As the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s inauguration is celebrated in Washington this week, there are headlines in the entertainment news about a miniseries about the Kennedy family that has been pulled from the broadcast schedule. Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes play the President and First Lady. The History Channel announced that it would be showing the miniseries in December of 2009, but after working with the producers to try to ensure its accuracy were still unable to conclude that it fit with their other programming. Now, according to the New York Times, it has also been turned down by Starz, FX, and Showtime.
It is scheduled for broadcast in 30 other countries.
What do you think? Would you watch it?
Regis Philbin has announced that he will leave his daily “Live” show sometime this year. He is 79 years old and has been doing the show for 28 years. His many television appearances have made him the Guiness Book of Records champ with more than 15 thousand hours on the air.
It is not easy to host a show that people welcome into their homes every day. Regis makes it look easy, which is what makes him so good.
So, do you think they’ll have a bunch of guest hosts, as they did before selecting Kelly Ripa to replace Kathy Lee Gifford? Who would you like to see in Regis’ chair?
This is the story of the civil rights movement, from 1952-1965. Interviews and archival footage tell the story of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared school segregation unconstitutional and the Montgomery bus boycott that forced the South to begin to allow equal access in public accommodations. As momentous as those events were, they were even more significant in what came next — decades of social, legal, and cultural upheavals that would lead to the Civil Rights Act, the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia abolishing the laws that prohibited inter-marriage, and, a generation later, the country’s first African-American President. The bigotry is shocking to us today, which is all the more reason we need this documentation. And the heroes are here: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, and more.
The PBS series, its sequel, and the companion volumes by Juan Williams are an indispensable reminder of our past and inspiration for our future. The struggle continues.
I’m not where I want to be.
I’m not where I’m going to be.
But thank God, I’m not where I was.
I love the new Masterpiece Theatre series, “Downton Abbey.” It’s a gripping story of fascinating characters and an enthralling depiction of a society undergoing seismic changes.
English society flourished for centuries based on a system that kept property from being dispersed through “entailment” — land was transferred to the oldest male heir. And anyone who’s ever read a Jane Austen book knows that while that system was great for keeping property in the same family for generations, it was tough on families. In this story, Hugh Bonneville (“Notting Hill”) plays the Earl of the title estate in pre-WWI England. Like many nobility of his generation, he married an American heiress to get the cash he needed to run the estate. But unlike most of them, he fell in love with his wife, played by the ravishing Elizabeth McGovern (“Ordinary People”).
And then they had three daughters. Which meant the property would go to the nearest male relative, a cousin. As was often the practice in these families, a marriage was arranged with the earl’s daughter. All seemed resolved. And then, as this show begins, the earl receives some very bad news. The heir and his father were on the Titanic. And that means that the estate will go to a distant relative they scarcely know who seems, to use the language of the era, unsuitable and disobliging. He arrives, filled with modern ideas and bourgeois habits — and bringing his mother.
And in the tradition of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” there is a whole other set of stories going on among the staff, including the arrival of a new valet for the earl and a footman who wanted that job for himself.
The show has already been a big hit in the UK and I am delighted to hear that there is a second season. In tonight’s episode, there is romantic intrigue for Lady Mary, the oldest daughter, and the arrival of a stranger. I’ll be there!
As the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s inauguration is celebrated in Washington this week, there are headlines in the entertainment news about a miniseries about the Kennedy family that has been pulled from the broadcast schedule. Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes play the President and First Lady. The History Channel announced that it would be showing the miniseries in December of 2009, but after working with the producers to try to ensure its accuracy were still unable to conclude that it fit with their other programming. Now, according to the New York Times, it has also been turned down by Starz, FX, and Showtime.
