When Showtime’s celebrated Homeland wrapped up its first season earlier this week, many critics were upset with its final twists. But AV Club’s TV editor, Todd VanDerWerff, wasn’t one of them. He took to Twitter to stick up for the show, noting that its detractors were largely upset about the plot while its defenders lauded its character development and concluding, “If you’re watching long-form TV for plot, it will disappoint you.” In fact, it’s always fascinating and multi-faceted characters, and the way they grow over time, that hooks us on a show for the long haul. So, with an eye to how vitally important they are to the overall success of a series, we’ve rounded up the year’s best TV characters. Since we can’t watch everything, you’ll want to add anyone we missed in the comments. Read More »
The recent news that Hilary Mantel’sWolf Hall will be adapted into a television show doesn’t surprise us too much. We can only add it to the growing list of book-to-small-screen adaptations that we are anxiously awaiting, joining the planned HBO series based onA Visit From the Goon Squad, and the one on Eugenides’s Middlesex, which HBO seems to have optioned and then forgotten about. However, there are no promises that any book to TV adaptation, even those with great books as starting points, will be any good, and there are hundreds of shows created in this way that aren’t — but in our minds, that just makes the great ones even greater. To get ourselves pumped for the adaptation of Wolf Hall, we’ve collected a list of the ten all-time best (according to us, that is) TV shows adapted from books. Click through to see our picks, and be sure to let us know your own favorites in the comments!
In case you were wondering why fans of both The Hold Steady and Friday Night Lights have been losing their shit all week, here’s what happened: the band’s frontman has announced plans to release a solo album called Clear Heart Full Eyes, an homage to the show that was recorded in Texas and whose title is a play on FNL‘s most memorable catchphrase (“Clear eyes, full hearts can’t lose”). The news got us thinking about how wonderful it would be if our favorite programs were scored by bands we love, which led us to compile the following wish list of TV shows and the musicians who were born to soundtrack them. Add your pairings in the comments. Read More »
Today at Flavorpill, we thought that this little kid dressed up like Carl Fredricksen from Up was quite possibly the cutest thing that we will ever see. We looked at the jaw-dropping views from the world’s tallest observation deck at the Shanghai World Financial Center. We watched an amazing time-lapse video of 47,000 people running across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the start of the New York City Marathon. We listened to a segment from one of Tina Fey’s two new hour-long radio specials, “The Hidden World of Girls.” We had to hit replay on the new “Muppet Show Theme” about five times in a row before locating the Joanna Newsom vocals. We visited Track 61, the long-abandoned train platform that’s underneath the Waldorf-Astoria. We hopped on board of The Guardian‘s world literature tour, which is currently focusing on writers from Argentina. We wondered if Andy Rooney was really “The Godfather of Troll.” We were amused to learn that Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn is working on a Friday Night Lights tribute album. And finally, we were impressed by this 3-D Lego army that was designed by Leon Keer for Chalkfestival in Sarasota, Florida. Don’t the minifigs look real?
Only in its first season now, and just recently renewed for a second, MTV’s Awkward. is one of the most unexpectedly honest series about high school we’ve seen in years. Sure, we all like to gape at the impossibly glamorous teen dramas dreamt up by Josh Schwartz, of The O.C. and Gossip Girl fame. But in real life, high school is raw and uncomfortable and histrionically mundane, and it takes an exceptionally perceptive program to get at the mood of those terrible and wonderful years. In celebration of Awkward., we’ve rounded up the TV shows we think best capture the high school experience.
Hey, Flavorwire readers, did you watch the Emmys last night? There were a few great moments — when Friday Night Lights finally won a few awards, for example — and a few too many jokes that fell flat (why get Jane Lynch to host when you’re only going to let her get in one great zinger about how Entourage explains why she’s a lesbian?). The prevailing mood of the night, however, was neither triumph nor disappointment; it was extreme awkwardness. Relive the mortification and confusion with us as we enumerate the night’s most uncomfortable moments after the jump.
With the 63rd annual Primetime Emmy Awards coming up on Sunday, just about every TV pundit has posted a list of predictions. But here at Flavorpill, we’re less interested in who we think will win than who actually deserves to bring home the trophy — so we’ve put together a roundup of the nominees we’d give the Emmy to, if the decision were up to us. Remind yourself of who’s up for an award here, then peruse our picks after the jump and tell us who you’re pulling for in the comments.
Here’s some good news for those of us who still haven’t gotten over the end of Friday Night Lights and don’t really believe that the rumored movie is ever going to happen: The show’s producers, Peter Berg, Sarah Aubrey, and Liz Heldens, have just sold a new series to NBC. Not much is known about the as yet untitled project, but The Hollywood Reporterdescribes it as “a western story told from a female point of view.” That sounds promising to us, so here’s hoping the show makes it past the development stage — and also that they cast FNL alum Adrianne Palicki… and Taylor Kitsch… and Kyle Chandler… and…
One of the best things we’ve come across lately is this photo of Kyle Chandler — aka Friday Night Lights‘ beloved Coach Eric Taylor — grilling enough meat to serve a famished army and looking utterly stoked about it. What really captured our imagination, though, was Vulture’s inquiry: “Does Coach Taylor–Ron Swanson fan-fic exist yet?” We don’t know that we’d be particularly interested in reading Coach/Ron slash, but it does make sense that they would enjoy each other’s company. Once we started thinking about characters from entirely different TV universes who would be best friends in real life, we couldn’t stop. So, you’ll find ten perfect pairs after the jump; add your own in the comments.
