0612 | Channel Guide Magazine

“Longmire” author Craig Johnson reflects on 1st season of the A&E hit based on his books

August 10, 2012 | By Stacey Harrison
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As the first season of Longmire comes to a close this Sunday at 10pm on A&E, Craig Johnson has watched — along with an average of more than 4 million other viewers per week — the characters he created in a series of mystery novels come to life. While he was initially leery about turning over the reins to his rugged, Wyoming-set stories to Hollywood, he says he couldn’t be more pleased with how this adaptation has turned out. I had a lively chat with Johnson as Longmire was about to premiere and he spoke about the unlikely way his [...]

5 Steps To Launching a Successful TV Network

July 9, 2012 | By Channel Guide Contributor
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Think You Could Launch A Network? These People Have, And They Share Why It’s So Hard, Even For Oprah. By Stacey Harrison & Athena Voulgaropoulos No one is immune from the multitude of challenges that come with launching a new TV network. Not even Oprah Winfrey, whose struggles getting OWN up and running have been breathlessly detailed in the media over the past few months, or Al Gore, whose efforts to take Current into the big time hit a major roadblock with the ugly departure of Keith Olbermann. So how does it work? What are the essential components needed to [...]

“Chasing UFOs” looks to explain the unexplained

June 29, 2012 | By Ryan Berenz
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So all the grainy, out-of-focus home-video footage on TV newsmagazine shows still hasn’t convinced you that UFOs are real? Maybe the crack team of investigators in National Geographic Channel’s new series Chasing UFOs (Friday, June 29, at 9pm ET/PT) might make you a firm believer or an unswaying skeptic. Lead researcher, tech guru and globetrotter Erin Ryder is an expert in using thermal cameras and night-vision equipment. Geologist, field explorer and radiation scientist Ben McGee — who actually has suborbital scientist-astronaut training — has an academic approach to UFO investigating. And “UFOlogist” James Fox is a documentary producer who claims [...]

Power struggles are the top story in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom”

June 22, 2012 | By Channel Guide Contributor
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By Jacqueline Cutler Bravo to creator Aaron Sorkin for writing a brilliant show capturing the excitement of what happens in a newsroom during a major story with the new HBO drama The Newsroom, premiering Sunday, June 24, at 10pm ET. Jeff Daniels is perfect as Will McAvoy, a TV anchor everyone thought was a milquetoast, but who reveals a sharper edge. In the pilot, he and other journalists are at a college Q&A and he’s pressured to answer a question about why the United States is the greatest country. McAvoy answers with searing honesty that America is not, reminding students [...]

Does Charlie Sheen win again with “Anger Management”?

June 21, 2012 | By Channel Guide Contributor
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By Jay Bobbin Charlie Sheen hopes to be winning the series-television game once more. More than a year after his much-documented and much-discussed dismissal from CBS’ Two and a Half Men, the actor is headlining a comedy show again. FX launches Anger Management — inspired by the 2003 Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson film — with Sheen as an ex-baseball player turned unconventional anger therapist. Much as his previous TV alter ego Charlie Harper incorporated a lot of Sheen’s own history and personality, so does his new character … another “Charlie.” He recently discussed the show and his colorful recent past, and [...]

Russell Brand fits FX with “Brand X”

June 21, 2012 | By Stacey Harrison
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For anyone who’s ever watched the news and wondered, “What would Russell Brand think of all this?,” FX has got your answer. Brand X With Russell Brand will present the outrageous, unnervingly erudite Brit commenting on current events in front of a late-night audience. The six half-hour specials — Thursdays beginning June 28 at 11pm — will be taped just days in advance, allowing Brand’s perspective on topics ranging from politics to gossip as much immediacy as possible, and his interactions with the audience are being sold as an integral part of the entertainment value. Much will be made of [...]

7 Questions With … Sutton Foster of ABC Family’s “Bunheads”

June 21, 2012 | By Stacey Harrison
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Sutton Foster has all the confidence in the world when she’s belting out show tunes on Broadway — as she did to Tony-winning effect in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Anything Goes — or teaching young girls to dance, as she does in the new ABC Family hit Bunheads, which airs Mondays at 9pm. But when it comes to meeting fellow actor Paul Rudd, the normally composed star confesses to becoming tongue-tied. She reveals that and more interesting tidbits about herself in this edition of “7 Questions.” What has been your strangest fan encounter? I actually had this whole video series that [...]

Cedric the Entertainer becomes “The Soul Man” for TV Land

June 19, 2012 | By Stacey Harrison
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Cedric the Entertainer has always been fond of his joke imagining what it would be like if R. Kelly became a preacher. So much so that it was the starting point for an idea that became his latest project. In The Soul Man, premiering 10pm June 20 on TV Land, the Original King of Comedy plays Rev. Boyce “The Voice” Ballentine, a former R&B star who made ladies swoon — and their underwear fly toward the stage — with such bump-and-grind hits as “Sex Wichoo.” He’s given up his lustful ways to take over as minister at his father’s St. [...]

Inside BBC America’s “Inside Men” with Warren Brown

June 14, 2012 | By Karl Paloucek
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It’s one of those projects that you almost can’t talk about. If I tell you anything substantial about BBC America’s Dramaville: Inside Men it’ll give away the story and the suspsense. But it’s enough to say that Inside Men uses a jigsaw-puzzle narrative approach to tell the story of a trio of cash reserve facility workers who work together to pull off the biggest cash theft in British history. Two of the men, John and Chris — played brilliantly by Steven Mackintosh (Luther) and Ashley Walters (Hustle) — are measured and calculating. The third, Marcus, is impulsive and occasionally stupid — [...]

7 Questions With … Ron Shirley of truTV’s “Lizard Lick Towing”

June 8, 2012 | By Stacey Harrison
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Talking with Ron Shirley is, to borrow one of his phrases (a.k.a. “Ronisms”), more fun than a possum in a persimmon tree. The burly Southerner is back for another season of truTV’s Lizard Lick Towing, which the network bills as an “actuality” series about the goings-on at a repossession business in rural North Carolina. The series returns for a brand new season at 10pm June 11. 1. You’re at a magazine rack and can only pick three titles. Which ones do you choose? MAD Magazine, Field & Stream and People. 2. Aside from Lizard Lick Towing, of course, if your [...]