NEWS - C'è poco da ridere! La prossima stagione sarà all'insegna del drama (meno sit-com per tutti)

Articolo di Brian Lowry per "Variety"
Desperate times call for desperate scheduling. And in the case of network comedy, that means breaking with longstanding traditions in seeking to invigorate a signature TV genre that is struggling mightily to find its place in the DVR age. The upcoming 2014-15 season was unveiled during last week’s network upfront presentations, coming on the heels of a year where much pre-season buzz surrounded a glut of high-profile comedies and big names — Michael J. Fox! Robin Williams! — gracing TV with their presence. Many critics glommed onto new shows with “Comedy’s back” abandon, enthusing over half-hours like “Enlisted,” “The Crazy Ones,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “About a Boy.”

While the last two will be back, the pile-up of canceled comedies resembled the carnage in a summer blockbuster. NBC finally got around to pulling the plug on “Community,” and announced a closing run of “Parks and Recreation,” shows whose media footprint always far surpassed their Nielsen resumes.
The real jaw-dropping takeaway from the aggregated lineups, however, is how decades of tradition were discarded, largely because the challenge in launching new comedies has become so formidable.
Toward that end, NBC will shift a drama, “The Blacklist,” to anchor its Thursday lineup at midseason, and kick off the fall with reality competition “The Biggest Loser” in the 8 p.m. hour — the first time the Peacock will be comedy-free to open the night in more than three decades. (NBC did move “The Apprentice” into its 9 p.m. slot during Jeff Zucker’s tenure, generally seen as a Hail Mary pass after years of squandered sitcom development.)
Fox, meanwhile, will break up its longtime Animation Domination block, pairing “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” on Sunday with two live-action sitcoms, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the new “Mulaney,” respectively.
CBS felt compelled to shrink its comedy footprint by an hour, and thanks to its acquisition of Thursday-night football, will get through a chunk of the fall airing only two sitcoms.
During his network’s upfront, ABC entertainment chief Paul Lee described passion as a must-have ingredient for program survival in the modern age, saying of successful shows, “It’s about what you love — what you seek out.”
Sitcoms have still managed to form love connections. But with a few ostentatious exceptions — CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” and to a lesser degree ABC’s “Modern Family” — those bonds have been with smaller audiences, to whom such shows can speak in a more particular way. Other than those Emmy-nominated network hits, the roster of cable award contenders, like “Girls,” “Veep” and “Louie,” draw crowds that would get them canceled between the first and second commercial breaks by any broadcaster.

Echoing Lee, Fox counterpart Kevin Reilly discussed the need for new shows to make noise in order to get noticed. But comedies generally struggle to conjure the kind of noise-making concepts that dramas or reality shows can, which is why new sitcoms have traditionally relied on an existing hit to help lead people into the tent. “Strong lead-ins still matter,” CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler says.
In success, of course, there’s still nothing quite so lucrative as a wildly popular comedy — and even in this day and age, “Big Bang” is a supernova of profits for Warner Bros. Television.
Amid the din of channels crying for attention, however, the sound emanating from such hits, along with the experience of widely shared laughter, looks to be slowly but steadily fading. And if that trend can’t be reversed, sitcoms as a genre could really be the biggest loser.

NEWS -  RIP, non ci sono più i gay effeminati di una volta...

Post di Nico Lang per PolicyMic

"A couple of years ago I sat in the audience for a panel discussion on queer representation in entertainment; the presentation included a breezy tour through the gay history of the media, complete with Powerpoint slides of Rosie, Ellen and old People magazines from when you needed to be on the cover of something to come out. The overview was greeted warmly, until we got to Will and Grace, where one of the show's characters, Jack McFarland, proved a sticking point. Jack, a sassy sidekick whose flamboyance towed the line between camp and parody, has long been a lightning rod of discussion in the community. You could feel that discomfort in the room.

Our tour guide diffused the tension by reminding the mostly-male audience that Jack might be a stereotype, but many of us know a Jack in real life. The audience laughed with delight and recognition. They nodded to friends as if to say, "Oh, yes. That's true." What he didn't say is that many of us are Jacks, but I wondered how many people would laugh at that statement.

I thought of this moment after NBC announced that the network would be pulling Sean Saves the World, the freshman sitcom starring Sean Hayes, who played Jack on Will and Grace. For those who haven't seen the show (read: all of you), Sean Saves the World was about a father forced to take sole guardianship of his estranged (yet adorable!) daughter after her mother abandoned her. The show was NBC's attempt to relive its glory days by borrowing from what worked in the '90s, with Hayes playing nearly the same character, a little older and wiser, but with all the trademark pitfalls. Even the stilted laugh track made it sound like the laughter was echoing in from 15 years ago.

 But in getting (rightly) cancelled by NBC, audiences weren't just leaving '90s sitcoms behind. They were leaving behind the Jack McFarlands, a relic of the Queer as Folk era of gay TV, when a show like Queer as Folk (for all its whitewashed issues) could give us three effeminate gays in its lead cast: Emmett, Ted and Justin. The recent television movement has been a push toward post-gay representation, creating male characters who just so happen to be gay. On the critically lauded Brooklyn Nine-Nine, that's the entire point of Andre Braugher's Captain Holt. His sexuality is as inscrutable as the rest of his persona, a hard-ass who has learned to blend in to survive in a homophobic workforce. The recent new HBO addition Looking was celebrated for the same thing. Although many critics chided it for being dull (which it is), defenders of the show found it liberating that gay characters got to be boring on television just like everyone else.

However, there's a certain type of character that gets the privilege to be post-gay, guys whose sexuality doesn't stand out in the same way that Jack's did. In order to get on television today, gay characters are butching it up, becoming like Captain Holt to prove they can hang with the boys, camouflaged with masculinity. Looking's characters are all fit hipster bros who call each other "dude" a lot. On the recently departed Happy Endings, the schlubby, hairy Max acted as a deconstruction of gay stereotypes. It was a running joke that Max was "less gay" than the show's straight dudes, much like gay characters on Nashville and GCB. This might be what it takes to fit in, but it looks awfully heteronormative.

Even recent shows that depict effeminate male characters use them primarily as the butt of the joke, a Lucy character who is always causing trouble. They act in counterpoint to a straighter man, who is seen as the voice of reason. The now-cancelled Ryan Murphy sitcom The New Normal provided Bryan — a shallow, judgmental television executive — primarily as a counterpoint to his angelically understanding partner David, a doctor who watches football and has no other character traits. David's role is "The Problem Solver." On Modern Family, Mitchell and Cameron have a similar dynamic, but Mitch seems to increasingly resent Cam for his effeminate tomfoolery. Their growing animosity has led many viewers to wonder if they secretly hate each other.

More than Mitchell, it's the community that has a complicated relationship with flamboyancy, much like the guys that I sat on the aforementioned panel with. It's a lot easier to pretend the queens don't exist than try to represent them, or we'd have to admit we have something in common. I remember that my mother once told me how much I reminded her of Jack and I remember how much it bothered me. I never stopped to ask myself why.

In being the newest gay show on TV, many will look to Looking to fix the problems surrounding gay representation and fill in the gaps in our media spectrum. Such is the inherent burden of representing a community, but we need to recognize why those cracks exist in the first place and why certain character types might push our buttons when it comes to masculinity and internalized homophobia. Fixing one TV show won't solve a problem that's bigger than HBO. With True Blood’s Lafayette and Glee's Kurt Hummel on shows that are on their last legs, our effeminate males are quickly becoming an endangered species.

On Girls, Lena Dunham's Hannah recently mourned the death of her complicated and quick-witted editor, David Pressler-Goings, played by the ever-androgynous John Cameron Mitchell. As David ascended to TV heaven to be with Sean Hayes, Hannah recalled that he had been her champion, the only one who believed in her work. TVs Davids, Jacks and Emmetts need champions too. They might not be represented on the air anymore, but it doesn't mean they aren't still here in real life and wondering what happened to their television counterparts".

NEWS - Golden Globes, trionfano "Breaking Bad" e la sorpresa "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"

Best Actor in a TV series – Drama

Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad” *WINNER
Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”
Michael Sheen, “Masters of Sex”
Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”
James Spader, “The Blacklist”

Best TV Series – Drama
“Breaking Bad” *WINNER
“Downton Abbey”
“The Good Wife”
“House of Cards”
“Masters of Sex”

Best Supporting Actor in a Series – Mini-Series or TV Movie

Josh Charles, “The Good Wife”
Rob Lowe, “Behind the Candelabra”
Aaron Paul, “Breaking Bad”
Corey Stoll, “House of Cards”
Jon Voight, “Ray Donovan” *WINNER

Best Actress in a TV Series – Drama

Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”
Tatiana Maslany, “Orphan Black”
Taylor Schilling, “Orange is the New Black”
Kerry Washington, “Scandal”
Robin Wright, “House of Cards” *WINNER

Best Actor – TV Series Comedy or Musical
Jason Bateman, “Arrested Development”
Don Cheadle, “House of Lies”
Michael J. Fox, “The Michael J. Fox Show”
Jim Parsons, “The Big Bang Theory”
Andy Samberg, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” *WINNER

Best Actress in a TV Series – Comedy

Zooey Deschanel, “New Girl”
Edie Falco, “Nurse Jackie”
Lena Dunham, “Girls”
Julia Louis Dreyfus, “Veep”
Amy Poehler, “Parks and Recreation” *WINNER

Best TV Series – Comedy

“The Big Bang Theory”
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” *WINNER
“Girls”
“Modern Family”
“Parks and Recreation”

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series, or TV Movie

Jacqueline Bisset, “Dancing on the Edge” *WINNER
Janet McTeer, “The White Queen”
Hayden Panettiere, “Nashville”
Monica Potter, “Parenthood”
Sofia Vergara, “Modern Family”