Everybody's everywhere, all at once

John Mulaney's talk show's a hit, plus 'X-Men '97,' 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' 'X-Men 97,' and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I find Flea…

It’s a busy week in TV, and thus at the newsletter, so everything’s going to be a bit Quibi’er than usual, if you catch my drift, with a super-sized edition of Odds and/or Ends to allow me to cover as much as possible in between Rolling Stone responsibilities. As James Poniewozik used to say when he wrote for Time, let’s go straight to the hail of bullets!

What’s Alan writing?

• Let’s start with my column about the TV show I’ve enjoyed most in recent weeks: John Mulaney’s Netflix talk show stunt Everybody’s in L.A. I wrote about how what was meant to once again encourage viewers to stream Netflix content live instead for the most part turned out to be evergreen in the same way that Somebody Feed Phil! is. (More on Phil in a bit.) I need more of Richard Kind, talk show sidekick in my life, even if it’s just a few times a year. Please.

• My second review was much less enthusiastic: Apple’s Huey Newton miniseries The Big Cigar opts to tell the story of the Black Panther Party founder through the very Argo-esque story — it’s even based on an article by the same reporter whose work inspired Argo — of a pair of Hollywood producers trying to smuggle Huey out of the country by pretending to be making a Blaxploitation film. Despite the usually reliable work from Andre Holland as Newton, there’s not a lot there, and the show really flinches when it comes to some of the real details of the story.

Let’s be upfront about this

Once upon a time, I would have spent this past week shuttling in and out of New York City, rushing from one fancy venue after another for Upfront Week — aka the annual stretch where every TV network announces its upcoming shows and schedules for advertisers and the press. Of course, once upon a time, Upfront Week was defined entirely by the broadcast networks, at a time when broadcast TV still provided the great majority of original TV content. (And, before I began doing this job, the networks basically provided all of it.)

But the TV business, you might have heard, has gone through some pretty radical changes over the last 15 years or so. Schedules don’t really matter. The broadcasters are just trying to hang onto the audiences they have, and in some cases are barely even making scripted shows anymore. Somehow, ABC — which only a few years ago had multiple successful sitcom blocs, with shows like black-ish, Speechless, Fresh Off the Boat, The Goldbergs, and Modern Family — will literally have one scripted show on its fall schedule, Abbott Elementary. Things aren’t quite that severe with the rest of the old guard, but it’s not great. And at this point, the upfront presentations are more about conglomerates promoting multiple platforms at once, so the Disney upfront was as much or more about Disney+, Hulu, etc as it was about the good old-fashioned ABC television network. (Pictured above, for instance, is Kerry Washington standing in front of a giant streaming interface.) So I’ve barely paid attention at all, other than friends who are attending or streaming texting me about various celebrities who appeared on stage. (I got several all-caps “JON HAMM!” messages during the Fox upfront, from friends who know of my great affection for the man behind Jon Hamm’s John Ham.)

I don’t miss sitting through those dog-and-pony shows. But I do miss the days when the broadcast networks mattered, and when they could be relied on to have a bunch of interesting shows every year that made 22 or more episodes. (Sometimes, they even made 27, which is part of a book I recently published, which you may or may not have heard about.)

Odds and/or ends

• Upfront Week brings with it lots of announcements. One of particular interest here: Amazon has ordered another season of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but it will reportedly not feature Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. As we discussed back in February, the season ended on what could be a final note for their versions of John and Jane Smith, an d the premise of the series allows for an anthological approach where we get new Smiths each time out. But Glover and Erskine were so good together, it’s at least a bit disappointing if they’re done playing those roles.

• FX put out an oddly-worded announcement late yesterday: “FX, Hulu and the Estate of James Clavell are working to extend the critically acclaimed global hit drama Shōgun, moving forward to develop the saga with two additional seasons of the drama series.” Given that the press release also says that it’s “FX’s most-watched show ever based on global hours streamed,” this was inevitable, even though these 10 episodes told the complete story of Clavell’s novel — spectacularly, but completely. So now we see if Rachel Kondo and company can justify continuing this story — as opposed to doing some kind of “Shōgun Presents” banner that would allow them to do Tai-Pan and some of Clavell’s other Japanese novels — or if this will, like Big Little Lies Season Two, et al, a misguided attempt to not let a beloved thing end at the right time. (Or, for that matter, whether the whole thing is a scam designed to get Shōgun moved into the drama categories at this year’s Emmys, where it would have a much cleaner path to a lot of trophies.)

• We’re two weeks and three episodes into the new season of Doctor Who, and I’m very, very pleased. I won’t spoil this week’s episode for those who haven’t been able to stream it yet, but it’s another Steven Moffat-penned classic. I grew frustrated after a few years of his stint as showrunner, but he works really well as a Very Special Guest Writer. Ncuti Gatwa remains a delight, and we’ve gotten an effective smorgasbord of subjects and tones, with the absolute goofiness of “Space Babies,” followed by the mix of horror and hope in “The Devil’s Chord,” and now the stripped-down suspense of “Boom.” Feels good to be watching this again.

• Once again, I’m glad I gave X-Men ‘97 a second chance, because the first season turned out to be pretty terrific. That said, I share Matt Singer’s one reservation: that the show’s efforts to squeeze in so many of the comic books’ greatest hits into a single season made the cartoon feel thrilling and eventful, but it also had to give a lot of those stories short shrift. I’d rather have this than a version where Storm was powerless for a whole season, or even multiple seasons. But X-Men could sometimes go too far in the other direction, and I wanted to let certain events breathe more. In particular, the pace at which things happened, and the way that humanity’s attitude towards mutants would do a 180 each time, became unintentionally hilarious because of how quickly each turn happened. On the whole, though, great fun.

• I very belatedly got a chance to see The Fall Guy last night, and now I can join in with my many friends (like Brian Grubb, who expressed this opinion at greater length) who are dismayed that this film — with charismatic and appealing movie stars getting to be charismatic and appealing movie stars, with fun practical action, some deft light comedy, etc. — has been a box office disappointment, thus making it even harder for non-franchise filmmaking for grown-ups. (Or, given how unapologetically dumb it is, perhaps I should say it’s filmmaking for the overgrown kid in all of us?)

• Finally, if you’re enough of a TV nerd to subscribe to this newsletter, you are probably enough of a TV nerd to attend the ATX TV Festival in Austin on the last weekend of May/first weekend of June. I’ll be going for the first time in many years, and am excited to see my critic pals, to chat with makers of excellent television — I’ll be moderating panels with Noah Hawley and Phil Rosenthal, among others, as well as a tribute to the late, great Norman Lear that will include table reads of episodes of Maude and Good Times — and to meet the kinds of super-passionate fans who come to ATX every year. (Oh, and also to enjoy barbecue.) At last count, I’ll be involved in at least five different panels — including one where Kathryn VanArendonk and I will attempt to define what is and isn’t a bottle episode — and will hopefully be signing books at some point. If you’re coming, please say hello!

That’s it for this week! What did everybody else think?