TIME Television

Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka Will Be on Freak Show

Neil Patrick Harris, David Burtka
Neil Patrick Harris, right, and David Burtka attend the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s 13th Annual "An Enduring Vision" benefit at Cipriani's Wall Street on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014, in New York. Charles Sykes—Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

The two will appear on the hit FX series toward the end of the season

Hollywood can’t get enough of Neil Patrick Harris. On top of all the other appearances and host spots NPH has snagged this year, the actor and his husband David Burtka will both appear in episodes of American Horror Story: Freak Show later this season.

Harris will join the cast of Freak Show for the 11th and 12th episodes, TV Line reports, in which the How I Met Your Mother star will play a chameleon salesman. Burtka, on the other hand, will appear in the season finale during a “sexy storyline” with Jessica Lange’s character.

Harris is also hosting the Oscars in 2015.

[TV Line]

TIME Television

There’s a TV Version of American Gigolo Coming

Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo, 1980.
Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo, 1980. Paramount

Paramount TV will produce it

The 1980s classic American Gigolo is set to become the latest film adapted for television by Paramount TV. The thriller’s original producer Jerry Bruckheimer will be involved in the project as an executive producer, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Bruckheimer produced the 1980s film starring Richard Gere as a male escort in Los Angeles who falls for Lauren Hutton’s character amid scandal. “With its signature noir aesthetic, American Gigolo has remained a deeply entertaining, psychological thriller and I’m thrilled to partner with [Paramount’s] Brad [Grey] and Amy [Powell] on remaking it into a television series,” Bruckheimer said in a statement.

Gigolo is one of many films getting a small screen reboot by Paramount TV. A television version of the 2002 film Minority Report is also in the works. Paramount TV is also producing Grease live for Fox, Yahoo reports.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

TIME Television

You’ll Never Guess What Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Are Calling Their Election Night Coverage

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts to host Jon Stewart during a taping of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Tuesday, July 15, 2014, in New York. Frank Franklin II—ASSOCIATED PRESS

Both of their shows will broadcast and livestream on Election Night

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not only broadcasting live episodes of their shows on Election Day, but the specials have—hands down—the best names.

CNN’s “Election Night in America” sounds downright boring when compared to The Daily Show’s “Democalypse 2014: America Remembers It Forgot to Vote” and The Colbert Report’s “Midterms ‘014: Detour to Gridlock: An Exciting Thing That I Am Totally Interested In—Wait! Don’t Change the Channel. Look at this Video of a Duckling Following a Cat Dressed Like a Shark Riding a Roomba! ‘014!”

No, seriously. That’s what it’s called.

The coverage will air back-to-back on election night on Comedy Central. Viewers can also stream coverage on Comedy Central’s website and mobile app. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show.

TIME Television

Richie Rich Series Is Heading to Netflix

The live-action series will debut in early 2015

Soon you’ll be able to watch Richie Rich on Netflix.

The 1980’s cartoon is getting a live-action reboot to be hosted exclusively on Netflix, The Wrap reports. The half-hour comedy series will have a 21-episode run, debuting in early 2015.

The show will star Jake Brennan, known for his appearance in the 2013 thriller Dark Skies. The plot varies a bit from the classic tale of a young boy who has everything and more, with Brennan’s Richie falling into extreme wealth after inventing new green technology. AwesomenessTV, a DreamWorks Animation-owned multi-channel network that makes kid-friendly shows and videos, is producing the show.

Here’s hoping this version is better than the 1990s film starring Macaulay Culkin.

[The Wrap]

TIME Television

Amy Poehler Grilled George R.R. Martin on Game of Thrones Trivia Last Night

Find out how well Martin knows his own characters

Quick, who said it: “When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.”

George R.R. Martin knew the answer when he stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers last night. The author was promoting his new book (no, not that one), The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones. He quickly found himself in a verbal duel of honor with Amy Poehler, who challenged him to find out exactly how well he knew his characters.

Poehler and Meyers took turns quizzing Martin with lines from his very long, multi-volume work and asking which character said it. For the most part Martin nailed it, but he apparently completely forgot about the Westeros 9 meteorologist who first predicted that winter is coming.

TIME Television

Watch Blood Orange’s Beautiful, Choreographed Performance on Jimmy Kimmel

The singer (real name: Dev Hynes) made his network TV debut

Last night, singer and producer Dev Hynes — best known as Blood Orange — dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform on network TV for the first time. First, he performed “It Is What It Is,” from his 2013 album Cupid Deluxe, surrounded by choreographed dancers. About a minute in, he’s joined by Samantha Urbani, his girlfriend, on vocals.

Later, Hynes returned to the stage to perform a soulful, solo rendition of “Time Will Tell,” from the same album. Make sure to watch all the way through the end so you can enjoy his dance moves:

TIME Television

Jane the Virgin Is the Keeper of This Fall Season

Jaime Camil as Rogelio and Gina Rodriguez as Jane in Jane The Virgin.
Jaime Camil as Rogelio and Gina Rodriguez as Jane in Jane The Virgin. Patrick Wymore—The CW

The accidental-pregnancy premise sounds absurd--and it is--but Jane's playful, good-hearted humor makes the unbelievable believable.

The networks, with their vast new fall schedules, are like a species of sea turtle that lays dozens of eggs to perpetuate the species. Some of the eggs never hatch. Some hatchlings are eaten by sharks. Others scamper to shore and carried off by seagulls. Only a hardy few make it.

Just so, when I see the new network pilots, there are many I know I’m done with after one episode. Others go on a wait-and-see list, but as the weeks pass, I drop one and another off the list, from the truly bad to fine-but-the not-good-enough-to-make-time-for. I’m left with a few survivors on my season pass list: last season, e.g., Sleepy Hollow, Brooklyn 9-9 and Trophy Wife (which, alas, was devoured by the orca of cancellation).

We’re a month into the 2014 season, and so far, Jane the Virgin is my turtle.

The CW series–a comic telenovela about a chaste woman who’s inseminated through a gynecologist’s mistake–had a strong, elegantly constructed pilot, and the luminous Gina Rodriguez was instantly winning as the title character. But a pilot is only a pilot: what’s won me over is that, having seen four episodes (next week’s included), each is as good as or better than the last. Here’s why:

This Show Is Having Fun. There’s a difference between a show being fun, or trying to be–which can sometimes be a forced exercise–and communicating a sense that its makers are having the time of their lives. Jane in its early days has something in common with other fresh, full-of-voice network hours like Scandal and The Good Wife: a sense of play. The rico-suave voiceover and cheeky screen captions bounce commentary off the storylines, and the show gets a particular kick out of visual and dialogue-based twists, as when Jane and her fiance have a conversation seemingly related to having sex for the first time, which takes a weird turn (“I promise it’ll be quick,” he says, “in and out”) until we see he’s accompanied her to an appointment. And the episode-three musical sequence where a guilt-wracked Jane imagines her entire church scolding her for considering losing her virginity–complete with a Clutch Cargo-style solo from a Virgin Mary statue–is one of the great TV moments of 2014.

Jane’s a Virgin, but Not a Saint. Jane has her reasons for waiting until marriage–guilt, family influence (pro and con), a certain personal cautiousness–but the show doesn’t make her a paragon; she’s just a sharp, complex young woman figuring out how she wants her life to go. She’s still a sexual being. She can be “judgey,” she admits, but she’s not a moralizer, and she’s self-aware of her judginess. The show foregrounds her virginity–it’s in the title, after all–but it doesn’t portray it as either a burden or a crusade.

It’s Culturally Specific. And by that, I don’t just mean, “It’s a show about Latino Americans.” It is, and the diversity’s welcome on TV; but it also has a very particular feel for things like Catholic culture in the 21st century, the generational differences in Jane’s family and her place in all of it. It’s the difference between a show that feels like it takes place in the world, and one that feels like it takes place on a TV set.

It’s a Soap Without Soap Opera Villains. Jane the Virgin is pretty plainly not going to skimp on the telenovela twists–beyond the title predicament, we’ve already seen a guy defenestrated and impaled on an ice sculpture–but it plays them out with characters who react genuinely. There isn’t, so far anyway, much mustache-twirling or vampy scheming, even among the antagonists and competing love interests; there’s a sense that on some level, everyone has good intentions, which makes for more interesting conflict. And the multigenerational dynamic among Jane, her mother and her abuelita is really something: Grandma is showing herself to be more than the pious scold you might have guessed from the opening “flower” scene, while Jane’s cautionary tale of a mom seem, at heart, to genuinely want to do right, even when she seems more like the child in the relationship. It all goes a long way toward making the unbelievable believable.

If you’ve been holding off because the show sounded ludicrously soapy, give Jane a shot. And if you didn’t want to commit for fear of getting your heart broken, good news: The CW has decided to carry the show to term, as it were, with a full season order. Whatever your position on virginity itself, Jane is worth keeping.

TIME Television

2015 Will Be the Last Time Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Host the Golden Globes

"There's nowhere to go but down!"

The 2015 Golden Globes will be bittersweet for fans of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.

While promoting her book Yes, Please on the Today Show Tuesday, the Parks and Recreation star said that January will mark the “third and final” time she and Fey co-host the awards show.

“It’s the law of diminishing returns, which is why this is our last time,” Poehler said. “Unless you want to be a perennial host, there’s nowhere to go but down!”

But could this be the “farewell tour” that keeps on going? Poehler joked, “We’ll be the Jay Z of the Globes and never retire.”

You can watch Poehler make the announcement below:

 

TIME Television

Melissa McCarthy Was Robbed When She First Got to Hollywood

The thief ran off with her mascara, she told Jimmy Kimmel

When Bridesmaids star Melissa McCarthy first got to Hollywood, she was held up at a dry cleaners. But she was more devastated the thief took her makeup than anything else, she told Jimmy Kimmel on his ABC talk show Monday.

The police later caught the man who robbed her, she added, and put him behind bars. McCarthy is on the big screen right now in St. Vincent in which she appears alongside Bill Murray.

TIME Comedy

Watch the Trailer for Chelsea Peretti’s Netflix Comedy Special

"Looks like this comedian's probably gonna be telling it like it is"

Between the title of her forthcoming Netflix comedy special, Chelsea Peretti: One of the Greats, and her claim, in its trailer, to be “a direct vessel of God,” Chelsea Peretti is all exaggerated bravado and tongue-in-cheek swagger. But the gag isn’t unwarranted — the writer/actress/comedian has consistently proven worthy of praise.

To name a few of her accolades and accomplishments: She’s been listed as a comedian to watch by Variety, Vanity Fair, and Comedy Central. She was one of TIME’s Best Twitter Feeds of 2013. Her podcast, Call Chelsea Peretti, debuted at No. 1 on the iTunes comedy charts. She’s written for Parks and Recreation, appeared on Louie and Kroll Show, and currently plays Gina Linetti on Brooklyn Nine-Nine alongside costars Andy Samberg and Terry Cruz.

In the trailer for her stand-up special, Peretti is deliciously crass, wondering how to “de-dick” a banana for public consumption, mocking hot girls’ insecurity, and equating fedoras to the most egregious of offenses. Of her decision to leave the Parks and Recreation gig to focus on standup, she told Cosmopolitan, “When I look at stand-up I don’t think there’s a lot of people out there like me and I didn’t just want that to fall away with the writing workload.” By the looks of it, it was a very good decision.

The special airs on Netflix on Nov. 14.

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