Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Monday, June 17th, 2024

Warner Bros Discovery needs a miracle. It has "Maine Cabin Masters: Building Italy"

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, June 17th, 2024:

PRODUCTION NOTES
* Just a heads-up that there might not be a newsletter tomorrow. I am planning on attending the Society of Professional Journalists Minnesota annual awards dinner. I'm not sure how long it will last. But there is a better than even chance it will run late enough that it prevents me from doing a newsletter.

* I've turned on Substack Chat for TooMuchTV. It's like a giant group text or old-school message board: it's a place for you to ask me questions, for me to ask you questions and for all of us to just generally hang out with one another. 

You can check the latest chats by clicking "Chat" on the Too Much TV homepage. Or if you use the Substack app, you can get push notifications when I post something. 

POSSIBLE GOOD NEWS FOR FANS OF 'HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS'
This tweet from David Simon is possibly good news for fans of the iconic NBC drama Homicide: Life On The Streets, which has never been available for streaming:

Assuming the show does make its streaming premiere (on Peacock?), there will no doubt be a tidal wave of press coverage. But I'll be interested in seeing how many people watch the show. Is this a situation where a small group of fans will binge it? Or will an audience of people who didn't see the show the first time around decide to check it out?

One recommendation I have is to help widen the potential audience is to create some bonus material to build out the interest. It's probably too late to put together a full-blown oral history documentary. But it's certainly possible to - at the very least - do a roundtable with cast and crew or even some one-on-one interviews.

On a side note, maybe my favorite story from the evolution of HLOTS is this story from the 1992-1993 season. At one point, producer John Wells faced allegations of plagiarism from David Simon, who argued the upcoming CBS drama Polish Hill contained an "astonishing number of similarities" to his 1991 book "Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets:"

Simon, a crime reporter for The (Baltimore) Sun, says entire accounts, dialogue and characters were lifted from his book by "Polish Hill" screenwriter John Wells.

"I called CBS and said, `How can you put this on? This is stolen material,"' Simon said in an interview. "Two of his (Wells') three murders are directly out of the book."

In one scene of the "Polish Hill" script, he said, "Every single line of dialogue was copied verbatim - including vernacular."

It's a really crazy story and one that led to some sort of settlement between the two parties. And it's amazing to me that Wells was able to move past this and have a long-running and very successful television career:

When John Wells met with TV critics in August 1992, it was the first question he was asked and he quickly took the Fifth: "I apologize, but the matter's been settled and I really can't discuss it." Looking back, it's surprising to me that the allegations didn't have a bigger impact on the career of Wells, who at the time was best known for his work on China Beach. 

Polish Hill was renamed Angel Street and the location was changed from Baltimore to Chicago. But the show's biggest problem was reports that co-stars Robin Givens and Pamela Ridley had a number of verbal confrontations that more than once led to physical violence:

No one associated with the show denied those charges at the time, "The material is very charged. There were take after take of people yelling at each other. I think there was a lot of tension. It's almost impossible with the intensity of this kind of material for the actors to walk off the set and to carry absolutely none of that with them. It was a very emotionally charged shoot," Wells told critics.

Givens told critics that "Being called a nigger is difficult," and while she didn't specify who called her that, co-star Gidley said that the duo "at first had a bit of a difficult time trying to find a kind of happy medium to be able to work in, live in and talk about these issues and situations."

WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY NEEDS A MIRACLE. IT HAS MAINE CABIN MASTERS: BUILDING ITALY
The reality series Maine Cabin Masters: Building Italy premieres tonight on Magnolia and it's an attempt to spin a limited series off from the long-running Maine Cabin Masters series, which was one of the few shows that made the transition from DIY to Magnolia several years ago. I don't mind Maine Cabin Masters. It's one of those shows that I'll put on if I just want a warm, easy-to-digest show to help me relax. 

But the fine folks at WBD seem to love taking familiar stars from their linear networks and having them do some sort of limited series set in Italy. Various Food Network personalities have done tours of Italy or televised vacations. Anybody remember Guy Fieri: Cruisin' The Italian Countryside?" Or Bobby And Giada In Italy? And there have been at least a couple of other shows that focused somehow on renovating an old house in rural Italy, such as Lorraine Bracco's My Big Italian Adventure or Fixer To Fabulous: Italiano.

To describe the premise of Maine Cabin Masters: Building Italy as a creative stretch is a massive understatement. The team travels to Molise, Italy, to transform a property into Chase Morrill's family's dream home. Except the entire idea just seems as if was invented out of smoke in order to get the team to Italy. "Hey, Chase, would you like a second home in Italy?" "Um...sure? How will that work?" "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of the details."

I've only seen the first two episodes and while Chase and the team are as interesting to watch as they are on the parent show, the premise and much of the execution are just ludicrous.

ODDS AND SODS
* Season two of Star Trek: Prodigy will premiere Monday, July 1st on its new home Netflix. The date is an interesting choice, because Monday is a day that Netflix typically reserves for kids' programming and anime.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

MONDAY, JUNE 17TH:
* Clotilda: The Return Home (NatGeo)
* Cult Massacre: One Day In Jonestown (Hulu)
* Maine Cabin Masters: Building Italy Series Premiere (Magnolia)
* Mission: Yozakura Family Series Premiere (Hulu)
* My Life Is Murder Season Four Premiere (Acorn TV/BBC America)
* The Great American Recipe Season Premiere (PBS)

TUESDAY, JUNE 18TH:
* Agents Of Mystery Series Premiere (Netflix)
* Bobby's Triple Threat Season Premiere (Food)
* Chopper Cops Series Premiere (Paramount+)
* Disco: Soundtrack Of A Revolution (PBS)
* Farmhouse Fixer: Camp Revamp Series Premiere (HGTV)
* Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution (Netflix)
* Power Of The Dream (Prime Video)
* Sin City Tow Series Premiere (Discovery)
* Stop Nyqvist Series Premiere (MHz Choice)

SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!