I am currently watching television programmes

[guruilla]

Great show for RI folk:

[Cordelia]

RIPS to Sons of Anarchy and The Newsroom.

Really looking forward to the season (series?) finale of The Fall. Gillian Anderson's performance is exemplary.

Agree, as is Jamie Dornan's, who plays the killer. Clever mirroring of characters and events. Half way through--great series.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyFrBC1rAcg

[Nordic]

My latest guilty pleasure: Masterpiece Theatre's "Poldark".

It started out looking like a melodrama with a hunky lead male returning to reclaim his family's decrepit estate. And it is. But it's very much about class, inequality, evil banksters, being a grown-up, the limits to which you can help others, and all sorts of other things.

Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, and there's no season 2! Hopefully it's in production now.

Oh, and the location shooting is beautiful, on these cliffs of Cornwall.

[KUAN]

Loved the original series - could i love the new Demelza?

[stefano]

So I watched The Man in the High Castle... didn't really dig it. For the same reason I don't really like Dick as a writer - he's bad at character-building, I find. In the series no one is at all interesting, least of all the two wooden leads with their rubbish lines (casting was also bad).

I've gone off TV a bit, but will probably tune in when Game of Thrones starts again. Today I saw this trailer for a Hulu thing about a cult that looks worth checking out:

[Nordic]

Loved the original series - could i love the new Demelza?

The new Demelza is quite a captivating lass.

http://m.imdb.com/name/nm1870434/

She has the potential to be a big star. She's got the goods.

[semper occultus]

...no doubt BBC will be milking that one for some time - there's quite a few book in the series...unless the male lead starts getting better offers...

.....did anyone catch that show Aquarius with David Duchovny and would it repay any investment of time / money.....?

( only finally got to watch True Detective a couple of weeks ago which has sort of put me in the mood for something else )

[guruilla]

I enjoyed Aquarius. Helluva lot better than the new X Files anyway, which is a bit like saying "Mmmm, tastes better than a wino's feces," but anyway.

Vinyl is really shit-hot entertainment (sorry, must be re-entering my anal stage or something); I suspect some post-McGowan damage control.



This one has just started but is really strong so far:



Enjoying American Crime Story quite a bit too, which is interesting because almost every character is despicable. I guess that's American realism.

[Schmazo]

How J.J. Abrams and Hulu Brought Stephen King's '11.22.63' to TV
Author and star James Franco on turning the bestselling JFK-assassination thriller into a buzzed-about miniseries

BY ANDY GREENE February 8, 2016

(The key quote by Stephen King relating to this thread is at the end of the article)




When Stephen King first got the idea for a story about a time-traveler trying to save JFK, he was a 24-year-old high school English teacher living in a double-wide trailer and couldn't find anyone to publish his writings outside of cheap Playboy knockoffs like Gent and Cavalier. It would take 40 years for the author to finally publish what would ultimately become the 849-page book 11/22/63 — but it was worth the long wait. The what-if novel sold by the millions and The New York Times named it one of the five best fiction books of 2011; and on February 15th, Hulu will premiere the first episode of an eight-hour miniseries adaptation of King's historical-fantasy opus starring James Franco.

SIDEBAR
fra Watch Unnerving Trailer for Stephen King's '11.22.63' »
The book — about a lonely, divorced high school teacher named Jake Epping that comes across a time portal back to 1958 in the closet of a diner, and spends five years plotting a way to stop President Kennedy's assassination — had a rather rocky first step on its road to the screen. Director Jonathan Demme was the first license to it, though King had complete veto power over every aspect of the project. "He was pretty adamant that it be a theatrical film," says the bestselling author. "It was like, 'Jon, I don't know. This is pretty long and complex.' Making into a movie is like sitting on a suitcase. You try and cram everything in and something always gets left off. Eventually we looked at each other and said, 'This isn't going to work.'"

Not long after Demme moved on from the project, J.J. Abrams made a deal with King to turn it into a miniseries for the streaming service (under the title 11.22.63; the backslashes have been retired). The news that the novel was heading to TV didn't reach James Franco, who was busy preparing for his oral exams in the Yale English department. "I had to be familiar with 150 books," he says. "A lot of them were academic, and when I finished I was finally able to read whatever I wanted. I remember seeing 11/22/63 at an airport bookstore, and just picked it up. When I read it I got this gut feeling, a tingle, that it could be something more." He e-mailed King and inquired about the rights, only to be told the Force Awakens director beat him to it. But an online essay Franco wrote about the book for Vice got the attention of Abrams, who offered him the lead role." I quickly responded and said, 'I'm totally in as long as I can direct a little,'" says Franco. "He said, 'No problem!' ... and that was it."

For Franco, the main appeal of the project was the chance to revisit a very familiar part of American history in a fresh way. "With the time travel element you get to sort of revitalize the whole assassination story," he says. "The possibilities of what happened are reopened." That means when the story actually reaches November 22nd, 1963, the fate of President Kennedy is completely unknown to the viewer. "For my generation that didn't live through the assassination, it's become like an American myth," says Franco. "This is a fresh in."

The difficult task of adapting the massive book into an eight-hour series fell to Los Angeles-based playwright and screenwriter Bridget Carpenter, best known for her work on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. "Reading the book, you are inside the mind of Jake Epping and privy to his thoughts," she says. "Unless you do a voiceover, which I didn't want to do, you're severely limited. If you don't hear somebody's thoughts you're just looking at a handsome man staring at a window." Early on, she made the crucial decision to take an extremely minor character from the book (Bill Turcotte, played by George MacKay) and make him a sidekick for Epping throughout much of the series. "That was brilliant on Bridget's part," says King. "They're talking to each other and we're listening in."

Stephen King
MediaPunch/Rex
Even with a running time that exceeds eight hours, Carpenter was forced to jettison some aspects of the plot. Epping travels to 1960 (as opposed to 1958) and a section of the book where he interacts with the main characters of It right after their first battle with Pennywise the clown was completely cut. "It didn't push the narrative forward," she says. "It was a little too atmospheric and not plot-driven. People may be a little disappointed, but we have so many Stephen King easter eggs [here] that I hope make up for it."

Everyone involved reveled in the freedom that Hulu provided. Free from the restrictions of network television, they were able to make each episode as long as it needed to be (they range from 45 minutes to an hour), and there was no need to create mini-cliffhangers every seven minutes for commercials. "So many movies are like short stories," says King. "But long form TV is really like 19th-century novels, where everything has a chance to stand and breathe a bit. It's hard to go back to episodic TV after watching something like this. Even a pretty good show like The Blacklist looks a little pressed together."

King has always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but after spending so much time delving into the project Carpenter developed a different take. "I was a lone-gunman theorist at first," she says. "But I have turned 180 degrees. My theory is that he was part of the CIA and perhaps went rogue, and there was a cover-up because of the national embarrassment that would have caused." Franco is quite torn on the matter. "I'm easily swayed, and every theory has some plausibility," he says. "But then you read something like James Ellroy's American Tabloid, you're like, 'Oh damn, there is a conspiracy!'"

When presenting the character of Oswald, however, Carpenter stuck as closely to the known historical record as possible and made sure to leave his motivation for the crime (which for many has never been spelled out in a satisfying way) as vague as possible. "I don't believe in using explanations," she says. "I thought it would be a disservice to the event that happened if, even in a fictional story, we were weaving a tale. That idea insulted my intelligence."

King had complete veto power over the script, the cast and nearly every aspect of the production, but he claims he never exercised it once. "He read every draft, and he watched every cut," says Carpenter. "He was an unbelievable supporter. It blew my mind: He's writing like a book a month, and then he would call and go, 'Hey, have you seen Mr. Robot? It’s really good!' And I’m like when do you have time to do this? This is crazy!"

SIDEBAR
Stephen King Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview »
The only aspect of of the show King couldn't control was how it was portioned out to the public. He wanted all eight episodes to be released at once so fans could binge; Hulu overruled him and is opting for a weekly rollout, with new episodes appearing on Mondays. "Getting to see one thing and getting excited about seeing it next week is a disappearing experience in our culture," Carpenter says. "All my favorite shows come out weekly."

11.22.63 follows the successful TV adaptation of King's 2009 Under The Dome, and more could be coming in the near future, including a long-awaited adaptation of his seven book fantasy series The Dark Tower, which might be split between movies and mini-series, an unprecedented move. "We're living in the golden age of TV," the author says. "There's more than any one person could reasonably watch. It's just this glorious buffet. And I love it."



http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/how ... v-20160208

[Nordic]

The whole idea of that ^^^^ makes me want to puke.


As far as The Night Manager, it was a hell of a book. I've heard good things about this series and can't wait to see it.

[Cordelia]

Just (reluctantly) finished the 2nd season of 'The Fall' and glad to read:

Filming has officially begun in Belfast for the third and final season of The Fall, which is expected to air later this year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media ... 97661.html

"Swedish actor Krister Henriksson, known for his role as Kurt Wallander in the Swedish version of the show, will be joining the cast........"

Can't imagine in what dark corners writer/creator/director Allan Cubitt has lived, but he's created a brilliant cat-and-mouse psychological thriller.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyFrBC1rAcg[/quote]

[redsock]

Definitely looking forward to The Fall's third season.

I have been enjoying Baskets, starring Zach Galifianakis as Chip Baskets, a failed professional clown who gets a job with the local rodeo in Bakersfield, California. Louie Anderson is superb playing his mother.

[MinM]

Enjoying American Crime Story quite a bit too, which is interesting because almost every character is despicable. I guess that's American realism.

An interesting tidbit from the show (imported from another thread: Holy Hijacking, Hugh)...

...Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras, the so-called “Frogman Case.”...

CIA Drug Asset

Along the Southern Front, in Costa Rica, the drug evidence centered on the forces of Eden Pastora, another leading contra commander...

...Three months later, in September 1982, Gomez started his CIA assignment in Costa Rica.
Years later, convicted drug trafficker Carlos Cabezas charged that in the early 1980s, Ivan Gomez was the CIA agent in Costa Rica who was overseeing drug-money donations to the contras.

Gomez “was to make sure the money was given to the right people [the contras] and nobody was taking ... profit they weren’t supposed to,” Cabezas stated publicly.

But the CIA sought to discredit Cabezas at the time because he had trouble identifying Gomez’s picture and put Gomez at one meeting in early 1982 before Gomez started his CIA assignment.

While the CIA was able to fend off Cabezas’s allegations by pointing to these discrepancies, Hitz’s report revealed that the CIA was nevertheless aware of Gomez’s direct role in drug-money laundering, a fact the agency hid from Sen. Kerry’s investigation in 1987...

Joseph Fernandez, who had been the CIA’s station chief in Costa Rica, later confirmed to congressional Iran-Contra investigators that Nunez “was involved in a very sensitive operation” for North’s “Enterprise.” The exact nature of that NSC-authorized activity has never been divulged...

@UPROXX

Yes, O.J. Simpson really made a 1994 NBC pilot titled Frogmen that was locked away forever http://uproxx.it/1UeS3Vm
11:13 PM - 15 Mar 2016

The seventh episode of The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story focused mainly on the infamous bloody glove moment at the trial, where Christopher Darden directed Simpson to try it on only to have the plan backfire when the glove appeared too tight. It was an important moment in the trial, and therefore an important moment in the series, but it was completely overshadowed — for me, at least — by a brief discussion Marcia Clark had with Christopher Darden’s friends about O.J. Simpson’s starring role in a scrapped 1994 NBC pilot titled Frogmen.

Yes, Frogmen was a real thing. It was described at the time as a kind of A-Team-esque series about beach bum former Navy SEALs. If you read that sentence and thought, “Well that sounds like an incredible television show,” there’s a good reason for that: It sounds like an incredible television show. From a 2000 Los Angeles Times article about the pilot:

The premise centers on a team of Navy SEALs who, as described in the pilot, “take on special assignments for the government and private sector.”

Simpson plays their leader, John “Bullfrog” Burke, who goes to Costa Rica with four fellow ex-SEALs seeking to rescue a former friend who married Burke’s ex-wife. Burke’s crack team includes a ladies’ man, a master of disguise and a skilled con man. Burke, meanwhile, fronts his operation out of a dive shop in Malibu. The final shot features the group having returned triumphant from their mission–grabbing surfboards and plunging into the surf.

It’s like The A-Team meets Point Break. Starring O.J. Simpson. As a man named Bullfrog. That would be like if someone made a show today about… actually, I don’t have an analogy here. This show was a snowflake. It never made it to air, though, because Simpson was arrested and charged with double murder while Warner Bros. — the studio that was producing the two-hour project — was putting the finishing touches on it. But it almost made its way into the trial anyway due to one scene, in particular.

The show was discussed, but never introduced as evidence, during Simpson’s criminal trial for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. In a chilling echo of those killings, a scene in the two-hour movie meant to launch the action-drama series features Simpson’s character grabbing what he believes to be an intruder (the young woman turns out to be his daughter) and momentarily holding a knife to her throat.

As for the current state of Frogmen, don’t expect to see it pop up on cable any time soon. All that exists of the project is a 25-minute sales presentation video, which Warner Bros. has locked away in the deepest, darkest part of its vault. (The writer of the Los Angeles Times story, Brian Lowry, was allowed to view the video by a source close to the project.) And they appear to have no intention of releasing it. If they didn’t cash in on the surefire ratings bonanza at the time of the trial, one assumes they’re perfectly happy to let it keep collecting dust.

There is one more interesting fact about Frogmen, though. In addition to Simpson, the pilot also starred an actor named Evan Handler as “a reluctant member of the team.” Handler went on to appear on shows like Californication and Sex and the City, and you can catch him on television right now as… Simpson lawyer Alan Dershowitz on The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

Ryan Murphy, you sly dog.

http://uproxx.com/tv/oj-simpson-frogmen/

keywords: frogmen, costa rica, iran-contra, nbc

BTW this should be a good one...

@VanityFair Mar 30

Martin Sheen hopes his new 'OJ Is Innocent' docuseries will find Nicole Simpson’s killer http://vntyfr.com/JlkBmKR

[MinM]

How J.J. Abrams and Hulu Brought Stephen King's '11.22.63' to TV
Author and star James Franco on turning the bestselling JFK-assassination thriller into a buzzed-about miniseries

BY ANDY GREENE February 8, 2016

(The key quote by Stephen King relating to this thread is at the end of the article)




When Stephen King first got the idea for a story about a time-traveler trying to save JFK, he was a 24-year-old high school English teacher living in a double-wide trailer and couldn't find anyone to publish his writings outside of cheap Playboy knockoffs like Gent and Cavalier. It would take 40 years for the author to finally publish what would ultimately become the 849-page book 11/22/63 — but it was worth the long wait. The what-if novel sold by the millions and The New York Times named it one of the five best fiction books of 2011; and on February 15th, Hulu will premiere the first episode of an eight-hour miniseries adaptation of King's historical-fantasy opus starring James Franco.

SIDEBAR
fra Watch Unnerving Trailer for Stephen King's '11.22.63' »
The book — about a lonely, divorced high school teacher named Jake Epping that comes across a time portal back to 1958 in the closet of a diner, and spends five years plotting a way to stop President Kennedy's assassination — had a rather rocky first step on its road to the screen. Director Jonathan Demme was the first license to it, though King had complete veto power over every aspect of the project. "He was pretty adamant that it be a theatrical film," says the bestselling author. "It was like, 'Jon, I don't know. This is pretty long and complex.' Making into a movie is like sitting on a suitcase. You try and cram everything in and something always gets left off. Eventually we looked at each other and said, 'This isn't going to work.'"

Not long after Demme moved on from the project, J.J. Abrams made a deal with King to turn it into a miniseries for the streaming service (under the title 11.22.63; the backslashes have been retired). The news that the novel was heading to TV didn't reach James Franco, who was busy preparing for his oral exams in the Yale English department. "I had to be familiar with 150 books," he says. "A lot of them were academic, and when I finished I was finally able to read whatever I wanted. I remember seeing 11/22/63 at an airport bookstore, and just picked it up. When I read it I got this gut feeling, a tingle, that it could be something more." He e-mailed King and inquired about the rights, only to be told the Force Awakens director beat him to it. But an online essay Franco wrote about the book for Vice got the attention of Abrams, who offered him the lead role." I quickly responded and said, 'I'm totally in as long as I can direct a little,'" says Franco. "He said, 'No problem!' ... and that was it."

For Franco, the main appeal of the project was the chance to revisit a very familiar part of American history in a fresh way. "With the time travel element you get to sort of revitalize the whole assassination story," he says. "The possibilities of what happened are reopened." That means when the story actually reaches November 22nd, 1963, the fate of President Kennedy is completely unknown to the viewer. "For my generation that didn't live through the assassination, it's become like an American myth," says Franco. "This is a fresh in."

The difficult task of adapting the massive book into an eight-hour series fell to Los Angeles-based playwright and screenwriter Bridget Carpenter, best known for her work on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. "Reading the book, you are inside the mind of Jake Epping and privy to his thoughts," she says. "Unless you do a voiceover, which I didn't want to do, you're severely limited. If you don't hear somebody's thoughts you're just looking at a handsome man staring at a window." Early on, she made the crucial decision to take an extremely minor character from the book (Bill Turcotte, played by George MacKay) and make him a sidekick for Epping throughout much of the series. "That was brilliant on Bridget's part," says King. "They're talking to each other and we're listening in."

Stephen King
MediaPunch/Rex
Even with a running time that exceeds eight hours, Carpenter was forced to jettison some aspects of the plot. Epping travels to 1960 (as opposed to 1958) and a section of the book where he interacts with the main characters of It right after their first battle with Pennywise the clown was completely cut. "It didn't push the narrative forward," she says. "It was a little too atmospheric and not plot-driven. People may be a little disappointed, but we have so many Stephen King easter eggs [here] that I hope make up for it."

Everyone involved reveled in the freedom that Hulu provided. Free from the restrictions of network television, they were able to make each episode as long as it needed to be (they range from 45 minutes to an hour), and there was no need to create mini-cliffhangers every seven minutes for commercials. "So many movies are like short stories," says King. "But long form TV is really like 19th-century novels, where everything has a chance to stand and breathe a bit. It's hard to go back to episodic TV after watching something like this. Even a pretty good show like The Blacklist looks a little pressed together."

King has always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but after spending so much time delving into the project Carpenter developed a different take. "I was a lone-gunman theorist at first," she says. "But I have turned 180 degrees. My theory is that he was part of the CIA and perhaps went rogue, and there was a cover-up because of the national embarrassment that would have caused." Franco is quite torn on the matter. "I'm easily swayed, and every theory has some plausibility," he says. "But then you read something like James Ellroy's American Tabloid, you're like, 'Oh damn, there is a conspiracy!'"

When presenting the character of Oswald, however, Carpenter stuck as closely to the known historical record as possible and made sure to leave his motivation for the crime (which for many has never been spelled out in a satisfying way) as vague as possible. "I don't believe in using explanations," she says. "I thought it would be a disservice to the event that happened if, even in a fictional story, we were weaving a tale. That idea insulted my intelligence."

King had complete veto power over the script, the cast and nearly every aspect of the production, but he claims he never exercised it once. "He read every draft, and he watched every cut," says Carpenter. "He was an unbelievable supporter. It blew my mind: He's writing like a book a month, and then he would call and go, 'Hey, have you seen Mr. Robot? It’s really good!' And I’m like when do you have time to do this? This is crazy!"

SIDEBAR
Stephen King Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview »
The only aspect of of the show King couldn't control was how it was portioned out to the public. He wanted all eight episodes to be released at once so fans could binge; Hulu overruled him and is opting for a weekly rollout, with new episodes appearing on Mondays. "Getting to see one thing and getting excited about seeing it next week is a disappearing experience in our culture," Carpenter says. "All my favorite shows come out weekly."

11.22.63 follows the successful TV adaptation of King's 2009 Under The Dome, and more could be coming in the near future, including a long-awaited adaptation of his seven book fantasy series The Dark Tower, which might be split between movies and mini-series, an unprecedented move. "We're living in the golden age of TV," the author says. "There's more than any one person could reasonably watch. It's just this glorious buffet. And I love it."



http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/how ... v-20160208

Isn't it interesting that after Franco saves JFK, the world goes totally to hell?

In this new history, Nixon becomes the next president after JFK. They don't say what
happened to the USA, or when, but JFK's presidency was most likely a complete failure
because his 1960 opponent Nixon is next elected. Obviously, the public realized that
they should have elected RMN instead of JFK!

According to the story, the *only* historical change was that JFK was NOT assassinated,
and went on to serve a second term. This places the blame for the horrific conditions
in the USA squarely on JFK. He is the catalyst for disaster.

The lesson taught here by the not too subtle Mr. King; is that JFK's murder was actually
a good thing for the country. Kinda makes me think of the upper level SS's well publicized
assertion that due to JFK's "reckless" behavior and "death wish" it was not the SS fault
that JFK was assassinated. It was JFK himself who was responsible for his own death.

Perhaps the government cover-up was to hide the fact that he actually shot *himself* in the
head -- yet another "lone gunman..."

Edited by Tom Neal, Today, 11:44 PM.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... 728&page=3

JFK disinfo in multi-media

[Nordic]

Watching "The Fall" now, based on all the recommends here. Thanks, it's very good. And keeps getting better. Stayed up WAY too late the other night watching "one more episode" a few times.

Just realized I'd spent the last 20 minutes or so thinking about it and decided to post about it here. Not that I can really say anything without being a spoiler!