RIP Kuma, the original Dog With a Blog. The Disney star was 16 years-old.
Trainer Sarah Clifford told Deadline that Kuma had suffered complications from a recent stroke. “Losing Kuma is the hardest thing I have ever gone through,” she wrote the oulet in an email. “He was my best friend and the smartest dog I have ever known in my 40 years of life. When the time came to say my final good-bye, I fed him his favorite foods, chicken and watermelon, which he ate with vigor until the very end.”
Netflix, in its bid to be a global TV network, will soon commission a show from Africa. It’s part of a more interesting idea, which is a potential shift from the monocultural US TV industry dominating to a more global, decentralised pop-cultural sphere of influence.
Erik Barmack, Netflix’s VP of International Originals:
“There’s going to come a time when half of the top 10 of most-watched shows in a given year are going to come from outside of the U.S.,” Barmack said. “I don’t think that’s very actually far away. I think that’s going to come in years, not decades.”
PopMatters has a glowing review of the new behind-the-scenes/cultural analysis book I’ll Be There For You, which looks (obviously enough) at the show Friends.
Miller also connects Friends to the #MeToo movement, putting Amaani Lyle's groundbreaking (but failed) lawsuit against Warner Bros. for sexual harassment in the writers' room at the center of her final chapter. In so doing, Miller depicts this contentious issue as evidence that this beloved show inspires multiple and often contradictory feelings in its viewers. Yes, some outright dislike or even hate the show, but many, even those who gag at the slew of gay jokes or at Ross literally saying "not all men" multiple times in the series, reconcile their frustration or anger with Friends to enjoy it nonetheless. In the end, Miller hasn't fully explained why we love the show so much, other than pointing to its "universal" appeal and lessons (though I disagree as a general rule with calling any cultural artifact "universal"), but she has charted the many emotions and investments viewers have poured into Friends for a quarter decade.
Joe Russo (of directing duo The Russo brothers) reports on visiting the set of the upcoming Star Wars live-action show The Mandalorian:
“It’s amazing. We went down there to say hi to Jon [Favrau]. Taika was directing an episode, so we went to hang out with them. Jon is always at the forefront of cutting-edge tech, and he is shooting this in a way that no one has ever shot anything ever before. It’s pretty astounding.”
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina season 2 is due 5 April, with a holiday special dropping in mid-Dec.
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Polygon have put together this list of the 11 funniest Monty Python sketches. The sketch that comes in at number one is exactly the sketch you would expect. So, don’t go into this looking to be surprised.
And finally…
Last week in this newsletter I relayed the news that Starbucks were banning pornography on its in-store wi-fi network. Well, when you bring a gun to a knifefight, expect to see an escalation. YouPorn has announced a ban on all Starbucks products from its offices.
