Archive for August, 2010

"Anarchy" at the TCA: Kurt Sutter, Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal. Credit: Ray Mickshaw

Pretend for a moment that your favorite cable channels are people. The idea isn’t all that weird when you consider that discussing a channel’s brand identity is, in a sense, outlining its personality. HBO, for example, has a closet full of designer suits and couture dresses. AMC also dresses well, but has a hidden life involving hard liquor and drugs.

Then there’s FX. FX has a five o’clock shadow by 10 a.m.  FX is a beer and whiskey drinker, isn’t averse to getting into a scrap now and then, and has a rowdy sense of humor. If you need dirty work done, you call FX. He is the guy you love to hang with, but you’d stop short of inviting him to a formal affair.

That image is both to FX’s benefit and its detriment.  It’s home to some of the brashest, most thoughtfully-written series on television. That tradition began with “The Shield” and lives on with “Sons of Anarchy,” kicking off its third season Sept. 7 at 10.  In January it adds “Lights Out,” a drama about a boxer whose career is in a downward spiral, and “Terriers,” which follows a pair of down-on-their-luck private investigators, arrives Sept. 8.

FX just picked up Louis C.K.’s comedy “Louie” for a second 13-episode season, and is adding “Alabama” to its lineup. The latter take space in space, and was created by “Reno 911‘s”  Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon.

Meanwhile, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is getting a syndicated run on Comedy Central, which could set up its sixth season (starting Sept. 16) to be its most successful so far.

FX has hit its stride, in other words. Yet, it’s becoming rarer for FX’s dramas and casts to be invited to the industry’s most glamorous parties.  “Sons’” Katey Sagal nailed her role in season two, and in the springtime, Timothy Olyphant‘s portrayal of “Justified‘s” quietly simmering U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens seemed to be all that anyone could talk about. The fact that neither received an Emmy nod for their performances is a crime.

This is the curse of having great shows on a network most often associated with the words “raw” and “gritty,” terms that make awards voters shy. “Sons”  is about an outlaw biker club. Emmy can’t have that up there with a meth-cooking teacher, a serial killer and vampires, can it?. What would people think?

But FX president John Landgraf seemed unfazed by the snubs as he introduced panels for his network’s fall series on Tuesday. Landgraf considers himself in the business of promoting what he calls the literature of the common man and common woman, and he’s succeeding in that goal.

Look at the names on the network’s roster: Louis C.K., not only a great comedian but an ace comedy writer and director. Kurt Sutter, executive producer of “Sons of Anarchy,” whose story arcs display a fearlessness otherwise absent in the realm of basic cable or, really, anyplace else on TV.

“Boomtown’s” Graham Yost, the formidable brains behind “Justified.” Shawn Ryan, who has the midseason cop drama “Ride Along” coming to Fox in addition to FX’s private eye dramedy “Terriers,” for which he’s joined forces with screenwriter Ted Griffin (Ocean’s Eleven, Ravenous).  In the world of television literature, they are all amazing authors.

So when the cast of “Sons of Anarchy” was asked for reaction to the Emmy snubs, nobody in the room was surprised when a few F-bombs were dropped — but then, none of the cast seemed too broken up about it either.

“Every year when the Emmys are announced, the stories that come out — half the
stories are about the nominations, and the other half of the stories are about the absurdity of the nominations and the snubs,” Sutter told critics. “So to me, perhaps that suggests that the system is somewhat flawed.”

“Yeah,” said Tommy Flanagan, who plays SAMCRO member Filip ‘Chibs’ Telford on the show. “Emmy, shmemmy.”

Read on for more from FX’s Press Tour day.

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Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice answers questions at TCA.

Monday was the day. It was really supposed to happen. Honest, and for reals! Many of us thought — nay, hoped — Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice and Entertainment President Kevin Reilly were going to announce the new judges for “American Idol,” putting to rest all of the speculative burbling in the trades through the weekend.

Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler, seated side by side at the judges table, delivering scathing critiques from behind gigantic Coca Cola cups! Can’t you just see it?

Granted, we are not six-year-olds on Christmas morning, convinced that behind that soft, wrapped package of tube socks our parents have hidden a rocket ship. We cover television and are used to keeping our expectations low.

That’s for good reason. Not long after the trades began quoting unnamed insiders swearing J. Lo and Tyler were in there, other reporters slowed their roll by saying the contracts are still being hammered out. And it appears that the T’s had not been crossed, the I’s dotted or the dollar bills counted by Monday morning.

“The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty right now is that no one has signed a deal yet on either side of the camera to join ‘American Idol’ next year who wasn’t on it last year,” Rice said. “And I know that that is it’s not particularly a fun announcement. It’s certainly not the choice I would have made, but it is the truth as we sit here today. There are no signed deals with anybody.”

Rice added, “I can tell you that much of the information that has been written is accurate. And some of the information that has been written is wildly inaccurate.”

Did he tell us which tidbits were on the money? Even hint at it? Of course not. We came at him from the front, the side, directly and obliquely. We tried through the normally gregarious Reilly. No luck.

“If variations of ‘I’m not going to get into conversations we’ve had with people’ were a drinking game,” one critic tweeted, “TCA members (would) be dead.”

What Rice did say was that when the main audition rounds kick off in September, the judges will be in place and ready to make dreams come true or irreparably crush hopeful spirits.  Meanwhile, Mr. Tyler, currently on tour with Aerosmith, reportedly let a few details slip through his trademark lips over the weekend.

“This beautiful girl from Fox came up to me and made an offer. I honored her offer… and it’s just a work in progress,”  Tyler said in a radio interview quoted  in a Billboard.com article.

So it remains, for the time being. Keep reading for the day’s other takeaways…

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