If Veronica Mars is going to come back, it can only really happen if Enrico Colantoni is back as her father, Sheriff Mars. And he is, so all is okay.
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have a new project for the BBC (and Netflix) that they are working on - it’ll be a 3-episode period piece based on Dracula. Like their series Sherlock, episodes will be movie-length, clocking in at 90 minutes apiece.
Jack Bannon has been cast as Alfred Pennyworth in the prequel series about the man who would go on to become Batman’s butler. Yes, this is apparently a show.
Roseanne spin-off series The Conners has received a positive review from woke culture site Vulture.
With the show’s most vocal supporter of the president now gone, the MAGA-era politics that the writers wove into the initial reboot have disappeared, too. That removes a burden that forced the new Roseanne’s characters to behave in some ways that didn’t match up with what we knew about them based on the original Roseanne.
Having actually watched Roseanne 2.0, I’m wondering which MAGA-era politics the show is talking about? Is it specifically just that first episode where they mentioned Trump and then never spoke about him again for the rest of the season? Is it the ongoing storyline about Roseanne and Dan struggling to pay for medication and the storyline bubbling in the way in the background about Roseanne’s growing adiction to opioids? Or was it the episode where Roseanne realised she was swept up in believing racist sentiment when confronted by living next door to her new Muslim neighbours?
I think it was easy to be swept up in the narrative of Roseanne 2.0, but the reality of that show wasn’t what a lot of culture sites were putting out there.
I’m more interested in whether the new incarnation of the show actually delivers some solid jokes? Because Roseanne 2.0’s only real weakness was being a bit light in that department.
Is Australian soap A Country Practice coming back? Early reports are pretty light on, but it doesn’t sound like the worst idea to me.
Keeping it local (the ABW home office is based in Sydney, Australia), Australian broadcast network Nine is actually using its catch-up streaming site 9Now as a destination for exclusive content. In addition to new US series Manifest (which is okay) and New Amsterdam (which has a lot of potential, but is weighed down by a lot of silliness), they are dipping into the archives for older series including ER - a series not shown in Australia since its original broadcast. The show has aged incredibly well and should become savvy viewers show of this summer.
Finally…
One of my favourite shows this year has been the very clever Counterpart. The good news is that season 2 is expected to kick off in the US from 9 December.
