot points? One of these carefully answered questions came in the form of response to who Game of Thrones’s Maisie Williams would be playing in the upcoming Doctor Who season. According to Moffat, Maisie Williams is “playing a brand new character not someone from the Doctor’s past”, which opened up an even bigger world of possibilities. He then quipped: “Unless I’m lying.”
Starz
Photograph: Matt Sayles/Invision for Starz Entertainment
The Starz panel put some much-needed spice into proceedings. CEO Chris Albrecht was asked a question about and addressed the “feud” between Starz and HBO, which began with a Starz press release for Survivor’s Remorse that brought up the fact that the critical response to the show was far superior to HBO’s new series with a vaguely similar premise, Ballers. At the HBO panel for Ballers, a critic broached the subject, and while Dwayne Johnson avoided really answering, HBO president Michael Lombardo responded with: “What’s Survivor’s Remorse?” The next day, Albrecht was stern in his request that no one try to bring up such conversation during the Survivor’s Remorse panel, and it appeared to do the trick. Then again, the press release was a reminder that critics did in fact prefer Survivor’s Remorse to Ballers, so perhaps it would have been counterproductive for anyone to even bring up Ballers during the Starz show’s panel.
The mood was acceptable, however, for the panel for Flesh and Bone, Starz’s upcoming “limited series” (a phrase that was key) and ballet drama. According to creator Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad), Flesh and Bone would look into the “underbelly” of dance, which isn’t something you really ever see. Neither is the casting process, as all of the dancers in the show are dancers first, and their schedules were practically non-stop. It was a seven-month international effort just to get the casting done. It was also announced that all the episodes will be available to binge-watch on Starz Play upon its premiere on 8 November, which is also the case for the last season of DaVinci’s Demons on 24 October.
The brief tension of the beginning of the round of panels didn’t really bring the mood down by the time they actually began. The Survivor’s Remorse Q&A went off without a hitch, and the panels for new series Blunt Talk and Ash v Evil Dead brought much-needed laughs. In fact, the latter was won by Bruce Campbell’s intense high energy, a punch follow-up to the well-received trailer for the new Evil Dead series. Campbell and director Sam Raimi were clearly on a high from getting the gang back together (“I feel liberated and wonderful about directing the show, it was like coming home,” said Raimi), and praised Starz for allowing them the avenue to make the series they wanted to continue the cult franchise.
As for Blunt Talk, it’s a sitcom about a British newscaster, Walter Blunt (Patrick Stewart), who lives in Los Angeles with his “alcoholic manservant” and makes a lot of bad decisions. For anyone worried about a broad, signature Seth MacFarlane project, the panel for the series did a lot to assuage that fear. In fact, MacFarlane joked early on in the panel that he was “the most useless person up here”, as he’ll be working as a non-writing executive producer on the show. It helped even more when showrunner Jonathan Ames (creator of the brilliant-but-cancelled Bored to Death) explained that “the show is a cross between Network and PG Wodehouse” and he sees the show “as a comedy of uplift”. “We’re not a dark comedy,” explained Ames, which you don’t really hear a lot with regards to cable sitcoms. Then there was Stewart’s role in the panel, telling charmingly hilarious anecdotes, teasing Ames for cutting scenes, and confirming MacFarlane’s initial thought about how absurd it is that Stewart has never starred in a single-camera sitcom. Even with the somewhat rough beginning to the round of panels, the charms of the Starz casts and crew colored it all beautifully.
IFC
Before the IFC panel even began, it was “always on, slightly off”, as the network’s logo goes: Fred Armisen was in full rock star gear from one of the episodes of the upcoming series Documentary Now! (premiering 20 August), a three-episode mockumentary series starring Armisen and Bill Hader (and co-created by Seth Meyers) in which each episode is an extremely detail-oriented homage on a real documentary. Throughout the panel, it was apparent that the series is a love letter to documentaries, to the point where the team even consulted the creators of the inspiration material for accuracy with shots and lenses. (Sadly, The Jinx won’t be one of the documentaries, at least not this go-around, as it all happened too late into filming for them to squeeze it in. They did manage to get Dame Helen Mirren as the host of the show, however.)
IFC was all about its new programs, and two set to premiere on 1 October were there: Gigi Does It and Benders. If there was a polar opposite to Documentary Now!, then Benders would be it – a sports comedy about a terrible men’s ice hockey team full of loudmouths. From longtime Denis Leary collaborators Jim Serpico and Tom Sellitti, it sells the promise of “grounded characters and ground conversations”. But it was hard to get much out of the panel, with stars Guy Code, Andrew Schulz and Chris Distefano taking the loudmouths concept to heart.
Somewhere in between was Gigi Does It, starring David Krumholtz (Numbers) as the titular Gigi, a 76-year-old woman who just lost her husband but also gained a large inheritance in the process. Despite how ridiculous the idea of Krumholtz playing a 76-old-woman sounds, the panel itself made it sound anything but and produced one of the most heartwarming tales of the day: it turns out Krumholtz’s Gigi was a tribute to his late grandmother.
AMC
After years of martial arts films being a part of AMC’s movie lineup, the cable network finally found a way to translate that into television with Into the Badlands (similar to the way the network used western films as an in for Hell on Wheels). From creative partners Al Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville), Into the Badlands takes place in a dystopian future where the world is back to reliance on fields and finds itself in “a second dark ages”, complete with a feudal system. “Other shows have action, but they’re not martial arts shows,” said Millar while explaining that Into the Badlands would be bringing that to American television. Based on a clip of a fight scene from the episode, Into the Badlands is going to be lauded for those sequences, which Gough and Millar were quick to compare to “musical numbers” and “fight jazz”.
Less eloquent fight scenes, however, could be found in AMC’s other new series, Walking Dead spin-off Fear the Walking Dead. The six-episode season (premiering 23 August) was even renewed for a 15-episode second season, which shows just how much AMC wants to stay in the walker (or “infected”, the term they’ll be using in the spin-off) business for a long time. The panel for the show (don’t expect it to cross over with the original series) raised questions of how the new series’ “urban” setting in Los Angeles would compare to the rural settings of its predecessor, but it also confronted the Walking Dead’s meme-worthy treatment of African American characters. The executive producers danced around it a bit but came to the conclusion that the infected “are equal opportunity consumers”. An easier answer came in response to whether we would see the inception of the zombie apocalypse: “No.” The mystery continues. (AMC also announced the renewal of Humans for a second season.)
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