Welcome to Clearing Out Our Queue, where we share TV news and recommendations to keep you filled in between episodes of our podcast. Every Friday, Adina and Kara will keep you in the loop about what’s going on in the entertainment world, and what you should be watching.
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BIG WINS AT SAG AND WGGB
The SAG Awards honored many film and TV actors this past weekend; among other categories, the honors for Best Ensemble for a Drama and Comedy show (respectively) went to Succession and The Bear, which both feel fitting. See all the winners here.
In addition, British writers scored a big victory: the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) struck a new deal with BBC for a 10% minimum pay raise and increases to residuals. The deal was revealed this morning (March 1) and includes plenty of other important protections for writers as well - like contract terms for use of “extracts” of writing (short clips used in other projects) as well as better pension terms.
Premieres this past week include Shogun on FX/Hulu, new The Good Wife spinoff Elsbeth on CBS, Perimeter on BET+, and Season 2 of The Tourist on Netflix. This weekend will also bring The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin on Apple TV+, The Regime on HBO, and Season 3 of BMF on Starz.
TV NEWS
Richard Lewis, comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm star, has passed away at age 76. The final season of Curb, in which Lewis appears, is currently airing; Lewis was a major part of the partly-improvised comedy since the beginning, playing a fictionalized version of himself alongside Larry David. Along with many others in the entertainment business, David paid tribute to Lewis, calling him a “brother.”
FX’s Shogun, a remake of the 1980 miniseries, has pioneered new methods for creating multilingual TV. As the Japanese performers and crew members pointed out that directly translating the originally-English scripts into Japanese resulted in lines that didn’t make sense culturally, the producers took extra time and care to rewrite all the Japanese dialogue to make it more natural to how characters from Feudal Japan would think and speak. Re-translating this version, they sought help from Japanese playwright Kiyoko Moriyaki to make the dialogue even more poetic. Finally, that script was re-translated back into English when crafting the subtitles, with the hopes that the final product will be equally enjoyable to English and Japanese speakers.
Analysts predict that Netflix will raise prices once again in 2024. The streamer has not directly announced any price increases itself, but they also haven’t ruled it out. 2023 saw the streamer increase revenue (and costs to the consumer) by raising the cost of the “Basic” plan and cracking down on password-sharing, forcing those who share accounts to pay more in order to do so. They still hold a large share of the streaming TV market, so they may well push prices as high as they think they can get away with.
Netflix has announced a medical procedural starring Justina Machado, known for leading One Day at at Time. The show is a medical drama, set a Miami emergency room. Netflix hasn’t made much in the way of procedurals for original series, but given that licensed procedurals like Suits are some of the most-watched series on the platform, it makes sense that they’d try it out. It remains to be seen how many episodes this show will have within a season, or if they’ll release week-to-week, as is typical of procedurals, which are a genre mostly seen on broadcast TV.
Eugene Levy has joined the cast for Only Murders in the Building Season 4, the latest in an impressive row of guest stars - Eva Longoria and Molly Shannon have also been revealed as new additions for the upcoming season; Meryl Streep will return in a supporting capacity, along with the leads, Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin.
CLEARING OUT OUR QUEUE
Or, what we’re watching this week.
Kara: I finished watching One Day, which left me emotionally devastated in the best way. I then realized I hadn’t watched the final season of Derry Girls so I finally finished that since I needed a laugh. And as always, I’m keeping up my One Tree Hill watch.
Adina: I’m still kind of behind on TV, need to get back on track with Abbott and also check out the new live-action A:TLA, but I caught up on the last couple episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which included a very bittersweet (in hindsight) moment of Larry and Richard Lewis arguing about the latter’s will.