Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Monday, August 9th, 2024

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, August 9th, 2024:

PRODUCTION NOTES
Just a heads-up that Tuesday's newsletter may be a bit later than usual. I'm headed to a local drinking establishment to watch the Presidential debate with a roomful of like-minded people. We'll see how this turns out. 

BRING ON HALLMARK+
Aside from the Presidential debate, Tuesday is also the launch of Hallmark+, the new streamer that hopes to be all things Hallmark. I'll have a formal review of the service tomorrow, along with looks at some of the original programs launching tomorrow. I'll also have interviews with cast members from the new series The Chicken Sisters, including Lea Thompson, Wendie Malick, Schuyler Fisk and Genevieve Angelson.

But the bottom line is that I think the streamer is a smart idea. Hallmark is positioning the service as part traditional niche streamer and part brand reinforcement effort and if they pull it off correctly, it could be quite the moneymaker.

AN APPRECIATION OF 'HARRY O'
All this month I am looking back at the 1974-1975 primetime TV season and I am especially happy with today's entry. Jay Faerber is a critically-acclaimed writer of comic books and television and unbelievably, he is a bigger fan of the classic detective TV shows than I am. Which is not an easy accomplishment.

He is taking a look back at the really wonderful David Janssen detective series Harry O, through the eyes of someone who writes for a living:

Harry’s use of the bus made for a great scene in the first regular episode, when two guys try to tail him. He’s on the bus, which makes it easy for him to spot a tail. So he gets off at the next stop and starts walking, which forces the guys following him to park their car and walk after him. Then he simply goes to the next bus stop, and gets on the next bus. The two goons are too far away from their car to continue to follow him. It’s a fun, playful little bit that totally works.

Harry O really deserves to be streaming somewhere.

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR THAT NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PRINCE
You might have seen a headline or two recently discussing the new nine-hour documentary recounting the life of Prince that Netflix ordered from Ezra Edelman. The NY Times has an expansive article on the film and explains why the project may never be seen by the public:

A few weeks after the Brooklyn screening, a cut of the full film was shown to the estate for a factual review. McMillan responded with 17 pages of notes demanding changes. Edelman, wanting to reach a compromise, made some adjustments. But he was adamant that he wouldn’t remove episodes or ideas that felt crucial for the film’s narrative and journalistic cohesion. The estate had demanded, for instance, that he reshoot Paisley Park because they didn’t like the way it looked, or that during the scene depicting Prince’s death, he remove the song “Let’s Go Crazy,” with its lyric about the elevator. They wanted him to take out a part of Wendy Melvoin’s interview, when she talks about Prince’s calling her up after he became more religious to ask her to renounce her homosexuality as a precondition for getting the band back together, and to excise Alan Leeds’s assessment — which was echoed by some critics at the time — that Prince’s 2001 album, “The Rainbow Children,” contained antisemitic lyrics. Edelman refused, insisting that this phase of Prince’s life demanded explanation. How could an artist who talked about freedom and inclusiveness also profess these kinds of beliefs? It wasn’t the entirety of Prince, but it was an important part of his trajectory.

But while I am just going by the description of the documentary from the NY Times piece, it sounds extraordinary:

Edelman presents the depth of Prince’s denial about the death of his baby — for years, he would never acknowledge it publicly — as more evidence of his inability to show how truly vulnerable he was: a motherless, fatherless child who longed to be protected by a family of his own. As the family-making enterprise was failing, it seems he sought a different form of protection. Over the next 15 years, he adhered to a strict religious observance, falling under the sway of an ersatz father figure, the musician Larry Graham, who insinuated himself into Prince’s life and instilled in him the Jehovah’s Witness theology. Another seemingly inexplicable chapter in Prince’s metamorphosis starts to make some kind of sense. That weird period when Prince kind of went off the deep end? The film shows how he was caught in a grief that he couldn’t admit to or comprehend, trying on many new guises in an attempt to shed it.

The documentary was shown to a small group of industry fans and Prince confidants who had been interviewed for the film and the experience shook many of them:

When the screening ended, after midnight, Questlove was shaken. Since he was 7 years old, he said, he had modeled himself on Prince — his fashion, his overflowing creativity, his musical rule-breaking. So “it was a heavy pill to swallow when someone that you put on a pedestal is normal.” That was the bottom line for him: that Prince was both extraordinary and a regular human being who struggled with self-destructiveness and rage. “Everything’s here: He’s a genius, he’s majestical, he’s sexual, he’s flawed, he’s trash, he’s divine, he’s all those things. And, man. Wow.”

The complicated and often contentious wranglings at the Prince estate have complicated the telling of his legacy more than helped preserve his memory. It's frustrating that he died without a will. It's even more frustrating that the people charged with managing his assets often seem incapable of making the best decision.

ODDS AND SODS
* The three-hour docuseries Aaron Rodgers: Enigma is set to premiere December 17th. I'm sure it will be insufferable.

* Fox is premiering the "news" documentary TMZ Investigates: Matthew Perry & the Secret Celebrity Drug Ring on Monday, September 16th.

* The BBC has a great profile of Rob Johnson, a man who spends his time convincing music labels to make their forgotten catalog titles available digitally.

* AARP The Magazine’s Annual Movies for Grownups Awards will be held in person in Beverly Hills on Saturday, January 11th, 2025, and Alan Cumming will return as the host

TWEET OF THE DAY



WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, 2024:
* Cabin In The Woods Series Premiere (Investigation Discovery) 
* Hot Wheels Let's Race Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
* My Brilliant Friend Season Four Premiere (HBO)
* POV: Name Me Lawand (PBS)
* Rachael Ray In Tuscany Season Finale (fyi)
* The Drew Barrymore Show Season Five Premiere (Syndicated)
* The Real Murders On Elm Street (Investigation Discovery)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10TH:
* Ahir Shah: Ends (Netflix)
* A Closer Look Primetime (NBC)
* Celebrations With Lacey Chabert Series Premiere (Hallmark+)
* Jake Whitehall: Fatherhood With My Father (Netflix)
* Love On The Danube: Love Song (Hallmark+)
* Presidential Debate (Various Outlets)
* The Chicken Sisters Series Premiere (Hallmark+)
* The Jane Mysteries: A Deadly Prescription (Hallmark+)

SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!