There was a time when the ideal television audience was said to be between 18 and 49 years old. Anyone reading this column knows that I sailed past that lighthouse some time ago. I may have reached the point where I no longer bring much relevance or resonance to the conversation. I have much more fun writing about the history of television and pop culture than surveying the current scene.
On many levels, I don’t want to be “that old guy.” I want to spare my readers the common side effects of advancing years, the tendency to repeat oneself and to live in the past. And, perhaps most importantly, the inability to write knowledgeably, respectfully and passionately about subjects that motivate and excite younger audiences.
It’s also worth noting that I am departing a field that has changed under my feet. I used to joke that I covered a 20th-century medium (television) in a 19th-century medium (newspapers). Knee deep in the 21st century, both still endure, but bear little resemblance to their former incarnations.
The television world that I have covered for so long appears to reinvent or at least redefine itself on a daily basis. And every day there is more of it.
When I began this column, my job was to answer the question “What’s on tonight?” and to herd readers into a fun water-cooler conversation about a finite number of scheduled offerings.
We now live in a world where you can watch anything and everything at any time. There is no “tonight,” there is no “schedule,” and the potential water-cooler conversation content seems as vast as the Pacific Ocean.
How do you cover a Niagara of programming? How do you “review” a dozen new series a day? Is television a “vast wasteland,” as it was once called? Or is it a miracle of creativity, offering more intelligent series, movies and documentaries than ever?
As they used to say in the old Certs breath/candy mint commercials: “Stop! You’re both right!”
It’s hard to wrap things up without thinking back to Groucho Marx’s famous quip, “Hello, I must be going.” Or Snagglepuss’ campy catch phrase, “Exit, stage left.”
Putting it in TV terms, how do we pull off this “finale”?
I can’t summon the spirits of Bob Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette, but I can evoke the memory of their appearance on the last episode of “Newhart,” considered the greatest series-ender of all time. Their sight gag told us that the entire series “had all been a dream.”
And, in some ways, writing this column has been a dream. A dream job where I got to enter your newspapers, your homes, your breakfast tables, your screens and your “feeds” to share a little information, entertainment and amusement.
The pleasure has been all mine.
— All that said, there is still a fall season in the offing. I would be remiss to leave the scene without making a few recommendations.
“Slow Horses” returns for its six-episode fourth season on Sept. 4, streaming on Apple TV+. Look for one episode a week through Oct. 9. Acclaimed actor Gary Oldman is at the top of his game as the foul-mouthed and unhygienic Jackson Lamb, head of a squad of MI5 washouts and misfits. “Horses” presents a brilliant meditation on the spy game in the post-post-Cold War era, a brooding variation on the spy genre, “Bond” bereft of sex and style, Le Carre as black comedy.
Apple will also stream “Disclaimer” on Oct. 11. The seven-part series offers a dark variation/reversal of a “#Me-Too” scandal, featuring a stellar cast. Cate Blanchett stars as a journalist whose past becomes the subject of a stranger’s vicious memoir. An almost unrecognizable Sacha Baron Cohen plays her weak-willed and easily manipulated husband. Kevin Kline offers the performance of the year as an aging man reduced to monstrous vengeance by loneliness and grief, and Lesley Manville portrays his addled wife and the “author” who sets this trainwreck in motion. Not an easy watch, “Disclaimer” features sexual content that may be too frank for some viewers.
HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere” returns on Oct. 27 for its third and final season, following a grief-stricken woman (Bridgett Everett) who returns to her Manhattan, Kansas, home to surround herself with a gaggle of rural outcasts. Audaciously generous to its finely etched and imperfect characters yet hilariously profane at the same time, this series revived my hope for the future of television comedy, if not humanity. And now it’s been canceled.
— Having spent the last 35 years making PBS documentaries about American history, Ken Burns turns his lens on a two-part documentary profile of Renaissance painter, draftsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor and architect Leonardo Da Vinci (PBS, Nov. 18). We now know why Burns called his company Florentine Productions!
Burns is said to be working on a new project on the American Revolution, probably scheduled to coincide with America’s 250th birthday. Or as some of us old farts think of it, the 50th anniversary of the Bicentennial.
SATURDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— The Philadelphia Phillies host the Atlanta Braves in MLB action (7 p.m., Fox).
— College football action includes UCLA at Hawaii (7:30 p.m., CBS); Fresno State at Michigan (7:30 p.m., NBC); and Notre Dame at Texas A&M (7:30 p.m., ABC).
— A cookbook editor finds her new community overly obsessed with smartphone technology in the 2023 shocker “Twisted Neighbor” (8 p.m., Lifetime, TV-14).
— An ambitious intern finds her values challenged while working at New York’s Fashion Week in the 2024 romance “Head Over Heels” (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).
SUNDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (7 p.m., CBS): Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo; Britain’s Channel Islands; a visit to a New Orleans high school where two seniors have solved a puzzle that has defied mathematicians for 2,000 years.
— 2024 Paris Paralympics (7 p.m., NBC) coverage.
— USC and LSU tangle in college football (8 p.m., ABC).
— Layton reveals the source of the experiments on “Snowpiercer” (9 p.m., AMC, TV-MA).
— Alan Cumming joins the search for Tonka on “Chimp Crazy” (10 p.m., HBO, TV-MA).
CULT CHOICE
TCM wraps up its August-long “Summer Under the Stars” festival with a salute to Tony Curtis, who stars as a cross-dressing jazz musician in the 1959 comedy “Some Like it Hot” (8 p.m. Saturday, TV-PG), the amoral publicist Sidney Falco in “Sweet Smell of Success” (2:15 a.m. early Sunday, TV-PG) and as a stand-in for Sen. Joseph McCarthy in director Nicholas Roeg’s 1985 alternative history “Insignificance” (4 a.m. early Sunday, TV-MA). This curious fever dream captures a chance encounter between McCarthy, Albert Einstein (Michael Emil), Joe DiMaggio (Gary Busey) and Marilyn Monroe (Theresa Russell). I can’t think of a more appropriate movie for my very last “Cult Choice.”
SATURDAY SERIES
The networks have devoted their lineups to sports coverage. See above.
SUNDAY SERIES
Plans for a heist on “Tulsa King” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-14) … Marge organizes labor on “The Simpsons” (8 p.m., Fox, r, TV-PG) … Doomsday prepped on “Bob’s Burgers” (8:30 p.m., Fox, r, TV-PG).
“Big Brother” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … “American Ninja Warrior” (9 p.m., NBC, r, TV-PG) … A cabin in the woods on “Family Guy” (9 p.m., Fox, r, TV-14) … Judy’s best customer gives her the creeps on “The Great North” (9:30 p.m., Fox, TV-14) … Colter finds a reluctant groom on “Tracker” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
