Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The 20th Century Called … And They Have the TV Remote
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with daughter Candice on The Charlie McCarthy Show 1952 (Photo: CBS)
CBS announced on Wednesday that they have reached a deal with creator Dianne English and star Candice Bergen to revive Murphy Brown, a 10-year hit for the network that first debuted in 1988. It is just the latest in television’s zombie lineup of shows that been repeatedly stabbed, shot, blown up and generally worn out but simply will not die.
Bergen, who debuted on her father’s radio show at age 6, is now 71. The fictional baby that riled the 1992 Presidential campaign when then-Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the glamorization of single motherhood would be 26. Don’t struggle trying to remember the sex of the baby because, by now, nine chances out of 10 the kid is probably transitioning to something else.
According to the network the revival will be set in “a world of cable news, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate.” In other words, like the cast of Will & Grace, they are itching to get into the game of bashing one Donald J. Trump.
There are very few fictional characters that once they’ve left the culture I’ve pined to learn their fate. I really don’t care to know what cable network Murphy Brown is reduced to working at. After the disaster that was the series finale for Mad About You (also slated for revival), I don’t care to revisit the domestic life of Paul and Jamie Buchanan. I don’t care if the truth is still out there nor does the prospect of John Goodman pulling a Patrick Duffy in the mind of Roseanne Barr send a thrill up and down my spine. What’s next? Does anyone want to know if Sam Malone of Cheers fell off the wagon and is dealing with the devastating effects of an STD?
Rule One of show business used to be “Don’t stay on the stage too long.” Rule Two should be “Don’t force your way back.” The Golden Rule was “Always leave them wanting more.”
Published in Entertainment
TV is worse than the movie choices – oh the days of Seinfeld and non-political funny shows….Archie Bunker will be back I predict…
Of course, the most authentic cop show has to be Cop Rock.
Right?
That or Police Squad.
Very realistic, because the best dramas of the 1990’s employed law enforcement and other professionals as consultants and NYPD Blue had the best, former NYPD Detective Bill Clark. His collaboration with writer David Milch furnished season one’s stories, as chronicled in their book True Blue. Clark not only supervised realism on the set. He also convened his former police colleagues annually to inspire the writers, and became so involved in the writing and everything else that he rose in rank to Executive Producer.
Also rising in rank was Detective Sipowicz, who started off a drunk with race prejudice, but who eventually sobered up, wised up, and became a trusted mentor. Most of his methods were cerebral, and based on a deep understanding of human character. Early on Andy showed impatience with a lying suspects, but as the show evolved his reputation changed from thuggish drunk to respected cop’s cop. Would that New York had more like him today. In the 1990’s when crime in the city dropped so dramatically, it was because they had a Mayor who demanded effective policing, and in those urban precincts, NYPD officers given the latitude to seek justice.
NYPD Blue reruns air weekdays in sequence on DirecTV‘s Audience Channel.
Good comment. Many of us certainly do watch visual entertainment on rectangular displays. But we re learning not to mention our doing so to the grand kids.
Roy Clark pushed back with “The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counterrevolution Polka.”
”The big wheels at the networks started spinning, and the verdict was that Hee Haw had to go…”
And truthfully it worked out better for Gaylord Entertainment. It did much better in first-run syndication. 2 seasons on CBS translated into a whole lot of success elsewhere.
Gah! Reboots! That’s all Broadway’s been for years now (Legally Blonde the musical, American Psycho the musical, now Mean Girls the musical). There was an Animal House: The Musical in the works, but thankfully that died.
And now Spielberg and Tony Kushner are remaking West Side Story.
Fine, Spielberg, remake it with genuine Puerto Ricans. But if anyone’s thinking about remaking The Sound of Music, I’m coming after them.
No doubt we’ll learn that Tony and Maria are Dreamers and Bernardo wants to be a woman.
Well . . .
The 12 year old thinks musicals are pretty unrealistic anyway. “Who just breaks into song randomly like that!?”
Of course, I instantly began singing everything I said, just to annoy her.
I love being a dad.
No doubt a new West Side Story will be grittier and darker. Unless they really take the show back to its roots and call it “East Side Story.” Originally Maria was Jewish, a Holocaust survivor and Tony was her Catholic boyfriend.
As they cast for Latino talent, a HuffPost writer has already stated that the new WSS will be more “authentic.” Or as authentic as a bunch of Latinos can get singing, dancing and acting out the work of three talented white Jewish men who based their play on the works of a very white, very dead Englishman.
If you get a chance take her to see Something Rotten. The showcase piece can be seen here (in truncated form) from the 2015 Tony Awards.
Will they have real Nazis?
Haha! When my nephew was about 7, my sister had them watch “Oklahoma!” with her. He got up and left, saying, “They should call it Stinklahoma!” I said “Well, he’s not gay.”
I read a great article a while ago, that the idea that TV programs had to conform to demands of the citizens in the “demographic sweet spot” was a falsehood. Although we have all read or heard that advertisers like folks in the age group 18 to 35, this apparently is a lie. Especially now when millenials and generation Z, or whatever, are indifferent to ads.
But TV programming and its ads are just that. Back in the day, TV networks offered the public many TV shows that revolved around family values and a moral code. Sure, it was a bit hokey that each week on Bonanza, the Cartwrights alone would support the Mormon family, or Mexican family et al who was shunned by everyone else in Virginia City.
But that TV fictional reality was a great deal better than all the current day reality shows of Honey Boo Boo (which depicts people who live ruraly as brain dead idiots) and all the reality shows wherein people of color scream at each other non-stop over everything. What are the programmers trying to do to young people’s hearts and minds, I would ask?
And it is sad that with the end of Hee Haw and Andy Griffith, rural life is no longer seen as fun and entertaining. Certainly the Griffith Show and HeeHaw were often corny. But corny is fun, and certainly rarely if ever repulsive.
I’m not convinced programmers have any plan, other than to meet whatever audience count goals they have, but, but, but,
The fact that so many of our young people are disconnected from a core of common culture fragments our society so much.
They become isolated, like line wolves. And I don’t think humanity is designed to thrive that way. It’s like individualism on steroids.
So, is less about programner’s goals, and more about where humanity lands after ingested the diet of $/!t they offer.