Tag: tv

The Sacklers come to Sesame Street as a muppet is revealed to have had an addicted mother

Sesame Street continues its run of excellent, empathetic new muppets to help kids deal with a changing world: after introducing muppets experiencing homelessness, living with autism, and explaining marriage without recourse to gender norms, the show has introduced a muppet whose mother lost custody of her after becoming addicted to drugs.
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Ava DuVernay is directing an HBO adaptation based on Brian Wood’s DMZ

DMZ, an outstanding post-apocalyptic comic written by Brian Wood which came to its satsifying conclusion in 2012, and has been subsequently collected in beautiful deluxe editions (which also reprint my introduction to the series’ third volume) is being adapted as a pilot for HBO by Ava DeVernay, the afrofuturist filmmaker whose work includes A Wrinkle in Time and Selma.
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J Michael Straczynski’s “Becoming Superman”: a memoir of horrific abuse, war crimes, perseverance, trauma, triumph and doing what’s right

J Michael Straczynski (previously) is known for many things: creating Babylon 5, spectacular runs on flagship comics from Spiderman to Superman, incredibly innovative and weird kids’ TV shows like The Real Ghostbusters, and megahits like Sense8; in the industry he’s known as a writing machine, the kind of guy who can write and produce 22 hours of TV in a single season, and he’s also known as a mensch, whose online outreach to fans during the Babylon 5 years set the bar for how creators and audiences can work together to convince studios to take real chances. But in JMS’s new memoir, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood, we get a look at a real-life history that is by turns horrific and terrifying, and a first-person account of superhuman perseverance and commitment to the right thing that, incredibly, leads to triumph
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The nine rules of “Freddish”: the positive, inclusive empathic language of Mr Rogers

From an excerpt from last year’s The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, the rules of “Freddish” — as Mr Rogers’ crewmembers jokingly referred to the rigorous rules that Rogers used to revise his scripts to make them appropriate and useful for the preschoolers in his audience.
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Crowdfunding season four of JourneyQuest: a CC-licensed fantasy-comedy show that treats its fans with respect

Ben writes, “First featured on Boing Boing in 2010, the fan-supported TV series JourneyQuest has continued for nine years(!) and is now Kickstarting a fourth season. It’s an open world with a copyleft license, proving that encouraging sharing, remixing, allowing commercial derivatives, and not treating fans like criminals can still lead to success.”
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Good Omens is amazing

I was already a Terry Pratchett fan and a Neil Gaiman fan in 1990, when their comedic novel Good Omens showed up in the bookstore I worked at, and I dibsed it, took it home over the weekend, read it in huge gulps, and wrote an enthusiastic review on a 3×5 card that I tacked to the bookshelf next to it on the new release rack at the front of the store; I hand-sold hundreds of copies, and have read it dozens of times since.
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Watch: the premiere of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot

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“The Comedian” is the first episode of Jordan Peele’s long awaited, hotly anticipated reboot of “The Twilight Zone.” Peele’s reboot is perfect, absolutely faithful to Rod Serling’s love of complexity, comeuppance, and ambiguity. Love this. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Omniverse CEO rejects piracy accusations, claims that he has a legit, “mind-blowing” 100-year license to stream TV on the internet

Mitch Wagner writes, “Omniverse CEO Jason DeMeo says a piracy lawsuit against his streaming TV service is full of crap. Omniverse faces piracy litigation from an alliance of content companies. But DeMeo says his company has a mind-blowing 100-year deal that allows it to stream TV channels over the Internet. Looks like somebody more than 25 years ago may have traded the crown jewels for a handful of beans, and Omniverse is enjoying the benefit today.”
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Comcast cranks up extra charges on cable bills, again, even for people who signed contracts promising a lower rate

Once again, Comcast is repeating its annual tradition of hiking “broadcast TV” and “regional sports network” hidden fees at a rate far above inflation, typically raising them from $14.50 to $18.25/month, rise of about 25%.
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